Chapter II. A Lack of Perception

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Mercantile as Americans were proclaimed to be, the opinion of Sir
Nigel Anstruthers was that they were, on some points, singularly
unbusinesslike. In the perfectly obvious and simple matter of the
settlement of his daughter's fortune, he had felt that Reuben
Vanderpoel was obtuse to the point of idiocy. He seemed to have none
of the ordinary points of view. Naturally there was to Anstruthers'
mind but one point of view to take. A man of birth and rank, he
argued, does not career across the Atlantic to marry a New York
millionaire's daughter unless he anticipates deriving some advantage
from the alliance. Such a man--being of Anstruthers' type--would not
have married a rich woman even in his own country with out making
sure that advantages were to accrue to himself as a result of the
union. "In England," to use his own words, "there was no nonsense
about it." Women's fortunes as well as themselves belonged to their
husbands, and a man who was master in his own house could make his
wife do as he chose. He had seen girls with money managed very
satisfactorily by fellows who held a tight rein, and were not moved
by tears, and did not allow talking to relations. If he had been
desirous of marrying and could have afforded to take a penniless
wife, there were hundreds of portionless girls ready to thank God for
a decent chance to settle themselves for life, and one need not stir
out of one's native land to find them.

But Sir Nigel had not in the least desired to saddle himself
with a domestic encumbrance, in fact nothing would have induced him
to consider the step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances.
His fortunes had reached a stage where money must be forthcoming
somehow--from somewhere. He and his mother had been living from hand
to mouth, so to speak, for years, and they had also been obliged to
keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons
of amiable tempers. Lady Anstruthers, it is true, had lived in the
country in as niggardly a manner as possible. She had narrowed her
existence to absolute privation, presenting at the same time a stern,
bold front to the persons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of
servants, to the village to the vicar and his wife, and the few
far-distant neighbours who perhaps once a year drove miles to call or
leave a card. She was an old woman sufficiently unattractive to find
no difficulty in the way of limiting her acquaintances. The
unprepossessing wardrobe she had gathered in the passing years was
remade again and again by the village dressmaker. She wore dingy old
silk gowns and appalling bonnets, and mantles dripping with rusty
fringes and bugle beads, but these mitigated not in the least the
unflinching arrogance of her bearing, or the simple, intolerant
rudeness which she considered proper and becoming in persons like
herself. She did not of course allow that there existed many persons
like herself.

That society rejoiced in this fact was but the stamp of its
inferiority and folly. While she pinched herself and harried her few
hirelings at Stornham it was necessary for Sir Nigel to show himself
in town and present as decent an appearance as possible. His vanity
was far too arrogant to allow of his permitting himself to drop out
of the world to which he could not afford to belong. That he should
have been forgotten or ignored would have been intolerable to him.
For a few years he was invited to dine at good houses, and got
shooting and hunting as part of the hospitality of his acquaintances.
But a man who cannot afford to return hospitalities will find that
he need not expect to avail himself of those of his acquaintances to
the end of his career unless he is an extremely engaging person. Sir
Nigel Anstruthers was not an engaging person. He never gave a
thought to the comfort or interest of any other human being than
himself. He was also dominated by the kind of nasty temper which so
reveals itself when let loose that its owner cannot control it even
when it would be distinctly to his advantage to do so.

Finding that he had nothing to give in return for what he took
as if it were his right, society gradually began to cease to retain
any lively recollection of his existence. The trades- people he had
borne himself loftily towards awakened to the fact that he was the
kind of man it was at once safe and wise to dun, and therefore
proceeded to make his life a burden to him. At his clubs he had
never been a member surrounded and rejoiced over when he made his
appearance. The time came when he began to fancy that he was rather
edged away from, and he endeavoured to sustain his dignity by being
sulky and making caustic speeches when he was approached. Driven
occasionally down to Stornham by actual pressure of circumstances, he
found the outlook there more embittering still.

Lady Anstruthers laid the bareness of the land before him
without any effort to palliate unpleasantness. If he chose to stalk
about and look glum, she could sit still and call his attention to
revolting truths which he could not deny. She could point out to him
that he had no money, and that tenants would not stay in houses which
were tumbling to pieces, and work land which had been starved. She
could tell him just how long a time had elapsed since wages had been
paid and accounts cleared off. And she had an engaging, unbiassed
way of seeming to drive these maddening details home by the mere
manner of her statement.

"You make the whole thing as damned disagreeable as you can,"
Nigel would snarl.

"I merely state facts," she would reply with acrid serenity.

A man who cannot keep up his estate, pay his tailor or the rent
of his lodgings in town, is in a strait which may drive him to
desperation. Sir Nigel Anstruthers borrowed some money, went to New
York and made his suit to nice little silly Rosalie Vanderpoel.

But the whole thing was unexpectedly disappointing and
surrounded by irritating circumstances. He found himself face to
face with a state of affairs such as he had not contemplated. In
England when a man married, certain practical matters could be
inquired into and arranged by solicitors, the amount of the
prospective bride's fortune, the allowances and settlements to be
made, the position of the bridegroom with regard to pecuniary
matters. To put it simply, a man found out where he stood and what
he was to gain. But, at first to his sardonic entertainment and
later to his disgusted annoyance, Sir Nigel gradually discovered that
in the matter of marriage, Americans had an ingenuous tendency to
believe in the sentimental feelings of the parties concerned. The
general impression seemed to be that a man married purely for love,
and that delicacy would make it impossible for him to ask questions
as to what his bride's parents were in a position to hand over to him
as a sort of indemnity for the loss of his bachelor freedom.
Anstruthers began to discover this fact before he had been many weeks
in New York. He reached the realisation of its existence by
processes of exclusion and inclusion, by hearing casual remarks
people let drop, by asking roundabout and careful questions, by
leading both men and women to the innocent expounding of certain
points of view. Millionaires, it appeared, did not expect to make
allowances to men who married their daughters; young women, it
transpired, did not in the least realise that a man should be
liberally endowed in payment for assuming the duties of a husband.
If rich fathers made allowances, they made them to their daughters
themselves, who disposed of them as they pleased. In this case, of
course, Sir Nigel privately argued with fine acumen, it became the
husband's business to see that what his wife pleased should be what
most agreeably coincided with his own views and conveniences.

His most illuminating experience had been the hearing of some
men, hard-headed, rich stockbrokers with a vulgar sense of humour,
enjoying themselves quite uproariously one night at a club, over a
story one of them was relating of an unsatisfactory German son-in-law
who had demanded an income. He was a man of small title, who had
married the narrator's daughter, and after some months spent in his
father- in-law's house, had felt it but proper that his financial
position should be put on a practical footing.

"He brought her back after the bridal tour to make us a visit,"
said the storyteller, a sharp-featured man with a quaint wry mouth,
which seemed to express a perpetual, repressed appreciation of
passing events. "I had nothing to say against that, because we were
all glad to see her home and her mother had been missing her. But
weeks passed and months passed and there was no mention made of them
going over to settle in the Slosh we'd heard so much of, and in time
it came out that the Slosh thing"--Anstruthers realised with gall in
his soul that the "brute," as he called him, meant "Schloss," and
that his mispronunciation was at once a matter of humour and
derision--"wasn't his at all. It was his elder brother's. The whole
lot of them were counts and not one of them seemed to own a dime.
The Slosh count hadn't more than twenty-five cents and he wasn't the
kind to deal any of it out to his family. So Lily's count would have
to go clerking in a dry goods store, if he promised to support
himself. But he didn't propose to do it. He thought he'd got on to
a soft thing. Of course we're an easy-going lot and we should have
stood him if he'd been a nice fellow. But he wasn't. Lily's mother
used to find her crying in her bedroom and it came out by degrees
that it was because Adolf had been quarrelling with her and saying
sneering things about her family. When her mother talked to him he
was insulting. Then bills began to come in and Lily was expected to
get me to pay them. And they were not the kind of bills a decent
fellow calls on another man to pay. But I did it five or six times
to make it easy for her. I didn't tell her that they gave an older
chap than himself sidelights on the situation. But that didn't work
well. He thought I did it because I had to, and he began to feel
free and easy about it, and didn't try to cover up his tracks so much
when he sent in a new lot. He was always working Lily. He began to
consider himself master of the house. He intimated that a private
carriage ought to be kept for them. He said it was beggarly that he
should have to consider the rest of the family when he wanted to go
out. When I got on to the situation, I began to enjoy it. I let him
spread himself for a while just to see what he would do. Good Lord!
I couldn't have believed that any fellow could have thought any other
fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was. He went perfectly
crazy after a month or so and ordered me about and patronised me as
if I was a bootblack he meant to teach something to. So at last I
had a talk with Lily and told her I was going to put an end to it.
Of course she cried and was half frightened to death, but by that
time he had ill- used her so that she only wanted to get rid of him.
So I sent for him and had a talk with him in my office. I led him on
to saying all he had on his mind. He explained to me what a
condescension it was for a man like himself to marry a girl like
Lily. He made a dignified, touching picture of all the disadvantages
of such an alliance and all the advantages they ought to bring in
exchange to the man who bore up under them. I rubbed my head and
looked worried every now and then and cleared my throat
apologetically just to warm him up. I can tell you that fellow felt
happy, downright happy when he saw how humbly I listened to him. He
positively swelled up with hope and comfort. He thought I was going
to turn out well, real well. I was going to pay up just as a vulgar
New York father-in-law ought to do, and thank God for the blessed
privilege. Why, he was real eloquent about his blood and his
ancestors and the hoary-headed Slosh. So when he'd finished, I
cleared my throat in a nervous, ingratiating kind of way again and I
asked him kind of anxiously what he thought would be the proper thing
for a base-born New York millionaire to do under the
circumstances--what he would approve of himself."

Sir Nigel was disgusted to see the narrator twist his mouth into
a sweet, shrewd, repressed grin even as he expectorated into the
nearest receptacle. The grin was greeted by a shout of laughter from
his companions.

"What did he say, Stebbins?" someone cried.

"He said," explained Mr. Stebbins deliberately, "he said that an
allowance was the proper thing. He said that a man of his rank must
have resources, and that it wasn't dignified for him to have to ask
his wife or his wife's father for money when he wanted it. He said
an allowance was what he felt he had a right to expect. And then he
twisted his moustache and said, `what proposition' did I make--what
would I allow him?"

The storyteller's hearers evidently knew him well. Their
laughter was louder than before.

"Let's hear the rest, Joe! Let's hear it! "

"Well," replied Mr. Stebbins almost thoughtfully, "I just got up
and said, `Well, it won't take long for me to answer that. I've
always been fond of my children, and Lily is rather my pet. She's
always had everything she wanted, and she always shall. She's a good
girl and she deserves it. I'll allow you----" The significant
deliberation of his drawl could scarcely be described. "I'll allow
you just five minutes to get out of this room, before I kick you out,
and if I kick you out of the room, I'll kick you down the stairs, and
if I kick you down the stairs, I shall have got my blood comfortably
warmed up and I'll kick you down the street and round the block and
down to Hoboken, because you're going to take the steamer there and
go back to the place you came from, to the Slosh thing or whatever
you call it. We haven't a damned bit of use for you here.' And
believe it or not, gentlemen----" looking round with the wry-mouthed
smile, "he took that passage and back he went. And Lily's living
with her mother and I mean to hold on to her."

Sir Nigel got up and left the club when the story was finished.
He took a long walk down Broadway, gnawing his lip and holding his
head in the air. He used blasphemous language at intervals in a low
voice. Some of it was addressed to his fate and some of it to the
vulgar mercantile coarseness and obtuseness of other people.

"They don't know what they are talking of," he said. "It is
unheard of. What do they expect? I never thought of this. Damn it!
I'm like a rat in a trap."

It was plain enough that he could not arrange his fortune as he
had anticipated when he decided to begin to make love to little pink
and white, doll-faced Rosy Vanderpoel. If he began to demand
monetary advantages in his dealing with his future wife's people in
their settlement of her fortune, he might arouse suspicion and
inquiry. He did not want inquiry either in connection with his own
means or his past manner of living. People who hated him would be
sure to crop up with stories of things better left alone. There were
always meddling fools ready to interfere.

His walk was long and full of savage thinking. Once or twice as
he realised what the disinterestedness of his sentiments was supposed
to be, a short laugh broke from him which was rather like the snort
of the Bishopess.

"I am supposed to be moonstruck over a simpering American
chit--moonstruck! Damn!" But when he returned to his hotel he had
made up his mind and was beginning to look over the situation in evil
cold blood. Matters must be settled without delay and he was shrewd
enough to realise that with his temper and its varied resources a
timid girl would not be difficult to manage. He had seen at an early
stage of their acquaintance that Rosy was greatly impressed by the
superiority of his bearing, that he could make her blush with
embarrassment when he conveyed to her that she had made a mistake,
that he could chill her miserably when he chose to assume a lofty
stiffness. A man's domestic armoury was filled with weapons if he
could make a woman feel gauche, inexperienced, in the wrong. When he
was safely married, he could pave the way to what he felt was the
only practical and feasible end.

If he had been marrying a woman with more brains, she would be
more difficult to subdue, but with Rosalie Vanderpoel, processes were
not necessary. If you shocked, bewildered or frightened her with
accusations, sulks, or sneers, her light, innocent head was set in
such a whirl that the rest was easy. It was possible, upon the
whole, that the thing might not turn out so infernally ill after all.
Supposing that it had been Bettina who had been the marriageable
one! Appreciating to the full the many reasons for rejoicing that
she had not been, he walked in gloomy reflection home.