TOWNLINSON & SHEPPARD
During the whole course of her interesting life--and she had always found life interesting--Betty Vanderpoel decided that she had known no experience more absorbing than this morning spent in going over the long-closed and deserted portions of the neglected house.She had never seen anything like the place, or as full of suggestion.The greater part of it had simply been shut up and left to time and weather, both of which had had their effects.The fine old red roof, having lost tiles, had fallen into leaks that let in rain, which had stained and rotted walls, plaster, and woodwork; wind and storm had beaten through broken window panes and done their worst with such furniture and hangings as they found to whip and toss and leave damp and spotted with mould.They passed through corridors, and up and down short or long stairways, with stained or faded walls, and sometimes with cracked or fallen plastering and wainscotting.Here and there the oak flooring itself was uncertain.The rooms, whether large or small, all presented a like aspect of potential beauty and comfort, utterly uncared for and forlorn.There were many rooms, but none more than scantily furnished, and a number of them were stripped bare.Betty found herself wondering how long a time it had taken the belongings of the big place to dwindle and melt away into such bareness.
"There was a time, I suppose, when it was all furnished,"she said.
"All these rooms were shut up when I came here," Rosy answered."I suppose things worth selling have been sold.
When pieces of furniture were broken in one part of the house, they were replaced by things brought from another.No one cared.Nigel hates it all.He calls it a rathole.He detests the country everywhere, but particularly this part of it.After the first year I had learned better than to speak to him of spending money on repairs.""A good deal of money should be spent on repairs,"reflected Betty, looking about her.
She was standing in the middle of a room whose walls were hung with the remains of what had been chintz, covered with a pattern of loose clusters of moss rosebuds.The dampness had rotted it until, in some places, it had fallen away in strips from its fastenings.A quaint, embroidered couch stood in one corner, and as Betty looked at it, a mouse crept from under the tattered valance, stared at her in alarm and suddenly darted back again, in terror of intrusion so unusual.
A casement window swung open, on a broken hinge, and a strong branch of ivy, having forced its way inside, had thrown a covering of leaves over the deep ledge, and was beginning to climb the inner woodwork.Through the casement was to be seen a heavenly spread of country, whose rolling lands were clad softly in green pastures and thick-branched trees.
"This is the Rosebud Boudoir," said Lady Anstruthers, smiling faintly."All the rooms have names.I thought them so delightful, when I first heard them.The Damask Room--the Tapestry Room--the White Wainscot Room--My Lady's Chamber.
It almost broke my heart when I saw what they looked like.""It would be very interesting," Betty commented slowly, "to make them look as they ought to look."A remote fear rose to the surface of the expression in Lady Anstruthers' eyes.She could not detach herself from certain recollections of Nigel--of his opinions of her family--of his determination not to allow it to enter as a factor in either his life or hers.And Betty had come to Stornham--Betty whom he had detested as a child--and in the course of two days, she had seemed to become a new part of the atmosphere, and to make the dead despair of the place begin to stir with life.
What other thing than this was happening as she spoke of making such rooms as the Rosebud Boudoir "look as they ought to look," and said the words not as if they were part of a fantastic vision, but as if they expressed a perfectly possible thing?
Betty saw the doubt in her eyes, and in a measure, guessed at its meaning.The time to pause for argument had, however not arrived.There was too much to be investigated, too much to be seen.She swept her on her way.They wandered on through some forty rooms, more or less; they opened doors and closed them; they unbarred shutters and let the sun stream in on dust and dampness and cobwebs.The comprehension of the situation which Betty gained was as valuable as it was enlightening.
The descent into the lower part of the house was a new experience.Betty had not before seen huge, flagged kitchens, vaulted servants' halls, stone passages, butteries and dairies.
The substantial masonry of the walls and arched ceilings, the stone stairway, and the seemingly endless offices, were interestingly remote in idea from such domestic modernities as chance views of up-to-date American household workings had provided her.
In the huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face.In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs.Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs before.And this was the unexpected arrival--the young lady there had been "talk of" from the moment of her appearance.Mrs.Noakes admitted with the grudgingness of a person of uncheerful temperament, that looks like that always would make talk.A certain degree of vague mental illumination led her to agree with Robert, the footman, that the stranger's effectiveness was, perhaps, also, not altogether a matter of good looks, and certainly it was not an affair of clothes.Her brightish blue dress, of rough cloth, was nothing particular, notwithstanding the fit of it.There was "something else about her." She looked round the place, not with the casual indifference of a fine young lady, carelessly curious to see what she had not seen before, but with an alert, questioning interest.
