Frances Hodgson Burnett

“ He came out upon the road almost face to face with Miss Vanderpoel, and from where he stood Mount Dunstan could see his delighted smile as he lifted his hat in salute. It was Lord Westholt, and what more natural than that after an exchange of greetings the two should ride together on their way! For nearly three miles their homeward road would be the same.
But in a breath's space Mount Dunstan realised a certain truth—a simple, elemental thing. All the exaltation of the morning swooped and fell as a bird seems to swoop and fall through space. ”

“ To be able to look back through centuries and know of one's blood that sometimes it had been shed in the doing of great deeds, must be a thing to remember. To realise that the courage and honour had been lost in ignoble modern vices, which no sense of dignity and reverence for race and name had restrained—must be bitter—bitter! And in the role of a servant to lead a stranger about among the ruins of what had been—that must have been bitter, too. For a moment Betty felt the bitterness of it herself and her red mouth took upon itself a grim line. ”

“ When Bettina came in, Vanderpoel, looking up to smile at her in welcome, was struck by the fact that as a background to an entering figure of tall, splendid girlhood in a ball dress it was admirable, throwing up all its whiteness and grace and sweep of line. He was always glad to see Betty. The rich strength of the life radiating from her, the reality and glow of her were good for him and had the power of detaching him from work of which he was tired. ”

“ How still and wide and golden it was; how the cry of plover and lifting trill of skylark assured one that one was wholly encircled by solitude and space which were more enclosing than any walls! She was going to the mounds to which Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony chaise, when he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought Roman camp and Roman legions to life again. Up on the largest hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and looking out under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living loveliness of the marsh-land world. ”

“ How wonderful life in such a place might be if flowers and birds and sweep of sward, and mass of stately, broad-branched trees, were parts of the home one loved and which surely would in its own way love one in return. But soon all this phase of life would be over. Rosalie, once safe at home, would look back, remembering the place with a shudder. As Ughtred grew older the passing of years would dim miserable child memories, and when his inheritance fell to him he might return to see it with happier eyes. ”

“ Lady Anstruthers rose with as involuntary a movement as if a strong hand had drawn her to her feet. She stood facing Betty, a pathetic little figure in her washed-out muslin frock and with her washed-out face and eyes and being, though on her faded cheeks a flush was rising.
“Oh, Betty!” she said, “I don't know what there is about you, but there is something which makes one feel as if you believed everything and could do everything, and as if one believes YOU. Whatever you were to say, you would make it seem TRUE. If you said the wildest thing in the world I should BELIEVE you.” ”

“ Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she should, in thought, repair them, set them straight. ”

“ Vanderpoel, to introduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years was to be launched into a new future. To concern one's self about her exquisite wardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded, to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feel something of the happiness she had known in those younger days when New York had been less advanced in its news and methods, and slim little blonde Rosalie had come out in white tulle and waltzed like a fairy with a hundred partners. ”

“ Something was stumbling heavily about the patch of garden—some animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath, and more stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managed to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere sense of his nearness seemed a sort of protection.
He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden before Nigel heard him. When he did hear, he came out of the house in the humour of a man the inflaming of whose mood has been cumulative; Childe Harold's temper also was not to be trifled with. ”

“ He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them the force they had controlled, and he had seen this force—controlled no longer—let loose upon the world, sometimes a power of evil, sometimes scattering itself aimlessly into nothingness and folly, which wrought harm. He was not an ambitious man, but—perhaps because he was not only a man of thought, but a Vanderpoel of the blood of the first Reuben—these were things he did not contemplate without restlessness. When Rosy had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been glad when he had seen Betty growing, day by day, into a strong thing. ”

“ Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed a big young laugh, which had, perhaps tended to the waking in him of the feeling he was suddenly conscious of—that a six-mile ride over a white, tree-dappled, sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after all, if at the end of the gallop one came again upon that other in whom life was strong and young, and bloomed on rose-cheek and was the far fire in the blue deeps of lovely eyes, and the slim straightness of the fair body, why would it not be, in a way, all to the good? ”

“ In the winter days to come there would be many an hour's talk in East End courts and alleys of the queer time when a score or more of them had lain in the great room with the dancing and floating goddesses looking down at them from the high, painted ceiling, and the swell, who was a lord, walking about among them, working for them as the nurses did, and sitting by some of them through awful hours, sometimes holding burning or slackening and chilling hands with a grip whose steadiness seemed to hold them back from the brink of the abyss they were slipping into. ”

“ Betty made a slight movement, and in her face there was a dawning of mingled amazement and incredulity. The thought which had come to her seemed—as Ughtred's locking of the door had seemed—too wild for modern days.
Lady Anstruthers saw her expression and understood it. She made a hopeless gesture with her small, bony hand.
“Yes,” she said, “it is just like that. No one would believe it. The worst cleverness of the things he does, is that when one tells of them, they sound like lies. I have a bewildered feeling that I should not believe them myself if I had not seen them. ”

“ Words are of small moment when the mere sound of a voice makes an unreasonable joy.
“There was that touch of sharp autumn sweetness in the air yesterday morning,” she said. “And the chaplets of briony berries that look as if they had been thrown over the hedges are beginning to change to scarlet here and there. The wild rose-haws are reddening, and so are the clusters of berries on the thorn trees and bushes.”
“There are millions of them,” Mount Dunstan said, “and in a few weeks' time they will look like bunches of crimson coral. When the sun shines on them they will be wonderful to see.” ”

“ Betty's tone was cool and clear. “But before she does I shall have made you look like yourself.”
Lady Anstruthers' thin hand closed on her plucked leaves convulsively, and then opening let them drop upon the stone of the terrace.
“We shall never see each other. It wouldn't be possible,” she said. “And there is no magic in the world now, Betty. You can't bring back——”
“Yes, you can,” said Bettina. “And what used to be called magic is only the controlled working of the law and order of things in these days. We must talk it all over.” ”

“ America ruled the universe, and its women ruled America, bullying it a little, prettily, perhaps. What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers, brothers and husbands, sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also? Betty, in her growing up, heard all this intimated. At twelve years old, though she had detested Rosalie's marriage, she had rather liked to hear people talk of the picturesqueness of places like Stornham Court, and of the life led by women of rank in their houses in town and country. ”

“ It was not Rosalie Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless face against the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees; it was the wife of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic, she had been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was being dragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she did not know how to escape. Already Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England a woman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against her husband, and that to endeavour to do anything was the last impossible touch of vulgar ignominy. ”

“ The vicar lifted his bowed head and began his service. Every man, woman and child before him responded aloud and with a curious fervour—not in decorous fear of seeming to thrust themselves before the throne, making too much of their petitions, in the presence of the gentry. Here and there sobs were to be heard. Lady Anstruthers followed the service timorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side, by the round table in the centre of the great square Stornham pew, which was like a room, bowed her head upon her folded arms, and prayed her own intense, insistent prayer. ”

“ Through centuries the home had enriched itself, its acres had borne harvests, its trees had grown and spread huge branches, full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls, there had been loves and lives and marriages and births, the breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. ”

“ She dragged up before her a vision of Rosalie, driving with her mother and herself, looking about her at the new buildings and changed streets, flushed and made radiant by the accelerated pace and excitement of her beloved New York. But, oh, the slow, penetrating rainfall, and—the cold damp clay!
She rose, making an involuntary sound which was half a moan. The long mirror set between two windows showed her momentarily an awful young figure, throwing up its arms. Was that Betty Vanderpoel—that?
“What does one do,” she said, “when the world comes to an end? What does one do?” ”

“ He was hideously afraid of death and pain, and he had had monstrous pain—and while he had lain battling with it, upon his bed in the villa on the Mediterranean, he had been able to hear, in the garden outside, the low voices and laughter of the Spanish dancer and the healthy, strong young fool who was her new adorer.
When he had found himself face to face with Betty in the avenue, after the first leap of annoyance, which had suddenly died down into perversely interested curiosity, he could have laughed outright at the novelty and odd unexpectedness of the situation. ”

“ What was there in such speeches as these to draw any two nearer and nearer to each other as they walked side by side—to fill the morning air with an intensity of life, to seem to cause the world to drop away and become as nothing? As they had been isolated during their waltz in the crowded ballroom at Dunholm Castle, so they were isolated now. When they stood in the narrow green groves of the hop garden, talking simply of the placing of the bins and the stripping and measuring of the vines, there might have been no human thing within a hundred miles—within a thousand. ”

“ There were the farmhouses, the square-towered churches, the red-pointed hop oasts, and the village children. How distinctly she had made him see them! His Betty—his splendid Betty! His heart beat at the thought of seeing her high, young black head, and holding her safe in his arms again. Safe! He resented having used the word, because there was a shock in seeming to admit the possibility that anything in the universe could do wrong to her. Yet one man had been villain enough to mean her harm, and to threaten her with it. ”

“ Betty drew a deep breath. For one moment there seemed to rise before her vision of a huge room, whose stately size made its bareness a more desolate thing. And Mr. Penzance bent low over the bed. She tore her thought away from it.
“No! No!” she cried out in low, passionate protest. “There will be love and yearning all about him everywhere. The villagers who are waiting—the poor things he has worked for—the very ringers themselves, are all pouring forth the same thoughts. He will feel even ours—ours too! His soul cannot be lonely.” ”

“ Bettina told the story to her father when they next met. She had grown into a tall young creature by this time. Her low, full voice was like a bell and was capable of ringing forth some fine, mellow tones of irony.
“And in America we are pleased,” she said, “and flatter ourselves that we are receiving the proper tribute of adoration of our American wit and beauty. We plume ourselves on our conquests.”
“No, Betty,” said her father, and his reflective deliberation had meaning. “There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularly in these days. ”

“ When he turned his red-brown eyes upon her suddenly she was conscious that she liked their colour, their shape, the power of the look in them. On his part, he—for the twentieth time—found himself newly moved by the dower nature had bestowed on her. Had the world ever held before a woman creature so much to be longed for?—abnormal wealth, New York and Fifth Avenue notwithstanding, a man could only think of folding arms round her and whispering in her lovely ear—follies, oaths, prayers, gratitude. ”

“ She put her hands against her cheeks and laughed a little, low laugh.
“I feel violent,” she said. “I feel violent and I must get over it. This is rage. Rage is worth nothing.”
It was rage—the rage of splendid hot blood which surged in answer to leaping hot thoughts. There would have been a sort of luxury in giving way to the sway of it. But the self-indulgence would have been no aid to future action. Rage was worth nothing. She said it as the first Reuben Vanderpoel might have said of a useless but glittering weapon. “This gun is worth nothing,” and cast it aside. ”

“ A narrow room at the back of a cheap lodging house, a bed, a strip of carpet, a washstand—this the sole refuge of a male human creature, in the flood tide of youth, no more than this to come back to nightly, footsore and resentful of soul, after a day's tramp spent in forcing himself and his wares on people who did not want him or them, and who found infinite variety in the forcefulness of their method of saying so. ”

“ The effort had ended in his being overpowered again by his horrors—the horrors in which he found himself staring at that end of things when no pleasure had spice, no debauchery the sting of life, and men, such as he, stood upon the shore of time shuddering and naked souls, watching the great tide, bearing its treasures, recede forever, and leave them to the cold and hideous dark. ”

“ Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be better than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Each to-day demands of to-morrow new men, new minds, new work. A to-day which has not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed new buildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure, unworthy even of being consigned to the limbo of respectable yesterdays. Such a country lives by leaps and bounds, and the ten years which followed the marriage of Reuben Vanderpoel's eldest daughter made many such bounds and leaps. ”

“ The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of stories of thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had been irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere exchange and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value of things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances, had stood him in marvellous good stead. ”

“ In the park beyond a cuckoo was calling.
She was conscious both of the forlorn beauty and significance of the neglected garden, and of the clear quaintness of the cuckoo call, as she thought of other things.
“Her spirit and her health are broken,” was her summing up. “Her prettiness has faded to a rag. She is as nervous as an ill-treated child. She has lost her wits. I do not know where to begin with her. I must let her tell me things as gradually as she chooses. Until I see Nigel I shall not know what his method with her has been. ”