Chapter XLI. She Would Do Something

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Sir Nigel's face was not a good thing to see when he appeared at
the dinner table in the evening. As he took his seat the two footmen
glanced quickly at each other, and the butler at the sideboard
furtively thrust out his underlip. Not a man or woman in the
household but had learned the signal denoting the moment when no
service would please, no word or movement be unobjectionable. Lady
Anstruthers' face unconsciously assumed its propitiatory expression,
and she glanced at her sister more than once when Betty was unaware
that she did so.

Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke,
merely making curt replies to any casual remark. This was one of his
simple and most engaging methods of at once enjoying an ill-humour
and making his wife feel that she was in some way to blame for it.

"Mount Dunstan is in a deucedly unpleasant position," he
condescended at last. "I should not care to stand in his shoes."

He had not returned to the Court until late in the afternoon,
but having heard in the village the rumour of the outbreak of fever,
he had made inquiries and gathered detail.

"You are thinking of the outbreak of typhoid among the hop
pickers?" said Lady Anstruthers. "Mrs. Brent thinks it threatens to
be very serious."

"An epidemic, without a doubt," he answered. "In a wretched
unsanitary place like Dunstan village, the wretches will die like
flies."

"What will be done?" inquired Betty.

He gave her one of the unpleasant personal glances and laughed
derisively.

"Done? The county authorities, who call themselves `guardians,'
will be frightened to death and will potter about and fuss like old
women, and profess to examine and protect and lay restrictions, but
everyone will manage to keep at a discreet distance, and the thing
will run riot and do its worst. As far as one can see, there seems
no reason why the whole place should not be swept away. No doubt
Mount Dunstan has wisely taken to his heels already."

"I think that, on the contrary, there would be much doubt of
that," Betty said. "He would stay and do what he could."

Sir Nigel shrugged his shoulders.

"Would he? I think you'll find he would not."

"Mrs. Brent tells me," Rosalie broke in somewhat hurriedly,
"that the huts for the hoppers are in the worst possible condition.
They are so dilapidated that the rain pours into them. There is no
proper shelter for the people who are ill, and Lord Mount Dunstan
cannot afford to take care of them."

"But he will--he will," broke forth Betty. Her head lifted
itself and she spoke almost as if through her small, shut teeth. A
wave of intense belief--high, proud, and obstinate, swept through
her. It was a feeling so strong and vibrant that she felt as if
Mount Dunstan himself must be reached and upborne by it--as if he
himself must hear her.

Rosalie looked at her half-startled, and, for the moment held
fascinated by the sudden force rising in her and by the splendid
spark of light under her lids. She was reminded of the fierce little
Betty of long ago, with her delicate, indomitable small face and the
spirit which even at nine years old had somehow seemed so strong and
straitly keen of sight that one had known it might always be trusted.
Actually, in one way, she had not changed. She saw the truth of
things. The next instant, however, inadvertently glancing towards
her husband, she caught her breath quickly. Across his
heavy-featured face had shot the sudden gleam of a new expression.
It was as if he had at the moment recognised something which filled
him with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for. That he did
not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There was a brief
silence in which it passed away. He spoke after it, with
disagreeable precision.

"He has had an enormous effect on you--that man," he said to
Betty.

He spoke clearly so that she might have the pleasure of being
certain that the menservants heard. They were close to the table,
handing fruit--professing to be automatons, eyes down, faces
expressing nothing, but as quick of hearing as it is said that blind
men are. He knew that if he had been in her place and a thing as
insultingly significant had been said to him, he should promptly have
hurled the nearest object--plate, wine- glass, or decanter--in the
face of the speaker. He knew, too, that women cannot hurl
projectiles without looking like viragos and fools. The
weakly-feminine might burst into tears or into a silly rage and leave
the table. There was a distinct breath's space of pause, and Betty,
cutting a cluster from a bunch of hothouse grapes presented by the
footman at her side, answered as clearly as he had spoken himself.

"He is strong enough to produce an effect on anyone," she said.
"I think you feel that yourself. He is a man who will not be beaten
in the end. Fortune will give him some good thing."

"He is a fellow who knows well enough on which hand of him good
things lie," he said. "He will take all that offers itself."

"Why not?" Betty said impartially.

"There must be no riding or driving in the neighbourhood of the
place," he said next. "I will have no risks run." He turned and
addressed the butler. "Jennings, tell the servants that those are my
orders."

He sat over his wine but a short time that evening, and when he
joined his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room he went at once
to Betty. In fact, he was in the condition when a man cannot keep
away from a woman, but must invent some reason for reaching her
whether it is fatuous or plausible.

"What I said to Jennings was an order to you as well as to the
people below stairs. I know you are particularly fond of riding in
the direction of Mount Dunstan. You are in my care so long as you
are in my house."

"Orders are not necessary," Betty replied. "The day is past
when one rushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong medicine when
one's friends were ill. If one is not a properly- trained nurse, it
is wiser not to risk being very much in the way."

He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady
Anstruthers sat apart, appearing to read.

"Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You have
yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately in love
cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes."

He was standing on the hearth. Betty swung herself lightly
round, facing him squarely. Her full look was splendid.

"If it is there--let it stay," she said. "I would not keep it
out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I
would--if it is there. If it is--let it stay."

The daring, throbbing, human truth of her made his brain whirl.
To a man young and clean and fit to count as in the lists, to have
heard her say the thing of a rival would have been hard enough, but
base, degenerate, and of the world behind her day, to hear it while
frenzied for her, was intolerable. And it was Mount Dunstan she bore
herself so highly for. Whether melodrama is out of date or not there
are, occasionally, some fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of
to-day.

"You think you will reach him," he persisted. "You think you
will help him in some way. You will not let the thing alone."

"Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever I take the liberty of
doing will encroach on no right of yours," she said.

But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face
reflecting itself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were
drawn together.

She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face,
drew the black brows closer, confronting a complicating truth.

"If I were free to take Rosalie and Ughtred home to-morrow," she
thought, "I could not bear to go. I should suffer too much."

She was suffering now. The strong longing in her heart was like
a physical pain. No word or look of this one man had given her proof
that his thoughts turned to her, and yet it was
intolerable--intolerable--that in his hour of stress and need they
were as wholly apart as if worlds rolled between them. At any dire
moment it was mere nature that she should give herself in help and
support. If, on the night at sea, when they had first spoken to each
other, the ship had gone down, she knew that they two, strangers
though they were, would have worked side by side among the frantic
people, and have been among the last to take to the boats. How did
she know? Only because, he being he, and she being she, it must have
been so in accordance with the laws ruling entities. And now he
stood facing a calamity almost as terrible--and she with full hands
sat still.

She had seen the hop pickers' huts and had recognised their
condition. Mere brick sheds in which the pickers slept upon bundles
of hay or straw in their best days; in their decay they did not even
provide shelter. In fine weather the hop gatherers slept well enough
in them, cooking their food in gypsy-fashion in the open. When the
rain descended, it must run down walls and drip through the holes in
the roofs in streams which would soak clothes and bedding. The worst
that Nigel and Mrs. Brent had implied was true. Illness of any
order, under such circumstances, would have small chance of recovery,
but malignant typhoid without shelter, without proper nourishment or
nursing, had not one chance in a million. And he--this one
man--stood alone in the midst of the tragedy--responsible and
helpless. He would feel himself responsible as she herself would, if
she were in his place. She was conscious that suddenly the event of
the afternoon--the interview upon the marshes, had receded until it
had become an almost unmeaning incident. What did the degenerate,
melodramatic folly matter----!

She had restlessly left her chair before the dressing-table, and
was walking to and fro. She paused and stood looking down at the
carpet, though she scarcely saw it.

"Nothing matters but one thing--one person," she owned to
herself aloud. "I suppose it is always like this. Rosy, Ughtred,
even father and mother--everyone seems less near than they were. It
is too strong--too strong. It is----" the words dropped slowly from
her lips, "the strongest thing-- in the world."

She lifted her face and threw out her hands, a lovely young
half-sad smile curling the deep corners of her mouth. "Sometimes one
feels so disdained," she said--"so disdained with all one's power.
Perhaps I am an unwanted thing."

But even in this case there were aids one might make an effort
to give. She went to her writing-table and sat thinking for some
time. Afterwards she began to write letters. Three or four were
addressed to London--one was to Mr. Penzance.

  .  .  .  .  .

Mount Dunstan and his vicar were
walking through the village to the vicarage. They had been to the
hop pickers' huts to see the people who were ill of the fever. Both
of them noticed that cottage doors and windows were shut, and that
here and there alarmed faces looked out from behind latticed
panes.

"They are in a panic of fear," Mount Dunstan said, "and by way
of safeguard they shut out every breath of air and stifle indoors.
Something must be done."

Catching the eye of a woman who was peering over her short white
dimity blind, he beckoned to her authoritatively. She came to the
door and hesitated there, curtsying nervously.

Mount Dunstan spoke to her across the hedge.

"You need not come out to me, Mrs. Binner. You may stay where
you are," he said. "Are you obeying the orders given by the
Guardians?"

"Yes, my lord. Yes, my lord," with more curtsys.

"Your health is very much in your own hands," he added.

"You must keep your cottage and your children cleaner than you
have ever kept them before, and you must use the disinfectant I sent
you. Keep away from the huts, and open your windows. If you don't
open them, I shall come and do it for you. Bad air is infection
itself. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord. Thank your lordship."

"Go in and open your windows now, and tell your neighbours to do
the same. If anyone is ill let me know at once. The vicar and I
will do our best for everyone."

By that time curiosity had overcome fear, and other cottage
doors had opened. Mount Dunstan passed down the row and said a few
words to each woman or man who looked out. Questions were asked
anxiously and he answered them. That he was personally unafraid was
comfortingly plain, and the mere sight of him was, on the whole, an
unexplainable support.

"We heard said your lordship was going away," put in a stout
mother with a heavy child on her arm, a slight testiness scarcely
concealed by respectful good-manners. She was a matron with a
temper, and that a Mount Dunstan should avoid responsibilities seemed
highly credible.

"I shall stay where I am," Mount Dunstan answered. "My place is
here."

They believed him, Mount Dunstan though he was. It could not be
said that they were fond of him, but gradually it had been borne in
upon them that his word was to be relied on, though his manner was
unalluring and they knew he was too poor to do his duty by them or
his estate. As he walked away with the vicar, windows were opened,
and in one or two untidy cottages a sudden flourishing of mops and
brooms began.

There was dark trouble in Mount Dunstan's face. In the huts
they had left two men stiff on their straw, and two women and a child
in a state of collapse. Added to these were others stricken
helpless. A number of workers in the hop gardens, on realising the
danger threatening them, had gathered together bundles and children,
and, leaving the harvest behind, had gone on the tramp again. Those
who remained were the weaker or less cautious, or were held by some
tie to those who were already ill of the fever. The village doctor
was an old man who had spent his blameless life in bringing little
cottagers into the world, attending their measles and whooping
coughs, and their father's and grandfather's rheumatics. He had
never faced a village crisis in the course of his seventy-five
years, and was aghast and flurried with fright. His methods remained
those of his youth, and were marked chiefly by a readiness to
prescribe calomel in any emergency. A younger and stronger man was
needed, as well as a man of more modern training. But even the most
brilliant practitioner of the hour could not have provided shelter
and nourishment, and without them his skill would have counted as
nothing. For three weeks there had been no rain, which was a
condition of the barometer not likely to last. Already grey clouds
were gathering and obscuring the blueness of the sky.

The vicar glanced upwards anxiously.

"When it comes," he said, "there will be a downpour, and a
persistent one."

"Yes," Mount Dunstan answered.

He had lain awake thinking throughout the night. How was a man
to sleep! It was as Betty Vanderpoel had known it would be. He,
who--beggar though he might be--was the lord of the land, was the man
to face the strait of these poor workers on the land, as his own.
Some action must be taken. What action? As he walked by his
friend's side from the huts where the dead men lay it revealed itself
that he saw his way.

They were going to the vicarage to consult a medical book, but
on the way there they passed a part of the park where, through a
break in the timber the huge, white, blind-faced house stood on view.
Mount Dunstan laid his hand on Mr. Penzance's shoulder and stopped
him

"Look there!" he said. "There are weather-tight rooms
enough."

A startled expression showed itself on the vicar's face.

"For what?" he exclaimed

"For a hospital," brusquely "I can give them one thing, at
least--shelter."

"It is a very remarkable thing to think of doing," Mr. Penzance
said.

"It is not so remarkable as that labourers on my land should die
at my gate because I cannot give them decent roofs to cover them.
There is a roof that will shield them from the weather. They shall
be brought to the Mount."

The vicar was silent a moment, and a flush of sympathy warmed
his face.

"You are quite right, Fergus," he said, "entirely right."

"Let us go to your study and plan how it shall be done," Mount
Dunstan said.

As they walked towards the vicarage, he went on talking.

"When I lie awake at night, there is one thread which always
winds itself through my thoughts whatsoever they are. I don't find
that I can disentangle it. It connects itself with Reuben S.
Vanderpoel's daughter. You would know that without my telling you.
If you had ever struggled with an insane passion----"

"It is not insane, I repeat," put in Penzance unflinchingly.

"Thank you--whether you are right or wrong," answered Mount
Dunstan, striding by his side. "When I am awake, she is as much a
part of my existence as my breath itself. When I think things over,
I find that I am asking myself if her thoughts would be like mine.
She is a creature of action. Last night, as I lay awake, I said to
myself, `She would do something. What would she do?' She would not
be held back by fear of comment or convention. She would look about
her for the utilisable, and she would find it somewhere and use it.
I began to sum up the village resources and found nothing--until my
thoughts led me to my own house. There it stood--empty and useless.
If it were hers, and she stood in my place, she would make it useful.
So I decided."

"You are quite right," Mr. Penzance said again.

They spent an hour in his library at the vicarage, arranging
practical methods for transforming the great ballroom into a sort of
hospital ward. It could be done by the removal of pieces of
furniture from the many unused bedrooms. There was also the
transportation of the patients from the huts to be provided for.
But, when all this was planned out, each found himself looking at the
other with an unspoken thought in his mind. Mount Dunstan first
expressed it.

"As far as I can gather, the safety of typhoid fever patients
depends almost entirely on scientific nursing, and the caution with
which even liquid nourishment is given. The woman whose husband died
this morning told me that he had seemed better in the night, and had
asked for something to eat. She gave him a piece of bread and a
slice of cold bacon, because he told her he fancied it. I could not
explain to her, as she sat sobbing over him, that she had probably
killed him. When we have patients in our ward, what shall we feed
them on, and who will know how to nurse them? They do not know how
to nurse each other, and the women in the village would not run the
risk of undertaking to help us."

But, even before he had left the house, the problem was solved
for them. The solving of it lay in the note Miss Vanderpoel had
written the night before at Stornham.

When it was brought to him Mr. Penzance glanced up from certain
calculations he was making upon a sheet of note- paper. The
accumulating difficulties made him look worn and tired. He opened
the note and read it gravely, and then as gravely, though with a
change of expression, handed it to Mount Dunstan.

"Yes, she is a creature of action. She has heard and understood
at once, and she has done something. It is immensely practical--it
is fine--it--it is lovable."

"Do you mind my keeping it?" Mount Dunstan asked, after he had
read it.

"Keep it by all means," the vicar answered. "It is worth
keeping."

But it was quite brief. She had heard of the outbreak of fever
among the hop pickers, and asked to be allowed to give help to the
people who were suffering. They would need prompt aid. She chanced
to know something of the requirements of such cases, and had written
to London for certain supplies which would be sent to them at once.
She had also written for nurses, who would be needed above all else.
Might she ask Mr. Penzance to kindly call upon her for any further
assistance required.

"Tell her we are deeply grateful," said Mount Dunstan, "and that
she has given us greater help than she knows."

"Why not answer her note yourself?" Penzance suggested.

Mount Dunstan shook his head.

"No," he said shortly. "No."