FOR LADY JANE
There is no one thing on earth of such interest as the study of the laws of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap into folly and danger the being they rule.As a child, not old enough to give a definite name to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject.As she had grown older, she had never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament, and she had looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in her father's being--the laws of strength, executive capacity, and that pleasure in great schemes, which is roused less by a desire for gain than for a strongly-felt necessity for action, resulting in success.She mentally followed other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far the individual was to be praised or blamed for his treading of the path he seemed to choose.And now there was given her the opportunity to study the workings of the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious thing.
He was not an individual to be envied.Never was man more tormented by lack of power to control his special devil, at the right moment of time, and therefore, never was there one so inevitably his own frustration.This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days, and wondered how far he was conscious or unconscious of the thing.At times it appeared to her that he was in a state of unrest--that he was as a man wavering between lines of action, swayed at one moment by one thought, at another by an idea quite different, and that he was harried because he could not hold his own with himself.
This was true.The ball at Dunholm Castle had been enlightening, and had wrought some changes in his points of view.Also other factors had influenced him.In the first place, the changed atmosphere of Stornham, the fitness and luxury of his surroundings, the new dignity given to his position by the altered aspect of things, rendered external amiability more easy.To ride about the country on a good horse, or drive in a smart phaeton, or suitable carriage, and to find that people who a year ago had passed him with the merest recognition, saluted him with polite intention, was, to a certain degree, stimulating to a vanity which had been long ill-fed.The power which produced these results should, of course, have been in his own hands--his money-making father-in-law should have seen that it was his affair to provide for that--but since he had not done so, it was rather entertaining that it should be, for the present, in the hands of this extraordinarily good-looking girl.
He had begun by merely thinking of her in this manner--as "this extraordinarily good-looking girl," and had not, for a moment, hesitated before the edifying idea of its not being impossible to arrange a lively flirtation with her.She was at an age when, in his opinion, girlhood was poised for flight with adventure, and his tastes had not led him in the direction of youth which was fastidious.His Riviera episode had left his vanity blistered and requiring some soothing application.
His life had worked evil with him, and he had fallen ill on the hands of a woman who had treated him as a shattered, useless thing whose day was done and with whom strength and bloom could not be burdened.He had kept his illness a hidden secret, on his return to Stornham, his one desire having been to forget--even to disbelieve in it, but dreams of its suggestion sometimes awakened him at night with shudders and cold sweat.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.The ill-mannered, impudently-staring, little New York beast had developed into THIS! Hang it! No man could guess what the embryo female creature might result in.