 CHAPTER XIX The visit to London was part of an evolution of both body and mind to Rosalie and Struthers. In one of the wonderful modern hotels a suite of rooms was engaged for them. The luxury, which surrounded them, was not of the order Rosalie had vaguely connected with hotels. Hellkeepers had apparently learned many things during the years of her seclusion. Vanderpools at least could so establish themselves as not to greatly feel the hotel atmosphere. Carefully chosen colours, textures and appointments formed the background of their days. The food they ate was a thing produced by art. The servants who attended them were completely trained mechanisms. To sit by a window and watch the kaleidoscopic human tide passing by on its way to its pleasure, to reach its work, to spend its money in unending shops, to show itself and its equipage in the park was a wonderful thing to Lady Ann Struthers. It all seemed to be a part of the life and quality of Betty, little Betty whom she remembered only as a child, and who had come to her a tall, strong, young beauty, who had, it was resplendently clear, never known a fear in her life, and whose mere personality had the effect of making fears seem unreal. She was taken out in a luxurious little broom to shops whose varied allurements were placed eagerly at her disposal. Respectful persons obedient to her most faintly expressed desire displayed garments as wonderful as those the New York Trunks had revealed. She was besought to consider the fitness of articles whose exquisiteness she was almost afraid to look at. Her thin little body was wonderfully fitted, managed, encouraged to make the most of its long-ignored outlines. Her ladyship's slenderness is great advantage, said the wisely inciting ones, there is no such advantage as delicacy of line. Summing up the character of their customer with the saleswoman's eye, they realised the discretion of turning to Miss Vanderpool for encouragement, though she was the younger of the two and bore no title. They were aware of the existence of persons of rank who were not lavish patrons, but the name of Vanderpool held most promising suggestions. To an English shopkeeper the American has of late years represented the Spender, the type which whatsoever its rank and resources has mysteriously always money to hand over counters in exchange for things it chances to desire to possess. Each year surges across the Atlantic a horde of these fortunate persons who to the sober commercial British mind appear to be free to devote their existences to travel and expenditure. This contingent appears shopping in the various shopping thoroughfares. It buys clothes, jewels, miscellaneous attractive things, making its purchasers of articles useful or decorative with a freedom from anxiety in its enjoyment which does not mark the mood of the ordinary shopper. In the everyday purchaser one is accustomed to take for granted as a factor in his expenditure a certain deliberation and uncertainty. To the travelling American in Europe shopping appears to be part of the holiday which is being made the most of. Surely all the neat, smart young persons who buy frocks and blouses, hats and coats, hosiery and chains cannot be the possessors of large incomes. There must be even in America a middle-class of middle-class resources. Yet these young persons, male and female and most frequently unaccompanied by older persons, seeing what they want, greet it with expressions of pleasure, waste no time in appropriating and paying for it, and go away as in relief and triumph, not as in that sober joy which is clouded by afterthought. The salespeople are sometimes even vaguely cheered by their gay lack of any doubt as to the wisdom of their getting what they admire and rejoicing in it. If America always buys in this holiday mood it must be an enviable thing to be a shopkeeper in their New York or Boston or San Francisco. Who would not make a fortune among them? They want what they want and not something which seems to them less desirable, but they open their purses and frequently with some amused uncertainty as to the differences between sovereigns and half-sovereins, florins and half-crowns, they pay their bills with something almost like glee. They are remarkably prompt about bills which is an excellent thing as they are nearly always just going somewhere else, to France or Germany or Italy or Scotland or Siberia. Those of us who are shopkeepers or their salesmen do not dream that some of them have incomes no larger than our own, that they work for their livings, that their teachers, journalists, small writers or illustrators of papers or magazines, that they are unimportant soldiers of fortune. But with their queer American insistence on exploration and the ignoring of limitations, they have somehow managed to make this exultant dash for a few daring weeks or months of freedom and new experience. If we knew this we should regard them from our conservative standpoint of provident decorum as improved lunatics, being ourselves unable to calculate with their odd courage and their cheerful belief in themselves. What we do know is that they spend, and we are far from distaining their patronage, though most of them have an odd little familiarity of address and are not stamped with that distinction which causes us to realize the enormous difference between the patron and the tradesmen, and makes us feel the worm we remotely like to feel ourselves, though we would not for worlds acknowledge the fact. Mentally and in our speech, both among our equals and our superiors, we can't ascend to and patronize them a little, though that, of course, is the fine old insular attitude it would be un-British to discourage. But if we are not in the least definite concerning the position and resources of these spenders as a mass, we are quite sure of a select number. There is mention of them in the newspapers, of the townhouses, the castles, moors, and salmon-fishings they rent, of their yachts, their presentations actually at our own courts, of their presents at great balls at Ascot and Goodwood, at the opera on Gala Nights, one staggers sometimes before the public summings up of the amount of their fortunes. These people who have neither blood nor rank, these men who labour in their business offices, are richer than our great dukes, at the realising of whose wealth and possessions we have at times almost turn pale. Them, chuffed to cost a monger over his barrow, loymy if some of them blokes won't pour a buccanum ballast than the old royal family some morning when they're out shopping. The subservient attendants in more than one fashionable shop Betty and her sister visit know that Miss Vanderpool is of the circle, though her father has not as yet bought or hired any greatest state, and his daughter has not been seen in London. It's queer we've never heard of her being presented, one shop girl says to another, just you look at her. She evidently knows what her ladyship ought to buy, what can be trusted not to overpower her faded fragility. The sales-women, even if they had not been devoured by alert curiosity, could not have avoided seeing that her ladyship did not seem to know what should be bought, and that Miss Vanderpool did, though she did not direct her sister's selection, but merely seemed to suggest with delicate restraint. Her taste was wonderfully perceptive, the buying-sport were exquisite, but a little colourless woman could wear them all with advantage to her restrictions of type. As the broom drove down Bond Street, Betty called Lady Anstrother's attention to more than one pass-ab-bye. Look, Rosie, she said, there is Mrs. Treat-Hillier in the second carriage to the right. You remember Josie Treat-Hillier married Lord Varrick's son. In the land or designated an elderly woman with wonderfully dressed white hair sat smiling and bowing to the friends who were walking. Lady Anstrother's, despite her eagerness, shrank back a little hoping to escape being seen. Oh, it's the lo she's speaking to, Tarmin Alice! I didn't know they'd sailed yet. The tall, well-groomed young man with a nice, ugly face was showing white teeth in a gay smile of recognition, and his pretty wife was likely waving a slim hand in a grey suede glove. How cheerful and nice temper they look, said Rosie. Tom was only twenty when I saw him last. Whom did he marry? An English girl. Such a love. A Devonshire gentleman's daughter. In New York his friends called her Devonshire Cream and Roses. She's one of the pretty flushy pink ones. How nice Bond Street is on a spring morning like this, said Lady Anstrother's. You may laugh at me for saying it, Betty, but somehow it seems to me more spring-like than the country. How clever of you, laughed Betty, there is so much truth in it. The people walking in the sunshine were all full of spring thoughts and plans. The colours they wore, the flowers in the women's hats and the men's buttonholes belonged to the season. The cheerful crowds of people and carriages had a sort of rushing stir of movement which suggested freshness. Later in the year everything looks more tired. Now things were beginning and everyone was rather inclined to believe that this year would be better than last. Look at the shop windows, said Betty, full of whites and pinks and yellows and blues, the colours of hyacinths and davorill beds. It seems as if they insist that there never has been a winter and never will be one. They insist that there never was and never will be anything but spring. It's in the air. Lady Anstrother's sigh was actually a happy one. It's just what I used to feel in April when we drove down Fifth Avenue. Among the crowds of freshly dressed passes by, women with flowery hats and light frocks and parasols, men with touches of flower colour on the lapels of their coats and the holiday look on their faces. She noted so many of her familiar type that she began to look for and try to pick them out with quite excited interest. I believe that woman is an American, she would say. That girl looks as if she were a New Yorker. Again, that man's face looks as if it belonged to Broadway. Oh, Betty, do you think I'm right? I should say those girls getting out of the handsome to go into Burnham and Staples came from out west and are going to buy thousands of things. Don't they look like it? She began to lean forward and look on at things with an interest so unlike her stornom listlessness that Betty's heart was moved. Her face looked alive and little waves of colour rose under her skin. Several times she laughed the natural little laugh of her gulfwood, which it had seemed almost too much to expect to hear again. The first of these laughs came when she encountered her tenth American, a tall westerner of the cartoon type, sauntering along with an expression of speculative enjoyment on his odd face, and evidently though furtively chewing tobacco. I absolutely love him, Betty, she cried. You couldn't mistake him for anything else." No, answered Betty, feeling that she loved him herself, not if you found him embalmed in the pyramids. They pleased themselves immensely, trying to guess what he would buy and take home to his wife and girls in his western town, though western towns were very grand and amazing in these days, Betty explained, and knew that they could give points to New York. He would not buy the things he would have bought fifteen years ago. Perhaps, in fact, his wife and daughters had come with him to London and stayed at the Metropole or the Savoy, and were at this moment being fitted by tailors and modists patronised by royalty. Rosie, look! Do you see who that is? Do you recognise her? It is Mrs. Bellingham. She was little Mina Thalberg. She married Captain Bellingham. He was quite poor but very well-born, a nephew of Lord Dunham's. He could not have married a poor girl, but they have been so happy together that Mina is growing fat and spends her days in taking reducing treatments. She says she wouldn't care in the least, but Dickie fell in love with her waist and shoulder line. The plump, pretty young woman getting out of her Victoria before her fashionable hairdressers looked radiant enough. She had not yet lost the waist and shoulder line, though her pink frock fitted her with discreet tightness. She paused a moment to pat and fuss friddly over the two blooming curly children who were to remain under the care of the nurse, who sat in the back seat, holding the baby on her lap. I should not have known her, said Rosie. She has grown pretty. She wasn't a pretty child. It's happiness and the English climate and Captain Dickie. They adore each other and laugh at everything like a pair of children. They were immensely popular in New York last winter when they visited Mina's people. The effect of the mourning upon Lady Anstrowthers was what Betty had hoped it might be. The curious drawing near of the two nations began to dawn upon her as a truth. Immured in the country, not sufficiently interested in life to read newspapers, she had heard rumours of some of the more important marriages, but had known nothing of the thousand small details which made for the weaving of the web. Mrs. Treet Hillier, driving in a leisurely accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at her compatriots, whose sailing was as much a part of the natural order of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the situation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the docks on the Hudson River. She returned to the hotel with an appetite for lunch and a new expression in her eyes which made utrid stare at her. Mother, he said, you look different, you look well, it isn't only your new dress and your hair. The new style of her attire had certainly done much, and the maid who had been engaged to attend her was a woman who knew her duties. She had been called upon in her time to make the most of hair, offering much less assistance to her skill than was supplied by the fine fair colourlessness she had found dragged back from her new mistress's forehead. It was not dragged back now, but had really been done wonders with. Rosalie had smiled a little when she had looked at herself in the glass after the first time it was so dressed. You are trying to make me look as I did when Mother saw me last Betty, she said. I wonder if you possibly could. Let us believe we can, laugh Betty, and wait and see. It seemed wise neither to make nor receive visits. The time for such things had evidently not yet come. Even the mention of the Worthingtons led to the revelation that Rosalie shrank from immediate contact with people. When she felt stronger, when she became more accustomed to the thought she might feel differently, but just now to be luxuriously one with the enviable part of London, to look on, to drink in, to drive here and there, doing the things she liked to do, ordering what was required at Stornham, was like the creating for her of a new heaven and a new earth. In one night, Betty took her with Utrid to the theatre, it was to see a play written by an American, played by American actors, produced by an American manager. They had even engaged in theatrical enterprise, it seemed, their actors played before London audiences, London actors played in American theatres, vibrating almost yearly between the two continents, and reaping rich harvests. Hearing rumours of this in the past, Lady Anstruthers had scarcely believed it entirely true. Now the practical reality was brought before her. The French, who were only separated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel, did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers, making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though each land was common ground and not divided by leagues of ocean travel. It seems so wonderful, Lady Anstruthers argued, I have always felt as if they hated each other. They did once, but how could it last between those of the same blood, of the same tongue? If we were really aliens, we might be a menace, but we are of their own. Betty leaned forward on the edge of the box, looking out over the crowded house filled with almost as many Americans as English faces. She smiled, reflecting. We were children put out to nurse and breathe new air in the country, and now we're coming home, vigorous and full grown. She studied the audience for some minutes, and as her glance wandered over the stalls it took in more than one marked variety of type. Suddenly it fell on a face she delightedly recognized. It was that of the nice speculative-eyed Westerner they had seen enjoying himself in Bond Street. Rosie, she said, there is the Western man we love, nearer the end of the fourth row. Lady Anstruthers looked for him with eagerness. Oh, I see him, next to the big one with the reddish hair. Betty turned her attention to the man in question whom she had not chance to notice. She uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest. The big man with the red hair, how lovely that they should chance to sit side by side. The big one is Lord Mount Dunstan. The necessity of seeing his solicitors, who happen to be Messes Townlinson and Shepard, had brought Lord Mount Dunstan to town. After a day devoted to business affairs he had been attracted by the idea of going to the theatre to see again a play he had already seen in New York. It would interest him to observe its exact effect upon a London audience. While he had been in New York he had gone with something of the same feeling to see a great English actor play to a crowded house. The great actor had been one who had returned to the country for a third or fourth time, and in the enthusiasm he had felt in the atmosphere about him Mount Dunstan had seen not only pleasure and appreciation of the man's perfect art, but had certain tumultuous outbursts and almost emotional welcome. The Americans, he had said to himself, were creatures of warmer blood than the English. The audience on that occasion had been en masse American. The audience he made one of now was made up of both nationalities, and in glancing over it he realized how large was the number of Americans who came yearly to London. As Lady Ann Stuthers had done he found himself selecting from the assemblage the types which were manifestly American and those obviously English. In the seat next to himself set a man of a type he felt he had learned by heart in the days of his life as Gems Salter. At a short distance fluttered brilliantly an English professional beauty with her male and female court about her. In the stage box made sumptuous with flowers was a royal party. As this party had entered God save the Queen had been played, and in rising with the audience during the entry he had recalled that the tune was identical with that of an American national air. How unconsciously inseparable, in spite of the lightness with which they regarded the curious tie between them, the two countries were. The people upon the stage were acting as if they knew their public, their bearing, suggesting no sense of any barrier beyond the footlights. It was the unconsciousness and lightness of the mutual attitude which had struck him of late. Punch had long gestured about fair Americans who in their first introduction to its pages used exotic and cryptic language, beginning every sentence either with I guess or say stranger. Its male American had been of the Uncle Sam order and had invariably worn a goatee. American witticisms had represented the Englishmen in plaid trousers opening his remarks with truly dear fella and unfailingly missing the point of any joke. Each country had cherished its type and good-naturedly derided it. In time this had modified itself and the joke had changed in kind. Many other things had changed, but the lightness of treatment still remained. And yet their blood was mingling itself with that of England's noblest and oldest of name, their wealth was making solid again towers and halls which had threatened a crumble. Ancient family jewels glittered on slender young American necks and above sometimes somewhat careless young American brows, and yet so far one was casual in one's thought of it all still. On his own part he was obstinate Britain enough to rebel against and resent it. They were intruders. He resented them, as he had resented in his boyhood, the historical fact that after all an Englishman was a German. A savage who five hundred years after the birth of Christ had swooped upon early Britain from his Engel land and Jutland, and ravaging with fire and sword had conquered and made the land his possession, ravishing its very name from it and giving it his own. These people did not come with fire and sword but with cable and telephone and bribes of gold and fair women, but they were encroaching like the sea, which in certain parts of the coast gained a few inches or so each year. He shook his shoulders impatiently and stiffened, feeling illogically antagonistic towards the good-natured Lantern-Geord man at his side. The Lantern-Geord man looked good-natured because he was smiling, and he was smiling because he saw something which pleased him in one of the boxes. His expression of unqualified approval naturally directed Mount Dunstan's eye to the point in question where it remained for some moments. This was because he found it resting upon Miss Vanderpool, who sat before him in luminous white garments and with a brilliant spark of ornament in the dense shadow of her hair. His sensation at the unexpected sight of her wood, if it had expressed itself physically, have taken the form of a slight start. The luminous quality did not confine itself to the whiteness of her garments. He was aware of feeling that she looked luminous herself, her eyes, her cheek, the smile she bent upon the little woman who was her companion. She was a beautifully living thing. Naturally she was being looked at by others than himself. She was one of those towards whom glasses in a theatre turned themselves inevitably. The sweep and lift of her black hair would have drawn them even if she had offered no other charm. Yes, he thought, here was another of them. To whom was she bringing her good looks and her millions? There were men enough who needed money even if they must accept it under lesser luring conditions. In the box next to the one occupied by the royal party was a man who was known to be waiting for the advent of some such opportunity. His was a case of dire if outwardly stately need. He was young, but a fool, and not noted for personal charms, yet he had in one sense great things to offer. There were, of course, many chances that he might offer them to her. If this happened would she accept them? There was really no objection to him but his dullness. Consequently there seemed many chances that she might. There was something akin to the pomp of royalty in the power her father's wealth implied. She could scarcely make an ordinary marriage. It would naturally be a sort of state affair. There were few men who had enough to offer in exchange for Vanderpaw millions, and of the few none had special attractions. The one in the box next to the royal party was a decent enough fellow. As young princesses were not infrequently called upon by the mere exclusion of royal blood to become united to young or mature princess without charm, so American young persons who were of royal possessions must find themselves limited. If you felt free to pick and choose from among young men in the guards or young attaches in the diplomatic service with tuppence a year, you might get beauty or wit or temperament or all three by good luck. But if you were over a royal house of New York or Chicago you would probably feel you must draw lines and choose only such splendours as accorded with, even while differing from your own. Any possible connection of himself with such a case did not present itself to him. If it had done so he would have counted himself haughtily as beyond the pale. It was for other men to do things of the sort. A remote antagonism of his whole being ward against the mere idea. It was bigoted prejudice perhaps, but it was a strong thing. A lovely shoulder and a brilliant head set on a long and slender neck have no nationality which can prevent a man's glance turning naturally towards them. His turned again during the last act of the play, and at a moment when he saw something rather like the thing he had seen when the meridiana moved away from the dock and the exalted Miss Vanderpool leaning upon the rail had held out her arms towards the child who had brought his toy to her as a farewell offering. Sitting by her to-night was a boy with a crooked back. Mount Dunstan remembered hearing that the Anstruthers had a deformed son, and she was leaning towards him, her hand resting on his shoulder, explaining something he had not quite grasped in the action of the play. The absolute adoration in the boy's uplifted eyes was an interesting thing to take in, and the radiant warmth of her bright look was as unconscious of onlookers as it had been when he had seen it yearning towards the child on the wharf. Hers was the temperament which gave, which gave. He found himself restraining a smile because her look brought back to him the actual sound of the New York Youngster's voice. I wanted to kiss you, Betty. Oh, I did so want to kiss you. Anstruthers, boy, poor little beggar, looked as if he too, in the face of actors and audience and brilliance of light, wanted to kiss her. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of The Shuttle This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Chapter 20, Things Occur in Stornham Village It would not have been possible for Miss Vanderpool to remain long in social seclusion in London, and before many days had passed Stornham Village was enlivened by the knowledge that her ladyship and her sister had returned to the court. It was also evident that their visit to London had not been made to no purpose. The stagnation of the waters of village life threatened to become a whirlpool, a respectable person who was to be her ladyship's maid had come with them and her ladyship had not been served by a personal attendant for years. Her ladyship had also appeared at the dinner table in new garments and with her hair done as love the ladies wore theirs. She looked like a different woman and actually had a bit of colour and was beginning to lose her frightened way. Now it dawned upon even the dullest and least active mind that something had begun to stir. It had been felt vaguely when the new young lady from America had walked through the village street and had drawn people to doors and windows by her mere passing. After the return from London the signs of activities were such as made the villagers catch their breaths in uttering uncertain exclamations and caused the feminine element to catch up offspring or dragging it by its hand run into neighbours' cottages and stand talking the incredible thing over in lowered and rather breathless voices. Yet the incredible thing in question was had it been seen from the standpoint of more prosperous villagers anything but extraordinary. In entirely rural places the castle, the hall or the manor, the Great House in short, still retained somewhat of the old feudal power to bestow benefits or withhold them. Wealth and goodwill at the manor supply work and result in comfort in the village and its surrounding holdings. Patronised by the Great House the two or three small village shops bestow themselves and awaken to activity. The blacksmith swings his hammer with renewed spirit over the numerous jobs the gentry stables, carriage houses, garden tools, and household repairs give to him. The carpenter mends and makes, the vicarage feels at ease realising that its churchiness charities do not stand unsupported. Small farmers and larger ones under a rich and interested landlord thrive and are able to hold their own even against the tricks of wind and weather. Farm labourers being as a result certain of steady and decent wage, trudged to and fro with stolid cheerfulness, knowing that the pot boils and the children's feet are shod. Superannuated old men and women are sure of their broth and Sunday dinner and their dread of the impending union fades away. The squire, or my lord or my lady, can be depended upon to care for their old bones until they are laid under the sod in the green churchyard. With wealth and goodwill at the Great House life warms and offers prospects. There are Christmas feasts and gifts and village treats, and the big carriage or the smaller ones stop at cottage doors and at once confer exciting distinction and carry good cheer. But Stornham Village had scarcely a remote memory of any period of such prosperity. It had not existed even in the oldest anigel's time, and certainly the present anigel's reign had been marked only by neglect, ill temper, indifference, and a falling into disorder and decay. Farms were poorly worked, labourers were unemployed, there was no trade for the manor household, no carriages, no horses, no company, no spending of money. Cottages leaked, floors were damp, the church roof itself was falling to pieces and the vicar had nothing to give. The helpless and old cottages were carried to the union, and dying there were buried by the stinted parish in parish coffins. Her ladyship had not visited the cottages since her child's birth, and now such inspiriting events as were everyday happenings in lucky places like Westerbridge and Rutscham and Yangford showed signs of being about to occur in Stornham itself. To begin with, even before the journey to London, Kedgers had made two or three visits to the clock and had been in a communicative mood. He had related the story of the morning when he had looked up from his work and had found the strange young lady standing before him, with the result that he had been struck all of an heap. And then he had given a detailed account of their walk around the place and of the way in which he had looked at things and asked questions, such as would have done credit to a man with an head on him. Nay, nay, commented Kedgers, shaking his own head doubtfully, even while with admiration, I've never seen the light before in young women, neither in lady young women, nor in them that's otherwise. Afterwards had transpired the story of Mrs. Noakes in the kitchen great, Mrs. Noakes having a friend in Miss Lupin, the village dressmaker. Had not put it past her, was Mrs. Noakes summing up to order a new one, I wouldn't. The footman in the shabby livery had been a little wild in his statements, being rendered so by the admiring and excited state of his mind. He dwelt upon the matter of her looks and the way she lighted up the dingy dining-room, and so converse that a man found himself listening and glancing when it was his business to be an unhearing, unseen piece of mechanism. Such simple records of servitor's impressions were quite enough for Stornham Village, and produced in it a sense of being roused a little from sleep, to listen to distant and uncomprehended, but not unagreable, sounds. One morning, Buttle the carpenter looked up as Kedgers had done, and saw standing on the threshold of his shop the tall young woman who was a sensation and an event in herself. You are the master of this shop, she asked. Buttle came forward touching his brow in hasty salute. Yes, my lady, he answered. Joseph, buttle your ladyship. I am Miss Vanderpool, dismissing the suddenly bestowed title with easy directness. Are you busy? I want to talk to you. No one had any reason to be busy at any time in Stornham Village, no such luck. But Buttle did not smile as he replied that he was at liberty and placed himself at his visitor's disposal. The tall young lady came into the little shop and took the chair respectfully offered to her. Buttle saw her eyes sweep the place as if taking in its resources. I want to talk to you about some work which must be done at the court, she explained at once. I want to know how much can be done by workmen of the village. How many men have you? How many men had he? Buttle wavered between gratification at its being supposed that he had men under him and grumpy depression because the illusion must be dispelled. There's me and Sim Somes, Miss, he answered, no more and no less. Where can you get more? asked Miss Vanderpool. It could not be denied that Buttle received a mental shock which verged in its suddenness on being almost a physical one. The promptness and decision of such a query swept him off his feet, that Sim Somes and himself should be an insufficient force to combat with such repairs as the court could afford, was an idea presenting an aspect of unheard-of novelty. But that methods as coolly radical as those this questioning implied should be resorted to was staggering. Me and Sim has always done what work was done, he stammered, it hasn't been much. Miss Vanderpool neither assented to nor dissented from this last palpable truth. She regarded Buttle with searching eyes. She was wondering if any practical ability concealed itself behind his dullness. If she gave him work, could he do it? If she gave the whole village work, was it too far gone in its unsperred stodgeness to be roused to carrying it out? There is a great deal to be done now, she said. All that can be done in the village should be done here. It seems to me that the villagers want work, new work, do they? Work, new work. The spark of life in her steady eyes actually lighted a spark in the being of Joe Buttle. Young ladies in villages, gentry, usually visited the cottages a bit if they were well-meaning young women, left good books and broth or jelly, potted about and were seen at church and playing croquet and finally married and removed to other places, or gradually faded year by year into respectable spinsterhood. And this one comes in and in two or three minutes shows that she knows things about the place and understands. A man might then take it for granted that she would understand the thing he daringly gathered courage to say. They want any work, miss, that they are sure of decent pay for, sure of it. She did understand, and she did not treat his implication as an impertinence. She saw it was not intended as one, and indeed she saw in it a sort of earnest of a possible practical quality in Buttle. Such work as the court had demanded had remained unpaid for with quiet persistence until even bills had begun to lag and fall off. She could see exactly how it had been done and comprehended quite clearly a lack of enthusiasm in the presence of orders from the Great House. All work will be paid for, she said. Each week the workmen will receive their wages. They may be sure. I will be responsible. Thank you, miss, said Buttle, and he half unconsciously touched his forehead again. In a place like this the young lady went on in her mellow voice and with a reflective thoughtfulness in her handsome eyes, on an estate like Stornham, no work that can be done by the villagers should be done by anyone else. The people of the land should be trained to do such work as the manor house or cottages or farms required to have done. How did she think that out, was Buttle's reflection. In places such as Stornham, through generation after generation, the things she had just said was accepted as law, clung to as a possession, any divergence from it being a grievance sullenly and bitterly grumbled over. And in places enough there was divergence in these days, the gentry sending to London for things and having up workmen to do their best paying jobs for them. The law had been so long a law that no village could see justice in outsiders being sent for, even to do work they could not do well themselves. It showed what she was, this handsome young woman, even though she did come from America, that she should know what was right. She took a notebook out and opened it on a rough table before her. I have made some notes here, she said, and a sketch or two, we must talk them over together. If she had given Joe Buttle cause for surprise at the outset, she gave him further cause during the next half hour. The work that was to be done was such as made him open his eyes and draw in his breath. If he was to be allowed to do it, if he could do it, if it was to be paid for, it struck him that he would be a man set up for life. If her ladyship had come and ordered it to be done he would have thought the poor thing had gone mad, but this one had it all jotted down in a clear hand, without the least feminine confusion of detail, and with here and there a little sharply drawn sketch, such as a carpenter, if he could draw, which Buttle could not, might have made. There's not workmen enough in the village to do it in a year, miss, he said at last, with a gasp of disappointment. She thought it over a minute, her pencil poised in her hand and her eyes on his face. Can you, she said, undertake to get men from other villages and superintend what they do? If you can do that, the work is still passing through your hands and Stornham will reap the benefit of it. Your workmen will lodge at the cottages and spend part of their wages at the shops, and you, who are a Stornham workman, will earn the money to be made out of a rather large contract. Joe Buttle became quite hot. If you have brought up a family for years on the proceeds of such jobs as driving a tenpenny nail in here or there, tinkering a hole in a cottage roof, knocking up a shelf in the vicarage kitchen, and mending a panel of fence, to be suddenly confronted with a proposal to engage workmen and undertake contracts, his shortening to the breath and heating to the blood. Miss, he said, we've never done big jobs, Simsomes and me, perhaps we're not up to it, but it it be a fortune to us. She was looking down at one of her papers and making pencil marks on it. You did some work last year on a little house at Tidhurst, didn't you, she said? To think of her knowing that. Yes, the unaccountable good luck had actually come to him, the two Tidhurst carpenters falling ill of the same typhoid at the same time, through living side by side in the same order of insanitary cottage. He and Sim had been given their work to finish and had done their best. Yes, Miss, he answered. I heard that when I was inquiring about you. I drove over to Tidhurst to see the work, and it was very sound and well done. If you did that, I cannot at least trust you to do something at the court, which will prove to me what you're equal to. I want a Stornham man to undertake this. No Tidhurst man, said Joe Buttle, with sudden courage, nor yet no Barners, nor yet no Yangford, nor Ratcham shall do it if I can look it in the face. It's Stornham work and Stornham at all to have it. It gives me a brace up to ear of it. The tall young lady laughed beautifully and got up. Come to the court to-morrow morning at ten, and we will look at over together, she said. Good morning, Buttle, and she went away. In the taproom of the clock, when Joe Buttle dropped in for his pot of beer, he found Fox the Saddler and Tread the Blacksmith, and each of them fell upon the others with something of the same story to tell. The new young lady from the court had been to see them, too, and had brought to each her definite little notebook. Harness was to be repaired and furbished up. The big carriage and the old fairton were to be put in order, and Master Utrid's cart was to be given new paint and springs. This is what she said, Fox's story ran, and she said it so straightforward and business-like that the conceitedest man that lived couldn't be upset by it. I want to see what you can do, she says. I'm new to the place, and I must find out what everyone can do. Then I shall know what to do myself. The way she sets their eyes on a man is a sight. It's a sense in him and a human nature that takes you. Yes, it's the sense, said Tread, and her looking at you as if she expected you to have sent yourself and understand that she's doing fair business. It's clear-headed like her asking questions and finding out what stawnom men can do. She's having the old things done up so that she can find out, and so that she can prove that the courtwork is going to be paid for. That's my belief. But what does it all mean, said Joe Butler, setting his pot of beer down on the tap-room table round which they sat in conclave. Where's the money coming from? There's money somewhere. Tread was the advanced thinker of the village. He had come through reverses from a bigger place. He read the newspapers. It'll come from where it's caught a way of coming, he gave forth portentiously. It'll come from America. Ah, they managed to get hold of so much of it there is past me, but they've got it, dang'em, and they're ready to spend it for what they want, though they're a sharp lot. Twelve years ago there was a good bit of talk about her ladyship's father being one of them with the fullest pockets. She came here with plenty, but Sir Nigel got hold of it for his games, and there the games had cost money. Her ladyship wasn't born with a backbone poor thing, but this new one was, and her ladyship's father is her father, and you part my words there's money coming into stawnom, though it's not going to be played the fool with. Lord yes, this new one has a backbone, and good strong wrists and a good strong head, though I must say, with a little masculine chuckle of admission, it's a bit unnatural with them eyelashes and their eyes looking at you between them, like blue water between rushes in the marsh. Before the next twenty-four hours had passed a still more unlooked-for advent had taken place. Long outstanding bills had been paid, and in as matter-of-fact a manner as if they had not been sent in and ignored in some cases for years. The settlement of Joe Butler's account sent him to bed at the day's end almost sliced-headed. To become suddenly the possessor of thirty-seven pounds, fifteen and tenpence-hapeny, of which all hope had been lost three years ago, was almost too much for any man. Six pounds, eight pounds, ten pounds, came into places as if sovereigns had been sixpences and shillings farthings. More than one cottage woman at the sight of the hoarded wealth in her staring Goodman's hand gulped and began to cry. If they had had it before and in driblets it would have been spent long since. Now in a lump it meant shoes and petticoats and tea and sugar in temporary abundance, and the sense of this abundance was felt to be entirely due to American magic. America was, in fact, greatly lauded and discussed the case of George Loomston being much quoted. Chapter twenty-one of the Shuttle—this LibriVox recording is in the public domain— The Shuttle by Francis Hodgeson-Vanette, Chapter twenty-one, Kedges. The work at Stornham Court went on steadily, though with no greater rapidity than is usually achieved by rural labourers. There was, however, without doubt a certain stimulus in the occasional appearance of Miss Vanderpool, who almost daily sauntered around the place to look on and exchange a few words with the workman. When they saw her coming the men hastily standing up to touch their foreheads were conscious of a slight acceleration of being, which was not quite the ordinary quickening produced by the presence of employers. It was, in fact, a sensation rather pleasing than anxious. Her interest in the work was, upon the whole, one which they found themselves beginning to share. The unusualness of the situation, a young woman who evidently stood for many things and powers desirable, employing labourers and seeming to know what she intended them to do, was a thing not easy to get over or become accustomed to. But there she was as easy and well-mannered as you please, and with gentle folks' ways, though as an American such finish could scarcely be expected from her. She knew each man's name, it was revealed gradually, and what was more knew what he stood for in the village, which cottage he lived in, how many children he had, and something about his wife. She remembered things and made inquiries which showed knowledge. Besides this she represented, though perhaps they were scarcely yet fully awake to the fact the promise their discouraged dullness had long lost sight of. It actually became apparent that her ladyship, who walked with her, was altering day by day. Was it true that the bit of colour they had heard spoken of when she returned from town was deepening and fixing itself on her cheek? It sometimes looked like it. Was she a bit less stiff and shy-like and frightened in her way? Buttle mentioned to his friends at the clock that he was sure of it. She had begun to look a man in the face when she talked, and more than once he had heard her laugh at things her sister said. To one man more than to any other had come an almost unspeakable piece of luck through the new arrival, a thing which to himself at least was as the opening of the heavens. This man was the discouraged cages. Miss Vanderpool, coming with her ladyship to talk to him, found that the man was a person of more experience than might have been imagined. In his youth he had been an undergardner at a great place, and being fond of his work had learned more than undergardners often learn. He had been one of a small army of workers under the orders of an imposing head gardener whose knowledge was a science. He had seen and taken part in what was done in orchard houses, oranges, binaries, peach houses, conservatories full of wondrous tropical plants. But it was not easy for a man like himself, uneducated and lacking confidence of character, to advance as a boldly young man might have done. The all-ruling head gardener had inspired him with awe. He had watched him reverently, accumulating knowledge, but being given as an underling no opportunity to do more than obey orders. He had spent his life in obeying, and congratulated himself that obedience secured him his weekly wage. He was a great man, Mr. Timpson, he was, he said in talking to Miss Vanderpool, i.e. was that, knew everything that could happen to a flower or a shrub or a vegetable, knew it all, had a library of books and read them night and day. Head gardener's cottage was good enough for gentry. The old markers used to walk around the otters and gardens talking to him by the hour. If he did what he told you exactly like he told it to you, then you were all right. But if you didn't, while you was off the place before you'd time to look around, worked under him from twenty to forty, then he died, and the new one that came in had new ways. He made a clean sweeper, most of us. The men said he was jealous of Mr. Timpson. That was bad for you if you had a wife and children, Miss Vanderpool said. Eight of us to feed, Kedges answered. A man with that on him can't wait, Miss. I had to take the first place I could get. It wasn't a good one. Poor parsonage with a big family and not room on the place for the vegetables they wanted. Cabbage and potatoes and beans and broccoli. No time nor grant for flowers. Used to seem as if flowers got to be a kind of dream. Kedges gave vent to a deprecatory half laugh. Me, I was fond of flowers. I wouldn't have asked no better than to live among them. Mr. Timpson gave me a book or two when his lordship sent him a lot of new ones. I've bought a few myself, though I suppose I couldn't afford it. From the poor parsonage he'd gone to a market gardener, and had evidently liked the work better, hard and unceasing as it had been, because he'd been among flowers again. Sudden changes from forcing houses to chill outside dampness had resulted in rheumatism. After that things had gone badly. He began to be regarded as past his prime of strength, lower wages, and labour still as hard as ever, though it professed to be lighter and therefore cheaper. At last the big neglected gardens of Stornham. What I'm seeing miss all the time is what could be done with them. Wonderful it it be. They might be the show of the county if we add Mr. Timpson here. Miss Vanderpool, standing in the sunshine on the broad-weed-grown pathway, was conscious that he was remotely moving. His flowers, his flowers. They had been the centre of his rudimentary rural being. Each man or woman cared for some one thing, and the unfed longing for it left the life of the creature a thwarted passion. Kedges, yearning to stir the earth about the roots of blooming things and doomed to broccoli and cabbage, had spent his years unfed. No thing is a small thing. Kedges, with the earth under his broad fingernails and his half-apologetic laugh, being the centre of his own world, was as large as Mount Dunstan who stood thwarted in the centre of his. Chancing, for God knows what mystery of reason, to be born one of those having power one might perhaps set in order a world like Kedges. In the course of twenty years' work under Timpson, she said, you must have learned a great deal from him. A good bit, Miss, a good bit, admitted Kedges. If I hadn't cared for the work, I might have gone on doing it with my eyes shut. But I didn't. Mr. Timpson's heart was set on it as well as his head, and mine got to be. But I wasn't even second or third under him. I was only one of a lot. He would have thought me fine and impudent if I had told him I'd got to know a good deal of what in you and had some bits of ideas of my own. If you had men enough under you and good art or all you want, Miss Founderpool said tentatively, you know what the place should be, no doubt. That I do miss, answered Kedges, turning red with feeling, why, if the soil was well treated, anything would grow here, the situations for everything, the shade for things that want, sit in south aspects for things that won't grow without the warmth of them. Well, I've gone about many a day when I was low down in my mind and worked myself up to being cheerful by just planning where I could put things and what they'd look like. Lilium's now. I could grow them in masses from June to October. He was becoming excited like a war-horse, sending battle from afar and forgot himself. The Lilium jargantum. I don't know whether you've ever seen one, Miss, but if you did it, it'd almost take your breath away. A Lilium that grows twelve feet high and more and has a flower like a great snow-white trumpet and a scent pouring out of it so that it floats for yards. There's a place where I could grow them so that you'd come on them sudden and you'd think they couldn't be true. Grow them, Kedges. Begin to grow them, said Miss Founderpool. I've never seen them. I must see them. Kedges' low-deprecatory chuckle made itself hurt again. Perhaps on going too fast, he said, it'd attack a good bit of expense to do it, Miss, a good bit. Then Miss Founderpool made, and she made it in the simplest matter-of-fact manner, too, the startling remark which three hours later all Stornham Village had heard of. The most astounding part of the remark was that it was uttered as if there was nothing in it, which was not the absolutely natural outcome of the circumstances of the case. Expense, which is proper and necessary, need not be considered, she said. Regular accounts will be kept and supervised, but you can have all that is required. Then it appeared that Kedges almost became pale. Being a foreigner, perhaps she did not know how much she was implying when she said such a thing to a man who had never held a place like Timpsons. Miss, he hesitated even shame-facedly because to suggest to such a fine-mannered, calm young lady that she might be ignorant seemed perilously near impertinent. Miss, did Eumenium want it only the Lilium Gigantium or other things as well? I should like to see, she answered him, all that you see. I should like to hear more of it all when we have time to talk it over. I understand we should need time to discuss plans. The quiet way she went on, seeming to believe in him almost as if he was Mr. Timpson. The old feeling, born and fostered by the great head gardener's rule, reasserted itself. It means more to work than someone over the miss, he said, if you had a man like Mr. Timpson. You have not forgotten what you've learned, with men enough under you it can be put into practice. You mean you trust me, Miss, same as if I was Mr. Timpson? Yes, if you ever feel the need of a man like Timpson, no doubt we can find one, but you will not, you love the work too much. Then, still standing in the sunshine on the weed-grown path, she continued to talk to him. It revealed itself that she understood a good deal. As he was to assume heavier responsibilities, he was to receive higher wages. It was his experience which was to be considered not his years. This was a new point of view. The mere propeller of wheel-barrows and digger of the soil, particularly after having been attacked by rheumatism, depreciates in value after youth this past. Kedges knew that a Mr. Timpson, with a regiment of under-gardners and daily increasing knowledge of his profession, could continue to direct though years rolled by. But to such fortune he had not dared to aspire. One of the lodgers might be put in order for him to live in. He might have the hot-houses to put in order too. He might have implements, plants, shrubs, even some of the newer books to consult. Kedges' brain reeled. You think I'm to be trusted, Miss? he said more than once. You think it would be all right? I wasn't even second or third under Mr. Timpson. But if I say it as shouldn't, I never lost a chance at learning things. I was just mad about it. Taint only liliums. Lord, I know them all, as if they were my own children, born and bred. Shrubs, coniferous, herbaceous borders that bloom in succession. My word, what you can do with just delphiniums and campanula and aqua ledger and poppies, every day things like them that'll grow in any cottage garden, and bulbs and annuals. Roses, Miss, why Mr. Timpson add them in thickets and carpets, and clambering over trees, and tumbling over walls in sheets and torrents. Just know their ways and what they want, and they'll grow in a riot. But they want feeding, feeding. A rose is a gross feeder. Feed a glory Dijon and watch over him, and he'll cover our stop and give you two bloomings. I've never lived in an English garden. I should like to see this one at its best. Leaving her with salutes of abject gratitude, Ketchers moved away bewildered. What man could believe it true? At three or four yards distance he stopped, and turning came back to touch his cap again. You understand, Miss, he said, I wasn't even second or third under Mr. Timpson. I'm not deceiving you, am I, Miss? You are to be trusted, said Miss Vanderpool, first because you love the things, and next because of Timpson." End of Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of The Shuttle The Slippery Box recording is in the public domain. The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson-Vanette. Chapter 22. One of Mr. Vanderpool's letters Mr. German, the secretary of the great Mr. Vanderpool, in arranging the neat stacks of letters, preparatory to his chief's entrance to his private room each morning, knowing where each should be placed, understood that such, as were addressed in Miss Vanderpool's hand, would be read before anything else. This had been the case even when she had just been placed in a French school, a tall slim little girl with immense demanding eyes, and a thick black plait of hair swinging between her straight rather thin shoulders. Between other financial potentates and their little girls, Mr. German knew that the oddly confidential relation which existed between these two was unusual. Her schoolgirl letters, it had been understood, should be given the first place on the stacks of envelopes each incoming ocean steamer brought in its mail bags. Since the beginning of her visit to her sister, Lady Anstruthus, the exact dates of mailed steamers seem to be of increased importance. Miss Vanderpool evidently found much to write about, each steamer brought a full-looking envelope to be placed in a prominent position. On a hot morning in the early summer Mr. German found two or three, two of them of larger size and seeming to contain business papers. These he placed where they would be seen at once. Mr. Vanderpool was a little later than usual in his arrival. At this season he came from his place in the country, and before leaving it this morning he had been talking to his wife, whom he found rather disturbed by a chance encounter with a young woman, who had returned to visit her mother after a year spent in England with her English husband. The young woman, now Lady Bowen and once Mellie Jones, had been one of the amusing marvels of New York. A girl neither rich nor so endowed by nature as to be able to press upon the world any special claim to consideration as a beauty, her enterprise and the daring of her tactics had been the delight of many a satiric onlooker. In her school days she had ingeniously mapped out her future career. Other American girls married men with titles and she intended to do the same thing. The other little girls laughed, but they liked to hear her talk. All information regarding such unions as was to be found in the newspapers and magazines, she collected and studiously read, sometimes allowed to her companions. Social paragraphs about royalties, dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies, court bowls and glittering functions, she devoured and learned by heart. An abominably vulgar little person she was an interestingly pertinacious creature and wrought night and day at acquiring an air of fashionable elegance, at first naturally laying out on in such a manner as suggested that it should be scraped off with a knife, but with experience gaining a certain specious knowledge of forms. How the over-matured child at school had assimilated her uncanny young worldliness it would have been less difficult to decide if possible sorters had been less numerous. The air was full of it, the literature of the day, the chatter of afternoon teas, the gossip of the hour. Before she was fifteen she saw the indiscretion of her childish frankness and realised that it might easily be detrimental to her ambitions. She said no more of her plans for her future and even took the astute tone of carelessly treating as a joke her vulgar little past. But no titled foreigner appeared upon the horizon without setting her small but businesslike brain at work. Her lack of wealth and assured position made her situation rather hopeless. She was not of the class of lucky young women whose parents' gorgeous establishments offered attractions to wandering persons of rank. She and her mother lived in a flat and gave rather pathetic afternoon teas in return for such more brilliant hospitalities as careful and pertinacious calling and recalling obliged their acquaintances to feel they could not decently be left wholly out of. Millie and her anxious mother had worked hard. They lost no opportunity of writing a note or sending a Christmas card or an economical funeral wreath. By daily toil and amicable ignoring of casualness of manner or slights, they managed to cling to the edge of the precipice of social oblivion into whose depths a lesser degree of aciduity or a greater sensitiveness would have plunged them. Once early in Millie's career, when her ever-ready chatter and her superficial brightness were a novelty, it had seemed for a short time that luck might be glancing towards her. A young man of foreign title and of Bohemian tastes met her at a studio dance, and misled by the smartness of her dress and her always carefully carried air of careless prosperity began to pay a delusive court to her. For a few weeks all her freshest frocks were worn assiduously, and credit was strained to buy new ones. The flat was adorned with fresh flowers, and several new yellow and pale blue cushions appeared at the little teas, which began to assume a more festive air. Desirable people, who went ordinarily to the teas at long intervals and through reluctant weakness, or sometimes rebellious amiability, were drummed up and brought firmly to the fore. Millie herself began to look pink and fluffy through mere hopeful good spirits. Her thin little laugh was heard incessantly, and people amusedly, if they were good tempered or derisively, if they were spiteful, wondered if it really would come to something. But it did not. The young foreigner suddenly left New York, making his adures with entire likeness. There was the end of it. He had heard something about lack of income and uncertainty of credit, which had suggested to him that discretion was the better part of valour. He married later a young lady in the West, whose father was a solid person. Less astute young women, under the circumstances, would have allowed themselves a week or so of headache or influenza, but Millie did not. She made calls in the new frocks, and with such persistent spirit that she fished forth from the depths of indifferent hospitality two or three excellent invitations. She wore her freshest pink frock and an amazingly clever little Parisian diamond crescent in her hair at the huge Monson ball at Delmonico's, and it was recorded that it was on that glittering occasion that her uncle James was first brought upon the scene. He was only mentioned lightly at first. It was to Millie's credit that he was not made too much of. He was casually touched upon as a very rich uncle who lived in Dakota, and had actually lived there since his youths letting his few relations know nothing of him. He had been rather a black sheep as a boy, but Millie's mother had liked him, and when he had run away from New York he had told her what he was going to do, and had kissed her when she cried, and had taken her daguerreotype with him. Now he had written, and it turned out that he was enormously rich and was interested in Millie. From that time uncle James formed an atmosphere. He did not appear in New York, but Millie spent the next season in London, and the Monsons being at Hurlingham one day had her pointed out to them as a new American girl who was the idol of a millionaire uncle. She was not living in an ultra-fashionable quarter or with ultra-fashionable people, but she was, on all occasions, they heard beautifully dressed and beautifully, if a little heavily, hung with gourds and gems, her rings being said to be quite amazing and suggesting an impassioned lavishness on the part of uncle James. London, having become a newer to American marvels, Millie's bit of it, accepted and enjoyed uncle James and all the sumptuous attributes of his Dakota. English people would swallow anything sometimes, Mrs. Monson commented sagely, and yet sometimes they stared and evidently thought you were lying about the simplest things. Millie's corner of South Kensington had gulp down the Dakota uncle, her managing in this way if there was no uncle was too clever and amusing. She had left her mother at home to scrimp and save, and by hook or by crook she had contrived to get a number of quite good things to wear. She wore them with such an air of a custom resource that the jewels might easily, mixed with some relics of her mother's better days, be of the order of the clever little Parisian diamond crescent. It was Millie's never laid aside manner which did it. The announcement of her union with Sir Arthur Bowen was received in certain New York circles with little suppressed shrieks of glee. It had been so sharp of her to aim low and to realise so quickly that she could not aim high. The baronetcy was a recent one and not unconnected with trade. Sir Arthur was not a rich man, and had it leaked out, believed in Uncle James. If he did not find him all his fancy painted, Millie was clever enough to keep him quiet. She was, when all was said and done, one of the American women of title. Her servants and the trade's people addressed her as my lady, and with her capacity for appropriating what was most useful and her easy assumption of possessing all required, she was a very smart person indeed. She provided herself with an English accent, an English vocabulary, and an English manner, and in certain circles was felt to be most impressive. At an afternoon function in the country Mrs. Vanderpool had met Lady Bowen. She had been one of the few kindly ones who in the past had given an occasional treat to Millie Jones for her goal-hood's sake. Lady Bowen, having gathered a small group of hearers, was talking voluably to it when the nice woman entered, and catching sight of her she swept across the room. It would not have been like Millie to fail to see and greet at once a wife of Reuben Vanderpool. She would count anywhere, even in London sets, it was not easy to connect one's self-width. She had already discovered that there were almost as many difficulties to be surmounted in London by the wife of an unimportant baronet as there had been to overcome in New York by a girl without money or place. It was well to have something in the way of information to offer in one small talk with the lucky ones, and Millie knew what subject lay nearest to Mrs. Vanderpool's heart. Miss Vanderpool has evidently been enjoying her visit to Stornham Court, she said, after her first few sentences. I met Mrs. Worthington at the embassy, and she said she had buried herself in the country. But I think she must have run up to town quietly for shopping. I saw her one day in Piccadilly, and I was almost sure Lady Ann Struthers was with her in the carriage—almost sure. Mrs. Vanderpool's heart quickened its feet. You were so young when she married, she said, I dare say you've forgotten her face. Oh no! Millie protested effusively. I remember her quite well. She was so pretty and pink and happy-looking, and her hair curled naturally. I used to pray every night that when I grew up I might have hair in a complexion like hers. Mrs. Vanderpool's kind maternal face fell. And you were not sure you recognized her? Well, I suppose twelve years does make a difference—a voice dragging a little. Millie saw that she had made a blunder. The fact was she had not even guested Rosie's identity until long after the carriage had passed her. Oh, you see! she hesitated. Their carriage was not near me, and I was not expecting to see them, and perhaps she looked a little delicate. I heard she had been rather delicate. She felt she was floundering and bravely floundered away from the subject. She plunged into talk of Betty and people's anxiety to see her, and the fact that the society columns were already faintly heralding her. She would surely come soon to town. It was too late for the first drawing-room this year, when did Mrs. Vanderpool think she would be presented? Would Lady Ann Struthers present her? Mrs. Vanderpool could not bring her back to Rosie in the nature of the change which had made it difficult to recognize her. The result of this chance encounter was that she did not sleep very well, and the next morning talked anxiously to her husband. What I could see, Ruben, was that Millie Bowen had not known her at all, even when she saw her in the carriage with Betty. She couldn't have changed as much as that if she'd been taken care of and happy. Her affection and admiration for her husband was such as made the task of soothing her a comparatively simple thing. The instinct of tenderness for the mate his youth had chosen was an unchangeable one in Ruben Vanderpool. He was not a primitive man, but in this he was as unquestioningly simple as if he had been a kindly New England farmer. He had outgrown his wife, but he had always loved and protected her gentle goodness. He had never failed her in her smallest difficulty, he couldn't bear to see her hurt. Betty had been his compere in his companion almost since her childhood, but his wife was the tenderest care of his days. There was a strong sense of relief in his sort of Betty now. It was good to remember the fineness of her perceptions, her clearness of judgment, and recall that they were qualities he might rely upon. When he left his wife to take his train to town he left her smiling again. She scarcely knew how her fears had been dispelled. His talk had all been kindly, practical, and reasonable. It was true, Betty had said in her letter that Rosie had been rather delicate and had not been taking very good care of herself, but that was to be remedied. Rosie had made a little joke or so about it herself. Betty says, I'm not fat enough for an English matron, I'm drinking milk and breakfasting in bed, and I'm going to be massaged to please her. I believe we all used to obey Betty when she was a child, and now she's so tall and splendid one would never dare to cross her. Oh, mother, I'm so happy at having her with me. To re-read just these simple things caused the suggestion of things not comfortably normal to melt away. Mrs. Vanderpool sat down at a sunny window with her lap full of letters, and forgot Millie Bowen's floundering. When Mr. Vanderpool reached his office and glanced at his carefully arranged morning's mail, Mr. German saw him smile at the sight of the envelopes addressed in his daughter's hand. He sat down to read them at once, and as he read the smile of welcome became a shrewd and deeply interested one. She has undertaken a good-sized contract, he was saying to himself, and she's to be trusted to see it through. It is rather fine the way she manages to combine emotions and romance and sentiments with practical good business, without letting one interfere with the other. It's none of it bad business. This is the end state is entailed, and the boy is Rosy's. It's good business. This was what Betty had written to her father in New York from Stornham Court. The things I am beginning to do it would be impossible for me to resist doing, and it would certainly be impossible for you. The thing I am seeing I have never seen at close hand before, though I have taken in something almost its parallel as part of a certain picturesqueness of scenes in other countries. But I am living with this, and also through relationship to Rosy, I in a measure belong to it, and it belongs to me. You and I may have often seen in American villages crudeness in completeness, lack of comfort, and the composition of a picture, a rough ugliness, the result of haste and unsettled life, which stays nowhere along, but packs up its goods and chattels and wanders further afield in search of something better or worse, in any case in search of change. But we have never seen ripe gradual falling to ruin of what generations ago was beautiful. To me it is wonderful and tragic and touching. If you could see the court, if you could see the village, if you could see the church, if you could see the people all quietly disintegrating, and so dearly perfect in their way that if one knew absolutely that nothing could be done to save them, one could only stand still and catch one's breath and burst into tears. The church has stood since the conquest, and as it still stands gray and fine with its massive square tower, and despite the state of its roof is not yet given wholly to the winds and weather, it will no doubt stand a few centuries longer. The court, however, cannot long remain a possible habitation if it is not given a new lease of life. I do not mean that it will crumble to-morrow or the day after, but we should not think it habitable now, even while we should admit that nothing could be more delightful to look at. The cottages in the village are already many of them amazing when regarded as the dwellings of human beings. How long ago the cottages gave up expecting that anything in particular would be done for them I do not know. I am impressed by the fact that they are an unexpected people. Their calm non-expectancy fills me with interest. Only centuries of waiting for their superiors in rank to do things for them and the slow formation of the habit of realizing that not to submit to disappointment was no use could have produced the almost serenity of their attitude. It is all very well for newborn republican nations, meaning my native land, to sniff sternly and say that such a state of affairs is an insult to the spirit of the race. Perhaps it is now, but it was not apparently centuries ago which was when it all began and when man and the race had not developed to the point of asking questions to which they demand replies about themselves and the things which happened to them. It began in the time of Egbert and Canute and earlier in the days of the Druids when they used peacefully to allow themselves to be burned by the score enclosed in wicker idols as natural offerings to placate the gods. The modern acceptance of things is only a somewhat attenuated remnant of the ancient idea, and this is what I have to deal with and understand. When I begin to do the things I am going to do with the aid of your practical advice, if I have your approval, the people will be at first rather afraid of me. They will privately expect I am mad. It will also not seem at all unlikely that an American should be of unreasoningly extravagant and flighty mind. Stornam, having long slumbered in remote peace through lack of railroad convenience, still regards America as almost of the character of wild rumour. Rosie was their one American, and she disappeared from their view so soon that she had not time to make any lasting impression. I am asking myself how difficult or how simple it will be to quite understand these people and to make them understand me. I greatly doubt it's being simple. Layers and layers and layers of centuries must be far from easy to borrow through. They look simple, they do not know that they are not simple, but really they are not. Their point of view has been the point of view of the English peasant so many hundred years that an American point of view, which has had no more than a trifling century and a half to form itself in, may find its sews and sinews at least powerful of the two. When I walk down the village street faces appear at windows and figures stolidly at doors. What I see is that vaguely and remotely American though I am, the fact that I am of her ladyship's blood and that her ladyship, American though she is, has to claim on them of being the mother of the son of the owner of the land, stirs in them a feeling that I have a shadowy sort of relationship in the whole thing, and with regard to their bad roofs and bad chimneys, to their broken palings and damp floors, to their comforts and discomforts, a sort of responsibility. That is the whole thing, and you, just you, father, will understand me when I say that I actually like it. I might not like it if I were poor Rosie, but being myself I love it. There is something patriarchal in it which moves me. Is it an abounding and arrogant, a light in power which makes it appeal to me, or is it something better? To feel that every man on the land, every woman, every child, new one, counted on one's honour and friendship, turned to one, believingly, in time of stress, to know that one could help and be a finally faithful thing, the very knowledge of it would give one vigor and warm blood in the veins. I wish I had been born to it. I wish the first sounds falling on my newborn ears had been the clanging of the peel from an old Norman church tower, calling out to me, Welcome, newcomer of our house, long life among us, welcome. Still, though the first sounds that greeted me were probably the rattling of a Fifth Avenue stage, I have brought them something, and who knows whether I could have brought it from without the range of that prosaic but cheerful rattle. The rest of the letter was detail of a business-like order. A large envelope contained the detail notes of things to be done, notes concerning roofs, windows, flooring, park fences, gardens, greenhouses, toolhouses, potting sheds, garden walls, gates, woodwork, masonry. Sharp little sketches such as buttle had seen, notes concerning buttle, fox, tread, cages, and less-accomplished workmen, concerning wages of daylabours, hours, capabilities. Buttle, if he had chance to see them, would have broken into a light perspiration at the idea of a young woman having compiled the documents. He had never heard of the first Ruben Vanderpool. Her father's reply to Betty was as long as her own to him, and gave her keen pleasure by its support, both of sympathetic interest and practical advice. He left none of her points unnoted, and dealt with each of them, and she had most hoped and indeed had felt she knew he would. This was his final summing up. If you had been a boy, and I own I am glad you were not a man once a daughter, I should have been quite willing to allow you your flutter on Wall Street, or your try at anything you felt you would like to handle. It would have interested me to look on and see what you were made of, what you wanted, and how you set about trying to get it. It's a new kind of deal you have undertaken. It's more romantic than Wall Street, but I think I do see what you see in it. Even apart from Rosie and the boy, it would interest me to see what you would do with it. This is your flutter. I like the way you face it. If you were a son instead of a daughter, I should see I might have confidence in you. I could not confide to Wall Street what I will tell you, which is sit in the midst of the drive and swirl and tumult of my life here. I like what you see in the thing. I like your idea of the Lord of the land who should love the land and the souls born on it, and be the friend and strength of them, and give the best and get it back in fair exchange. There's a steadiness in the thought of such a life among one's kind, which has attractions for a man who has spent years in a maelstrom, snatching at what world among the eddies of it. Your notes and sketches and summing up of probable costs did us both credit. I say both, because your business education is the result of our long talks and journeys together. You began to train for this when you began going to visit mines and railroads with me at twelve years old. I leave the whole thing in your hands, my girl. I leave Rosie in your hands, and in leaving Rosie to you, you know how I am trusting you with your mother. Your letters to her tell her only what is good for her. She is beginning to look happier and younger already, and is looking forward to the day when Rosie and the boy will come home to visit us, and when we shall go in state to Stornham Court. God bless her, she is made up of affection and simple trust, and that makes it easy to keep things from her. She has never been ill-treated, and she knows I love her, so that when I tell her that things are coming right, she never doubts me. While you are rebuilding the place, you will rebuild Rosie, so that the sight of her may not be a pain when her mother sees her again, which is what she is living for.