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THE SHUTTLE
By FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT BETTINA VANDERPOEL was ten years old when her sister Rosalie married Sir Nigel Anstruthers, an English baronet. Betty hated Nigel with a child's instinctive hatred for a bully, but in spite of his coarseness there was a certain fascination about him which blinded Rosalie to his real character. They were married in the whirl of gaiety which befitted the daughter of a multi-millionaire, and left New York for England. Long before the honeymoon ended, Rosy discovered that Nigel cared only for her money, and nothing whatever for her pretty, rather shallow self, and by the time Stornham Court was reached Rosy was desperately homesick and frightened. Her life in the little English village, even while she was the lady of the manor, was made a nightmare by Nigel and his mother; and when, bewildered and terrified, Rosy sought spiritual consolation and comfort from Mr. Ffolliott, the vicar, Nigel accused her of having a lover. He intercepted her letters, lied to her about her parents, and at last, furious at her refusal to ask her father for money, he struck her so that she fell in a little heap against a chair, and cried out, with a crazy, awful little laugh : "Nigel, be careful! You don't know how valuable I am ! I might-I might have-a son!" Fifteen years passed, and the Shuttle of Life, weaving back and forth between the two countries, weaving a ceaseless web over the ocean, twisted a thread in the life of o Betty Vanderpoel that stirred her with the spirit of adventure that had been born in her Dutch forefathers, and always a voice cried out to her to go to Rosy, to see why the letters from England had been so few and so unsatisfying. Betty was a lovely woman of twenty-five, very different from the gawky, long-legged little school-girl who had angrily defied Nigel Anstruthers, but she kept her de-termination and her will-power, and booked her passage on the Mauretania with a party of friends. At sea a storm came up that threatened to send the ship to the bottom of the ocean, and rallying the frightened people who were with her Betty had the unexpected assistance of one of the second-class passengers, a silent, gentlemanly English-man, who helped her to keep order among the passengers, and then, as suddenly as he came, disappeared into the second cabin. The storm abated at last and England was reached in safety, but Betty did not see the man again. When Betty reached Stornham Court, her worst fears were confirmed. Rosy was changed from a dainty, pretty, lovable girl into a faded wreck, timid and dowdy, old before her time. Her son Ughtred, was a hunchback, and, with the cringing nature of his kind, tried to hide himself from the world. Nigel was on a trip to the Riviera, and his mother had died, which left Rosalie alone in the Court, which was tumbling down for lack of repair. With plenty of money at her call, and with plenty of courage, Betty set about her work of transforming Rosalie and building up the house, which soon changed from a dingy, gloomy pile to the stately English country-house it should have been. She superintended the repairing of several of the houses in the village, and one day, during her regular drive about Stornham, she went farther and visited the grounds of the Mount Dunstan estate. Mount Dunstan was almost as badly in need of help as Stornham. There was a superstition which had come down through the years that the earls of Mount Dunstan were cursed, and the last earl, James Hubert Saltyre, shared the dislike which had been given his father. Going through the grounds, Betty found the man who had been the second-class passenger on the Mauretania, and, assuming from his dress that he was the keeper, she talked to him and learned some-thing of the family of Mount Dunstan. As she was going she offered him money, when to her surprise she learned that he was the earl. More annoyed than confused, Betty forgave him for the deception, and gradually friendship sprang up between the two houses. Then, as if to cement their friendship, the Shuttle twisted in the web of G. Selden, the junior salesman for the Delkoff Typewriter Company of New York, who made Mount Dunstan's acquaintance, and, learning that the daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel was in Stornham, went to see her, in the faint hope of selling her a typewriter, and contrived to break his leg in front of Stornham Court. They carried him into the house and cared for him, and through his slangy, care-free manner he unconsciously broke down the barrier of prejudice that surrounded Mount Dunstan, and went back to America happy in the possession of a letter to Mr. Vander-pool, the establishment of a longed-for "territory," and the order for six typewriters which were to be sent to England. The long summer days found Rosalie very nearly restored to her former self and perfectly contented to have Betty there; when Nigel tired of the Riviera, and, having exhausted his resources, returned to Stornham, there to find the place built up and repaired, Rosalie almost free of her fear of him, and Betty, rich and beautiful, in full charge. No sooner did he appear than Rosy fell back into her old timid ways, but, with a view to propitiating Betty, Nigel treated his wife with as much kindness as he could assume. Everything he did was done with the hope of making Betty like him, until at last he found that Mount Dunstan, penniless as he was, loved Betty, and, although she did not con- fess it, Betty loved him. Nigel was crafty, however, and bided his time, until there came a dreadful scourge of fever that swept the villages and terrified the people. Mount Dunstan gave up his home as a hospital, and, heedless of his own well-being, he acted as doctor, nurse, and minister, and won from every one the love and respect that was his due; and then, as the fever was abating, he was taken ill. An awful day followed for Betty, for they had told her of his illness, and she knew that if the worst happened they would toll the bell in the church tower. Sundown came, and with it the ominous tolling of the bell, the pitiless notes that froze her heart, and blindly she rode away from Stornham, trying to shut out the sound of the bell. Her horse stumbled in a hole and threw her, injuring her ankle, and then it was that she knew Nigel had followed her. He found her hiding in a little hut and claimed her for his own, and in answer to his demands she said: "There is one who stands between us-one who died to-day." He laughed at her and tried to take her in his arms, but she managed to evade him, and can, as best she could, with her injured foot, and hid from him in a tiny clump of bushes, whispering ceaselessly, "Come-you who died to-day-you who died!" And then-he came-the man she thought had died, the man she loved and who loved her, and, finding her there, and finding Nigel with evil in his eyes, he led her gently to the little hut and then went back to Nigel. What followed would not be good to repeat, but Betty heard sounds like the howling of a dog, and when Mount Dunstan finally came back to her, it was with flashing eyes and clenched fists, his broken horsewhip trailing on the ground. Then he told her how it had happened-how he had simply had a headache, and the bell had tolled for some one else, and how, when he found she had gone, he knew that it had been for love of him. For a few months Nigel lingered, stricken with paralysis, and then the kindly Weaver of the Shuttle slipped out his black thread, leaving Rosy contented with her father and mother, while the golden threads of the love of Betty for her man wove themselves in and out, forming the perfect web of happiness. |