 Chapter twenty-seven of the shuttle, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain, the shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Chapter twenty-seven, Life. Mount Dunstan, walking through the park next morning on his way to the vicarage just after post-time, met Mr. Penzance himself coming to make an equally early call at the mount. Each of them had a letter in his hand, and each met the other's glance with a smile. G. Selden, Mount Dunstan, said, and yours? G. Selden also answered the vicar, for young fellow, what a luck! And yet, is it ill luck, he says not? He tells me it is not, said Mount Dunstan, and I agree with him. Mr. Penzance read his letter aloud. Dear sir, this is to notify you that owing to my bite going back on me when going downhill, I met with an accident in Stornham Park, was cut about the head and leg broken. Little Willie, being far from home and mother, you can see what sort of a fix he'd have been in if it hadn't been for the kindness of Ruben S. Vanderpool's daughters, Miss Bettina and her sister Lady Anstruthers. The way they've had me taken care of has been great. I've been under a nurse and doctor, same as if I was Albert Edward with Appendictius. I apologize if that's not spelled right. Dear sir, this is to say that I ask Miss Vanderpool if I should be butting in too much if I dropped a line, to ask if you could spare the time to call and see me. It would be considered a favour and appreciated by G. Selden, Delcoff, Tye Brighter Company, Broadway. P.S. have already sold three Delcoffs to Miss Vanderpool. Upon my word Mr. Pencance commented, and his amiable fervour quite glowed. I like that queer young fellow, I like him. He doesn't wish to but in too much. Now there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And what a humorous, forceful figure of speech, some butting animal, a goat I seem to see preferably, forcing its way into a group or closed circle of persons. His gleeful analysis of the phrase had such evident charm for him that Mount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G. Selden had done at the adroit mention of Weber and Fields. Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour with G. Selden surrounded by the atmosphere of Ruben S. Vanderpool would be a cheering thing, he said. It would be, Mr. Pencance answered, let us go by all means. We should not, I suppose, with keen delight, be butting in upon Lady Anstrother's too early. He was quite enraptured with his own aptness. Like G. Selden, I should not like to but in, he added. The scent and warmth and glow of a glorious morning filled the hour. Combining themselves with a certain normal human gaiety which surrounded the mere thought of G. Selden, they were good things for Mount Dunstan. Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed a big young laugh which had perhaps tended to the waking in him of the feeling he was suddenly conscious of, that a six-mile ride over a white tree-daple sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after all, if at the end of the gallop one came again upon that other in whom life was strong and young, and bloomed on Rose Cheek and was the far fire in the blue deeps of lovely eyes and the slim straightness of the fair body, why would it not be, in a way, all to the good? He had thought of her on more than one day, and felt that he wanted to see her again. Let us go, he answered Penzance. One can call on an invalid at any time. Lady Anstrother's will forgive us. In less than an hour's time they were on their way. They laughed and talked as they rode their horses' hooves, striking out a cheerful ringing accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating than the hollow regular ring and click-clack of good hooves going well over a fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the junior assistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpool. Penzance was much pleased by the prospect of seeing this delightful and unusual girl. He had heard stories of her as had Lord Westholt. He knew of Old Dobie's pipe and of Mrs Weldon's respite from the Union, and though such incidents would seem mere trifles to their dweller in great towns, he had himself lived and done his work long enough in villages to know the village mind and the scale of proportions by which its gladness and sadness were measured. He knew more of all this than Mount Dunstan could, since Mount Dunstan's existence had isolated itself from rather gloomy choice. But as he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these things. There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in them, and such suggestion was good for any man or woman either, who had fallen into living in a dull narrow groove. It's the new life in her which strikes me, he said. She's brought wealth with her and wealthiest power to do the good or evil that grows in a man's soul. But she has brought something more. She might have come here and brought all the sumptuousness of a fashionable young beauty who drove through the village and drew people to their windows, and made clod-hoppers scratch their heads and pull their forelocks and children bob curtsies and stare. She might have come and gone and left a mind-dazzling memory and nothing else. A few sovereigns tossed here and there would have earned her a reputation, but by G., to quote Seldon, she has begun living with them, as if her ancestors had done it for six hundred years. And what I see is that if she had come without a penny in her pocket, she would have done the same thing. He paused upon during moment and then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamation in itself. She's life, he said. She's life itself. Good God, what a thing it is for a man or woman to be life, instead of a massive tissue and muscle and nerve dragged about by the mere mechanism of living. Penzan said, listen seriously. What you say is very suggestive, he commented. It strikes me as true, too. You have seen something of her also, at least more than I have. I did not think these things when I saw her, though I suppose I felt them unconsciously. I have reached this way of summing her up by processes of exclusion and inclusion. One hears of her as you know yourself, and one thinks her over. You have thought her over? A lot, rather grumpily. A beautiful female creature inevitably gives an unbeautiful male creature something to think of, if he's not otherwise actively employed. I am not. She has become a sort of dawning relief to my hopeless humours. Being a low and unworthy beast I'm sometimes resentful enough of the unfairness of things. She has too much. When they rode through Stornham Village they saw signs of work already done and work still in hand. There were no broken windows or palings or hanging wicked gates. Cottage gardens had been put in order, and there were evidences of such cheering touches as new bits of window curtain and strong-looking young plants blooming between them. So many small but necessary things had been done that the whole village wore the aspect of a place which had taken heart and was facing existence in a hopeful spirit. A year ago Mount Dunstan and his vicar riding through it had been struck by its neglected and dispirited look. As they entered the hall of the court Miss Vanderpool was descending the staircase she was laughing a little to herself and she looked pleased when she saw them. It is good of you to come, she said, as they crossed the hall to the drawing room. But I told him I really thought you would. I have just been talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to whether he had assumed too much. As to whether he had butted in, said Mr. Penzance, I think he must have said that. He did. He also was afraid that he might have been too fresh, answered Betty. On our part, put in Mr. Penzance with gentle glee, we hesitated a moment in fear lest we also might appear to be butting in. Then they all laughed together. They were laughing when Lady Amstradus entered and she herself joined them. But to Mount Dunstan, who felt her to be somehow a touching little person, there was manifest a tenderness in her feeling for G. Selden. For that matter, however, there was something already beginning to be rather affectionate in the attitude of each of them. They went upstairs to find him lying in state upon a big sofa placed near a window, and his joy at the sight of them was a genuine human thing. In fact, he had pondered a good deal in secret on the possibility of these swell people thinking he had more than his share of gall to expect them to remember him after he passed on his junior assistant Salesman's way. Ruben S. van der Poel's daughters were off the highest of his four hundred, but they were Americans, and Americans were not as a rule so stuck on themselves as the English. And these two swells came as friendly as you please, and that nice old chap that was a vicar smiling and giving him the glad hand. Betty and Mount Dunstan left Mr. Penzance talking to the convalescent after a short time. Mount Dunstan had asked to be shown the gardens. He wanted to see the wonderful things he had hurt had been already done to them. They went down the stairs together and passed through the drawing-room to the pleasure grounds. The once-neglected lawns had already been mown and rolled, clipped and trimmed, until they spread before the eye huge measures of green velvet, even the beds girdling and adorning them were brilliant with flowers. Kedgers said Betty waving her hand. In my ignorance I thought we must wait for blossoms until next year. But it appears that wonders can be bought all ready to bloom for one from nursery gardens, and can be made to grow with care and daring and passionate affection. I have seen Kedgers turn pale with anguish as he hung over a bed of transplanted things which seemed to droop too long. They drooped just at first, you know, and then they slowly lift their heads, slowly as if to listen to a voice calling, calling. Once I sat for quite a long time before a rose watching it. When I saw it begin to listen, I felt a little trembling pass over my body. I seemed to be so strangely near to such a strange thing. It was life, life coming back an answer to what we cannot hear. She had begun lightly and then her voice had changed. It was very quiet at the end of her speaking. Mount Dunstan simply repeated her last words—to what we cannot hear. One feels it so much in a garden, she said, I have never lived in a garden of my own. This is not mine, but I have been living in it with Kedgers. One is so close to life in it, the stirring of the brown earth, the piercing through of green spears, that breaking of buds and pouring forth of scent. Why shouldn't one tremble if one thinks? I have stood in a potting shed and watched Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp, rich mould, and scatter over it a thin layer of infinitesimal seeds. Then he moistens them and carries them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse. The ledgers in Kedgers' greenhouse are altars. I think he offers prayers before them. Why not? I should. And when one comes to see them the moist seeds as well to fullness. And when one comes again they are bursting. And the next time tiny green things are curling outward. And at last there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale green stems and leaves, and one is standing close to the secret of the world. And why should not one prostrate oneself, breathing softly, and touching one's odd forehead to the earth? Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her, a pause in his step. They were walking down a tuft path and over their heads meeting branches of new leaves hung. Something in his movement made her turn and pause also. They both paused and quite unknowingly. Do you know, he said in a low and rather unusual voice, that as we were on our way here, I said of you to Benzance that you were life, you. For a few seconds as they stood so his look held her, their eyes involuntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly glowing in the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the song of a rising skylark, trilling in the blue, a field away, something in the warmed incense of blossoms near them was calling, calling in the voice, though they did not know they heard. Strangely a splendid blush rose in a fair flood under her skin. She was conscious of it, and felt a second's amazed impatience that she should color like a schoolgirl suspecting a compliment. He did not look at her as a man looks who has made a pretty speech. His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, and he repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers. That you were life, you. The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely. Her feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done. I'm so glad you said that, she answered. It was a beautiful thing to say. I have often thought that I should like it to be true. It is true, he said. Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth in its nest in the meadow and they walked on. She learned from him as they walked together, and he also learned from her, in a manner which built for them as they went from point to point a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually during their ramble, tending to make discussion and question possible. Her intelligent and broad interest in the work on the estate, her frank desire to acquire such practical information as she lacked, aroused in himself an interest he had previously seen no reason that he should feel. He realized that his outlook upon the unusual situation was being illuminated by an intelligence at once brilliant and fine, while it was also full of nice shading. The situation, of course, was unusual. A beautiful young sister-in-law appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-used estate, and restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellow who was a blaggard should have set in order years ago. That Lady Anstra's money should have rescued her boy's inheritance instead of being spent upon lavish viciousness went without saying. What Mount Dunstan was most struck by was the perfect clearness in its combination with a certain judicial good-breeding in Miss Vanderpool's view of the matter. She made no confidences, beautifully candid as her manner was, but he saw that she clearly understood the thing she was doing, and that if her sister had had no son she would not have done this, but something totally different. He had an idea that Lady Anstra's would have been swiftly and lightly swept back to New York, and St. Nigel left to his own devices, in which case Stornum Court in its village would gradually have crumbled to decay. It was for so utrid Anstra's the place was being restored. She was quite clear on the matter of entail. He wondered at first, not unnaturally, how a girl had learned certain things she had obviously a clear knowledge of. As they continued to converse he learned Ruben S. Vanderpool was without doubt a man remarkable, not only in the matter of being the owner of vast wealth. The rising flood of his millions had borne him upon its strange surface a thinking, not an unthinking being, in fact a strong and fine intelligence. His thousands of miles of yearly journeying in his sumptuous private car had been the means of his accumulating not merely added gains, but ideas, points of view, emotions—a human outlook worth counting as an asset. His daughter, when she had travelled with him, had seen and talked with him of all he himself had seen. When she had not been his companion she had heard from him afterwards all best worth hearing. She had become, without any special process, familiar with the technicalities of huge business schemes with law and commerce and political situations. Even her childish interest in the world of enterprise and labour had been passionate. So she had acquired inevitably, while almost unconsciously, a remarkable education. If he had not been himself he might easily have grown tired of a little girl constantly wanting to hear things constantly asking questions, she said, but he did not get tired. We invented a special knock on the door of his private room. It said, May I come in, Father? If he was busy he answered with one knock on his desk and I went away. If he had time to talk he called out, Come, Betty, and I went to him. I used to sit upon the floor and lean against his knee. He had a beautiful way of stroking my hair or my hand as he talked. He trusted me. He told me of great things even before he talked off them to men. He knew I would never speak of what was said between us in his room, that was part of his trust. He said once that it was a part of the evolution of race that men had begun to expect of women what in past ages they really only expected of each other. Aunt Dunstan hesitated before speaking. You mean absolute faith, apart from affection? Yes, the power to be quite silent even when one is tempted to speak, if to speak might portray what it is wiser to keep to oneself because it is another man's affair. The kind of thing which is good faith among businessmen, it applies to small things as much as to large and to other things than business. Mount Dunstan, recalling his own childhood and his own father, felt again the pressure of the remote mental suggestion that she had had too much—a childhood and girlhood like this, the affection and companionship of a man of large and ordered intelligence, of clear and judicial outlook upon an immense area of life and experience. There was no cause for wonder that her young womanhood was all it presented to himself as well as to others. Recognizing the shadow of resentment in his thought, he swept it away, and inward sense making it clear to him that if their positions had been reversed, she would have been more generous than himself. He pulled himself together with an unconscious movement of his shoulders. Here was the day of early June, the gold of the sun in its morning, the green shadows, the turf they walked on together, the skylark rising again from the meadow and showering down its song. Why think of anything else? What a line that was which swept from her chin down her long, slim throat to its hollow. The colour between the velvet of her close-set lashes, the remembrance of her curious, splendid blush, made the man's lost and unlived youth come back to him. What did it matter whether she was American or English? What did it matter whether she was insolently rich or beggarly poor? He would let himself go and forget all but the pleasure of the sight and hearing of her. So as they went they found themselves laughing together and talking without restraint. They went through the flower and kitchen gardens, they saw the once fallen wall rebuilt now with the old brick. They visited the greenhouses and came upon cages entranced with business, but enraptured at being called upon to show his treasures. His eyes, turning magnetised upon Betty, revealed the story of his soul. Mount Dunstan remarked that when he spoke to her of his flowers, it was as if there existed between them the sympathy which might be engendered between two who had sat up together night after night with delicate children. He stronger to day miss, he said, as they paused before a new wonderful bloom, what he's getting now is good for him. I had to change his food, miss, but this seems all right his colours better. Betty herself bent over the flower as she might have bent over a child. Her eyes softened. She touched a leaf with a slim finger, as delicately as if it had been a newborn baby's cheek. As Mount Dunstan watched her, he drew a step nearer to her side. For the first time in his life he felt the glow of a normal and simple pleasure untouched by any bitterness. CHAPTER XXVIII Old Dobie, sitting at his open window with his pipe and illustrated papers on the table by his side, began to find life a series of thrills. The advantage of a window giving upon the village street unspeakably increased. For many years he had preferred the chimney corner greatly and had rejoiced at the drawing-in of winter days when a fire must be well kept up, and a man might bend over it and rub his hand slowly, gazing into the red coals or little pointed flames which seemed the only things alive and worthy the watching. The flames were blue at the base and yellow at the top, and jumped looking merry, and caught at bits of black coal and set them crackling and throwing off splinters until they were ablaze in as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and entertainment therefrom. There was not else so good to live with. Nothing happened in the street, and every dull face that passed was an old story and told an old tale of stupefying hard labour and hard days. But now the window was a better place to sit near. Carts went by with men whistling as they walked by the horse's heads. Loads of things wanted for work at the court. New faces passed, faces of workmen, sometimes grinning impudent youngsters who locked with the young women, and called out to them as they passed their cottages if a good-looking one was loitering about her garden-gate. Old Dobie chuckled at their love-making chaff, remembering dimly that seventy years ago he'd been just as proper a young chap and had made love in the same way. Lord, Lord, yes, he'd been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye. Then, too, there were the vans heavy-loaded and closed and coming along slowly. Every few days at first there had come a van from London, going to the court, of course, and to sit there and hear the women talk about what might be in them, and to try to guess oneself that was a rare pastime. Find things going to the court these days, furniture and grandeur filling up the shabby or empty old rooms and making them look like other big houses, same as West Bridge even, so the women said. The women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, and were beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something more interesting to talk about than children's worn-out shoes and whooping cough. Dobie heard everything first from them. Dang the women, they always knowed things fast. It was them as knowed about the smart carriages as began to roll through the one village street. They were gentry's carriages with fine stamping horses and jingling silver harness and big coachman and tall footman, and such like had long ago dropped off showing themselves at Stornham. But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpool and what's being done at the court, and they know what it means, said young Mrs. Dobie, and they want to see her and find out what she's like. It's her brings them. Oh, Dobie chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what she was like, that straight, slim back of hers and the thick twist of black hair, and the way she had of laughing at you as cheery as if a bell was ringing. Aye, he knew all about that. When they see her once they'll come again for sure, he quavered shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages with vivid eagerness. If a day or two passed without his seeing one, he grew fretful and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being neglected. None to day, nor yet yesterday he would cackle. What be they folk are doing? Old Mrs. Weldon, having heard of the pipe and come to see it, had struck up an acquaintance with him and dropped in almost every day to talk and sit at his window. She was a young thing by comparison and could bring him lively news, and indeed so stir him up with her gossip that he was in danger of becoming a young thing himself. Her groceries and his tobacco were subjects whose interest was undying. A great curiosity had been awakened in the county, and visitors came from distances greater than such as ordinarily include usual calls. Naturally one was curious about the daughter of the Vanderpool, who was a sort of national institution in his own country. His name had not been so much heard of in England when Lady Anstrothers had arrived, but there had at first been felt an interest in her. But she had been a failure, a childish-looking girl whose thin, fair prettiness had no distinction, and who was obviously overwhelmed by her surroundings. She had evidently had no influence over Sir Nigel, and had not been able to prevent his making ducks and rakes of her money, which of course ought to have been spent on the estate. Besides which, a married woman represented fewer potentialities than a handsome unmarried girl entitled to expectations from huge American wealth. So the carriages came and came again, and stately or unstately far off neighbors sat at tea upon the lawn under the trees, and it was observed that the methods and appointments of the court had entirely changed. Nothing looked new and American. The silently moving men's servants could not have been improved upon. There was plainly an excellent chef somewhere, and the massive silver was old and wonderful. Upon everybody's word the change was such as it was worth a long drive merely to see. The most wonderful thing, however, was Lady Anstrothers herself. She had begun to grow delicately plump, her once-drawn and haggard face had rounded out, her skin had smoothed, and was actually becoming pink and fair, and nimbus of fine pale hair puffed airily over her forehead, and she wore the most charming little clothes, all of which made her look fifteen years younger than she seemed, when on the grounds of ill health she had retired into seclusion. The renewed relations with her family, the atmosphere by which she was surrounded, had evidently given her a fresh lease of life and awakened in her a new courage. When the summer epidemic of garden parties broke forth, old Dobie gleefully beheld day after day, the court carriage drive by, bearing her ladyship and her sister, attired in ferris shades and tints, same as if there was flowers. Their delicate vapourousness and rare colours were sweet delights to the old man, and he and Mrs. Weldon spent happy evenings discussing them as personal possessions. To these two Betty was a personal possession for stowing upon them a marked distinction. They were hers and she was theirs, no one else so owned her. Heaven had given her to them so that their last years might be lighted with splendour. On her way to one of the garden parties she stopped the carriage before old Dobie's cottage and went into him to speak a few words. She was of pale convolvulus blue that afternoon, and Dobie, standing up, touching his forelock and Mrs. Weldon curtsying, gazed at her with prayer in their eyes. She had a few flowers in her hand and a book of coloured photographs of Venice. These are pictures of the city I told you about, the city built in the sea where the streets are water. You and Mrs. Weldon can look at them together, she said, as she laid flowers and booked down. I am going to Dunham Castle to a garden party this afternoon. Someday I will come and tell you about it. The two were at the window staring spellbound as she swept back to the carriage between the sweet Williams and Canterbury bells bordering the narrow garden path. Do you know, I really went in to let them see my dress, she said, when she rejoined Lady Ann Struthers. Old Dobie's granddaughter told me that he and Mrs. Weldon have little quarrels about the colours I wear. It seems that they find my wardrobe an absorbing interest. When I put the book on the table, I felt Dobie touch my sleeve with his trembling old hand. He thought I didn't know. What will they do with Venice? asked Rosie. They will believe the water as blue as the photographs make it and the palaces as pink. It will seem like a chapter out of revelations which they can believe is true and not merely scripture, because I have been there. I wish I had been to the city of the Gates of Pearl and I could tell them about that. On the lawns of the garden party she was much gazed at and commented upon. Her height and her long slender neck held her head above those of other girls. The dense black of her hair made a rich note of shadow amid the prevailing English blondness. Her mere colouring set her apart. Rosie used to watch her with tender wonder, recalling her memory of nine-year-old Betty with the long, slim legs and the demanding and accusing child eyes. She had always been this creature even in those far-off days. At the garden party at Dunham Castle it became evident that she was, after a manner, unusually the central figure of the occasion. It was not at all surprising, people said to each other, nothing could have been more desirable for Lord Westholt. He combined rank with fortune, and the Vanderpool wealth almost constituted rank in itself. Both Lord and Lady Dunham seemed pleased with the girl. Lord Dunham showed her great attention. When she took part in the dancing on the lawn he looked on delightedly. He walked about the gardens with her, and it was plain to see that their conversation was not the ordinary polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between a mature man and a merely pretty girl. Lord Dunham sometimes laughed with unfeigned a light, and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things. Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the social census of the county, Lord Dunham 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 Dunham hesitated a second as his son had done at Miss Vanderpool'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 Dunham 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 wrong 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 had 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 Dunham 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 Dunston 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 Dunham 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. I do not know that he has done anything but seem rather sulky and be the son of his father and the brother of his brother. 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 Dunham, and one feels rather awkward at having shared it. You have set me thinking again, Miss Vanderpool. CHAPTER XXIX The shuttle, having in its weaving caught up the thread of G. Seldon'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 into woven 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 Dunston 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 Seldon. 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 ingenious 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 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 Utrecht, 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 Vanderpool. You do know I appreciate it, don't you? He had an immense admiration for Mount Dunston 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 Vickers 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 Dunston 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 diverse 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. Salton is asking Mr. Penzance questions about English history, but he said one one of the afternoons in which they sat in the shade. I need not ask you questions, you are English history. And you are American history, Mount Dunston answered. I suppose I am. At one of their chance meetings Ms. Fanderpool had told Lord Dunham and Lord West Holt something of the story of G. Selden. The novelty of it had delighted and amused them. Lord Dunham had at points been touched as Penzance had been. West Holt had felt that he must ride over to Stornham to see the convalescent he wanted to learn some New York slang. He would take lessons from Selden, and he would also buy a Delcoff—two Delcoffs, if that would be better. He knew a hard-working fellow who ought to have a typewriter. He thought I have one, he said to his father. Heath was the house steward. Think of the letters the poor chap has to write to tradespeople to order things and unorder them, and blag of the shopkeepers when they are not satisfactory. Invest in one for Heath, father. It is by no means a bad idea, Lord Dunham reflected. Time would be saved by the use of it, I have no doubt. It saves time in any department where it can be used, Betty had answered. Three are now in use at Stornham, and I am going to present one to Kedges. This is a testimonial I am offering. Three weeks ago I began to use the Delcoff. Since then I have used no other. If you use them you will introduce them to the county. She understood the feeling of the junior assistant when he found himself in the presence of possible purchasers. Her blood tingled slightly. She wished she'd bought a catalogue. We will come to Stornham to see the catalogue, Lord Dunham promised. Perhaps you'll read it aloud to us, Westholt suggested gleefully. Gee, Seldon knows it by heart, and will repeat it to you with running comments. Do you know I shall be very glad if you decide to buy one or two or three, with an uplift of the Irish blue eyes to Lord Dunham. The blood of the first Ruben Vanderpool stirs in my veins. Also I have begun to be fond of Gee Seldon. Therefore it occurred that on the afternoon referred to Lady Anstra this appeared crossing the ward with two male visitors in her wake. Lord Dunham and Lord Westholt said Betty rising. For this meeting between the men Seldon was without doubt responsible. While his father talked to Mount Dunstan Westholt explained that they had come a thirst for the catalogue. Presently Betty took him to the sheltered corner of the lawn where the convalescent sat with Mr. Penzance. But for a short time Lord Dunham remained to converse with Mount Dunstan. In a way the situation was delicate. To encounter by chance a neighbour for whom one, for reasons, has not seen since his childhood, and to be equal to passing over and gracefully obliterating the intervening years, makes demand even upon finished tact. Lord Dunham's world had been a large one, and he had acquired experience tending to the development of the most perfect methods. If Gee Seldon had chance to be the magnet which had decided his course this special afternoon, Miss Vanderpool it was, who had stirred in him sufficient interest in Mount Dunstan to cause him to use the best of these methods when he found himself face to face with him. He beautifully eliminated the years. He eliminated all but the facts that the young man's father and himself had been acquaintances in youth, that he remembered Mount Dunstan himself as a child, that he had heard with interest of his visit to America. Whatsoever the young man felt he made no sign which presented obstacles. He accepted the eliminations with outward composure. He was a powerful looking fellow with a fine way of carrying his shoulders and an eye which might be able to light savagely, but just now at least he showed nothing of the sulkiness he was accused of. Lord Dunham progressed admirably with him. He soon found that he need not be upon any strain with regard to the eliminations the man himself could eliminate which was in assistance. They talked together when they turned to follow the others to the retreat of Gee Seldon. Have you bought a Delcoff, Lord Dunham, inquired? If I could have afforded it, I should have bought one. I think that we have come here with the intention of buying three. We did not know we required them until Miss Vanderpool recited half a page of the catalog to us. Three will mean a rake-off of fifteen dollars to Gee Seldon, said Mount Dunstan. It was, he saw, necessary that he should explain the meaning of a rake-off, and he did so to his companion's entertainment. The afternoon was a satisfactory one. They were all kind to Gee Seldon, and he on his part was an aide to them. In his innocence he steered three of them at least through narrow places into an open sea of easy intercourse. This was a good beginning. The junior assistant was recovering rapidly and looked remarkably well. The doctor had told him that he might try to use his leg. The inside cabin of the cheap liner and little old New York were looming up before him, but what luck he had had, and what a holiday! It had been enough to set a fellow up for ten years' work. It would set up the boys merely to be told about it. He didn't know what he had done ever to deserve such luck as it happened to him, for the rest of his life he would be waving the Union Jack alongside of the stars and stripes. Mr. Penzant it was, who suggested that he should try the strength of the leg now. Yes, Mount Dunstan said, let me help you. As he rose to go to him, West Hall good-naturedly got up also. They took their places on either side of his invalid chair and assisted him to rise and stand on his feet. It's all right, gentlemen, it's all right, he called out with a delighted flash when he found himself upright. I believe I could stand alone. Thank you, thank you." He was able, leaning on Mount Dunstan's arm, to take a few steps. Evidently in a short time he would find himself no longer disabled. Mr. Penzant had invited him to spend a week at the vicarage. He was to do this as soon as he could comfortably drive from the one place to the other. After receiving the invitation, he had sent secretly to London for one of the Delcoffs he had brought with him from America as a specimen. He cherished in private a plan of gently entertaining his host by teaching him to use the machine. The vicar would thus be prepared for that future in which surely a Delcoff must in some way fall into his hands. Indeed, fortune having at length cast an eye on himself might chance to favour him further, and in time he might be able to send a high-class machine as a grateful gift to the vicarage. Perhaps Mr. Penzant's would accept it because he would understand what it meant of feeling and appreciation. During the afternoon Lord Dunham managed to talk a good deal with Mount Dunstan. There was no air of intention in his manner. Nevertheless, intention was concealed beneath its courteous amiability. He wanted to get at the man. Before they parted he felt he had perhaps learned things, opening up new points of view. In the smoking-room at Dunham that night he and his son talked of their chance encounter. It seemed possible that mistakes had been made about Mount Dunstan. One did not form a definite idea of a man's character in the course of an afternoon, but he himself had been impressed by a conviction that there had been mistakes. We are a rather stiff-necked lot in the country when we allow ourselves to be taken possession of by an idea, West Holt commented. I am not at all proud of the way in which we have taken things for granted, was his father summing up. It is perhaps worth observing, taking his cigar from his mouth and smiling at the end of it as he removed the ash, that but for Miss Vanderpool and G. Seldon we might never have had the opportunity of facing the fact that we may not have been giving fair play, and one has prided one's self on one's fair play. CHAPTER XXXXIII. A return. At the close of a long warm afternoon Betty Vanderpool came out upon the square stone terrace overlooking the gardens and that part of the park which in closing them caused them as they melted into its greenness to lose all limitations and appear to be only a more blooming bit of the landscape. Upon the garden Betty's eyes dwelt as she stood still for some minutes taking in their effect thoughtfully. Kedgers had certainly accomplished much. His close-streamed lawns did him credit. His flower beds were flushed and azured, purpled and snowed with bloom. Sweet tall spires hung with blue or white or rosy flower bells lifted their heads above the colour of lower growths. Only the fervent affection, the fasting and prayer of a Kedgers could have done such wonders with new things and old. The old ones he had cherished and allured into a renewal of existence. The new ones he had so coaxed out of their earthen pots into the soil luxuriously prepared for their reception, and had afterwards so nourished and bedued with soft waterings, so supported, watched over, and adored that they had been almost unconscious of their transplanting. Without assistance he could have done nothing, but he had been given a sufficient number of under-gardners and had even managed to inspire them with something of his own ambition and solicitude. The result was before Betty's eyes in an aspect which, to such as knew the garden's well, the Dunham's, for instance, was astonishing in its success. I've had privileges miss and so have the flowers. Kedgers had said warmly when Miss Vanderpool had reported to him for his encouragement Dunham Castle's praise. Not one of them has ever had to wait for his food and drink, nor to complain of his bed not being what he was accustomed to. They've not had to wait for rain, for we've given it to him from watering cans, and thank goodness the season's been kind to him. Betty, descending the terrace steps, wandered down the paths between the flower beds, glancing about her as she went. The air of neglect and desolation had been swept away. Buttle and Tim Soames had been given as many privileges as Kedgers. The chief points impressed upon them had been that the work must be done not only thoroughly but quickly, as many additional workmen as they required, as much solid material as they needed, but there must be a dispatch which at first staggered them to contemplate. They had not known such methods before. They had been accustomed to work under money limitation throughout their lives, and when work must be done with insufficient aid it must be done slowly. Economy had been the chief factor in all calculations. Speed had not entered into them, so leisureliness had become a fixed habit. But it seemed American to sweep leisureliness away into space with a free gesture. It must be done quickly, Miss Vanderpool had said. If ten men cannot do it quickly enough you must have twenty or as many more as are needed. It is time which must be saved just now. Time more than money it appeared. Buttle's experience had been that you might take time if you didn't charge for it. When time began to mean money that was a different matter. If you did work by the job you might drive in a few nails, loiter and return without haste. If you worked by the hour your absence would be inquired into. In the present case no one could loiter. That was realized early. The tall girl with the deep straight look at you made you realize that without spoken words. She expected energy something like her own. She was a new force and spurred them. No man knew how it was done, but when she appeared among them even in the afternoon, looking that womany, holding up her thin dress over lace petticoats the like of which had not been seen before, she looked on with just the same straight expecting eyes. They did not seem to doubt in the least that she would find that great advance had been made. So advance had been made and work accomplished. As Betty walked from one place to another she saw the signs of it with gratification. The place was not the one she had come to a few months ago. Hot houses, outbuilding, stables were in repair. Work was still being done in different places. In the house itself carpenters or decorators were enclosed in some rooms and at their business, but exterior order prevailed. In the courtyard stablemen were at work and her own groom came forward touching his forehead. She paid a visit to the horses. They were fine creatures, and when she entered their stalls made room for her and winnied gently in well-founded expectation of sugar and bread which were kept in a cupboard awaiting her visits. She smoothed velvet noses and patted certain sides, talking to Mason a little before she went her way. Then she strolled into the park. The park was always a pleasure. She was in a thoughtful mood and the soft green shadowed silence lured her. The summer wind hushed the branches as it likely waved them. The brown earth of the avenue was sun-dappled. There were bird-notes and calls to be heard here and there and everywhere if one only arrested one's attention a moment to listen, and she was in a listening and dreaming mood, one of the moods in which bird, leaf and wind, sunshade and scent of growing things have part. And yet her thoughts were of mundane things. It was on this avenue that G. Selden had met with his accident. He was still at Dunstan vicarage, and yesterday M. Dunstan in calling had told them that Mr. Penzance was applying himself with delighted interest to a study of the manipulation of the Delcoff. The thought of M. Dunstan brought with it the thought of her father. This was because there was frequently in her mind a connection between the two. How would the man of schemes, of wealth and power, almost unbounded, regard the man born with a load about his neck, chained to earth by it, standing in the midst of his hungering and thirsting possessions, his hands empty of what would feed them and restore their strength? Would he see any solution of the problem? She could imagine his looking at situations through his gaze at the man and considering both in his summing up. Circumstances and the man, she had heard him say, but always the man first. Being no visionary he did not underestimate the power of circumstance. This Betty had learned from him. And what could practically be done by circumstance such as this? The question had begun to recur to her. What could she herself have done in the care of Rosie and Stornham if chance had not placed in her hand the strongest lever? What she had accomplished had been easy, easy. All that had been required had been the qualities which control of the lever might itself tend to create in one. Given by mere chance again, imagination and initiative, the moving of the lever did the rest. If chance had not been on one side, what then? And where was this man's chance? She had said to Rosie in speaking of the wealth of America, sometimes one is tired of it, and Rosie had reminded her that there were those who were not tired of it who could bear some of the burden of it if it might be laid on their own shoulders. The great beautiful blind-faced house awaiting its slow doom in the midst of its lonely unfed lands, what could save it, and all it represented of race and name and the stately history of men, but the power one professed to call base and sordid mere money. She felt a sudden impatience at herself for having said she was tired of it. That was a folly which took upon itself the aspect of an afficitation. And if a man could not earn money or go forth to rob richer neighbours of it as in the good old marauding days, or accept it if it were offered to him as a gift, what could he do? Nothing. If he had been born a village labourer, he could have earned by the work of his hands enough to keep his cottage-roof over him, and have held up his head among his fellows. But for such as himself there was no mere labour which would avail. He had not that rough honest resource. Only the decent living and orderly management of the generations behind him would have left to him fairly his own chance to hold with dignity the place in the world into which fate had thrust him at the outset, a blind newborn thing of whom no permission had been asked. If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day I might earn two shillings, he had said to Betty on the previous day, I could break stones well, holding out a big arm, but fourteen shillings a week will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a stone-breaker. He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational attitude towards his own affairs. Betty sometimes wondered how she herself knew so much about them, how it happened that her thoughts so often dwelt upon them, the explanation she had once made to herself had been half irony, half serious reflection. It is a result of the first Ruben van der Poel, it is because I am of the fighting commercial stock, and when I see a business problem I cannot leave it alone, even when it's no affair of mine. As an exposition of the type of the commercial fighting stock she presented as she paused beneath overshadowing trees an aspect beautifully suggesting a far different thing. She stood, or white, from slim shoe to tilted parasol, and either the result of her inspection of the work done by her order, or a combination of her summer day mood with her feeling for the problem, had given her a special radiance. It glowed on lip and cheek and shone in her irish eyes. She had paused to look at a man approaching down the avenue. He was not a labourer, and she did not know him. Men who were not labourers usually rode or drove, and this one was walking. He was neither young nor old, and though at a distance his aspect was not attracting, she found that she regarded him curiously and waited for him to draw nearer. The man himself was glancing about him with a puzzled look and knitted forehead. When he had passed through the village he had seen things he had not expected to see. When he had reached the entrance gate, and for reasons of his own dismissed his station trap, he had looked at the lodge scrutinizingly because he was not prepared for its picturesque trimeness. The avenue was free from weeds and in order the two gates beyond him were new and substantial. As he went on his way and reached the first he saw at about a hundred yards distance, a tall girl in white standing watching him. Things which were not easily explainable always irritated him. That this place, which was his own affair, should present an air of mystery, did not improve his humour, which was bad to begin with. He had lately been passing through unpleasant things, which had left him feeling himself tricked and made ridiculous, as only women can trick a man and make him ridiculous, he had said to himself. And there had been an acrid consolation in looking forward to the relief of venting one's self on a woman who dared not resent. What has happened confound it, he muttered, when he caught sight of the girl, have we set up a house party? And then, as he saw more distinctly, damn, what a figure! By this time Betty herself had begun to see more clearly. Surely this was the face she remembered, though the passing of years and ugly living had thickened and blurred somewhat its always-heavy features. Suddenly she knew it, and the look in its eyes, the look she had as a child, unreasoningly, hated. Nigel Ansta, thus, had returned from his private holiday. As she took a few quiet steps forward to meet him their eyes rested on each other. After a night or two in town his was slightly bloodshot and the light in them was not agreeable. It was he who spoke first, and it is possible that he did not quite intend to use the expletive which broke from him, but he was remembering things also. Here were eyes he too had seen before, twelve years ago, in the face of an objectionable long-legged child in New York, and his own hatred of them had been founded in his own opinion on the best of reasons. And here they gazed at him from the face of a young beauty, for a beauty she was. Damn it, he exclaimed, it's Betty. Yes, she answered with a faint but entirely courteous smile. It is. I hope you are very well. She held out her hand. A delicious hand was what he said to himself as he took it. And what eyes for a girl to have in her head were those which looked out at him between shadows. Was there a hint of the devil in them? He thought so, he hoped so, since she had descended on the place in this way. But what the devil was the meaning of her being on the spot at all? He was, however, far beyond the lack of astuteness which might have permitted him to express this last thought at this particular juncture. He was only betrayed into stupid mistakes afterwards to be regretted when rage caused him utterly to lose control of his wits. And though he was startled and not exactly pleased, he was not in rage now. The eyelashes and the figure gave an agreeable Philip to his humour. How so ever she had come she was worth looking at. How could one expect such a delightful thing as this, he said, with a touch of ironic amiability? It's more than one deserves. It's very polite of you to say that, answered Betty. He was thinking rapidly as he stood and gazed at her. There were, in truth, many things to think of under circumstances so unexpected. May I ask you to excuse my staring at you, here inquired with what Rosie had called his awful agreeable smile. When I saw you last you were a fierce nine-year-old American child. I use the word fierce, because if you'll pardon my saying so, there was a certain ferocity about you. I have learned at various educational institutions to conceal it, smiled Betty. May I ask when you arrived—a short time after you went abroad? Rosalie did not inform me of your arrival. She did not know your address, you had forgotten to leave it. He had made a mistake and realised it, but she presented to him no air of having observed his slip. He paused a few seconds, still regarding her, and still thinking rapidly. He recalled the mended windows and roofs and palings in the village and parked gates and entrance. Who the devil had done all that? How could a mere handsome girl be concerned in it? And yet here she was. When I drove through the village, he said next, I saw that some remarkable changes had taken place on my property. I feel as if you can explain them to me. I hope they are changes which meet with your approval. Quite, quite a little curtly, though I confess they mystify me. Though I am the son-in-law of an American multi-millionaire, I could not afford to make such repairs myself. A certain small spitefulness which was his most frequent undoing made it impossible for him to resist adding the innuendo in his last sentence, and again he saw it was a folly. The impersonal tone of her reply simply left him where he had placed himself. We were sorry not to be able to reach you, as it seemed well to begin the work at once we consulted Mess's town Linsen and Shepard. We, he repeated, am I to have the pleasure, with a slight rhinus of the mouth, of finding Mr. Vanderpool also at Stornham? No, not yet. As I was on the spot I saw your solicitors and asked their advice and approval for my father. If he had known how necessary the work was, it would have been done before, for Uhtrid's sake. Her voice was that of a person who, in stating obvious facts, provides no approach to enlightening comment upon them, and there was in her manner the merest gracious impersonality. Do I understand that Mr. Vanderpool employed someone to visit the place and direct the work? It was really not difficult to direct. It was merely a matter of engaging labor and competent foreman. An odd expression rose in his eyes. You suggest a novel idea upon my word, he said. Is it possible, you see I know something of America, is it possible I must thank you for the working of this magic? You need not thank me, she said, rather slowly, because it was necessary that she also should think of many things at once. I could not have helped doing it. She wished to make all clear to him before he met Rosie. She knew it was not unnatural that the unexpectedness of his appearance might deprive Lady Anstruthers of presence of mind. Instinct told her that what was needed in intercourse with him was above all things presence of mind. I will tell you about it, she said. We will walk slowly up and down here if you do not object. He did not object. He wanted to hear the stories. He could not hear it from his nervous little fool of a wife who would be frightened into forgetting things and their sequence. What he meant to discover was where he stood in the matter, where his father-in-law stood, and rather specially to have a chance to sum up the weaknesses and strengths of the new arrival. That would be to his interest. In talking this thing over she would unconsciously reveal how much vanity or emotion or inexperience he might count upon as factors safety used in one's dealings with her in the future. As he listened he was supported by the fact that he did not lose consciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is probable that he would have gone blind with fury at certain points which forced themselves upon him. The first was that there had been an absurd and immense expenditure which would simply benefit his son and not himself. He could not sell or borrow money on what had been given. Apparently the place had been re-established on a footing such as it had not rested upon during his own generation or his father's. As he loathed life in the country it was not he who would enjoy its luxury but his wife and her child. The second point was that these people, this girl, had somehow had the sharpness to put themselves in the right and to place him in a position at which he could not complain without putting himself in the wrong. Public opinion would say that benefits had been heaped upon him that the correct thing had been done correctly with the knowledge and approval of the legal advisers of his family. It had been a masterly thing that visit to Townlinson and Shepard. He was obliged to aid his self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort of girl, this spetty, whose childhood he had loathed and to his jaded taste novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was also added to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was not combined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was repelled as well as allured. She represented things which he hated. First the mere material power which no man can bully whatsoever his humour. It was the power he most longed for, and as he could not hope to possess it most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she talked, it was plain that her habit of self-control and her sense of resource would be difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the type of man whose simple creed was that women should not possess resources as when they possessed them they could rarely be made to behave themselves. But while he thought these things he walked by her side and both listened and talked smiling the agreeable smile. You will pardon my dull bewilderment, he said. It's not unnaturally sit in a mere outsider. And Betty, with the beautiful impersonal smile, said, We felt it so unfortunate that even your solicitors did not know your address. When at length they turned and strolled toward the house a carriage was drawing up before the door and at the sight of it Betty saw her companion slightly lift his eyebrows. Lady Anstruthers had been out and was returning. The groom got down from the box and two men-servants appeared upon the steps. Lady Anstruthers descended, laughing a little as she talked to Utrid, who had been with her. She was dressed in clear pale grey and the soft rose lining of her parasol warmed the colour of her skin. Sennigel paused a second and put up his glass. Is that my wife, he said. Really, she quite recalls New York. The agreeable smile was on his lips as he hastened forward. He always more or less enjoyed coming upon Rosalie suddenly. The obvious result was a pleasing tribute to his power. Betty following him saw what occurred. Utrid saw him first and spoke quick and low. Mother, he said. The turn of his voice was evidently enough. Lady Anstruthers turned with an unmistakable start. The rose lining of her parasol ceased to warm her colour. In fact, the parasol itself stepped aside and she stood with a blank stiff white face. My dear Rosalie said so night or going towards her, you don't look very glad to see me. He bent and kissed her quite with the air of a devoted husband. Knowing what the caress meant and seeing Rosalie's face as she submitted to it, Betty felt rather cold. After the conjugal greeting he turned to Utrid. You look remarkably well, he said. Betty came forward. We met in the park, Rosalie, she explained. We have been talking to each other for half an hour. The atmosphere which had surrounded her during the last three months had done much for Lady Anstruthers' nerves. She had the power to recover herself. Sir Nigel himself saw this when she spoke. I was startled because I was not expecting to see you, she said. I thought you were still on the Riviera. I hope you had a pleasant journey home. I had an extraordinarily pleasant surprise in finding your sister here, he answered, and they went into the house. In descending the staircase on his way to the drawing-room before dinner, Sir Nigel glanced about him with interested curiosity. If the village had been put in order, something more had been done here. Remembering the worn rugs and the bald-headed tiger, he lifted his brows, to leave one's house in a state of resigned elaboration, and returned to find it filled with all such things as comfort combined with excellent taste might demand, was an enlivening experience, or would have been so under some circumstances. As matter stood, perhaps he might have felt better pleased if things had been less well done, but they were very well done. They had managed to put themselves in the right in this also. The rich sobriety of colour and form left no opening for supercilious comment, which was a neat weapon hit was annoying to be robbed of. The drawing-room was fresh, brightly charming, and full of flowers. Betty was standing before an open window with her sister. His wife's shoulders, he observed at once, had absolutely begun to suggest contours. At all events her bones no longer stuck out, but one did not look at one's wife's shoulders when one could turn from them to a fairness of velvet and ivory. You know, he said, approaching them, I find all this very amazing. I have been looking out of my window onto the gardens. It's Betty who's done it all, said Rosie. I did not suspect you of doing it, my dear Rosalie, smiling. When I saw Betty standing in the avenue, I knew at once that it was she who had mended the chimney-pots in the village and rehung the gates. For the present, at least, it was evident that he meant to be sufficiently amiable. At the dinner-table he was conversational and asked many questions, professing a natural interest in what had been done. It was not difficult to talk to a girl whose eyes and shoulders combined themselves with a quick wit and a power to attract, which he reluctantly earned he had never seen equaled. His reluctance arose from the fact that such a power complicated matters. He must be on the defensive until he knew what he was going to do, what he must do himself, and what results were probable or possible. He had spent his life in intrigue of one order or another. He enjoyed outwitting people and rather preferred to attain an end by devious paths. He began every acquaintance on the defensive. His argument was that you never knew how things would turn out, consequently it was as well to conduct oneself at the outset with the discreet forethought of a man in the presence of an enemy. He did not know how things would turn out in Betty's case, and it was a little confusing to find oneself watching her with a sense of excitement. He would have preferred to be cool, to be cold, and he realized that he could not keep his eyes off her. I remember with regret he said to her later in the evening that when you were a child we were enemies. I am afraid we were, was Betty's impartial answer. I am sure it was my fault, he said, pray forget it, since you have accomplished such wonders will you not in the morning take me about the place and explain to me how it has been done? When Betty went to her room she dismissed her maid as soon as possible, and sat for some time alone and waiting. She had had no opportunity to speak to Rosie in private, and she was sure she would come to her. In the course of half an hour she heard a knock at the door. Yes, it was Rosie, and her newly born colour had fled and left her looking dragged again. She came forward and dropped into a low chair near Betty, letting her face fall into her hands. I'm very sorry, Betty, she half whispered, but it's of no use. What is no use, Betty asked? Nothing is any use. All these years have made me such a coward. I suppose I always was a coward, but in the old days there never was anything to be afraid of. What are you most afraid of now? I don't know, that's the worst. I'm afraid of him, just of himself, of the look in his eyes of what he may be planning quietly. My strength dies away when he comes near me. What has he said to you? she asked. He came into my dressing-room and sat and talked. He looked about from one thing to another, and pretended to admire it all and congratulated me. But though he did not sneer at what he saw, his eyes were sneering at me. He talked about you. He said that you were a very clever woman, I don't know how he manages to imply that a very clever woman is something cunning and debased, but it means that when he says it. It seems to insinuate things which make one grow hot all over. She put out a hand and caught one of Betty's. Betty, Betty, she implored, don't make him angry, don't. I'm not going to begin by making him angry, Betty said, and I do not think he will try to make me angry at first. No, he will not, cried Rosalie, and you remember what I told you when first we talked about him? And do you remember, was Betty's answer, what I said to you when I first met you in the park? If we were to cable to New York this moment, we could receive an answer in a few hours. He would not let us do it, said Rosy. He would stop us in some way, as he stopped my letters to Mother, as he stopped me when I tried to run away. Oh, Betty, I know him and you do not. I shall know him better every day. This is what I must do. I must learn to know him. He said something more to you than you have told me, Rosy. What was it? He waited until Decem left me, Lady Anstrow, thus confessed, more than half reluctantly. And then he got up to go away, and stood with his hands resting on the chair-back, and spoke to me in a low, queer voice. He said, don't try to play any tricks on me, my good girl, and don't let your sister try to play any. You would both have reason to regret it. She was a half-hypnotised thing, and Betty, watching her with curious, but tender eyes, recognised the abnormality. Ah, if I am a clever woman, she said, he is a clever man. He is beginning to see that his power is slipping away. That was what G. Selden would call a bluff. End of Chapter 30 Chapter 31 of The Shuttle The Slipper-Vox recording is in the public domain. The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Chapter 31. No, she would not. St. Nigel did not invite Rosalie to accompany them when the next morning after breakfast he reminded Betty of his suggestion of the night before that she should walk over the place with him and show him what had been done. He preferred to make his study of his sister-in-law undisturbed. There was no detail whose significance he missed as they went about together. He had keen eyes, and was quite a sufficiently practical person on such matters as concerned his own interests. In this case it was to his interest to make up his mind as to what he might gain or lose by the appearance of his wife's family. He did not mean to lose if it could be helped, anything either of personal importance or material benefit, and it could only be helped by his comprehending clearly what he had to deal with. Betty was at present the chief factor in the situation, and he was sufficiently astute to see that she might not be easy to read. His personal theories concerning women presented to him two or three effective ways of managing them. You made love to them, you flattered them either subtly or grossly, you roughly or smoothly bullied them, or you harrowed them with haughty indifference, if your love-making had produced its proper effect, when it was necessary to lure or drive or trick them into submission. Women should be made useful in one way or another. Little fool as she was, Rosalie had been useful. He had, after all, was said and done had some comparatively easy years as the result of her existence. But she had not been useful enough, and there had even been moments when he had wondered if he had made a mistake in separating her entirely from her family. There might have been more to be gained if he had allowed them to visit her and had played the part of a devoted husband in their presence. A great bore, of course, but they could not have spent their entire lives at Stornham. Twelve years ago, however, he had known very little of Americans and he had lost his temper. He was rarely very fond of his temper, and rather enjoyed referring to it with tolerant regret as being a bad one and beyond his control, with a manner which suggested that the attribute was the inevitable result of strength of character and masculine spirit. The luxury of giving way to it was a great one, and it was exasperating as he walked about with this handsome girl to find himself beginning to suspect that where she was concerned some self-control might be necessary. He was led to this thought because the things he took in on all sides could only have been achieved by a person whose mind was a steadily balanced thing. In one's treatment of such a creature methods must be well chosen. The crudest had suviced to overwhelm Rosalie. He tried two or three little things as experiments during their walk. The first was to touch with dignified pathos on the subject of Uhtred. Betty, he intimated gently, could imagine what a man's grief and disappointment might be on finding his son and heir deformed in such a manner. The delicate reserve with which he managed to convey his fear that Rosalie's own uncontrolled hysteric attacks had been the cause of the misfortune was very well done. She had, of course, been very young and much spoiled and had not learned self-restraint, poor girl. It was at this point that Betty first realized a certain hideous sting. She must actually remain silent. There would be at the outset many times when she could only protect her sister by refraining from either denial or argument. If she turned upon him now with refutation, it was Rosalie who would be called upon to bear the consequences. He would go at once to Rosalie, and she herself would have done what she had said she would not do. She would have brought trouble upon the poor girl before she was strong enough to bear it. She suspected also that his intention was to discover how much he had heard and if she might be goaded into betraying her attitude in the matter. But she was not to be so goaded. He watched her closely, and her very colour itself seemed to be under her own control. He had expected, if she had heard hysteric garbled stories from his wife, to see a flame of scarlet leap up on the cheek he was admiring. There was no such leap which was baffling in itself. Could it be that experience had taught Rosalie the discretion of keeping her mouth shut? I am very fond of Uhtrid, was the sole comment he was granted. We made friends from the first. As he grows older and stronger, his misfortune may be less apparent. He will be a very clever man. He will be a very clever man, if he is at all like. He checked himself with a slight movement of his shoulders. I was going to say a thing utterly banal. I beg your pardon. I forgot for the moment that I was not talking to an English girl. It was so stupid that she turned and looked at him smiling faintly, but her answer was mild and soft. Do not deprive me of compliments because I am a mere American, she said. I am very fond of them and respond at once. You are very daring, he said, looking straight into our eyes. Deliciously so. American women always are, I think. The young devil, he was saying internally, the beautiful young devil, she throws one off the track. He found himself more and more attracted and exasperated as they made their rounds. It was his sense of being attracted, which was the cause of his exasperation. A girl who could stir one like this would be a dangerous enemy, even as a friend she would not be safe, because one faced the absurd peril of losing one's head a little and forgetting the precautions one should never lose sight of or a woman was concerned, the precautions which provided for one's holding a good taut rein in one's own hands. They went from gardens to greenhouses, from greenhouses to stables, and he was on the watch for the moment when she would reveal some little feminine pose or vanity, but this morning at least she laid none bare. She did not strike him as being of angelic perfections, but she was very modern and not likely to show easily any openings in her armour. Of course I continue to be amazed, he commented, though one ought not to be amazed at anything which evolves from your extraordinary country. In spite of your impersonal air I shall persist in regarding you as my benefactor, but to be frank I always told Rosalie that if she would write to your father he would certainly put things in order. She did write once you will remember, answered Betty. Did she, with courteous vagueness, really I'm sure I did not hear of it? My poor wife has her own little ideas about the disposal of her income. And Betty knew that she was expected to believe that Rosalie had hoarded the money sent to restore the place, and from sheer weak myselinus had allowed her son's heritage to fall to ruin, and but for Rosalie's sake she might have stopped upon the path and looking at him squarely have said, you are lying to me and I know the truth. He continued to converse amiably. Of course it is you one must thank not only for rousing in the poor girl some interest in her personal appearance, but also some interest in her neighbours. Some women, after they marry and pass girlhood, seem to release their hold on all desire to attract or retain friends. For years Rosalie has given herself up to a chronic semi-invalidism. When the mistress of a house is always depressed and languid and does not return visits, neighbours become discouraged and drop off as it were. If his wife had told stories to gain her sympathy his companion would be sure to lose her temper and show her hand. If he could make her openly lose her temper he would have made in advance. One can quite understand that, she said, it is a great happiness to me to see Rosalie gaining ground every day. She has taken me out with her a good many times and people are beginning to realise that she likes to see them at Stornham. You are very delightful, he said, with your she has taken me out. When I glanced at the magnificent array of cards on the salver in the hall I realised a number of things and quite vulgarly lost my breath. The Dunham's have been very amiable in recalling our existence, for charming Americans of your order arouse amiable emotions. I am very amiable myself, said Betty. It was he who flushed now. He was losing patience at feeling himself held with such likeness at arm's length and at being in spite of himself somehow compelled to continue to assume a jocular courtesy. No, you are not, he answered. Not, repeated Betty with an incredulous lifting of her brows. You are charming and clever, but I rather suspect you of being a vixen. At all events you are a spirited young woman and quick-witted enough to understand the attraction you must have for the sordid herd. And then he became aware, if not of an opening in her armour, at least of a joint in it, for he saw near her ear a deepening warmth. That was it. She was quick-witted, and she hid somewhere a hot pride. I confess, however, he proceeded cheerfully, that not withstanding my own experience of the habits of the sordid herd, I saw one card I was surprised to find, though rarely, shrugging his shoulders, I ought to have been less surprised to find it than to find any other. But it was bold, I suppose, the fellow's desperate. You are speaking of, suggested Betty. Of Mount Dunstan hang it all, it was bold, as if in half amused disgust. As she had walked through the garden paths, Betty had at intervals bent and gathered a flower until she held in one hand a loose fair sheaf. At this moment she stooped to break off a spire of pale blue campanula, and she was, as with a shock, struck with the consciousness that she bent, because she must, because to do so was a refuge, a concealment of something she must hide. It had come upon her without a second's warning. Sennigel was right. She was a vixen, a varago. She was in such a rage that her heart sprang up and down, and her cheek and eyes were on fire. Her long-trained control of herself was gone, and her shock was a lightning-swift awakening to the fact that she felt all this. She must hide her face, because it was this one man, just this one and no other, who was being dragged into this thing with insult. It was an awakening, and she broke off rather slowly one, two, three, even four campanula stems before she stood upright again. As for Nigel and Struthers, he went on talking in his low-pitched disgusted voice. Surely he might count himself out of the running. There will be a good deal of running, my dear Betty. You fair Americans have learned that by this time. But that a man who has not even a decent name to offer, who is blackballed by his county, should coolly present himself as a pretendant, is an insolence he should be kicked for. Betty arranged her campanulas carefully. There was no exterior reason why she should draw sword in Lord Mount Dunstan's defence. He had certainly not seemed to expect anything intimately interested from her. His manner, she had generally felt, to be rather restrained. But one could in a measure express oneself. Whatsoever the running, she remarked, no pretendant has complimented me by presenting himself so far, and Lord Mount Dunstan is physically an unusually strong man. You mean it would be difficult to kick him. Is this partisanship, I hope not? Am I to understand, he added, with deliberation, that Rosalie has received him here? Yes. And that you have received him also, as you have received Lord Westolt? Quite. Then I must discuss the matter with Rosalie. It is not to be discussed with you. You mean that you will exercise your authority in this matter? In England, my dear girl, the master of a house is still sometimes guilty of exercising authority in matters which concern the reputation of his female relatives. In the absence of your father I shall not allow you, while you are under my roof, to endanger your name in any degree. I am at least your brother by marriage. I intend to protect you. Thank you, said Betty. You are young and extremely handsome. You will have an enormous fortune, and you have evidently had your own way all your life. A girl such as you are may either make a magnificent marriage or a ridiculous and humiliating one. Neither American young women nor English young men are as disinterested as they were some years ago. Each has begun to learn what the other has to give. I think that is true, commented Betty. In some cases there is a good deal to be exchanged on both sides. You have a great deal to give and should get exchange worth accepting. A beggar to state in a tainted title are not good enough. That is business-like, Betty made comment again. Sennigel laughed quietly. The fact is, I hope you won't misunderstand my saying it, you do not strike me as being un-business-like yourself. I am not, answered Betty. I thought not, rather narrowing his eyes as he watched her, because he believed that she must involuntarily show her hand if he irritated her sufficiently. You do not impress me as being one of the girls who make unsuccessful marriages. You are a modern New York beauty, not an early Victorian sentimentalist. He did not despair of results from his process of irritation. To gently but steadily convey to a beautiful and spirited young creature that no man could approach her without ulterior motive was rather a good idea. If one could make it clear, with the casual air of sensibly taking it for granted, that the natural power of youth, wit and beauty were rendered impotent by a greatness of fortune whose proportions obliterated all else. If one simply argued from the premise that young love was no affair of hers, since she must always be regarded as a gilded chattel whose cost was writ large in plain figures, what girl with blood in her veins could endure it long without wincing. This girl had undue and, as he regarded such matters, unseemly control over her temper and her nerves, but she had blood enough in her veins, and presently she would say or do something which would give him a lead. When you marry, he began, she lifted her head delicately, but ended the sentence for him with eyes which were actually not unsmiling. When I marry, I shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give. If the exchange is to be equal, you must ask a great deal, he answered, that is why you must be protected from such fellows as Mount Dunstan. If it becomes necessary, perhaps I shall be able to protect myself, she said. Ah, regretfully, I'm afraid I've annoyed you, and that you need protection more than you suspect. If she were flesh and blood she could scarcely resist presenting the implication contained in this, but resisted she did, and with a cool little smile which stirred him to sudden if irritated admiration. She paused a second and used the touch of gentle regret herself. You have wounded my vanity by intimating that my admirers do not love me for myself alone. He paused also, and narrowing his eyes again looked straight between her lashes. They ought to love you for yourself alone, he said in a low voice. You are a ducidly attractive girl. Oh, Betty, Rosie had pleaded, don't make him angry, don't make him angry. So Betty lifted her shoulders slightly without comment. Shall we go back to the house now, she said. Rosalie will naturally be anxious to hear that what has been done in your absence has met with your approval. In what manner his approval was expressed to Rosalie, Betty did not hear this morning at least. Externally cool though she had appeared, the process had not been without its results, and she felt that she would prefer to be alone. I must write some letters to catch the next steamer, she said, as she went upstairs. When she entered her room she went to her writing-table and sat down with pen and paper before her. She drew the paper towards her and took up the pen, but the next moment she laid it down and gave a slight push to the paper. As she did so she realized that her hand trembled. I must not let myself form the habit of falling into rages, or I shall not be able to keep still some day when I ought to do it, she whispered. I am in a fury, a fury. And for a moment she covered her face. She was a strong girl, but a girl not withstanding her powers. What she suddenly saw was that if by one movement of some powerful unseen hand, Rosie, who had been the centre of all things, had been swept out of her thought. Her anger at the injustice done to Rosie had been as nothing before the fire which had flamed in her at the insult flung at the other. And all that was undue and unbalanced. One might as well look the thing straightly in the face. Her old child-hatred of Nigel and Struthers had sprung up again in tenfold strength. There was, it was true, something abominable about him, something which made his words more abominable than they would have been if another man had uttered them. But though it was inevitable that his method should rouse one when those of one's own blood were concerned, it was not enough to fill one with raging flame when his malignity was dealing with those who were almost strangers. Mount Dunstan was almost a stranger. She had met Lord Westholt oftener. Would she have felt the same hot beat of the blood if Lord Westholt had been concerned? No, she answered herself frankly. She would not. End of chapter 31