Edith Wharton - Novel 21

by The Buccaneers (v2. 1)

  Even after their return to London and Longlands the young couple continued to disturb the Dowager Duchess’s peace of mind. The most careful and patient initiation into the functions of the servants attending on her had not kept Annabel from committing what seemed to her mother-in-law inexcusable, perhaps deliberate blunders; such as asking the groom-of-the-chambers to fetch her a glass of water, or bidding one of the under house-maids to lace up her dinner-dress when her own maid was accidentally out of hearing.

  “It’s not that she’s stupid, you know, my dear,” the Dowager avowed to her old friend Miss Jacky March, “but she puts one out, asking the reason of things that have nothing to do with reasons—such as why the housekeeper doesn’t take her meals with the upper servants, but only comes in for dessert. What would happen next, as I said to her, in a house where the housekeeper did take her meals with the upper servants? That sort of possibility never occurs to the poor child; yet I really can’t call her stupid. I often find her with a book in her hand. I think she thinks too much about things that oughtn’t to be thought about,” wailed the bewildered Duchess. “And the worst of it is that dear Ushant doesn’t seem to know how to help her…” her tone implying that, in any case, such a task should not have been laid on him. And Miss Jacky March murmured her sympathy.

  

  XX.

  Those quiet months in Cornwall, which already seemed so much more remote from the actual Annabel than her girlhood at Saratoga, had been of her own choosing. She did not admit to herself that her first sight of the ruins of the ancient Tintagel had played a large part in her wooing; that if the Duke had been only the dullest among the amiable but dull young men who came to the bungalow at Runnymede she would hardly have given him a second thought. But the idea of living in that magic castle by the sad western sea had secretly tinged her vision of the castle’s owner; and she had thought that he and she might get to know each other more readily there than anywhere else. And now, in looking back, she asked herself if it were not her own fault that the weeks at Tintagel had not brought the expected understanding. Instead, as she now saw, they had only made husband and wife more unintelligible to each other. To Annabel, the Cornish castle spoke with that rich low murmur of the past which she had first heard in its mysterious intensity the night when she had lain awake in the tapestried chamber at Allfriars, beside the sleeping Virginia, who had noticed only that the room was cold and shabby. Though the walls of Tintagel were relatively new, they were built on ancient foundations, and crowded with the treasures of the past; and near by was the mere of Excalibur, and from her windows she could see the dark gray sea, and sometimes, at night-fall, the mysterious barge with black sails putting out from the ruined castle to carry the dead King to Avalon.

  Of all this, nothing existed for her husband. He saw the new Tintagel only as a costly folly of his father’s, which family pride obliged him to keep up with fitting state, in spite of the unfruitful acres that made its maintenance so difficult. In shouldering these cares, however, he did not expect his wife to help him, save by looking her part as a beautiful and angelically pure young Duchess, whose only duties consisted in bestowing her angelic presence on entertainments for the tenantry and agricultural prize-givings. The Duke had grown up under the iron rod of a mother who, during his minority, had managed not only his property, but his very life, and he had no idea of letting her authority pass to his wife. Much as he dreaded the duties belonging to his great rank, deeply as he was oppressed by them, he was determined to perform them himself, were it ever so hesitatingly and painfully, and not to be guided by any one else’s suggestions.

  To his surprise such suggestions were not slow in coming from Annabel. She had not yet learned that she was expected to remain a lovely and adoring looker-on, and in her daily drives over the estate (in the smart pony-chaise with its burnished trappings and gay piebald ponies) she often, out of sheer loneliness, stopped for a chat at toll-gates, farm-houses and cottages, made purchases at the village shops, scattered toys and lollipops among the children, and tried to find out from their mothers what she could do to help them. It had filled her with wonder to learn that for miles around, both at Longlands and Tintagel, all these people in the quaint damp cottages and the stuffy little shops were her husband’s tenants and dependents; that he had the naming of the rectors and vicars of a dozen churches, and that even the old men and women in the mouldy almshouses were there by virtue of his bounty. But when she had grasped the extent of his power it seemed to her that to help and befriend those who depended on him was the best service she could render him. Nothing in her early bringing-up had directed her mind toward any kind of organized beneficence, but she had always been what she called “sorry for people”, and it seemed to her that there was a good deal to be sorry about in the lot of these people who depended solely, in health and sickness, on a rich man’s whim.

  The discovery that her interest in them was distasteful to the Duke came to her as a great shock, and left a wound that did not heal. Coming in one day, a few months after their marriage, from one of her exploring expeditions, she was told that his Grace wished to speak to her in his study, and she went in eagerly, glad to seize the chance of telling him at once about the evidences of neglect and poverty she had come upon that very afternoon.

  “Oh, Ushant, I’m so glad you’re in! Could you come with me at once to the Linfrys’ cottage, down by St Gildas’s; you know, that damp place under the bridge, with the front covered with roses? The eldest boy’s down with typhoid, and the drains ought to be seen to at once if all the younger ones are not to get it.” She spoke in haste, too much engrossed in what she had to say to notice the Duke’s expression. It was his silence that roused her; and when she looked at him she saw that his face wore what she called its bolted look—the look she most disliked to see on it. He sat silent, twisting an ivory paper-cutter between his fingers.

  “May I ask who told you this?” he said at length, in a voice like his mother’s when she was rebuking an upper house-maid.

  “Why, I found it out myself. I’ve just come from there.”

  The Duke stood up, knocking the paper-cutter to the floor.

  “You’ve been there? Yourself? To a house where you tell me there is typhoid fever? In your state of health? I confess, Annabel—” His lips twitched nervously under his scanty blond moustache.

  “Oh, bother my state of health! I feel all right, really I do. And you know the doctors have ordered me to walk and drive every day.”

  “But not go and sit with Mrs. Linfry’s sick children, in a house reeking with disease.”

  “But, Ushant, I just had to! There was no one else to see about them. And if the house reeks with disease, whose fault is it but ours? They’ve no sick-nurse, and nobody to help the mother, or tell her what to do; and the doctor comes only every other day.”

  “Is it your idea, my dear, that I should provide every cottage on my estates, here and elsewhere, with a hospital nurse?” the Duke asked ironically.

  “Well, I wish you would! At least there ought to be a nurse in every village, and two in the bigger ones; and the doctor ought to see his patients every day; and the drains—Ushant, you must come with me at once and smell the drains!” cried Nan in a passion of entreaty.

  She felt the Duke’s inexpressive eyes fixed coldly on her.

  “If your intention is to introduce typhoid fever at Tintagel, I can imagine no better way of going about it,” he began. “But perhaps you don’t realize that, though it may not be as contagious as typhus, the doctors are by no means sure…”

  “Oh, but they are sure; only ask them! Typhoid comes from bad drains and infected milk. It can’t hurt you in the least to go down and see what’s happening at the Linfrys’; and you ought to, because they’re your own tenants. Won’t you come with me now? The ponies are not a bit tired, and I told William to wait—”

  “I wish you would not call Armson by his Christian name; I’ve already told you that in England head grooms
are called by their surnames.”

  “Oh, Ushant, what can it matter? I call you by your surname, but I never can remember about the others. And the only thing that matters now…”

  The Duke walked to the hearth, and pulled the embroidered bell-rope beside the chimney. To the footman who appeared he said: “Please tell Armson that her Grace will not require the pony-chaise any longer this afternoon.”

  “But—” Annabel burst out; then she stood silent till the door closed on the servant. The Duke remained silent also.

  “Is that your answer?” she asked at length, her breath coming quickly.

  He lifted a more friendly face. “My dear child, don’t look so tragic. I’ll see Blair; he shall look into the drains. But do try to remember that these small matters concern my agent more than they do me, and that they don’t concern you at all. My mother was very much esteemed and respected at Tintagel, but though she managed my affairs so wisely, it never occurred to her to interfere directly with the agent’s business, except as regards Christmas festivities, and the annual school-treat. Her holding herself aloof increased the respect that was felt for her; and my wife could not do better than to follow her example.”

  Annabel stood staring at her husband without speaking. She was too young to understand the manifold inhibitions, some inherited, some peculiar to his own character, which made it impossible for him to act promptly and spontaneously; but she knew him to be by nature not an unkind man, and this increased her bewilderment.

  Suddenly a flood of words burst from her. “You tell me to be careful about my health in the very same breath that you say you can’t be bothered about these poor people, and that their child’s dying is a small matter, to be looked after by the agent. It’s for the sake of your own child that you forbid me to go to see them—but I tell you I don’t want a child if he’s to be brought up with such ideas, if he’s to be taught, as you have been, that it’s right and natural to live in a palace with fifty servants, and not care for the people who are slaving for him on his own land, to make his big income bigger! I’d rather be dead than see a child of mine taught to grow up as—as you have!”

  She broke down and dropped into a seat, hiding her face in her hands. Her husband looked at her without speaking. Nothing in his past experience had prepared him for such a scene, and the consciousness that he did not know how to deal with it increased his irritation. Had Annabel gone mad—or was it only what the doctors called her “condition”? In either case he felt equally incapable of resolute and dignified action. Of course, if he were told that it was necessary, owing to her “condition”, he would send these Linfrys—a shiftless lot—money and food, would ask the doctor to see the boy oftener; though it went hard with him to swallow his own words, and find himself again under a woman’s orders. At any rate, he must try to propitiate Annabel, to get her into a more amenable mood; and as soon as possible must take her back to Longlands, where she would be nearer a London physician, accustomed to bringing Dukes into the world.

  “Annabel,” he said, going up to her, and laying his hand on her bent head.

  She started to her feet. “Let me alone,” she exclaimed, and brushed past him to the door. He heard her cross the hall and go up the stairs in the direction of her own rooms; then he turned back to his desk. One of the drawing-room clocks stood there before him, disembowelled; and as he began (with hands that still shook a little) to put it cautiously together, he remembered his mother’s comment: “Women are not always as simple as clocks.” Had she been right?

  After a while he laid aside the works of the clock and sat staring helplessly before him. Then it occurred to him that Annabel, in her present mood, was quite capable of going contrary to his orders, and sending for a carriage to drive her back to the Linfrys’—or Heaven knew where. He rang again, and asked for his own servant. When the man came the Duke confided to him that her Grace was in a somewhat nervous state, and that the doctors wished her to be kept quiet, and not to drive out again that afternoon. Would Bowman therefore see the head coachman at once, and explain that, even if her Grace should ask for a carriage, some excuse must be found… they were not, of course, to say anything to implicate the Duke, but it must be so managed that her Grace should not be able to drive out again that day.

  Bowman acquiesced, with the look of respectful compassion which his face often wore when he was charged with his master’s involved and embarrassed instructions; and the Duke, left alone, continued to sit idly at his writing-table.

  Annabel did not re-appear that afternoon; and when the Duke, on his way up to dress for dinner, knocked at her sitting-room door, she was not there. He went on to his own dressing-room, but on the way met his wife’s maid, and asked if her Grace were already dressing.

  “Oh, no, your Grace. I thought the Duchess was with your Grace…”

  A little chill caught him about the heart. It was nearly eight o’clock, for they dined late at Tintagel; and the maid had not yet seen her mistressl The Duke said with affected composure: “Her Grace was tired this afternoon. She may have fallen asleep in the drawing-room—” though he could imagine nothing less like the alert and restless Annabel.

  Oh, no, the maid said again; her Grace had gone out on foot two or three hours ago, and had not yet returned.

  “On foot?”

  “Yes, your Grace. Her Grace asked for her pony-carriage; but I understood there were orders—”

  The Duke interrupted irritably: “The doctor’s orders were that her Grace should not go out at all today.”

  The maid lowered her lids as if to hide her incredulous eyes, and he felt that she was probably acquainted with every detail of the day’s happenings. The thought sent the blood up to the roots of his pale hair, and he challenged her nervously. “You must at least know which way her Grace said she was going.”

  “The Duchess said nothing to me, your Grace. But I understand she sent to the stables, and finding she could not have a carriage walked away through the park.”

  “That will do… there’s been some unfortunate misunderstanding about her Grace’s orders,” stammered the Duke, turning away to his dressing-room.

  The day had been raw and cloudy, and with the dusk rain had begun, and was coming down now in a heavy pour that echoed through the narrow twisting passages of the castle and made their sky-lights rattle. And in this icy down-pour his wife, his Duchess, the expectant mother of future Dukes, was wandering somewhere on foot, alone and unprotected. Anger and alarm contended in the Duke. If any one had told him that marrying a simple unworldly girl, hardly out of the school-room, would add fresh complications to a life already overburdened with them, he would have scoffed at the idea. Certainly he had done nothing to deserve such a fate. And he wondered now why he had been so eager to bring it upon himself. Though he had married for love only a few months before, he was now far more concerned with Annabel as the mother of his son than for her own sake. The first weeks with her had been very sweet—but since then her presence in his house had seemed only to increase his daily problems and bothers. The Duke rang and ordered Bowman to send to the stables for the station-brougham, and when it arrived he drove down at break-neck speed to the Linfrys’ cottage. But Nan was not there. The Duke stared at Mrs. Linfry blankly. He did not know where to go next, and it mortified him to reveal his distress and uncertainty to the coachman. “Home!” he ordered angrily, getting into the carriage again; and the dark drive began once more. He was half way back when the carriage stopped with a jerk, and the coachman, scrambling down from the box, called to him in a queer frightened voice.

  The Duke jumped out and saw the man lifting a small dripping figure into the brougham. “By the mercy of God, your Grace… I think the Duchess has fainted…”

  “Drive like the devil… stop at the stables to send a groom for the doctor,” stammered the Duke, pressing his wife in his arms. The rest of the way back was as indistinct to him as to the girl who lay so white on his breast. Bowed over her in anguish, he remembe
red nothing till the carriage drove under the echoing gate-tower at Tintagel, and lights and servants pressed confusedly about them. He lifted Annabel out, and she opened her eyes and took a few steps alone across the hall. “Oh—am I here again?” she said, with a little laugh; then she swayed forward, and he caught her as she fell…

  To the Duchess of Tintagel who was signing the last notes of invitation for the Longlands shooting-party, the scene at Tintagel and what had followed now seemed as remote and legendary as the tales that clung about the old ruins of Arthur’s castle. Annabel had put herself hopelessly in the wrong. She had understood it without being told, she had acknowledged it and wept over it at the time; but the irremediable had been done, and she knew that never, in her husband’s eyes, would any evidence of repentance atone for that night’s disaster.

  The miscarriage which had resulted from her mad expedition through the storm had robbed the Duke of a son; of that he was convinced. He, the Duke of Tintagel, wanted a son, he had a right to expect a son, he would have had a son, if this woman’s criminal folly had not destroyed his hopes. The physicians summoned in consultation spoke of the necessity of many months of repose… even they did not seem to understand that a Duke must have an heir, that it is the purpose for which Dukes make the troublesome effort of marrying.

  It was now more than a year since that had happened, and after long weeks of illness a new Annabel—a third Annabel—had emerged from the ordeal. Life had somehow, as the months passed, clumsily re-adjusted itself. As far as words went, the Duke had forgiven his wife; they had left the solitude of Tintagel as soon as the physicians thought it possible for the Duchess to be moved; and now, in their crowded London life, and at Longlands, where the Dowager had seen to it that all the old ceremonial was re-established, the ducal pair were too busy, too deeply involved in the incessant distractions and obligations of their station, to have time to remember what was over and could not be mended.