The Shuttle

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Shuttle


"Is anything the matter, Nigel?" she asked at first, wondering if she
were guilty of silliness in trying to slip her hand into his. She was
sure she had been when he answered her.

"No," he said chillingly.

"I don't believe you are happy," she returned. "Somehow you seem so--so
different."

"I have reasons for being depressed," he replied, and it was with a
stiff finality which struck a note of warning to her, signifying that it
would be better taste in her to put an end to her simple efforts.

She vaguely felt herself put in the wrong, and he preferred that it
should be so. It was the best form of preparation for any mood he might
see that it might pay him to show her in the future. He was, in fact,
confronting disdainfully his position. He had her on his hands and he
was returning to his relations with no definite advantage to exhibit as
the result of having married her. She had been supplied with an income
but he had no control over it. It would not have been so if he had
not been in such straits that he had been afraid to risk his chance by
making a stand. To have a wife with money, a silly, sweet temper and no
will of her own, was of course better than to be penniless, head over
heels in debt and hemmed in by difficulties on every side. He had seen
women trained to give in to anything rather than be bullied in public,
to accede in the end to any demand rather than endure the shame of
a certain kind of scene made before servants, and a certain kind of
insolence used to relatives and guests. The quality he found
most maddeningly irritating in Rosalie was her obviously absolute
unconsciousness of the fact that it was entirely natural and proper that
her resources should be in her husband's hands. He had, indeed, even
in these early days, made a tentative effort or so in the form of a
suggestive speech; he had given her openings to give him an opening to
put things on a practical basis, but she had never had the intelligence
to see what he was aiming at, and he had found himself almost
floundering ungracefully in his remarks, while she had looked at him
without a sign of comprehension in her simple, anxious blue eyes. The
creature was actually trying to understand him and could not. That was
the worst of it, the blank wall of her unconsciousness, her childlike
belief that he was far too grand a personage to require anything. These
were the things he was thinking over when he walked up and down the deck
in unamiable solitariness. Rosy awakened to the amazed consciousness of
the fact that, instead of being pleased with the luxury and prettiness
of her wardrobe and appointments, he seemed to dislike and disdain them.

"You American women change your clothes too much and think too much of
them," was one of his first amiable criticisms. "You spend more than
well-bred women should spend on mere dresses and bonnets. In New York it
always strikes an Englishman that the women look endimanche at whatever
time of day you come across them."

"Oh, Nigel!" cried Rosy woefully. She could not think of anything more
to say than, "Oh, Nigel!"

"I am sorry to say it is true," he replied loftily. That she was an
American and a New Yorker was being impressed upon poor little Lady
Anstruthers in a new way--somehow as if the mere cold statement of the
fact put a fine edge of sarcasm to any remark. She was of too innocent a
loyalty to wish that she was neither the one nor the other, but she did
wish that Nigel was not so prejudiced against the places and people she
cared for so much.

She was sitting in her stateroom enfolded in a dressing gown covered
with cascades of lace, tied with knots of embroidered ribbon, and her
maid, Hannah, who admired her greatly, was brushing her fair long hair
with a gold-backed brush, ornamented with a monogram of jewels.

If she had been a French duchess of a piquant type, or an English one
with an aquiline nose, she would have been beyond criticism; if she had
been a plump, over-fed woman, or an ugly, ill-natured, gross one, she
would have looked vulgar, but she was a little, thin, fair New
Yorker, and though she was not beyond criticism--if one demanded high
distinction--she was pretty and nice to look at. But Nigel Anstruthers
would not allow this to her. His own tailors' bills being far in
arrears and his pocket disgustingly empty, the sight of her ingenuous
sumptuousness and the gay, accustomed simpleness of outlook with which
she accepted it as her natural right, irritated him and roused his
venom. Bills would remain unpaid if she was permitted to spend her money
on this sort of thing without any consideration for the requirements of
other people.

He inhaled the air and made a gesture of distaste.

"This sachet business is rather overpowering," he said. "It is the sort
of thing a woman should be particularly discreet about."

"Oh, Nigel!" cried the poor girl agitatedly. "Hannah, do go and call
the steward to open the windows. Is it really strong?" she implored as
Hannah went out. "How dreadful. It's only orris and I didn't know Hannah
had put it in the trunks."

"My dear Rosalie," with a wave of the hand taking in both herself and
her dressing case, "it is all too strong."

"All--wh--what?" gaspingly.

"The whole thing. All that lace and love knot arrangement, the
gold-backed brushes and scent bottles with diamonds and rubies sticking
in them."

"They--they were wedding presents. They came from Tiffany's. Everyone
thought them lovely."

"They look as if they belonged to the dressing table of a French woman
of the demi-monde. I feel as if I had actually walked into the apartment
of some notorious Parisian soubrette."

Rosalie Vanderpoel was a clean-minded little person, her people were of
the clean-minded type, therefore she did not understand all that this
ironic speech implied, but she gathered enough of its significance to
cause her to turn first red and then pale and then to burst into tears.
She was crying and trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned.
She bent her head and touched her eyes furtively while her toilette was
completed.

Sir Nigel had retired from the scene, but he had done so feeling that he
had planted a seed and bestowed a practical lesson. He had, it is true,
bestowed one, but again she had not understood its significance and was
only left bewildered and unhappy. She began to be nervous and uncertain
about herself and about his moods and points of view. She had never been
made to feel so at home. Everyone had been kind to her and lenient to
her lack of brilliancy. No one had expected her to be brilliant, and she
had been quite sweet-temperedly resigned to the fact that she was not
the kind of girl who shone either in society or elsewhere. She did not
resent the fact that she knew people said of her, "She isn't in the
least bit bright, Rosy Vanderpoel, but she's a nice, sweet little
thing." She had tried to be nice and sweet and had aspired to nothing
higher.

But now that seemed so much less than enough. Perhaps Nigel ought to
have married one of the clever ones, someone who would have known how to
understand him and who would have been more entertaining than she could
be. Perhaps she was beginning to bore him, perhaps he was finding her
out and beginning to get tired. At this point the always too ready
tears would rise to her eyes and she would be overwhelmed by a sense of
homesickness. Often she cried herself silently to sleep, longing for
her mother--her nice, comfortable, ordinary mother, whom she had several
times felt Nigel had some difficulty in being unreservedly polite
to--though he had been polite on the surface.

By the time they landed she had been living under so much strain in her
effort to seem quite unchanged, that she had lost her nerve. She did not
feel well and was sometimes afraid that she might do something silly and
hysterical in spite of herself, begin to cry for instance when there was
really no explanation for her doing it. But when she reached London the
novelty of everything so excited her that she thought she was going to
be better, and then she said to herself it would be proved to her that
all her fears had been nonsense. This return of hope made her quite
light-spirited, and she was almost gay in her little outbursts of
delight and admiration as she drove about the streets with her husband.
She did not know that her ingenuous ignorance of things he had known all
his life, her rapture over common monuments of history, led him to say
to himself that he felt rather as if he were taking a housemaid to see a
Lord Mayor's Show.

Before going to Stornham Court they spent a few days in town. There had
been no intention of proclaiming their presence to the world, and they
did not do so, but unluckily certain tradesmen discovered the fact that
Sir Nigel Anstruthers had returned to England with the bride he had
secured in New York. The conclusion to be deduced from this circumstance
was that the particular moment was a good one at which to send in bills
for "acct. rendered." The tradesmen quite shared Anstruthers' point
of view. Their reasoning was delightfully simple and they were wholly
unaware that it might have been called gross. A man over his head and
ears in debt naturally expected his creditors would be paid by the young
woman who had married him. America had in these days been so little
explored by the thrifty impecunious well-born that its ingenuous
sentimentality in certain matters was by no means comprehended.

By each post Sir Nigel received numerous bills. Sometimes letters
accompanied them, and once or twice respectful but firm male persons
brought them by hand and demanded interviews which irritated Sir Nigel
extremely. Given time to arrange matters with Rosalie, to train her to
some sense of her duty, he believed that the "acct. rendered" could be
wiped off, but he saw he must have time. She was such a little fool.
Again and again he was furious at the fate which had forced him to take
her.

The truth was that Rosalie knew nothing whatever about unpaid bills.
Reuben Vanderpoel's daughters had never encountered an indignant
tradesman in their lives. When they went into "stores" they were
received with unfeigned rapture. Everything was dragged forth to be
displayed to them, attendants waited to leap forth to supply their
smallest behest. They knew no other phase of existence than the one in
which one could buy anything one wanted and pay any price demanded for
it.

Consequently Rosalie did not recognise signs which would have been
obviously recognisable by the initiated. If Sir Nigel Anstruthers had
been a nice young fellow who had loved her, and he had been honest
enough to make a clean breast of his difficulties, she would have thrown
herself into his arms and implored him effusively to make use of all
her available funds, and if the supply had been insufficient, would have
immediately written to her father for further donations, knowing that
her appeal would be responded to at once. But Sir Nigel Anstruthers
cherished no sentiment for any other individual than himself, and he
had no intention of explaining that his mere vanity had caused him to
mislead her, that his rank and estate counted for nothing and that he
was in fact a pauper loaded with dishonest debts. He wanted money, but
he wanted it to be given to him as if he conferred a favour by receiving
it. It must be transferred to him as though it were his by right. What
did a man marry for? Therefore his wife's unconsciousness that she was
inflicting outrage upon him by her mere mental attitude filled his being
with slowly rising gall.

Poor Rosalie went joyfully forth shopping after the manner of all newly
arrived Americans. She bought new toilettes and gewgaws and presents
for her friends and relations in New York, and each package which was
delivered at the hotel added to Sir Nigel's rage.

That the little blockhead should be allowed to do what she liked with
her money and that he should not be able to forbid her! This he said
to himself at intervals of five minutes through the day--which led to
another small episode.

"You are spending a great deal of money," he said one morning in his
condemnatory manner. Rosalie looked up from the lace flounce which
had just been delivered and gave the little nervous laugh, which was
becoming entirely uncertain of propitiating.

"Am I?" she answered. "They say all Americans spend a good deal."

"Your money ought to be in proper hands and properly managed," he went
on with cold precision. "If you were an English woman, your husband
would control it."

"Would he?" The simple, sweet-tempered obtuseness of her tone was an
infuriating thing to him. There was the usual shade of troubled surprise
in her eyes as they met his. "I don't think men in America ever do that.
I don't believe the nice ones want to. You see they have such a pride
about always giving things to women, and taking care of them. I believe
a nice American man would break stones in the street rather than take
money from a woman--even his wife. I mean while he could work. Of course
if he was ill or had ill luck or anything like that, he wouldn't be so
proud as not to take it from the person who loved him most and wanted
to help him. You do sometimes hear of a man who won't work and lets his
wife support him, but it's very seldom, and they are always the low kind
that other men look down on."

"Wanted to help him." Sir Nigel selected the phrase and quoted it
between puffs of the cigar he held in his fine, rather cruel-looking
hands, and his voice expressed a not too subtle sneer. "A woman is not
'helping' her husband when she gives him control of her fortune. She
is only doing her duty and accepting her proper position with regard to
him. The law used to settle the thing definitely."

"Did-did it?" Rosy faltered weakly. She knew he was offended again and
that she was once more somehow in the wrong. So many things about her
seemed to displease him, and when he was displeased he always reminded
her that she was stupidly, objectionably guilty of not being an English
woman.

Whatsoever it happened to be, the fault she had committed out of her
depth of ignorance, he did not forget it. It was no habit of his to
endeavour to dismiss offences. He preferred to hold them in possession
as if they were treasures and to turn them over and over, in the mental
seclusion which nourishes the growth of injuries, since within its
barriers there is no chance of their being palliated by the apologies or
explanations of the offender.

During their journey to Stornham Court the next day he was in one of his
black moods. Once in the railway carriage he paid small attention to
his wife, but sat rigidly reading his Times, until about midway to their
destination he descended at a station and paid a visit to the buffet in
the small refreshment room, after which he settled himself to doze in
an exceedingly unbecoming attitude, his travelling cap pulled down,
his rather heavy face congested with the dark flush Rosalie had not yet
learned was due to the fact that he had hastily tossed off two or three
whiskies and sodas. Though he was never either thick of utterance or
unsteady on his feet, whisky and soda formed an important factor in his
existence. When he was annoyed or dull he at once took the necessary
precautions against being overcome by these feelings, and the effect
upon a constitutionally evil temper was to transform it into an infernal
one. The night had been a bad one for Rosy. Such floods of homesick
longing had overpowered her that she had not been able to sleep. She had
risen feeling shaky and hysterical and her nervousness had been added to
by her fear that Nigel might observe her and make comment. Of course
she told herself it was natural that he should not wish her to appear at
Stornham Court looking a pale, pink-nosed little fright. Her efforts
to be cheerful had indeed been somewhat touching, but they had met with
small encouragement.

She thought the green-clothed country lovely as the train sped through
it, and a lump rose in her small throat because she knew she might have
been so happy if she had not been so frightened and miserable. The thing
which had been dawning upon her took clearer, more awful form. Incidents
she had tried to explain and excuse to herself, upon all sorts of
futile, simple grounds, began to loom up before her in something like
their actual proportions. She had heard of men who had changed their
manner towards girls after they had married them, but she did not know
they had begun to change so soon. This was so early in the honeymoon to
be sitting in a railway carriage, in a corner remote from that occupied
by a bridegroom, who read his paper in what was obviously intentional,
resentful solitude. Emily Soame's father, she remembered it against her
will, had been obliged to get a divorce for Emily after her two years
of wretched married life. But Alfred Soames had been quite nice for six
months at least. It seemed as if all this must be a dream, one of those
nightmare things, in which you suddenly find yourself married to
someone you cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened, because you
yourself have had nothing to do with the matter. She felt that presently
she must waken with a start and find herself breathing fast, and panting
out, half laughing, half crying, "Oh, I am so glad it's not true! I am
so glad it's not true!"

But this was true, and there was Nigel. And she was in a new, unexplored
world. Her little trembling hands clutched each other. The happy, light
girlish days full of ease and friendliness and decency seemed gone
forever. It was not Rosalie Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless face
against the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees; it was
the wife of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic, she
had been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was being
dragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she did not know how to
escape. Already Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England a
woman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against her
husband, and that to endeavour to do anything was the last impossible
touch of vulgar ignominy.

The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a possession
as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced away
again with a little hysterical shudder. New York, good-tempered,
lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away and Nigel was so
loathly near and--and so ugly. She had never known before that he was so
ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his
expression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently analytical
to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to the appalling
point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature
to whom she was chained for life. She was terrified at finding herself
forced to combat the realisation that there were certain expressions
of his countenance which made her feel sick with repulsion. Her
self-reproach also was as great as her terror. He was her husband--her
husband--and she was a wicked girl. She repeated the words to herself
again and again, but remotely she knew that when she said, "He is my
husband," that was the worst thing of all.

This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added misery, and
when their railroad journey terminated at Stornham Station she was met
by new bewilderment.

The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed down a
bank to meet the very train itself. The station master's cottage had
roses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny garden. The station
master, a good-natured, red-faced man, came forward, baring his head,
to open the railroad carriage door with his own hand. Rosy thought him
delightful and bowed and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to his
wife and little girls, who were curtseying at the garden gate. She was
sufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their air of
welcoming her. But as she smiled she glanced furtively at Nigel to see
if she was doing exactly the right thing.

He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when the station
master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a
deferential welcome.

"Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel," he said; "very
happy, if I may say so."

Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-military
lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt.

"D'ye do, Wells," he said, and strode past him to speak to the footman
who had come from Stornham Court with the carriage.

The new and nervous little Lady Anstruthers, who was left to trot after
her husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-looking fellow, this time
in conscious deprecation. In the simplicity of her republican sympathy
with a well-meaning fellow creature who might feel himself snubbed,
she could have shaken him by the hand. She had even parted her lips to
venture a word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel's
voice raised in angry rating.

"Damned bad management not to bring something else," she heard. "Kind of
thing you fellows are always doing."

She made her way to the carriage, flurried again by not knowing whether
she was doing right or wrong. Sir Nigel had given her no instructions
and she had not yet learned that when he was in a certain humour there
was equal fault in obeying or disobeying such orders as he gave.

The carriage from the Court--not in the least a new or smart
equipage--was drawn up before the entrance of the station and Sir Nigel
was in a rage because the vehicle brought for the luggage was too small
to carry it all.

"Very sorry, Sir Nigel," said the coachman, touching his hat two or
three times in his agitation. "Very sorry. The omnibus was a little out
of order--the springs, Sir Nigel--and I thought----"

"You thought!" was the heated interruption. "What right had you to
think, damn it! You are not paid to think, you are paid to do your
work properly. Here are a lot of damned boxes which ought to go with us
and--where's your maid?" wheeling round upon his wife.

Rosalie turned towards the woman, who was approaching from the waiting
room.

"Hannah," she said timorously.

"Drop those confounded bundles," ordered Sir Nigel, "and show James the
boxes her ladyship is obliged to have this evening. Be quick about it
and don't pick out half a dozen. The cart can't take them."

Hannah looked frightened. This sort of thing was new to her, too. She
shuffled her packages on to a seat and followed the footman to the
luggage. Sir Nigel continued rating the coachman. Any form of violent
self-assertion was welcome to him at any time, and when he was irritated
he found it a distinct luxury to kick a dog or throw a boot at a cat.
The springs of the omnibus, he argued, had no right to be broken when
it was known that he was coming home. His anger was only added to by the
coachman's halting endeavours in his excuses to veil a fact he knew his
master was aware of, that everything at Stornham was more or less out of
order, and that dilapidations were the inevitable result of there being
no money to pay for repairs. The man leaned forward on his box and spoke
at last in a low tone.

"The bus has been broken some time," he said. "It's--it's an expensive
job, Sir Nigel. Her ladyship thought it better to----" Sir Nigel turned
white about the mouth.

"Hold your tongue," he commanded, and the coachman got red in the face,
saluted, biting his lips, and sat very stiff and upright on his box.

The station master edged away uneasily and tried to look as if he were
not listening. But Rosalie could see that he could not help hearing, nor
could the country people who had been passengers by the train and who
were collecting their belongings and getting into their traps.

Lady Anstruthers was ignored and remained standing while the scene
went on. She could not help recalling the manner in which she had been
invariably received in New York on her return from any journey, how she
was met by comfortable, merry people and taken care of at once. This was
so strange, it was so queer, so different.

"Oh, never mind, Nigel dear," she said at last, with innocent
indiscretion. "It doesn't really matter, you know."

Sir Nigel turned upon her a blaze of haughty indignation.

"If you'll pardon my saying so, it does matter," he said. "It matters
confoundedly. Be good enough to take your place in the carriage."

He moved to the carriage door, and not too civilly put her in. She
gasped a little for breath as she sat down. He had spoken to her as if
she had been an impertinent servant who had taken a liberty. The poor
girl was bewildered to the verge of panic. When he had ended his tirade
and took his place beside her he wore his most haughtily intolerant air.

"May I request that in future you will be good enough not to interfere
when I am reproving my servants," he remarked.

"I didn't mean to interfere," she apologised tremulously.