The Shuttle: By Frances Hodgson Burnett

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  “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.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  A FOOTSTEP

  It was cold enough for fires in halls and bedrooms, and Lady Anstruthers often sat over hers and watched the glowing bed of coals with a fixed thoughtfulness of look. She was so sitting when her sister went to her room to talk to her, and she looked up questioningly when the door closed and Betty came towards her.

  “You have come to tell me something,” she said.

  A slight shade of anxiousness showed itself in her eyes, and Betty sat down by her and took her hand. She had come because what she knew was that Rosalie must be prepared for any step taken, and the time had arrived when she must not be allowed to remain in ignorance even of things it would be unpleasant to put into words.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I want to talk to you about something I have decided to do. I think I must write to father and ask him to come to us.”

  Rosalie turned white, but though her lips parted as if she were going to speak, she said nothing.

  “Do not be frightened,” Betty said. “I believe it is the only thing to do.”

  “I know! I know!”

  Betty went on, holding the hand a little closer. “When I came here you were too weak physically to be able to face even the thought of a struggle. I saw that. I was afraid it must come in the end, but I knew that at that time you could not bear it. It would have killed you and might have killed mother, if I had not waited; and until you were stronger, I knew I must wait and reason coolly about you—about everything.”

  “I used to guess—sometimes,” said Lady Anstruthers.

  “I can tell you about it now. You are not as you were then,” Betty said. “I did not know Nigel at first, and I felt I ought to see more of him. I wanted to make sure that my child hatred of him did not make me unfair. I even tried to hope that when he came back and found the place in order and things going well, he might recognise the wisdom of behaving with decent kindness to you. If he had done that I knew father would have provided for you both, though he would not have left him the opportunity to do agai
n what he did before. No business man would allow such a thing as that. But as time has gone by I have seen I was mistaken in hoping for a respectable compromise. Even if he were given a free hand he would not change. And now–-” She hesitated, feeling it difficult to choose such words as would not be too unpleasant. How was she to tell Rosy of the ugly, morbid situation which made ordinary passiveness impossible. “Now there is a reason–-” she began again.

  To her surprise and relief it was Rosalie who ended for her. She spoke with the painful courage which strong affection gives a weak thing. Her face was pale no longer, but slightly reddened, and she lifted the hand which held hers and kissed it.

  “You shall not say it,” she interrupted her. “I will. There is a reason now why you cannot stay here—why you shall not stay here. That was why I begged you to go. You must go, even if I stay behind alone.”

  Never had the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel’s eyes worn so fully their look of being bluebells under water. That this timid creature should so stand at bay to defend her was more moving than anything else could have been.

  “Thank you, Rosy—thank you,” she answered. “But you shall not be left alone. You must go, too. There is no other way. Difficulties will be made for us, but we must face them. Father will see the situation from a practical man’s standpoint. Men know the things other men cannot do. Women don’t. Generally they know nothing about the law and can be bullied into feeling that it is dangerous and compromising to inquire into it. Nigel has always seen that it was easy to manage women. A strong business man who has more exact legal information than he has himself will be a new factor to deal with. And he cannot make objectionable love to him. It is because he knows these things that he says that my sending for father will be a declaration of war.”

  “Did he say that?” a little breathlessly.

  “Yes, and I told him that it need not be so. But he would not listen.”

  “And you are sure father will come?”

  “I am sure. In a week or two he will be here.”

  Lady Anstruthers’ lips shook, her eyes lifted themselves to Betty’s in a touchingly distressed appeal. Had her momentary courage fled beyond recall? If so, that would be the worst coming to the worst, indeed. Yet it was not ordinary fear which expressed itself in her face, but a deeper piteousness, a sudden hopeless pain, baffling because it seemed a new emotion, or perhaps the upheaval of an old one long and carefully hidden.

  “You will be brave?” Betty appealed to her. “You will not give way, Rosy?”

  “Yes, I must be brave—I am not ill now. I must not fail you—I won’t, Betty, but–-“

  She slipped upon the floor and dropped her face upon the girl’s knee, sobbing.

  Betty bent over her, putting her arms round the heaving shoulders, and pleading with her to speak. Was there something more to be told, something she did not know?

  “Yes, yes. Oh, I ought to have told you long ago—but I have always been afraid and ashamed. It has made everything so much worse. I was afraid you would not understand and would think me wicked—wicked.”

  It was Betty who now lost a shade of colour. But she held the slim little body closer and kissed her sister’s cheek.

  “What have you been afraid and ashamed to tell me? Do not be ashamed any more. You must not hide anything, no matter what it is, Rosy. I shall understand.”

  “I know I must not hide anything, now that all is over and father is coming. It is—it is about Mr. Ffolliott.”

  “Mr. Ffolliott?” repeated Betty quite softly.

  Lady Anstruthers’ face, lifted with desperate effort, was like a weeping child’s. So much so in its tear-wet simpleness and utter lack of any effort at concealment, that after one quick look at it Betty’s hastened pulses ceased to beat at double-quick time.

  “Tell me, dear,” she almost whispered.

  “Mr. Ffolliott himself does not know—and I could not help it. He was kind to me when I was dying of unkindness. You don’t know what it was like to be drowning in loneliness and misery, and to see one good hand stretched out to help you. Before he went away—oh, Betty, I know it was awful because I was married!—I began to care for him very much, and I have cared for him ever since. I cannot stop myself caring, even though I am terrified.”

  Betty kissed her again with a passion of tender pity. Poor little, simple Rosy, too! The tide had crept around her also, and had swept her off her feet, tossing her upon its surf like a wisp of seaweed and bearing her each day farther from firm shore.

  “Do not be terrified,” she said. “You need only be afraid if—if you had told him.”

  “He will never know—never. Once in the middle of the night,” there was anguish in the delicate face, pure anguish, “a strange loud cry wakened me, and it was I myself who had cried out—because in my sleep it had come home to me that the years would go on and on, and at last some day he would die and go out of the world—and I should die and go out of the world. And he would never know—even KNOW.”

  Betty’s clasp of her loosened and she sat very still, looking straight before her into some unseen place.

  “Yes,” she said involuntarily. “Yes, I know—I know—I know.”

  Lady Anstruthers fell back a little to gaze at her.

  “YOU know? YOU know?” she breathed. “Betty?”

  But Betty at first did not speak. Her lovely eyes dwelt on the far-away place.

  “Betty,” whispered Rosy, “do you know what you have said?”

  The lovely eyes turned slowly towards her, and the soft corners of Betty’s mouth deepened in a curious unsteadiness.

  “Yes. I did not intend to say it. But it is true. I know— I know—I know. Do not ask me how.”

  Rosalie flung her arms round her waist and for a moment hid her face.

  “YOU! YOU!” she murmured, but stopped herself almost as she uttered the exclamation. “I will not ask you,” she said when she spoke again. “But now I shall not be so ashamed. You are a beauty and wonderful, and I am not; but if you KNOW, that makes us almost the same. You will understand why I broke down. It was because I could not bear to think of what will happen. I shall be saved and taken home, but Nigel will wreak revenge on HIM. And I shall be the shame that is put upon him—only because he was kind—KIND. When father comes it will all begin.” She wrung her hands, becoming almost hysterical.

  “Hush,” said Betty. “Hush! A man like that CANNOT be hurt, even by a man like Nigel. There is a way out— there IS. Oh, Rosy, we must BELIEVE it.”

  She soothed and caressed her and led her on to relieving her long locked-up misery by speech. It was easy to see the ways in which her feeling had made her life harder to bear. She was as inexperienced as a girl, and had accused herself cruelly. When Nigel had tormented her with evil, carefully chosen taunts, she had felt half guilty and had coloured scarlet or turned pale, afraid to meet his sneeringly smiling face. She had tried to forget the kind voice, the kindly, understanding eyes, and had blamed herself as a criminal because she could not.

  “I had nothing else to remember—but unhappiness—and it seemed as if I could not help but remember HIM,” she said as simply as the Rosy who had left New York at nineteen might have said it. “I was afraid to trust myself to speak his name. When Nigel made insulting speeches I could not answer him, and he used to say that women who had adventures should train their faces not to betray them every time they were looked at.

  “Oh!” broke from Betty’s lips, and she stood up on the hearth and threw out her hands. “I wish that for one day I might be a man—and your brother instead of your sister!”

  “Why?”

  Betty smiled strangely—a smile which was not amused— which was perhaps not a smile at all. Her voice as she answered was at once low and tense.

  “Because, then I should know what to do. When a male creature cannot be reached through manhood or decency or shame, there is one way in which he can be punished. A man—a real man—should take him by his throat and lash him with a
whip—while others look on—lash him until he howls aloud like a dog.”

  She had not expected to say it, but she had said it. Lady Anstruthers looked at her fascinated, and then she covered her face with her hands, huddling herself in a heap as she knelt on the rug, looking singularly small and frail.

  “Betty,” she said presently, in a new, awful little voice, “I—I will tell you something. I never thought I should dare to tell anyone alive. I have shuddered at it myself. There have been days—awful, helpless days, when I was sure there was no hope for me in all the world—when deep down in my soul I understood what women felt when they MURDERED people —crept to them in their wicked sleep and STRUCK them again —and again—and again. Like that!” She sat up suddenly, as if she did not know what she was doing, and uncovering her little ghastly face struck downward three fierce times at nothingness—but as if it were not nothingness, and as if she held something in her hand.

  There was horror in it—Betty sprang at the hand and caught it.

  “No! no!” she cried out. “Poor little Rosy! Darling little Rosy! No! no! no!”

  That instant Lady Anstruthers looked up at her shocked and awake. She was Rosy again, and clung to her, holding to her dress, piteous and panting.

  “No! no!” she said. “When it came to me in the night— it was always in the night—I used to get out of bed and pray that it might never, never come again, and that I might be forgiven—just forgiven. It was too horrible that I should even UNDERSTAND it so well.” A woeful, wry little smile twisted her mouth. “I was not brave enough to have done it. I could never have DONE it, Betty; but the thought was there—it was there! I used to think it had made a black mark on my soul.”