“Whatsoever the `running,’ ” she remarked, “no pretendant has complimented me by presenting himself, so far—and Lord Mount Dunstan is physically an unusually strong man.”
“You mean it would be difficult to kick him? Is this partisanship? I hope not. Am I to understand,” he added with deliberation, “that Rosalie has received him here?”
“Yes.”
“And that you have received him, also—as you have received Lord Westholt?”
“Quite.”
“Then I must discuss the matter with Rosalie. It is not to be discussed with you.”
“You mean that you will exercise your authority in the matter?”
“In England, my dear girl, the master of a house is still sometimes guilty of exercising authority in matters which concern the reputation of his female relatives. In the absence of your father, I shall not allow you, while you are under my roof, to endanger your name in any degree. I am, at least, your brother by marriage. I intend to protect you.”
“Thank you,” said Betty.
“You are young and extremely handsome, you will have an enormous fortune, and you have evidently had your own way all your life. A girl, such as you are, may either make a magnificent marriage or a ridiculous and humiliating one. Neither American young women, nor English young men, are as disinterested as they were some years ago. Each has begun to learn what the other has to give.”
“I think that is true,” commented Betty.
“In some cases there is a good deal to be exchanged on both sides. You have a great deal to give, and should get exchange worth accepting. A beggared estate and a tainted title are not good enough.”
“That is businesslike,” Betty made comment again.
Sir Nigel laughed quietly.
“The fact is—I hope you won’t misunderstand my saying it—you do not strike me as being UNbusinesslike, yourself.”
“I am not,” answered Betty.
“I thought not,” rather narrowing his eyes as he watched her, because he believed that she must involuntarily show her hand if he irritated her sufficiently. “You do not impress me as being one of the girls who make unsuccessful marriages. You are a modern New York beauty—not an early Victorian sentimentalist.” He did not despair of results from his process of irritation. To gently but steadily convey to a beautiful and spirited young creature that no man could approach her without ulterior motive was rather a good idea. If one could make it clear—with a casual air of sensibly taking it for granted— that the natural power of youth, wit, and beauty were rendered impotent by a greatness of fortune whose proportions obliterated all else; if one simply argued from the premise that young love was no affair of hers, since she must always be regarded as a gilded chattel, whose cost was writ large in plain figures, what girl, with blood in her veins, could endure it long without wincing? This girl had undue, and, as he regarded such matters, unseemly control over her temper and her nerves, but she had blood enough in her veins, and presently she would say or do something which would give him a lead.
“When you marry–-” he began.
She lifted her head delicately, but ended the sentence for him with eyes which were actually not unsmiling.
“When I marry, I shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give.”
“If the exchange is to be equal, you must ask a great deal,” he answered. “That is why you must be protected from such fellows as Mount Dunstan.”
“If it becomes necessary, perhaps I shall be able to protect myself,” she said.
“Ah!” regretfully, “I am afraid I have annoyed you— and that you need protection more than you suspect.” If she were flesh and blood, she could scarcely resist resenting the implication contained in this. But resist it she did, and with a cool little smile which stirred him to sudden, if irritated, admiration.
She paused a second, and used the touch of gentle regret herself.
“You have wounded my vanity by intimating that my admirers do not love me for myself alone.”
He paused, also, and, narrowing his eyes again, looked straight between her lashes.
“They ought to love you for yourself alone,” he said, in a low voice. “You are a deucedly attractive girl.”
“Oh, Betty,” Rosy had pleaded, “don’t make him angry —don’t make him angry.”
So Betty lifted her shoulders slightly without comment.
“Shall we go back to the house now?” she said. “Rosalie will naturally be anxious to hear that what has been done in your absence has met with your approval.”
In what manner his approval was expressed to Rosalie, Betty did not hear this morning, at least. Externally cool though she had appeared, the process had not been without its results, and she felt that she would prefer to be alone.
“I must write some letters to catch the next steamer,” she said, as she went upstairs.
When she entered her room, she went to her writing table and sat down, with pen and paper before her. She drew the paper towards her and took up the pen, but the next moment she laid it down and gave a slight push to the paper. As she did so she realised that her hand trembled.
“I must not let myself form the habit of falling into rages—or I shall not be able to keep still some day, when I ought to do it,” she whispered. “I am in a fury—a fury.” And for a moment she covered her face.
She was a strong girl, but a girl, notwithstanding her powers. What she suddenly saw was that, as if by one movement of some powerful unseen hand, Rosy, who had been the centre of all things, had been swept out of her thought. Her anger at the injustice done to Rosy had been as nothing before the fire which had flamed in her at the insult flung at the other. And all that was undue and unbalanced. One might as well look the thing straightly in the face. Her old child hatred of Nigel Anstruthers had sprung up again in ten-fold strength. There was, it was true, something abominable about him, something which made his words more abominable than they would have been if another man had uttered them—but, though it was inevitable that his method should rouse one, where those of one’s own blood were concerned, it was not enough to fill one with raging flame when his malignity was dealing with those who were almost strangers. Mount Dunstan was almost a stranger—she had met Lord Westholt oftener. Would she have felt the same hot beat of the blood, if Lord Westholt had been concerned? No, she answered herself frankly, she would not.
CHAPTER XXXII
A GREAT BALL
A certain great ball, given yearly at Dunholm Castle, was one of the most notable social features of the county. It took place when the house was full of its most interestingly distinguished guests, and, though other balls might be given at other times, this one was marked by a degree of greater state. On several occasions the chief guests had been great personages indeed, and to be bidden to meet them implied a selection flattering in itself. One’s invitation must convey by inference that one was either brilliant, beautiful, or admirable, if not important.
Nigel Anstruthers had never appeared at what the uninvited were wont, with derisive smiles, to call The Great Panjandrum Function—which was an ironic designation not employed by such persons as received cards bidding them to the festivity. Stornham Court was not popular in the county; no one had yearned for the society of the Dowager Lady Anstruthers, even in her youth; and a not too well-favoured young man with an ill-favoured temper, noticeably on the lookout for grievances, is not an addition to one’s circle. At nineteen Nigel had discovered the older Lord Mount Dunstan and his son Tenham to be congenial acquaintances, and had been so often absent from home that his neighbours would have found social intercourse with him difficult, even if desirable. Accordingly, when the county paper recorded the splendours of The Great Panjandrum Function—which it by no means mentioned by that name—the list of “Among those present ” had not so far contained the name of Sir Nigel Anstruthers.
So, on a morning a few days after his return, the master of Stornham turned over a card of invitation and rea
d it several times before speaking.
“I suppose you know what this means,” he said at last to Rosalie, who was alone with him.
“It means that we are invited to Dunholm Castle for the ball, doesn’t it?”
Her husband tossed the card aside on the table.
“It means that Betty will be invited to every house where there is a son who must be disposed of profitably.
“She is invited because she is beautiful and clever. She would be invited if she had no money at all,” said Rosy daringly. She was actually growing daring, she thought sometimes. It would not have been possible to say anything like this a few months ago.
“Don’t make silly mistakes,” said Nigel. “There are a good many handsome girls who receive comparatively little attention. But the hounds of war are let loose, when one of your swollen American fortunes appears. The obviousness of it `virtuously’ makes me sick. It’s as vulgar—as New York.”
What befel next brought to Sir Nigel a shock of curious enlightenment, but no one was more amazed than Rosy herself. She felt, when she heard her own voice, as if she must be rather mad.
“I would rather,” she said quite distinctly, “that you did not speak to me of New York in that way.”
“What!” said Anstruthers, staring at her with contempt which was derision.
“It is my home,” she answered. “It is not proper that I should hear it spoken of slightingly.”
“Your home! It has not taken the slightest notice of you for twelve years. Your people dropped you as if you were a hot potato.”
“They have taken me up again.” Still in amazement at her own boldness, but somehow learning something as she went on.
He walked over to her side, and stood before her.
“Look here, Rosalie,” he said. “You have been taking lessons from your sister. She is a beauty and young and you are not. People will stand things from her they will not take from you. I would stand some things myself, because it rather amuses a man to see a fine girl peacocking. It’s merely ridiculous in you, and I won’t stand it—not a bit of it.”
It was not specially fortunate for him that the door opened as he was speaking, and Betty came in with her own invitation in her hand. He was quick enough, however, to turn to greet her with a shrug of his shoulders.
“I am being favoured with a little scene by my wife,” he explained. “She is capable of getting up excellent little scenes, but I daresay she does not show you that side of her temper.”
Betty took a comfortable chintz-covered, easy chair. Her expression was evasively speculative.
“Was it a scene I interrupted?” she said. “Then I must not go away and leave you to finish it. You were saying that you would not `stand’ something. What does a man do when he will not `stand’ a thing? It always sounds so final and appalling—as if he were threatening horrible things such as, perhaps, were a resource in feudal times. What IS the resource in these dull days of law and order—and policemen?”
“Is this American chaff?” he was disagreeably conscious that he was not wholly successful in his effort to be lofty.
The frankness of Betty’s smile was quite without prejudice.
“Dear me, no,” she said. “It is only the unpicturesque result of an unfeminine knowledge of the law. And I was thinking how one is limited—and yet how things are simplified after all.”
“Simplified!” disgustedly.
“Yes, really. You see, if Rosy were violent she could not beat you—even if she were strong enough—because you could ring the bell and give her into custody. And you could not beat her because the same unpleasant thing would happen to you. Policemen do rob things of colour, don’t they? And besides, when one remembers that mere vulgar law insists that no one can be forced to live with another person who is brutal or loathsome, that’s simple, isn’t it? You could go away from Rosy,” with sweet clearness, “at any moment you wished—as far away as you liked.”
“You seem to forget,” still feeling that convincing loftiness was not easy, “that when a man leaves his wife, or she deserts him, it is she who is likely to be called upon to bear the onus of public opinion.”
“Would she be called upon to bear it under all circumstances?”
“Damned clever woman as you are, you know that she would, as well as I know it.” He made an abrupt gesture with his hand. “You know that what I say is true. Women who take to their heels are deucedly unpopular in England.”
“I have not been long in England, but I have been struck by the prevalence of a sort of constitutional British sense of fair play among the people who really count. The Dunholms, for instance, have it markedly. In America it is the men who force women to take to their heels who are deucedly unpopular. The Americans’ sense of fair play is their most English quality. It was brought over in ships by the first colonists—like the pieces of fine solid old furniture, one even now sees, here and there, in houses in Virginia.”
“But the fact remains,” said Nigel, with an unpleasant laugh, “the fact remains, my dear girl.”
“The fact that does remain,” said Betty, not unpleasantly at all, and still with her gentle air of mere unprejudiced speculation, “is that, if a man or woman is properly ill-treated—PROPERLY—not in any amateurish way—they reach the point of not caring in the least—nothing matters, but that they must get away from the horror of the unbearable thing —never to see or hear of it again is heaven enough to make anything else a thing to smile at. But one could settle the other point by experimenting. Suppose you run away from Rosy, and then we can see if she is cut by the county.”
His laugh was unpleasant again.
“So long as you are with her, she will not be cut. There are a number of penniless young men of family in this, as well as the adjoining, counties. Do you think Mount Dunstan would cut her?”
She looked down at the carpet thoughtfully a moment, and then lifted her eyes.
“I do not think so,” she answered. “But I will ask him.”
He was startled by a sudden feeling that she might be capable of it.
“Oh, come now,” he said, “that goes beyond a joke. You will not do any such absurd thing. One does not want one’s domestic difficulties discussed by one’s neighbours.”
Betty opened coolly surprised eyes.
“I did not understand it was a personal matter,” she remarked. “Where do the domestic difficulties come in?”
He stared at her a few seconds with the look she did not like, which was less likeable at the moment, because it combined itself with other things.
“Hang it,” he muttered. “I wish I could keep my temper as you can keep yours,” and he turned on his heel and left the room.
Rosy had not spoken. She had sat with her hands in her lap, looking out of the window. She had at first had a moment of terror. She had, indeed, once uttered in her soul the abject cry: “Don’t make him angry, Betty—oh, don’t, don’t!” And suddenly it had been stilled, and she had listened. This was because she realised that Nigel himself was listening. That made her see what she had not dared to allow herself to see before. These trite things were true. There were laws to protect one. If Betty had not been dealing with mere truths, Nigel would have stopped her. He had been supercilious, but he could not contradict her.
“Betty,” she said, when her sister came to her, “you said that to show ME things, as well as to show them to him. I knew you did, and listened to every word. It was good for me to hear you.”
“Clear-cut, unadorned facts are like bullets,” said Betty. “They reach home, if one’s aim is good. The shiftiest people cannot evade them.”
… . .
A certain thing became evident to Betty during the time which elapsed between the arrival of the invitations and the great ball. Despite an obvious intention to assume an amiable pose for the time being, Sir Nigel could not conceal a not quite unexplainable antipathy to one individual. This individual was Mount Dunstan, whom it did not seem easy for him to leave
alone. He seemed to recur to him as a subject, without any special reason, and this somewhat puzzled Betty until she heard from Rosalie of his intimacy with Lord Tenham, which, in a measure, explained it. The whole truth was that “The Lout,” as he had been called, had indulged in frank speech in his rare intercourse with his brother and his friends, and had once interfered with hot young fury in a matter in which the pair had specially wished to avoid all interference. His open scorn of their methods of entertaining themselves they had felt to be disgusting impudence, which would have been deservedly punished with a horsewhip, if the youngster had not been a big-muscled, clumsy oaf, with a dangerous eye. Upon this footing their acquaintance had stood in past years, and to decide—as Sir Nigel had decided—that the oaf in question had begun to make his bid for splendid fortune under the roof of Stornham Court itself was a thing not to be regarded calmly. It was more than he could stand, and the folly of temper, which was forever his undoing, betrayed him into mistakes more than once. This girl, with her beauty and her wealth, he chose to regard as a sort of property rightfully his own. She was his sister-in-law, at least; she was living under his roof; he had more or less the power to encourage or discourage such aspirants as appeared. Upon the whole there was something soothing to one’s vanity in appearing before the world as the person at present responsible for her. It gave a man a certain dignity of position, and his chief girding at fate had always risen from the fact that he had not had dignity of position. He would not be held cheap in this matter, at least. But sometimes, as he looked at the girl he turned hot and sick, as it was driven home to him that he was no longer young, that he had never been good-looking, and that he had cut the ground from under his feet twelve years ago, when he had married Rosalie! If he could have waited—if he could have done several other things—perhaps the clever acting of a part, and his power of domination might have given him a chance. Even that blackguard of a Mount Dunstan had a better one now. He was young, at least, and free—and a big strong beast. He was forced, with bitter reluctance, to admit that he himself was not even particularly strong—of late he had felt it hideously.
The Shuttle: By Frances Hodgson Burnett Page 39
