The Shuttle. Frances Hodgson Burnett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ of a rather clever brute, who was malignant, but she knew now.

      “He used to hate us all,” she said to herself. “He did not mean to know us when he had taken Rosalie away, and he did not intend that she should know us.”

      She had heard rumours of cases somewhat parallel, cases in which girls' lives had become swamped in those of their husbands, and their husbands' families. And she had also heard unpleasant details of the means employed to reach the desired results. Annie Butterfield's husband had forbidden her to correspond with her American relatives. He had argued that such correspondence was disturbing to her mind, and to the domestic duties which should be every decent woman's religion. One of the occasions of his beating her had been in consequence of his finding her writing to her mother a letter blotted with tears. Husbands frequently objected to their wives' relatives, but there was a special order of European husband who opposed violently any intimacy with American relations on the practical ground that their views of a wife's position, with regard to her husband, were of a revolutionary nature.

      Mrs. Vanderpoel had in her possession every letter Rosalie or her husband had ever written. Bettina asked to be allowed to read them, and one morning seated herself in her own room before a blazing fire, with the collection on a table at her side. She read them in order. Nigel's began as they went on. They were all in one tone, formal, uninteresting, and requiring no answers. There was not a suggestion of human feeling in one of them.

      “He wrote them,” said Betty, “so that we could not say that he had never written.”

      Rosalie's first epistles were affectionate, but timid. At the outset she was evidently trying to conceal the fact that she was homesick. Gradually she became briefer and more constrained. In one she said pathetically, “I am such a bad letter writer. I always feel as if I want to tear up what I have written, because I never say half that is in my heart.” Mrs. Vanderpoel had kissed that letter many a time. She was sure that a mark on the paper near this particular sentence was where a tear had fallen. Bettina was sure of this, too, and sat and looked at the fire for some time.

      That night she went to a ball, and when she returned home, she persuaded her mother to go to bed.

      “I want to have a talk with father,” she exclaimed. “I am going to ask him something.”

      She went to the great man's private room, where he sat at work, even after the hours when less seriously engaged people come home from balls. The room he sat in was one of the apartments newspapers had with much detail described. It was luxuriously comfortable, and its effect was sober and rich and fine.

      When Bettina came in, Vanderpoel, looking up to smile at her in welcome, was struck by the fact that as a background to an entering figure of tall, splendid girlhood in a ball dress it was admirable, throwing up all its whiteness and grace and sweep of line. He was always glad to see Betty. The rich strength of the life radiating from her, the reality and glow of her were good for him and had the power of detaching him from work of which he was tired.

      She smiled back at him, and, coming forward took her place in a big armchair close to him, her lace-frilled cloak slipping from her shoulders with a soft rustling sound which seemed to convey her intention to stay.

      “Are you too busy to be interrupted?” she asked, her mellow voice caressing him. “I want to talk to you about something I am going to do.” She put out her hand and laid it on his with a clinging firmness which meant strong feeling. “At least, I am going to do it if you will help me,” she ended.

      “What is it, Betty?” he inquired, his usual interest in her accentuated by her manner.

      She laid her other hand on his and he clasped both with his own.

      “When the Worthingtons sail for England next month,” she explained, “I want to go with them. Mrs. Worthington is very kind and will be good enough to take care of me until I reach London.”

      Mr. Vanderpoel moved slightly in his chair. Then their eyes met comprehendingly. He saw what hers held.

      “From there you are going to Stornham Court!” he exclaimed.

      “To see Rosy,” she answered, leaning a little forward. “To SEE her.

      “You believe that what has happened has not been her fault?” he said. There was a look in her face which warmed his blood.

      “I have always been sure that Nigel Anstruthers arranged it.”

      “Do you think he has been unkind to her?”

      “I am going to see,” she answered.

      “Betty,” he said, “tell me all about it.”

      He knew that this was no suddenly-formed plan, and he knew it would be well worth while to hear the details of its growth. It was so interestingly like her to have remained silent through the process of thinking a thing out, evolving her final idea without having disturbed him by bringing to him any chaotic uncertainties.

      “It's a sort of confession,” she answered. “Father, I have been thinking about it for years. I said nothing because for so long I knew I was only a child, and a child's judgment might be worth so little. But through all those years I was learning things and gathering evidence. When I was at school, first in one country and then another, I used to tell myself that I was growing up and preparing myself to do a particular thing—to go to rescue Rosy.”

      “I used to guess you thought of her in a way of your own,” Vanderpoel said, “but I did not guess you were thinking that much. You were always a solid, loyal little thing, and there was business capacity in your keeping your scheme to yourself. Let us look the matter in the face. Suppose she does not need rescuing. Suppose, after all, she is a comfortable, fine lady and adores her husband. What then?”

      “If I should find that to be true, I will behave myself very well—as if we had expected nothing else. I will make her a short visit and come away. Lady Cecilia Orme, whom I knew in Florence, has asked me to stay with her in London. I will go to her. She is a charming woman. But I must first see Rosy—SEE her.”

      Mr. Vanderpoel thought the matter over during a few moments of silence.

      “You do not wish your mother to go with you?” he said presently.

      “I believe it will be better that she should not,” she answered. “If there are difficulties or disappointments she would be too unhappy.”

      “Yes,” he said slowly, “and she could not control her feelings. She would give the whole thing away, poor girl.”

      He had been looking at the carpet reflectively, and now he looked at Bettina.

      “What are you expecting to find, at the worst?” he asked her. “The kind of thing which will need management while it is being looked into?”

      “I do not know what I am expecting to find,” was her reply. “We know absolutely nothing; but that Rosy was fond of us, and that her marriage has seemed to make her cease to care. She was not like that; she was not like that! Was she, father?”

      “No, she wasn't,” he exclaimed. The memory of her in her short-frocked and early girlish days, a pretty, smiling, effusive thing, given to lavish caresses and affectionate little surprises for them all, came back to him vividly. “She was the most affectionate girl I ever knew,” he said. “She was more СКАЧАТЬ