The Shuttle Part 23

"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 gamekeeper. But he turned out to be Lord Mount Dunstan."

Lady Anstruthers gasped.

"What did he do?" she exclaimed. "Did he look angry at seeing a stranger? They say he is so ill-tempered and rude."

"I should feel ill-tempered if I were in his place," said Betty. "He has enough to rouse his evil pa.s.sions and make him savage. What a fate for a man with any sense and decency of feeling! What fools and criminals the last generation of his house must have produced! I wonder how such things evolve themselves. But he is different--different. One can see it. If he had a chance--just half a chance--he would build it all up again. And I don't mean merely the place, but all that one means when one says 'his house.'"

"He would need a great deal of money," sighed Lady Anstruthers.

Betty nodded slowly as she looked out, reflecting, into the park.

"Yes, it would require money," was her admission.

"And he has none," Lady Anstruthers added. "None whatever."

"He will get some," said Betty, still reflecting. "He will make it, or dig it up, or someone will leave it to him. There is a great deal of money in the world, and when a strong creature ought to have some of it he gets it."

"Oh, Betty!" said Rosy. "Oh, Betty!"

"Watch that man," said Betty; "you will see. It will come."

Lady Anstruthers' mind, working at no time on complex lines, presented her with a simple modern solution.

"Perhaps he will marry an American," she said, and saying it, sighed again.

"He will not do it on purpose." Bettina answered slowly and with such an air of absence of mind that Rosy laughed a little.

"Will he do it accidentally, or against his will?" she said.

Betty herself smiled.

"Perhaps he will," she said. "There are Englishmen who rather dislike Americans. I think he is one of them."

It apparently became necessary for Lady Anstruthers, a moment later, to lean upon the stone bal.u.s.trade and pick off a young leaf or so, for no reason whatever, unless that in doing so she averted her look from her sister as she made her next remark.

"Are you--when are you going to write to father and mother?"

"I have written," with unembarra.s.sed evenness of tone. "Mother will be counting the days."

"Mother!" Rosy breathed, with a soft little gasp. "Mother!" and turned her face farther away. "What did you tell her?"

Betty moved over to her and stood close at her side. The power of her personality enveloped the tremulous creature as if it had been a sense of warmth.

"I told her how beautiful the place was, and how Ughtred adored you--and how you loved us all, and longed to see New York again."

The relief in the poor little face was so immense that Betty's heart shook before it. Lady Anstruthers looked up at her with adoring eyes.

"I might have known," she said; "I might have known that--that you would only say the right thing. You couldn't say the wrong thing, Betty."

Betty bent over her and spoke almost yearningly.

"Whatever happens," she said, "we will take care that mother is not hurt. She's too kind--she's too good--she's too tender."

"That is what I have remembered," said Lady Anstruthers brokenly. "She used to hold me on her lap when I was quite grown up. Oh! her soft, warm arms--her warm shoulder! I have so wanted her."

"She has wanted you," Betty answered. "She thinks of you just as she did when she held you on her lap."

"But if she saw me now--looking like this! If she saw me! Sometimes I have even been glad to think she never would."

"She will." Betty's tone was cool and clear. "But before she does I shall have made you look like yourself."

Lady Anstruthers' thin hand closed on her plucked leaves convulsively, and then opening let them drop upon the stone of the terrace.

"We shall never see each other. It wouldn't be possible," she said. "And there is no magic in the world now, Betty. You can't bring back----"

"Yes, you can," said Bettina. "And what used to be called magic is only the controlled working of the law and order of things in these days. We must talk it all over."

Lady Anstruthers became a little pale.