The Shuttle

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"Mother," he said, "you look different. You look well. It isn't only
your new dress and your hair."

The new style of her attire had certainly done much, and the maid who
had been engaged to attend her was a woman who knew her duties. She had
been called upon in her time to make the most of hair offering much
less assistance to her skill than was supplied by the fine, fair
colourlessness she had found dragged back from her new mistress's
forehead. It was not dragged back now, but had really been done wonders
with. Rosalie had smiled a little when she had looked at herself in the
glass after the first time it was so dressed.

"You are trying to make me look as I did when mother saw me last,
Betty," she said. "I wonder if you possibly could."

"Let us believe we can," laughed Betty. "And wait and see."

It seemed wise neither to make nor receive visits. The time for such
things had evidently not yet come. Even the mention of the Worthingtons
led to the revelation that Rosalie shrank from immediate contact with
people. When she felt stronger, when she became more accustomed to the
thought, she might feel differently, but just now, to be luxuriously one
with the enviable part of London, to look on, to drink in, to drive here
and there, doing the things she liked to do, ordering what was required
at Stornham, was like the creating for her of a new heaven and a new
earth.

When, one night, Betty took her with Ughtred to the theatre, it was to
see a play written by an American, played by American actors, produced
by an American manager. They had even engaged in theatrical enterprise,
it seemed, their actors played before London audiences, London actors
played in American theatres, vibrating almost yearly between the two
continents and reaping rich harvests. Hearing rumours of this in the
past, Lady Anstruthers had scarcely believed it entirely true. Now the
practical reality was brought before her. The French, who were only
separated from the English metropolis by a mere few miles of Channel,
did not exchange their actors year after year in increasing numbers,
making a mere friendly barter of each other's territory, as though each
land was common ground and not divided by leagues of ocean travel.

"It seems so wonderful," Lady Anstruthers argued. "I have always felt as
if they hated each other."

"They did once--but how could it last between those of the same
blood--of the same tongue? If we were really aliens we might be a
menace. But we are of their own." Betty leaned forward on the edge of
the box, looking out over the crowded house, filled with almost as many
Americans as English faces. She smiled, reflecting. "We were children
put out to nurse and breathe new air in the country, and now we are
coming home, vigorous, and full-grown."

She studied the audience for some minutes, and, as her glance wandered
over the stalls, it took in more than one marked variety of type.
Suddenly it fell on a face she delightedly recognised. It was that of
the nice, speculative-eyed Westerner they had seen enjoying himself in
Bond Street.

"Rosy," she said, "there is the Western man we love. Near the end of the
fourth row."

Lady Anstruthers looked for him with eagerness.

"Oh, I see him! Next to the big one with the reddish hair."

Betty turned her attention to the man in question, whom she had not
chanced to notice. She uttered an exclamation of surprise and interest.

"The big man with the red hair. How lovely that they should chance to
sit side by side--the big one is Lord Mount Dunstan!"

The necessity of seeing his solicitors, who happened to be Messrs.
Townlinson & Sheppard, had brought Lord Mount Dunstan to town. After a
day devoted to business affairs, he had been attracted by the idea of
going to the theatre to see again a play he had already seen in New
York. It would interest him to observe its exact effect upon a London
audience. While he had been in New York, he had gone with something of
the same feeling to see a great English actor play to a crowded house.
The great actor had been one who had returned to the country for a third
or fourth time, and, in the enthusiasm he had felt in the atmosphere
about him, Mount Dunstan had seen not only pleasure and appreciation of
the man's perfect art, but--at certain tumultuous outbursts--an almost
emotional welcome. The Americans, he had said to himself, were creatures
of warmer blood than the English. The audience on that occasion had
been, in mass, American. The audience he made one of now, was made up of
both nationalities, and, in glancing over it, he realised how large was
the number of Americans who came yearly to London. As Lady Anstruthers
had done, he found himself selecting from the assemblage the types which
were manifestly American, and those obviously English. In the seat next
to himself sat a man of a type he felt he had learned by heart in
the days of his life as Jem Salter. At a short distance fluttered
brilliantly an English professional beauty, with her male and female
court about her. In the stage box, made sumptuous with flowers, was a
royal party.

As this party had entered, "God save the Queen" had been played, and, in
rising with the audience during the entry, he had recalled that the tune
was identical with that of an American national air. How unconsciously
inseparable--in spite of the lightness with which they regarded the
curious tie between them--the two countries were. The people upon the
stage were acting as if they knew their public, their bearing
suggesting no sense of any barrier beyond the footlights. It was the
unconsciousness and lightness of the mutual attitude which had struck
him of late. Punch had long jested about "Fair Americans," who, in
their first introduction to its pages, used exotic and cryptic language,
beginning every sentence either with "I guess," or "Say, Stranger"; its
male American had been of the Uncle Sam order and had invariably worn
a "goatee." American witticisms had represented the Englishman in
plaid trousers, opening his remarks with "Chawley, deah fellah," and
unfailingly missing the point of any joke. Each country had cherished
its type and good-naturedly derided it. In time this had modified itself
and the joke had changed in kind. Many other things had changed, but the
lightness of treatment still remained. And yet their blood was mingling
itself with that of England's noblest and oldest of name, their wealth
was making solid again towers and halls which had threatened to crumble.
Ancient family jewels glittered on slender, young American necks, and
above--sometimes somewhat careless--young American brows. And yet, so
far, one was casual in one's thought of it all, still. On his own part
he was obstinate Briton enough to rebel against and resent it. They
were intruders. He resented them as he had resented in his boyhood the
historical fact that, after all, an Englishman was a German--a savage
who, five hundred years after the birth of Christ, had swooped upon
Early Briton from his Engleland and Jutland, and ravaging with fire and
sword, had conquered and made the land his possession, ravishing its
very name from it and giving it his own. These people did not come with
fire and sword, but with cable and telephone, and bribes of gold and
fair women, but they were encroaching like the sea, which, in certain
parts of the coast, gained a few inches or so each year. He shook his
shoulders impatiently, and stiffened, feeling illogically antagonistic
towards the good-natured, lantern-jawed man at his side.

The lantern-jawed man looked good-natured because he was smiling, and
he was smiling because he saw something which pleased him in one of the
boxes.

His expression of unqualified approval naturally directed Mount
Dunstan's eye to the point in question, where it remained for some
moments. This was because he found it resting upon Miss Vanderpoel, who
sat before him in luminous white garments, and with a brilliant spark
of ornament in the dense shadow of her hair. His sensation at the
unexpected sight of her would, if it had expressed itself physically,
have taken the form of a slight start. The luminous quality did not
confine itself to the whiteness of her garments. He was aware of feeling
that she looked luminous herself--her eyes, her cheek, the smile she
bent upon the little woman who was her companion. She was a beautifully
living thing.

Naturally, she was being looked at by others than himself. She was one
of those towards whom glasses in a theatre turn themselves inevitably.
The sweep and lift of her black hair would have drawn them, even if she
had offered no other charm. Yes, he thought, here was another of them.
To whom was she bringing her good looks and her millions? There were men
enough who needed money, even if they must accept it under less alluring
conditions. In the box next to the one occupied by the royal party was a
man who was known to be waiting for the advent of some such opportunity.
His was a case of dire, if outwardly stately, need. He was young, but a
fool, and not noted for personal charms, yet he had, in one sense, great
things to offer. There were, of course, many chances that he might offer
them to her. If this happened, would she accept them? There was really
no objection to him but his dulness, consequently there seemed many
chances that she might. There was something akin to the pomp of royalty
in the power her father's wealth implied. She could scarcely make an
ordinary marriage. It would naturally be a sort of state affair.
There were few men who had enough to offer in exchange for Vanderpoel
millions, and of the few none had special attractions. The one in
the box next to the royal party was a decent enough fellow. As young
princesses were not infrequently called upon, by the mere exclusion of
royal blood, to become united to young or mature princes without charm,
so American young persons who were of royal possessions must find
themselves limited. If you felt free to pick and choose from among
young men in the Guards or young attaches in the Diplomatic Service with
twopence a year, you might get beauty or wit or temperament or all three
by good luck, but if you were of a royal house of New York or Chicago,
you would probably feel you must draw lines and choose only such
splendours as accorded with, even while differing from, your own.

Any possible connection of himself with such a case did not present
itself to him. If it had done so, he would have counted himself,
haughtily, as beyond the pale. It was for other men to do things of the
sort; a remote antagonism of his whole being warred against the mere
idea. It was bigoted prejudice, perhaps, but it was a strong thing.

A lovely shoulder and a brilliant head set on a long and slender neck
have no nationality which can prevent a man's glance turning naturally
towards them. His turned again during the last act of the play, and at a
moment when he saw something rather like the thing he had seen when
the Meridiana moved away from the dock and the exalted Miss Vanderpoel
leaning upon the rail had held out her arms towards the child who had
brought his toy to her as a farewell offering.

Sitting by her to-night was a boy with a crooked back--Mount Dunstan
remembered hearing that the Anstruthers had a deformed son--and she
was leaning towards him, her hand resting on his shoulder, explaining
something he had not quite grasped in the action of the play. The
absolute adoration in the boy's uplifted eyes was an interesting thing
to take in, and the radiant warmth of her bright look was as unconscious
of onlookers as it had been when he had seen it yearning towards the
child on the wharf. Hers was the temperament which gave--which gave. He
found himself restraining a smile because her look brought back to him
the actual sound of the New York youngster's voice.

"I wanted to kiss you, Betty, oh, I did so want to kiss you!"

Anstruthers' boy--poor little beggar--looked as if he, too, in the face
of actors and audience, and brilliance of light, wanted to kiss her.





CHAPTER XX

THINGS OCCUR IN STORNHAM VILLAGE

It would not have been possible for Miss Vanderpoel to remain long in
social seclusion in London, and, before many days had passed, Stornham
village was enlivened by the knowledge that her ladyship and her sister
had returned to the Court. It was also evident that their visit to
London had not been made to no purpose. The stagnation of the waters of
village life threatened to become a whirlpool. A respectable person, who
was to be her ladyship's maid, had come with them, and her ladyship had
not been served by a personal attendant for years. Her ladyship had also
appeared at the dinner-table in new garments, and with her hair done
as other ladies wore theirs. She looked like a different woman, and
actually had a bit of colour, and was beginning to lose her frightened
way. Now it dawned upon even the dullest and least active mind that
something had begun to stir.

It had been felt vaguely when the new young lady from "Meriker" had
walked through the village street, and had drawn people to doors and
windows by her mere passing. After the return from London the signs of
activity were such as made the villagers catch their breaths in uttering
uncertain exclamations, and caused the feminine element to catch up
offspring or, dragging it by its hand, run into neighbours' cottages and
stand talking the incredible thing over in lowered and rather breathless
voices. Yet the incredible thing in question was--had it been seen from
the standpoint of more prosperous villagers--anything but extraordinary.
In entirely rural places the Castle, the Hall or the Manor, the Great
House--in short--still retains somewhat of the old feudal power to
bestow benefits or withhold them. Wealth and good will at the Manor
supply work and resultant comfort in the village and its surrounding
holdings. Patronised by the Great House the two or three small village
shops bestir themselves and awaken to activity. The blacksmith swings
his hammer with renewed spirit over the numerous jobs the gentry's
stables, carriage houses, garden tools, and household repairs give
to him. The carpenter mends and makes, the vicarage feels at ease,
realising that its church and its charities do not stand unsupported.
Small farmers and larger ones, under a rich and interested landlord,
thrive and are able to hold their own even against the tricks of wind
and weather. Farm labourers being, as a result, certain of steady and
decent wage, trudge to and fro, with stolid cheerfulness, knowing that
the pot boils and the children's feet are shod. Superannuated old men
and women are sure of their broth and Sunday dinner, and their dread of
the impending "Union" fades away. The squire or my lord or my lady can
be depended upon to care for their old bones until they are laid under
the sod in the green churchyard. With wealth and good will at the Great
House, life warms and offers prospects. There are Christmas feasts and
gifts and village treats, and the big carriage or the smaller ones stop
at cottage doors and at once confer exciting distinction and carry good
cheer.

But Stornham village had scarcely a remote memory of any period of such
prosperity. It had not existed even in the older Sir Nigel's time, and
certainly the present Sir Nigel's reign had been marked only by neglect,
ill-temper, indifference, and a falling into disorder and decay. Farms
were poorly worked, labourers were unemployed, there was no trade from
the manor household, no carriages, no horses, no company, no spending
of money. Cottages leaked, floors were damp, the church roof itself was
falling to pieces, and the vicar had nothing to give. The helpless and
old cottagers were carried to the "Union" and, dying there, were buried
by the stinted parish in parish coffins.

Her ladyship had not visited the cottages since her child's birth. And
now such inspiriting events as were everyday happenings in lucky places
like Westerbridge and Wratcham and Yangford, showed signs of being about
to occur in Stornham itself.

To begin with, even before the journey to London, Kedgers had made two
or three visits to The Clock, and had been in a communicative mood. He
had related the story of the morning when he had looked up from his
work and had found the strange young lady standing before him, with the
result that he had been "struck all of a heap." And then he had given a
detailed account of their walk round the place, and of the way in which
she had looked at things and asked questions, such as would have done
credit to a man "with a 'ead on 'im."

"Nay! Nay!" commented Kedgers, shaking his own head doubtfully, even
while with admiration. "I've never seen the like before--in young
women--neither in lady young women nor in them that's otherwise."

Afterwards had transpired the story of Mrs. Noakes, and the kitchen
grate, Mrs. Noakes having a friend in Miss Lupin, the village
dressmaker.

"I'd not put it past her," was Mrs. Noakes' summing up, "to order a new
one, I wouldn't."

The footman in the shabby livery had been a little wild in his
statements, being rendered so by the admiring and excited state of his
mind. He dwelt upon the matter of her "looks," and the way she lighted
up the dingy dining-room, and so conversed that a man found himself
listening and glancing when it was his business to be an unhearing,
unseeing piece of mechanism.

Such simple records of servitors' impressions were quite enough for
Stornham village, and produced in it a sense of being roused a little
from sleep to listen to distant and uncomprehended, but not unagreeable,
sounds.

One morning Buttle, the carpenter, looked up as Kedgers had done, and
saw standing on the threshold of his shop the tall young woman, who was
a sensation and an event in herself.

"You are the master of this shop?" she asked.

Buttle came forward, touching his brow in hasty salute.

"Yes, my lady," he answered. "Joseph Buttle, your ladyship."

"I am Miss Vanderpoel," dismissing the suddenly bestowed title with easy
directness. "Are you busy? I want to talk to you."

No one had any reason to be "busy" at any time in Stornham village, no
such luck; but Buttle did not smile as he replied that he was at liberty
and placed himself at his visitor's disposal. The tall young lady came
into the little shop, and took the chair respectfully offered to her.
Buttle saw her eyes sweep the place as if taking in its resources.

"I want to talk to you about some work which must be done at the Court,"
she explained at once. "I want to know how much can be done by workmen
of the village. How many men have you?"

"How many men had he?" Buttle wavered between gratification at its being
supposed that he had "men" under him and grumpy depression because the
illusion must be dispelled.

"There's me and Sim Soames, miss," he answered. "No more, an' no less."

"Where can you get more?" asked Miss Vanderpoel.

It could not be denied that Buttle received a mental shock which verged
in its suddenness on being almost a physical one. The promptness and
decision of such a query swept him off his feet. That Sim Soames and
himself should be an insufficient force to combat with such repairs as
the Court could afford was an idea presenting an aspect of unheard-of
novelty, but that methods as coolly radical as those this questioning
implied, should be resorted to, was staggering.

"Me and Sim has always done what work was done," he stammered. "It
hasn't been much."

Miss Vanderpoel neither assented to nor dissented from this last
palpable truth. She regarded Buttle with searching eyes. She was
wondering if any practical ability concealed itself behind his dullness.
If she gave him work, could he do it? If she gave the whole village
work, was it too far gone in its unspurred stodginess to be roused to
carrying it out?

"There is a great deal to be done now," she said. "All that can be done
in the village should be done here. It seems to me that the villagers
want work--new work. Do they?"

Work! New work! The spark of life in her steady eyes actually
lighted a spark in the being of Joe Buttle. Young ladies in
villages--gentry--usually visited the cottagers a bit if they were
well-meaning young women--left good books and broth or jelly, pottered
about and were seen at church, and playing croquet, and finally married
and removed to other places, or gradually faded year by year into
respectable spinsterhood. And this one comes in, and in two or three
minutes shows that she knows things about the place and understands. A
man might then take it for granted that she would understand the thing
he daringly gathered courage to say.

"They want any work, miss--that they are sure of decent pay for--sure of
it."

She did understand. And she did not treat his implication as an
impertinence. She knew it was not intended as one, and, indeed, she saw
in it a sort of earnest of a possible practical quality in Buttle.
Such work as the Court had demanded had remained unpaid for with quiet
persistence, until even bills had begun to lag and fall off. She could
see exactly how it had been done, and comprehended quite clearly a lack
of enthusiasm in the presence of orders from the Great House.

"All work will be paid for," she said. "Each week the workmen will
receive their wages. They may be sure. I will be responsible."

"Thank you, miss," said Buttle, and he half unconsciously touched his
forehead again.

"In a place like this," the young lady went on in her mellow voice, and
with a reflective thoughtfulness in her handsome eyes, "on an estate
like Stornham, no work that can be done by the villagers should be done
by anyone else. The people of the land should be trained to do such work
as the manor house, or cottages, or farms require to have done."

"How did she think that out?" was Buttle's reflection. In places such
as Stornham, through generation after generation, the thing she had just
said was accepted as law, clung to as a possession, any divergence from
it being a grievance sullenly and bitterly grumbled over. And in places
enough there was divergence in these days--the gentry sending to London
for things, and having up workmen to do their best-paying jobs for them.
The law had been so long a law that no village could see justice
in outsiders being sent for, even to do work they could not do well
themselves. It showed what she was, this handsome young woman--even
though she did come from America--that she should know what was right.

She took a note-book out and opened it on the rough table before her.

"I have made some notes here," she said, "and a sketch or two. We must
talk them over together."

If she had given Joe Buttle cause for surprise at the outset, she gave
him further cause during the next half-hour. The work that was to be
done was such as made him open his eyes, and draw in his breath. If
he was to be allowed to do it--if he could do it--if it was to be
paid for--it struck him that he would be a man set up for life. If her
ladyship had come and ordered it to be done, he would have thought the
poor thing had gone mad. But this one had it all jotted down in a clear
hand, without the least feminine confusion of detail, and with here and
there a little sharply-drawn sketch, such as a carpenter, if he could
draw, which Buttle could not, might have made.

"There's not workmen enough in the village to do it in a year, miss," he
said at last, with a gasp of disappointment.

She thought it over a minute, her pencil poised in her hand and her eyes
on his face.

"Can you," she said, "undertake to get men from other villages, and
superintend what they do? If you can do that, the work is still passing
through your hands, and Stornham will reap the benefit of it. Your
workmen will lodge at the cottages and spend part of their wages at the
shops, and you who are a Stornham workman will earn the money to be made
out of a rather large contract."

Joe Buttle became quite hot. If you have brought up a family for years
on the proceeds of such jobs as driving a ten-penny nail in here or
there, tinkering a hole in a cottage roof, knocking up a shelf in
the vicarage kitchen, and mending a panel of fence, to be suddenly
confronted with a proposal to engage workmen and undertake "contracts"
is shortening to the breath and heating to the blood.

"Miss," he said, "we've never done big jobs, Sim Soames an' me. P'raps
we're not up to it--but it'd be a fortune to us."

She was looking down at one of her papers and making pencil marks on it.

"You did some work last year on a little house at Tidhurst, didn't you?"
she said.

To think of her knowing that! Yes, the unaccountable good luck had
actually come to him that two Tidhurst carpenters, falling ill of the
same typhoid at the same time, through living side by side in the same
order of unsanitary cottage, he and Sim had been given their work to
finish, and had done their best.

"Yes, miss," he answered.