The Shuttle

F >> Frances Hodgson Burnett >> The Shuttle


"That rough-looking man," she commented to herself, "is as anxious and
disturbed as I am."

Salter did look rough, it was true. His well-worn clothes had suffered
somewhat from the restrictions of a second-class cabin shared with two
other men. But the aspect which had presented itself to her brief glance
had been not so much roughness of clothing as of mood expressing itself
in his countenance. He was thinking harshly and angrily of the life
ahead of him.

These looks of theirs which had so inadvertently encountered each
other were of that order which sometimes startles one when in passing a
stranger one finds one's eyes entangled for a second in his or hers, as
the case may be. At such times it seems for that instant difficult to
disentangle one's gaze. But neither of these two thought of the other
much, after hurrying away. Each was too fully mastered by personal mood.

There would, indeed, have been no reason for their encountering each
other further but for "the accident," as it was called when spoken of
afterwards, the accident which might so easily have been a catastrophe.
It occurred that night. This was two nights before they were to land.

Everybody had begun to come under the influence of that cheerfulness of
humour, the sense of relief bordering on gaiety, which generally elates
people when a voyage is drawing to a close. If one has been dull, one
begins to gather one's self together, rejoiced that the boredom is over.
In any case, there are plans to be made, thought of, or discussed.

"You wish to go to Stornham at once?" Mrs. Worthington said to Bettina.
"How pleased Lady Anstruthers and Sir Nigel must be at the idea of
seeing you with them after so long."

"I can scarcely tell you how I am looking forward to it," Betty
answered.

She sat in her corner among her cushions looking at the dark water
which seemed to sweep past the ship, and listening to the throb of the
engines. She was not gay. She was wondering how far the plans she had
made would prove feasible. Mrs. Worthington was not aware that her visit
to Stornham Court was to be unannounced. It had not been necessary to
explain the matter. The whole affair was simple and decorous enough.
Miss Vanderpoel was to bid good-bye to her friends and go at once to her
sister, Lady Anstruthers, whose husband's country seat was but a short
journey from London. Bettina and her father had arranged that the fact
should be kept from the society paragraphist. This had required some
adroit management, but had actually been accomplished.

As the waves swished past her, Bettina was saying to herself, "What
will Rosy say when she sees me! What shall I say when I see Rosy? We are
drawing nearer to each other with every wave that passes."

A fog which swept up suddenly sent them all below rather early. The
Worthingtons laughed and talked a little in their staterooms, but
presently became quiet and had evidently gone to bed. Bettina was
restless and moved about her room alone after she had sent away her
maid. She at last sat down and finished a letter she had been writing to
her father.

"As I near the land," she wrote, "I feel a sort of excitement. Several
times to-day I have recalled so distinctly the picture of Rosy as I saw
her last, when we all stood crowded upon the wharf at New York to see
her off. She and Nigel were leaning upon the rail of the upper deck.
She looked such a delicate, airy little creature, quite like a pretty
schoolgirl with tears in her eyes. She was laughing and crying at the
same time, and kissing both her hands to us again and again. I was
crying passionately myself, though I tried to conceal the fact, and I
remember that each time I looked from Rosy to Nigel's heavy face the
poignancy of my anguish made me break forth again. I wonder if it was
because I was a child, that he looked such a contemptuous brute, even
when he pretended to smile. It is twelve years since then. I wonder--how
I wonder, what I shall find."

She stopped writing and sat a few moments, her chin upon her hand,
thinking. Suddenly she sprang to her feet in alarm. The stillness of the
night was broken by wild shouts, a running of feet outside, a tumult of
mingled sounds and motion, a dash and rush of surging water, a strange
thumping and straining of engines, and a moment later she was hurled
from one side of her stateroom to the other by a crashing shock which
seemed to heave the ship out of the sea, shuddering as if the end of all
things had come.

It was so sudden and horrible a thing that, though she had only been
flung upon a pile of rugs and cushions and was unhurt, she felt as if
she had been struck on the head and plunged into wild delirium. Above
the sound of the dashing and rocking waves, the straining and roaring of
hacking engines and the pandemonium of voices rose from one end of the
ship to the other, one wild, despairing, long-drawn shriek of women and
children. Bettina turned sick at the mad terror in it--the insensate,
awful horror.


"Something has run into us!" she gasped, getting up with her heart
leaping in her throat.

She could hear the Worthingtons' tempest of terrified confusion through
the partitions between them, and she remembered afterwards that in the
space of two or three seconds, and in the midst of their clamour, a
hundred incongruous thoughts leaped through her brain. Perhaps they were
this moment going down. Now she knew what it was like! This thing she
had read of in newspapers! Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she,
Betty Vanderpoel! And, as she sprang to clutch her fur coat, there
flashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlines
in the newspapers and the inevitable reference to the millions she
represented.

"I must keep calm," she heard herself say, as she fastened the
long coat, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering. "Poor
Daddy--poor Daddy!"

Maddening new sounds were all about her, sounds of water dashing and
churning, sounds of voices bellowing out commands, straining and leaping
sounds of the engines. What was it--what was it? She must at least
find out. Everybody was going mad in the staterooms, the stewards were
rushing about, trying to quiet people, their own voices shaking and
breaking into cracked notes. If the worst had happened, everyone would
be fighting for life in a few minutes. Out on deck she must get and find
out for herself what the worst was.

She was the first woman outside, though the wails and shrieks swelled
below, and half-dressed, ghastly creatures tumbled gasping up the
companion-way.

"What is it?" she heard. "My God! what's happened? Where's the Captain!
Are we going down! The boats! The boats!"

It was useless to speak to the seamen rushing by. They did not see, much
less hear! She caught sight of a man who could not be a sailor, since
he was standing still. She made her way to him, thankful that she had
managed to stop her teeth chattering.

"What has happened to us?" she said.

He turned and looked at her straitly. He was the second-cabin passenger
with the red hair.

"A tramp steamer has run into us in the fog," he answered.

"How much harm is done?"

"They are trying to find out. I am standing here on the chance of
hearing something. It is madness to ask any man questions."

They spoke to each other in short, sharp sentences, knowing there was no
time to lose.

"Are you horribly frightened?" he asked.

She stamped her foot.

"I hate it--I hate it!" she said, flinging out her hand towards the
black, heaving water. "The plunge--the choking! No one could hate it
more. But I want to DO something!"

She was turning away when he caught her hand and held her.

"Wait a second," he said. "I hate it as much as you do, but I believe we
two can keep our heads. Those who can do that may help, perhaps. Let us
try to quiet the people. As soon as I find out anything I will come to
your friends' stateroom. You are near the boats there. Then I shall go
back to the second cabin. You work on your side and I'll work on mine.
That's all."

"Thank you. Tell the Worthingtons. I'm going to the saloon deck." She
was off as she spoke.

Upon the stairway she found herself in the midst of a struggling
panic-stricken mob, tripping over each other on the steps, and clutching
at any garment nearest, to drag themselves up as they fell, or were on
the point of falling. Everyone was crying out in question and appeal.

Bettina stood still, a firm, tall obstacle, and clutched at the hysteric
woman who was hurled against her.

"I've been on deck," she said. "A tramp steamer has run into us. No one
has time to answer questions. The first thing to do is to put on warm
clothes and secure the life belts in case you need them."

At once everyone turned upon her as if she was an authority. She replied
with almost fierce determination to the torrent of words poured forth.

"I know nothing further--only that if one is not a fool one must make
sure of clothes and belts."

"Quite right, Miss Vanderpoel," said one young man, touching his cap in
nervous propitiation.

"Stop screaming," Betty said mercilessly to the woman. "It's
idiotic--the more noise you make the less chance you have. How can men
keep their wits among a mob of shrieking, mad women?"

That the remote Miss Vanderpoel should have emerged from her luxurious
corner to frankly bully the lot of them was an excellent shock for the
crowd. Men, who had been in danger of losing their heads and becoming
as uncontrolled as the women, suddenly realised the fact and pulled
themselves together. Bettina made her way at once to the Worthingtons'
staterooms.

There she found frenzy reigning. Blanche and Marie Worthington were
darting to and fro, dragging about first one thing and then another.
They were silly with fright, and dashed at, and dropped alternately,
life belts, shoes, jewel cases, and wraps, while they sobbed and cried
out hysterically. "Oh, what shall we do with mother! What shall we do!"

The manners of Betty Vanderpoel's sharp schoolgirl days returned to her
in full force. She seized Blanche by the shoulder and shook her.

"What a donkey you are!" she said. "Put on your clothes. There they
are," pushing her to the place where they hung. "Marie--dress yourself
this moment. We may be in no real danger at all."

"Do you think not! Oh, Betty!" they wailed in concert. "Oh, what shall
we do with mother!"

"Where is your mother?"

"She fainted--Louise----"

Betty was in Mrs. Worthington's cabin before they had finished speaking.
The poor woman had fainted, and struck her cheek against a chair. She
lay on the floor in her nightgown, with blood trickling from a cut on
her face. Her maid, Louise, was wringing her hands, and doing nothing
whatever.

"If you don't bring the brandy this minute," said the beautiful Miss
Vanderpoel, "I'll box your ears. Believe me, my girl." She looked so
capable of doing it that the woman was startled and actually offended
into a return of her senses. Miss Vanderpoel had usually the best
possible manners in dealing with her inferiors.

Betty poured brandy down Mrs. Worthington's throat and applied strong
smelling salts until she gasped back to consciousness. She had just
burst into frightened sobs, when Betty heard confusion and exclamations
in the adjoining room. Blanche and Marie had cried out, and a man's
voice was speaking. Betty went to them. They were in various stages of
undress, and the red-haired second-cabin passenger was standing at the
door.

"I promised Miss Vanderpoel----" he was saying, when Betty came forward.
He turned to her promptly.

"I come to tell you that it seems absolutely to be relied on that there
is no immediate danger. The tramp is more injured than we are."

"Oh, are you sure? Are you sure?" panted Blanche, catching at his
sleeve.

"Yes," he answered. "Can I do anything for you?" he said to Bettina, who
was on the point of speaking.

"Will you be good enough to help me to assist Mrs. Worthington into her
berth, and then try to find the doctor."

He went into the next room without speaking. To Mrs. Worthington he
spoke briefly a few words of reassurance. He was a powerful man, and
laid her on her berth without dragging her about uncomfortably, or
making her feel that her weight was greater than even in her most
desponding moments she had suspected. Even her helplessly hysteric mood
was illuminated by a ray of grateful appreciation.

"Oh, thank you--thank you," she murmured. "And you are quite sure there
is no actual danger, Mr.----?"

"Salter," he terminated for her. "You may feel safe. The damage is
really only slight, after all."

"It is so good of you to come and tell us," said the poor lady, still
tremulous. "The shock was awful. Our introduction has been an alarming
one. I--I don't think we have met during the voyage."

"No," replied Salter. "I am in the second cabin."

"Oh! thank you. It's so good of you," she faltered amiably, for want of
inspiration. As he went out of the stateroom, Salter spoke to Bettina.

"I will send the doctor, if I can find him," he said. "I think, perhaps,
you had better take some brandy yourself. I shall."

"It's queer how little one seems to realise even that there are
second-cabin passengers," commented Mrs. Worthington feebly. "That was a
nice man, and perfectly respectable. He even had a kind of--of manner."




CHAPTER IX

LADY JANE GREY

It seemed upon the whole even absurd that after a shock so awful and a
panic wild enough to cause people to expose their very souls--for
there were, of course, endless anecdotes to be related afterwards,
illustrative of grotesque terror, cowardice, and utter abandonment
of all shadows of convention--that all should end in an anticlimax of
trifling danger, upon which, in a day or two, jokes might be made. Even
the tramp steamer had not been seriously injured, though its injuries
were likely to be less easy of repair than those of the Meridiana.

"Still," as a passenger remarked, when she steamed into the dock at
Liverpool, "we might all be at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
this morning. Just think what columns there would have been in the
newspapers. Imagine Miss Vanderpoel's being drowned."

"I was very rude to Louise, when I found her wringing her hands over
you, and I was rude to Blanche," Bettina said to Mrs. Worthington. "In
fact I believe I was rude to a number of people that night. I am rather
ashamed."

"You called me a donkey," said Blanche, "but it was the best thing you
could have done. You frightened me into putting on my shoes, instead of
trying to comb my hair with them. It was startling to see you march into
the stateroom, the only person who had not been turned into a gibbering
idiot. I know I was gibbering, and I know Marie was."

"We both gibbered at the red-haired man when he came in," said Marie.
"We clutched at him and gibbered together. Where is the red-haired man,
Betty? Perhaps we made him ill. I've not seen him since that moment."

"He is in the second cabin, I suppose," Bettina answered, "but I have
not seen him, either."

"We ought to get up a testimonial and give it to him, because he did
not gibber," said Blanche. "He was as rude and as sensible as you were,
Betty."

They did not see him again, in fact, at that time. He had reasons of his
own for preferring to remain unseen. The truth was that the nearer his
approach to his native shores, the nastier, he was perfectly conscious,
his temper became, and he did not wish to expose himself by any incident
which might cause him stupidly and obviously to lose it.

The maid, Louise, however, recognised him among her companions in the
third-class carriage in which she travelled to town. To her mind, whose
opinions were regulated by neatly arranged standards, he looked morose
and shabbily dressed. Some of the other second-cabin passengers had made
themselves quite smart in various, not too distinguished ways. He had
not changed his dress at all, and the large valise upon the luggage
rack was worn and battered as if with long and rough usage. The woman
wondered a little if he would address her, and inquire after the health
of her mistress. But, being an astute creature, she only wondered this
for an instant, the next she realised that, for one reason or another,
it was clear that he was not of the tribe of second-rate persons who
pursue an accidental acquaintance with their superiors in fortune,
through sociable interchange with their footmen or maids.

When the train slackened its speed at the platform of the station, he
got up, reaching down his valise and leaving the carriage, strode to the
nearest hansom cab, waving the porter aside.

"Charing Cross," he called out to the driver, jumped in, and was rattled
away.

. . . . .

During the years which had passed since Rosalie Vanderpoel first came to
London as Lady Anstruthers, numbers of huge luxurious hotels had grown
up, principally, as it seemed, that Americans should swarm into them
and live at an expense which reminded them of their native land. Such
establishments would never have been built for English people, whose
habit it is merely to "stop" at hotels, not to LIVE in them. The
tendency of the American is to live in his hotel, even though his
intention may be only to remain in it two days. He is accustomed to
doing himself extremely well in proportion to his resources, whether
they be great or small, and the comforts, as also the luxuries, he
allows himself and his domestic appendages are in a proportion much
higher in its relation to these resources than it would be were he
English, French, German, or Italians. As a consequence, he expects, when
he goes forth, whether holiday-making or on business, that his hostelry
shall surround him, either with holiday luxuries and gaiety, or with
such lavishness of comfort as shall alleviate the wear and tear of
business cares and fatigues. The rich man demands something almost as
good as he has left at home, the man of moderate means something much
better. Certain persons given to regarding public wants and desires as
foundations for the fortune of business schemes having discovered
this, the enormous and sumptuous hotel evolved itself from their astute
knowledge of common facts. At the entrances of these hotels,
omnibuses and cabs, laden with trunks and packages frequently
bearing labels marked with red letters "S. S. So-and-So,
Stateroom--Hold--Baggage-room," drew up and deposited their contents
and burdens at regular intervals. Then men with keen, and often humorous
faces or almost painfully anxious ones, their exceedingly well-dressed
wives, and more or less attractive and vivacious-looking daughters,
their eager little girls, and un-English-looking little boys, passed
through the corridors in flocks and took possession of suites of rooms,
sometimes for twenty-four hours, sometimes for six weeks.

The Worthingtons took possession of such a suite in such a hotel.
Bettina Vanderpoel's apartments faced the Embankment. From her windows
she could look out at the broad splendid, muddy Thames, slowly rolling
in its grave, stately way beneath its bridges, bearing with it heavy
lumbering barges, excited tooting little penny steamers and craft
of various shapes and sizes, the errand or burden of each meaning a
different story.

It had been to Bettina one of her pleasures of the finest epicurean
flavour to reflect that she had never had any brief and superficial
knowledge of England, as she had never been to the country at all in
those earlier years, when her knowledge of places must necessarily have
been always the incomplete one of either a schoolgirl traveller or
a schoolgirl resident, whose views were limited by the walls of
restriction built around her.

If relations of the usual ease and friendliness had existed between Lady
Anstruthers and her family, Bettina would, doubtless, have known her
sister's adopted country well. It would have been a thing so natural
as to be almost inevitable, that she would have crossed the Channel to
spend her holidays at Stornham. As matters had stood, however, the child
herself, in the days when she had been a child, had had most definite
private views on the subject of visits to England. She had made up her
young mind absolutely that she would not, if it were decently possible
to avoid it, set her foot upon English soil until she was old enough
and strong enough to carry out what had been at first her passionately
romantic plans for discovering and facing the truth of the reason for
the apparent change in Rosy. When she went to England, she would go to
Rosy. As she had grown older, having in the course of education and
travel seen most Continental countries, she had liked to think that
she had saved, put aside for less hasty consumption and more delicate
appreciation of flavours, as it were, the country she was conscious she
cared for most.

"It is England we love, we Americans," she had said to her father. "What
could be more natural? We belong to it--it belongs to us. I could never
be convinced that the old tie of blood does not count. All nationalities
have come to us since we became a nation, but most of us in the
beginning came from England. We are touching about it, too. We trifle
with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalise over Italy and
ecstacise over Spain--but England we love. How it moves us when we go
to it, how we gush if we are simple and effusive, how we are stirred
imaginatively if we are of the perceptive class. I have heard the
commonest little half-educated woman say the prettiest, clumsy,
emotional things about what she has seen there. A New England
schoolma'am, who has made a Cook's tour, will almost have tears in her
voice as she wanders on with her commonplaces about hawthorn hedges and
thatched cottages and white or red farms. Why are we not unconsciously
pathetic about German cottages and Italian villas? Because we have not,
in centuries past, had the habit of being born in them. It is only
an English cottage and an English lane, whether white with hawthorn
blossoms or bare with winter, that wakes in us that little yearning,
grovelling tenderness that is so sweet. It is only nature calling us
home."

Mrs. Worthington came in during the course of the morning to find her
standing before her window looking out at the Thames, the Embankment,
the hansom cabs themselves, with an absolutely serious absorption. This
changed to a smile as she turned to greet her.

"I am delighted," she said. "I could scarcely tell you how much. The
impression is all new and I am excited a little by everything. I am so
intensely glad that I have saved it so long and that I have known it
only as part of literature. I am even charmed that it rains, and that
the cabmen's mackintoshes are shining and wet." She drew forward a
chair, and Mrs. Worthington sat down, looking at her with involuntary
admiration.

"You look as if you were delighted," she said. "Your eyes--you have
amazing eyes, Betty! I am trying to picture to myself what Lady
Anstruthers will feel when she sees you. What were you like when she
married?"

Bettina sat down, smiling and looking, indeed, quite incredibly lovely.
She was capable of a warmth and a sweetness which were as embracing as
other qualities she possessed were powerful.

"I was eight years old," she said. "I was a rude little girl, with
long legs and a high, determined voice. I know I was rude. I remember
answering back."

"I seem to have heard that you did not like your brother-in-law, and
that you were opposed to the marriage."

"Imagine the undisciplined audacity of a child of eight 'opposing' the
marriage of her grown-up sister. I was quite capable of it. You see in
those days we had not been trained at all (one had only been allowed
tremendous liberty), and interfered conversationally with one's elders
and betters at any moment. I was an American little girl, and American
little girls were really--they really were!" with a laugh, whose musical
sound was after all wholly non-committal.

"You did not treat Sir Nigel Anstruthers as one of your betters."

"He was one of my elders, at all events, and becomingness of bearing
should have taught me to hold my little tongue. I am giving some thought
now to the kind of thing I must invent as a suitable apology when I find
him a really delightful person, full of virtues and accomplishments.
Perhaps he has a horror of me."

"I should like to be present at your first meeting," Mrs. Worthington
reflected. "You are going down to Stornham to-morrow?"

"That is my plan. When I write to you on my arrival, I will tell you if
I encountered the horror." Then, with a swift change of subject and a
lifting of her slender, velvet line of eyebrow, "I am only deploring
that I have not time to visit the Tower."

Mrs. Worthington was betrayed into a momentary glance of uncertainty,
almost verging in its significance on a gasp.

"The Tower? Of London? Dear Betty!"

Bettina's laugh was mellow with revelation.

"Ah!" she said. "You don't know my point of view; it's plain enough.
You see, when I delight in these things, I think I delight most in my
delight in them. It means that I am almost having the kind of feeling
the fresh American souls had who landed here thirty years ago and
revelled in the resemblance to Dickens's characters they met with in
the streets, and were historically thrilled by the places where people's
heads were chopped off. Imagine their reflections on Charles I., when
they stood in Whitehall gazing on the very spot where that poor last
word was uttered--'Remember.' And think of their joy when each crossing
sweeper they gave disproportionate largess to, seemed Joe All Alones in
the slightest disguise."