Sir Nigel's face was not a good thing to see when he appeared at the dinner table in the evening. As he took his seat the two footmen glanced quickly at each other, and the butler at the sideboard furtively1 thrust out his underlip. Not a man or woman in the household but had learned the signal denoting the moment when no service would please, no word or movement be unobjectionable. Lady Anstruthers' face unconsciously assumed its propitiatory2 expression, and she glanced at her sister more than once when Betty was unaware3 that she did so.
Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke4, merely making curt6 replies to any casual remark. This was one of his simple and most engaging methods of at once enjoying an ill-humour and making his wife feel that she was in some way to blame for it.
“Mount Dunstan is in a deucedly unpleasant position,” he condescended7 at last. “I should not care to stand in his shoes.”
He had not returned to the Court until late in the afternoon, but having heard in the village the rumour9 of the outbreak of fever, he had made inquiries10 and gathered detail.
“You are thinking of the outbreak of typhoid among the hop11 pickers?” said Lady Anstruthers. “Mrs. Brent thinks it threatens to be very serious.”
“An epidemic12, without a doubt,” he answered. “In a wretched unsanitary place like Dunstan village, the wretches13 will die like flies.”
“What will be done?” inquired Betty.
He gave her one of the unpleasant personal glances and laughed derisively14.
“Done? The county authorities, who call themselves 'guardians15,' will be frightened to death and will potter about and fuss like old women, and profess16 to examine and protect and lay restrictions17, but everyone will manage to keep at a discreet18 distance, and the thing will run riot and do its worst. As far as one can see, there seems no reason why the whole place should not be swept away. No doubt Mount Dunstan has wisely taken to his heels already.”
“I think that, on the contrary, there would be much doubt of that,” Betty said. “He would stay and do what he could.”
Sir Nigel shrugged19 his shoulders.
“Would he? I think you'll find he would not.”
“Mrs. Brent tells me,” Rosalie broke in somewhat hurriedly, “that the huts for the hoppers are in the worst possible condition. They are so dilapidated that the rain pours into them. There is no proper shelter for the people who are ill, and Lord Mount Dunstan cannot afford to take care of them.”
“But he WILL—he WILL,” broke forth20 Betty. Her head lifted itself and she spoke almost as if through her small, shut teeth. A wave of intense belief—high, proud, and obstinate21, swept through her. It was a feeling so strong and vibrant22 that she felt as if Mount Dunstan himself must be reached and upborne by it—as if he himself must hear her.
Rosalie looked at her half-startled, and, for the moment held fascinated by the sudden force rising in her and by the splendid spark of light under her lids. She was reminded of the fierce little Betty of long ago, with her delicate, indomitable small face and the spirit which even at nine years old had somehow seemed so strong and straitly keen of sight that one had known it might always be trusted. Actually, in one way, she had not changed. She saw the truth of things. The next instant, however, inadvertently glancing towards her husband, she caught her breath quickly. Across his heavy-featured face had shot the sudden gleam of a new expression. It was as if he had at the moment recognised something which filled him with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for. That he did not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There was a brief silence in which it passed away. He spoke after it, with disagreeable precision.
“He has had an enormous effect on you—that man,” he said to Betty.
He spoke clearly so that she might have the pleasure of being certain that the menservants heard. They were close to the table, handing fruit—professing to be automatons24, eyes down, faces expressing nothing, but as quick of hearing as it is said that blind men are. He knew that if he had been in her place and a thing as insultingly significant had been said to him, he should promptly25 have hurled27 the nearest object—plate, wineglass, or decanter—in the face of the speaker. He knew, too, that women cannot hurl26 projectiles28 without looking like viragos and fools. The weakly-feminine might burst into tears or into a silly rage and leave the table. There was a distinct breath's space of pause, and Betty, cutting a cluster from a bunch of hothouse grapes presented by the footman at her side, answered as clearly as he had spoken himself.
“He is strong enough to produce an effect on anyone,” she said. “I think you feel that yourself. He is a man who will not be beaten in the end. Fortune will give him some good thing.”
“He is a fellow who knows well enough on which hand of him good things lie,” he said. “He will take all that offers itself.”
“Why not?” Betty said impartially29.
“There must be no riding or driving in the neighbourhood of the place,” he said next. “I will have no risks run.” He turned and addressed the butler. “Jennings, tell the servants that those are my orders.”
He sat over his wine but a short time that evening, and when he joined his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room he went at once to Betty. In fact, he was in the condition when a man cannot keep away from a woman, but must invent some reason for reaching her whether it is fatuous30 or plausible31.
“What I said to Jennings was an order to you as well as to the people below stairs. I know you are particularly fond of riding in the direction of Mount Dunstan. You are in my care so long as you are in my house.”
“Orders are not necessary,” Betty replied. “The day is past when one rushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong medicine when one's friends were ill. If one is not a properly-trained nurse, it is wiser not to risk being very much in the way.”
He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady Anstruthers sat apart, appearing to read.
“Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately33 in love cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes.”
He was standing34 on the hearth35. Betty swung herself lightly round, facing him squarely. Her full look was splendid.
“If it is there—let it stay,” she said. “I would not keep it out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I would—if it is there. If it is—let it stay.”
The daring, throbbing36, human truth of her made his brain whirl. To a man young and clean and fit to count as in the lists, to have heard her say the thing of a rival would have been hard enough, but base, degenerate37, and of the world behind her day, to hear it while frenzied38 for her, was intolerable. And it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for. Whether melodrama39 is out of date or not there are, occasionally, some fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day.
“You think you will reach him,” he persisted. “You think you will help him in some way. You will not let the thing alone.”
“Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever40 I take the liberty of doing will encroach on no right of yours,” she said.
But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face reflecting itself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were drawn41 together.
She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face, drew the black brows closer, confronting a complicating42 truth.
“If I were free to take Rosalie and Ughtred home to-morrow,” she thought, “I could not bear to go. I should suffer too much.”
She was suffering now. The strong longing43 in her heart was like a physical pain. No word or look of this one man had given her proof that his thoughts turned to her, and yet it was intolerable—intolerable—that in his hour of stress and need they were as wholly apart as if worlds rolled between them. At any dire32 moment it was mere5 nature that she should give herself in help and support. If, on the night at sea, when they had first spoken to each other, the ship had gone down, she knew that they two, strangers though they were, would have worked side by side among the frantic44 people, and have been among the last to take to the boats. How did she know? Only because, he being he, and she being she, it must have been so in accordance with the laws ruling entities45. And now he stood facing a calamity46 almost as terrible—and she with full hands sat still.
She had seen the hop pickers' huts and had recognised their condition. Mere brick sheds in which the pickers slept upon bundles of hay or straw in their best days; in their decay they did not even provide shelter. In fine weather the hop gatherers slept well enough in them, cooking their food in gypsy-fashion in the open. When the rain descended8, it must run down walls and drip through the holes in the roofs in streams which would soak clothes and bedding. The worst that Nigel and Mrs. Brent had implied was true. Illness of any order, under such circumstances, would have small chance of recovery, but malignant47 typhoid without shelter, without proper nourishment48 or nursing, had not ............