Chapter XXXIX. On the Marshes

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

The marshes stretched mellow in the autumn sun, sheep wandered
about, nibbling contentedly, or lay down to rest in groups, the sky
reflecting itself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour to the
water, a scent of the sea was in the air as one breathed it, flocks
of plover rose, now and then, crying softly. Betty, walking with her
dog, had passed a heron standing at the edge of a pool.

From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by the
marshes with their English suggestion of the Roman Campagna, their
broad expanse of level land spread out to the sun and wind, the
thousands of white sheep dotted or clustered as far as eye could
reach, the hues of the marsh grass and the plants growing thick at
the borders of the strips of water. Its beauty was all its own and
curiously aloof from the softly- wooded, undulating world about it.
Driving or walking along the high road--the road the Romans had built
to London town long centuries ago--on either side of one were
meadows, farms, scattered cottages, and hop gardens, but beyond and
below stretched the marsh land, golden and grey, and always alluring
one by its silence.

"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary
walks over it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It
seems as if, lying there under the blue sky or the low grey clouds
with all the world held at bay by mere space and stillness, they must
feel something we know nothing of. I want to go and find out what it
is."

This she had once said to Mount Dunstan.

So she had fallen into the habit of walking there with her dog
at her side as her sole companion, for having need for time and space
for thought, she had found them in the silence and aloofness.

Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far as
she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she must have
been very happy, because she had never found herself desiring
existence other than such as had come to her day by day. Except for
her passionate childish regret at Rosy's marriage, she had
experienced no painful feeling. In fact, she had faced no hurt in
her life, and certainly had been confronted by no limitations.
Arguing that girls in their teens usually fall in love, her father
had occasionally wondered that she passed through no little episodes
of sentiment, but the fact was that her interests had been larger and
more numerous than the interests of girls generally are, and her
affectionate intimacy with himself had left no such small vacant
spaces as are frequently filled by unimportant young emotions.
Because she was a logical creature, and had watched life and those
living it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to
the path which had marked itself before her during the summer's
growth and waning. She had not, at first, perhaps, known exactly
when things began to change for her--when the clarity of her mind
began to be disturbed. She had thought in the beginning--as people
have a habit of doing--that an instance --a problem--a situation had
attracted her attention because it was absorbing enough to think
over. Her view of the matter had been that as the same thing would
have interested her father, it had interested herself. But from the
morning when she had been conscious of the sudden fury roused in her
by Nigel Anstruthers' ugly sneer at Mount Dunstan, she had better
understood the thing which had come upon her. Day by day it had
increased and gathered power, and she realised with a certain sense
of impatience that she had not in any degree understood it when she
had seen and wondered at its effect on other women. Each day had
been like a wave encroaching farther upon the shore she stood upon.
At the outset a certain ignoble pride--she knew it ignoble--filled
her with rebellion. She had seen so much of this kind of situation,
and had heard so much of the general comment. People had learned how
to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gave them cause,
why should they not sneer at her as at things? She recalled what she
had herself thought of such things--the folly of them, the
obviousness--the almost deserved disaster. She had arrogated to
herself judgment of women--and men--who might, yes, who might have
stood upon their strip of sand, as she stood, with the waves creeping
in, each one higher, stronger, and more engulfing than the last.
There might have been those among them who also had knowledge of that
sudden deadly joy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice.
When that wave submerged one's pulsing being, what had the world to
do with one--how could one hear and think of what its speech might
be? Its voice clamoured too far off.

As she walked across the marsh she was thinking this first phase
over. She had reached a new one, and at first she looked back with a
faint, even rather hard, smile. She walked straight ahead, her
mastiff, Roland, padding along heavily close at her side. How still
and wide and golden it was; how the cry of plover and lifting trill
of skylark assured one that one was wholly encircled by solitude and
space which were more enclosing than any walls! She was going to the
mounds to which Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony
chaise, when he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought
Roman camp and Roman legions to life again. Up on the largest
hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and looking out
under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living loveliness of the
marsh-land world. So she was presently seated, with her heavy-limbed
Roland at her feet. She had come here to try to put things clearly
to herself, to plan with such reason as she could control. She had
begun to be unhappy, she had begun --with some unfairness--to look
back upon the Betty Vanderpoel of the past as an unwittingly
self-sufficient young woman, to find herself suddenly entangled by
things, even to know a touch of desperateness.

"Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter," she was
saying mentally. That was why her smile was a little hard. What if
the remnant from the ducal bargain counter had prejudices of his
own?

"If he were passionately--passionately in love with me," she
said, with red staining her cheeks, "he would not come--he would not
come--he would not come. And, because of that, he is more to
me--more! And more he will become every day --and the more strongly
he will hold me. And there we stand."

Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it erect
on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry. She put
out her hand and tenderly patted him.

"He will have none of me," she said. "He will have none of me."
And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her head a little
haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with an altered
expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she had shaken upon
it, from the extravagant lashes, two clear drops.

It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of him
for weeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of that. Twice
he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and once he had ridden
past her on the road when he might have stopped to exchange
greetings, or have ridden on by her side. He did not mean to seem to
desire, ever so lightly, to be counted as in the lists. Whether he
was drawn by any liking for her or not, it was plain he had
determined on this.

If she were to go away now, they would never meet again. Their
ways in this world would part forever. She would not know how long
it took to break him utterly--if such a man could be broken. If no
magic change took place in his fortunes --and what change could
come?--the decay about him would spread day by day. Stone walls last
a long time, so the house would stand while every beauty and
stateliness within it fell into ruin. Gardens would become
wildernesses, terraces and fountains crumble and be overgrown, walls
that were to-day leaning would fall with time. The years would pass,
and his youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man
while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly and
hard. How strange it was that lives should touch and pass on the
ocean of Time, and nothing should result--nothing at all! When she
went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded with every aid of
food and treasure had passed a boat in which a strong man tossed,
starving to death, and had not even run up a flag.

"But one cannot run up a flag," she said, stroking Roland. "One
cannot. There we stand."

To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been
adding the growing disturbance caused by yet another thing which was
increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.

Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing,
Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular place
in her everyday life. It had begun with a certain personalness in
his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to dislike, but almost
impossible openly to resent. Certainly, as a self-invited guest in
his house, she could scarcely protest against the amiability of his
demeanour and his exterior courtesy and attentiveness of manner in
his conduct towards her. She had tried to sweep away the
objectionable quality in his bearing, by frankness, by indifference,
by entire lack of response, but she had remained conscious of its
increasing as a spider's web might increase as the spider spun it
quietly over one, throwing out threads so impalpable that one could
not brush them away because they were too slight to be seen. She was
aware that in the first years of his married life he had alternately
resented the scarcity of the invitations sent them and rudely refused
such as were received. Since he had returned to find her at
Stornham, he had insisted that no invitations should be declined, and
had escorted his wife and herself wherever they went. What could
have been conventionally more proper--what more improper than that he
should have persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a
time when, as they three drove together at night in the closed
carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in the
dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the robe over
her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly, but persistently,
conveyed that the personalness of his voice, look, and physical
nearness was a sort of hideous confidence between them which they
were cleverly concealing from Rosalie and the outside world.

When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing at
some turning and making himself her companion, riding too closely at
her side, and assuming a noticeable air of being engaged in meaningly
confidential talk. Once, when he had been leaning towards her with
an audaciously tender manner, they had been passed by the Dunholm
carriage, and Lady Dunholm and the friend driving with her had
evidently tried not to look surprised. Lady Alanby, meeting them in
the same way at another time, had put up her glasses and stared in
open disapproval. She might admire a strikingly handsome American
girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar silliness
as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law. When Betty strolled
about the park or the lanes, she much too often encountered Sir Nigel
strolling also, and knew that he did not mean to allow her to rid
herself of him. In public, he made a point of keeping observably
close to her, of hovering in her vicinity and looking on at all she
did with eyes she rebelled against finding fixed on her each time she
was obliged to turn in his direction. He had a fashion of coming to
her side and speaking in a dropped voice, which excluded others, as a
favoured lover might. She had seen both men and women glance at her
in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding themselves
slightly de trop. She had said aloud to him on one such
occasion--and she had said it with smiling casualness for the benefit
of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking:

"Don't alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel. I am easily
frightened--and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators."

For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased to
believe that there was no way in which she could defend herself,
unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a scene. He
flushed and drew himself up.

"I beg your pardon, my dear Betty," he said, and walked away
with the manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to realise an
odiously unpleasant truth--which is that there are incidents only
made more inexplicable by an effort to explain. She saw also that he
was quite aware of this, and that his offended departure was a
brilliant inspiration, and had left her, as it were, in the lurch.
To have said to Lady Alanby: "My brother-in-law, in whose house I am
merely staying for my sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe
that I allow him to make love to me," would have suggested either
folly or insanity on her own part. As it was--after a glance at Sir
Nigel's stiffly retreating back--Lady Alanby merely looked away with
a wholly uninviting expression.

When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with
determination, he laughed.

"My dearest girl," he said, "if I watch you with interest and
drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only do what
every other man does, and I do it because you are an alluring young
woman--which no one is more perfectly aware of than yourself. Your
pretence that you do not know you are alluring is the most
captivating thing about you. And what do you think of doing if I
continue to offend you? Do you propose to desert us--to leave poor
Rosalie to sink back again into the bundle of old clothes she was
when you came? For Heaven's sake, don't do that!"

All that his words suggested took form before her vividly. How
well he understood what he was saying. But she answered him
bravely.

"No. I do not mean to do that."

He watched her for a few seconds. There was curiosity in his
eyes.

"Don't make the mistake of imagining that I will let my wife go
with you to America," he said next. "She is as far off from that as
she was when I brought her to Stornham. I have told her so. A man
cannot tie his wife to the bedpost in these days, but he can make her
efforts to leave him so decidedly unpleasant that decent women prefer
to stay at home and take what is coming. I have seen that often
enough `to bank on it,' if I may quote your American friends."

"Do you remember my once saying," Betty remarked, "that when a
woman has been properly ill-treated the time comes when nothing
matters--nothing but release from the life she loathes?"

"Yes," he answered. "And to you nothing would matter
but--excuse my saying it--your own damnable, headstrong pride. But
Rosalie is different. Everything matters to her. And you will find
it so, my dear girl."

And that this was at least half true was brought home to her by
the fact that late the same night Rosy came to her white with
crying.

"It is not your fault, Betty," she said. "Don't think that I
think it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of those
humours when he seems like a devil. He thinks you will go back to
America and try to take me with you. But, Betty, you must not think
about me. It will be better for you to go. I have seen you again.
I have had you for--for a time. You will be safer at home with
father and mother."

Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly.

"What is it, Rosy?" she said. "What is it he does to you --that
makes you like this?"

"I don't know--but that he makes me feel that there is nothing
but evil and lies in the world and nothing can help one against them.
Those things he says about everyone--men and women--things one can't
repeat--make me sick. And when I try to deny them, he laughs."

"Does he say things about me?" Betty inquired, very quietly, and
suddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her.

"Betty, darling," she cried, "go home--go home. You must not
stay here."

"When I go, you will go with me," Betty answered. "I am not
going back to mother without you."

She made a collection of many facts before their interview was
at an end, and they parted for the night. Among the first was that
Nigel had prepared for certain possibilities as wise holders of a
fortress prepare for siege. A rather long sitting alone over whisky
and soda had, without making him loquacious, heated his blood in such
a manner as led him to be less subtle than usual. Drink did not make
him drunk, but malignant, and when a man is in the malignant mood, he
forgets his cleverness. So he revealed more than he absolutely
intended. It was to be gathered that he did not mean to permit his
wife to leave him, even for a visit; he would not allow himself to be
made ridiculous by such a thing. A man who could not control his
wife was a fool and deserved to be a laughing-stock. As Ughtred and
his future inheritance seemed to have become of interest to his
grandfather, and were to be well nursed and taken care of, his
intention was that the boy should remain under his own supervision.
He could amuse himself well enough at Stornham, now that it had been
put in order, if it was kept up properly and he filled it with people
who did not bore him. There were people who did not bore him--plenty
of them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive his guests.
If she imagined that the little episode of Ffolliott had been
entirely dormant, she was mistaken. He knew where the man was, and
exactly how serious it would be to him if scandal was stirred up. He
had been at some trouble to find out. The fellow had recently had
the luck to fall into a very fine living. It had been bestowed on him
by the old Duke of Broadmorlands, who was the most strait-laced old
boy in England. He had become so in his disgust at the light
behaviour of the wife he had divorced in his early manhood. Nigel
cackled gently as he detailed that, by an agreeable coincidence, it
happened that her Grace had suddenly become filled with pious
fervour--roused thereto by a good-looking locum tenens-- result,
painful discoveries--the pair being now rumoured to be keeping a
lodging-house together somewhere in Australia. A word to good old
Broadmorlands would produce the effect of a lighted match on a barrel
of gunpowder. It would be the end of Ffolliott. Neither would it be
a good introduction to Betty's first season in London, neither would
it be enjoyed by her mother, whom he remembered as a woman with
primitive views of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as
he took out of his pocket the envelope containing the words his wife
had written to Mr. Ffolliott, "Do not come to the house. Meet me at
Bartyon Wood." It did not take much to convince people, if one
managed things with decent forethought. The Brents, for instance,
were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and they had never forgotten
the questionable conduct of their locum tenens. Then, suddenly, he
had changed his manner and had sat down, laughing, and drawn Rosalie
to his knee and kissed her--yes, he had kissed her and told her not
to look like a little fool or act like one. Nothing unpleasant would
happen if she behaved herself. Betty had improved her greatly, and
she had grown young and pretty again. She looked quite like a child
sometimes, now that her bones were covered and she dressed well. If
she wanted to please him she could put her arms round his neck and
kiss him, as he had kissed her.

"That is what has made you look white," said Betty.

"Yes. There is something about him that sometimes makes you
feel as if the very blood in your veins turned white," answered
Rosy--in a low voice, which the next moment rose. "Don't you
see--don't you see," she broke out, "that to displease him would be
like murdering Mr. Ffolliott--like murdering his mother and mine--and
like murdering Ughtred, because he would be killed by the shame of
things--and by being taken from me. We have loved each other so
much--so much. Don't you see?"

"I see all that rises up before you," Betty said, "and I
understand your feeling that you cannot save yourself by bringing
ruin upon an innocent man who helped you. I realise that one must
have time to think it over. But, Rosy," a sudden ring in her voice,
"I tell you there is a way out--there is a way out! The end of the
misery is coming--and it will not be what he thinks."

"You always believe----" began Rosy.

"I know," answered Betty. "I know there are some things so bad
that they cannot go on. They kill themselves through their own evil.
I know! I know! That is all."