The Shuttle Part 67

"Do you know that you are raving?" she said, with quiet curiosity--"raving?"

Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he touched his forehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his hand actually shook.

"Yes," he answered, panting, "but 'ware my ravings! They mean what they say."

"You do yourself an injury when you give way to them"--steadily, even with a touch of slow significance--"a physical injury. I have noticed that more than once."

He sprang to his feet again. Every drop of blood left his face. For a second he looked as if he would strike her. His arm actually flung itself out--and fell.

"You devil!" he gasped. "You count on that? You she-devil!"

She left her tree and stood before him.

"Listen to me," she said. "You intimate that you have been laying melodramatic plots against me which will injure my good name. That is rubbish. Let us leave it at that. You threaten that you will break Rosy's heart and take her child from her, you say also that you will wound and hurt my mother to her death and do your worst to ruin an honest man----"

"And, by G.o.d, I will!" he raged. "And you cannot stop me, if----"

"I do not know whether I can stop you or not, though you may be sure I will try," she interrupted him, "but that is not what I was going to say." She drew a step nearer, and there was something in the intensity of her look which fascinated and held him for a moment. She was curiously grave. "Nigel, I believe in certain things you do not believe in. I believe black thoughts breed black ills to those who think them.

It is not a new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says, 'Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.' I believe also that the worst--the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think steadily--steadily--only of the best. To you that is merely superst.i.tion to be laughed at. That is a matter of opinion. But--don't go on with this thing--DON'T GO ON WITH IT. Stop and think it over."

He stared at her furiously--tried to laugh outright, and failed because the look in her eyes was so odd in its strength and stillness.

"You think you can lay some weird spell upon me," he jeered sardonically.

"No, I don't," she answered. "I could not if I would. It is no affair of mine. It is your affair only--and there is nothing weird about it. Don't go on, I tell you. Think better of it."

She turned about without further speech, and walked away from him with light swiftness over the marsh. Oddly enough, he did not even attempt to follow her. He felt a little weak--perhaps because a certain thing she had said had brought back to him a familiar touch of the horrors. She had the eyes of a falcon under the odd, soft shade of the extraordinary lashes. She had seen what he thought no one but himself had realised.

Having watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, he sat down--as suddenly as before--on the mound near the tree.

"Oh, d.a.m.n her!" he said, his damp forehead on his hands. "d.a.m.n the whole universe!"

When Betty and Roland reached Stornham, the wicker-work pony chaise from the vicarage stood before the stone entrance steps. The drawing-room door was open, and Mrs. Brent was standing near it saying some last words to Lady Anstruthers before leaving the house, after a visit evidently made with an object. This Betty gathered from the solemnity of her manner.

"Betty," said Lady Anstruthers, catching sight of her, "do come in for a moment."

When Betty entered, both her sister and Mrs. Brent looked at her questioningly.

"You look a little pale and tired, Miss Vanderpoel," Mrs. Brent said, rather as if in haste to be the first to speak. "I hope you are not at all unwell. We need all our strength just now. I have brought the most painful news. Malignant typhoid fever has broken out among the hop pickers on the Mount Dunstan estate. Some poor creature was evidently sickening for it when he came from London. Three people died last night."

CHAPTER XLI

SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING

Sir Nigel's face was not a good thing to see when he appeared at the dinner table in the evening. As he took his seat the two footmen glanced quickly at each other, and the butler at the sideboard furtively thrust out his underlip. Not a man or woman in the household but had learned the signal denoting the moment when no service would please, no word or movement be un.o.bjectionable. Lady Anstruthers' face unconsciously a.s.sumed its propitiatory expression, and she glanced at her sister more than once when Betty was unaware that she did so.

Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke, merely making curt replies to any casual remark. This was one of his simple and most engaging methods of at once enjoying an ill-humour and making his wife feel that she was in some way to blame for it.

"Mount Dunstan is in a deucedly unpleasant position," he condescended at last. "I should not care to stand in his shoes."

He had not returned to the Court until late in the afternoon, but having heard in the village the rumour of the outbreak of fever, he had made inquiries and gathered detail.

"You are thinking of the outbreak of typhoid among the hop pickers?"

said Lady Anstruthers. "Mrs. Brent thinks it threatens to be very serious."

"An epidemic, without a doubt," he answered. "In a wretched unsanitary place like Dunstan village, the wretches will die like flies."

"What will be done?" inquired Betty.

He gave her one of the unpleasant personal glances and laughed derisively.

"Done? The county authorities, who call themselves 'guardians,' will be frightened to death and will potter about and fuss like old women, and profess to examine and protect and lay restrictions, but everyone will manage to keep at a discreet distance, and the thing will run riot and do its worst. As far as one can see, there seems no reason why the whole place should not be swept away. No doubt Mount Dunstan has wisely taken to his heels already."

"I think that, on the contrary, there would be much doubt of that,"

Betty said. "He would stay and do what he could."

Sir Nigel shrugged his shoulders.

"Would he? I think you'll find he would not."

"Mrs. Brent tells me," Rosalie broke in somewhat hurriedly, "that the huts for the hoppers are in the worst possible condition. They are so dilapidated that the rain pours into them. There is no proper shelter for the people who are ill, and Lord Mount Dunstan cannot afford to take care of them."

"But he WILL--he WILL," broke forth Betty. Her head lifted itself and she spoke almost as if through her small, shut teeth. A wave of intense belief--high, proud, and obstinate, swept through her. It was a feeling so strong and vibrant that she felt as if Mount Dunstan himself must be reached and upborne by it--as if he himself must hear her.

Rosalie looked at her half-startled, and, for the moment held fascinated by the sudden force rising in her and by the splendid spark of light under her lids. She was reminded of the fierce little Betty of long ago, with her delicate, indomitable small face and the spirit which even at nine years old had somehow seemed so strong and straitly keen of sight that one had known it might always be trusted. Actually, in one way, she had not changed. She saw the truth of things. The next instant, however, inadvertently glancing towards her husband, she caught her breath quickly. Across his heavy-featured face had shot the sudden gleam of a new expression. It was as if he had at the moment recognised something which filled him with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for.

That he did not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There was a brief silence in which it pa.s.sed away. He spoke after it, with disagreeable precision.

"He has had an enormous effect on you--that man," he said to Betty.

He spoke clearly so that she might have the pleasure of being certain that the menservants heard. They were close to the table, handing fruit--professing to be automatons, eyes down, faces expressing nothing, but as quick of hearing as it is said that blind men are. He knew that if he had been in her place and a thing as insultingly significant had been said to him, he should promptly have hurled the nearest object--plate, winegla.s.s, or decanter--in the face of the speaker.

He knew, too, that women cannot hurl projectiles without looking like viragos and fools. The weakly-feminine might burst into tears or into a silly rage and leave the table. There was a distinct breath's s.p.a.ce of pause, and Betty, cutting a cl.u.s.ter from a bunch of hothouse grapes presented by the footman at her side, answered as clearly as he had spoken himself.

"He is strong enough to produce an effect on anyone," she said. "I think you feel that yourself. He is a man who will not be beaten in the end.

Fortune will give him some good thing."

"He is a fellow who knows well enough on which hand of him good things lie," he said. "He will take all that offers itself."

"Why not?" Betty said impartially.

"There must be no riding or driving in the neighbourhood of the place,"

he said next. "I will have no risks run." He turned and addressed the butler. "Jennings, tell the servants that those are my orders."

He sat over his wine but a short time that evening, and when he joined his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room he went at once to Betty.

In fact, he was in the condition when a man cannot keep away from a woman, but must invent some reason for reaching her whether it is fatuous or plausible.