THE PARTICULAR INCIDENT
Betty Vanderpoel's walk back to Stornham did not, long though it was, give her time to follow to its end the thread of her thoughts.Mentally she walked again with her uncommunicative guide, through woodpaths and gardens, and stood gazing at the great blind-faced house.She had not given the man more than an occasional glance until he had told her his name.She had been too much absorbed, too much moved, by what she had been seeing.She wondered, if she had been more aware of him, whether his face would have revealed a great deal.She believed it would not.He had made himself outwardly stolid.But the thing must have been bitter.
To him the whole story of the splendid past was familiar even if through his own life he had looked on only at gradual decay.There must be stories enough of men and women who had lived in the place, of what they had done, of how they had loved, of what they had counted for in their country's wars and peacemakings, great functions and law-building.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.
The worst of it for him was that he was not of that strain of his race who had been the "bad lot." The "bad lot" had been the weak lot, the vicious, the self-degrading.
Scandals which had shut men out from their class and kind were usually of an ugly type.This man had a strong jaw, a powerful, healthy body, and clean, though perhaps hard, eyes.
The First Man of them, who hewed his way to the front, who stood fierce in the face of things, who won the first lands and laid the first stones, might have been like him in build and look.
"It's a disgusting thing," she said to herself, "to think of the corrupt weaklings the strong ones dwindled down to.Ihate them.So does he."
There had been many such of late years, she knew.She had seen them in Paris, in Rome, even in New York.Things with thin or over-thick bodies and receding chins and foreheads;things haunting places of amusement and finding inordinate entertainment in strange jokes and horseplay.She herself had hot blood and a fierce strength of rebellion, and she was wondering how, if the father and elder brother had been the "bad lot," he had managed to stand still, looking on, and keeping his hands off them.
The last gold of the sun was mellowing the grey stone of the terrace and enriching the green of the weeds thrusting themselves into life between the uneven flags when she reached Stornham, and passing through the house found Lady Anstruthers sitting there.In sustenance of her effort to keep up appearances, she had put on a weird little muslin dress and had elaborated the dressing of her thin hair.It was no longer dragged back straight from her face, and she looked a trifle less abject, even a shade prettier.Bettina sat upon the edge of the balustrade and touched the hair with light fingers, ruffling it a little becomingly.
"If you had worn it like this yesterday," she said, "I should have known you.""Should you, Betty? I never look into a mirror if I can help it, but when I do I never know myself.The thing that stares back at me with its pale eyes is not Rosy.But, of course, everyone grows old.""Not now! People are just discovering how to grow young instead."Lady Anstruthers looked into the clear courage of her laughing eyes.
"Somehow," she said, "you say strange things in such a way that one feels as if they must be true, however--however unlike anything else they are.""They are not as new as they seem," said Betty."Ancient philosophers said things like them centuries ago, but people did not believe them.We are just beginning to drag them out of the dust and furbish them up and pretend they are ours, just as people rub up and adorn themselves with jewels dug out of excavations.""In America people think so many new things," said poor little Lady Anstruthers with yearning humbleness.
"The whole civilised world is thinking what you call new things," said Betty."The old ones won't do.They have been tried, and though they have helped us to the place we have reached, they cannot help us any farther.We must begin again.""It is such a long time since I began," said Rosy, "such a long time.""Then there must be another beginning for you, too.The hour has struck."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."Betty got up, too, and there was an extraordinary steadiness in her eyes.
"You may," she answered."I shall never say one thing to you which is not a truth, not one single thing.""I believe that," said Rosy Anstruthers, with a quivering mouth."I do believe it so.""I walked to Mount Dunstan," Betty said later.
"Really?" said Rosy."There and back?"
"Yes, and all round the park and the gardens."Rosy looked rather uncertain.
"Weren't you a little afraid of meeting someone?""I did meet someone.At first I took him for a game-keeper.But he turned out to be Lord Mount Dunstan."Lady Anstruthers gasped.