Mrs. Betts sat down, with a long sigh, still not venturing to look up.

Instead she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; beginning to speak in a broken, sobbing voice.

"If you can't help us, Miss Coryston, I--I don't know what we shall do--my poor husband and I. We heard last night--that at the chapel service--oh!

my husband used to read the lessons there for years and years, and now he never goes:--but he heard from one of his men, who was there, about your engagement to Mr. Newbury--and how Mr. Perry gave it out. I am so _ashamed_, Miss Coryston, to be speaking of your private affairs!--I don't know how to excuse myself--"

She looked up humbly. She had large blue eyes in a round fair-complexioned face, and the lids fluttered as though just keeping back the tears.

"Please go on," said Marcia, coldly, quivering with excitement and annoyance. But she had been bred to self-control, and she betrayed nothing.

"And then--well then"--Mrs. Betts covered her face with her hands a moment, removing them with another long and miserable sigh--"my husband and I consulted--and we thought I might come to you and beg you, Miss Coryston, to plead for us--with Mr. Newbury and Lord William! You will be very happy, Miss Coryston--and we--we are so miserable!"

Mrs. Betts raised her eyes again, and this time the tears escaped, ran lightly over her cheek, and fell on her blue silk dress. Marcia, who had placed herself on a chair near, felt uncomfortably touched.

"I am sure n.o.body wishes to be unkind to you," she said, with embarra.s.sment.

Mrs. Betts bent forward eagerly.

"Then you have heard? You know that John is to be turned out of his farm unless he will give me up?"

But a quieter manner would have served her better. The answer came stiffly:

"I cannot discuss Lord William's affairs."

"Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?" cried Mrs. Betts under her breath, turning her eyes from side to side like a hunted thing, and twisting a rag of a handkerchief in her small right hand. Then, suddenly, she broke into vehemence:

"You ought to listen to me!--it is cruel--heartless, if you don't listen!

You are going to be happy--and rich--to have everything you can possibly wish for on this earth. How can you--how _can_ you refuse--to help anybody as wretched as I am!"

The small, chubby face and slight figure had a.s.sumed a certain tragic force. The impression indeed was of some one absolutely at bay, at the bitter end of their resources, and therefore reckless as to what might be thought of them. And yet there was still the slight theatrical touch, as though the speaker observed herself, even in violence.

Marcia, troubled, intimidated, watched her in silence a few moments and then said:

"How can I possibly help you, Mrs. Betts? You shouldn't have come to me--you shouldn't, indeed. I don't know your story, and if I did I shouldn't understand it. Why didn't you ask to see my mother?"

"Lady Coryston would never look at the likes of me!" cried Mrs. Betts. "No, Miss Coryston! I know it's selfish, perhaps--but it's just because you're so young--and so--so happy--that I came to you. You don't know my story--and I can't tell it you--" The speaker covered her face a moment.

"I'm not a good woman, Miss Coryston. I never pretended to be. But I've had an awfully hard time--awfully hard! You see," she went on, hurriedly, as though afraid Marcia would stop her, "you see--I was married when I was only seventeen to an old husband. My mother made me--she was dying--and she wanted to be sure I had a home. And he turned against me after a few months. It was a horrible, horrible business. I couldn't tell you what I suffered--I wouldn't for the world. He shut me up, he half starved me, he struck me, and abused me. Then"--she turned her head away and spoke in a choked, rapid voice--"there was another man--he taught me music, and--I was only a child, Miss Coryston--just eighteen. He made me believe he loved me--and I had never had kind things said to me before. It seemed like heaven--and one day--I went off with him--down to a seaside place, and there we stayed. It was wicked. I suppose I ought to have borne up against my life, but I couldn't--there! I couldn't. And so--then my husband divorced me--and for ten years I lived with my old father. The other man--deserted me. I soon found him out. I don't think he meant to be cruel to me. But his people got hold of him. They wouldn't let him marry me. So there I was left, with--with my child." Mrs. Betts threw a shrinking look at Marcia.

The girl flushed suddenly and deeply, but said nothing. Mrs. Betts resumed.

"And I just lived on somehow--with my father--who was a hard man. He hated me for what I'd done; he was always nagging and reproving me. But I couldn't earn money and be independent--though I tried once or twice. I'm not strong--and I'm not clever; and there was the child. So he just had to keep me--and it was bitter--for him and for me. Well, then, last August he was dying, and we went to Colwyn Bay for him, and took a little lodging.

And one day on the sands I saw--John Betts--after fifteen years. When I was twenty--he wanted to marry me, but we'd never met since. He came up to me--and oh!--I was glad to see him! We walked along the sh.o.r.e, and I told him everything. Well--he was sorry for me!--and father died--and I hadn't a penny. For what father left only just paid his debts. And I had no prospects in the world, and no one to help me or my boy. So, then, Mr.

Betts offered to marry me. He knew all about my divorce--he had seen it in the newspapers years ago. I didn't deceive him--not one little bit. But he knew what Lord William would think. Only it didn't seem to matter, really, to any one but him and me. I was free--and I wasn't going to bring any more disgrace on anybody."

She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the small face, its premature withering and coa.r.s.ening, the traces of rouge and powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor!

Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up.

"Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!"

The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her slight frame stiffened as she sat; the pa.s.sion in the blue eyes which sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only say again in a vaguely troubled voice:

"I am sure n.o.body wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere."

"Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place.

He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go?

What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"]

Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no acting now.

The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her.

"I'm dreadfully sorry for you! I do wish I could help you. But you know what Lord and Lady William think, what Mr. Newbury thinks about divorced people marrying again. You know--how they've set a standard all their lives--for their people here. How can they go against all they've ever preached? You must see their point of view, too. You must think of their feelings. They hate--I'm sure they hate--making any one unhappy. But if one of the chief people on the estate does this, and they think it wicked, how--"

"Ah!" cried Mrs. Betts, eagerly interrupting. "But now please, _please_, Miss Coryston, listen! This is what I want, what I beg you to say to Mr. Newbury! I can't give John up--and he'll never give me up. But I'll go away--I'll go to a little cottage John has--it was his mother's, in Charnwood Forest--far away from everybody. n.o.body here will ever know! And John will come to see me, whenever he can, whenever his work will let him. He will come over in the motor--he's always running about the country--n.o.body would ever notice. It might be said we'd separated--so we should have separated--as far as spending our lives together goes. But I should sometimes--sometimes--have my John!--for my own--my very own--and he would sometimes have me!"

Sobs came tearing through, and, bowing her face upon the sofa, Mrs. Betts shook from head to foot.

Marcia sat silent, but strangely conscious of new horizons of feeling--of a deepening life. This was the first time she had ever come across such an experience, touched so nearly on pa.s.sions and sins which had hitherto been to her as stage phantoms moving in a far distance. The girl of to-day, whatever cla.s.s she belongs to, is no longer, indeed, reared in the conventional innocence of the mid-Victorian moment--a moment differing wholly from that immediately before it, no less than from those which have come after it. The manners, the plays, the talk of our generation attack such an innocence at every turn. But in place of an indirect and hearsay knowledge, here, in this humble, shabby instance, was, for the first time, the real stuff--the real, miserable thing, in flesh and blood. That was new to her.

And, in a flash of memory and a.s.sociation, there pa.s.sed through her mind the vision of the Opera House blazing with lights--Iphigenia on the stage, wailing at her father's knees in an agony of terror and despair, and Newbury's voice:

"_This_ is the death she shrinks from--"

And again, as the beautiful form, erect and calm once more, swept stately to its doom:

"And this--is the death she _accepts_!"

Newbury's face, as he spoke, was before her, quietly smiling, its handsome features alive with an exaltation which had both chilled and fascinated the girl looking at him. As she remembered it the thought arose--"_he_ would accept any martyrdom for himself, in defense of what he believes and loves--and _therefore_ he will inflict it inexorably on others. But that's the point! For oneself, yes--but for others who suffer and don't believe!--suffer horribly!"

A look of resolution came into the young face. She tried to rouse Mrs.

Betts.

"Please don't cry so!" she said, in distress. "I see what you mean. I'll try and put it to Mr. Newbury. n.o.body here, you think, need know anything about you? They'd suppose you'd separated? Mr. Betts would live here, and you would live somewhere else. That's what you mean, isn't it? That's all anybody need know?"

Mrs. Betts raised herself.

"That's it. Of course, you see, we might have pretended to accept Lord William's conditions, and then have deceived him. But my husband wouldn't do that. He simply doesn't admit that anybody else here has any right to interfere with our private affairs. But he won't tell lies to Lord William and Mr. Edward. If they won't, they won't!"

She sat up, drearily controlling herself, and began to smooth back her hair and put her hat straight. But in the middle of it she caught Marcia's hand:

"Miss Coryston! you're going to marry Mr. Newbury--because you love him. If I lose John who will ever give me a kind word--a kind look again? I thought at last--I'd found--a little love. Even bad people"--her voice broke--"may rejoice in that, mayn't they? Christ didn't forbid them that."

Her piteous look hung on her companion. The tears sprang to Marcia's eyes.

Yet her temperament did not tend to easy weeping; and at the root of her mind in this very moment were feelings of repulsion and of doubt, mingled with impressions of pity. But the hours at Hoddon Grey had been hours of deep and transforming emotion; they had left her a more sensitive and responsive human being.

"I'll do what I can," she said, with slow emphasis. "I promise you that I'll speak to Mr. Newbury."