"Don't think I am fool enough not to understand.You have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately 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 Iwould--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it while frenzied for her, was intolerable.And it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for.Whether melodrama is out of date or not there are, occasionally, some fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day.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 entities.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 circumstances, 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 passed down the row and said a few words to each woman or man who looked out.
