“Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the social census of the county,” Lord Dunholm explained. “One invites ALL one’s neighbours and is invited again. It is a friendly duty one owes.”
“I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan,” Betty answered. “Is he here?”
She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan, and she had looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his son had done at Miss Vanderpoel’s mention of the tabooed name. But, being an older man, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kind look.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “did you expect to see him here?”
“Yes, I think I did,” Betty replied, with slow softness. “I believe I rather hoped I should.”
“Indeed! You are interested in him?”
“I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you why.”
She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together. She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-haired second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thought that he was an unhappy, rough-looking young man, until the brief moment in which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that the other was to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst. She had understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had liked it. When she related the incident of her meeting with him when she thought him a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changed and thoughtful expression. The effect produced upon her imagination by what she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad beauty of the wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly to bear himself as a servant, his unintended self- revelations, her clear, well-argued point of view charmed him. She had seen the thing set apart from its county scandal, and so had read possibilities others had been blind to. He was immensely touched by certain things she said about the First Man.
“He is one of them,” she said. “They find their way in the end—they find their way. But just now he thinks there is none. He is standing in the dark—where the roads meet.”
“You think he will find his way?” Lord Dunholm said. “Why do you think so? “
“Because I KNOW he will,” she answered. “But I cannot tell you WHY I know.”
“What you have said has been interesting to me, because of the light your own thought threw upon what you saw. It has not been Mount Dunstan I have been caring for, but for the light you saw him in. You met him without prejudice, and you carried the light in your hand. You always carry a light, my impression is,” very quietly. “Some women do.”
“The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a proud man to bear. Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?”
Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments.
“It is an extraordinary thing to reflect,”—his words came slowly—”that it may NOT be a just prejudice.
“And go to America,” said Betty. “He could have avoided doing that—but he cannot be called to account for his relations. If that is all—the prejudice is NOT just.”
“No, it is not,” said Lord Dunholm, “and one feels rather awkward at having shared it. You have set me thinking again, Miss Vanderpoel.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE THREAD OF G. SELDEN
The Shuttle having in its weaving caught up the thread of G. Selden’s rudimentary existence and drawn it, with the young man himself, across the sea, used curiously the thread in question, in the forming of the design of its huge web. As wool and coarse linen are sometimes interwoven with rich silk for decorative or utilitarian purposes, so perhaps was this previously unvalued material employed.
It was, indeed, an interesting truth that the young man, during his convalescence, without his own knowledge, acted as a species of magnet which drew together persons who might not easily otherwise have met. Mr. Penzance and Mount Dunstan rode over to see him every few days, and their visits naturally established relations with Stornham Court much more intimate than could have formed themselves in the same length of time under any of the ordinary circumstances of country life. Conventionalities lost their prominence in friendly intercourse with Selden. It was not, however, that he himself desired to dispense with convention. His intense wish to “do the right thing,” and avoid giving offence was the most ingenuous and touching feature of his broad cosmopolitan good nature.
“If I ever make a break, sir,” he had once said, with almost passionate fervour, in talking to Mr. Penzance, “please tell me, and set me on the right track. No fellow likes to look like a hoosier, but I don’t mind that half as much as—as seeming not to APPRECIATE.”
He used the word “appreciate” frequently. It expressed for him many degrees of thanks.
“I tell you that’s fine,” he said to Ughtred, who brought him a flower from the garden. “I appreciate that.”
To Betty he said more than once:
“You know how I appreciate all this, Miss Vanderpoel. You DO know I appreciate it, don’t you?”
He had an immense admiration for Mount Dunstan, and talked to him a great deal about America, often about the sheep ranch, and what it might have done and ought to have done. But his admiration for Mr. Penzance became affection. To him he talked oftener about England, and listened to the vicar’s scholarly stories of its history, its past glories and its present ones, as he might have listened at fourteen to stories from the Arabian Nights.
These two being frequently absorbed in conversation, Mount Dunstan was rather thrown upon Betty’s hands. When they strolled together about the place or sat under the deep shade of green trees, they talked not only of England and America, but of divers things which increased their knowledge of each other. It is points of view which reveal qualities, tendencies, and innate differences, or accordances of thought, and the points of view of each interested the other.
“Mr. Selden is asking Mr. Penzance questions about English history,” Betty said, on one of the afternoons in
