THE SHUTTLE
BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
THE SHUTTLE
CHAPTER I
THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE
No man knew when the Shuttle began its slow and
heavy weaving from shore to shore, that it was held
and guided by the great hand of Fate. Fate alone
saw the meaning of the web it wove, the might of it, and
its place in the making of a world's history. Men thought
but little of either web or weaving, calling them by other
names and lighter ones, for the time unconscious of the strength
of the thread thrown across thousands of miles of leaping,
heaving, grey or blue ocean.
Fate and Life planned the weaving, and it seemed mere
circumstance which guided the Shuttle to and fro between
two worlds divided by a gulf broader and deeper than the
thousands of miles of salt, fierce sea--the gulf of a bitter
quarrel deepened by hatred and the shedding of brothers'
blood. Between the two worlds of East and West there was
no will to draw nearer. Each held apart. Those who had
rebelled against that which their souls called tyranny, having
struggled madly and shed blood in tearing themselves free,
turned stern backs upon their unconquered enemies, broke all
cords that bound them to the past, flinging off ties of name,
kinship and rank, beginning with fierce disdain a new life.
Those who, being rebelled against, found the rebels too
passionate in their determination and too desperate in their
defence of their strongholds to be less than unconquerable,
sailed back haughtily to the world which seemed so far the
greater power. Plunging into new battles, they added new
conquests and splendour to their land, looking back with
something of contempt to the half-savage West left to build its
own civilisation without other aid than the strength of its own
strong right hand and strong uncultured brain.
But while the two worlds held apart, the Shuttle, weaving
slowly in the great hand of Fate, drew them closer and held
them firm, each of them all unknowing for many a year, that
what had at first been mere threads of gossamer, was forming
a web whose strength in time none could compute, whose
severance could be accomplished but by tragedy and convulsion.
The weaving was but in its early and slow-moving years
when this story opens. Steamers crossed and recrossed the
Atlantic, but they accomplished the journey at leisure and with
heavy rollings and all such discomforts as small craft can
afford. Their staterooms and decks were not crowded with
people to whom the voyage was a mere incident--in many
cases a yearly one. "A crossing" in those days was an event.
It was planned seriously, long thought of, discussed and re-
discussed, with and among the various members of the family
to which the voyager belonged. A certain boldness,
bordering on recklessness, was almost to be presupposed in the
individual who, turning his back upon New York, Philadelphia,
Boston, and like cities, turned his face towards "Europe."
In those days when the Shuttle wove at leisure, a man
did not lightly run over to London, or Paris, or Berlin, he
gravely went to "Europe."
The journey being likely to be made once in a lifetime, the
traveller's intention was to see as much as possible, to visit
as many cities cathedrals, ruins, galleries, as his time and
purse would allow. People who could speak with any degree
of familiarity of Hyde Park, the Champs Elysees, the Pincio,
had gained a certain dignity. The ability to touch with an
intimate bearing upon such localities was a raison de plus for
being asked out to tea or to dinner. To possess photographs
and relics was to be of interest, to have seen European
celebrities even at a distance, to have wandered about the
outside of poets' gardens and philosophers' houses, was to be
entitled to respect. The period was a far cry from the time when
the Shuttle, having shot to and fro, faster and faster, week by
week, month by month, weaving new threads into its web
each year, has woven warp and woof until they bind far
shore to shore.
It was in comparatively early days that the first thread we
follow was woven into the web. Many such have been woven
since and have added greater strength than any others, twining
the cord of sex and home-building and race-founding.
But this was a slight and weak one, being only the thread of
the life of one of Reuben Vanderpoel's daughters--the pretty
little simple one whose name was Rosalie.
They were--the Vanderpoels--of the Americans whose
fortunes were a portion of the history of their country. The
building of these fortunes had been a part of, or had created
epochs and crises. Their millions could scarcely be regarded
as private property. Newspapers bandied them about, so to
speak, employing them as factors in argument, using them
as figures of speech, incorporating them into methods of
calculation. Literature touched upon them, moral systems
considered them, stories for the young treated them gravely as
illustrative.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger
had traded with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was
the lauded hero of stories of thrift and enterprise. Throughout
his hard-working life he had been irresistibly impelled to
action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself
at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere exchange
and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value
of things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances,
had stood him in marvellous good stead. He had bought
at low prices things which in the eyes of the less discerning
were worthless, but, having obtained possession of such things,
the less discerning had almost invariably awakened to the
fact that, in his hands, values increased, and methods of
remunerative disposition, being sought, were found. Nothing
remained unutilisable. The practical, sordid, uneducated
little man developed the power to create demand for his own
supplies. If he was betrayed into an error, he quickly retrieved
it. He could live upon nothing and consequently could travel
anywhere in search of such things as he desired. He could
barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was daring
and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier, his
blood burned with the fever of but one desire--the desire to
accumulate. Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure,
but investment in such small or large properties as could be
resold at profit in the near or far future. The future held
fascinations for him. He bought nothing for his own pleasure
or comfort, nothing which could not be sold or bartered
again. He married a woman who was a trader's daughter
and shared his passion for gain. She was of North of England
blood, her father having been a hard-fisted small tradesman
in an unimportant town, who had been daring enough to
emigrate when emigration meant the facing of unknown dangers
in a half-savage land. She had excited Reuben Vanderpoel's
admiration by taking off her petticoat one bitter winter's
day to sell it to a squaw in exchange for an ornament
for which she chanced to know another squaw would pay with
a skin of value. The first Mrs. Vanderpoel was as wonderful
as her husband. They were both wonderful. They were the
founders of the fortune which a century and a half later was
the delight--in fact the piece de resistance--of New York
society reporters, its enormity being restated in round figures
when a blank space must be filled up. The method of statement
lent itself to infinite variety and was always interesting
to a particular class, some elements of which felt it encouraging
to be assured that so much money could be a personal
possession, some elements feeling the fact an additional
argument to be used against the infamy of monopoly.
The first Reuben Vanderpoel transmitted to his son his
accumulations and his fever for gain. He had but one child.
The second Reuben built upon the foundations this afforded
him, a fortune as much larger than the first as the rapid growth
and increasing capabilities of the country gave him enlarging
opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessary to deal
with savages: his powers were called upon to cope with those
of white men who came to a new country to struggle for
livelihood and fortune. Some were shrewd, some were
desperate, some were dishonest. But shrewdness never outwitted,
desperation never overcame, dishonesty never deceived the second
Reuben Vanderpoel. Each characteristic ended by adapting
itself to his own purposes and qualities, and as a result of
each it was he who in any business transaction was the gainer.
It was the common saying that the Vanderpoels were possessed
of a money-making spell. Their spell lay in their entire mental
and physical absorption in one idea. Their peculiarity was not
so much that they wished to be rich as that Nature itself
impelled them to collect wealth as the load-stone draws towards
it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich, having
become rich they became richer, having founded their fortunes
on small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In
time they attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would
seem no circumstance can control or limit. The first Reuben
Vanderpoel could not spell, the second could, the third was
as well educated as a man could be whose sole profession is
money-making. His children were taught all that expensive
teachers and expensive opportunities could teach them. After
the second generation the meagre and mercantile physical type
of the Vanderpoels improved upon itself. Feminine good looks
appeared and were made the most of. The Vanderpoel element
invested even good looks to an advantage. The fourth
Reuben Vanderpoel had no son and two daughters. They
were brought up in a brown-stone mansion built upon a fashionable
New York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the
farthest point of the Rocky Mountains the number of dollars
this "mansion" (it was always called so) had cost, was
known. There may have existed Pueblo Indians who had
heard rumours of the price of it. All the shop-keepers and
farmers in the United States had read newspaper descriptions
of its furnishings and knew the value of the brocade which
hung in the bedrooms and boudoirs of the Misses Vanderpoel.
It was a fact much cherished that Miss Rosalie's bath
was of Carrara marble, and to good souls actively engaged in
doing their own washing in small New England or Western
towns, it was a distinct luxury to be aware that the water in
the Carrara marble bath was perfumed with Florentine Iris.
Circumstances such as these seemed to become personal
possessions and even to lighten somewhat the burden of toil.
Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part
of the story of her married life forms my prologue. Hers was of
the early international marriages, and the republican mind had
not yet adjusted itself to all that such alliances might imply.
It was yet ingenuous, imaginative and confiding in such
matters. A baronetcy and a manor house reigning over an old
English village and over villagers in possible smock frocks,
presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whose
intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels
of Mrs. Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little
anecdotes in which vicarages, gamekeepers, and dowagers
figured, were exciting in these early days. "Sir Nigel
Anstruthers," when engraved upon a visiting card, wore an air of
distinction almost startling. Sir Nigel himself was not as
picturesque as his name, though he was not entirely without
attraction, when for reasons of his own he chose to aim at
agreeableness of bearing. He was a man with a good figure
and a good voice, and but for a heaviness of feature the result
of objectionable living, might have given the impression of
being better looking than he really was. New York laid
amused and at the same time, charmed stress upon the fact
that he spoke with an "English accent." His enunciation
was in fact clear cut and treated its vowels well. He was a
man who observed with an air of accustomed punctiliousness
such social rules and courtesies as he deemed it expedient to
consider. An astute worldling had remarked that he was at
once more ceremonious and more casual in his manner than
men bred in America.
"If you invite him to dinner," the wording said, "or if
you die, or marry, or meet with an accident, his notes of
condolence or congratulation are prompt and civil, but the actual
truth is that he cares nothing whatever about you or your
relations, and if you don't please him he does not hesitate to
sulk or be astonishingly rude, which last an American does
not allow himself to be, as a rule."
By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed, but accepted.
He was of the early English who came to New York, and was
a novelty of interest, with his background of Manor House
and village and old family name. He was very much talked
of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he was very much
talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner
parties he was furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner
when he sat with the men over their wine, he was not popular.
He was not perhaps exactly disliked, but men whose chief
interest at that period lay in stocks and railroads, did not find
conversation easy with a man whose sole occupation had been
the shooting of birds and the hunting of foxes, when he was
not absolutely loitering about London, with his time on his
hands. The stories he told--and they were few--were chiefly
anecdotes whose points gained their humour by the fact that
a man was a comically bad shot or bad rider and either
peppered a gamekeeper or was thrown into a ditch when his
horse went over a hedge, and such relations did not increase
in the poignancy of their interest by being filtered through
brains accustomed to applying their powers to problems of
speculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he
perceived this at an early stage of his visit to New York,
which was probably the reason of the infrequency of his stories.
He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour
of a "big deal" or a big blunder made on Wall Street--or
to the wit of jokes concerning them. Upon the whole he
would have been glad to have understood such matters more
clearly. His circumstances were such as had at last forced
him to contemplate the world of money-makers with something
of an annoyed respect. "These fellows" who had
neither titles nor estates to keep up could make money. He,
as he acknowledged disgustedly to himself, was much worse
than a beggar. There was Stornham Court in a state of ruin--
the estate going to the dogs, the farmhouses tumbling to
pieces and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to bless himself
with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the
rank which in bygone times had not associated itself with
trade had begun at least to trifle with it--to consider its
potentialities as factors possibly to be made useful by the
aristocracy. Countesses had not yet spiritedly opened milliners'
shops, nor belted Earls adorned the stage, but certain noblemen
had dallied with beer and coquetted with stocks. One
of the first commercial developments had been the discovery
of America--particularly of New York--as a place where
if one could make up one's mind to the plunge, one might
marry one's sons profitably. At the outset it presented a field
so promising as to lead to rashness and indiscretion on the part
of persons not given to analysis of character and in consequence
relying too serenely upon an ingenuousness which
rather speedily revealed that it had its limits. Ingenuousness
combining itself with remarkable alertness of perception on
occasion, is rather American than English, and is, therefore, to
the English mind, misleading.
At first younger sons, who "gave trouble" to their
families, were sent out. Their names, their backgrounds of
castles or manors, relatives of distinction, London seasons, fox
hunting, Buckingham Palace and Goodwood Races, formed
a picturesque allurement. That the castles and manors would
belong to their elder brothers, that the relatives of distinction
did not encourage intimacy with swarms of the younger
branches of their families; that London seasons, hunting, and
racing were for their elders and betters, were facts not realised
in all their importance by the republican mind. In the course
of time they were realised to the full, but in Rosalie
Vanderpoel's nineteenth year they covered what was at that time
almost unknown territory. One may rest assured Sir Nigel
Anstruthers said nothing whatsoever in New York of an interview
he had had before sailing with an intensely disagreeable
great-aunt, who was the wife of a Bishop. She was a horrible
old woman with a broad face, blunt features and a
raucous voice, whose tones added acridity to her observations
when she was indulging in her favourite pastime of interfering
with the business of her acquaintances and relations.
"I do not know what you are going chasing off to America
for, Nigel," she commented. "You can't afford it and it is
perfectly ridiculous of you to take it upon yourself to travel
for pleasure as if you were a man of means instead of being
in such a state of pocket that Maria tells me you cannot pay
your tailor. Neither the Bishop nor I can do anything for
you and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that
you know yourself what you are going to America in search
of, and that it is something more practical than buffaloes.
You had better stop in New York. Those big shopkeepers'
daughters are enormously rich, they say, and they are immensely
pleased by attentions from men of your class. They say they'll
marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother with a
title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You
need not refer to the fact that she thought your father a
blackguard and your mother an interloper, and that you have
never been invited to Broadmere since you were born. You
can refer casually to me and to the Bishop and to the Palace,
too. A Palace--even a Bishop's--ought to go a long way with
Americans. They will think it is something royal." She
ended her remarks with one of her most insulting snorts of
laughter, and Sir Nigel became dark red and looked as if he
would like to knock her down.
It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly
revolting to him. If she had expressed them in a manner
more flattering to himself he would have felt that there was
a good deal to be said for them. In fact, he had put the
same thing to himself some time previously, and, in summing
up the American matter, had reached certain thrifty decisions.
The impulse to knock her down surged within him solely because
he had a brutally bad temper when his vanity was insulted,
and he was furious at her impudence in speaking to
him as if he were a villager out of work whom she was at
liberty to bully and lecture.
"For a woman who is supposed to have been born of
gentle people," he said to his mother afterwards, "Aunt Marian
is the most vulgar old beast I have ever beheld. She has
the taste of a female costermonger." Which was entirely
true, but it might be added that his own was no better and
his points of view and morals wholly coincided with his taste.
Naturally Rosalie Vanderpoel knew nothing of this side of
the matter. She had been a petted, butterfly child, who had
been pretty and admired and indulged from her infancy; she
had grown up into a petted, butterfly girl, pretty and admired
and surrounded by inordinate luxury. Her world had been
made up of good-natured, lavish friends and relations, who
enjoyed themselves and felt a delight in her girlish toilettes
and triumphs. She had spent her one season of belledom in being
whirled from festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms
festooned with thousands of dollars' worth of flowers, in
lunching or dining at tables loaded with roses and violets and
orchids, from which ballrooms or feasts she had borne away
wonderful "favours" and gifts, whose prices, being recorded
in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass
over the land. She was a slim little creature, with quantities
of light feathery hair like a French doll's. She had small
hands and small feet and a small waist--a small brain also,
it must be admitted, but she was an innocent, sweet-tempered
girl with a childlike simpleness of mind. In fine, she was
exactly the girl to find Sir Nigel's domineering temperament
at once imposing and attractive, so long as it was cloaked by
the ceremonies of external good breeding.
Her sister Bettina, who was still a child, was of a stronger
and less susceptible nature. Betty--at eight--had long legs
and a square but delicate small face. Her well-opened steel-
blue eyes were noticeable for rather extravagant ink-black
lashes and a straight young stare which seemed to accuse if
not to condemn. She was being educated at a ruinously expensive
school with a number of other inordinately rich little
girls, who were all too wonderfully dressed and too lavishly
supplied with pocket money. The school considered itself
especially refined and select, but was in fact interestingly
vulgar.
The inordinately rich little girls, who had most of them
pretty and spiritual or pretty and piquant faces, ate a great
many bon bons and chattered a great deal in high unmodulated
voices about the parties their sisters and other relatives
went to and the dresses they wore. Some of them were
nice little souls, who in the future would emerge from their
chrysalis state enchanting women, but they used colloquialisms
freely, and had an ingenuous habit of referring to the prices of
things. Bettina Vanderpoel, who was the richest and cleverest
and most promisingly handsome among them, was colloquial to
slanginess, but she had a deep, mellow, child voice and an
amazing carriage.
She could not endure Sir Nigel Anstruthers, and, being
an American child, did not hesitate to express herself with
force, if with some crudeness. "He's a hateful thing," she said,
"I loathe him. He's stuck up and he thinks you are afraid
of him and he likes it."
Sir Nigel had known only English children, little girls
who lived in that discreet corner of their parents' town or
country houses known as "the schoolroom," apparently emerging
only for daily walks with governesses; girls with long
hair and boys in little high hats and with faces which seemed
curiously made to match them. Both boys and girls were
decently kept out of the way and not in the least dwelt on
except when brought out for inspection during the holidays
and taken to the pantomime.
Sir Nigel had not realised that an American child was an
absolute factor to be counted with, and a "youngster" who
entered the drawing-room when she chose and joined fearlessly
in adult conversation was an element he considered annoying.
It was quite true that Bettina talked too much and too readily
at times, but it had not been explained to her that the opinions
of eight years are not always of absorbing interest to the
mature. It was also true that Sir Nigel was a great fool for
interfering with what was clearly no affair of his in such a
manner as would have made him an enemy even had not the child's
instinct arrayed her against him at the outset.
"You American youngsters are too cheeky," he said on one
of the occasions when Betty had talked too much. "If you
were my sister and lived at Stornham Court, you would be
learning lessons in the schoolroom and wearing a pinafore.
Nobody ever saw my sister Emily when she was your age."
"Well, I'm not your sister Emily," retorted Betty, "and
I guess I'm glad of it."
It was rather impudent of her, but it must be confessed that
she was not infrequently rather impudent in a rude little-girl
way, but she was serenely unconscious of the fact.
Sir Nigel flushed darkly and laughed a short, unpleasant
laugh. If she had been his sister Emily she would have fared
ill at the moment, for his villainous temper would have got
the better of him.
"I `guess' that I may be congratulated too," he sneered.
"If I was going to be anybody's sister Emily," said Betty,
excited a little by the sense of the fray, "I shouldn't want to
be yours."
"Now Betty, don't be hateful," interposed Rosalie,
laughing, and her laugh was nervous. "There's Mina Thalberg
coming up the front steps. Go and meet her."
Rosalie, poor girl, always found herself nervous when Sir
Nigel and Betty were in the room together. She instinctively
recognised their antagonism and was afraid Betty would do
something an English baronet would think vulgar. Her simple
brain could not have explained to her why it was that she
knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorkers vulgar. She was,
however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact,
and felt a timid desire to be explanatory.
When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary
carriage finely manifest, Rosy's little laugh was propitiatory.
"You mustn't mind her," she said. "She's a real splendid
little thing, but she's got a quick temper. It's all over in a
minute."
"They wouldn't stand that sort of thing in England,"
said Sir Nigel. "She's deucedly spoiled, you know."
He detested the child. He disliked all children, but this one
awakened in him more than mere dislike. The fact was that
though Betty herself was wholly unconscious of the subtle
truth, the as yet undeveloped intellect which later made her
a brilliant and captivating personality, vaguely saw him as he
was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorseless an adventurer
and swindler in his special line, as if he had been
engaged in drawing false cheques and arranging huge jewel
robberies, instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous
marriage a girl whose gentleness and fortune could be used
by a blackguard of reputable name. The man was cold-
blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness was of value
because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted on
because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices
and on his racked and ruined name and estate, which must
be rebuilt and restocked at an early date by someone or other,
lest they tumbled into ignominious collapse which could not
be concealed. Bettina of the accusing eyes did not know that
in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct was summing
up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen
of the British blackguard, but this was nevertheless the
interesting truth. When later she was told that her sister had
become engaged to Sir Nigel Anstruthers, a flame of colour
flashed over her face, she stared silently a moment, then bit
her lip and burst into tears.
"Well, Bett," exclaimed Rosalie, "you are the queerest
thing I ever saw."
Bettina's tears were an outburst, not a flow. She swept
them away passionately with her small handkerchief.
"He'll do something awful to you," she said. "He'll
nearly kill you. I know he will. I'd rather be dead myself."
She dashed out of the room, and could never be induced to
say a word further about the matter. She would indeed have
found it impossible to express her intense antipathy and sense
of impending calamity. She had not the phrases to make herself
clear even to herself, and after all what controlling effort
can one produce when one is only eight years old?
