Chapter XXVII. Life

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Mount Dunstan, walking through the park next morning on his way to
the vicarage, just after post time, met Mr. Penzance himself coming
to make an equally early call at the Mount. Each of them had a
letter in his hand, and each met the other's glance with a smile.

"G. Selden," Mount Dunstan said. "And yours?"

"G. Selden also," answered the vicar. "Poor young fellow, what
ill-luck. And yet--is it ill-luck? He says not."

"He tells me it is not," said Mount Dunstan. "And I agree with
him."

Mr. Penzance read his letter aloud.

"DEAR SIR:

"This is to notify you that owing to my bike going back on me
when going down hill, I met with an accident in Stornham Park. Was
cut about the head and leg broken. Little Willie being far from home
and mother, you can see what sort of fix he'd been in if it hadn't
been for the kindness of Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters--Miss
Bettina and her sister Lady Anstruthers. The way they've had me
taken care of has been great. I've been under a nurse and doctor
same as if I was Albert Edward with appendycytus (I apologise if
that's not spelt right). Dear Sir, this is to say that I asked Miss
Vanderpoel if I should be butting in too much if I dropped a line to
ask if you could spare the time to call and see me. It would be
considered a favour and appreciated by

"G. SELDEN,
"Delkoff Typewriter Co.
Broadway.

"P. S. Have already sold three Delkoffs to Miss Vanderpoel."

"Upon my word," Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour
quite glowed, "I like that queer young fellow-- I like him. He does
not wish to `butt in too much.' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy
in that. And what a humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some
butting animal--a goat, I seem to see, preferably--forcing its way
into a group or closed circle of persons."

His gleeful analysis of the phrase had such evident charm for
him that Mount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G.
Selden had done at the adroit mention of Weber & Fields.

"Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour
with G. Selden, surrounded by the atmosphere of Reuben S. Vanderpoel,
would be a cheering thing," he said.

"It would," Mr. Penzance answered. "Let us go by all means. We
should not, I suppose," with keen delight, "be `butting in' upon Lady
Anstruthers too early?" He was quite enraptured with his own
aptness. "Like G. Selden, I should not like to `butt in,' " he
added.

The scent and warmth and glow of a glorious morning filled the
hour. Combining themselves with a certain normal human gaiety which
surrounded the mere thought of G. Selden, they were good things for
Mount Dunstan. Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed
a big young laugh, which had, perhaps tended to the waking in him of
the feeling he was suddenly conscious of--that a six-mile ride over a
white, tree-dappled, sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after
all, if at the end of the gallop one came again upon that other in
whom life was strong and young, and bloomed on rose-cheek and was the
far fire in the blue deeps of lovely eyes, and the slim straightness
of the fair body, why would it not be, in a way, all to the good? He
had thought of her on more than one day, and felt that he wanted to
see her again.

"Let us go," he answered Penzance. "One can call on an invalid
at any time. Lady Anstruthers will forgive us."

In less than an hour's time they were on their way. They
laughed and talked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a
cheerful ringing accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing
more exhilarating than the hollow, regular ring and click-clack of
good hoofs going well over a fine old Roman road in the morning
sunlight. They talked of the junior assistant salesman and of Miss
Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased by the prospect of seeing
"this delightful and unusual girl." He had heard stories of her, as
had Lord Westholt. He knew of old Doby's pipe, and of Mrs. Welden's
respite from the Union, and though such incidents would seem mere
trifles to the dweller in great towns, he had himself lived and done
his work long enough in villages to know the village mind and the
scale of proportions by which its gladness and sadness were measured.
He knew more of all this than Mount Dunstan could, since Mount
Dunstan's existence had isolated itself, from rather gloomy choice.
But as he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these
things. There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in
them, and such suggestion was good for any man--or woman, either--who
had fallen into living in a dull, narrow groove.

"It is the new life in her which strikes me," he said. "She has
brought wealth with her, and wealth is power to do the good or evil
that grows in a man's soul; but she has brought something more. She
might have come here and brought all the sumptuousness of a
fashionable young beauty, who drove through the village and drew
people to their windows, and made clodhoppers scratch their heads and
pull their forelocks, and children bob curtsies and stare. She might
have come and gone and left a mind-dazzling memory and nothing else.
A few sovereigns tossed here and there would have earned her a
reputation--but, by gee! to quote Selden--she has begun living with
them, as if her ancestors had done it for six hundred years. And
what I see is that if she had come without a penny in her pocket she
would have done the same thing." He paused a pondering moment, and
then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamation in itself. "She's
Life!" he said. "She's Life itself! Good God! what a thing it is
for a man or woman to be Life--instead of a mass of tissue and muscle
and nerve, dragged about by the mere mechanism of living!"

Penzance had listened seriously.

"What you say is very suggestive," he commented. "It strikes me
as true, too. You have seen something of her also, at least more
than I have."

"I did not think these things when I saw her--though I suppose I
felt them unconsciously. I have reached this way of summing her up
by processes of exclusion and inclusion. One hears of her, as you
know yourself, and one thinks her over."

"You have thought her over?"

"A lot," rather grumpily. "A beautiful female creature
inevitably gives an unbeautiful male creature something to think
of--if he is not otherwise actively employed. I am not. She has
become a sort of dawning relief to my hopeless humours. Being a low
and unworthy beast, I am sometimes resentful enough of the unfairness
of things. She has too much."

When they rode through Stornham village they saw signs of work
already done and work still in hand. There were no broken windows or
palings or hanging wicket gates; cottage gardens had been put in
order, and there were evidences of such cheering touches as new bits
of window curtain and strong-looking young plants blooming between
them. So many small, but necessary, things had been done that the
whole village wore the aspect of a place which had taken heart, and
was facing existence in a hopeful spirit. A year ago Mount Dunstan
and his vicar riding through it had been struck by its neglected and
dispirited look.

As they entered the hall of the Court Miss Vanderpoel was
descending the staircase. She was laughing a little to herself, and
she looked pleased when she saw them.

"It is good of you to come," she said, as they crossed the hall
to the drawing-room. "But I told him I really thought you would. I
have just been talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to
whether he had assumed too much."

"As to whether he had `butted in,' " said Mr. Penzance. "I
think he must have said that."

"He did. He also was afraid that he might have been `too
fresh.' " answered Betty.

"On our part," said Mr. Penzance, with gentle glee, "we
hesitated a moment in fear lest we also might appear to be `butting
in.' "

Then they all laughed together. They were laughing when Lady
Anstruthers entered, and she herself joined them. But to Mount
Dunstan, who felt her to be somehow a touching little person, there
was manifest a tenderness in her feeling for G. Selden. For that
matter, however, there was something already beginning to be rather
affectionate in the attitude of each of them. They went upstairs to
find him lying in state upon a big sofa placed near a window, and his
joy at the sight of them was a genuine, human thing. In fact, he had
pondered a good deal in secret on the possibility of these swell
people thinking he had "more than his share of gall" to expect them
to remember him after he passed on his junior assistant salesman's
way. Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters were of the highest of his
Four Hundred, but they were Americans, and Americans were not as a
rule so "stuck on themselves" as the English. And here these two
swells came as friendly as you please. And that nice old chap that
was a vicar, smiling and giving him "the glad hand"!

Betty and Mount Dunstan left Mr. Penzance talking to the
convalescent after a short time. Mount Dunstan had asked to be shown
the gardens. He wanted to see the wonderful things he had heard had
been already done to them.

They went down the stairs together and passed through the
drawing-room into the pleasure grounds. The once neglected lawns had
already been mown and rolled, clipped and trimmed, until they spread
before the eye huge measures of green velvet; even the beds girdling
and adorning them were brilliant with flowers.

"Kedgers!" said Betty, waving her hand. "In my ignorance I
thought we must wait for blossoms until next year; but it appears
that wonders can be brought all ready to bloom for one from nursery
gardens, and can be made to grow with care--and daring--and
passionate affection. I have seen Kedgers turn pale with anguish as
he hung over a bed of transplanted things which seemed to droop too
long. They droop just at first, you know, and then they slowly lift
their heads, slowly, as if to listen to a Voice calling--calling.
Once I sat for quite a long time before a rose, watching it. When I
saw it begin to listen, I felt a little trembling pass over my body.
I seemed to be so strangely near to such a strange thing. It was
Life--Life coming back--in answer to what we cannot hear."

She had begun lightly, and then her voice had changed. It was
very quiet at the end of her speaking. Mount Dunstan simply repeated
her last words.

"To what we cannot hear."

"One feels it so much in a garden," she said. "I have never
lived in a garden of my own. This is not mine, but I have been
living in it--with Kedgers. One is so close to Life in it-- the
stirring in the brown earth, the piercing through of green spears,
that breaking of buds and pouring forth of scent! Why shouldn't one
tremble, if one thinks? I have stood in a potting shed and watched
Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp rich mould and scatter over it a
thin layer of infinitesimal seeds; then he moistens them and carries
them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse. The ledges in
Kedgers' green- houses are altars. I think he offers prayers before
them. Why not? I should. And when one comes to see them, the moist
seeds are swelled to fulness, and when one comes again they are
bursting. And the next time, tiny green things are curling outward.
And, at last, there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale

green stems and leaves. And one is standing close to the Secret
of the World! And why should not one prostrate one's self, breathing
softly--and touching one's awed forehead to the earth?"

Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her--a pause in his
step--they were walking down a turfed path, and over their heads
meeting branches of new leaves hung. Something in his movement made
her turn and pause also. They both paused --and quite
unknowingly.

"Do you know," he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, "that
as we were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you were
Life--you!"

For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her--their
eyes involuntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly
glowing in the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down
in the song of a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away,
something in the warmed incense of blossoms near them, was
calling--calling in the Voice, though they did not know they heard.
Strangely, a splendid blush rose in a fair flood under her skin. She
was conscious of it, and felt a second's amazed impatience that she
should colour like a schoolgirl suspecting a compliment. He did not
look at her as a man looks who has made a pretty speech. His eyes
met hers straight and thoughtfully, and he repeated his last words as
he had before repeated hers.

"That you were Life--you!"

The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely.
Her feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had
done.

"I am glad you said that!" she answered. "It was a beautiful
thing to say. I have often thought that I should like it to be
true."

"It is true," he said.

Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and
its nest in the meadow, and they walked on.

She learned from him, as they walked together, and he also
learned from her, in a manner which built for them as they went from
point to point, a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually,
during their ramble, tending to make discussion and question
possible. Her intelligent and broad interest in the work on the
estate, her frank desire to acquire such practical information as she
lacked, aroused in himself an interest he had previously seen no
reason that he should feel. He realised that his outlook upon the
unusual situation was being illuminated by an intelligence at once
brilliant and fine, while it was also full of nice shading. The
situation, of course, was unusual. A beautiful young sister-in-law
appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-used estate, and
restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellow who was a
blackguard should have set in order years ago. That Lady
Anstruthers' money should have rescued her boy's inheritance instead
of being spent upon lavish viciousness went without saying. What
Mount Dunstan was most struck by was the perfect clearness, and its
combination with a certain judicial good breeding, in Miss
Vanderpoel's view of the matter. She made no confidences,
beautifully candid as her manner was, but he saw that she clearly
understood the thing she was doing, and that if her sister had had no
son she would not have done this, but something totally different.
He had an idea that Lady Anstruthers would have been swiftly and
lightly swept back to New York, and Sir Nigel left to his own
devices, in which case Stornham Court and its village would gradually
have crumbled to decay. It was for Sir Ughtred Anstruthers the place
was being restored. She was quite clear on the matter of entail. He
wondered at first--not unnaturally--how a girl had learned certain
things she had an obviously clear knowledge of. As they continued to
converse he learned. Reuben S. Vanderpoel was without doubt a man
remarkable not only in the matter of being the owner of vast wealth.
The rising flood of his millions had borne him upon its strange
surface a thinking, not an unthinking being--in fact, a strong and
fine intelligence. His thousands of miles of yearly journeying in
his sumptuous private car had been the means of his accumulating not
merely added gains, but ideas, points of view, emotions, a human
outlook worth counting as an asset. His daughter, when she had
travelled with him, had seen and talked with him of all he himself
had seen. When she had not been his companion she had heard from him
afterwards all best worth hearing. She had become--without any
special process--familiar with the technicalities of huge business
schemes, with law and commerce and political situations. Even her
childish interest in the world of enterprise and labour had been
passionate. So she had acquired--inevitably, while almost
unconsciously--a remarkable education.

"If he had not been himself he might easily have grown tired of
a little girl constantly wanting to hear things-- constantly asking
questions," she said. "But he did not get tired. We invented a
special knock on the door of his private room. It said, `May I come
in, father?' If he was busy he answered with one knock on his desk,
and I went away. If he had time to talk he called out, `Come,
Betty,' and I went to him. I used to sit upon the floor and lean
against his knee. He had a beautiful way of stroking my hair or my
hand as he talked. He trusted me. He told me of great things even
before he had talked of them to men. He knew I would never speak of
what was said between us in his room. That was part of his trust.
He said once that it was a part of the evolution of race, that men
had begun to expect of women what in past ages they really only
expected of each other."

Mount Dunstan hesitated before speaking.

"You mean--absolute faith--apart from affection?"

"Yes. The power to be quite silent, even when one is tempted to
speak--if to speak might betray what it is wiser to keep to one's
self because it is another man's affair. The kind of thing which is
good faith among business men. It applies to small things as much as
to large, and to other things than business."

Mount Dunstan, recalling his own childhood and his own father,
felt again the pressure of the remote mental suggestion that she had
had too much, a childhood and girlhood like this, the affection and
companionship of a man of large and ordered intelligence, of clear
and judicial outlook upon an immense area of life and experience.
There was no cause for wonder that her young womanhood was all it
presented to himself, as well as to others. Recognising the shadow
of resentment in his thought, he swept it away, an inward sense
making it clear to him that if their positions had been reversed, she
would have been more generous than himself.

He pulled himself together with an unconscious movement of his
shoulders. Here was the day of early June, the gold of the sun in
its morning, the green shadows, the turf they walked on together, the
skylark rising again from the meadow and showering down its song.
Why think of anything else. What a line that was which swept from
her chin down her long slim throat to its hollow! The colour between
the velvet of her close-set lashes--the remembrance of her curious
splendid blush--made the man's lost and unlived youth come back to
him. What did it matter whether she was American or English--what
did it matter whether she was insolently rich or beggarly poor? He
would let himself go and forget all but the pleasure of the sight and
hearing of her.

So as they went they found themselves laughing together and
talking without restraint. They went through the flower and kitchen
gardens; they saw the once fallen wall rebuilt now with the old
brick; they visited the greenhouses and came upon Kedgers entranced
with business, but enraptured at being called upon to show his
treasures. His eyes, turning magnetised upon Betty, revealed the
story of his soul. Mount Dunstan remarked that when he spoke to her
of his flowers it was as if there existed between them the sympathy
which might be engendered between two who had sat up together night
after night with delicate children.

"He's stronger to-day, miss," he said, as they paused before a
new wonderful bloom. "What he's getting now is good for him. I had
to change his food, miss, but this seems all right. His colour's
better."

Betty herself bent over the flower as she might have bent over a
child. Her eyes softened, she touched a leaf with a slim finger, as
delicately as if it had been a new-born baby's cheek. As Mount
Dunstan watched her he drew a step nearer to her side. For the first
time in his life he felt the glow of a normal and simple pleasure
untouched by any bitterness.