Chapter X. "Is Lady Anstruthers at Home?"

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

All that she had brought with her to England, combined with what
she had called "sophistication," but which was rather her exquisite
appreciation of values and effects, she took with her when she went
the next day to Charing Cross Station and arranged herself at her
ease in the railway carriage, while her maid bought their tickets for
Stornham.

What the people in the station saw, the guards and porters, the
men in the book stalls, the travellers hurrying past, was a
striking-looking girl, whose colouring and carriage made one turn to
glance after her, and who, having bought some periodicals and papers,
took her place in a first-class compartment and watched the passersby
interestedly through the open window. Having been looked at and
remarked on during her whole life, Bettina did not find it disturbing
that more than one corduroy-clothed porter and fresh-coloured,
elderly gentleman, or freshly attired young one, having caught a
glimpse of her through her window, made it convenient to saunter past
or hover round. She looked at them much more frankly than they
looked at her. To her they were all specimens of the types she was
at present interested in. For practical reasons she was summing up
English character with more deliberate intention than she had felt in
the years when she had gradually learned to know Continental types
and differentiate such peculiarities as were significant of their
ranks and nations. As the first Reuben Vanderpoel had studied the
countenances and indicative methods of the inhabitants of the new
parts of the country in which it was his intention to do business, so
the modernity of his descendant applied itself to observation for
reasons parallel in nature though not in actual kind. As he had
brought beads and firewater to bear as agents upon savages who would
barter for them skins and products which might be turned into money,
so she brought her nineteenth-century beauty, steadfastness of
purpose and alertness of brain to bear upon the matter the practical
dealing with which was the end she held in view. To bear herself in
this matter with as practical a control of situations as that with
which her great-grandfather would have borne himself in making a
trade with a previously unknown tribe of Indians was quite her
intention, though it had not occurred to her to put it to herself in
any such form. Still, whether she was aware of the fact or not, her
point of view was exactly what the first Reuben Vanderpoel's had been
on many very different occasions. She had before her the task of
dealing with facts and factors of which at present she knew but
little. Astuteness of perception, self-command, and adaptability
were her chief resources. She was ready, either for calm, bold
approach, or equally calm and wholly non-committal retreat.

The perceptions she had brought with her filled her journey into
Kent with delicious things, delicious recognition of beauties she had
before known the existence of only through the reading of books, and
the dwelling upon their charms as reproduced, more or less perfectly,
on canvas. She saw roll by her, with the passing of the train, the
loveliness of land and picturesqueness of living which she had saved
for herself with epicurean intention for years. Her fancy, when
detached from her thoughts of her sister, had been epicurean, and she
had been quite aware that it was so. When she had left the suburbs
and those villages already touched with suburbanity behind, she felt
herself settle into a glow of luxurious enjoyment in the freshness of
her pleasure in the familiar, and yet unfamiliar, objects in the
thick-hedged fields, whose broad- branched, thick-foliaged oaks and
beeches were more embowering in their shade, and sweeter in their
green than anything she remembered that other countries had offered
her, even at their best. Within the fields the hawthorn hedges
beautifully enclosed were groups of resigned mother sheep with their
young lambs about them. The curious pointed tops of the red
hopkilns, piercing the trees near the farmhouses, wore an almost
intentional air of adding picturesque detail. There were clusters of
old buildings and dots of cottages and cottage gardens which made her
now and then utter exclamations of delight. Little inarticulate Rosy
had seen and felt it all twelve years before on her hopeless bridal
home-coming when Nigel had sat huddled unbecomingly in the corner of
the railway carriage. Her power of expression had been limited to
little joyful gasps and obvious laudatory adjectives, smothered in
their birth by her first glance at her bridegroom. Betty, in seeing
it, knew all the exquisiteness of her own pleasure, and all the
meanings of it.

Yes, it was England--England. It was the England of Constable
and Morland, of Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, the Brontes and George
Eliot. The land which softly rolled and clothed itself in the rich
verdure of many trees, sometimes in lovely clusters, sometimes in
covering copse, was Constable's; the ripe young woman with the
fat-legged children and the farmyard beasts about her, as she fed the
hens from the wooden piggin under her arm, was Morland's own. The
village street might be Miss Mitford's, the well-to-do house Jane
Austen's own fancy, in its warm brick and comfortable decorum. She
laughed a little as she thought it.

"That is American," she said, "the habit of comparing every
stick and stone and breathing thing to some literary parallel. We
almost invariably say that things remind us of pictures or
books--most usually books. It seems a little crude, but perhaps it
means that we are an intensely literary and artistic people."

She continued to find comparisons revealing to her their
appositeness, until her journey had ended by the train's slackening
speed and coming to a standstill before the rural-looking little
station which had presented its quaint aspect to Lady Anstruthers on
her home-coming of years before.

It had not, during the years which certainly had given time for
change, altered in the least. The station master had grown stouter
and more rosy, and came forward with his respectful, hospitable air,
to attend to the unusual-looking young lady, who was the only
first-class passenger. He thought she must be a visitor expected at
some country house, but none of the carriages, whose coachmen were
his familiar acquaintances, were in waiting. That such a fine young
lady should be paying a visit at any house whose owners did not send
an equipage to attend her coming, struck him as unusual. The
brougham from the "Crown," though a decent country town vehicle,
seemed inadequate. Yet, there it stood drawn up outside the station,
and she went to it with the manner of a young lady who had ordered
its attendance and knew it would be there.

Wells felt a good deal of interest. Among the many young ladies
who descended from the first-class compartments and passed through
the little waiting-room on their way to the carriages of the gentry
they were going to visit, he did not know when a young lady had
"caught his eye," so to speak, as this one did. She was not exactly
the kind of young lady one would immediately class mentally as "a
foreigner," but the blue of her eyes was so deep. and her hair and
eyelashes so dark, that these things, combining themselves with a
certain "way" she had, made him feel her to be of a type unfamiliar
to the region, at least.

He was struck, also, by the fact that the young lady had no maid
with her. The truth was that Bettina had purposely left her maid in
town. If awkward things occurred, the presence of an attendant would
be a sort of complication. It was better, on the first approach, to
be wholly unencumbered.

"How far are we from Stornham Court?" she inquired.

"Five miles, my lady," he answered, touching his cap. She
expressed something which to the rural and ingenuous, whose standards
were defined, demanded a recognition of probable rank.

"I'd like to know," was his comment to his wife when he went
home to dinner, "who has gone to Stornham Court to-day. There's few
enough visitors go there, and none such as her, for certain. She
don't live anywhere on the line above here, either, for I've never
seen her face before. She was a tall, handsome one--she was, but it
isn't just that made you look after her. She was a clever one with a
spirit, I'll be bound. I was wondering what her ladyship would have
to say to her."

"Perhaps she was one of his fine ladies?" suggestively.

"That she wasn't, either. And, as for that, I wonder what he'd
have to say to such as she is."

There was complexity of element enough in the thing she was on
her way to do, Bettina was thinking, as she was driven over the white
ribbon of country road that unrolled over rise and hollow, between
the sheep-dotted greenness of fields and the scented hedges. The
soft beauty enclosing her was a little shut out from her by her
mental attitude. She brought forward for her own decisions upon
suitable action a number of possible situations she might find
herself called upon to confront. The one thing necessary was that
she should be prepared for anything whatever, even for Rosy's not
being pleased to see her, or for finding Sir Nigel a thoroughly
reformed and amiable character

"It is the thing which seemingly cannot happen which one is most
likely to find one's self face to face with. It will be a little
awkward to arrange, if he has developed every domestic virtue, and is
delighted to see me."

Under such rather confusing conditions her plan would be to
present to them, as an affectionate surprise, the unheralded visit,
which might appear a trifle uncalled for. She felt happily sure of
herself under any circumstances not partaking of the nature of
collisions at sea. Yet she had not behaved absolutely ill at the
time of the threatened catastrophe in the Meridiana. Her
remembrance, an oddly sudden one, of the definite manner of the
red-haired second-class passenger, assured her of that. He had
certainly had all his senses about him, and he had spoken to her as a
person to be counted on.

Her pulse beat a little more hurriedly as the brougham entered
Stornham village. It was picturesque, but struck her as looking
neglected. Many of the cottages had an air of dilapidation. There
were many broken windows and unmended garden palings. A suggested
lack of whitewash in several cases was not cheerful.

"I know nothing of the duties of English landlords," she said,
looking through her carriage window, "but I should do it myself, if I
were Rosy."

She saw, as she was taken through the park gateway, that that
structure was out of order, and that damaged diamond panes peered out
from under the thickness of the ivy massing itself over the lodge.

"Ah!" was her thought, "it does not promise as it should. Happy
people do not let things fall to pieces."

Even winding avenue, and spreading sward, and gorse, and broom,
and bracken, enfolding all the earth beneath huge trees, were not
fair enough to remove a sudden remote fear which arose in her rapidly
reasoning mind. It suggested to her a point of view so new that,
while she was amazed at herself for not having contemplated it
before, she found herself wishing that the coachman would drive
rather more slowly, actually that she might have more time to
reflect.

They were nearing a dip in the park, where there was a lonely
looking pool. The bracken was thick and high there, and the sun,
which had just broken through a cloud, had pierced the trees with a
golden gleam.

A little withdrawn from this shaft of brightness stood two
figures, a dowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The woman held
some ferns in her hand, and the boy was sitting down and resting his
chin on his hands, which were folded on the top of a stick.

"Stop here for a moment," Bettina said to the coachman. "I want
to ask that woman a question."

She had thought that she might discover if her sister was at the
Court. She realised that to know would be a point of advantage. She
leaned forward and spoke.

"I beg your pardon," she said, "I wonder if you can tell
me----"

The woman came forward a little. She had a listless step and a
faded, listless face.

"What did you ask?" she said.

Betty leaned still further forward.

"Can you tell me----" she began and stopped. A sense of
stricture in the throat stopped her, as her eyes took in the
washed-out colour of the thin face, the washed-out colour of the thin
hair--thin drab hair, dragged in straight, hard unbecomingness from
the forehead and cheeks.

Was it true that her heart was thumping, as she had heard it
said that agitation made hearts thump?

She began again.

"Can you--tell me if--Lady Anstruthers is at home?" she
inquired. As she said it she felt the blood surge up from the
furious heart, and the hand she had laid on the handle of the door of
the brougham clutched it involuntarily.

The dowdy little woman answered her indifferently, staring at
her a little.

"I am Lady Anstruthers," she said.

Bettina opened the carriage door and stood upon the ground.

"Go on to the house," she gave order to the coachman, and, with
a somewhat startled look, he drove away.

"Rosy!" Bettina's voice was a hushed, almost awed, thing. "You
are Rosy?"

The faded little wreck of a creature began to look
frightened.

"Rosy!" she repeated, with a small, wry, painful smile.

She was the next moment held in the folding of strong, young
arms, against a quickly beating heart. She was being wildly kissed,
and the very air seemed rich with warmth and life.

"I am Betty," she heard. "Look at me, Rosy! I am Betty. Look
at me and remember!"

Lady Anstruthers gasped, and broke into a faint, hysteric laugh.
She suddenly clutched at Bettina's arm. For a minute her gaze was
wild as she looked up.

"Betty," she cried out. "No! No! No! I can't believe it! I
can't! I can't!"

That just this thing could have taken place in her, Bettina had
never thought. As she had reflected on her way from the station, the
impossible is what one finds one's self face to face with. Twelve
years should not have changed a pretty blonde thing of nineteen to a
worn, unintelligent-looking dowdy of the order of dowdiness which
seems to have lived beyond age and sex. She looked even stupid, or
at least stupefied. At this moment she was a silly, middle-aged
woman, who did not know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina
wondered if she was glad to see her, or only felt awkward and unequal
to the situation.

"I can't believe you," she cried out again, and began to shiver.
"Betty! Little Betty? No! No! it isn't!"

She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his stick,
and was staring.

"Ughtred! Ughtred!" she called to him. "Come! She says--she
says----"

She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid
her face in her spare hands and broke into sobbing.

"Oh, Betty! No!" she gasped. "It's so long ago--it's so far
away. You never came--no one--no one--came!"

The hunchbacked boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick.
He spoke like an elderly, affectionate gnome, not like a child.

"Don't do that, mother," he said. "Don't let it upset you so,
whatever it is."

"It's so long ago; it's so far away!" she wept, with catches in
her breath and voice. "You never came!"

Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like voice
was firm and clear.

"I have come now," she said. "And it is not far away. A cable
will reach father in two hours."

Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked at her
watch.

"If you spoke to mother by cable this moment," she added, with
accustomed coolness, and she felt her sister actually start as she
spoke, "she could answer you by five o'clock."

Lady Anstruther's start ended in a laugh and gasp more hysteric
than her first. There was even a kind of wan awakening in her face,
as she lifted it to look at the wonderful newcomer. She caught her
hand and held it, trembling, as she weakly laughed.

"It must be Betty," she cried. "That little stern way! It is
so like her. Betty--Betty--dear!" She fell into a sobbing, shaken
heap upon the heather. The harrowing thought passed through Betty's
mind that she looked almost like a limp bundle of shabby clothes.
She was so helpless in her pathetic, apologetic hysteria.

"I shall--be better," she gasped. "It's nothing. Ughtred, tell
her."

"She's very weak, really," said the boy Ughtred, in his mature
way. "She can't help it sometimes. I'll get some water from the
pool."

"Let me go," said Betty, and she darted down to the water. She
was back in a moment. The boy was rubbing and patting his mother's
hands tenderly.

"At any rate," he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection,
"father is not at home."