The thought of Mount Dunstan brought with it the thought of her father.This was because there was frequently in her mind a connection between the two.How would the man of schemes, of wealth, and power almost unbounded, regard the man born with a load about his neck--chained to earth by it, standing in the midst of his hungering and thirsting possessions, his hands empty of what would feed them and restore their strength? Would he see any solution of the problem? She could imagine his looking at the situation through his gaze at the man, and considering both in his summing up.
"Circumstances and the man," she had heard him say.
"But always the man first."
Being no visionary, he did not underestimate the power of circumstance.This Betty had learned from him.And what could practically be done with circumstance such as this? The question had begun to recur to her.What could she herself have done in the care of Rosy and Stornham, if chance had not placed in her hand the strongest lever? What she had accomplished had been easy--easy.All that had been required had been the qualities which control of the lever might itself tend to create in one.Given--by mere chance again--imagination and initiative, the moving of the lever did the rest.
If chance had not been on one's side, what then? And where was this man's chance? She had said to Rosy, in speaking of the wealth of America, "Sometimes one is tired of it." And Rosy had reminded her that there were those who were not tired of it, who could bear some of the burden of it, if it might be laid on their own shoulders.The great beautiful, blind-faced house, awaiting its slow doom in the midst of its lonely unfed lands--what could save it, and all it represented of race and name, and the stately history of men, but the power one professed to call base and sordid--mere money? She felt a sudden impatience at herself for having said she was tired of it.That was a folly which took upon itself the aspect of an affectation.
And, if a man could not earn money--or go forth to rob richer neighbours of it as in the good old marauding days--or accept it if it were offered to him as a gift--what could he do? Nothing.If he had been born a village labourer, he could have earned by the work of his hands enough to keep his cottage roof over him, and have held up his head among his fellows.But for such as himself there was no mere labour which would avail.He had not that rough honest resource.
Only the decent living and orderly management of the generations behind him would have left to him fairly his own chance to hold with dignity the place in the world into which Fate had thrust him at the outset--a blind, newborn thing of whom no permission had been asked.
"If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day, I might earn two shillings," he had said to Betty, on the previous day."I could break stones well," holding out a big arm, "but fourteen shillings a week will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a stonebreaker."He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational attitude towards his own affairs.Betty sometimes wondered how she herself knew so much about them--how it happened that her thoughts so often dwelt upon them.The explanation she had once made to herself had been half irony, half serious reflection.
"It is a result of the first Reuben Vanderpoel.It is because Iam of the fighting commercial stock, and, when I see a business problem, I cannot leave it alone, even when it is no affair of mine."As an exposition of the type of the commercial fighting-stock she presented, as she paused beneath overshadowing trees, an aspect beautifully suggesting a far different thing.
She stood--all white from slim shoe to tilted parasol,--and either the result of her inspection of the work done by her order, or a combination of her summer-day mood with her feeling for the problem, had given her a special radiance.
It glowed on lip and cheek, and shone in her Irish eyes.
She had paused to look at a man approaching down the avenue.He was not a labourer, and she did not know him.
Men who were not labourers usually rode or drove, and this one was walking.He was neither young nor old, and, though at a distance his aspect was not attracting, she found that she regarded him curiously, and waited for him to draw nearer.
The man himself was glancing about him with a puzzled look and knitted forehead.When he had passed through the village he had seen things he had not expected to see; when he had reached the entrance gate, and--for reasons of his own --dismissed his station trap, he had looked at the lodge scrutinisingly, because he was not prepared for its picturesque trimness.The avenue was free from weeds and in order, the two gates beyond him were new and substantial.As he went on his way and reached the first, he saw at about a hundred yards distance a tall girl in white standing watching him.
Things which were not easily explainable always irritated him.That this place--which was his own affair--should present an air of mystery, did not improve his humour, which was bad to begin with.He had lately been passing through unpleasant things, which had left him feeling himself tricked and made ridiculous--as only women can trick a man and make him ridiculous, he had said to himself.And there had been an acrid consolation in looking forward to the relief of venting one's self on a woman who dare not resent.
"What has happened, confound it!" he muttered, when he caught sight of the girl."Have we set up a house party?"And then, as he saw more distinctly, "Damn! What a figure!"By this time Betty herself had begun to see more clearly.
Surely this was a face she remembered--though the passing of years and ugly living had thickened and blurred, somewhat, its always heavy features.Suddenly she knew it, and the look in its eyes--the look she had, as a child, unreasoningly hated.
Nigel Anstruthers had returned from his private holiday.