Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
THE SHUTTLE
By Frances Hodgson Burnett
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE
II. A LACK OF PERCEPTION
III. YOUNG LADY ANSTRUTHERS
IV. A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S
V. ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC
VI. AN UNFAIR ENDOWMENT
VII. ON BOARD THE “MERIDIANA”
VIII. THE SECOND-CLASS PASSENGER
IX. LADY JANE GREY
X. “IS LADY ANSTRUTHERS AT HOME?”
XI. “I THOUGHT YOU HAD ALL FORGOTTEN”
XII. UGHTRED
XIII. ONE OF THE NEW YORK DRESSES
XIV. IN THE GARDENS
XV. THE FIRST MAN
XVI. THE PARTICULAR INCIDENT
XVII. TOWNLINSON & SHEPPARD
XVIII. THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF MOUNT DUNSTAN
XIX. SPRING IN BOND STREET
XX. THINGS OCCUR IN STORNHAM VILLAGE
XXI. KEDGERS
XXII. ONE OF MR. VANDERPOEL'S LETTERS
XXIII. INTRODUCING G. SELDEN
XXIV. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STORNHAM
XXV. “WE BEGAN TO MARRY THEM, MY GOOD FELLOW!”
XXVI. “WHAT IT MUST BE TO BE YOU--JUST YOU!”
XXVII. LIFE
XXVIII. SETTING THEM THINKING
XXIX. THE THREAD OF G. SELDEN
XXX. A RETURN
XXXI. NO, SHE WOULD NOT
XXXII. A GREAT BALL
XXXIII. FOR LADY JANE
XXXIV. RED GODWYN
XXXV. THE TIDAL WAVE
XXXVI. BY THE ROADSIDE EVERYWHERE
XXXVII. CLOSED CORRIDORS
XXXVIII. AT SHANDY'S
XXXIX. ON THE MARSHES
XL. “DON'T GO ON WITH THIS”
XLI. SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING
XLII. IN THE BALLROOM
XLIII. HIS CHANCE
XLIV. A FOOTSTEP
XLV. THE PASSING BELL
XLVI. LISTENING
XLVII. “I HAVE NO WORD OR LOOK TO REMEMBER”
XLVIII. THE MOMENT
XLIX. AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS
L. THE PRIMEVAL THING
THE SHUTTLE
CHAPTER I
THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE
No man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving from shore
to shore, that it was held and guided by the great hand of Fate. Fate
alone saw the meaning of the web it wove, the might of it, and its place
in the making of a world's history. Men thought but little of either web
or weaving, calling them by other names and lighter ones, for the time
unconscious of the strength of the thread thrown across thousands of
miles of leaping, heaving, grey or blue ocean.
Fate and Life planned the weaving, and it seemed mere circumstance
which guided the Shuttle to and fro between two worlds divided by a gulf
broader and deeper than the thousands of miles of salt, fierce sea--the
gulf of a bitter quarrel deepened by hatred and the shedding of
brothers' blood. Between the two worlds of East and West there was no
will to draw nearer. Each held apart. Those who had rebelled against
that which their souls called tyranny, having struggled madly and
shed blood in tearing themselves free, turned stern backs upon their
unconquered enemies, broke all cords that bound them to the past,
flinging off ties of name, kinship and rank, beginning with fierce
disdain a new life.
Those who, being rebelled against, found the rebels too passionate
in their determination and too desperate in their defence of their
strongholds to be less than unconquerable, sailed back haughtily to the
world which seemed so far the greater power. Plunging into new battles,
they added new conquests and splendour to their land, looking back with
something of contempt to the half-savage West left to build its own
civilisation without other aid than the strength of its own strong right
hand and strong uncultured brain.
But while the two worlds held apart, the Shuttle, weaving slowly in the
great hand of Fate, drew them closer and held them firm, each of them
all unknowing for many a year, that what had at first been mere threads
of gossamer, was forming a web whose strength in time none could
compute, whose severance could be accomplished but by tragedy and
convulsion.
The weaving was but in its early and slow-moving years when this
story opens. Steamers crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, but they
accomplished the journey at leisure and with heavy rollings and all such
discomforts as small craft can afford. Their staterooms and decks were
not crowded with people to whom the voyage was a mere incident--in many
cases a yearly one. “A crossing” in those days was an event. It was
planned seriously, long thought of, discussed and re-discussed, with and
among the various members of the family to which the voyager belonged.
A certain boldness, bordering on recklessness, was almost to be
presupposed in the individual who, turning his back upon New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, and like cities, turned his face towards “Europe.”
In those days when the Shuttle wove at leisure, a man did not lightly
run over to London, or Paris, or Berlin, he gravely went to “Europe.”
The journey being likely to be made once in a lifetime, the traveller's
intention was to see as much as possible, to visit as many cities
cathedrals, ruins, galleries, as his time and purse would allow. People
who could speak with any degree of familiarity of Hyde Park, the Champs
Elysees, the Pincio, had gained a certain dignity. The ability to touch
with an intimate bearing upon such localities was a raison de plus for
being asked out to tea or to dinner. To possess photographs and relics
was to be of interest, to have seen European celebrities even at a
distance, to have wandered about the outside of poets' gardens and
philosophers' houses, was to be entitled to respect. The period was a
far cry from the time when the Shuttle, having shot to and fro, faster
and faster, week by week, month by month, weaving new threads into its
web each year, has woven warp and woof until they bind far shore to
shore.
It was in comparatively early days that the first thread we follow
was woven into the web. Many such have been woven since and have
added greater strength than any others, twining the cord of sex and
home-building and race-founding. But this was a slight and weak
one, being only the thread of the life of one of Reuben Vanderpoel's
daughters--the pretty little simple one whose name was Rosalie.
They were--the Vanderpoels--of the Americans whose fortunes were a
portion of the history of their country. The building of these fortunes
had been a part of, or had created epochs and crises. Their millions
could scarcely be regarded as private property. Newspapers bandied them
about, so to speak, employing them as factors in argument, using them
as figures of speech, incorporating them into methods of calculation.
Literature touched upon them, moral systems considered them, stories for
the young treated them gravely as illustrative.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded with
savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of stories
of thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had been
irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce,
expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere
exchange and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value of
things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances, had stood
him in marvellous good stead. He had bought at low prices things which
in the eyes of the less discerning were worthless, but, having obtained
possession of such things, the less discerning had almost invariably
awakened to the fact that, in his hands, values increased, and methods
of remunerative disposition, being sought, were found. Nothing remained
unutilisable. The practical, sordid, uneducated little man developed the
power to create demand for his own supplies. If he was betrayed into
an error, he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon nothing and
consequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as he
desired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was
daring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier, his blood
burned with the fever of but one desire--the desire to accumulate. Money
expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such small
or large properties as could be resold at profit in the near or far
future. The future held fascinations for him. He bought nothing for his
own pleasure or comfort, nothing which could not be sold or bartered
again. He married a woman who was a trader's daughter and shared his
passion for gain. She was of North of England blood, her father having
been a hard-fisted small tradesman in an unimportant town, who had been
daring enough to emigrate when emigration meant the facing of unknown
dangers in a half-savage land. She had excited Reuben Vanderpoel's
admiration by taking off her petticoat one bitter winter's day to sell
it to a squaw in exchange for an ornament for which she chanced to know
another squaw would pay with a skin of value. The first Mrs. Vanderpoel
was as wonderful as her husband. They were both wonderful. They were
the founders of the fortune which a century and a half later was the
delight--in fact the piece de resistance--of New York society reporters,
its enormity being restated in round figures when a blank space must be
filled up. The method of statement lent itself to infinite variety and
was always interesting to a particular class, some elements of which
felt it encouraging to be assured that so much money could be a personal
possession, some elements feeling the fact an additional argument to be
used against the infamy of monopoly.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel transmitted to his son his accumulations and
his fever for gain. He had but one child. The second Reuben built upon
the foundations this afforded him, a fortune as much larger than the
first as the rapid growth and increasing capabilities of the country
gave him enlarging opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessary
to deal with savages: his powers were called upon to cope with those
of white men who came to a new country to struggle for livelihood and
fortune. Some were shrewd, some were desperate, some were dishonest. But
shrewdness never outwitted, desperation never overcame, dishonesty never
deceived the second Reuben Vanderpoel. Each characteristic ended by
adapting itself to his own purposes and qualities, and as a result of
each it was he who in any business transaction was the gainer. It was
the common saying that the Vanderpoels were possessed of a money-making
spell. Their spell lay in their entire mental and physical absorption in
one idea. Their peculiarity was not so much that they wished to be rich
as that Nature itself impelled them to collect wealth as the load-stone
draws towards it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich,
having become rich they became richer, having founded their fortunes
on small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In time they
attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstance
can control or limit. The first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, the
second could, the third was as well educated as a man could be whose
sole profession is money-making. His children were taught all that
expensive teachers and expensive opportunities could teach them. After
the second generation the meagre and mercantile physical type of the
Vanderpoels improved upon itself. Feminine good looks appeared and were
made the most of. The Vanderpoel element invested even good looks to an
advantage. The fourth Reuben Vanderpoel had no son and two daughters.
They were brought up in a brown-stone mansion built upon a fashionable
New York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the farthest point of
the Rocky Mountains the number of dollars this “mansion” (it was always
called so) had cost, was known. There may have existed Pueblo Indians
who had heard rumours of the price of it. All the shop-keepers and
farmers in the United States had read newspaper descriptions of its
furnishings and knew the value of the brocade which hung in the bedrooms
and boudoirs of the Misses Vanderpoel. It was a fact much cherished that
Miss Rosalie's bath was of Carrara marble, and to good souls actively
engaged in doing their own washing in small New England or Western
towns, it was a distinct luxury to be aware that the water in the
Carrara marble bath was perfumed with Florentine Iris. Circumstances
such as these seemed to become personal possessions and even to lighten
somewhat the burden of toil.
Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part of the
story of her married life forms my prologue. Hers was of the early
international marriages, and the republican mind had not yet adjusted
itself to all that such alliances might imply. It was yet ingenuous,
imaginative and confiding in such matters. A baronetcy and a manor house
reigning over an old English village and over villagers in possible
smock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whose
intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels of Mrs.
Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little anecdotes in which
vicarages, gamekeepers, and dowagers figured, were exciting in these
early days. “Sir Nigel Anstruthers,” when engraved upon a visiting card,
wore an air of distinction almost startling. Sir Nigel himself was
not as picturesque as his name, though he was not entirely without
attraction, when for reasons of his own he chose to aim at agreeableness
of bearing. He was a man with a good figure and a good voice, and but
for a heaviness of feature the result of objectionable living, might
have given the impression of being better looking than he really was.
New York laid amused and at the same time, charmed stress upon the fact
that he spoke with an “English accent.” His enunciation was in fact
clear cut and treated its vowels well. He was a man who observed with an
air of accustomed punctiliousness such social rules and courtesies as he
deemed it expedient to consider. An astute worldling had remarked that
he was at once more ceremonious and more casual in his manner than men
bred in America.
“If you invite him to dinner,” the wording said, “or if you die,
or marry, or meet with an accident, his notes of condolence or
congratulation are prompt and civil, but the actual truth is that he
cares nothing whatever about you or your relations, and if you don't
please him he does not hesitate to sulk or be astonishingly rude, which
last an American does not allow himself to be, as a rule.”
By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed, but accepted. He was of the
early English who came to New York, and was a novelty of interest, with
his background of Manor House and village and old family name. He was
very much talked of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he was very
much talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner parties he
was furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner when he sat with
the men over their wine, he was not popular. He was not perhaps exactly
disliked, but men whose chief interest at that period lay in stocks
and railroads, did not find conversation easy with a man whose sole
occupation had been the shooting of birds and the hunting of foxes,
when he was not absolutely loitering about London, with his time on his
hands. The stories he told--and they were few--were chiefly anecdotes
whose points gained their humour by the fact that a man was a comically
bad shot or bad rider and either peppered a gamekeeper or was thrown
into a ditch when his horse went over a hedge, and such relations
did not increase in the poignancy of their interest by being filtered
through brains accustomed to applying their powers to problems of
speculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he perceived
this at an early stage of his visit to New York, which was probably the
reason of the infrequency of his stories.
He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour of a “big
deal” or a big blunder made on Wall Street--or to the wit of jokes
concerning them. Upon the whole he would have been glad to have
understood such matters more clearly. His circumstances were such as
had at last forced him to contemplate the world of money-makers with
something of an annoyed respect. “These fellows” who had neither
titles nor estates to keep up could make money. He, as he acknowledged
disgustedly to himself, was much worse than a beggar. There was Stornham
Court in a state of ruin--the estate going to the dogs, the farmhouses
tumbling to pieces and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to bless
himself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the rank which
in bygone times had not associated itself with trade had begun at least
to trifle with it--to consider its potentialities as factors possibly
to be made useful by the aristocracy. Countesses had not yet spiritedly
opened milliners' shops, nor belted Earls adorned the stage, but certain
noblemen had dallied with beer and coquetted with stocks. One of
the first commercial developments had been the discovery of
America--particularly of New York--as a place where if one could make up
one's mind to the plunge, one might marry one's sons profitably. At
the outset it presented a field so promising as to lead to rashness and
indiscretion on the part of persons not given to analysis of character
and in consequence relying too serenely upon an ingenuousness which
rather speedily revealed that it had its limits. Ingenuousness combining
itself with remarkable alertness of perception on occasion, is
rather American than English, and is, therefore, to the English mind,
misleading.
At first younger sons, who “gave trouble” to their families, were sent
out. Their names, their backgrounds of castles or manors, relatives of
distinction, London seasons, fox hunting, Buckingham Palace and Goodwood
Races, formed a picturesque allurement. That the castles and manors
would belong to their elder brothers, that the relatives of distinction
did not encourage intimacy with swarms of the younger branches of their
families; that London seasons, hunting, and racing were for their elders
and betters, were facts not realised in all their importance by the
republican mind. In the course of time they were realised to the full,
but in Rosalie Vanderpoel's nineteenth year they covered what was at
that time almost unknown territory. One may rest assured Sir Nigel
Anstruthers said nothing whatsoever in New York of an interview he had
had before sailing with an intensely disagreeable great-aunt, who was
the wife of a Bishop. She was a horrible old woman with a broad face,
blunt features and a raucous voice, whose tones added acridity to
her observations when she was indulging in her favourite pastime of
interfering with the business of her acquaintances and relations.
“I do not know what you are going chasing off to America for, Nigel,”
she commented. “You can't afford it and it is perfectly ridiculous of
you to take it upon yourself to travel for pleasure as if you were a man
of means instead of being in such a state of pocket that Maria tells me
you cannot pay your tailor. Neither the Bishop nor I can do anything
for you and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that you know
yourself what you are going to America in search of, and that it is
something more practical than buffaloes. You had better stop in New
York. Those big shopkeepers' daughters are enormously rich, they say,
and they are immensely pleased by attentions from men of your class.
They say they'll marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother with
a title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You need not refer
to the fact that she thought your father a blackguard and your mother an
interloper, and that you have never been invited to Broadmere since you
were born. You can refer casually to me and to the Bishop and to the
Palace, too. A Palace--even a Bishop's--ought to go a long way with
Americans. They will think it is something royal.” She ended her remarks
with one of her most insulting snorts of laughter, and Sir Nigel became
dark red and looked as if he would like to knock her down.
It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly revolting to
him. If she had expressed them in a manner more flattering to himself he
would have felt that there was a good deal to be said for them. In
fact, he had put the same thing to himself some time previously, and, in
summing up the American matter, had reached certain thrifty decisions.
The impulse to knock her down surged within him solely because he had a
brutally bad temper when his vanity was insulted, and he was furious at
her impudence in speaking to him as if he were a villager out of work
whom she was at liberty to bully and lecture.
“For a woman who is supposed to have been born of gentle people,” he
said to his mother afterwards, “Aunt Marian is the most vulgar old beast
I have ever beheld. She has the taste of a female costermonger.” Which
was entirely true, but it might be added that his own was no better and
his points of view and morals wholly coincided with his taste.
Naturally Rosalie Vanderpoel knew nothing of this side of the matter.
She had been a petted, butterfly child, who had been pretty and admired
and indulged from her infancy; she had grown up into a petted, butterfly
girl, pretty and admired and surrounded by inordinate luxury. Her world
had been made up of good-natured, lavish friends and relations, who
enjoyed themselves and felt a delight in her girlish toilettes and
triumphs. She had spent her one season of belledom in being whirled from
festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned with thousands of
dollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at tables loaded with
roses and violets and orchids, from which ballrooms or feasts she had
borne away wonderful “favours” and gifts, whose prices, being recorded
in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass over the
land. She was a slim little creature, with quantities of light feathery
hair like a French doll's. She had small hands and small feet and a
small waist--a small brain also, it must be admitted, but she was an
innocent, sweet-tempered girl with a childlike simpleness of mind.
In fine, she was exactly the girl to find Sir Nigel's domineering
temperament at once imposing and attractive, so long as it was cloaked
by the ceremonies of external good breeding.
Her sister Bettina, who was still a child, was of a stronger and less
susceptible nature. Betty--at eight--had long legs and a square but
delicate small face. Her well-opened steel-blue eyes were noticeable
for rather extravagant ink-black lashes and a straight young stare
which seemed to accuse if not to condemn. She was being educated at
a ruinously expensive school with a number of other inordinately rich
little girls, who were all too wonderfully dressed and too lavishly
supplied with pocket money. The school considered itself especially
refined and select, but was in fact interestingly vulgar.
The inordinately rich little girls, who had most of them pretty and
spiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great many bon bons and
chattered a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the parties
their sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore.
Some of them were nice little souls, who in the future would emerge from
their chrysalis state enchanting women, but they used colloquialisms
freely, and had an ingenuous habit of referring to the prices of
things. Bettina Vanderpoel, who was the richest and cleverest and most
promisingly handsome among them, was colloquial to slanginess, but she
had a deep, mellow, child voice and an amazing carriage.
She could not endure Sir Nigel Anstruthers, and, being an American
child, did not hesitate to express herself with force, if with some
crudeness. “He's a hateful thing,” she said, “I loathe him. He's stuck
up and he thinks you are afraid of him and he likes it.”
Sir Nigel had known only English children, little girls who lived in
that discreet corner of their parents' town or country houses known
as “the schoolroom,” apparently emerging only for daily walks with
governesses; girls with long hair and boys in little high hats and with
faces which seemed curiously made to match them. Both boys and girls
were decently kept out of the way and not in the least dwelt on except
when brought out for inspection during the holidays and taken to the
pantomime.
Sir Nigel had not realised that an American child was an absolute factor
to be counted with, and a “youngster” who entered the drawing-room when
she chose and joined fearlessly in adult conversation was an element he
considered annoying. It was quite true that Bettina talked too much
and too readily at times, but it had not been explained to her that
the opinions of eight years are not always of absorbing interest to the
mature. It was also true that Sir Nigel was a great fool for interfering
with what was clearly no affair of his in such a manner as would have
made him an enemy even had not the child's instinct arrayed her against
him at the outset.
“You American youngsters are too cheeky,” he said on one of the
occasions when Betty had talked too much. “If you were my sister and
lived at Stornham Court, you would be learning lessons in the schoolroom
and wearing a pinafore. Nobody ever saw my sister Emily when she was
your age.”
“Well, I'm not your sister Emily,” retorted Betty, “and I guess I'm glad
of it.”
It was rather impudent of her, but it must be confessed that she was
not infrequently rather impudent in a rude little-girl way, but she was
serenely unconscious of the fact.
Sir Nigel flushed darkly and laughed a short, unpleasant laugh. If she
had been his sister Emily she would have fared ill at the moment, for
his villainous temper would have got the better of him.
“I 'guess' that I may be congratulated too,” he sneered.
“If I was going to be anybody's sister Emily,” said Betty, excited a
little by the sense of the fray, “I shouldn't want to be yours.”
“Now Betty, don't be hateful,” interposed Rosalie, laughing, and her
laugh was nervous. “There's Mina Thalberg coming up the front steps. Go
and meet her.”
Rosalie, poor girl, always found herself nervous when Sir Nigel and
Betty were in the room together. She instinctively recognised their
antagonism and was afraid Betty would do something an English baronet
would think vulgar. Her simple brain could not have explained to her
why it was that she knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorkers vulgar. She
was, however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact, and
felt a timid desire to be explanatory.
When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary carriage
finely manifest, Rosy's little laugh was propitiatory.
“You mustn't mind her,” she said. “She's a real splendid little thing,
but she's got a quick temper. It's all over in a minute.”
“They wouldn't stand that sort of thing in England,” said Sir Nigel.
“She's deucedly spoiled, you know.”
He detested the child. He disliked all children, but this one awakened
in him more than mere dislike. The fact was that though Betty herself
was wholly unconscious of the subtle truth, the as yet undeveloped
intellect which later made her a brilliant and captivating personality,
vaguely saw him as he was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorseless
an adventurer and swindler in his special line, as if he had been
engaged in drawing false cheques and arranging huge jewel robberies,
instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous marriage a girl
whose gentleness and fortune could be used by a blackguard of reputable
name. The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness
was of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted on
because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices and on his
racked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restocked
at an early date by someone or other, lest they tumbled into ignominious
collapse which could not be concealed. Bettina of the accusing eyes did
not know that in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct was
summing up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen of
the British blackguard, but this was nevertheless the interesting truth.
When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to Sir
Nigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she stared
silently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears.
“Well, Bett,” exclaimed Rosalie, “you are the queerest thing I ever
saw.”
Bettina's tears were an outburst, not a flow. She swept them away
passionately with her small handkerchief.
“He'll do something awful to you,” she said. “He'll nearly kill you. I
know he will. I'd rather be dead myself.”
She dashed out of the room, and could never be induced to say a word
further about the matter. She would indeed have found it impossible to
express her intense antipathy and sense of impending calamity. She had
not the phrases to make herself clear even to herself, and after all
what controlling effort can one produce when one is only eight years
old?