Chapter XXVIII. Setting Them Thinking

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Old Doby, sitting at his open window, with his pipe and
illustrated papers on the table by his side, began to find life a
series of thrills. The advantage of a window giving upon the village
street unspeakably increased. For many years he had preferred the
chimney corner greatly, and had rejoiced at the drawing in of winter
days when a fire must be well kept up, and a man might bend over it,
and rub his hands slowly gazing into the red coals or little pointed
flames which seemed the only things alive and worthy the watching.
The flames were blue at the base and yellow at the top, and jumped
looking merry, and caught at bits of black coal, and set them
crackling and throwing off splinters till they were ablaze and as
much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and entertainment
therefrom. There was naught else so good to live with. Nothing
happened in the street, and every dull face that passed was an old
story, and told an old tale of stupefying hard labour and hard
days.

But now the window was a better place to sit near. Carts went
by with men whistling as they walked by the horses heads. Loads of
things wanted for work at the Court. New faces passed faces of
workmen--sometimes grinning, "impident youngsters," who larked with
the young women, and called out to them as they passed their
cottages, if a good- looking one was loitering about her garden gate.
Old Doby chuckled at their love-making chaff, remembering dimly that
seventy years ago he had been just as proper a young chap, and had
made love in the same way. Lord, Lord, yes! He had been a bold
young chap as ever winked an eye. Then, too, there were the vans,
heavy-loaded and closed, and coming along slowly. Every few days, at
first, there had come a van from "Lunnon." Going to the Court, of
course. And to sit there, and hear the women talk about what might
be in them, and to try to guess one's self, that was a rare pastime.
Fine things going to the Court these days--furniture and grandeur
filling up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them look like
other big houses--same as Westerbridge even, so the women said. The
women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, and were
beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something more
interesting to talk about than children's worn-out shoes, and
whooping cough.

Doby heard everything first from them. "Dang the women, they
always knowed things fust." It was them as knowed about the smart
carriages as began to roll through the one village street. They were
gentry's carriages, with fine, stamping horses, and jingling silver
harness, and big coachmen, and tall footmen, and such like had long
ago dropped off showing themselves at Stornham.

"But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel, and what's
being done at the Court, and they know what it means," said young
Mrs. Doby. "And they want to see her, and find out what she's like.
It's her brings them."

Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what she was
like. That straight, slim back of hers, and the thick twist of black
hair, and the way she had of laughing at you, as cheery as if a bell
was ringing. Aye, he knew all about that.

"When they see her once, they'll come agen, for sure," he
quavered shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages
with vivid eagerness. If a day or two passed without his seeing one,
he grew fretful, and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being
neglected! "None to-day, nor yet yest'day," he would cackle. "What
be they folk a-doin'?"

Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to see it,
had struck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped in almost every
day to talk and sit at his window. She was a young thing, by
comparison, and could bring him lively news, and, indeed, so stir him
up with her gossip that he was in danger of becoming a young thing
himself. Her groceries and his tobacco were subjects whose interest
was undying.

A great curiosity had been awakened in the county, and visitors
came from distances greater than such as ordinarily include usual
calls. Naturally, one was curious about the daughter of the
Vanderpoel who was a sort of national institution in his own country.
His name had not been so much heard of in England when Lady
Anstruthers had arrived but there had, at first, been felt an
interest in her. But she had been a failure--a childish-looking
girl--whose thin, fair, prettiness had no distinction, and who was
obviously overwhelmed by her surroundings. She had evidently had no
influence over Sir Nigel, and had not been able to prevent his making
ducks and drakes of her money, which of course ought to have been
spent on the estate. Besides which a married woman represented fewer
potentialities than a handsome unmarried girl entitled to
expectations from huge American wealth.

So the carriages came and came again, and, stately or unstately
far-off neighbours sat at tea upon the lawn under the trees, and it
was observed that the methods and appointments of the Court had
entirely changed. Nothing looked new and American. The silently
moving men-servants could not have been improved upon, there was
plainly an excellent chef somewhere, and the massive silver was old
and wonderful. Upon everybody's word, the change was such as it was
worth a long drive merely to see!

The most wonderful thing, however, was Lady Anstruthers herself.
She had begun to grow delicately plump, her once drawn and haggard
face had rounded out, her skin had smoothed, and was actually
becoming pink and fair, a nimbus of pale fine hair puffed airily over
her forehead, and she wore the most charming little clothes, all of
which made her look fifteen years younger than she had seemed when,
on the grounds of ill-health, she had retired into seclusion. The
renewed relations with her family, the atmosphere by which she was
surrounded, had evidently given her a fresh lease of life, and
awakened in her a new courage.

When the summer epidemic of garden parties broke forth, old Doby
gleefully beheld, day after day, the Court carriage drive by bearing
her ladyship and her sister attired in fairest shades and tints "same
as if they was flowers." Their delicate vaporousness, and rare
colours, were sweet delights to the old man, and he and Mrs. Welden
spent happy evenings discussing them as personal possessions. To
these two Betty was a personal possession, bestowing upon them a
marked distinction. They were hers and she was theirs. No one else
so owned her. Heaven had given her to them that their last years
might be lighted with splendour.

On her way to one of the garden parties she stopped the carriage
before old Doby's cottage, and went in to him to speak a few words.
She was of pale convolvulus blue that afternoon, and Doby, standing
up touching his forelock and Mrs. Welden curtsying, gazed at her with
prayer in their eyes. She had a few flowers in her hand, and a book
of coloured photographs of Venice.

"These are pictures of the city I told you about--the city built
in the sea--where the streets are water. You and Mrs. Welden can
look at them together," she said, as she laid flowers and book down.
"I am going to Dunholm Castle to a garden party this afternoon. Some
day I will come and tell you about it."

The two were at the window staring spellbound, as she swept back
to the carriage between the sweet-williams and Canterbury bells
bordering the narrow garden path.

"Do you know I really went in to let them see my dress," she
said, when she rejoined Lady Anstruthers. "Old Doby's granddaughter
told me that he and Mrs. Welden have little quarrels about the
colours I wear. It seems that they find my wardrobe an absorbing
interest. When I put the book on the table, I felt Doby touch my
sleeve with his trembling old hand. He thought I did not know."

"What will they do with Venice?" asked Rosy.

"They will believe the water is as blue as the photographs make
it--and the palaces as pink. It will seem like a chapter out of
Revelations, which they can believe is true and not merely
`Scriptur,'--because I have been there. I wish I had been to the
City of the Gates of Pearl, and could tell them about that."

On the lawns at the garden parties she was much gazed at and
commented upon. Her height and her long slender neck held her head
above those of other girls, the dense black of her hair made a rich
note of shadow amid the prevailing English blondness. Her mere
colouring set her apart. Rosy used to watch her with tender wonder,
recalling her memory of nine-year-old Betty, with the long slim legs
and the demanding and accusing child-eyes. She had always been this
creature even in those far-off days. At the garden party at Dunholm
Castle it became evident that she was, after a manner, unusually the
central figure of the occasion. It was not at all surprising, people
said to each other. Nothing could have been more desirable for Lord
Westholt. He combined rank with fortune, and the Vanderpoel wealth
almost constituted rank in itself. Both Lord and Lady Dunholm seemed
pleased with the girl. Lord Dunholm showed her great attention.
When she took part in the dancing on the lawn, he looked on
delightedly. He walked about the gardens with her, and it was plain
to see that their conversation was not the ordinary polite effort to
accord, usually marking the talk between a mature man and a merely
pretty girl. Lord Dunholm sometimes laughed with unfeigned delight,
and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things.

"Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the
social census of the county," Lord Dunholm explained. "One invites
all one's neighbours and is invited again. It is a friendly duty one
owes."

"I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan," Betty answered. "Is he
here?"

She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan,
and she had looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his
son had done at Miss Vanderpoel's mention of the tabooed name. But,
being an older man, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a
rather long kind look.

"My dear young lady," he said, "did you expect to see him
here?"

"Yes, I think I did," Betty replied, with slow softness. "I
believe I rather hoped I should."

"Indeed! You are interested in him?"

"I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you
why."

She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together.
She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-haired
second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thought
that he was an unhappy, rough- looking young man, until the brief
moment in which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that
the other was to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst.
She had understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had
liked it. When she related the incident of her meeting with him when
she thought him a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened
with a changed and thoughtful expression. The effect produced upon
her imagination by what she had seen, her silent wandering through
the sad beauty of the wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly
to bear himself as a servant, his unintended self-revelations, her
clear, well-argued point of view charmed him. She had seen the thing
set apart from its county scandal, and so had read possibilities
others had been blind to. He was immensely touched by certain things
she said about the First Man.

"He is one of them," she said. "They find their way in the
end--they find their way. But just now he thinks there is none. He
is standing in the dark--where the roads meet."

"You think he will find his way?" Lord Dunholm said. "Why do
you think so? "

"Because I know he will," she answered. "But I cannot tell you
why I know."

"What you have said has been interesting to me, because of the
light your own thought threw upon what you saw. It has not been
Mount Dunstan I have been caring for, but for the light you saw him
in. You met him without prejudice, and you carried the light in your
hand. You always carry a light, my impression is," very quietly.
"Some women do."

"The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a proud
man to bear. Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?"

Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments.

"It is an extraordinary thing to reflect,"--his words came
slowly--"that it may not be a just prejudice. I do not know that he
has done anything--but seem rather sulky, and be the son of his
father, and the brother of his brother."

"And go to America," said Betty. "He could have avoided doing
that--but he cannot be called to account for his relations. If that
is all--the prejudice is not just."

"No, it is not," said Lord Dunholm, "and one feels rather
awkward at having shared it. You have set me thinking again, Miss
Vanderpoel."