International marriages ceased to be a novelty.As Bettina Vanderpoel grew up, she grew up, so to speak, in the midst of them.She saw her country, its people, its newspapers, its literature, innocently rejoiced by the alliances its charming young women contracted with foreign rank.She saw it affectionately, gleefully, rubbing its hands over its duchesses, its countesses, its miladies.The American Eagle spread its wings and flapped them sometimes a trifle, over this new but so natural and inevitable triumph of its virgins.It was of course only "American" that such things should happen.America ruled the universe, and its women ruled America, bullying it a little, prettily, perhaps.What could be more a matter of course than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers, brothers and husbands, sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also? Betty, in her growing up, heard all this intimated.At twelve years old, though she had detested Rosalie's marriage, she had rather liked to hear people talk of the picturesqueness of places like Stornham Court, and of the life led by women of rank in their houses in town and country.Such talk nearly always involved the description of things and people, whose colour and tone had only reached her through the medium of books, most frequently fiction.
She was, however, of an unusually observing mind, even as a child, and the time came when she realised that the national bird spread its wings less proudly when the subject of international matches was touched upon, and even at such times showed signs of restlessness.Now and then things had not turned out as they appeared to promise; two or three seemingly brilliant unions had resulted in disaster.She had not understood all the details the newspapers cheerfully provided, but it was clear to her that more than one previously envied young woman had had practical reasons for discovering that she had made an astonishingly bad bargain.This being the case, she used frequently to ponder over the case of Rosy--Rosy! who had been swept away from them and swallowed up, as it seemed, by that other and older world.She was in certain ways a silent child, and no one but herself knew how little she had forgotten Rosy, how often she pondered over her, how sometimes she had lain awake in the night and puzzled out lines of argument concerning her and things which might be true.
The one grief of poor Mrs.Vanderpoel's life had been the apparent estrangement of her eldest child.After her first six months in England Lady Anstruthers' letters had become fewer and farther between, and had given so little information connected with herself that affectionate curiosity became discouraged.Sir Nigel's brief and rare epistles revealed so little desire for any relationship with his wife's family that gradually Rosy's image seemed to fade into far distance and become fainter with the passing of each month.It seemed almost an incredible thing, when they allowed themselves to think of it, but no member of the family had ever been to Stornham Court.Two or three efforts to arrange a visit had been made, but on each occasion had failed through some apparently accidental cause.Once Lady Anstruthers had been away, once a letter had seemingly failed to reach her, once her children had had scarlet fever and the orders of the physicians in attendance had been stringent in regard to visitors, even relatives who did not fear contagion.
"If she had been living in New York and her children had been ill I should have been with her all the time," poor Mrs.
Vanderpoel had said with tears."Rosy's changed awfully, somehow.Her letters don't sound a bit like she used to be.
It seems as if she just doesn't care to see her mother and father."Betty had frowned a good deal and thought intensely in secret.She did not believe that Rosy was ashamed of her relations.She remembered, however, it is true, that Clara Newell (who had been a schoolmate) had become very super-fine and indifferent to her family after her marriage to an aristocratic and learned German.Hers had been one of the successful alliances, and after living a few years in Berlin she had quite looked down upon New Yorkers, and had made herself exceedingly unpopular during her one brief visit to her relatives.She seemed to think her father and mother undignified and uncultivated, and she disapproved entirely of her sisters dress and bearing.She said that they had no distinction of manner and that all their interests were frivolous and unenlightened.
"But Clara always was a conceited girl," thought Betty.
"She was always patronising people, and Rosy was only pretty and sweet.She always said herself that she had no brains.
But she had a heart."
After the lapse of a few years there had been no further discussion of plans for visiting Stornham.Rosalie had become so remote as to appear almost unreachable.She had been presented at Court, she had had three children, the Dowager Lady Anstruthers had died.Once she had written to her father to ask for a large sum of money, which he had sent to her, because she seemed to want it very much.She required it to pay off certain debts on the estate and spoke touchingly of her boy who would inherit.
"He is a delicate boy, father," she wrote, "and I don't want the estate to come to him burdened."When she received the money she wrote gratefully of the generosity shown her, but she spoke very vaguely of the prospect of their seeing each other in the future.It was as if she felt her own remoteness even more than they felt it themselves.
In the meantime Bettina had been taken to France and placed at school there.The resulting experience was an enlightening one, far more illuminating to the quick-witted American child than it would have been to an English, French, or German one, who would not have had so much to learn, and probably would not have been so quick at the learning.
