Chapter I. The Weaving of the Shuttle

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

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?