Chapter XXX. A Return

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

At the close of a long, warm afternoon Betty Vanderpoel came out
upon the square stone terrace overlooking the gardens, and that part
of the park which, enclosing them, caused them, as they melted into
its greenness, to lose all limitations and appear to be only a more
blooming bit of the landscape.

Upon the garden Betty's eyes dwelt, as she stood still for some
minutes taking in their effect thoughtfully.

Kedgers had certainly accomplished much. His close- trimmed
lawns did him credit, his flower beds were flushed and azured,
purpled and snowed with bloom. Sweet tall spires, hung with blue or
white or rosy flower bells, lifted their heads above the colour of
lower growths. Only the fervent affection, the fasting and prayer of
a Kedgers could have done such wonders with new things and old. The
old ones he had cherished and allured into a renewal of existence--
the new ones he had so coaxed out of their earthen pots into the
soil, luxuriously prepared for their reception, and had afterwards so
nourished and bedewed with soft waterings, so supported, watched over
and adored that they had been almost unconscious of their
transplanting. Without assistants he could have done nothing, but he
had been given a sufficient number of under gardeners, and had even
managed to inspire them with something of his own ambition and
solicitude. The result was before Betty's eyes in an aspect which,
to such as knew the gardens well,--the Dunholms, for instance,--was
astonishing in its success.

"I've had privileges, miss, and so have the flowers," Kedgers
had said warmly, when Miss Vanderpoel had reported to him, for his
encouragement, Dunholm Castle's praise. "Not one of 'em has ever had
to wait for his food and drink, nor to complain of his bed not being
what he was accustomed to. They've not had to wait for rain, for
we've given it to 'em from watering cans, and, thank goodness, the
season's been kind to 'em."

Betty, descending the terrace steps, wandered down the paths
between the flower beds, glancing about her as she went. The air of
neglect and desolation had been swept away. Buttle and Tim Soames
had been given as many privileges as Kedgers. The chief points
impressed upon them had been that the work must be done, not only
thoroughly, but quickly. As many additional workmen as they
required, as much solid material as they needed, but there must be a
despatch which at first it staggered them to contemplate. They had
not known such methods before. They had been accustomed to work
under money limitation throughout their lives, and, when work must be
done with insufficient aid, it must be done slowly. Economy had been
the chief factor in all calculations, speed had not entered into
them, so leisureliness had become a fixed habit. But it seemed
American to sweep leisureliness away into space with a free
gesture.

"It must be done quickly," Miss Vanderpoel had said. "If ten
men cannot do it quickly enough, you must have twenty--or as many
more as are needed. It is time which must be saved just now."

Time more than money, it appeared. Buttle's experience had been
that you might take time, if you did not charge for it. When time
began to mean money, that was a different matter. If you did work by
the job, you might drive in a few nails, loiter, and return without
haste; if you worked by the hour, your absence would be inquired
into. In the present case no one could loiter. That was realised
early. The tall girl, with the deep straight look at you, made you
realise that without spoken words. She expected energy something
like her own. She was a new force and spurred them. No man knew how
it was done, but, when she appeared among them--even in the
afternoon--"lookin' that womany," holding up her thin dress over lace
petticoats, the like of which had not been seen before, she looked on
with just the same straight, expecting eyes. They did not seem to
doubt in the least that she would find that great advance had been
made.

So advance had been made, and work accomplished. As Betty
walked from one place to another she saw the signs of it with
gratification. The place was not the one she had come to a few
months ago. Hothouses, outbuildings, stables were in repair. Work
was still being done in different places. In the house itself
carpenters or decorators were enclosed in some rooms, and at their
business, but exterior order prevailed. In the courtyard stablemen
were at work, and her own groom came forward touching his forehead.
She paid a visit to the horses. They were fine creatures, and, when
she entered their stalls, made room for her and whinnied gently, in
well-founded expectation of sugar and bread which were kept in a
cupboard awaiting her visits. She smoothed velvet noses and patted
satin sides, talking to Mason a little before she went her way.

Then she strolled into the park. The park was always a
pleasure. She was in a thoughtful mood, and the soft green shadowed
silence lured her. The summer wind hus-s-shed the branches as it
lightly waved them, the brown earth of the avenue was sun-dappled,
there were bird notes and calls to be heard here and there and
everywhere, if one only arrested one's attention a moment to listen.
And she was in a listening and dreaming mood--one of the moods in
which bird, leaf, and wind, sun, shade, and scent of growing things
have part.

And yet her thoughts were of mundane things.

It was on this avenue that G. Selden had met with his accident.
He was still at Dunstan vicarage, and yesterday Mount Dunstan, in
calling, had told them that Mr. Penzance was applying himself with
delighted interest to a study of the manipulation of the Delkoff.

The thought of Mount Dunstan brought with it the thought of her
father. This was because there was frequently in her mind a
connection between the two. How would the man of schemes, of wealth,
and power almost unbounded, regard the man born with a load about his
neck--chained to earth by it, standing in the midst of his hungering
and thirsting possessions, his hands empty of what would feed them
and restore their strength? Would he see any solution of the
problem? She could imagine his looking at the situation through his
gaze at the man, and considering both in his summing up.

"Circumstances and the man," she had heard him say. "But always
the man first."

Being no visionary, he did not underestimate the power of
circumstance. This Betty had learned from him. And what could
practically be done with circumstance such as this? The question had
begun to recur to her. What could she herself have done in the care
of Rosy and Stornham, if chance had not placed in her hand the
strongest lever? What she had accomplished had been easy--easy. All
that had been required had been the qualities which control of the
lever might itself tend to create in one. Given--by mere chance
again--imagination and initiative, the moving of the lever did the
rest. If chance had not been on one's side, what then? And where
was this man's chance? She had said to Rosy, in speaking of the
wealth of America, "Sometimes one is tired of it." And Rosy had
reminded her that there were those who were not tired of it, who
could bear some of the burden of it, if it might be laid on their own
shoulders. The great beautiful, blind-faced house, awaiting its slow
doom in the midst of its lonely unfed lands--what could save it, and
all it represented of race and name, and the stately history of men,
but the power one professed to call base and sordid--mere money? She
felt a sudden impatience at herself for having said she was tired of
it. That was a folly which took upon itself the aspect of an
affectation.

And, if a man could not earn money--or go forth to rob richer
neighbours of it as in the good old marauding days-- or accept it if
it were offered to him as a gift--what could he do? Nothing. If he
had been born a village labourer, he could have earned by the work of
his hands enough to keep his cottage roof over him, and have held up
his head among his fellows. But for such as himself there was no
mere labour which would avail. He had not that rough honest
resource. Only the decent living and orderly management of the
generations behind him would have left to him fairly his own chance
to hold with dignity the place in the world into which Fate had
thrust him at the outset--a blind, newborn thing of whom no
permission had been asked.

"If I broke stones upon the highway for twelve hours a day, I
might earn two shillings," he had said to Betty, on the previous day.
"I could break stones well," holding out a big arm, "but fourteen
shillings a week will do no more than buy bread and bacon for a
stonebreaker."

He was ordinarily rather silent and stiff in his conversational
attitude towards his own affairs. Betty sometimes wondered how she
herself knew so much about them--how it happened that her thoughts so
often dwelt upon them. The explanation she had once made to herself
had been half irony, half serious reflection.

"It is a result of the first Reuben Vanderpoel. It is because I
am of the fighting commercial stock, and, when I see a business
problem, I cannot leave it alone, even when it is no affair of
mine."

As an exposition of the type of the commercial fighting-stock
she presented, as she paused beneath overshadowing trees, an aspect
beautifully suggesting a far different thing.

She stood--all white from slim shoe to tilted parasol,--and
either the result of her inspection of the work done by her order, or
a combination of her summer-day mood with her feeling for the
problem, had given her a special radiance. It glowed on lip and
cheek, and shone in her Irish eyes.

She had paused to look at a man approaching down the avenue. He
was not a labourer, and she did not know him. Men who were not
labourers usually rode or drove, and this one was walking. He was
neither young nor old, and, though at a distance his aspect was not
attracting, she found that she regarded him curiously, and waited for
him to draw nearer.

The man himself was glancing about him with a puzzled look and
knitted forehead. When he had passed through the village he had seen
things he had not expected to see; when he had reached the entrance
gate, and--for reasons of his own --dismissed his station trap, he
had looked at the lodge scrutinisingly, because he was not prepared
for its picturesque trimness. The avenue was free from weeds and in
order, the two gates beyond him were new and substantial. As he went
on his way and reached the first, he saw at about a hundred yards
distance a tall girl in white standing watching him. Things which
were not easily explainable always irritated him. That this
place--which was his own affair--should present an air of mystery,
did not improve his humour, which was bad to begin with. He had
lately been passing through unpleasant things, which had left him
feeling himself tricked and made ridiculous--as only women can trick
a man and make him ridiculous, he had said to himself. And there had
been an acrid consolation in looking forward to the relief of venting
one's self on a woman who dare not resent.

"What has happened, confound it!" he muttered, when he caught
sight of the girl. "Have we set up a house party?" And then, as he
saw more distinctly, "Damn! What a figure!"

By this time Betty herself had begun to see more clearly.
Surely this was a face she remembered--though the passing of years
and ugly living had thickened and blurred, somewhat, its always heavy
features. Suddenly she knew it, and the look in its eyes--the look
she had, as a child, unreasoningly hated.

Nigel Anstruthers had returned from his private holiday.

As she took a few quiet steps forward to meet him, their eyes
rested on each other. After a night or two in town his were slightly
bloodshot, and the light in them was not agreeable.

It was he who spoke first, and it is possible that he did not
quite intend to use the expletive which broke from him. But he was
remembering things also. Here were eyes he, too, had seen
before--twelve years ago in the face of an objectionable, long-legged
child in New York. And his own hatred of them had been founded in
his own opinion on the best of reasons. And here they gazed at him
from the face of a young beauty--for a beauty she was.

"Damn it!" he exclaimed; "it is Betty."

"Yes," she answered, with a faint, but entirely courteous,
smile. "It is. I hope you are very well."

She held out her hand. "A delicious hand," was what he said to
himself, as he took it. And what eyes for a girl to have in her head
were those which looked out at him between shadows. Was there a hint
of the devil in them? He thought so--he hoped so, since she had
descended on the place in this way. But what the devil was the
meaning of her being on the spot at all? He was, however, far beyond
the lack of astuteness which might have permitted him to express this
last thought at this particular juncture. He was only betrayed into
stupid mistakes, afterwards to be regretted, when rage caused him
utterly to lose control of his wits. And, though he was startled and
not exactly pleased, he was not in a rage now. The eyelashes and the
figure gave an agreeable fillip to his humour. Howsoever she had
come, she was worth looking at.

"How could one expect such a delightful thing as this?" he said,
with a touch of ironic amiability. "It is more than one
deserves."

"It is very polite of you to say that," answered Betty.

He was thinking rapidly as he stood and gazed at her. There
were, in truth, many things to think of under circumstances so
unexpected.

"May I ask you to excuse my staring at you?" he inquired with
what Rosy had called his "awful, agreeable smile." "When I saw you
last you were a fierce nine-year-old American child. I use the word
`fierce' because--if you'll pardon my saying so--there was a certain
ferocity about you."

"I have learned at various educational institutions to conceal
it," smiled Betty.

"May I ask when you arrived?"

"A short time after you went abroad."

"Rosalie did not inform me of your arrival."

"She did not know your address. You had forgotten to leave
it."

He had made a mistake and realised it. But she presented to him
no air of having observed his slip. He paused a few seconds, still
regarding her and still thinking rapidly. He recalled the mended
windows and roofs and palings in the village, the park gates and
entrance. Who the devil had done all that? How could a mere
handsome girl be concerned in it? And yet--here she was.

"When I drove through the village," he said next, "I saw that
some remarkable changes had taken place on my property. I feel as if
you can explain them to me."

"I hope they are changes which meet with your approval."

"Quite--quite," a little curtly. "Though I confess they mystify
me. Though I am the son-in-law of an American multimillionaire, I
could not afford to make such repairs myself."

A certain small spitefulness which was his most frequent undoing
made it impossible for him to resist adding the innuendo in his last
sentence. And again he saw it was a folly. The impersonal tone of
her reply simply left him where he had placed himself.

"We were sorry not to be able to reach you. As it seemed well
to begin the work at once, we consulted Messrs. Townlinson &
Sheppard."

"We?" he repeated. "Am I to have the pleasure," with a slight
wryness of the mouth, "of finding Mr. Vanderpoel also at
Stornham?"

"No--not yet. As I was on the spot, I saw your solicitors and
asked their advice and approval--for my father. If he had known how
necessary the work was, it would have been done before, for Ughtred's
sake."

Her voice was that of a person who, in stating obvious facts,
provides no approach to enlightening comment upon them. And there
was in her manner the merest gracious impersonality.

"Do I understand that Mr. Vanderpoel employed someone to visit
the place and direct the work?"

"It was really not difficult to direct. It was merely a matter
of engaging labour and competent foremen."

An odd expression rose in his eyes.

"You suggest a novel idea, upon my word," he said. "Is it
possible--you see I know something of America--is it possible I must
thank you for the working of this magic?"

"You need not thank me," she said, rather slowly, because it was
necessary that she also should think of many things at once. "I
could not have helped doing it."

She wished to make all clear to him before he met Rosy. She
knew it was not unnatural that the unexpectedness of his appearance
might deprive Lady Anstruthers of presence of mind. Instinct told
her that what was needed in intercourse with him was, above all
things, presence of mind.

"I will tell you about it," she said. "We will walk slowly up
and down here, if you do not object."

He did not object. He wanted to hear the story as he could not
hear it from his nervous little fool of a wife, who would be
frightened into forgetting things and their sequence. What he meant
to discover was where he stood in the matter--where his father-in-law
stood, and, rather specially, to have a chance to sum up the
weaknesses and strengths of the new arrival. That would be to his
interest. In talking this thing over she would unconsciously reveal
how much vanity or emotion or inexperience he might count upon as
factors safe to use in one's dealings with her in the future.

As he listened he was supported by the fact that he did not lose
consciousness of the eyes and the figure. But for these it is
probable that he would have gone blind with fury at certain points
which forced themselves upon him. The first was that there had been
an absurd and immense expenditure which would simply benefit his son
and not himself. He could not sell or borrow money on what had been
given. Apparently the place had been re-established on a footing
such as it had not rested upon during his own generation, or his
father's. As he loathed life in the country, it was not he who would
enjoy its luxury, but his wife and her child. The second point was
that these people--this girl--had somehow had the sharpness to put
themselves in the right, and to place him in a position at which he
could not complain without putting himself in the wrong. Public
opinion would say that benefits had been heaped upon him, that the
correct thing had been done correctly with the knowledge and approval
of the legal advisers of his family. It had been a masterly thing,
that visit to Townlinson & Sheppard. He was obliged to aid his
self-control by a glance at the eyelashes. She was a new sort of
girl, this Betty, whose childhood he had loathed, and, to his jaded
taste, novelty appealed enormously. Her attraction for him was also
added to by the fact that he was not at all sure that there was not
combined with it a pungent spice of the old detestation. He was
repelled as well as allured. She represented things which he hated.
First, the mere material power, which no man can bully, whatsoever
his humour. It was the power he most longed for and, as he could not
hope to possess it, most sneered at and raged against. Also, as she
talked, it was plain that her habit of self-control and her sense of
resource would be difficult to deal with. He was a survival of the
type of man whose simple creed was that women should not possess
resources, as when they possessed them they could rarely be made to
behave themselves.

But while he thought these things, he walked by her side and
both listened and talked smiling the agreeable smile.

"You will pardon my dull bewilderment," he said. "It is not
unnatural, is it--in a mere outsider?"

And Betty, with the beautiful impersonal smile, said:

"We felt it so unfortunate that even your solicitors did not
know your address."

When, at length, they turned and strolled towards the house, a
carriage was drawing up before the door, and at the sight of it,
Betty saw her companion slightly lift his eyebrows. Lady Anstruthers
had been out and was returning. The groom got down from the box, and
two men-servants appeared upon the steps. Lady Anstruthers
descended, laughing a little as she talked to Ughtred, who had been
with her. She was dressed in clear, pale grey, and the soft rose
lining of her parasol warmed the colour of her skin.

Sir Nigel paused a second and put up his glass.

"Is that my wife?" he said. "Really! She quite recalls New
York."

The agreeable smile was on his lips as he hastened forward. He
always more or less enjoyed coming upon Rosalie suddenly. The
obvious result was a pleasing tribute to his power.

Betty, following him, saw what occurred.

Ughtred saw him first, and spoke quick and low.

"Mother!" he said.

The tone of his voice was evidently enough. Lady Anstruthers
turned with an unmistakable start. The rose lining of her parasol
ceased to warm her colour. In fact, the parasol itself stepped
aside, and she stood with a blank, stiff, white face.

"My dear Rosalie," said Sir Nigel, going towards her. "You
don't look very glad to see me."

He bent and kissed her quite with the air of a devoted husband.
Knowing what the caress meant, and seeing Rosy's face as she
submitted to it, Betty felt rather cold. After the conjugal greeting
he turned to Ughtred.

"You look remarkably well," he said.

Betty came forward.

"We met in the park, Rosy," she explained. "We have been
talking to each other for half an hour."

The atmosphere which had surrounded her during the last three
months had done much for Lady Anstruthers' nerves. She had the power
to recover herself. Sir Nigel himself saw this when she spoke.

"I was startled because I was not expecting to see you," she
said. "I thought you were still on the Riviera. I hope you had a
pleasant journey home."

"I had an extraordinarily pleasant surprise in finding your
sister here," he answered. And they went into the house.

In descending the staircase on his way to the drawing-room
before dinner, Sir Nigel glanced about him with interested curiosity.
If the village had been put in order, something more had been done
here. Remembering the worn rugs and the bald- headed tiger, he
lifted his brows. To leave one's house in a state of resigned
dilapidation and return to find it filled with all such things as
comfort combined with excellent taste might demand, was an enlivening
experience--or would have been so under some circumstances. As
matters stood, perhaps, he might have felt better pleased if things
had been less well done. But they were very well done. They had
managed to put themselves in the right in this also. The rich
sobriety of colour and form left no opening for supercilious
comment--which was a neat weapon it was annoying to be robbed of.

The drawing-room was fresh, brightly charming, and full of
flowers. Betty was standing before an open window with her sister.
His wife's shoulders, he observed at once, had absolutely begun to
suggest contours. At all events, her bones no longer stuck out. But
one did not look at one's wife's shoulders when one could turn from
them to a fairness of velvet and ivory. "You know," he said,
approaching them, "I find all this very amazing. I have been looking
out of my window on to the gardens."

"It is Betty who has done it all," said Rosy.

"I did not suspect you of doing it, my dear Rosalie," smiling.
"When I saw Betty standing in the avenue, I knew at once that it was
she who had mended the chimney-pots in the village and rehung the
gates."

For the present, at least, it was evident that he meant to be
sufficiently amiable. At the dinner table he was conversational and
asked many questions, professing a natural interest in what had been
done. It was not difficult to talk to a girl whose eyes and
shoulders combined themselves with a quick wit and a power to attract
which he reluctantly owned he had never seen equalled. His
reluctance arose from the fact that such a power complicated matters.
He must be on the defensive until he knew what she was going to do,
what he must do himself, and what results were probable or possible.
He had spent his life in intrigue of one order or another. He
enjoyed outwitting people and rather preferred to attain an end by
devious paths. He began every acquaintance on the defensive. His
argument was that you never knew how things would turn out,
consequently, it was as well to conduct one's self at the outset with
the discreet forethought of a man in the presence of an enemy. He
did not know how things would turn out in Betty's case, and it was a
little confusing to find one's self watching her with a sense of
excitement. He would have preferred to be cool--to be cold--and he
realised that he could not keep his eyes off her.

"I remember, with regret," he said to her later in the evening,
"that when you were a child we were enemies."

"I am afraid we were," was Betty's impartial answer.

"I am sure it was my fault," he said. "Pray forget it. Since
you have accomplished such wonders, will you not, in the morning,
take me about the place and explain to me how it has been done?"

When Betty went to her room she dismissed her maid as soon as
possible, and sat for some time alone and waiting. She had had no
opportunity to speak to Rosy in private, and she was sure she would
come to her. In the course of half an hour she heard a knock at the
door.

Yes, it was Rosy, and her newly-born colour had fled and left
her looking dragged again. She came forward and dropped into a low
chair near Betty, letting her face fall into her hands.

"I'm very sorry, Betty," she half whispered, "but it is no
use."

"What is no use?" Betty asked.

"Nothing is any use. All these years have made me such a
coward. I suppose I always was a coward, but in the old days there
never was anything to be afraid of."

"What are you most afraid of now?"

"I don't know. That is the worst. I am afraid of him-- just of
himself--of the look in his eyes--of what he may be planning quietly.
My strength dies away when he comes near me."

"What has he said to you?" she asked.

"He came into my dressing-room and sat and talked. He looked
about from one thing to another and pretended to admire it all and
congratulated me. But though he did not sneer at what he saw, his
eyes were sneering at me. He talked about you. He said that you
were a very clever woman. I don't know how he manages to imply that
a very clever woman is something cunning and debased--but it means
that when he says it.

It seems to insinuate things which make one grow hot all
over."

She put out a hand and caught one of Betty's.

"Betty, Betty," she implored. "Don't make him angry.
Don't."

"I am not going to begin by making him angry," Betty said. "And
I do not think he will try to make me angry-- at first."

"No, he will not," cried Rosalie. "And--and you remember what I
told you when first we talked about him?"

"And do you remember," was Betty's answer, "what I said to you
when I first met you in the park? If we were to cable to New York
this moment, we could receive an answer in a few hours."

"He would not let us do it," said Rosy. "He would stop us in
some way--as he stopped my letters to mother--as he stopped me when I
tried to run away. Oh, Betty, I know him and you do not."

"I shall know him better every day. That is what I must do. I
must learn to know him. He said something more to you than you have
told me, Rosy. What was it?"

"He waited until Detcham left me," Lady Anstruthers confessed,
more than half reluctantly. "And then he got up to go away, and
stood with his hands resting on the chairback, and spoke to me in a
low, queer voice. He said, `Don't try to play any tricks on me, my
good girl--and don't let your sister try to play any. You would both
have reason to regret it.' "

She was a half-hypnotised thing, and Betty, watching her with
curious but tender eyes, recognised the abnormality.

"Ah, if I am a clever woman," she said, "he is a clever man. He
is beginning to see that his power is slipping away. That was what
G. Selden would call `bluff.' "