"See, you poor thing," said Rosalie, glowing with memories of this incident, her homesick young soul comforted by the mere likeness in the two calamities. "I brought my cheque book with me because I meant to help you. A man worked for my father had his house burned, just as yours was, and my father made everything all right for him again. I"ll make it all right for you; I"ll make you a cheque for a hundred pounds now, and then when your husband begins to build I"ll give him some more."
The woman gasped for breath and turned pale. She was frightened. It really seemed as if her ladyship must have lost her wits a little. She could not mean this. The vicaress turned pale also.
"Lady Anstruthers," she said, "Lady Anstruthers, it--it is too much. Sir Nigel----"
"Too much!" exclaimed Rosalie. "They have lost everything, you know; their hayricks and cattle as well as their house; I guess it won"t be half enough."
Mrs. Brent dragged her into the vicar"s study and talked to her. She tried to explain that in English villages such things were not done in a manner so casual, as if they were the mere result of unconsidered feeling, as if they were quite natural things, such as any human person might do. When Rosalie cried: "But why not--why not? They ought to be."
Mrs. Brent could not seem to make herself quite clear. Rosalie only gathered in a bewildered way that there ought to be more ceremony, more deliberation, more holding off, before a person of rank indulged in such munificence. The recipient ought to be made to feel it more, to understand fully what a great thing was being done.
"They will think you will do anything for them."
"So I will," said young Lady Anstruthers, "if I have the money when they are in such awful trouble. Suppose we lost everything in the world and there were people who could easily help us and wouldn"t?"
"You and Sir Nigel--that is quite different," said Mrs. Brent. "I am afraid that if you do not discuss the matter and ask advice from your husband and mother-in-law they will be very much offended."
"If I were doing it with their money they would have the right to be,"
replied Rosalie, with entire ingenuousness. "I wouldn"t presume to do such a thing as that. That wouldn"t be right, of course."
"They will be angry with me," said the vicaress awkwardly. This queer, silly girl, who seemed to see nothing in the right light, frequently made her feel awkward. Mrs. Brent told her husband that she appeared to have no sense of dignity or proper appreciation of her position.
The wife of the farmer, John Wilson, carried away the cheque, quite stunned. She was breathless with amazement and turned rather faint with excitement, bewilderment and her sense of relief. She had to sit down in the vicarage kitchen for a few minutes and drink a gla.s.s of the thin vicarage beer.
Rosalie promised that she would discuss the matter and ask advice when she returned to the Court. Just as she left the house Mrs. Brent suddenly remembered something she had forgotten.
"The Wilson trouble completely drove it out of my mind," she said. "It was a stupid mistake of the postboy"s. He left a letter of yours among mine when he came this morning. It was most careless. I shall speak to his father about it. It might have been important that you should receive it early."
When she saw the letter Rosalie uttered an exclamation. It was addressed in her father"s handwriting.
"Oh!" she cried. "It"s from father! And the postmark is Havre. What does it mean?"
She was so excited that she almost forgot to express her thanks.
Her heart leaped up in her throat. Could they have come over from America--could they? Why was it written from Havre? Could they be near her?
She walked along the road choked with ecstatic, laughing sobs. Her hand shook so that she could scarcely tear open the envelope; she tore a corner of the letter, and when the sheet was spread open her eyes were full of wild, delighted tears, which made it impossible for her to see for the moment. But she swept the tears away and read this:
DEAR DAUGHTER:
It seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you. We had counted on it very much, and your mother feels it all the more because she is weak after her illness. We don"t quite understand why you did not seem to know about her having had diphtheria in Paris. You did not answer Betty"s letter. Perhaps it missed you in some way. Things do sometimes go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother has thought a letter has been lost. She thought so because you seemed to forget to refer to things. We came over to leave Betty at a French school and we had expected to visit you later. But your mother fell ill of diphtheria and not hearing from you seemed to make her homesick, so we decided to return to New York by the next steamer. I ran over to London, however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the first day I arrived I met your husband in Bond Street. He at once explained to me that you had gone to a house party at some castle in Scotland, and said you were well and enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way to join you. I am sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could not see each other. It seems a long time since you left us. But I am very glad, however, that you are so well and really like English life. If we had time for it I am sure it would be delightful. Your mother sends her love and wants very much to hear of all you are doing and enjoying.
Hoping that we may have better luck the next time we cross--
Your affectionate father,
REUBEN L. VANDERPOEL.
Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue. She was clutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering from side to side. Now and then she uttered horrible little short cries, like an animal"s. She ran and ran, seeing nothing, and now and then with the clenched hand in which the letter was crushed striking a sharp blow at her breast.
She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the day she was brought home as a bride. Her dress caught her feet and she fell on her knees and scrambled up again, gasping; she dashed across the huge dark hall, and, hurling herself against the door of the morning room, appeared, dishevelled, haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on her wild, white face, before the Dowager, who started angrily to her feet:
"Where is Nigel? Where is Nigel?" she cried out frenziedly.
"What in heaven"s name do you mean by such manners?" demanded her ladyship. "Apologise at once!"
"Where is Nigel? Nigel! Nigel!" the girl raved. "I will see him--I will--I will see him!"
She who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures all her life had suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken, hysteric grief and rage. She did not know what she was saying and doing; she only realised in an agony of despair that she was a thing caught in a trap; that these people had her in their power, and that they had tricked and lied to her and kept her apart from what her girl"s heart so cried out to and longed for. Her father, her mother, her little sister; they had been near her and had been lied to and sent away.
"You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature!" cried the Dowager furiously. "You ought to be put in a straitjacket and drenched with cold water."
Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was in riding dress and was breathless and livid with anger. He was in a nice mood to confront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics. After a bad half hour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by chance of Wilson"s conflagration and the hundred-pound cheque. He had galloped home at the top of his horse"s speed.
"Here is your wife raving mad," cried out his mother.
Rosalie staggered across the room to him. She held up her hand clenching the letter and shook it at him.
"My mother and father have been here," she shrieked. My mother has been ill. They wanted to come to see me. You knew and you kept it from me.
You told my father lies--lies--hideous lies! You said I was away in Scotland--enjoying myself--when I was here and dying with homesickness.
You made them think I did not care for them--or for New York! You have killed me! Why did you do such a wicked thing!
He looked at her with glaring eyes. If a man born a gentleman is ever in the mood to kick his wife to death, as costermongers do, he was in that mood. He had lost control over himself as completely as she had, and while she was only a desperate, hysteric girl, he was a violent man.
"I did it because I did not mean to have them here," he said. "I did it because I won"t have them here."
"They shall come," she quavered shrilly in her wildness. "They shall come to see me. They are my own father and mother, and I will have them."
He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he would break it, if she could have thought or felt anything.
"No, you will not have them," he ground forth between his teeth. "You will do as I order you and learn to behave yourself as a decent married woman should. You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishes and control your devilish American temper."
"They have gone--gone!" wailed Rosalie. "You sent them away! My father, my mother, my sister!"
"Stop your indecent ravings!" ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her. "I will not submit to be disgraced before the servants."
"Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel," cried his mother. "The very scullery maids will hear."
She was as infuriated as her son. And, indeed, to behold civilised human beings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached was a sight to shudder at.
"I won"t stop," cried the girl. "Why did you take me away from everything--I was quite happy. Everybody was kind to me. I loved people, I had everything. No one ever--ever--ever ill-used anyone----"
Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her with absolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful little distorted, sobbing face.
"I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgar ostentation by throwing away hundred-pound cheques to villagers," he said. "I didn"t take you to give you the position of a lady and be made a fool of by you."
"You have ruined him," burst forth his mother. "You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman who would have known it was her duty to give something in return for his name and protection."
Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equal violence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began to find herself enlightened unsparingly. She and her people were vulgar sharpers. They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage and had not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had been an Englishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding, all her fortune would have been properly transferred to her husband and he would have had the dispensing of it. Her husband would have been in the position to control her expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As it was she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who had been properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of good morality.