 Chapter 5 On both sides of the Atlantic In the course of twelve years the shuttle had woven steadily, and its movements lubricated by time and custom with increasing rapidity. Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro with threads of literature and art, threads of life drawn from one shore to the other and back again, until they were bound in the fabric of its weaving. Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence of taste and thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment, but the web in fates hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintly warmed despite itself. Taste and thought drawn into nearer contact, reflecting upon their divergences, grew into tolerance, and the knowledge that the diverging seen more clearly was not so broad. Argument, coming within speaking distance, reasoned itself to logical and practical conclusions. Problems which had stirred anger began to find solutions. Books in the first place did perhaps more than all else. Cheap pirated editions of English works much quarreled over by authors and publishers, being scattered over the land, brought before American eyes soft home-like pictures of places which were, after all, were said and done, the homes of those who read of them, at least in the sense of having been the birth-places of fathers or grandfathers. Some subtle, far-reaching power of nature caused a stirring of the blood, a vague and expressed yearning and lingering over pages which depicted sweet green lanes, broad acres rich with centuries of nourishment and care, gray church-towers, red roofs and village children playing before cottage-doors. None of these things were new to those who pondered over them. Kinsmen had dwelt on memories of them in their fireside talk, and their children had seen them in fancy and in dreams. Old grievances, having had time to fade away and take on less poignant colour, the stirring of the blood stirred also imaginations and wakened something akin to homesickness, though no man called the feeling by its name. And this perhaps was the strongest chord the shuttle wove, and was the true meaning of its power. Being drawn by it, Americans in increasing numbers turned their faces toward the older land. Gradually it was discovered that it was the simplest affair in the world to drive down to the wharves and take a steamer which landed one after a more or less interesting voyage in Liverpool or at some other convenient port. From there one went to London or Paris or Rome, in fact with a so-ever once fancy-guided, but first or last it always led the traveller to the treading of green velvet English turf. And one standing on such velvet, both men and women looking about them, felt despite themselves the strange old thrill which some of them half-resented and some warmly loved. In the course of twelve years a length of time which will transform a little girl wearing a short frock into a young woman wearing a long one, the pace of life and the ordering of society may become so altered as to appear amazing when one finds time to reflect on the subject, but one does not often find time. Changes occur so gradually that one scarcely observes them or so swiftly that they take the form of a kind of amazed chock which one gets over as quickly as one experiences it and realises that its cause is already a fixed fact. In the United States of America which have not yet acquired the serene sense of conservative self-satisfaction and repose which centuries of age may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change. Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be better than yesterday fuller of plans of briskness of initiative. Each today demands of tomorrow new men, new minds, new work. A today which has not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed new buildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure. Unworthy even of being consigned to the limbo of respectable yesterdays. Such a country lives by leaps and bounds in the ten years which followed the marriage of Ruben Vanderpool's eldest daughter made many such bounds and leaps. There were years which initiated and established international social relations in a manner which caused them to incorporate themselves with the history of both countries. As America discovered Europe, that continent discovered America. American beauties began to appear in English drawing-rooms and continental salons. They were presented at court and commented on in the row and the boire. Their little transatlantic tricks of speech and their most were repeated with gusto. It became understood that they were amusing and amazing. Americans came in as the heroes and heroines of novels and stories, punched alighted in them vastly, shopkeepers and hotel proprietors stocked, furnished and provisioned for them. They spent money enormously and were singularly indifferent at the outset under imposition. They came over in a manner as epoch-making, though less warlike than that of William the Conqueror. International marriages ceased to be a novelty. As Bettina Vanderpool grew up, she grew up, so to speak, in the midst of them. She saw her country, its people, its newspapers, its literature innocently rejoiced by the alliances its charming young women contracted with foreign rank. She saw it affectionately, gleefully rubbing its hands over its duchesses, its countesses, its milledies. The American eagle spread its wings and flapped them sometimes a trifle over this new but so natural and inevitable triumph of its virgins. It was, of course, only American that such thing should happen. America ruled the universe, and its women ruled America, bullying it a little, prettily, perhaps. What could be more a matter, of course, than that American women, being aided by adoring fathers, brothers and husbands sumptuously to ship themselves to other lands, should begin to rule these lands also? Bettina, growing up, heard all this intimated. At twelve years old, though she had detested Rosalie's marriage, she had rather liked to hear people talk of the picturesqueness of places like Stornham Court and of the life led by women of rank in their houses in town and country. Such talk nearly always involved the description of things and people whose color and tone had only reached her through the medium of books, most frequently fiction. She was, however, of an unusually observing mind even as a child, and the time came when she realized that the national bird spread its wings less proudly when the subject of international matches was touched upon, and even at such time showed signs of restlessness. Now and then things had not turned out as they appeared to promise. Two or three seemingly brilliant unions had resulted in disaster. She had not understood all the details the newspapers cheerfully provided, but it was clear to her that more than one previously envied young woman had had practical reasons for discovering that she had made an astonishingly bad bargain. This being the case, she used frequently to ponder over the case of Rosalie, Rosalie who had been swept away from them and swallowed up as it seemed by the other and older world. She was in certain ways a silent child, and no one but herself knew how little she had forgotten Rosalie, how often she pondered over her, how sometimes she had lain awake in the night and puzzled outlines of argument concerning her and things which might be true. The one grief of poor Mrs. Vanderpool's life had been the apparent estrangement of her eldest child. After her first six months in England, Lady Anne Struthers' letters had become fewer and further between, and had given so little information connected with herself that affectionate curiosity became discouraged. Sir Nigel's brief and rare epistles revealed so little desire for any relationship with his wife's family that gradually Rosalie's image seemed to fade into far distance and become fainter with the passing of each month. It seemed almost an incredible thing when they allowed themselves to think of it, but no member of the family had ever been to Stornham Court. Two or three efforts to arrange a visit had been made, but on each occasion had failed through some apparently accidental cause. Once Lady Anne Struthers had been away, once a letter had seemingly failed to reach her, once her children had had scarlet fever, and the orders of the physicians in attendance had been stringent in regard to visitors, even relatives who did not fear conjugation. If she had been living in New York and her children had been ill, I should have been with her all the time, poor Mrs. Vanderpool had said with tears. Rosie's changed awfully somehow. Her letters don't sound a bit like she used to. It seems as if she just doesn't care to see her mother and father. Betty had frowned a good deal and thought intensely in secret. She did not believe that Rosie was ashamed of her relations. She remembered, however, it is true that Clara Newell, who had been a schoolmate, had become very superfine and indifferent to her family after her marriage to an aristocratic and learned German. Hers had been one of the successful alliances, and after living a few years in Berlin she had quite looked down upon New Yorkers, and had made herself exceedingly unpopular during her one brief visit to her relatives. She seemed to think her father and mother undignified and uncultivated, and she disapproved entirely of her sister's dress and bearing. She said that they had no distinction of manner, and that all their interests were frivolous and unenlightened. But Clara always was a conceited girl, thought Betty. She was always patronising people, and Rosie was only pretty and sweet. She always said herself that she had no brains, but she had a heart. After the lapse of a few years there had been no further discussion of plans for visiting Stornum. Rosalie had become so remotest to appear almost unreachable. She had been presented at court. She had had three children. The Dowager Lady Amstras had died. Once she had written to her father to ask for a large sum of money which he had sent to her because she seemed to want it very much. She required it to pay off certain debts on the estate, and spoke touchingly of her boy who would inherit. "'He's a delicate boy, father,' she wrote, and I don't want the estate to come to him burdened. When she received the money she wrote gratefully of the generosity shown her, but she spoke very vaguely of the prospect of their seeing each other in the future. It was as if she felt her own remoteness even more than they felt it themselves. In the meantime Bettina had been taken to France and placed at school there. The resulting experience was an enlightening one, far more illuminating to the quick-witted American child than it would have been to an English, French or German one who would not have had so much to learn, and probably would not have been so quick at the learning. Lady Vanderpool knew nothing which was not American and only vaguely a few things which were not of New York. She had lived in Fifth Avenue, attended school in a numbered street near her own home, played in and been driven around Central Park. She had spent the hot months of the summer in places up the Hudson or on Long Island, and such resorts of pleasure. She had believed implicitly in all she saw and knew. She had been surrounded by wealth and decent good-nature throughout her existence, and had enjoyed her life far too much to admit of any doubt that America was the most perfect country in the world, American's the cleverest and most amusing people, and that other nations were a little out of it and consequently sufficiently scant of resource to render pity without condemnation and natural sentiment in connection with one's occasional thoughts of them. But hers was a mentality by no means ordinary. Inheritance in her nature had combined with circumstances as it has a habit of doing in all human beings. But in her case the combinations were unusual and produced to result somewhat remarkable. The quality of brains which in the first Ruben Vanderpool had expressed itself in the marvelously successful planning and carrying to their ends of commercial and financial schemes the absolute genius of penetration and calculation of the sordid and uneducated little trader in skins and barter of goods, having filtered through two generations of gradual education and refinement of existence, which was no longer that of the mere trader, had been transformed in the great-grand-daughter into keen, clear sight, level-headed perceptiveness and a logical sense of values. As the first Ruben had known by instinct the values of pelts and lands, Bettina knew by instinct the value of qualities of brains of hearts of circumstances, and the incidents which effect them. She was as unaware of the significance of her great possession as were those around her. Nevertheless it was an unerring thing. As a mere child, unformed and uneducated by life, she had not been one of the small creatures to be deceived or flattered. She is an awfully smart little thing that Betty, her New York aunts and cousins often remarked. She seems to see what people mean, it doesn't matter what they say. She likes people you would not expect her to like, and then again she sometimes doesn't care the least for people who are thought awfully attractive. As has been already intimated, the child was crude enough and not particularly well-bred, but her small brain had always been at work and each day of her life recorded for her valuable impressions. The page of her young mind had ceased to be a blank much earlier than is usual. The comparing of these impressions with such as she received when her life in the French school was new afforded her active mental exercise. She began with natural secret indignation and rebellion. There was no other American pupil in the establishment besides herself. But for the fact that the name of Vanderpool represented wealth so enormous as to amount to a sort of rank in itself, Bettina would not have been received. The proprietress of the institution had gravely disquieting doubts of the propriety of America. Her pupils were not accustomed to freedom of opinions and customs. An American child might either consciously or unconsciously introduce them. As this must be guarded against, Bettina's first few months at the school were not agreeable to her. She was supervised and expurgated as it were. Special sisters were told off to converse and walk with her, and she soon perceived that conversations were not only French lessons in disguise, but were lectures on ethics, morals, and good manners imperfectly concealed by the mask and domino of amiable entertainment. She translated into English after the following manner the facts her swift young perceptions gathered. There were things it was so inelegant to say that only the most impossible person said them. There were things it was so inexcusable to do that when done their inexcusability assumed the proportions of a crime. There were movements, expressions, points of view which one must avoid as one would avoid the plague. And there were all things, acts, expressions, attitudes of mind which Bettina had been familiar with from her infancy, and which she was well aware were considered almost entirely harmless and unobjectionable in New York, in her beloved New York, which was the centre of the world, which was bigger, richer, more gayer, more admirable than any other city known upon the earth. If she had not so loved it, if she had ever dreamed of the existence of any other places being absolutely necessary, she would not have felt the thing so bitterly. But it seemed to her that all these amiable diatribes in exquisite French were directed at her New York, and it must be admitted that she was humiliated and enraged. It was a personal, indeed, a family matter. Her father, her mother, her relatives, and friends were all in some degree exactly the kind of persons who speak habits and opinions she must conscientiously avoid. But for the instinct of summing up values, circumstances and intentions, it is probable that she would have lost her head, let loose her temper and her tongue, and have become insubordinate. But the quickness of perception which had revealed practical potentialities to old Ruben Vanderpool, revealed to her the value of French which was perfectly fluent, a voice which was musical, movements which were grace, manners which had a still beauty, and comparing these things with others less charming, she listened and restrained herself, learning, marking, and inwardly digesting with a cleverness most enviable. Among her fellow pensionaires she met with discomforting illuminations which were fine discipline also, though if she herself had been a less intellectual creature they might have been embittering. Without doubt Betty, even at twelve years, was intellectual. Hers was the practical working intellect that begins duty at birth and does not lay down its tools because the sun sets. The little and big girls who wrote their exercises at her side did not deliberately enlighten her, but she learned from them in vague ways that it was not New York which was the centre of the earth, but Paris or Berlin, Madrid, London, or Rome. Paris and London were perhaps more calmly positive of themselves than other capitals and were a little inclined to smile at the lack of seriousness in other claims. But one strange fact was more predominant than any other and this was that New York was not counted as a civilised centre at all, it had no particular existence. Nobody expressed this rudely, in fact it did not acquire the form of actual statement at any time. It was merely revealed by amiable and ingenious unconsciousness of the circumstance that such a part of the world expected to be regarded or referred to at all. Betty began early to realise that as her companions did not talk of Timbuktu or Zanzibar so they did not talk of New York. Stockholm or Amsterdam seemed despite their smallness to be considered. No one denied the presence of Zanzibar on the map, but as it conveyed nothing more than the impression of being a mere geographical fact there was no reason why one should dwell on it in conversation. Remembering all she'd left behind, the crowded streets, the brilliant shop windows, the buzz of individual people, there were moments when Betty ground her strong little teeth. She wanted to express all these things to call out to explain and command recognition for them, but her cleverness showed to her that argument or protestation would be useless. She could not make such hearers understand. There were girls whose interest in America was founded on their impression that magnificent Indian chieftains in blankets and feathers talked about the streets of the towns, and that Betty's own thick black hair had been handed down to her by some beautiful Minnehaha or Pocahontas. When first she was approached by timid tentative questionings revealing this point of view, Betty felt hot and answered with unamiable curtness. No, there were no red Indians in New York. There had been no red Indians in her family. She had neither grandmothers nor aunts who were scores if they meant that. She felt so scornfully, so disgustedly indignant at their benighted ignorance that she knew she behaved very well in saying so little in reply. She could have said so much, but whatsoever she had said would have conveyed nothing to them, so she thought it all out alone. She went over the whole ground and little realized how much she was teaching herself as she turned and tossed in her narrow spotlessly white bed at night, arguing, comparing, drawing deductions from what she knew and did not know of the two continents. Her childish anger, combining itself with the practical alert brain of Reuben van der Poel I, developed in her a logical reasoning power which led her to arrive at many an excellent and curiously mature conclusion. The result was finally educational, all the more so that in her fevered desire for justification of the things she loved she began to read books such as Little Girls Do Not Usually Take Interest In. She found some difficulty in obtaining them at first, but a letter or two written to her father obtained for her permission to read what she chose. The third Reuben van der Poel was deeply fond of his younger daughter and felt in secret a profound admiration for her which was saved from becoming too obvious by the ever-present American sense of humor. Betty seems to be going in for politics, he said, after reading the letter containing her request and her first list of books. She's about as mad as she can be at the ignorance of the French girls about America and Americans. She wants to fill up on solid facts so she can come out strong in argument. She's got an understanding of the power of solid facts that would be a fortune to her if she were a man. It was no doubt her understanding of the power of facts which led her to learn everything well and to develop in many directions. She began to dip into political and historical volumes because she was furious and wished to be able to refute idiocy, but she found herself continuing to read because she was interested in a way she had not expected. She began to see things. Once she made a remark which was prophetic. She made it an answer to a guileless observation concerning the gold mines with which Boston was supposed to be enriched. You don't know anything about America, you others, she said, but you will know. Do you think it will become the fashion to travel in America, asked a German girl? Perhaps, said Betty, but it isn't so much that you will go to America. I believe it will come to you. It's like that, America. It doesn't stand still. It goes and gets what it wants. She laughed as she ended and so did the other girls. But in ten years' time, when there were young women, some of them married, some of them caught beauties, one of them recalled this speech to another, whom she encountered in an important house in St. Petersburg, the wife of the celebrated diplomat who was its owner, being an American woman. Bettina Vanderpool's education was a rather fine thing. She herself had more to do with it than girls usually have to do with their own training. In a few months' time, those in authority in the French school found that it was not necessary to supervise an expurgator. She learned with an interested capacity, which was at once unusual and amazing. And she evidently did not learn from books alone. Her voice as an organ had been musical and full from babyhood. It began to modulate itself and to express things most voices are incapable of expressing. She had been so built by nature that the carriage of her head and limbs were good to behold. She acquired a harmony of movement which caused her to lose no shade of grace and spirit. Her eyes were full of thought, of speculation and intentness. She thinks a great deal for one so young was said of her frequently by one or the other of her teachers. One finally went further and added, She has genius. This was true, she had genius, but it was not specialized. It was not genius which expressed itself through any one art. It was a genius for life, for living herself, for aiding others to live, for vivifying mere existence. She herself was, however, aware only of an eagerness of temperament, a passion for seeing, doing and gaining knowledge. Everything interested her. Everybody was suggestive and more or less enlightening. Her relatives sought her original in her fancies. They called them fancies because she was so young. Fortunately for her there was no reason why she should not be gratified. Most girls preferred to spend their holidays on the continent. She elected to return to America every alternate year. She enjoyed the voyage, and she liked the entire change of atmosphere and people. It makes me like both places more, she said to her father when she was thirteen. It makes me see things. Her father discovered that she saw everything. She was the pleasure of his life. He was attracted greatly by the interest she exhibited in all orders of things. He saw her make bold ingenious plungers into all waters, without any apparent consciousness that the scrubs of knowledge she brought to the surface were unusual possessions for a schoolgirl. She had young views on the politics and commerce of different countries, as she had views on their literature. When Ruben Vanderpool swooped across the American continent on journeys of thousands of miles, taking her as a companion, he discovered that he actually placed a sort of confidence in her summing up of men and schemes. He took her to see mines and railroads and those who worked them, and he talked them over with her afterwards half with a sense of humour, half with a sense of finding comfort in her intelligent comprehension of all he said. She enjoyed herself immensely and gained a strong picturesqueness of character. After an American holiday she used to return to France, Germany or Italy with a renewed zest of feelings for all things romantic and antique. After a few years in the French convent she asked that she might be sent to Germany. I'm gradually changing into a French girl, she wrote to her father. One morning I found I was thinking it would be nice to go into a convent, and another day I almost entirely agreed with one of the girls who was declaiming against her brother who had fallen in love with a Californian. You'd better take me away and send me to Germany. Ruben Vanderpool laughed. He understood Betty much better than most of her relations did. He knew when seriousness underlay her jests and his respects for her seriousness was great. He sent her to school in Germany. During the early years of her school days Betty had observed that America appeared upon the whole to be regarded by her school fellows principally as a place to which the more unfortunate among the peasantry emigrated to steerage passengers when things could become no worse for them in their own country. The United States was not mentally detached from any other portion of the huge western continent. Quite well educated persons spoke casually of individuals having gone to America as if there were no particular difference between Brazil and Massachusetts. I wonder if you ever saw my cousin Gaston, a French girl once asked her as they sat at their desks. He became very poor through ill living. He was quite without money, and he went to America. To New York? inquired Bettina. I am not sure. The town is called Conception. That is not in the United States, but he answered disdainfully, it's in Chile. She dragged her atlas towards her and found the place. See, she said, it is thousands of miles from New York. Her companion was a near sighted rather slow girl. She appeared at the map, drawing a line with her finger from New York to Conception. Yes, they are a great distance from one another, she admitted, but they are both in America. But not both in the United States, cried Betty. French girls always seem to think that North and South America are the same, that they are both the United States. Yes, said the slow girl with deliberation, we do make odd mistakes sometimes. To which she added with entire innocence of any ironic intention. But you Americans, you seem to feel the United States, your New York, to be all America. Betty started a little and flushed. During a few minutes of rapid reflection, she sat bolt upright at her desk and looked straight before her. Her mentality was of the order which is capable of making discoveries concerning itself as well as concerning others. She had never thought of this view of the matter before, but it was quite true. To passionate young patriots such as herself at least, that portion of the map covered by the United States was America. She suddenly saw also that to her New York had been America. Fifth Avenue, Broadway, Central Park, even Tiffany's had been America. She laughed and read into shade as she put the Atlas aside, having recorded a new idea. She had found out that it was not only Europeans who were local, which was a discovery of some importance to her fervid youth. Because she thought so often of Rosalie, her attention was, during the passing years, naturally attracted by the many things she heard of such marriages as were made by Americans with men of other countries than their own. She discovered that notwithstanding certain commercial views of matrimony, all foreigners who united themselves with American heiresses were not the entire brute's primitive prejudice might lead one to imagine. There were rather one-sided alliances which proved themselves far from happy. The cousin Gaston, for instance, brought home a bride whose fortune rebuilt and refurnished his dilapidated chateau, and who ended by making of him a well-behaved and cheery country gentleman not at all to be despised in his amiable, if like-minded, good nature and good spirits. His wife, fortunately, was not a young woman who yearned for sentiment. She was a nice-tempered, practical American girl who adored French country life and knew how to amuse and manage her husband. It was a genial sort of menage, and yet, though this was an undeniable fact, Bettina observed that when the union was spoken of, it was always referred to with a certain tone which conveyed that, though one did not exactly complain of its having been undesirable, it was not quite what Gaston might have expected. His wife had money and was good-natured, but there were limitations to one's appreciation of a marriage in which husband and wife were not on the same plane. She is an excellent person and has been good for Gaston, said Bettina's friend. We like her, but she is not—she is not—she paused there evidently seeing that the remark was unlucky. Bettina, who was still in short fox, took her up. What is she not? she asked. Ah! it is difficult to explain to Americans. It's really not exactly a fault, but she is not of his world. But if he does not like that, said Bettina Cooley, why did he let her buy him and pay for him? It was young and brutal, but there were times when the business perspicuity of the first Ruben Vanderpool, combining with the fiery wounded spirit of his young descendant, rendered Bettina brutal. She saw certain unadorned facts with unsparing young eyes and wanted to state them. After her frocks were lengthened she learned how to state them with more fineness of phrase, but even then she was sometimes still rather unsparing. In this case her companion, who was not fiery of temperament, only coloured slightly. It was not quite that, she answered. Gaston really is fond of her. She amuses him, and he says she is far cleverer than he is. But there were unions less satisfactory, and Bettina had opportunities to reflect upon these also. The English and Continental papers did not give enthusiastic detailed descriptions of the marriage's New York journals dwelt upon with such delight. They were passed over with a paragraph. When Bettie heard them spoken of in France, Germany or Italy, she observed that they were not, as a rule, spoken of respectfully. It seemed to her that the bridegrooms were in conversation treated by their equals with scant respect. It appeared that there had always been some extremely practical reason for the passion which had led them to the altar. One generally gathered that they or their estates were very much out at elbow, and frequently their characters were not considered admirable by their relatives and acquaintances. Some had been rather cold-shoulded in certain capitals on account of embarrassing little or big stories. Some had spent their patrimonies in rioters' living. Those who had merely begun by coming into impoverished estates and had later attenuated their resources by comparatively decent follies were of the more desirable order. By the time she was nineteen Bettina had felt the blood surge in her veins more than once when she heard some comments on alliances over which she had seen her compatriots glow with affectionate delight. It was time Ludlow married some girl with money, she heard said, of one such union. He's been playing the fool ever since he came into the estate—horses on a lot of stupid women. He had come some awful croppers during the last ten years. Good-enough-looking girl, they tell me. The American is married. Tremendous lot of money. Couldn't have picked it up on this side. English young women of fortune are not looking for that kind of thing. Poor old Billy wasn't good enough. Bettina told a story to her father when they next met. She had grown into a tall young creature by this time. Her low, full voice was like a bell and was capable of ringing forth some fine mellow tones of irony. And in America, we're pleased, she said, and flatter ourselves that we are receiving the proper tribute of adoration of our American wit and beauty. We plume ourselves on our conquests." Nobody, said her father, and his reflective deliberation had meaning. There are a lot of us who don't plume ourselves particularly in these days. We're not as innocent as we are when this sort of thing began. We're not as innocent as we were when Rosie was married. And he sighed and rubbed his forehead with the handle of his pen. Not as innocent as we were when Rosie was married, he repeated. Bettina went to him and slid her fine young arm around his neck. It was a long, slim round arm with a wonderful power to caress in its curves. She kissed Vanderpool's lying cheek. Have you had time to think much about Rosie? she said. I've not had time, but I've done it, he answered. Anything that hurts your mother hurts me. Sometimes she begins to cry in her sleep, and when I wake her she tells me she's been dreaming that she's seen Rosie. I have had time to think of her, said Bettina. I've heard so much of these things. I was at school in Germany when Annie Butterfield and Baron von Steindal were married. I heard it talked about there, and then my mother sent me some American papers. She laughed a little, and for a moment her laugh did not sound like a girl's. Well, it's turned out badly enough, her father commented. The papers had penned it to say about it later. There wasn't much he was too good to do to his wife, apparently. There was nothing too bad for him to do before he had a wife, said Bettina. He was black. It was an incidence that he should have dared to speak to Annie Butterfield. Somebody ought to have beaten him. He beat her instead. Yes, and I think his family thought it quite natural. They said that she was so vulgar and American that she exasperated Frederick beyond endurance. She was not Gaborin, that was it. She laughed a severe little laugh again. Perhaps we shall get tired in time, she added. I think we're learning. If it's made a matter of business quite open and above board it will be fair. You know, Father, you always said that I was business-like. There was interested curiosity in Vanderpool's steady look at her. There were times when he felt that Betty's summing up of things was well worth listening to. He saw that now she was in one of her moods when it would pay one to hear her out. She held her chin up a little, and her face took on a fine stillness at one sweet and unrelenting. She was very good to look at in such moments. Yes, he answered, you have a particularly level head for a girl. Well, she went on, what I see is that these things are not business, and they ought to be. If a man comes to a rich American girl and says, I in my title are for sale, will you buy us? If the girl is that kind of good girl, and wants that kind of man, she can look them both over and say, Yes, I will buy you, and it can be arranged. He will not return the money if he is unsatisfactory, but she cannot complain that she has been deceived. She can only complain of that when he pretends that he asks her to marry him because he wants her for his wife, because he would want her for his wife if she were as poor as himself. Let it be understood that he is property for sale. Let her make sure that he is the kind of property she wants to buy. Then if, when they are married, he is brutal or impudent, or his people are brutal or impudent, she can say, I will forfeit the purchase money, but I will not forfeit myself. I will not stay with you. They would not like to hear you say that, Betty, said her father, rubbing his chin reflectively. No, she answered, neither the girl nor the man would like it, and it is their business, not mine. But it is practical and would prevent silly mistakes. It would prevent the girls being laughed at. It is when they are flattered by the choice made of them that they are laughed at. No one can sneer at a man or woman for buying what they think they want and throwing it aside if it turns out a bad bargain. She had seated herself near her father. She rested her elbow slightly on the table and her chin in the hollow of her hand. She was a beautiful young creature. She had a soft curving mouth and a soft curving cheek which was warm rose. Taken in conjunction with those young charms, her next words had an air of incongruity. You think I'm hard, she said. When I think of these things I am hard as hard as nails. That is an Americanism, but it is a good expression. I am angry for America. If we assorted an undignified, let us get what we pay for and make the others acknowledge that we have paid." She did not smile, nor did her father. Mr. Vanderpool, on the contrary, sighed. He had a dreary suspicion that Rosie at least had not received what she had paid for, and he knew she had not been in the least aware that she had paid or that she was expected to do so. Several times during the last few years he had thought that if he had not been so hard-worked, if he had had time, he would have seriously investigated the case of Rosie. But who is not now aware that the profession of multimillionaire does not allow of any swerving from duty or of any interest requiring leisure? I wonder, Betty, he said quite deliberately, if you know how handsome you are. Yes, answered Bettina, I think so, and I am tall. It is the fashion to be tall now. It was early Victorian to be little. The Queen brought in the dear little woman, and now the type is gone out. They will come to look at you pretty soon, said Vanderpool. What shall you say then? I, said Bettina, and her voice sounded particularly low and mellow. I have a little monomania, Father. Some people have a monomania for one thing, and some for another. Mine is for not taking a bargain from the Ducal remnant counter. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of the Shuttle The Slipper-Vox recording is in the public domain. The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 6 An Unfair Endowment To Bettina Vanderpool had been given, to an extraordinary extent, the extraordinary thing which is called beauty, which is the thing entirely set apart from mere good looks or prettiness. This thing is extraordinary, because if statistics were taken, the result would probably be the discovery that not three human beings in a million rarely possess it. That it should be bestowed at all, since it is so rare, seems as unfair a thing as appears to the mere mortal mind, the bestowal of unbounded wealth, since it quite as inevitably places the life of its owner upon an abnormal plane. There are millions of pretty women and billions of personable men, but the man or woman of entire physical beauty may cross one's pathway only once in a lifetime, or not at all. In the latter case it is natural to doubt the absolute truth of the rumours that the thing exists. The abnormal creature seems a mere freak of nature, and may chance to be angel, criminal, totaled incipidity, virago or enchanta, but let such a wine enter a room or appear in the street and heads must turn, eyes light and follow, souls yearn or envy, or sink under the discouragement of comparison. With the complete harmony and perfect balance of the singular thing it would be folly for the rest of the world to compete. A human being who had lived in poverty for half a lifetime might, if suddenly endowed with limitless fortune, retain to a certain extent balance of mind. But the same creature, having lived the same number of years a wholly unlovely thing, suddenly awakening to the possession of entire physical beauty, must find the strain upon pure sanity greater and the balance less easy to preserve. The relief from the conscious or unconscious tension bred by the sense of imperfection, the calm surety of the fearlessness of meeting in any eye a look not lighted by pleasure, would be less normal than the knowledge that no wish, need, remain unfulfilled, no fancy ungratified. Even at sixteen Betty was a long-limbed young nymph whose small head, set high on a fine, slim column of throat, might well have been crowned with the garland of some goddess of health and the joy of life. She was light and swift, and being a creature of long lines and tender curves there was pleasure in the mere seeing her move. The cut of her spirited lip and delicate nostril made for a profile at which one turned to look more than once despite oneself. Her hair was soft and black and repeated its colour in the extravagant lashes of her childhood, which made mysterious the changeful dense blue of her eyes. They were eyes with laughter in them and pride and a suggestion of many deep things yet unsteered. She was rather unusually tall and her body had the suppleness of a young bamboo. The deep corners of her red mouth curled generously and the chin, melting into the fine line of the lovely throat, was at once strong and soft and lovely. She was a creature of harmony, warm richness of colour, and brilliantly alluring life. When her school days were over she returned to New York and gave herself into her mother's hands. Her mother's kindness of heart and sweet tempered lovingness were touching things to Petina. In the midst of her millions Mrs. Vanderpool was wholly unworldly. Petina knew that she felt a perpetual homesickness when she allowed herself to think of the daughter who seemed lost to her, and the girl's realisation of this caused her to wish to be especially affectionate and amenable. She was glad that she was tall and beautiful, not merely because such physical gifts added to the colour and agreeableness of life, but because hers gave comfort and happiness to her mother. To Mrs. Vanderpool, to introduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years, was to be launched into a new future. To concern oneself about her exquisite wardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded, to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feel something of the happiness she had known in those younger days, when New York had been less advanced in its news and methods, and Slim Little Blonde Rosalie had come out in white tulle and waltzed like a fairy with a hundred partners. I wonder what Rosie looks like now, the poor woman said involuntarily one day. Petina was not a fairy. When her mother uttered her exclamation, Petina was on the point of going out, and as she stood near her, wrapped in splendid furs, she had the air of a Russian princess. She could not have worn the things you do, Betty, said the affectionate maternal creature. She was such a little slight thing, but she was very pretty. I wonder if twelve years have changed her much. Betty turned towards her rather suddenly. Mother, she said, some time before very long, I'm going to see. To see, exclaimed Mrs. Vanderpool, to see Rosie. Yes, Betty answered, I have a plan. I have never told you of it, but I've been thinking over it since I was fifteen years old. She went to her mother and kissed her. She wore a becoming but resolute expression. We will not talk about it now, she said. There are some things I must find out. When she'd left the room, which she did almost immediately, Mrs. Vanderpool sat down and cried. She nearly always shed a few tears when anyone touched upon the subject of Rosie. On her desk were some photographs. One was of Rosie as a little girl with long hair, one was of Lady Anstruthers in her wedding dress, and one was of Sir Nigel. I never felt as if I quite liked him, she said, looking at this last. But I suppose she does, or she would not be so happy that she could forget her mother and sister. There was another picture she looked at. Rosalie had sent it with the letter she wrote to her father after he had forwarded the money she asked for. It was a little study in watercolours of the head of her boy. It was nothing but a head, the shoulders being fancifully draped, but the face was a peculiar one. It was over-mature and unlovely, but for a mouth that once pathetic and sweet. He's not a pretty child, sighed Mrs. Vanderpool. I should have thought Rosie would have had pretty babies. Uhtred is more like his father than his mother. She spoke to her husband later of what Betty had said. What do you think she has in her mind, Ruben? she asked. What Betty has in her mind is usually good sense, was his response. She will begin to talk to me about it presently. I shall not ask questions yet. She's probably thinking things over. She was in truth thinking things over, as she had been doing for some time. She had asked questions on several occasions of English people she'd met abroad, but a schoolgirl cannot ask many questions, and though she had once met someone who knew Sennigel and Struthers, it was a person who didn't know him well, for the reason that she had not desired to increase her slight acquaintance. This lady was the aunt of one of Bettina's fellow pupils, and she was not aware of the girl's relationship to Sennigel. What Betty gathered was that her brother-in-law was regarded as a decidedly bad lot, that since his marriage to some American girl he had seemed to have money which he spent in right as living, and that the wife, who was said to be a silly creature, was kept in the country, either because her husband did not want her in London, or because she preferred to stay at Stornum. About the wife no one appeared to know anything, in fact. She's rather a fool, I believe, and Sennigel and Struthers is the kind of man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to, Bettina had heard the lady say. Her own reflections upon these comments had led her through various paths of thought. She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and what she herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of her character. She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind. She had been the most amenable little creature in the world. Her yielding amiability could always be counted upon as a factor by the calculating. Sweet tempered to weakness, she could be beguiled or distressed into any course the desires of others dictated. An ill-tempered or self-pitying person could alter any line of conduct she herself wished to pursue. She was neither clever nor strong-minded, Betty said to herself. A man like Sennigel and Struthers could make what he chose of her. I wonder what he's done to her. Of one thing she thought she was sure. This was that Rosalie's aloofness from her family was the result of his design. She comprehended in her mature years the dislike of her childhood. She remembered a certain look in his face which she had detested. She had not known then that it was the look of a rather clever brute who was malignant, but she knew now. He used to hate us all, she said to herself. He did not mean to know us when he had taken Rosalie away, and he did not intend that she should know us. She had heard rumors of cases somewhat parallel, cases in which girls' lives had become swamped in those of their husbands and their husbands' families, and she had also heard unpleasant details of the means employed to reach the desired results. Annie Butterfield's husband had forbidden her to correspond with her American relatives. He had argued that such correspondence was disturbing to her mind and to the domestic duties which should be every decent woman's religion. One of the occasions of his beating her had been in consequence of his finding her writing to her mother a letter blotted with tears. Husbands frequently objected to their wives' relatives, but there was a special order of European husband who opposed violently any intimacy with American relations on the practical ground that their views of a wife's position with regard to her husband were of a revolutionary nature. Mrs. Fanderpool had in her possession every letter Rosalie or her husband had ever written. Petina asked to be allowed to read them, and one morning seated herself in her own room before a blazing fire with the collection on the table at her side. She read them in order. Nigels began as they went on. They were all in one tone, formal, uninteresting, and requiring no answers. There was not a suggestion of human feeling in one of them. He wrote them, said Betty, so that if we could not say he had never written. Rosalie's first epistles were affectionate but timid. At the outset she was evidently trying to conceal the fact that she was homesick. Gradually she became briefer and more constrained. In one she said pathetically, I'm such a bad letter writer, I always feel as if I want to tear up what I've written because I never say half what is in my heart. Mrs. Fanderpool had kissed that letter many a time. She was sure that a mark on the paper near this particular sentence was where a tear had fallen. Petina was sure of this too, and sat and looked at the fire for some time. That night she went to a ball, and when she returned home she persuaded her mother to go to bed. I want to have a talk with father, she exclaimed. I'm going to ask him something. She went to the great man's private room where he sat at work, even after the hours when less seriously engaged people came home from balls. The room he sat in was one of the apartments newspapers had with much detail described. It was luxuriously comfortable, and its effect was sober and rich and fine. When Petina came in, Fanderpool, looking up to smile at her in welcome, was struck by the fact that as a background to an entering figure of tall, splendid girlhood in a bald dress it was admirable, throwing up all its whiteness and grace and sweep of line. He was always glad to see Betty. The rich strength of the life radiating from her, the reality and glow of her were good for him, and had the power of detaching him from work of which he was tired. She smiled back at him, and coming forward took her place in a big armchair close to him, her lace-friiled cloak slipping from her shoulders with a soft rustling sound which seemed to convey her intention to stay. Are you too busy to be interrupted? she asked, a mellow voice caressing him. I want to talk to you about something I'm going to do. She put out her hand and laid it on his with a clinging firmness which meant strong feeling. At least I'm going to do it if you will help me, she added. What is it, Betty? he inquired, his usual interest in her accentuated by her manner. She laid her other hand on his and he clasped both with his own. When the Worthington sale for England next month, she explained, I want to go with them. Mrs. Worthington is very kind and will be good enough to take care of me until I reach London. Mr. Vanderpool moved slightly in his chair. Then their eyes met comprehendingly. He saw what hers held. From there you're going to Stornham Court, he exclaimed. To see Rosie, she answered, leaning a little forward, to see her. You believe that what has happened has not been her fault, he said. There was a look in her face which warmed his blood. I have always been sure that Nigel Anstra has arranged it. Do you think he's been unkind to her? I'm going to see, she answered. Betty, he said, tell me all about it. He knew that this was no suddenly formed plan, and he knew it would be well worthwhile to hear the details of its growth. It was so interestingly like her to have remained silent through the process of thinking a thing out, evolving her final idea without having disturbed him by bringing to him any chaotic uncertainties. It's a sort of confession, she answered. Father, I have been thinking about it for years. I said nothing, because for so long I knew I was only a child, and a child's judgment might be worth so little. But through all these years I was learning things and gathering evidence. When I was at school, first in one country and then another, I used to tell myself that I was growing up and preparing myself to do a particular thing, to go to rescue Rosie. I used to guess you thought of her in a way of your own, Vanderpool said, but I did not guess you were thinking that much. You were always a solid, loyal little thing, and there was business capacity in your keeping your scheme to yourself. Let us look the matter in the face. Suppose she does not need rescuing. Suppose, after all, she is a comfortable, fine lady and adores her husband. What then? If I should find that to be true, I will behave myself very well, as if we had expected nothing else. I will make her a short visit and come away. Lady Cecilia Orm, who I knew in Florence, has asked me to stay with her in London. I will go to her. She is a charming woman, but I must first see Rosie, see her. Mr. Vanderpool thought the matter over during a few moments of silence. You do not wish your mother to go with you, he said presently. I believe it will be better that she should not, she answered, if there are difficulties or disappointments she would be too unhappy. Yes, he said slowly, and she could not control her feelings. She would give the whole thing away, poor girl. He had been looking at the carpet reflectively, and now he looked at Bettina. What are you expecting to find at the worst, he asked her, the kind of thing which will need management while it is being looked into? I do not know what I am expecting to find, was her reply. We know absolutely nothing but that Rosie was fond of us, and that her marriage has seemed to make her cease to care. She was not like that. She was not like that. Was she father? No, she was not, he exclaimed. The memory of her in her short frock and early girlish days, a pretty smiling, effusive thing, given to lavish caresses and affectionate little surprises for them all, came back to him vividly. She was the most affectionate girl I ever knew, he said. She was more affectionate than you, Betty, with a smile. Bettina smiled in return and bent her head to put a kiss on his hand, a warm, lovely, comprehending kiss. If she had been different I should not have thought so much of the change, she said. I believe that people are always more or less like themselves as long as they live. What has seemed to happen has been so unlike Rosie that there must be some reason for it. You think that she has been prevented from seeing us? I think it's so possible that I'm not going to announce my visit beforehand. You have a good head, Betty, her father said. If Sir Nigel has put obstacles in our way before, he will do it again. I shall try to find out when I reach London, if Rosalie is at Stornham. When I'm sure she is there, I shall go and present myself. If Sir Nigel meets me at the Park Gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel rather like a detective. It entertains me and excites me a little. The deep blue of her eyes shone under the shadow of the extravagant lashes as she laughed. Are you willing that I should go farther? she said next. Yes, he answered. I'm willing to trust you, Betty, to do things I would not trust other girls to try at. If you were not my girl at all, if you were a man on Wall Street, I should know you would be pretty safe to come out a little more than even in any venture you made. You know how to keep cool. Bettina picked up her fallen cloak and laid it over her arm. It was made of billowy frills of maline lace such as only Vanderpools could buy. She looked down at the amazing thing and touched up the frills with her fingers as she whimsically smiled. There are a good many girls who can be trusted to do things in these days, she said. Women have found out so much. Perhaps it is because the heroines of novels have informed them. Heroines and heroes always bring in the new fashions in character. I believe it is years since a heroine burst into a flood of tears. It has been discovered, really, that nothing is to be gained by it. Whatsoever I find at Stornham Court I shall neither weep nor be helpless. There is the Atlantic cable, you know. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why heroines have changed, when they could not escape from their persecutors except in a stagecoach and could not send telegrams they were more or less in every one's hands. It's different now. Thank you, Father. You're very good to believe in me. The brilliant sunny morning just before its departure is an interesting and suggestive object to those who are fond of following suggestion to its end. One sometimes wonders if it is possible that the excitement in the dock atmosphere could ever become a thing to which one was sufficiently accustomed to be able to regard it as among things commonplace. The rumbling and rattling of wagons and carts, the loading and unloading of boxes and bales, the people who are late and the people who are early, the faces which are excited and the faces which are sad, the trunks and bales, the cranes which creak and groan, the shouts and cries, the hurry and confusion of movement, notwithstanding that every day has seen them all for years, have a sort of perennial interest to the looker on. This is perhaps more especially the case when the looker on is to be a passenger on the outgoing ship, and the exhilaration of his point of view may greatly depend upon the reason for his voyage and the class by which he travels. Gaiety and youth usually appear upon the promenade deck having taken saloon passage. Dullness, commerce, and elk mingling with them it is true, but with a discretion which does not seem to dominate. Second-class passengers wear a more practical aspect, and youth among them is rarer and more grave. People who must travel second and third class make voyages for utilitarian reasons. Their object is usually to better themselves in one way or another. When they are going from Liverpool to New York it is usually to enter upon new efforts and new labours. When they are returning from New York to Liverpool it is often because the new life has proved less to be depended upon than the old, and they are bearing back with them bitterness of soul and discouragement of spirit. On the brilliant spring morning when the huge liner Meridiana was to sail for England, a young man who was a second-class passenger leaned upon the ship's rail and watched the turmoil on the wharf with a detached and not at all buoyant air. His air was detached because he had other things in his mind than those merely passing before him, and he was not buoyant because they were not cheerful or encouraging subjects for reflection. He was a big young man, well hung together, and carrying himself well. His face was square, Jordan rugged, and he had dark red hair, restrained by its close cut from waving strongly on his forehead. His eyes were red-brown, and a few dark freckles marked his clear skin. He was of the order of man one looks at twice, having looked at him once, though one does not in the least know why, and this one finally reaches some degree of intimacy. He watched the vehicles, heavy in light, roll into the big shed-like building and deposit their freight. He heard the voices and caught the sentences of instruction and comment. He saw boxes and bales hauled from the dockside to the deck and swung below with the rattling of machinery and chains. But these formed merely a noisy background to his mood which was self-centred and gloomy. He was one of those who go back to their native land knowing themselves conquered. He had left England two years before, feeling obstinately determined to accomplish a certain difficult thing, but forces of nature combining with the circumstances of previous education and living had beaten him. He had lost two years and all the money he had ventured. He was going back to the place he had come from, and he was carrying with him a sense of having been used hardly by fortune, and in a way he had not deserved. He had gone out to the west with the intention of working hard and using his hands as well as his brains. He had not been squeamish. He had, in fact, laboured like a ploughman, and to be obliged to give in had been galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of themselves the possibility of being beaten does not enter. This man was one of them. The ship was of the huge and luxuriously fitted class by which the rich and fortunate are transported from one continent to another. Passengers could indulge themselves in sweets of rooms and live sumptuously. As the man leaning on the rail looked on, he saw messengers bearing baskets and boxes of fruit and flowers with cards and notes attached, hurrying up the gangway to deliver them to waiting stewards. These were the farewell offerings to be placed in state rooms or to await their owners on the saloon tables. Salta, the second-class passenger's name was Salta, had seen a few such offerings before on the first crossing. But there had not been such lavishness at Liverpool. It was the New Yorkers who were sumptuous in such matters, as he had been told. He had also heard casually that the passenger list on this voyage was to record important names, the names of multimillionaire people who were going over for the London season. Two stewards talking near him earlier in the morning had been exulting over the probable largesse such a list would result in at the end of the voyage. The Worthingtons and the Hirams and the John William Spaters said one, they travel all right, they know what they want and they want a good deal and they're willing to pay for it. Yes, they're not school teachers going over to improve their minds and contriving to cross in a big ship by economising in everything else. Miss Vanderpool sailing with the Worthingtons, she's got the best suite all to herself. She'll bring back a duke or one of those Princefellas. How many millions has Vanderpool? How many millions, how many hundred millions, said his companion, gloating cheerfully over the vastness of unknown possibilities. I've crossed with Miss Vanderpool often, two or three times when she was in short frocks. She's the kind of girl you'd read about and she's got money enough to buy in half a dozen princes. There are New Yorkers who won't like it if she does return the other. There's been too much money going out of the country. Her suite is crammed full of Jack Roses now and there are boxes waiting outside. Salter moved away and hurt no more. He moved away in fact because he was conscious that to a man in his case, this dwelling upon millions, this plethora of wealth was a little revolting. He had walked down Broadway and seen the price of Jack Mino Roses, and he was not soothed or allured at this particular moment by the picture of a girl whose half-dozen cabins were crowded with them. Oh, the devil, he said, it sounds vulgar. And he walked up and down fast, squaring his shoulders with his hands in the pockets of his rough, well-worn coat. He had seen in England something of the American young women with millionaire relatives. He had been scarcely more than a boy when the American flood first began to rise. He had been old enough, however, to hear people talk. As he had grown older, Salter had observed its advance. Englishmen had married American beauties. American fortunes had built up English houses, which otherwise threatened to fall into decay. Then the American faculty of adaptability came into play. Anglo-American wives became sometimes more English than their husbands. They proceeded to anglicise their relations, their relations' clothes, even in time their speech. They carried or sent English conventions to the States. Their brothers ordered their clothes from West End tailors. Their sisters began to wear walking-dresses to play out-of-door games and take active exercise. Their mothers tentatively took houses in London or Paris. There came a period when their fathers or uncles, serious or anxious businessmen, the most unsporting of human beings, rented castles or manners with huge moors and covers attached, and entertained large parties of shooters or fishers who could be lured to any quarter by the promise of the particular form of slaughter for which they burned. Here American business perspicacity that, said Salter as he marched up and down, thinking of a particular case of this order. There's something admirable in the practical way they make for what they want. They want to amalgamate with English people, not for their own sake, but because they're women like it, and so they offer the men thousands of acres full of things to kill. They can get them by paying for them, and they know how to pay. He laughed a little, lifting his square shoulders. Balthamore's six thousand acres of grass moor and Elsty's salmon fishing are rented by the Chicago man. He doesn't care tuppence for them and doesn't know a pheasant from a capicalcy, but his wife wants to know men who do. It must be confessed that Salter was of the English who were not pleased with the American invasion. In some of his views of the matter he was a little prehistoric and savage, but the modern side of his character was too intelligent to lack reason. He was by no means entirely modern, however, a large part of his nature belonged to the age in which men had fought fiercely for what they wanted to get or keep, and when the amenities of commerce had not become powerful factors in existence. They're not a bad lot, he was thinking at this moment. They're rather fine in a way. They're clever and powerful and interesting, more so than they know themselves. But it's all commerce. They don't come and fight with us and get possession of us by force. They come and buy us. They buy our land and our homes and our landowners for that matter. When they don't buy them they send their women to marry them, confounded. He took half a dozen more strides and lifted his shoulders again. Beggarly lot as I am, he said, unlikely as it seems that I can marry at all, I'm hanged if I don't marry an English woman, if I give my life to a woman at all. But in fact he was of the opinion that he should never give his life to any woman, and this was because he was, at this period, also of the opinion that there was small prospect of its ever being worth the giving or taking. It had been one of those lives which begin untowardly and are ruled by unfair circumstances. He had a particularly well-cut and expressive mouth, and as he went back to the ship's side and leaned on his folded arms on the rail again, its curves concealed a good deal of strong feeling. The wharf was busier than before. In less than half an hour the ship was to sail. The bustle and confusion had increased. There were people hurrying about looking for friends, and there were people scribbling off excited farewell messages at the telegraph office. The situation was working up to its climax. An observing look-a-round might catch glimpses of emotional scenes. Many of the passengers were already on board. Parties of them, accompanied by their friends, were making their way up the gangplank. Salter had just been watching a luxuriously cared for little invalid woman being carried on deck in a reclining chair when his attention was attracted by the sound of trampling hooves and rolling wheels. Two noticeably big and smart carriages had driven up to the stopping-place for vehicles. They were gorgeously of the latest mode, and their tall, satin-skinned horses jangled silver chains and stepped up to their noses. Here come the Worthingtons, whosoever they may be, thought Salter. The fine, upstanding young woman is no doubt the multimillionaires. The fine, upstanding young woman was the multimillionaires. Bettina walked up the gangway in the sunshine, and the passengers upon the upper deck craned their necks to look at her. The carriage of her head and shoulders invariably made people turn to look. My, ain't she fine-looking! exclaimed an excited lady beholder above. I guess that must be Miss Vanderpool, the multimillionaire's daughter. Jane told me she'd heard she was crossing this strip. Bettina heard her. She sometimes wondered if she was ever pointed out if her name was ever mentioned without the addition of the explanatory statement that she was the multimillionaire's daughter. As a child she had thought it ridiculous and tiresome. As she had grown older she had felt that only a remarkable individuality could surmount a fact so ever-present. It was like a tremendous quality which overshadowed everything else. It wounds my vanity, I have no doubt, she said to her father. Nobody ever sees me, they only see you in your millions and millions of dollars. Salter watched her pass up the gangway. The phase through which he was living was not of the order which leads a man to dwell upon the beautiful and inspiring as expressed by the female image. Success and the hopefulness which engender warmth of soul and quickness of heart are required for the development of such allurements. He thought of the Vanderpool Millions as the lady on the deck had thought of them and in his mind somehow the girl herself appeared to express them. The rich up-springing sweep of her abundant hair, her height, her coloring, the remarkable shade and length of her lashes, the full curve of her mouth—all he told himself looked expensive, as if even nature herself had been given carte blanche and the best possible articles procured for the money. She moves, he thought sardonically, as if she were perfectly aware that she could pay for anything, an unlimited income no doubt establishes any owner the equivalent to a sense of rank. He changed his position for one in which he could command a view of the promenade deck where the arriving passengers were gradually appearing. He did this from the idle and careless curiosity which, though it is not a matter of absolute interest, does not object to being entertained by passing objects. He saw the Worthington party reappear. It struck Salter that they looked not so much like persons coming on board a ship, as like people who were returning to a hotel to which they were accustomed and which was also accustomed to them. He argued that they had probably crossed the Atlantic innumerable times in this particular steamer. The deck stewards knew them and made a basins with impressment. Miss Vanderpool nodded to the stewards Salter had heard discussing her. She gave him a smile of recognition and paused a moment to speak to him. Salter saw her sweep the deck with her glance and then designate a sequestered corner such as he experienced voyage oak would recognize as being desirably sheltered. She was evidently giving an order concerning the placing of her deck chair, which was presently brought. An elegantly neat and decorous person in black, who was evidently her maid, appeared later, followed by a steward who carried cushions and sumptuous fur rugs. These being arranged at a lightful corner was left alluringly prepared. Miss Vanderpool, after her instructions to the deck steward, had joined her party and seemed to be awaiting some arrival anxiously. She knows how to do herself well, Salter commented, and she realizes that forethought is a practical factor. Millions have been productive of composure. It's not unnatural, either. It was but a short time later that the warning bell was rung. Stewards passed through the crowds calling out, all ashore if you please, all ashore. Final embraces were in order on all sides. People shook hands with fervour and laughed a little nervously. Women kissed each other and poured forth hurried messages to be delivered on the other side of the Atlantic. Having kissed and parted, some of them rushed back and indulged in little clutches again, notwithstanding that the tide of humanity surges across the Atlantic almost as regularly as the daily tide surges in on its shores, a wave of emotion sweeps through every ship at such partings. Salter stood on deck and watched the crowd dispersing. Some of the people were laughing and some had red eyes. Groups collected on the wharf and tried to say still more last words to their friends crowding against the rail. The Worthingtons kept their places and were still looking out by this time disappointedly. It seemed that the friend or friends they expected were not coming. Salter saw that Miss Vanderpool looked more disappointed than the rest. She leaned forward and strained her eyes to see. Just at the last moment there was the sound of trampling horses and rolling wheels again. From the arriving carriage descended hastily an elderly woman who lifted out a little boy, excited almost to tears. He was a dear, chubby little person in flapping sailor trousers, and he carried a splendidly comparison toy donkey in his arms. Salter could not help feeling slightly excited himself as they rushed forward. He wondered if there were passengers who would be left behind. They were not passengers, but the arrivals Miss Vanderpool had been expecting so ardently. They had come to say good-bye to her and were too late for that, at least, as the gangway was just about to be withdrawn. Miss Vanderpool leaned forward with an amazingly fervent expression on her face. "'Tommy! Tommy!' she cried to the little boy. "'Here I am, Tommy. We can say good-bye from here.' The little boy, looking up, broke into a wail of despair. "'Betty! Betty! Betty!' he cried. "'I wanted to kiss you, Betty!' Betty held out her arms. She did it with entire forgetfulness of the existence of any lookers on, and with such outreaching love on her face that it seemed as if the child must feel her touch. She made a beautiful warm, consoling bud of her mouth. "'We'll kiss each other from here, Tommy,' she said. "'See, we can. Kiss me, and I'll kiss you.' Tommy held out his arms and the magnificent donkey. "'Betty!' he cried. "'I brought you my donkey. I wanted to give it to you for a present, because you liked it.' Miss Vanderpool bent further forward and addressed the elderly woman. "'Matilda,' she said. "'Please pack Master Tommy's present and send it to me. I want it very much.' Tender smiles irradiated the small face. The gangway was withdrawn, and amid the familiar sounds of her big craft's first struggle the ship began to move. Miss Vanderpool still bent forward and held out her arms. "'I'll soon come back, Tommy,' she cried, "'and we are always friends.' The child held out his short blue surge arms also, and Salter watching him could not but be touched for all his gloom of mind. "'I wanted to kiss you, Betty,' he heard in farewell. "'I did so want to kiss you.' And so they steamed away upon the blue. Up to a certain point the voyage was like all other voyages. During the first two days there were passengers who did not appear on deck, but as the weather was fair for the season of the year there were fewer absentees than as usual. Indeed on the third day the deck-chairs were all filled, people who were given to tramping during their voyages had begun to walk their customary quota of carefully measured miles the day. There were a few pale faces dozing here and there, but the general aspect of things had begun to be sprightly. The shuffleboard players and quite enthusiasts began to bestow themselves, the deck steward appeared regularly with light repasts of beef tea and biscuits, and the brilliant hues of red, blue or yellow novels made frequent spots of colour upon the promenade. Persons of some initiative went to the length of making tentative observations to their next-chair neighbours. The second cabin passengers were cheerful, and the steerage passengers, having tumbled up, formed friendly groups and began to joke with each other. The Worthingtons had painly the good fortune to be respectable sailors. They reappeared on the second day in established regular habits, after the manner of accustomed travellers. Ms. Vanderpool's habits were regular from the first, and when Salter saw her he was impressed even more at the outset with her air of being at home instead of on board ship. Her practically well-chosen corner was an agreeable place to look at. Her chair was built for ease of angle and width, her cushions were of dark rich colours, her travelling rugs were of black fox fur, and she owned an adjustable table for books and accompaniments. She appeared early in the morning and walked until the sea air crimsoned her cheeks, she sat and read with evident enjoyment, she talked to her companions and plainly entertained them. Salter, being bored and in bad spirits, found himself watching her rather often, but he knew that but for the small comic episode of Tommy he would have definitely disliked her. The dislike would not have been fair, but it would have existed in spite of himself. It would not have been fair, because it would have been founded simply upon the ignoble resentment of Envy, upon the poor truth that he was not in the state of mind to avoid resenting the injustice of fate in bestowing multi-millions upon one person and his offspring. He resented his own resentment but was obliged to acknowledge its existence in his humour. He himself, especially and peculiarly, had always known the bitterness of poverty, the humiliation of seeing where money could be well used, indeed ought to be used, and at the same time having ground into him the fact that there was no money to lay one's hand on. He had hated it even as a boy, because in his case and that of his people the whole thing was undignified and unbecoming. It was humiliating to him now to bring home to himself the fact that the thing for which he was inclined to dislike this tall upstanding girl was her unconscious, he realized the unconsciousness of it, air of having always lived in the atmosphere of millions, of never having known a reason why she should not have anything she had a desire for. Perhaps upon the whole he said to himself, it was his own ill luck and sense of defeat which made her corner with its cushions and comforts her properly attentive maid, and her cold weather-sables expressive of a fortune too colossal to be decent. The episode of the plump despairing Tommy he had liked, however. There had been a fine naturalness about it and a fine practicalness in her prompt order to the elderly nurse that the richly comparison donkey should be sent to her. This had at once made it clear to the donor that his gift was too valuable to be left behind. She didn't care toughens for the lot of us was his summing up. She might have been nothing but the nicest possible warm-hearted nursemaid or a cottage woman who loved the child. He was quite aware that though he had found himself more than once observing her, she herself had probably not recognized the trivial fact of his existing upon that other side of the barrier which separated the higher grade of passenger from the lower. There was indeed no reason why she should have singled him out for observation, and she was in fact too frequently absorbed in her own reflections to be in the frame of mind to remark her fellow passengers to the extent which was generally customary with her. During her crossings of the Atlantic she usually made mental observations of the people on board. This time, when she was not talking to the Worthingtons or reading, she was thinking of the possibilities of her visit to Stornham. She used to walk about the deck thinking of them, and sitting in her chair summed them up as her eyes rested on the rolling and breaking waves. There were many things to be considered, and one of the first was the perfectly sane suggestion her father had made. Suppose she does not want to be rescued. Suppose you find her a comfortable fine lady who adores her husband. Such a thing was possible, though Bettina did not think it probable. She intended, however, to prepare herself even for this. If she found Lady Anstrother's plump and rosy head, pleased with herself and her position, she was quite equal to making her visit appear a casual and conventional affair. I ought to wish it to be so, she thought, and yet how disappointingly I should feel she had changed. Still, even ethical reasons would not excuse one for wishing her to be miserable. She was a creature with a number of passionate ideals which warred frequently with the practical side of her mentality. Often she used to walk up and down the deck or lean upon the ship's side, her eyes stormy with emotions. I do not want to find Rosie a heartless woman, and I do not want to find her wretched. What do I want? Only the usual thing, that what cannot be undone, had never been done. People are always wishing that. She was standing near the second cabin barrier, thinking this the first time she saw the passenger with the red hair. She had paused by mere chance, and while her eyes were stormy with her thought, she suddenly became conscious that she was looking directly into other eyes as darkling as her own. They were those of a man on the wrong side of the barrier. He had a troubled, brooding face, and as their gaze met, each of them started slightly and turned away with the sense of having unconsciously intruded and having been intruded upon. That rough-looking man, she commented to herself, is as anxious and disturbed as I am. Salter did look rough, it was true. His well-worn clothes had suffered somewhat from the restrictions of a second-class cabin chaired with two other men, but the aspect which had presented itself to her brief glance had been not so much roughness of clothing as of mood expressing itself in his countenance. He was thinking harshly and angrily of the life ahead of him. These looks of theirs which had so inadvertently encountered each other were of that order which sometimes startles one when in passing a stranger one finds one's eyes entangled for a second in his or hers as the case may be. At such times it seems for that instant difficult to disentangle one's gaze. But neither of these two thought of the other much after hurrying away. Each was too fully mastered by personal mood. There would indeed have been no reason for their encountering each other further but for the accident as it was called when spoken of afterwards. The accident which might so easily have been a catastrophe. It occurred that night. This was two nights before there were to land. Everybody had begun to come under the influence of that cheerfulness of humour, the sense of relief bordering on gaiety which generally elates people when a voyage is drawing to a close. If one has been dull one begins to gather oneself together, rejoice that the boredom is over. In any case there are plans to be made, thought of or discussed. You wish to go to Stornham at once, Mrs. Worthington said to Bettina, how please Lady Ann Struthers and Sir Nigel must be at the idea of seeing you with them after so long. I can scarcely tell you how I am looking forward to it, Betty answered. She sat in her corner among her cushions looking at the dark water which seemed to sweep past the ship and listening to the throb of the engines. She was not gay. She was wondering how far the plans she had made would prove feasible. Mrs. Worthington was not aware that her visit to Stornham Court was to be unannounced. It had not been necessary to explain the matter. The whole affair was simple and decorous enough. Miss Vanderpool was to bid good-bye to her friends and go at once to her sister, Lady Ann Struthers, whose husband's country seat was but a short journey from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the fact should be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required some adroit management, but had actually been accomplished. As the wave swished past her Bettina was saying to herself, what will Rosie say when she sees me? What shall I say when I see Rosie? We are drawing nearer to each other with every wave that passes. A fog which swept up suddenly sent them all below rather early. The Worthingtons laughed and talked a little in their staterooms, but presently became quiet and had evidently gone to bed. Bettina was restless and moved about her room alone after she had sent away her maid. She had last sat down and finished a letter she had been writing to her father. As I neared the land, she wrote, I feel a sort of excitement. Several times to-day I have recalled so distinctly the picture of Rosie as I saw her lust when we all stood crowded upon the wharf at New York to see her off. She and Nigel were leaning upon the rail of the upper deck. She looked such a delicate airy little creature, quite like a pretty school girl with tears in her eyes. She was laughing and crying at the same time, and kissing both her hands to us again and again. I was crying passionately myself though I tried to conceal the fact. And I remember that each time I looked from Rosie to Nigel's heavy face, the poignancy of my anguish made me break forth again. I wonder if it was because I was a child that he looked such a contemptuous brute even when he pretended to smile. It's twelve years since then. I wonder how I wonder what I shall find. She stopped writing and sat a few moments searching upon her hand, thinking. Suddenly she sprang to her feet in alarm. The stillness of the night was broken by wild shouts, a running of feet outside, a tumult of mingled sounds and motion, a dash and rush of surging water, a strange thumping and straining of engines, and a moment later she was hurled from one side of her stateroom to the other by a crashing shock which seemed to heave the ship out of the sea, shuddering as if the end of all things had come. It was so sudden and horrible a thing that though she had only been flung upon a pile of rugs and cushions and was unhurt, she felt as if she had been struck on the head and plunged into wild delirium. Above the sound of the dashing and rocking waves the straining and roaring of hacking engines and the pandemonium of voices rose from one end of the ship to the other, one wild, despairing, long-drawn shriek of women and children. Bettina turned sick at the mad terror in it, the insensate awful horror. Something has run into us, she gasped, getting up with her heart leaping in her throat. She could hear the Worthington's tempest of terrified confusion through the partitions between them, and she remembered afterwards that in the space of two or three seconds and in the midst of their clamour a hundred incongruous thoughts leapt through her brain. Perhaps they were this moment going down, now she knew what it was like, this thing she had read of in newspapers. Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she, Betty Vanderpool, and as she sprung to clutch her fur coat, there flashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlines in the newspapers and the inevitable reference to the million she represented. I must keep calm, she heard herself say as she fastened the long coat, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. Poor Daddy! Poor Daddy! Maddening new sounds were all about her, sounds of water dashing and churning, sounds of voices bellowing out commands, straining and leaping sounds of the engines. What was it? What was it? She must at least find out. Everybody was going mad in the staterooms, the stewards were rushing about trying to quiet people, their own voices shaking and breaking into cracked notes. If the worst had happened, everyone would be fighting for life in a few minutes. Out on deck, she must get, and find out for herself what the worst was. She was the first woman outside, though the whales and shrieks swelled below, and half dressed, ghastly creatures tumbled, gasping up the companion way. What is it, she heard? My God! What's happened? Where's the captain? Are we going down? The boats! The boats! It was useless to speak to the seamen rushing by. They did not see much less here. She caught sight of a man who could not be a sailor since he was standing still. She made her way to him, thankful that she had managed to stop her teeth chattering. What has happened to us? she said. He turned and looked at her straightly. He was the second cabin passenger with the red hair. A tramp steamer has run into us in the fog, he answered. How much harm is done? They're trying to find out. I'm standing here on the chance of hearing something. It's madness to ask any man questions. They spoke to each other in short, sharp sentences, knowing there was no time to lose. Are you horribly frightened? he asked. She stamped her foot. I hate it. I hate it, she said, flinging out her hand toward the black heaving water. The plunge, the choking. No one could hate it more, but I want to do something. She was turning away when he caught her hand and held her. Wait a second, he said. I hate it as much as you do, but I believe we too can keep our heads. Those who can do that may help, perhaps. Let us try to quiet the people. As soon as I find out anything, I will come to your friend's stateroom. You're near the boats there. Then I shall go back to the second cabin. You work on your side, and I'll work on mine. That's all. Thank you. Tell the Worthingtons I'm going to the saloon deck. She was off as she spoke. Upon the stairway she found herself in the midst of a struggling, panic-stricken mob, tripping over each other on the steps and clutching at any garment nearest to drag themselves up as they fell or were on the point of falling. Everyone was crying out in question and appeal. Bettina stood still, a firm, tall obstacle, and clutched at the hysteric woman who was hurled against her. I've been on deck, she said. A tramp's steamer has run into us. No one has time to answer questions. The first thing to do is to put on warm clothes and secure the life-belts in case you need them. At once everyone turned upon her as if she was an authority. She replied with almost fierce determination to the torrent of words ford forth. I know nothing further, only that if one is not a fool one must make sure of clothes and belts. Quite right, Miss Vanderpool, said one young man, touching his cap in nervous propitiation. Stop screaming, Betty said mercilessly to the woman. It's idiotic. The more a noise you make, the less chance you have. How can men keep their wits among a mob of shrieking mad women? That the remote Miss Vanderpool should have emerged from her luxurious corner to frankly bully the lot of them was an excellent shock for the crowd. Men who had been in danger of losing their heads and becoming as uncontrolled as the women suddenly realized the fact and pulled themselves together. Bettina made her way at once to the Worthington's staterooms. There she found frenzy reigning. Blanche and Mari Worthington were darting to and fro, dragging about first one thing and then another. They were silly with fright and dash-dat and dropped alternately life-belt shoes, jewel-cases and wraps, while they sobbed and cried out hysterically, oh, what shall we do with mother, what shall we do? The manners of Betty Vanderpool's sharp schoolgirl days returned to her in full force. She seized Blanche by the shoulder and shook her. What a donkey you are, she said. Put on your clothes, there they are. Putting her to a place where they hung. Mari, dress yourself this moment, we may be in no real danger at all. Do you think not? Oh, Betty, they wailed in concert. Oh, what shall we do with mother? Where is your mother? She fainted. Louise—Betty was in Mrs. Worthington's cabin before they had finished speaking. The poor woman had fainted and struck her cheek against a chair. She lay on the floor in her night-down, with blood trickling from a cut on her face. Her maid Louise was wringing her hands and doing nothing whatever. If you don't bring the brandy this minute, said the beautiful Miss Vanderpool, I'll box your ears, believe me, my girl. She looked so capable of doing it that the woman was startled and actually offended into a return of her senses. Miss Vanderpool had usually the best possible manners in dealing with her inferiors. Betty poured brandy down Mrs. Worthington's throat and applied strong smelling salts until she gasped back to consciousness. She had just burst into frightened sobs when Betty heard confusion and exclamations in the adjoining room. Blanche and Mari had cried out and a man's voice was speaking. Betty went to them. They were in various stages of undress, and the red-haired second cabin passenger was standing at the door. I promised Miss Vanderpool, he was saying, when Betty came forward, he turned to her promptly. I came to tell you that it seems absolutely to be relied on that there is no immediate danger. The tramp is more injured than we are. Oh, are you sure—are you sure, panted Blanche, catching at his sleeve? Yes, he answered. Can I do anything for you? he said to Bettina, who was on the point of speaking. Will you be good enough to help me to assist Mrs. Worthington into her birth, and then try to find the doctor? He went into the next room without speaking. To Mrs. Worthington he spoke briefly a few words of reassurance. He was a powerful man, and laid her on her birth without dragging her about uncomfortably or making her feel that her weight was greater than even in her most desponding moments she had suspected. Even her helplessly hysteric mood was illuminated by a ray of grateful appreciation. Oh, thank you, thank you, she murmured. Are you quite sure there is no actual danger, Mr. Salter? he terminated for her. You may feel safe—the damage is rarely only slight after all. It is so good of you to come and tell us, said the poor lady, still tremulous. The shock was awful. Our introduction has been an alarming one. I don't think we have met during the voyage. No, replied Salter. I am in the second cabin. Oh, oh, thank you, it's so good of you, she faulted amably for want of an inspiration. As he went out of the stateroom, Salter spoke to Bettina. I will send for the doctor if I can find him, he said. I think perhaps you had better take some brandy yourself, I shall. It's queer how little one seems to realize even that there are second cabin passengers, commented Mrs. Worthington feebly. That was a nice man and perfectly respectable. He even had a kind of—of manor. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of the Shuttle This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 9 Lady Jane Gray It seemed upon the whole even absurd that after a shock so awful and a panic wild enough to cause people to expose their very souls, for there were, of course, endless anecdotes to be related afterwards, illustrative of grotesque terror, cowardice, and utter abandonment of all shadows of convention, that all should end in an anti-climax of trifling danger, upon which in a day or two jokes might be made. Even the tramp's steamer had not been seriously injured, though its injuries were likely to be less easy of repair than those of the Meridiana. Still, a passenger remarked when she steamed into the dock at Liverpool, we might all be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean this morning. Just think what columns there would have been in the newspapers. Imagine Miss Vanderpools being drowned. I was very rude to Louise when I found her ringing her hands over you, and I was rude to Blanche, Bettina said to Mrs. Worthington. In fact, I believe I was rude to a number of people that night. I am rather ashamed. You called me a donkey, said Blanche, but it was the best thing you could have done. You frightened me into putting on my shoes instead of trying to comb my hair with them. It was startling to see you march into the stateroom, the only person who had not been turned into a gibbering idiot. I know I was gibbering, and I know Mari was. We both gibbered at the red-haired man when he came in, said Mari. We clutched at him and gibbered together. Where is the red-haired man? Betty, perhaps we made him ill. I've not seen him since that moment. He's in the second cab, and I suppose, Bettina answered. But I have not seen him, either. We ought to get up a testimonial and give it to him because he did not gibber, said Blanche. He was rude and as sensible as you were, Betty. They did not see him again, in fact, at that time. He had reasons of his own for preferring to remain unseen. The truth was that the nearer his approach to his native shores, the nastier he was perfectly conscious, his temper became, and he did not wish to expose himself by any incident which might cause him stupidly and obviously to lose it. The maid Louise, however, recognised him among her companions in the third-class carriage in which she travelled to town. To her mind, whose opinions were regulated by neatly arranged standards, he looked morose and shabbily dressed. Some of the other second-cabin passengers had made themselves quite smart in various, not too distinguished ways. He had not changed his dress at all, and the large valice upon the luggage rack was worn and battered as if with long and rough usage. The woman wondered a little if he would address her and inquire after the health of her mistress, but being an astute creature she only wondered this for an instant. The next she realised that, for one reason or another, it was clear that he was not of the tribe of second-rate persons who pursue an accidental acquaintance with their superiors in fortune through sociable interchange with their footmen or maids. When the train slackened its speed at the platform of the station, he got up, reaching down his valice and leaving the carriage strode to the nearest handsome cab waving the porter aside. Charing cross, he called out to the driver, jumped in, and was rattled away. During the years which had passed since Rosalie Vanderpool first came to London as Lady Anstruthers, numbers of huge luxurious hotels had grown up, principally as it seemed that Americans should swarm into them and live at an expense which reminded them of their native land. Such establishments would never have been built for English people whose habit it is merely to stop at hotels not to live in them. The tendency of the American is to live in his hotel, even though his intention may be only to remain in it two days. He is accustomed to doing himself extremely well in proportion to his resources, whether they be great or small, and the comforts as also the luxuries he allows himself and his domestic appendages are in a proportion much higher in its relation to these resources than it would be were he English, French, German or Italian. As a consequence he expects when he goes forth whether holiday-making or on business that his hostelry shall surround him, either with holiday luxuries and gaiety, or with such lavishness of comfort as shall alleviate the wear and tear of businesscares and fatigues. The rich man demands something almost as good as he has left at home, the man of moderate means something much better. Certain persons given to regarding public wants and desires as foundations for the fortune of business schemes, having discovered this, the enormous and sumptuous hotel evolved itself from their astute knowledge of common facts. At the entrances of these hotels, omnibusses and cabs laden with trunks and packages, frequently bearing labels marked with red letters, SS so-and-so, stateroom, hold, baggage-room, drew up and deposited their contents and burdens at regular intervals. Then men with keen and often humorous faces, or almost painfully anxious ones, their exceedingly well-dressed wives, and more or less attractive and vivacious-looking daughters, their eager little girls, and un-English-looking little boys, passed through the corridors in flocks, and took possession of suites of rooms sometimes for twenty-four hours, sometimes for six weeks. The Worthingtons took possession of such a suite in such a hotel. Betty Vanderpool's apartments faced the embankment. From her window she could look out at the broad, splendid muddy Thames, slowly rolling in its grave stately way beneath its bridges, bearing with it heavy lumbering barges, excited tooting little penny-steamers, and craft of various shapes and sizes, the errand or burden of each meaning a different story. It had been to Bettina one of her pleasures of the finest Epicurean flavour to reflect that she had never had any brief and superficial knowledge of England, as she had never been to the country at all in those earlier years, when her knowledge of places must necessarily have been always the incomplete one of either a schoolgirl traveller or a schoolgirl resident whose views were limited by the walls of restriction built around her. If relations of the usual ease and friendliness had existed between Lady Anstruthers and her family, Bettina would doubtless have known her sister's adopted country well. It would have been a thing so natural as to be almost inevitable that she would have crossed the channel to spend her holidays at Stornham. As matters had stood, however, the child herself in the days when she had been a child had had most definite private views on the subject of visits to England. She had made up her young mind absolutely that she would not, if it were decently possible to avoid it, set her foot upon English soil until she was old enough and strong enough to carry out what had been at first her passionately romantic plans for discovering and facing the truth of the reason for the apparent change in Rosie. When she went to England she would go to Rosie. As she had grown older, having in the course of education and travel seen most continental countries, she had liked to think that she had saved to put aside for less hasty consumption and more delicate appreciation of flavours as it were, the country she was conscious she cared for most. It is England we love, we Americans, she had said to her father, what could be more natural. We belong to it, it belongs to us. I could never be convinced that the old tie of blood does not count. All nationalities have come to us since we became a nation, but most of us in the beginning came from England. We're touching about it too. We trifle with France and labour with Germany. We sentimentalise over Italy and ecstasise over Spain, but England we love. How it moves us when we go to it, how we gush if we are simple and effusive, how we are stirred imaginatively if we are of the perceptive class. I have heard the commonest little half-educated woman say the prettiest clumsy emotional things about what she has seen there. A new England schoolma'am who has made a cook's tour will almost have tears in her voice as she wanders on with the common places about hawthorn hedges and touched cottages and white or red farms. Why are we not unconsciously pathetic about German cottages and Italian villas? Because we have not in centuries past had the habit of being born in them. It is only an English cottage and an English lane where the white with hawthorn blossoms or bear with winter that wakes in us that little yearning groveling tenderness that is so sweet. It is only nature calling us home. Mrs. Worthington came in during the course of the morning to find her standing before her window looking out at the Thames, the embankment, the handsome cabs themselves, with an absolutely serious absorption. This changed to a smile as she turned to greet her. I'm delighted, she said, I could scarcely tell you how much. The impression is all new and I'm excited a little by everything. I'm so intensely glad that I have saved it so long and that I have known it only as part of literature. I am even charmed that it rains and that the cabman's Macintoshes are shining and wet. She drew forward a chair and Mrs. Worthington sat down, looking at her with involuntary admiration. You look as if you were delighted, she said. Your eyes, you have amazing eyes, Betty. I'm trying to picture to myself what Lady Anstrowthers will feel when she sees you. What will you like when she married? Bettina sat down, smiling and looking indeed quite incredibly lovely. She was capable of a warmth and a sweetness which were as embracing as other qualities she possessed were powerful. I was eight years old, she said. I was a rude little girl with long legs and a high determined voice. I know I was rude. I remember answering back. I seem to have heard that you did not like your brother-in-law and that you were opposed to the marriage. Imagine the undisciplined audacity of a girl of eight opposing the marriage of her grown-up sister. I was quite capable of it. You see, in those days we had not been trained at all. One had only been allowed tremendous liberty and interfered conversationally with one's elders and betters at any moment. I was an American little girl and American little girls were really—they really were—with a laugh whose musical sound was, after all, wholly non-committal. You did not treat Sir Nigel Amstrothers as one of your betters? He was one of my elders at all events and becoming this of bearing should have taught me to hold my little tongue. I am giving some thought now to the kind of thing I must invent as a suitable apology when I find him a really delightful person full of virtues and accomplishments. Perhaps he has a horror of me. I should like to be present at your first meeting, Mrs. Worthington reflected. You're going down to Stornham to-morrow? That is my plan. When I write to you on my arrival I will tell you if I encountered the horror. Then with a swift change of subject and a lifting of her slender velvet line of eyebrow I am only deploring that I have not time to visit the tower. Mrs. Worthington was betrayed into a momentary glance of uncertainty almost verging in its significance on a gasp. The tower of London, dear Betty. Bettina's laugh was mellow with revelation. Ah, she said, you don't know my point of view. It's plain enough. You see, when I delight in these things I think I delight most in my delight in them. It means that I am almost having the kind of feeling the fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago and reveled in the resemblance to Dickon's characters they met with in the streets and were historically thrilled by the places where people's heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles the First when they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last word was uttered, remember, and think of their joy when each crossing-sweeper they gave disproportionate largesse to seem joe all alone in the slightest disguise. You don't mean to say, Mrs. Worthington was vaguely awakening to the situation, that the charm of my visit to myself is that I realize that I am rather like that. I have positively preserved something because I have kept away. You have been here so often and know things so well, and you were even so sophisticated when you began that you have never really had the flavours and emotions. I am sophisticated too, sophisticated enough to have cherished my flavours as a gourmet tries to save the bouquet of old wine. You think that the tower is the pleasure of housemaids on a bank holiday, but it quite makes me quivered to think of it, laughing again, that I laugh is the sign that I am not as beautifully freshly capable of enjoyment as those genuine First Americans were, and in a way I'm sorry for it. Mrs. Worthington laughed also, and with an enjoyment. You're very clever, Betty, she said. No, no, answered Bettina, or if I am, almost everybody is clever in these days. We are nearly all of us comparatively intelligent. You are very interesting at all events and the answer others will exalt in you. If they are dull in the country, you will save them. I am very interested at all events, said Bettina, and interest like mine is quite passe. A clever American, who lives in England, enists the pet of duchesses, once said to me, he always speaks of Americans as if they were a distant and recently discovered species. When they first came over they were a novelty, their enthusiasm amused people, but now you see it has become viergeur. Young women whose specialty was to be excited by the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey are not novelties any longer. In fact, it's been done, and it's done for a suspiculty. And I am excited about the Tower of London. I may be able to restrain my feelings at the sight of the bee-feeders, but they will upset me a little, and I must brace myself, I must indeed. Truly Betty, said Mrs. Worthington regarding her with curiosity, arising from a faint doubt of her entire seriousness, mingled with a fainted out of her entire levity. Betty flung out her hands in a slight but very involuntary looking gesture, and shook her head. Ah! she said, it was all true, you know. They were all horribly real, the things that were shuddered over and sentimentalised about. Sophistication, combined with imagination, makes them materialise again. To me at least, now I am here. The gulf between a historical figure and a man or woman who could bleed and cry out in human words was broad when one was at school. Lady Jane Gray, for instance, how nebulous she was and how little one cared. She seemed invented merely to add a detail to one's lesson in English history. But as we drove across Waterloo Bridge, I caught a glimpse of the tower, and what you suppose I began to think of. It was monstrous. I saw a door in the tower, and the stone steps in the square space, and in the chill clear early morning a little slender helpless girl led out. A little fair real thing, like Rosie, all alone. Every one she belonged too far away, not a man near who dared utter a word of pity when she turned her awful, meek young desperate eyes upon him. She was a fierce child, and no doubt she lifted her eyes to the sky. I wonder if it was blue and its blueness broke her heart, because it looked as if it might have pitied such a young, patient girl thing led out in the fair morning to walk to the hacked block and give her trembling pardon to the black visoured man with the axe, and then commending her soul to God to stretch her sweet, slim neck out upon it. Oh, Betty dear, Mrs. Worthington expostulated. Bettina sprang to her and took her hand in pretty appeal. I beg pardon, I beg pardon, I really do, she exclaimed. I did not intend deliberately to be painful. But that, beneath the sophistication, is something of what I bring to England.