Chapter XXXVII. Closed Corridors

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

To spend one's days perforce in an enormous house alone is a
thing likely to play unholy tricks with a man's mind and lead it to
gloomy workings. To know the existence of a hundred or so of closed
doors shut on the darkness of unoccupied rooms; to be conscious of
flights of unmounted stairs, of stretches of untrodden corridors, of
unending walls, from which the pictured eyes of long dead men and
women stare, as if seeing things which human eyes behold not--is an
eerie and unwholesome thing. Mount Dunstan slept in a large
four-post bed in a chamber in which he might have died or been
murdered a score of times without being able to communicate with the
remote servants' quarters below stairs, where lay the one man and one
woman who attended him. When he came late to his room and prepared
for sleep by the light of two flickering candles the silence of the
dead in tombs was about him; but it was only a more profound and
insistent thing than the silence of the day, because it was the
silence of the night, which is a presence. He used to tell himself
with secret smiles at the fact that at certain times the fantasy was
half believable--that there were things which walked about softly at
night--things which did not want to be dead. He himself had picked
them out from among the pictures in the gallery--pretty, light,
petulant women; adventurous-eyed, full-blooded, eager men. His
theory was that they hated their stone coffins, and fought their way
back through the grey mists to try to talk and make love and to be
seen of warm things which were alive. But it was not to be done,
because they had no bodies and no voices, and when they beat upon
closed doors they would not open. Still they came back--came back.
And sometimes there was a rustle and a sweep through the air in a
passage, or a creak, or a sense of waiting which was almost a
sound.

"Perhaps some of them have gone when they have been as I am," he
had said one black night, when he had sat in his room staring at the
floor. "If a man was dragged out when he had not lived a day, he
would come back I should come back if--God! A man could not be
dragged away--like this!"

And to sit alone and think of it was an awful and a lonely
thing--a lonely thing.

But loneliness was nothing new, only that in these months his
had strangely intensified itself. This, though he was not aware of
it, was because the soul and body which were the completing parts of
him were within reach--and without it. When he went down to
breakfast he sat singly at his table, round which twenty people might
have laughed and talked. Between the dining-room and the library he
spent his days when he was not out of doors. Since he could not
afford servants, the many other rooms must be kept closed. It was a
ghastly and melancholy thing to make, as he must sometimes, a sort of
precautionary visit to the state apartments. He was the last Mount
Dunstan, and he would never see them opened again for use, but so
long as he lived under the roof he might by prevision check, in a
measure, the too rapid encroachments of decay. To have a leak
stopped here, a nail driven or a support put there, seemed decent
things to do.

"Whom am I doing it for?" he said to Mr. Penzance. "I am doing
it for myself--because I cannot help it. The place seems to me like
some gorgeous old warrior come to the end of his days It has stood
the war of things for century after century--the war of things. It
is going now I am all that is left to it. It is all I have. So I
patch it up when I can afford it, with a crutch or a splint and a
bandage."

Late in the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpoel rode
away from West Ways with Lord Westholt, a stealthy and darkly purple
cloud rose, lifting its ominous bulk against a chrysoprase and pink
horizon. It was the kind of cloud which speaks of but one thing to
those who watch clouds, or even casually consider them. So Lady
Anstruthers felt some surprise when she saw Sir Nigel mount his horse
before the stone steps and ride away, as it were, into the very heart
of the coming storm.

"Nigel will be caught in the rain," she said to her sister. "I
wonder why he goes out now. It would be better to wait until
to-morrow."

But Sir Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters with
some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with Mount Dunstan as
would make a casual call seem an entirely natural thing, and he
wished to drop in upon him for a casual call and in an unpremeditated
manner. He meant to reach the Mount about the time the storm broke,
under which circumstance nothing could bear more lightly an air of
being unpremeditated than to take refuge in a chance passing.

Mount Dunstan was in the library. He had sat smoking his pipe
while he watched the purple cloud roll up and spread itself, blotting
out the chrysoprase and pink and blue, and when the branches of the
trees began to toss about he had looked on with pleasure as the rush
of big rain drops came down and pelted things. It was a fine storm,
and there were some imposing claps of thunder and jagged flashes of
lightning. As one splendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to
hear a summons at the great hall door. Who on earth could be turning
up at this time? His man Reeve announced the arrival a few moments
later, and it was Sir Nigel Anstruthers. He had, he explained, been
riding through the village when the deluge descended, and it had
occurred to him to turn in at the park gates and ask a temporary
shelter. Mount Dunstan received him with sufficient courtesy. His
appearance was not a thing to rejoice over, but it could be endured.
Whisky and soda and a smoke would serve to pass the hour, if the
storm lasted so long.

Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under the
circumstances, but Sir Nigel led the way steadily after he had taken
his seat and accepted the hospitalities offered. What a place it
was--this! He had been struck for the hundredth time with the
impressiveness of the mass of it, the sweep of the park and the
splendid grouping of the timber, as he had ridden up the avenue.
There was no other place like it in the county. Was there another
like it in England?

"Not in its case, I hope," Mount Dunstan said.

There were a few seconds of silence. The rain poured down in
splashing sheets and was swept in rattling gusts against the window
panes.

"What the place needs is--an heiress," Anstruthers observed in
the tone of a practical man. "I believe I have heard that your views
of things are such that she should preferably not be an American."

Mount Dunstan did not smile, though he slightly showed his
teeth.

"When I am driven to the wall," he answered, "I may not be
fastidious as to nationality."

Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose that tone
of casual openness which, while it does not wholly commit itself, may
be regarded as suggestive of the amiable half confidence of speeches
made as "man to man."

"My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress
within my own gates is a first-class one. I find that it knows what
it wants and that its intention is to get it." A short laugh broke
from him as he flicked the ash from his cigar on to the small bronze
receptacle at his elbow. "It is not many years since it would have
been difficult for a girl to be frank enough to say, `When I marry I
shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give.' "

"There are not many who have as much to give," said Mount
Dunstan coolly.

"True," with a slight shrug. "You are thinking that men are
glad enough to take a girl like that--even one who has not a shape
like Diana's and eyes like the sea. Yes, by George," softly, and
narrowing his lids, "she is a handsome creature."

Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and
Anstruthers laughed low again.

"It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That is
the interesting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing
commercial mind. She does not object to admitting it. She educated
herself in delightful cold blood that she might be prepared for the
largest prize appearing upon the horizon. She held things in view
when she was a child at school, and obviously attacked her French,
German, and Italian conjugations with a twelve-year-old eye on the
future."

Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair, laughed-- as
it seemed--with him. Internally he was saying that the man was a
liar who might always be trusted to lie, but he knew with shamed fury
that the lies were doing something to his soul--rolling dark vapours
over it--stinging him, dragging away props, and making him feel they
had been foolish things to lean on. This can always be done with a
man in love who has slight foundation for hope. For some mysterious
and occult reason civilisation has elected to treat the strange and
great passion as if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose
dominion over him proper social training prevents any man from
admitting openly. In passing through its cruelest phases he must
bear himself as if he were immune, and this being the custom, he may
be called upon to endure much without the relief of striking out with
manly blows. An enemy guessing his case and possessing the infernal
gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with courteous
despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow here and there with
neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can, with decency,
neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard himself, but must sit
still and listen, hospitably supplying smoke and drink and being
careful not to make an ass of himself.

Therefore Mount Dunstan pushed the cigars nearer to his visitor
and waved his hand hospitably towards the whisky and soda. There was
no reason, in fact, why Anstruthers--or any one indeed, but Penzance,
should suspect that he had become somewhat mad in secret. The man's
talk was marked merely by the lightly disparaging malice which was
rarely to be missed from any speech of his which touched on others.
Yet it might have been a thing arranged beforehand, to suggest
adroitly either lies or truth which would make a man see every
sickeningly good reason for feeling that in this contest he did not
count for a man at all.

"It has all been pretty obvious," said Sir Nigel. "There is a
sort of cynicism in the openness of the siege. My impression is that
almost every youngster who has met her has taken a shot. Tommy
Alanby scrambling up from his knees in one of the rose-gardens was a
satisfying sight. His much-talked-of- passion for Jane Lithcom was
temporarily in abeyance."

The rain swirled in a torrent against the window, and casually
glancing outside at the tossing gardens he went on.

"She is enjoying herself. Why not? She has the spirit of the
huntress. I don't think she talks nonsense about friendship to the
captives of her bow and spear. She knows she can always get what she
wants. A girl like that must have an arrogance of mind. And she is
not a young saint. She is one of the women born with the look in her
eyes. I own I should not like to be in the place of any primeval
poor brute who really went mad over her--and counted her millions as
so much dirt."

Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders:

"Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of to-day as
the men who lived on the land when Hengist and Horsa came--or when
Caesar landed at Deal."

"He would seem as remote to her," with a shrug also. "I should
not like to contend that his point of view would not interest her or
that she would particularly discourage him. Her eyes would call
him--without malice or intention, no doubt, but your early Briton
ceorl or earl would be as well understood by her. Your New York
beauty who has lived in the market place knows principally the prices
of things."

He was not ill pleased with himself. He was putting it well and
getting rather even with her. If this fellow with his shut mouth had
a sore spot hidden anywhere he was giving him "to think." And he
would find himself thinking, while, whatsoever he thought, he would
be obliged to continue to keep his ugly mouth shut. The great idea
was to say things without saying them, to set your hearer's mind to
saying them for you.

"What strikes one most is a sort of commercial brilliance in
her," taking up his thread again after a smilingly reflective pause.
"It quite exhilarates one by its novelty. There's spice in it. We
English have not a look-in when we are dealing with Americans, and
yet France calls us a nation of shop- keepers. My impression is that
their women take little inventories of every house they enter, of
every man they meet. I heard her once speaking to my wife about this
place, as if she had lived in it. She spoke of the closed windows
and the state of the gardens--of broken fountains and fallen arches.
She evidently deplored the deterioration of things which represented
capital. She has inventoried Dunholm, no doubt. That will give
Westholt a chance. But she will do nothing until after her next
year's season in London--that I'd swear. I look forward to next
year. It will be worth watching. She has been training my wife. A
sister who has married an Englishman and has at least spent some
years of her life in England has a certain established air. When she
is presented one knows she will be a sensation. After that----" he
hesitated a moment, smiling not too pleasantly.

"After that," said Mount Dunstan, "the Deluge."

"Exactly. The Deluge which usually sweeps girls off their
feet--but it will not sweep her off hers. She will stand quite firm
in the flood and lose sight of nothing of importance which floats
past."

Mount Dunstan took him up. He was sick of hearing the fellow's
voice.

"There will be a good many things," he said; "there will be
great personages and small ones, pomps and vanities, glittering
things and heavy ones."

"When she sees what she wants," said Anstruthers, "she will hold
out her hand, knowing it will come to her. The things which drown
will not disturb her. I once made the blunder of suggesting that she
might need protection against the importunate--as if she had been an
English girl. It was an idiotic thing to do."

"Because?" Mount Dunstan for the moment had lost his head.
Anstruthers had maddeningly paused.

"She answered that if it became necessary she might perhaps be
able to protect herself. She was as cool and frank as a boy. No air
pince about it--merely consciousness of being able to put things in
their right places. Made a mere male relative feel like a fool."

"When are things in their right places?" To his credit be it
spoken, Mount Dunstan managed to say it as if in the mere putting
together of idle words. What man likes to be reminded of his right
place! No man wants to be put in his right place. There is always
another place which seems more desirable.

"She knows--if we others do not. I suppose my right place is at
Stornham, conducting myself as the brother-in-law of a fair American
should. I suppose yours is here--shut up among your closed corridors
and locked doors. There must be a lot of them in a house like this.
Don't you sometimes feel it too large for you?"

"Always," answered Mount Dunstan.

The fact that he added nothing else and met a rapid side glance
with unmoving red-brown eyes gazing out from under rugged brows,
perhaps irritated Anstruthers. He had been rather enjoying himself,
but he had not enjoyed himself enough. There was no denying that his
plaything had not openly flinched. Plainly he was not good at
flinching. Anstruthers wondered how far a man might go. He tried
again.

"She likes the place, though she has a natural disdain for its
condition. That is practical American. Things which are going to
pieces because money is not spent upon them--mere money, of which all
the people who count for anything have so much--are inevitably rather
disdained. They are `out of it.' But she likes the estate." As he
watched Mount Dunstan he felt sure he had got it at last--the right
thing. "If you were a duke with fifty thousand a year," with a
distinctly nasty, amicably humorous, faint laugh, "she would--by the
Lord, I believe, she would take it over--and you with it."

Mount Dunstan got up. In his rough walking tweeds he looked
over-big--and heavy--and perilous. For two seconds Nigel Anstruthers
would not have been surprised if he had without warning slapped his
face, or knocked him over, or whirled him out of his chair and kicked
him. He would not have liked it, but--for two seconds--it would have
been no surprise. In fact, he instinctively braced his not too firm
muscles. But nothing of the sort occurred. During the two
seconds--perhaps three--Mount Dunstan stood still and looked down at
him. The brief space at an end, he walked over to the hearth and
stood with his back to the big fireplace.

"You don't like her," he said, and his manner was that of a man
dealing with a matter of fact. "Why do you talk about her?"

He had got away again--quite away.

An ugly flush shot over Anstruthers' face. There was one more
thing to say--whether it was idiotic to say it or not. Things can
always be denied afterwards, should denial appear necessary--and for
the moment his special devil possessed him.

"I do not like her!" And his mouth twisted. "Do I not? I am
not an old woman. I am a man--like others. I chance to like
her--too much."

There was a short silence. Mount Dunstan broke it.

"Then," he remarked, "you had better emigrate to some country
with a climate which suits you. I should say that England--for the
present--does not."

"I shall stay where I am," answered Anstruthers, with a slight
hoarseness of voice, which made it necessary for him to clear his
throat. "I shall stay where she is. I will have that satisfaction,
at least. She does not mind. I am only a racketty, middle-aged
brother-in-law, and she can take care of herself. As I told you, she
has the spirit of the huntress."

"Look here," said Mount Dunstan, quite without haste, and with
an iron civility. "I am going to take the liberty of suggesting
something. If this thing is true, it would be as well not to talk
about it."

"As well for me--or for her?" and there was a serene
significance in the query.

Mount Dunstan thought a few seconds.

"I confess," he said slowly, and he planted his fine blow
between the eyes well and with directness. "I confess that it would
not have occurred to me to ask you to do anything or refrain from
doing it for her sake."

"Thank you. Perhaps you are right. One learns that one must
protect one's self. I shall not talk--neither will you. I know
that. I was a fool to let it out. The storm is over. I must ride
home." He rose from his seat and stood smiling. "It would smash up
things nicely if the new beauty's appearance in the great world were
preceded by chatter of the unseemly affection of some adorer of ill
repute. Unfairly enough it is always the woman who is hurt."

"Unless," said Mount Dunstan civilly, "there should arise the
poor, primeval brute, in his neolithic wrath, to seize on the man to
blame, and break every bone and sinew in his damned body."

"The newspapers would enjoy that more than she would," answered
Sir Nigel. "She does not like the newspapers. They are too ready to
disparage the multi-millionaire, and cackle about members of his
family."

The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in the
depths of their pupils, as they regarded each other, had its birth in
a passion as elemental as the quakings of the earth, or the rage of
two lions in a desert, lashing their flanks in the blazing sun. It
was well that at this moment they should part ways.

Sir Nigel's horse being brought, he went on the way which was
his.

"It was a mistake to say what I did," he said before going. "I
ought to have held my tongue. But I am under the same roof with her.
At any rate, that is a privilege no other man shares with me."

He rode off smartly, his horse's hoofs splashing in the rain
pools left in the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure after
all that he had made a mistake, and for the moment he was not in the
mood to care whether he had made one or not. His agreeable smile
showed itself as he thought of the obstinate, proud brute he had left
behind, sitting alone among his shut doors and closed corridors.
They had not shaken hands either at meeting or parting. Queer thing
it was--the kind of enmity a man could feel for another when he was
upset by a woman. It was amusing enough that it should be she who
was upsetting him after all these years--impudent little Betty, with
the ferocious manner.