bettina mowbray, walking the deck of the ocean steamer bound for england, was aware that she was observed with interest by a great many pairs of eyes. certainly the possessors of these eyes were not more interested in her than she was in the interpretation of their glances. it was, indeed, of the first importance to her to know that she was being especially noticed by the men and women of the world, who in large part made up the passenger list, since her beauty was her one endowment for the position in the great world which all her life she had intended and expected to occupy. she was anxious, therefore, to know whether the personal appearance which had been rated so high in the obscure places hitherto known to her [pg 2]would or would not hold its own when she got out into life, as it were.
therefore, as miss mowbray paced the deck, at the side of the erect elderly woman who had been her nurse and was now her maid, she was vigilantly regardful of the looks which were turned upon her, and at times, by straining her ears, she could even catch a word or two of comment. both looks and words were gratifying in the extreme. they not only confirmed the previous verdict passed upon her beauty, but they gave evidence to her keen intuition that, judged by a higher standard, she had won a higher tribute.
yet, ardent as this admiration was on the one side, and grateful as it was on the other, there the matter stopped. to those who would have approached her more closely bettina set up a tacit barrier which no one had been able to cross, and, after several days at sea, she was still limited to the society of her maid. those who had spoken to her once had been so politely repelled that they had not spoken again, and many of those who had felt inclined to speak had, on coming nearer to her, refrained instinctively.
there was something, apart from her beauty, which attracted the eye and the imagination in [pg 3]this tall girl in her deep mourning. this, perhaps, was the twofold aspect which her different moods and expressions gave to her. at one time she looked so profoundly sad, dejected, almost despairing, that it was easy to connect her mourning dress with the loss of what had been dearest to her. at another time there was a buoyancy, animation, vividness, in her look which made her black clothes seem incongruous in any other sense than that in which a dark setting is sometimes used to throw into relief the brilliancy of a jewel.
and these two outward manifestations did, in truth, represent the dual nature which was bettina’s. her mother, who had studied her with a keen and affectionate insight, had often told her that the two key-notes of her nature were love and ambition. so far, all the ardor of bettina’s heart had been centred in her delicate, exquisite little old mother, whom she had loved with something like frenzy; and it was from the loss of this mother that she was now enduring a degree of sorrow which might perhaps have overwhelmed her, had not the other strong instinct of nature acted as an antidote. after some weeks of what seemed like blank despair, the girl had roused herself with a sort of desperation, and [pg 4]looked about her to see what was yet left to her in life. then it was that ambition had come to her rescue. with a hardened feeling in her breast she told herself that she could never love again in the way in which she had loved her mother, so she must make the most of her opportunity to become a brilliant figure in the world.
this opportunity, fortunately, was quite within sight. a path had been opened before her feet by which she might walk to a higher rank and position than even her extravagant dreams had led her to expect.
in the isolation of her narrow village life she had read in the papers accounts of the english aristocracy; and to show off her beauty in such an atmosphere, and be called by a titled name, had fired her imagination to such a degree that her good mother had had many a pang of fear for the future of her child.
when bettina found herself alone, the one profound attachment of her heart severed by death, she seemed to have no hope of relief from the dire oppression of her position, save that which lay in the possibilities of worldly enjoyment which might be in store for her if she chose to accept them. these took the form of a definite opportunity in the person of one whom her mother [pg 5]entirely trusted and approved, and this in itself was enough for bettina now. it was little less than a marvellous prospect for a girl in her position, but it had come about quite simply.
the rector of the church in the village where mrs. mowbray and her daughter lived was an englishman of good family, the rev. arthur spotswood by name. when his young relative, horace spotswood, who was cousin and heir to lord hurdly, came to travel in america, it was but natural that he should visit the rector in his home. natural, too, it was that he should there encounter bettina mowbray; and as he thought her the most charming and most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and as his affections were quite disengaged, it was almost a matter of course that he should fall in love with her.
so aware of this was bettina that when one morning she had met and talked to the young fellow at the rectory, she wound up the account of the meeting which she gave to her mother by saying, quite simply:
“he will ask me to marry him, mamma, and i shall say yes. so for a short time i shall be mrs. horace spotswood, the wife of a diplomat at the russian court, and ultimately i shall be lady hurdly, with a london mansion, several [pg 6]country places, and one of the greatest positions in english society.”
“my child, my poor child!” said the mother, in a tone of distress, “what is to be the end of your inordinate ambition for the things of the world? you have got to discover the vanity and hollowness of them some time, but what must you suffer on your way to this experience! money and position cannot bring happiness in marriage. nothing can do that but love.”
“but, you see, i propose to have love too,” was the gay response. “i assure you it will not be a difficult matter to love such a man as this, and i assure you also that he is fathoms deep in love with me already. he is manly, handsome, healthy, well-bred, and altogether charming. as to my ever loving any created being as i love you, mother darling, that, i have always told you, is out of the question; but i can imagine myself caring a good deal for this young heir of lord hurdly.”
“bettina,” said the mother, gravely, laying her hands on her daughter’s shoulder and looking deep into her eyes, “you will have to come to it by suffering, my child, but you will come to it at last—the knowledge that even the love which you give to me is slight and inadequate, [pg 7]and not worthy to be compared with the love which you will one day feel for the man who, as your husband, shall call forth your highest feeling. i believe this with firm conviction, and i beg you not to throw away your chance of a woman’s best heritage. don’t marry this man, or any man, until you can feel that even the great love you have given me is poor compared with that. heaven knows i love you, child, and mother-love is stronger than daughter-love; but i could not love you so well or so worthly if i had not loved your father more.”
these words, so impatiently listened to, were destined to come back to bettina afterward, though at the time she resented the very suggestion of what they predicted.
her instinct about young spotswood had been exactly true. he had become fascinated with her during their first interview, and had followed up the acquaintance with ardor, making her very soon a proposal of marriage.
lord hurdly, his cousin, was unmarried, it appeared, and was an inveterate enemy to matrimony. horace spotswood was his nearest of kin and legal heir. but lord hurdly was not over sixty two or three, and was likely to live a long time. finding it, perhaps, not very agreeable [pg 8]to be constantly reminded that another man would some day stand in his shoes, his lordship had procured for horace a diplomatic position at st. petersburg, where, although the society was delightful, the pay was small. as his heir, however, lord hurdly made him a very liberal allowance, and with this it was easy for horace to indulge his taste for travel. in this way he had come to america, intending to see it extensively; but he met bettina, and from that moment gave up every other thought but the dominant one of winning her for his wife.
even when he had asked and been accepted he could not leave her side, but concluded to await there lord hurdly’s answer to his letter announcing his engagement. he was not without certain misgivings on this point, but he had written so convincingly, as he thought, of bettina’s beauty, breeding, and fitness for the position of lady hurdly that was to be, that he would not and could not believe that his cousin would disapprove. besides, he was too blissfully happy to grieve over problematical troubles, and so he quite gave himself up to the joys of his present position and ardent dreams of the future.
it happened, however, that lord hurdly’s letter, when it came, was a cold, curt, and most decided [pg 9]refusal to consent to the marriage. he objected chiefly on the score of bettina’s being an american, though he did not hesitate to say also that he considered his heir a fool to think of marrying a woman without fortune, when he might so easily do better. in conclusion, he said that if this infatuated nonsense, as he called it, went on, he would withdraw his allowance from the very day of the marriage. he ended by hoping that horace would come to his senses, and let him know that the thing was at an end.
poor horace! he would fain have kept this letter from bettina, but she insisted upon seeing it. having done so, she became fired with a keen desire to triumph over this obdurate opposition, and when horace asked her if she would still fulfil her pledge, in the face of his altered fortunes, she agreed with rather more ardor of feeling than she had hitherto shown.
the truth was, bettina had disappointed him in this last respect. her mother was so obviously and unquestionably her first thought, and her mother’s failing health was so plainly a grief which his love could not counterbalance, that he at times had pangs of jealousy, of which he afterward felt ashamed. was not this intense love for her mother in itself a proof of her great [pg 10]capacity of loving, and must he not, with patient waiting, one day see himself loved in like manner? still, he chafed under the fact that every day her mother became more and more the object of her time and attention, so that he saw her now more rarely and for shorter periods. she always explained this fact by saying that the invalid was more suffering and in need of her, and she never seemed to think it possible that this excuse would not be all-sufficing.
at last a day came which brought him what he had been fearing—a summons to return to his post of duty. at one time he would have attempted to get a longer leave, even at some risk; but now, with the prospect of having his allowance from england withdrawn, he dared not do so. he knew that it would require great economy for two to live on what had once seemed so inadequate for one, and he laid the matter frankly before bettina. she was full of hope that lord hurdly would relent, and spoke so indifferently about their lack of money that he loved her all the more for it.
he had some hope, in his ardent soul, that he might persuade bettina to be married at once and go with him, but when he ventured to propose this he found that the mere suggestion of [pg 11]her leaving her mother, then or ever, made her almost angry. she insisted that her mother would get better; that when the weather changed she would be braced up and strengthened, and then, she hoped, a thorough change would do her good. so her plan was to let her lover go at once, and some months later, when mrs. mowbray should be stronger, they would go to england together, and there spotswood could meet her and they could be married.
with this promise he was obliged to go. it was a new and annoying experience for him to have to consider the question of money so closely. true, he was lord hurdly’s heir-at-law, and he could not be disinherited, so far as the title and entailed estates were concerned, but it was wholly within the power of the present lord to deprive him of the other properties, and he knew lord hurdly well enough to understand that he was tenacious of any position once taken.
so he said farewell to bettina with a sad heart. he was ardently willing to give up money and ease and to endure hardness for her sake, but he would have wished to feel that the sadness and depression in which bettina parted from him had been the echo of what was in his own heart, rather than, as he was quite aware, the deeper [pg 12]care and sorrow of her anxiety about her mother’s health.
once away from her, however, the strong flame of his love burned so vividly that he wrote her, by almost every mail, letters of such heart-felt love and sympathy and adoration that he could but feel confident that they would bring him a reply in kind. when at last her letters did come, they were so short, scant, and preoccupied that they fell like blows upon his heart. when he thought of the passionately loving letters that she was getting almost daily, while he got so rarely these half-hearted and insufficient ones, his pride became aroused, and he decided that he would imitate her to the extent of writing more rarely, even if he could not find it in his heart to write to her coolly, as she did to him. in this way it came to pass that there was a distinct change in the tone of his letters to her. as day by day, and sometimes week by week, passed without his hearing from her, and as her letters, when they came, continued to speak only of her mother’s health and her grief about it, the young fellow’s love and pride were alike so wounded that he forced himself, so far as his nature and feelings would allow, to imitate her attitude to him, and to cease the expression of the [pg 13]vehement love for her in which he got no response.
at last, after a longer interval than usual, he got a letter from bettina, which told him that her mother was dead—had, indeed, been dead and buried almost two weeks before she had roused herself to write to him.
in the tone of this letter there was a sort of desperate resolution that showed that a reaction had come on, under the stress of which she had been roused to act with energy. she announced that as she had found it intolerable to stay where she was, she would sail for europe at once. she fixed the 23d of june as the day on which she had decided to sail. in reality, however, she actually embarked from new york just one week earlier. this was in pursuance of a certain plan which required that she should have one week in london quite free of horace before he should come to claim the fulfilment of her promise to marry him.
