Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him. The lady, who was speaking, had heard that he was one of those big, rather lumpy men, and had an ill-tempered expression. She always gave a wide berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered. One or two other persons who had spoken of him had conveyed to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguely unpromising information. The episode of G. Selden had been interesting enough, with its suggestions of picturesque contrasts and combinations. Betty’s touch had made the junior salesman attracting. It was a good type this, of a young fellow who, battling with the discouragements of a hard life, still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, and found healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall bedroom. He had consented to Betty’s request that he would see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect. By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had liked what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan’s attitude towards a personality so singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated, and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool. To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summing-up of a normal, nice-natured, common young denizen of the United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how, after he had overcome his visitor’s first awkwardness—if he chanced to be self-conscious—he could lead him to talk. What he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal impressions and points of view. Young men of his clean, rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or lack of it, without absolute intention or actual statement. Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of the mists of social prejudice and modification. Yes, he felt he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of unawareness.
Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was desirous to hear of? Well, the absolute reason for that he could not have explained, either. He had asked himself questions on the subject more than once. There was no well-founded reason, perhaps. If Betty’s letters had spoken of Mount Dunstan and his home, they had also described Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle. Of these two men she had certainly spoken more fully than of others. Of Mount Dunstan she had had more to relate through the incident of G. Selden. He smiled as he realised the importance of the figure of G. Selden. It was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over from Mount Dunstan to visit. But for Selden, Betty might not have met Mount Dunstan again. He was reason enough for all she had said. And yet–-! Perhaps, between Betty and himself there existed the thing which impresses and communicates without words. Perhaps, because their affection was unusual, they realised each other’s emotions. The half-defined anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessed to himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the last steamer had brought him. It was NOT Lord Westholt, it definitely appeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she had declined his proposal.
“I could not have LIKED a man any more without being in love with him,” she wrote. “I LIKE him more than I can say —so much, indeed, that I feel a little depressed by my certainty that I do not love him.”
If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been simplified. If the other man had drawn her, the thing would not be simple. Her father foresaw all the complications—and he did not want complications for Betty. Yet emotions were perverse and irresistible things, and the stronger the creature swayed by them, the more enormous their power. But, as he sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the one feeling predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but Betty—nothing really mattered but Betty.
In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at once touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his sense of home-coming. It was pretty good to be in little old New York again. The hurried pace of the life about him stimulated his young blood. There were no street cars in Fifth Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, all pantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back. The beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of being at leisure. It was evident that they were going to keep engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.
“Something doing. Something doing,” was his cheerful self-congratulatory thought. He had spent his life in the midst of it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back.
The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him into an uplifted mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle broke from him as he tried to realise that he had been given the chance which a year ago had seemed so impossible that its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject for jokes. He was going to call on Reuben S. Vanderpoel, and he was going because Reuben S. had made an appointment with him.
He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he looked pretty decent. He could only do his best in the matter of bearing. He always thought that, so long as a fellow didn’t get “chesty” and kept his head from swelling, he was all right. Of course he had never been in one of these swell Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous—but Miss Vanderpoel would have told her father what sort of fellow he was, and her father was likely to be something like herself. The house, which had been built since Lady Anstruthers’ marriage, was well “up-town,” and was big and imposing. When a manservant opened the front door, the square hall looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of rich furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one or two special shop windows in Fifth Avenue—places where they sold magnificent gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces of tapestry and marvellous embroideries, antiquities from foreign palaces. Though it was quite different, it was as swell in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan, and there were gleams of pictures on the walls that looked fine, and no mistake.
He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Mr. Vanderpoel’s room. After he had announced his name he closed the door quietly and went away. Mr. Vanderpoel rose from an armchair to come forward to meet his visitor. He was tall and straight—Betty had inherited her slender height from him. His well-balanced face suggested the relationship between them. He had a steady mouth, and eyes which looked as if they saw much and far.
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Selden,” he said, shaking hands with him. “You have seen my daughters, and can tell me how they are. Miss Vanderpoel has written to me of you several times.”
He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Selden felt that he had been right in telling himself that Reuben S. Vanderpoel would be somehow like his girl. She was a girl, and he was an elderly man of business, but they were like each other. There was the same kind of straight way of doing things, and the same straight-seeing look in both of them.
It was queer how natural things seemed, when they really happened to a fellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather chair and opposite to him in its fellow sat Reuben S. Vanderpoel, looking at him with friendly eyes. And it seemed all right, too—not as if he had managed to “butt in,” and would find himself politely fired out directly. He might have been one of the Four Hundred making a call. Reuben S. knew how to make a man feel easy, and no mistake. This G. Selden observed at once, though he had, in fact, no knowledge of the practical tact which dealt with him. He found himself answering questions about Lady Anstruthers and her sister, which led to the opening up of other subjects. He did not realise that he began to express ingenuous opinions and describe things. His listener’s interest led him on, a question here, a rather pleased laugh there, were encouraging. He had enjoyed himself so much during his stay in England, and had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoiced over, that they were easy to talk of at any time—in fact, it was even a trifle difficult not to talk of them—but, stimulated by
the look which rested on him, by the deft word and ready smile, words flowed readily and without the restraint of self-consciousness.
“When you think that all of it sort of began with a robin, it’s queer enough,” he said. “But for that robin I shouldn’t be here, sir,” with a boyish laugh. “And he was an English robin—a little fellow not half the size of the kind that hops about Central Park.”
“Let me hear about that,” said Mr. Vanderpoel.
It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own junior salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the green country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge during the shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the fresh wet leafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young satin-glossed breast pulsating and swelling. His words were colloquial enough, but they called up the picture.
“Everything sort of glittering with the sunshine on the wet drops, and things smelling good, like they do after rain— leaves, and grass, and good earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if the whole world was his brother. And when Mr. Rob. lit on that twig and swelled his red breast as if he knew the whole thing was his, and began to let them notes out, calling for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, I just had to laugh and speak to him, and that was when Lord Mount Dunstan heard me and jumped over the hedge. He’d been listening, too.”
The expression Reuben S. Vanderpoel wore made it an agreeable thing to talk—to go on. He evidently cared to hear. So Selden did his best, and enjoyed himself in doing it. His style made for realism and brought things clearly before one. The big-built man in the rough and shabby shooting clothes, his way when he dropped into the grass to sit beside the stranger and talk, certain meanings in his words which conveyed to Vanderpoel what had not been conveyed to G. Selden. Yes, the man carried a heaviness about with him and hated the burden. Selden quite unconsciously brought him out strongly.
“I don’t know whether I’m the kind of fellow who is always making breaks,” he said, with his boy’s laugh again, “but if I am, I never made a worse one than when I asked him straight if he was out of a job, and on the tramp. It showed what a nice fellow he was that he didn’t get hot about it. Some fellows would. He only laughed—sort of short— and said his job had been more than he could handle, and he was afraid he was down and out.”
Mr. Vanderpoel was conscious that so far he was somewhat attracted by this central figure. G. Selden was also proving satisfactory in the matter of revealing his excellently simple views of persons and things.
“The only time he got mad was when I wouldn’t believe him when he told me who he was. I was a bit hot in the collar myself. I’d felt sorry for him, because I thought he was a chap like myself, and he was up against it. I know what that is, and I’d wanted to jolly him along a bit. When he said his name was Mount Dunstan, and the place belonged to him, I guessed he thought he was making a joke. So I got on my wheel and started off, and then he got mad for keeps. He said he wasn’t such a damned fool as he looked, and what he’d said was true, and I could go and be hanged.”
Reuben S. Vanderpoel laughed. He liked that. It sounded like decent British hot temper, which he had often found accompanied honest British decencies.
He liked other things, as the story proceeded. The picture of the huge house with the shut windows, made him slightly restless. The concealed imagination, combined with the financier’s resentment of dormant interests, disturbed him. That which had attracted Selden in the Reverend Lewis Penzance strongly attracted himself. Also, a man was a good deal to be judged by his friends. The man who lived alone in the midst of stately desolateness and held as his chief intimate a high-bred and gentle-minded scholar of ripe years, gave, in doing this, certain evidence which did not tell against him. The whole situation meant something a splendid, vivid-minded young creature might be moved by—might be allured by, even despite herself.
There was something fantastic in the odd linking of incidents—Selden’s chance view of Betty as she rode by, his next day’s sudden resolve to turn back and go to Stornham, his accident, all that followed seemed, if one were fanciful —part of a scheme prearranged
“When I came to myself,” G. Selden said, “I felt like that fellow in the Shakespeare play that they dress up and put to bed in the palace when he’s drunk. I thought I’d gone off my head. And then Miss Vanderpoel came.” He paused a moment and looked down on the carpet, thinking. “Gee whiz! It WAS queer,” he said.
Betty Vanderpoel’s father could almost hear her voice as the rest was told. He knew how her laugh had sounded, and what her presence must have been to the young fellow. His delightful, human, always satisfying Betty!
Through this odd trick of fortune, Mount Dunstan had begun to see her. Since, through the unfair endowment of Nature—that it was not wholly fair he had often told himself— she was all the things that desire could yearn for, there were many chances that when a man saw her he must long to see her again, and there were the same chances that such an one as Mount Dunstan might long also, and, if Fate was against him, long with a bitter strength. Selden was not aware that he had spoken more fully of Mount Dunstan and his place than of other things. That this had been the case, had been because Mr. Vanderpoel had intended it should be so. He had subtly drawn out and encouraged a detailed account of the time spent at Mount Dunstan vicarage. It was easily encouraged. Selden’s affectionate admiration for the vicar led him on to enthusiasm. The quiet house and garden, the old books, the afternoon tea under the copper beech, and the long talks of old things, which had been so new to the young New Yorker, had plainly made a mark upon his life, not likely to be erased even by the rush of after years.
“The way he knew history was what got me,” he said. “And the way you got interested in it, when he talked. It wasn’t just HISTORY, like you learn at school, and forget, and never see the use of, anyhow. It was things about men, just like yourself—hustling for a living in their way, just as we’re hustling in Broadway. Most of it was fighting, and there are mounds scattered about that are the remains of their forts and camps. Roman camps, some of them. He took me to see them. He had a little old pony chaise we trundled about in, and he’d draw up and we’d sit and talk. `There were men here on this very spot,’ he’d say, `looking out for attack, eating, drinking, cooking their food, polishing their weapons, laughing, and shouting—MEN—Selden, fifty-five years before Christ was born—and sometimes the New Testament times seem to us so far away that they are half a dream.’ That was the kind of thing he’d say, and I’d sometimes feel as if I heard the Romans shouting. The country about there was full of queer places, and both he and Lord Dunstan knew more about them than I know about Twenty-third Street.”
“You saw Lord Mount Dunstan often?” Mr. Vanderpoel suggested.
“Every day, sir. And the more I saw him, the more I got to like him. He’s all right. But it’s hard luck to be fixed as he is—that’s stone-cold truth. What’s a man to do? The money he ought to have to keep up his place was spent before he was born. His father and his eldest brother were a bum lot, and his grandfather and great-grandfather were fools. He can’t sell the place, and he wouldn’t if he could. Mr. Penzance was so fond of him that sometimes he’d say things. But,” hastily, “perhaps I’m talking too much.”
“You happen to be talking about questions I have been greatly interested in. I have thought a good deal at times of the position of the holders of large estates they cannot afford to keep up. This special instance is a case in point.”
G. Selden felt himself in luck again. Reuben S., quite evidently, found his subject worthy of undivided attention. Selden had not heartily liked Lord Mount Dunstan, and lived in the atmosphere surrounding him, looking about him with sharp young New York eyes, without learning a good deal.
He had seen the practical hardship of the situation, and laid it bare.
“What Mr. Penzance says is that he’s like the men that built things in the beginning—fought for them—fo
ught Romans and Saxons and Normans—perhaps the whole lot at different times. I used to like to get Mr. Penzance to tell stories about the Mount Dunstans. They were splendid. It must be pretty fine to look back about a thousand years and know your folks have been something. All the same its pretty fierce to have to stand alone at the end of it, not able to help yourself, because some of your relations were crazy fools. I don’t wonder he feels mad.”
“Does he?” Mr. Vanderpoel inquired.
“He’s straight,” said G. Selden sympathetically. “He’s all right. But only money can help him, and he’s got none, so he has to stand and stare at things falling to pieces. And—well, I tell you, Mr. Vanderpoel, he LOVES that place—he’s crazy about it. And he’s proud—I don’t mean he’s got the swell-head, because he hasn’t—but he’s just proud. Now, for instance, he hasn’t any use for men like himself that marry just for money. He’s seen a lot of it, and it’s made him sick. He’s not that kind.”
He had been asked and had answered a good many questions before he went away, but each had dropped into the talk so incidentally that he had not recognised them as queries. He did not know that Lord Mount Dunstan stood out a clearly defined figure in Mr. Vanderpoel’s mind, a figure to be reflected upon, and one not without its attraction.
“Miss Vanderpoel tells me,” Mr. Vanderpoel said, when the interview was drawing to a close, “that you are an agent for the Delkoff typewriter.”
The Shuttle: By Frances Hodgson Burnett Page 49
