Chapter XLIII. His Chance

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

Betty walked much alone upon the marshes with Roland at her side.
At intervals she heard from Mr. Penzance, but his notes were
necessarily brief, and at other times she could only rely upon report
for news of what was occurring at Mount Dunstan. Lord Mount
Dunstan's almost military supervision of and command over his
villagers had certainly saved them from the horrors of an
uncontrollable epidemic; his decision and energy had filled the
alarmed Guardians with respect and this respect had begun to be
shared by many other persons. A man as prompt in action, and as
faithful to such responsibilities as many men might have found
plausible reasons enough for shirking, inevitably assumed a certain
dignity of aspect, when all was said and done. Lord Dunholm was most
clear in his expressions of opinion concerning him. Lady Alanby of
Dole made a practice of speaking of him in public frequently, always
with admiring approval, and in that final manner of hers, to whose
authority her neighbours had so long submitted. It began to be
accepted as a fact that he was a new development of his race--as her
ladyship had put it, "A new order of Mount Dunstan."

The story of his power over the stricken people, and of their
passionate affection and admiration for him, was one likely to spread
far, and be immensely popular. The drama of certain incidents
appealed greatly to the rustic mind, and by cottage firesides he was
represented with rapturous awe, as raising men, women, and children
from the dead, by the mere miracle of touch. Mrs. Welden and old
Doby revelled in thrilling, almost Biblical, versions of current
anecdotes, when Betty paid her visits to them.

"It's like the Scripture, wot he done for that young man as the
last breath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening fast.
`Young man, arise,' he says. `The Lord Almighty calls. You've got a
young wife an' three children to take care of. Take up your bed an'
walk.' Not as he wanted him to carry his bed anywheres, but it was a
manner of speaking. An' up the young man got. An' a sensible way,"
said old Mrs. Welden frankly, "for the Lord to look at it-- for I
must say, miss, if I was struck down for it, though I s'pose it's
only my sinful ignorance--that there's times when the Lord seems to
think no more of sweepin' away a steady eighteen-shillin' a week, and
p'raps seven in family, an' one at the breast, an' another on the
way--than if it was nothin'. But likely enough, eighteen shillin' a
week an' confinements does seem paltry to the Maker of 'eaven an'
earth."

But, to the girl walking over the marshland, the humanness of
the things she heard gave to her the sense of nearness--of being
almost within sight and sound--which Mount Dunstan himself had felt,
when each day was filled with the result of her thought of the needs
of the poor souls thrown by fate into his hands. In these days,
after listening to old Mrs. Welden's anecdotes, through which she
gathered the simpler truth of things, Betty was able to construct for
herself a less Scriptural version of what she had heard. She was
glad--glad in his sitting by a bedside and holding a hand which lay
in his hot or cold, but always trusting to something which his strong
body and strong soul gave without stint. There would be no restraint
there. Yes, he was kind--kind--kind --with the kindness a woman
loves, and which she, of all women, loved most. Sometimes she would
sit upon some mound, and, while her eyes seemed to rest on the
yellowing marsh and its birds and pools, they saw other things, and
their colour grew deep and dark as the marsh water between the
rushes.

The time was pressing when a change in her life must come. She
frequently asked herself if what she saw in Nigel Anstruthers' face
was the normal thinking of a sane man, which he himself could
control. There had been moments when she had seriously doubted it.
He was haggard, aging and restless. Sometimes he--always as if by
chance--followed her as she went from one room to another, and would
seat himself and fix his miserable eyes upon her for so long a time
that it seemed he must be unconscious of what he was doing. Then he
would appear suddenly to recollect himself and would start up with a
muttered exclamation, and stalk out of the room. He spent long hours
riding or driving alone about the country or wandering wretchedly
through the Park and gardens. Once he went up to town, and, after a
few days' absence, came back looking more haggard than before, and
wearing a hunted look in his eyes. He had gone to see a physician,
and, after having seen him, he had tried to lose himself in a plunge
into deep and turbid enough waters; but he found that he had even
lost the taste of high flavours, for which he had once had an
epicurean palate. The effort had ended in his being overpowered
again by his horrors--the horrors in which he found himself staring
at that end of things when no pleasure had spice, no debauchery the
sting of life, and men, such as he, stood upon the shore of time
shuddering and naked souls, watching the great tide, bearing its
treasures, recede forever, and leave them to the cold and hideous
dark. During one day of his stay in town he had seen Teresita, who
had at first stared half frightened by the change she saw in him, and
then had told him truths he could have wrung her neck for putting
into words.

"You look an old man," she said, with the foreign accent he had
once found deliciously amusing, but which now seemed to add a sting.
"And somesing is eating you op. You are mad in lofe with some
beautiful one who will not look at you. I haf seen it in mans
before. It is she who eats you op--your evil thinkings of her. It
serve you right. Your eyes look mad."

He himself, at times, suspected that they did, and cursed
himself because he could not keep cool. It was part of his horrors
that he knew his internal furies were worse than folly, and yet he
could not restrain them. The creeping suspicion that this was only
the result of the simple fact that he had never tried to restrain any
tendency of his own was maddening. His nervous system was a wreck.
He drank a great deal of whisky to keep himself "straight" during the
day, and he rose many times during his black waking hours in the
night to drink more because he obstinately refused to give up the
hope that, if he drank enough, it would make him sleep. As through
the thoughts of Mount Dunstan, who was a clean and healthy human
being, there ran one thread which would not disentangle itself, so
there ran through his unwholesome thinking a thread which burned like
fire. His secret ravings would not have been good to hear. His
passion was more than half hatred, and a desire for vengeance, for
the chance to re- assert his own power, to prove himself master, to
get the better in one way or another of this arrogant young outsider
and her high-handed pride. The condition of his mind was so far from
normal that he failed to see that the things he said to himself, the
plans he laid, were grotesque in their folly. The old cruel
dominance of the man over the woman thing, which had seemed the mere
natural working of the law among men of his race in centuries past,
was awake in him, amid the limitations of modern days.

"My God," he said to himself more than once, "I would like to
have had her in my hands a few hundred years ago. Women were kept in
their places, then."

He was even frenzied enough to think over what he would have
done, if such a thing had been--of her utter helplessness against
that which raged in him--of the grey thickness of the walls where he
might have held and wrought his will upon her--insult, torment,
death. His alcohol-excited brain ran riot--but, when it did its
foolish worst, he was baffled by one thing.

"Damn her!" he found himself crying out. "If I had hung her up
and cut her into strips she would have died staring at me with her
big eyes--without uttering a sound."

There was a long reach between his imaginings and the time he
lived in. America had not been discovered in those decent days, and
now a man could not beat even his own wife, or spend her money,
without being meddled with by fools. He was thinking of a New York
young woman of the nineteenth century who could actually do as she
hanged pleased, and who pleased to be damned high and mighty. For
that reason in itself it was incumbent upon a man to get even with
her in one way or another. High and mightiness was not the hardest
thing to reach. It offered a good aim.

His temper when he returned to Stornham was of the order which
in past years had set Rosalie and her child shuddering and had sent
the servants about the house with pale or sullen faces. Betty's
presence had the odd effect of restraining him, and he even told her
so with sneering resentment.

"There would be the devil to pay if you were not here," he said.
"You keep me in order, by Jove! I can't work up steam properly when
you watch me."

He himself knew that it was likely that some change would take
place. She would not stay at Stornham and she would not leave his
wife and child alone with him again. It would be like her to hold
her tongue until she was ready with her infernal plans and could
spring them on him. Her letters to her father had probably prepared
him for such action as such a man would be likely to take. He could
guess what it would be. They were free and easy enough in America in
their dealings with the marriage tie. Their idea would doubtless be
a divorce with custody of the child. He wondered a little that they
had remained quiet so long. There had been American shrewdness in
her coming boldly to Stornham to look over the ground herself and
actually set the place in order. It did not present itself to his
mind that what she had done had been no part of a scheme, but the
mere result of her temperament and training. He told himself that it
had been planned beforehand and carried out in hard-headed commercial
American fashion as a matter of business. The thing which most
enraged him was the implied cool, practical realisation of the fact
that he, as inheritor of an entailed estate, was but owner in charge,
and not young enough to be regarded as an insurmountable obstacle to
their plans. He could not undo the greater part of what had been
done, and they were calculating, he argued, that his would not be
likely to be a long life, and if --if anything happened--Stornham
would be Ughtred's and the whole vulgar lot of them would come over
and take possession and swagger about the place as if they had been
born on it. As to divorce or separation--if they took that line, he
would at least give them a good run for their money. They would wish
they had let sleeping dogs lie before the thing was over. The right
kind of lawyer could bully Rosalie into saying anything he chose on
the witness-stand. There was not much limit to the evidence a man
could bring if he was experienced enough to be circumstantial, and
knew whom he was dealing with. The very fact that the little fool
could be made to appear to have been so sly and sanctimonious would
stir the gall of any jury of men. His own condoning the matter for
the sake of his sensitive boy, deformed by his mother's unrestrained
and violent hysteria before his birth, would go a long way. Let them
get their divorce, they would have paid for it, the whole lot of
them, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel and all. Such a story as the
newspapers would revel in would not be a recommendation to Englishmen
of unsmirched reputation. Then his exultation would suddenly drop as
his mental excitement produced its effect of inevitable physical
fatigue. Even if he made them pay for getting their own way, what
would happen to himself afterwards? No morbid vanity of
self-bolstering could make the outlook anything but unpromising. If
he had not had such diabolical luck in his few investments he could
have lived his own life. As it was, old Vanderpoel would possibly
condescend to make him some insufficient allowance because Rosalie
would wish that it might be done, and he would be expected to drag
out to the end the kind of life a man pensioned by his wife's
relatives inevitably does. If he attempted to live in the country he
should blow out his brains. When his depression was at its worst, he
saw himself aging and shabby, rambling about from one cheap
Continental town to another, blackballed by good clubs,
cold-shouldered even by the Teresitas, cut off from society by his
limited means and the stories his wife's friends would spread. He
ground his teeth when he thought of Betty. Her splendid vitality had
done something to life for him--had given it savour. When he had
come upon her in the avenue his blood had stirred, even though it had
been maliciously, and there had been spice in his very resentment of
her presence. And she would go away. He would not be likely to see
her again if his wife broke with him; she would be swept out of his
days. It was hideous to think of, and his rage would overpower him
and his nerves go to pieces again.

"What are you going to do?" he broke forth suddenly one evening,
when he found himself temporarily alone with her. "You are going to
do something. I see it in your eyes."

He had been for some time watching her from behind his
newspaper, while she, with an unread book upon her lap, had, in fact,
been thinking deeply and putting to herself serious questions.

Her answer made him stir rather uncomfortably.

"I am going to write to my father to ask him to come to
England."

So this was what she had been preparing to spring upon him. He
laughed insolently.

"To ask him to come here?"

"With your permission."

"With mine? Does an American father-in-law wait for
permission?"

"Is there any practical reason why you should prefer that he
should not come?"

He left his seat and walked over to her.

"Yes. Your sending for him is a declaration of war."

"It need not be so. Why should it?"

"In this case I happen to be aware that it is. The choice is
your own, I suppose," with ready bravado, "that you and he are
prepared to face the consequences. But is Rosalie, and is your
mother?"

"My father is a business man and will know what can be done. He
will know what is worth doing," she answered, without noticing his
question. "But," she added the words slowly, "I have been making up
my mind--before I write to him--to say something to you--to ask you a
question."

He made a mock sentimental gesture.

"To ask me to spare my wife, to `remember that she is the mother
of my child'?"

She passed over that also.

"To ask you if there is no possible way in which all this
unhappiness can be ended decently."

"The only decent way of ending it would be that there should be
no further interference. Let Rosalie supply the decency by showing
me the consideration due from a wife to her husband. The place has
been put in order. It was not for my benefit, and I have no money to
keep it up. Let Rosalie be provided with means to do it."

As he spoke the words he realised that he had opened a way for
embarrassing comment. He expected her to remind him that Rosalie had
not come to him without money. But she said nothing about the
matter. She never said the things he expected to hear.

"You do not want Rosalie for your wife," she went on "but you
could treat her courteously without loving her. You could allow her
the privileges other men's wives are allowed. You need not separate
her from her family. You could allow her father and mother to come
to her and leave her free to go to them sometimes. Will you not
agree to that? Will you not let her live peaceably in her own simple
way? She is very gentle and humble and would ask nothing more."

"She is a fool!" he exclaimed furiously. "A fool! She will
stay where she is and do as I tell her."

"You knew what she was when you married her. She was simple and
girlish and pretended to be nothing she was not. You chose to marry
her and take her from the people who loved her. You broke her spirit
and her heart. You would have killed her if I had not come in time
to prevent it."

"I will kill her yet if you leave her," his folly made him
say.

"You are talking like a feudal lord holding the power of life
and death in his hands," she said. "Power like that is ancient
history. You can hurt no one who has friends--without being
punished."

It was the old story. She filled him with the desire to shake
or disturb her at any cost, and he did his utmost. If she was
proposing to make terms with him, he would show her whether he would
accept them or not. He let her hear all he had said to himself in
his worst moments--all that he had argued concerning what she and her
people would do, and what his own actions would be--all his intention
to make them pay the uttermost farthing in humiliation if he could
not frustrate them. His methods would be definite enough. He had
not watched his wife and Ffolliott for weeks to no end. He had known
what he was dealing with. He had put other people upon the track and
they would testify for him. He poured forth unspeakable statements
and intimations, going, as usual, further than he had known he should
go when he began. Under the spur of excitement his imagination
served him well. At last he paused.

"Well," he put it to her, "what have you to say?"

"I?" with the remote intent curiosity growing in her eyes. "I
have nothing to say. I am leaving you to say things."

"You will, of course, try to deny----" he insisted.

"No, I shall not. Why should I?"

"You may assume your air of magnificence, but I am dealing with
uncomfortable factors." He stopped in spite of himself, and then
burst forth in a new order of rage. "You are trying some confounded
experiment on me. What is it?"

She rose from her chair to go out of the room, and stood a
moment holding her book half open in her hand.

"Yes. I suppose it might be called an experiment," was her
answer. "Perhaps it was a mistake. I wanted to make quite sure of
something."

"Of what?"

"I did not want to leave anything undone. I did not want to
believe that any man could exist who had not one touch of decent
feeling to redeem him. It did not seem human."

White dints showed themselves about his nostrils.

"Well, you have found one," he cried. "You have a lashing
tongue, by God, when you choose to let it go. But I could teach you
a good many things, my girl. And before I have done you will have
learned most of them."

But though he threw himself into a chair and laughed aloud as
she left him, he knew that his arrogance and bullying were proving
poor weapons, though they had done him good service all his life.
And he knew, too, that it was mere simple truth that, as a result of
the intellectual, ethical vagaries he scathingly derided--she had
actually been giving him a sort of chance to retrieve himself, and
that if he had been another sort of man he might have taken it.