The Shuttle Part 68

"What I said to Jennings was an order to you as well as to the people below stairs. I know you are particularly fond of riding in the direction of Mount Dunstan. You are in my care so long as you are in my house."

"Orders are not necessary," Betty replied. "The day is past when one rushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong medicine when one's friends were ill. If one is not a properly-trained nurse, it is wiser not to risk being very much in the way."

He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady Anstruthers sat apart, appearing to read.

"Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman pa.s.sionately in love cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes."

He was standing on the hearth. Betty swung herself lightly round, facing him squarely. Her full look was splendid.

"If it is there--let it stay," she said. "I would not keep it out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I would--if it is there. If it is--let it stay."

The daring, throbbing, human truth of her made his brain whirl. To a man young and clean and fit to count as in the lists, to have heard her say the thing of a rival would have been hard enough, but base, degenerate, and of the world behind her day, to hear it while frenzied for her, was intolerable. And it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for.

Whether melodrama is out of date or not there are, occasionally, some fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day.

"You think you will reach him," he persisted. "You think you will help him in some way. You will not let the thing alone."

"Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever I take the liberty of doing will encroach on no right of yours," she said.

But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face reflecting itself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were drawn together.

She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face, drew the black brows closer, confronting a complicating truth.

"If I were free to take Rosalie and Ughtred home to-morrow," she thought, "I could not bear to go. I should suffer too much."

She was suffering now. The strong longing in her heart was like a physical pain. No word or look of this one man had given her proof that his thoughts turned to her, and yet it was intolerable--intolerable--that in his hour of stress and need they were as wholly apart as if worlds rolled between them. At any dire moment it was mere nature that she should give herself in help and support. If, on the night at sea, when they had first spoken to each other, the ship had gone down, she knew that they two, strangers though they were, would have worked side by side among the frantic people, and have been among the last to take to the boats. How did she know? Only because, he being he, and she being she, it must have been so in accordance with the laws ruling ent.i.ties. And now he stood facing a calamity almost as terrible--and she with full hands sat still.

She had seen the hop pickers' huts and had recognised their condition.

Mere brick sheds in which the pickers slept upon bundles of hay or straw in their best days; in their decay they did not even provide shelter. In fine weather the hop gatherers slept well enough in them, cooking their food in gypsy-fashion in the open. When the rain descended, it must run down walls and drip through the holes in the roofs in streams which would soak clothes and bedding. The worst that Nigel and Mrs. Brent had implied was true. Illness of any order, under such circ.u.mstances, would have small chance of recovery, but malignant typhoid without shelter, without proper nourishment or nursing, had not one chance in a million. And he--this one man--stood alone in the midst of the tragedy--responsible and helpless. He would feel himself responsible as she herself would, if she were in his place. She was conscious that suddenly the event of the afternoon--the interview upon the marshes, had receded until it had become an almost unmeaning incident. What did the degenerate, melodramatic folly matter----!

She had restlessly left her chair before the dressing-table, and was walking to and fro. She paused and stood looking down at the carpet, though she scarcely saw it.

"Nothing matters but one thing--one person," she owned to herself aloud. "I suppose it is always like this. Rosy, Ughtred, even father and mother--everyone seems less near than they were. It is too strong--too strong. It is----" the words dropped slowly from her lips, "the strongest thing--in the world."

She lifted her face and threw out her hands, a lovely young half-sad smile curling the deep corners of her mouth. "Sometimes one feels so disdained," she said--"so disdained with all one's power. Perhaps I am an unwanted thing."

But even in this case there were aids one might make an effort to give.

She went to her writing-table and sat thinking for some time. Afterwards she began to write letters. Three or four were addressed to London--one was to Mr. Penzance.

Mount Dunstan and his vicar were walking through the village to the vicarage. They had been to the hop pickers' huts to see the people who were ill of the fever. Both of them noticed that cottage doors and windows were shut, and that here and there alarmed faces looked out from behind latticed panes.

"They are in a panic of fear," Mount Dunstan said, "and by way of safeguard they shut out every breath of air and stifle indoors.

Something must be done."

Catching the eye of a woman who was peering over her short white dimity blind, he beckoned to her authoritatively. She came to the door and hesitated there, curtsying nervously.

Mount Dunstan spoke to her across the hedge.

"You need not come out to me, Mrs. Binner. You may stay where you are,"

he said. "Are you obeying the orders given by the Guardians?"

"Yes, my lord. Yes, my lord," with more curtsys.

"Your health is very much in your own hands," he added.

"You must keep your cottage and your children cleaner than you have ever kept them before, and you must use the disinfectant I sent you. Keep away from the huts, and open your windows. If you don't open them, I shall come and do it for you. Bad air is infection itself. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord. Thank your lordship."

"Go in and open your windows now, and tell your neighbours to do the same. If anyone is ill let me know at once. The vicar and I will do our best for everyone."

By that time curiosity had overcome fear, and other cottage doors had opened. Mount Dunstan pa.s.sed down the row and said a few words to each woman or man who looked out. Questions were asked anxiously and he answered them. That he was personally unafraid was comfortingly plain, and the mere sight of him was, on the whole, an unexplainable support.

"We heard said your lordship was going away," put in a stout mother with a heavy child on her arm, a slight testiness scarcely concealed by respectful good-manners. She was a matron with a temper, and that a Mount Dunstan should avoid responsibilities seemed highly credible.

"I shall stay where I am," Mount Dunstan answered. "My place is here."

They believed him, Mount Dunstan though he was. It could not be said that they were fond of him, but gradually it had been borne in upon them that his word was to be relied on, though his manner was unalluring and they knew he was too poor to do his duty by them or his estate. As he walked away with the vicar, windows were opened, and in one or two untidy cottages a sudden flourishing of mops and brooms began.

There was dark trouble in Mount Dunstan's face. In the huts they had left two men stiff on their straw, and two women and a child in a state of collapse. Added to these were others stricken helpless. A number of workers in the hop gardens, on realising the danger threatening them, had gathered together bundles and children, and, leaving the harvest behind, had gone on the tramp again. Those who remained were the weaker or less cautious, or were held by some tie to those who were already ill of the fever. The village doctor was an old man who had spent his blameless life in bringing little cottagers into the world, attending their measles and whooping coughs, and their father's and grandfather's rheumatics. He had never faced a village crisis in the course of his seventy-five years, and was aghast and flurried with fright. His methods remained those of his youth, and were marked chiefly by a readiness to prescribe calomel in any emergency. A younger and stronger man was needed, as well as a man of more modern training. But even the most brilliant pract.i.tioner of the hour could not have provided shelter and nourishment, and without them his skill would have counted as nothing.

For three weeks there had been no rain, which was a condition of the barometer not likely to last. Already grey clouds were gathering and obscuring the blueness of the sky.

The vicar glanced upwards anxiously.

"When it comes," he said, "there will be a downpour, and a persistent one."

"Yes," Mount Dunstan answered.

He had lain awake thinking throughout the night. How was a man to sleep!

It was as Betty Vanderpoel had known it would be. He, who--beggar though he might be--was the lord of the land, was the man to face the strait of these poor workers on the land, as his own. Some action must be taken.

What action? As he walked by his friend's side from the huts where the dead men lay it revealed itself that he saw his way.

They were going to the vicarage to consult a medical book, but on the way there they pa.s.sed a part of the park where, through a break in the timber the huge, white, blind-faced house stood on view. Mount Dunstan laid his hand on Mr. Penzance's shoulder and stopped him,

"Look there!" he said. "THERE are weather-tight rooms enough."

A startled expression showed itself on the vicar's face.

"For what?" he exclaimed

"For a hospital," brusquely "I can give them one thing, at least--shelter."

"It is a very remarkable thing to think of doing," Mr. Penzance said.

"It is not so remarkable as that labourers on my land should die at my gate because I cannot give them decent roofs to cover them. There is a roof that will shield them from the weather. They shall be brought to the Mount."

The vicar was silent a moment, and a flush of sympathy warmed his face.