The Shuttle

It seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you.  We had counted on it very much, and your mother feels it all the more because she is weak after her illness.  We don’t quite understand why you did not seem to know about her having had diphtheria in Paris.  You did not answer Betty’s letter.  Perhaps it missed you in some way.  Things do sometimes go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother has thought a letter has been lost.  She thought so because you seemed to forget to refer to things.  We came over to leave Betty at a French school and we had expected to visit you later.  But your mother fell ill of diphtheria and not hearing from you seemed to make her homesick, so we decided to return to New York by the next steamer.  I ran over to London, however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the first day I arrived I met your husband in Bond Street.  He at once explained to me that you had gone to a house party at some castle in Scotland, and said you were well and enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way to join you.  I am sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could not see each other.  It seems a long time since you left us.  But I am very glad, however, that you are so well and really like English life.  If we had time for it I am sure it would be delightful.  Your mother sends her love and wants very much to hear of all you are doing and enjoying.  Hoping that we may have better luck the next time we cross—­

Your affectionate father,

Reuben L. Vanderpoel.

Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue.  She was clutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering from side to side.  Now and then she uttered horrible little short cries, like an animal’s.  She ran and ran, seeing nothing, and now and then with the clenched hand in which the letter was crushed striking a sharp blow at her breast.

She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the day she was brought home as a bride.  Her dress caught her feet and she fell on her knees and scrambled up again, gasping; she dashed across the huge dark hall, and, hurling herself against the door of the morning room, appeared, dishevelled, haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on her wild, white face, before the Dowager, who started angrily to her feet: 

“Where is Nigel?  Where is Nigel?” she cried out frenziedly.

“What in heaven’s name do you mean by such manners?” demanded her ladyship.  “Apologise at once!”

“Where is Nigel?  Nigel!  Nigel!” the girl raved.  “I will see him—­I will—­I will see him!”

She who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures all her life had suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken, hysteric grief and rage.  She did not know what she was saying and doing; she only realised in an agony of despair that she was a thing caught in a trap; that these people had her in their power, and that they had tricked and lied to her and kept her apart from what her girl’s heart so cried out to and longed for.  Her father, her mother, her little sister; they had been near her and had been lied to and sent away.

“You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature!” cried the Dowager furiously.  “You ought to be put in a straitjacket and drenched with cold water.”

Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in.  He was in riding dress and was breathless and livid with anger.  He was in a nice mood to confront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics.  After a bad half hour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by chance of Wilson’s conflagration and the hundred-pound cheque.  He had galloped home at the top of his horse’s speed.

“Here is your wife raving mad,” cried out his mother.

Rosalie staggered across the room to him.  She held up her hand clenching the letter and shook it at him.

“My mother and father have been here,” she shrieked.  My mother has been ill.  They wanted to come to see me.  You knew and you kept it from me.  You told my father lies—­lies—­hideous lies!  You said I was away in Scotland—­enjoying myself—­when I was here and dying with homesickness.  You made them think I did not care for them—­or for New York!  You have killed me!  Why did you do such a wicked thing!

He looked at her with glaring eyes.  If a man born a gentleman is ever in the mood to kick his wife to death, as costermongers do, he was in that mood.  He had lost control over himself as completely as she had, and while she was only a desperate, hysteric girl, he was a violent man.

“I did it because I did not mean to have them here,” he said.  “I did it because I won’t have them here.”

“They shall come,” she quavered shrilly in her wildness.  “They shall come to see me.  They are my own father and mother, and I will have them.”

He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he would break it, if she could have thought or felt anything.

“No, you will not have them,” he ground forth between his teeth.  “You will do as I order you and learn to behave yourself as a decent married woman should.  You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishes and control your devilish American temper.”

“They have gone—­gone!” wailed Rosalie.  “You sent them away!  My father, my mother, my sister!”

“Stop your indecent ravings!” ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her.  “I will not submit to be disgraced before the servants.”

“Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel,” cried his mother.  “The very scullery maids will hear.”

She was as infuriated as her son.  And, indeed, to behold civilised human beings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached was a sight to shudder at.

“I won’t stop,” cried the girl.  “Why did you take me away from everything—­I was quite happy.  Everybody was kind to me.  I loved people, I had everything.  No one ever—­ever—­ever ill-used anyone——­”

Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her with absolute violence.  Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful little distorted, sobbing face.

“I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgar ostentation by throwing away hundred-pound cheques to villagers,” he said.  “I didn’t take you to give you the position of a lady and be made a fool of by you.”

“You have ruined him,” burst forth his mother.  “You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman who would have known it was her duty to give something in return for his name and protection.”

Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equal violence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began to find herself enlightened unsparingly.  She and her people were vulgar sharpers.  They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage and had not the decency to pay for what they had got.  If she had been an Englishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding, all her fortune would have been properly transferred to her husband and he would have had the dispensing of it.  Her husband would have been in the position to control her expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself.  As it was she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who had been properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of good morality.

First it was the Dowager who poured forth, and then it was Sir Nigel.  They broke in on each other, they interrupted one another with exclamations and interpolations.  They had so far lost themselves that they did not know they became grotesque in the violence of their fury.  Rosalie’s brain whirled.  Her hysteria mounted and mounted.  She stared first at one and then at the other, gasping and sobbing by turns; she swayed on her feet and clutched at a chair.

“I did not know,” she broke forth at last, trying to make her voice heard in the storm.  “I never understood.  I knew something made you hate me, but I didn’t know you were angry about money.”  She laughed tremulously and wildly.  “I would have given it to you—­father would have given you some—­if you had been good to me.”  The laugh became hysterical beyond her management.  Peal after peal broke from her, she shook all over with her ghastly merriment, sobbing at one and the same time.

“Oh! oh! oh!” she shrieked.  “You see, I thought you were so aristocratic.  I wouldn’t have dared to think of such a thing.  I thought an English gentleman—­an English gentleman—­oh! oh! to think it was all because I did not give you money—­just common dollars and cents that—­that I daren’t offer to a decent American who could work for himself.”

Sir Nigel sprang at her.  He struck her with his open hand upon the cheek, and as she reeled she held up her small, feverish, shaking hand, laughing more wildly than before.

“You ought not to strike me,” she cried.  “You oughtn’t!  You don’t know how valuable I am.  Perhaps——­” with a little, crazy scream—­“perhaps I might have a son.”

She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavily against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, her arms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead thing.