Would Lady Anstruthers present her? Mrs.Vanderpoel could not bring her back to Rosy, and the nature of the change which had made it difficult to recognise her.
The result of this chance encounter was that she did not sleep very well, and the next morning talked anxiously to her husband.
"What I could see, Reuben, was that Milly Bowen had not known her at all, even when she saw her in the carriage with Betty.She couldn't have changed as much as that, if she had been taken care of, and happy."Her affection and admiration for her husband were such as made the task of soothing her a comparatively simple thing.
The instinct of tenderness for the mate his youth had chosen was an unchangeable one in Reuben Vanderpoel.He was not a primitive man, but in this he was as unquestioningly simple as if he had been a kindly New England farmer.He had outgrown his wife, but he had always loved and protected her gentle goodness.He had never failed her in her smallest difficulty, he could not bear to see her hurt.Betty had been his compeer and his companion almost since her childhood, but his wife was the tenderest care of his days.There was a strong sense of relief in his thought of Betty now.It was good to remember the fineness of her perceptions, her clearness of judgment, and recall that they were qualities he might rely upon.
When he left his wife to take his train to town, he left her smiling again.She scarcely knew how her fears had been dispelled.His talk had all been kindly, practical, and reasonable.It was true Betty had said in her letter that Rosy had been rather delicate, and had not been taking very good care of herself, but that was to be remedied.Rosy had made a little joke or so about it herself.
"Betty says I am not fat enough for an English matron.
I am drinking milk and breakfasting in bed, and am going to be massaged to please her.I believe we all used to obey Betty when she was a child, and now she is so tall and splendid, one would never dare to cross her.Oh, mother! I am so happy at having her with me!"To reread just these simple things caused the suggestion of things not comfortably normal to melt away.Mrs.
Vanderpoel sat down at a sunny window with her lap full of letters, and forgot Milly Bowen's floundering.
When Mr.Vanderpoel reached his office and glanced at his carefully arranged morning's mail, Mr.Germen saw him smile at the sight of the envelopes addressed in his daughter's hand.He sat down to read them at once, and, as he read, the smile of welcome became a shrewd and deeply interested one.
"She has undertaken a good-sized contract," he was saying to himself, "and she's to be trusted to see it through.It is rather fine, the way she manages to combine emotions and romance and sentiments with practical good business, without letting one interfere with the other.It's none of it bad business this, as the estate is entailed, and the boy is Rosy's.
It's good business."
This was what Betty had written to her father in New York from Stornham Court.
"The things I am beginning to do, it would be impossible for me to resist doing, and it would certainly be impossible for you.The thing I am seeing I have never seen, at close hand, before, though I have taken in something almost its parallel as part of certain picturesqueness of scenes in other countries.But I am LIVING with this and also, through relationship to Rosy, I, in a measure, belong to it, and it belongs to me.You and I may have often seen in American villages crudeness, incompleteness, lack of comfort, and the composition of a picture, a rough ugliness the result of haste and unsettled life which stays nowhere long, but packs up its goods and chattels and wanders farther afield in search of something better or worse, in any case in search of change, but we have never seen ripe, gradual falling to ruin of what generations ago was beautiful.To me it is wonderful and tragic and touching.If you could see the Court, if you could see the village, if you could see the church, if you could see the people, all quietly disintegrating, and so dearly perfect in their way that if one knew absolutely that nothing could be done to save them, one could only stand still and catch one's breath and burst into tears.The church has stood since the Conquest, and, as it still stands, grey and fine, with its mass of square tower, and despite the state of its roof, is not yet given wholly to the winds and weather, it will, no doubt, stand a few centuries longer.The Court, however, cannot long remain a possible habitation, if it is not given a new lease of life.I do not mean that it will crumble to-morrow, or the day after, but we should not think it habitable now, even while we should admit that nothing could be more delightful to look at.The cottages in the village are already, many of them, amazing, when regarded as the dwellings of human beings.How long ago the cottagers gave up expecting that anything in particular would be done for them, I do not know.I am impressed by the fact that they are an unexpecting people.Their calm non-expectancy fills me with interest.Only centuries of waiting for their superiors in rank to do things for them, and the slow formation of the habit of realising that not to submit to disappointment was no use, could have produced the almost SERENITY of their attitude.It is all very well for newborn republican nations --meaning my native land--to sniff sternly and say that such a state of affairs is an insult to the spirit of the race.
Perhaps it is now, but it was not apparently centuries ago, which was when it all began and when `Man' and the `Race'