ONE OF THE NEW YORK DRESSES
As she went down the staircase later, on her way to dinner, Miss Vanderpoel saw on all sides signs of the extent of the nakedness of the land.She was in a fine old house, stripped of most of its saleable belongings, uncared for, deteriorating year by year, gradually going to ruin.One need not possess particular keenness of sight to observe this, and she had chanced to see old houses in like condition in other countries than England.A man-servant, in a shabby livery, opened the drawing-room door for her.He was not a picturesque servitor of fallen fortunes, but an awkward person who was not accustomed to his duties.Betty wondered if he had been called in from the gardens to meet the necessities of the moment.His furtive glance at the tall young woman who passed him, took in with sudden embarrassment the fact that she plainly did not belong to the dispirited world bounded by Stornham Court.Without sparkling gems or trailing richness in her wake, she was suggestively splendid.He did not know whether it was her hair or the build of her neck and shoulders that did it, but it was revealed to him that tiaras and collars of stones which blazed belonged without doubt to her equipment.He recalled that there was a legend to the effect that the present Lady Anstruthers, who looked like a rag doll, had been the daughter of a rich American, and that better things might have been expected of her if she had not been such a poor-spirited creature.
If this was her sister, she perhaps was a young woman of fortune, and that she was not of poor spirit was plain.
The large drawing-room presented but another aspect of the bareness of the rest of the house.In times probably long past, possibly in the Dowager Lady Anstruthers' early years of marriage, the walls had been hung with white and gold paper of a pattern which dominated the scene, and had been furnished with gilded chairs, tables, and ottomans.Some of these last had evidently been removed as they became too much out of repair for use or ornament.Such as remained, tarnished as to gilding and worn in the matter of upholstery, stood sparsely scattered on a desert of carpet, whose huge, flowered medallions had faded almost from view.
Lady Anstruthers, looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament on a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background.Her evening dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date as her carpet.It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its gauziness hung in crushed folds and its blue was almost grey.It was also the dress of a girl, not that of a colourless, worn woman, and her consciousness of its unfitness showed in her small-featured face as she came forward.
"Do you--recognise it, Betty?" she asked hesitatingly."It was one of my New York dresses.I put it on because--because----" and her stammering ended helplessly.
"Because you wanted to remind me," Betty said.If she felt it easier to begin with an excuse she should be provided with one.
Perhaps but for this readiness to fall into any tone she chose to adopt Rosy might have endeavoured to carry her poor farce on, but as it was she suddenly gave it up.
"I put it on because I have no other," she said."We never have visitors and I haven't dressed for dinner for so long that I seem to have nothing left that is fit to wear.I dragged this out because it was better than anything else.It was pretty once----" she gave a little laugh, "twelve years ago.How long years seem! Was I--was I pretty, Betty--twelve years ago?""Twelve years is not such a long time." Betty took her hand and drew her to a sofa."Let us sit down and talk about it.""There is nothing much to talk about.This is it----"taking in the room with a wave of her hand."I am it.
Ughtred is it."
"Then let us talk about England," was Bettina's light skim over the thin ice.
A red spot grew on each of Lady Anstruthers' cheek bones and made her faded eyes look intense.
"Let us talk about America," her little birdclaw of a hand clinging feverishly."Is New York still--still----""It is still there," Betty answered with one of the adorable smiles which showed a deep dimple near her lip."But it is much nearer England than it used to be.""Nearer!" The hand tightened as Rosy caught her breath.
Betty bent rather suddenly and kissed her.It was the easiest way of hiding the look she knew had risen to her eyes.
She began to talk gaily, half laughingly.
"It is quite near," she said."Don't you realise it?
Americans swoop over here by thousands every year.They come for business, they come for pleasure, they come for rest.They cannot keep away.They come to buy and sell--pictures and books and luxuries and lands.They come to give and take.
They are building a bridge from shore to shore of their work, and their thoughts, and their plannings, out of the lives and souls of them.It will be a great bridge and great things will pass over it." She kissed the faded cheek again.She wanted to sweep Rosy away from the dreariness of "it." Lady Anstruthers looked at her with faintly smiling eyes.She did not follow all this quite readily, but she felt pleased and vaguely comforted.
"I know how they come here and marry," she said."The new Duchess of Downes is an American.She had a fortune of two million pounds.""If she chooses to rebuild a great house and a great name,"said Betty, lifting her shoulders lightly, "why not--if it is an honest bargain? I suppose it is part of the building of the bridge."Little Lady Anstruthers, trying to pull up the sleeves of the gauzy bodice slipping off her small, sharp bones, stared at her half in wondering adoration, half in alarm.
"Betty--you--you are so handsome--and so clever and strange," she fluttered."Oh, Betty, stand up so that I can see how tall and handsome you are!"Betty did as she was told, and upon her feet she was a young woman of long lines, and fine curves so inspiring to behold that Lady Anstruthers clasped her hands together on her knees in an excited gesture.