Chapter XLV. The Passing Bell

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

The following morning Sir Nigel did not appear at the breakfast
table. He breakfasted in his own room, and it be came known
throughout the household that he had suddenly decided to go away, and
his man was packing for the journey. What the journey or the reason
for its being taken happened to be were things not explained to
anyone but Lady Anstruthers, at the door of whose dressing room he
appeared without warning, just as she was leaving it.

Rosalie started when she found herself confronting him. His
eyes looked hot and hollow with feverish sleeplessness.

"You look ill," she exclaimed involuntarily. "You look as if
you had not slept."

"Thank you. You always encourage a man. I am not in the habit
of sleeping much," he answered. "I am going away for my health. It
is as well you should know. I am going to look up old Broadmorlands.
I want to know exactly where he is, in case it becomes necessary for
me to see him. I also require some trifling data connected with
Ffolliott. If your father is coming, it will be as well to be able
to lay my hands on things. You can explain to Betty. Good-morning."
He waited for no reply, but wheeled about and left her.

Betty herself wore a changed face when she came down. A cloud
had passed over her blooming, as clouds pass over a morning sky and
dim it. Rosalie asked herself if she had not noticed something like
this before. She began to think she had. Yes, she was sure that at
intervals there had been moments when she had glanced at the
brilliant face with an uneasy and yet half-unrealising sense of
looking at a glowing light temporarily waning. The feeling had been
unrealisable, because it was not to be explained. Betty was never
ill, she was never low- spirited, she was never out of humour or
afraid of things--that was why it was so wonderful to live with her.
But--yes, it was true--there had been days when the strong, fine
light of her had waned. Lady Anstruthers' comprehension of it arose
now from her memory of the look she had seen the night before in the
eyes which suddenly had gazed straight before her, as into an unknown
place.

"Yes, I know--I know--I know!" And the tone in the girl's voice
had been one Rosy had not heard before.

Slight wonder--if you knew--at any outward change which showed
itself, though in your own most desperate despite. It would be so
even with Betty, who, in her sister's eyes, was unlike any other
creature. But perhaps it would be better to make no comment. To
make comment would be almost like asking the question she had been
forbidden to ask.

While the servants were in the room during breakfast they talked
of common things, resorting even to the weather and the news of the
village. Afterwards they passed into the morning room together, and
Betty put her arm around Rosalie and kissed her.

"Nigel has suddenly gone away, I hear," she said. "Do you know
where he has gone?"

"He came to my dressing-room to tell me." Betty felt the whole
slim body stiffen itself with a determination to seem calm. "He said
he was going to find out where the old Duke of Broadmorlands was
staying at present."

"There is some forethought in that," was Betty's answer. "He is
not on such terms with the Duke that he can expect to be received as
a casual visitor. It will require apt contrivance to arrange an
interview. I wonder if he will be able to accomplish it?"

"Yes, he will," said Lady Anstruthers. "I think he can always
contrive things like that." She hesitated a moment, and then added:
"He said also that he wished to find out certain things about Mr.
Ffolliott--`trifling data,' he called it--that he might be able to
lay his hands on things if father came. He told me to explain to
you."

"That was intended for a taunt--but it's a warning," Betty said,
thinking the thing over. "We are rather like ladies left alone to
defend a besieged castle. He wished us to feel that." She tightened
her enclosing arm. "But we stand together-- together. We shall not
fail each other. We can face siege until father comes."

"You wrote to him last night?"

"A long letter, which I wish him to receive before he sails. He
might decide to act upon it before leaving New York, to advise with
some legal authority he knows and trusts, to prepare our mother in
some way--to do some wise thing we cannot foresee the value of. He
has known the outline of the story, but not exact
details--particularly recent ones. I have held back nothing it was
necessary he should know. I am going out to post the letter myself.
I shall send a cable asking him to prepare to come to us after he has
reflected on what I have written."

Rosalie was very quiet, but when, having left the room to
prepare to go to the village, Betty came back to say a last word, her
sister came to her and laid her hand on her arm.

"I have been so weak and trodden upon for years that it would
not be natural for you to quite trust me," she said. "But I won't
fail you, Betty--I won't."

The winter was drawing in, the last autumn days were short and
often grey and dreary; the wind had swept the leaves from the trees
and scattered them over park lands and lanes, where they lay a
mellow-hued, rustling carpet, shifting with each chill breeze that
blew. The berried briony garlands clung to the bared hedges, and
here and there flared scarlet, still holding their red defiantly
until hard frosts should come to shrivel and blacken them. The rare
hours of sunshine were amber hours instead of golden.

As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of the
first morning on which she had walked down the village street between
the irregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the ragged little
enclosing gardens. Then the air and sunshine had been of the just
awakening spring, now the sky was brightly cold, and through the
small-paned windows she caught glimpses of fireglow. A bent old man
walking very slowly, leaning upon two sticks, had a red-brown woollen
muffler wrapped round his neck. Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled
the two sticks into one hand that he might leave the other free to
touch his wrinkled forehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow
smile as she stopped to speak to him.

"Good-morning, Marlow," he said. "How is the rheumatism
to-day?"

He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on
principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that when
her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him greeting she had
not forgotten to inquire respecting the "rheumatics," which formed
the greater part of existence.

"Mornin', miss--mornin'," he answered in the high, cracked voice
of rural ancientry. "Winter be nigh, an' they damp days be full of
rheumatiz. 'T'int easy to get about on my old legs, but I be main
thankful for they warm things you sent, miss. This 'ere," fumbling
at his red-brown muffler proudly, " 'tis a comfort on windy days, so
'tis, and warmth be a good thing to a man when he be goin' down hill
in years."

"All of you who are not able to earn your own fires shall be
warm this winter," her ladyship's handsome sister said, speaking
closer to his ear. "You shall all be warm. Don't be afraid of the
cold days coming."

He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again, looking
up at her admiringly and chuckling.

" 'T'will be a new tale for Stornham village," he cackled. "
'T'will be a new tale. Thank ye, miss. Thank ye."

As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling
still under his breath as he hobbled on his slow way, comforted and
elate. How almost shamefully easy it was; a few loads of coal and
faggots here and there, a few blankets and warm garments whose cost
counted for so little when one's hands were full, could change a
gruesome village winter into a season during which labour-stiffened
and broken old things, closing their cottage doors, could draw their
chairs round the hearth and hover luxuriously over the red glow,
which in its comforting fashion of seeming to have understanding of
the dull dreams in old eyes, was more to be loved than any human
friend.

But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to
stimulate realisation of how much she had learned to care for the
mere living among these people, to whom she seemed to have begun to
belong, and whose comfortably lighting faces when they met her showed
that they knew her to be one who might be turned to in any hour of
trouble or dismay. The centuries which had trained them to depend
upon their "betters" had taught the slowest of them to judge with
keen sight those who were to be trusted, not alone as power and
wealth holders, but as creatures humanly upright and merciful with
their kind.

"Workin' folk allus knows gentry," old Doby had once shrilled to
her. "Gentry's gentry, an' us knows 'em wheresoever they be.
Better'n they know theirselves. So us do!"

Yes, they knew. And though they accepted many things as being
merely their natural rights, they gave an unsentimental affection and
appreciation in return. The patriarchal note in the life was lovable
to her. Each creature she passed was a sort of friend who seemed
almost of her own blood. It had come to that. This particular
existence was more satisfying to her than any other, more
heart-filling and warmly complete.

"Though I am only an impostor," she thought; "I was born in
Fifth Avenue; yet since I have known this I shall be quite happy in
no other place than an English village, with a Norman church tower
looking down upon it and rows of little gardens with spears of white
and blue lupins and Canterbury bells standing guard before cottage
doors."

And Rosalie--on the evening of that first strange day when she
had come upon her piteous figure among the heather under the trees
near the lake--Rosalie had held her arm with a hot little hand and
had said feverishly:

"If I could hear the roar of Broadway again! Do the stages
rattle as they used to, Betty? I can't help hoping that they do."

She carried her letter to the post and stopped to talk a few
minutes with the postmaster, who transacted his official business in
a small shop where sides of bacon and hams hung suspended from the
ceiling, while groceries, flannels, dress prints, and glass bottles
of sweet stuff filled the shelves. "Mr. Tewson's" was the central
point of Stornham in a commercial sense. The establishment had also
certain social qualifications.

Mr. Tewson knew the secrets of all hearts within the village
radius, also the secrets of all constitutions. He knew by some
occult means who had been "taken bad," or who had "taken a turn," and
was aware at once when anyone was "sinkin' fast." With such
differences of opinion as occasionally arose between the vicar and
his churchwardens he was immediately familiar. The history of the
fever among the hop pickers at Dunstan village he had been able to
relate in detail from the moment of its outbreak. It was he who had
first dramatically revealed the truth of the action Miss Vanderpoel
had taken in the matter, which revelation had aroused such enthusiasm
as had filled The Clock Inn to overflowing and given an impetus to
the sale of beer. Tread, it was said, had even made a speech which
he had ended with vague but excellent intentions by proposing the
joint healths of her ladyship's sister and the "President of
America." Mr. Tewson was always glad to see Miss Vanderpoel cross
his threshold. This was not alone because she represented the custom
of the Court, which since her arrival had meant large regular orders
and large bills promptly paid, but that she brought with her an
exotic atmosphere of interest and excitement.

He had mentioned to friends that somehow a talk with her made
him feel "set up for the day." Betty was not at all sure that he did
not prepare and hoard up choice remarks or bits of information as
openings to conversation.

This morning he had thrilling news for her and began with it at
once.

"Dr. Fenwick at Stornham is very low, miss," he said. "He's
very low, you'll be sorry to hear. The worry about the fever upset
him terrible and his bronchitis took him bad. He's an old man, you
know."

Miss Vanderpoel was very sorry to hear it. It was quite in the
natural order of things that she should ask other questions about
Dunstan village and the Mount, and she asked several.

The fever was dying out and pale convalescents were sometimes
seen in the village or strolling about the park. His lordship was
taking care of the people and doing his best for them until they
should be strong enough to return to their homes.

"But he's very strict about making it plain that it's you, miss,
they have to thank for what he does."

"That is not quite just," said Miss Vanderpoel. "He and Mr.
Penzance fought on the field. I only supplied some of the
ammunition."

"The county doesn't think of him as it did even a year ago,
miss," said Tewson rather smugly. "He was very ill thought of then
among the gentry. It's wonderful the change that's come about. If
he should fall ill there'll be a deal of sympathy."

"I hope there is no question of his falling ill," said Miss
Vanderpoel.

Mr. Tewson lowered his voice confidentially. This was really
his most valuable item of news.

"Well, miss," he admitted, "I have heard that he's been looking
very bad for a good bit, and it was told me quite private, because
the doctors and the vicar don't want the people to be upset by
hearing it--that for a week he's not been well enough to make his
rounds."

"Oh!" The exclamation was a faint one, but it was an
exclamation. "I hope that means nothing really serious," Miss
Vanderpoel added. "Everyone will hope so."

"Yes, miss," said Mr. Tewson, deftly twisting the string round
the package he was tying up for her. "A sad reward it would be if he
lost his life after doing all he has done. A sad reward! But
there'd be a good deal of sympathy."

The small package contained trifles of sewing and knitting
materials she was going to take to Mrs. Welden, and she held out her
hand for it. She knew she did not smile quite naturally as she said
her good-morning to Tewson. She went out into the pale amber
sunshine and stood a few moments, glad to find herself bathed in it
again. She suddenly needed air and light. "A sad reward!"
Sometimes people were not rewarded. Brave men were shot dead on the
battlefield when they were doing brave things; brave physicians and
nurses died of the plagues they faithfully wrestled with. Here were
dread and pain confronting her--Betty Vanderpoel--and while almost
everyone else seemed to have faced them, she was wholly unused to
their appalling clutch. What a life hers had been-- that in looking
back over it she should realise that she had never been touched by
anything like this before! There came back to her the look of almost
awed wonder in G. Selden's honest eyes when he said: "What it must
be to be you--just you!" He had been thinking only of the millions
and of the freedom from all everyday anxieties the millions gave.
She smiled faintly as the thought crossed her brain. The millions!
The rolling up of them year by year, because millions were breeders!
The newspaper stories of them--the wonder at and belief in their
power! It was all going on just as before, and yet here stood a
Vanderpoel in an English village street, of no more worth as far as
power to aid herself went than Joe Buttle's girl with the thick waist
and round red cheeks. Jenny Buttle would have believed that her
ladyship's rich American sister could do anything she chose, open any
door, command any presence, sweep aside any obstacle with a wave of
her hand. But of the two, Jenny Buttle's path would have laid
straighter before her. If she had had "a young man" who had fallen
ill she would have been free if his mother had cherished no objection
to their "walking out"--to spend all her spare hours in his cottage,
making gruel and poultices, crying until her nose and eyes were red,
and pouring forth her hopes and fears to any neighbour who came in or
out or hung over the dividing garden hedge. If the patient died, the
deeper her mourning and the louder her sobs at his funeral the more
respectable and deserving of sympathy and admiration would Jenny
Buttle have been counted. Her ladyship's rich American sister had no
"young man"; she had not at any time been asked to "walk out." Even
in the dark days of the fever, each of which had carried thought and
action of hers to the scene of trouble, there had reigned unbroken
silence, except for the vicar's notes of warm and appreciative
gratitude.

"You are very obstinate, Fergus," Mr. Penzance had said.

And Mount Dunstan had shaken his head fiercely and answered:

"Don't speak to me about it. Only obstinacy will save me from
behaving like--other blackguards."

Mr. Penzance, carefully polishing his eyeglasses as he watched
him, was not sparing in his comment.

"That is pure folly," he said, "pure bull-necked, stubborn
folly, charging with its head down. Before it has done with you it
will have made you suffer quite enough."

"Be sure of that," Mount Dunstan had said, setting his teeth, as
he sat in his chair clasping his hands behind his head and glowering
into space.

Mr. Penzance quietly, speculatively, looked him over, and
reflected aloud--or, so it sounded.

"It is a big-boned and big-muscled characteristic, but there are
things which are stronger. Some one minute will arrive-- just one
minute--which will be stronger. One of those moments when the
mysteries of the universe are at work."

"Don't speak to me like that, I tell you!" Mount Dunstan broke
out passionately. And he sprang up and marched out of the room like
an angry man.

Miss Vanderpoel did not go to Mrs. Welden's cottage at once, but
walked past its door down the lane, where there were no more
cottages, but only hedges and fields on either side of her. "Not
well enough to make his rounds" might mean much or little. It might
mean a temporary breakdown from overfatigue or a sickening for deadly
illness. She looked at a group of cropping sheep in a field and at a
flock of rooks which had just alighted near it with cawing and
flapping of wings. She kept her eyes on them merely to steady
herself. The thoughts she had brought out with her had grown heavier
and were horribly difficult to control. One must not allow one's
self to believe the worst will come--one must not allow it.

She always held this rule before herself, and now she was not
holding it steadily. There was nothing to do. She could write a
mere note of inquiry to Mr. Penzance, but that was all. She could
only walk up and down the lanes and think--whether he lay dying or
not. She could do nothing, even if a day came when she knew that a
pit had been dug in the clay and he had been lowered into it with
creaking ropes, and the clods shovelled back upon him where he lay
still--never having told her that he was glad that her being had
turned to him and her heart cried aloud his name. She recalled with
curious distinctness the effect of the steady toll of the church
bell--the "passing bell."

She could hear it as she had heard it the first time it fell
upon her ear, and she had inquired what it meant. Why did they call
it the "passing bell"? All had passed before it began to toll--all
had passed. If it tolled at Dunstan and the pit was dug in the
churchyard before her father came, would he see, the moment they met,
that something had befallen her--that the Betty he had known was
changed--gone? Yes, he would see. Affection such as his always saw.
Then he would sit alone with her in some quiet room and talk to her,
and she would tell him the strange thing that had happened. He would
understand--perhaps better than she.

She stopped abruptly in her walk and stood still. The hand
holding her package was quite cold. This was what one must not allow
one's self. But how the thoughts had raced through her brain! She
turned and hastened her steps towards Mrs. Welden's cottage.

In Mrs. Welden's tiny back yard there stood a "coal lodge"
suited to the size of the domicile and already stacked with a full
winter's supply of coal. Therefore the well-polished and cleanly
little grate in the living-room was bright with fire.

Old Doby, who had tottered round the corner to pay his fellow
gossip a visit, was sitting by it, and old Mrs. Welden, clean as to
cap and apron and small purple shoulder shawl, had evidently been
allaying his natural anxiety as to the conduct of foreign sovereigns
by reading in a loud voice the "print" under the pictures in an
illustrated paper.

This occupation had, however, been interrupted a few moments
before Miss Vanderpoel's arrival. Mrs. Bester, the neighbour in the
next cottage, had stepped in with her youngest on her hip and was
talking breathlessly. She paused to drop her curtsy as Betty
entered, and old Doby stood up and made his salute with a trembling
hand

"She'll know," he said. "Gentry knows the ins an' outs of
gentry fust. She'll know the rights."

"What has happened?"

Mrs. Bester unexpectedly burst into tears. There was an element
in the female villagers' temperament which Betty had found was
frequently unexpected in its breaking forth.

"He's down, miss," she said. "He's down with it crool bad.
There'll be no savin' of him--none."

Betty laid her package of sewing cotton and knitting wool
quietly on the blue and white checked tablecloth.

"Who--is he?" she asked.

"His lordship--and him just saved all Dunstan parish from
death--to go like this!"

In Stornham village and in all others of the neighbourhood the
feminine attitude towards Mount Dunstan had been one of strongly
emotional admiration. The thwarted female longing for romance--the
desire for drama and a hero had been fed by him. A fine, big young
man, one that had been "spoke ill of" and regarded as an outcast, had
suddenly turned the tables on fortune and made himself the central
figure of the county, the talk of gentry in their grand houses, of
cottage women on their doorsteps, and labourers stopping to speak to
each other by the roadside. Magic stories had been told of him,
beflowered with dramatic detail. No incident could have been related
to his credit which would not have been believed and improved upon.
Shut up in his village working among his people and unseen by
outsiders, he had become a popular idol. Any scrap of news of
him--any rumour, true or untrue, was seized upon and excitedly spread
abroad. Therefore Mrs. Bester wept as she talked, and, if the truth
must be told, enjoyed the situation. She was the first to tell the
story to her ladyship's sister herself, as well as to Mrs. Welden and
old Doby.

"It's Tom as brought it in," she said. "He's my brother, miss,
an' he's one of the ringers. He heard it from Jem Wesgate, an' he
heard it at Toomy's farm. They've been keepin' it hid at the Mount
because the people that's ill hangs on his lordship so that the
doctors daren't let them know the truth. They've been told he had to
go to London an' may come back any day. What Tom was sayin', miss,
was that we'd all know when it was over, for we'd hear the church
bell toll here same as it'd toll at Dunstan, because they ringers
have talked it over an' they're goin' to talk it over to-day with the
other parishes--Yangford an' Meltham an' Dunholm an' them. Tom says
Stornham ringers met just now at The Clock an' said that for a man
that's stood by labouring folk like he has, toll they will, an' so
ought the other parishes, same as if he was royalty, for he's made
himself nearer. They'll toll the minute they hear it, miss. Lord
help us!" with a fresh outburst of crying. "It don't seem like it's
fair as it should be. When we hear the bell toll, miss----"

"Don't!" said her ladyship's handsome sister suddenly. "Please
don't say it again."

She sat down by the table, and resting her elbows on the blue
and white checked cloth, covered her face with her hands. She did
not speak at all. In this tiny room, with these two old souls who
loved her, she need not explain. She sat quite still, and Mrs.
Welden after looking at her for a few seconds was prompted by some
sublimely simple intuition, and gently sidled Mrs. Bester and her
youngest into the little kitchen, where the copper was.

"Her helpin' him like she did, makes it come near," she
whispered. "Dessay it seems as if he was a'most like a relation."

Old Doby sat and looked at his goddess. In his slowly moving
old brain stirred far-off memories like long-dead things striving to
come to life. He did not know what they were, but they wakened his
dim eyes to a new seeing of the slim young shape leaning a little
forward, the soft cloud of hair, the fair beauty of the cheek. He
had not seen anything like it in his youth, but--it was Youth itself,
and so was that which the ringers were so soon to toll for; and for
some remote and unformed reason, to his scores of years they were
pitiful and should be cheered. He bent forward himself and put out
his ancient, veined and knotted, gnarled and trembling hand, to
timorously touch the arm of her he worshipped and adored.

"God bless ye!" he said, his high, cracked voice even more
shrill and thin than usual. "God bless ye!" And as she let her
hands slip down, and, turning, gently looked at him, he nodded to her
speakingly, because out of the dimness of his being, some part of
Nature's working had strangely answered and understood.