Edith Wharton - Novel 21

by The Buccaneers (v2. 1)

  The Duke stood looking down at the long shelf, the heaps of upturned soil and the scattered labels. It occurred to him that, for ladies, horticulture might prove a safe and agreeable pastime.

  “Have you ever tried to interest Annabel in this kind of thing?” he asked abruptly. “I’m afraid I’m too ignorant to do it myself—but I sometimes think she would be happier if she had some innocent amusement like gardening. Needle-work doesn’t seem to appeal to her.”

  The Dowager’s upper lip lengthened. “I’ve not had much chance of discussing her tastes with her; but of course, if you wish me to… Do you think, for instance, she might learn to care for grafting?”

  It was inconceivable to the Duke that any one should care for grafting; but not wishing to betray his complete ignorance of the subject, he effected a diversion by proposing a change of scene. “Perhaps we could talk more comfortably in the drawing-room,” he suggested.

  His mother laid down her tools. She was used to interruptions, and did not dare to confess how trying it was to be asked to abandon her seedlings at that critical stage. She also weakly regretted having to leave the pleasant temperature of the conservatory for an icy drawing-room in which the fire was never lit till the lamps were brought. Such economies were necessary to a Dowager with several daughters whose meagre allowances were always having to be supplemented; but the Duchess, who was almost as hardened to cold as her son, led the way to the drawing-room without apology.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as she seated herself near the lifeless hearth, “that you think dear Annabel lacks amusements.”

  The Duke stood before the chimney, his hands thrust despondently in his pockets. “Oh—I don’t say that. But I suppose she’s been used to other kinds of amusement in the States; skating, you know, and dancing—they seem to do a lot of dancing over there; and even in England I suppose young ladies expect more variety and excitement nowadays than they had in your time.”

  The Dowager, who had taken up her alms-house knitting, dropped a sigh into its harsh folds.

  “Certainly in my time they didn’t expect much—luckily, for they wouldn’t have got it.”

  The Duke made no reply, but moved uneasily back and forth across the room, as his way was when his mind was troubled.

  “Won’t you sit down, Ushant?”

  “Thanks. No.” He returned to his station on the hearth-rug.

  “You’re not joining the guns?” his mother asked.

  “No. Seadown will replace me. The fact is,” the Duke continued in an embarrassed tone, “I wanted a few minutes of quiet talk with you.”

  He paused again, and his mother sat silent, automatically counting her stitches, though her whole mind was centred on his words. She was sure some pressing difficulty had brought him to her, but she knew that any visible sign of curiosity, or even sympathy, might check his confidence.

  “I—I have had a very—er—embarrassing experience with Annabel,” he began; and the Dowager lifted her head quickly, but without interrupting the movement of her needles.

  The Duke coughed and cleared his throat. (“At the last minute,” his mother thought, “he’s wondering whether he might not better have held his tongue.” She knitted on.)

  “A—a really incomprehensible experience.” He threw himself into the chair opposite hers. “And completely unexpected. Yesterday morning, just as I was leaving the house, Annabel asked me for a large sum of money—a very large sum. For five hundred pounds.”

  “Five hundred pounds?” The needles dropped from the Dowager’s petrified fingers.

  Her son gave a dry laugh. “It seems to me a considerable amount.”

  The Dowager was thinking hurriedly: “That chit! I shouldn’t have dared to ask him for a quarter of that amount—much less his father…” Aloud she said: “But what does she want it for?”

  “That’s the point. She refuses to tell me.”

  “Refuses—?” the Dowager gasped.

  “Er—yes. First she hinted it was for her dress-maker; but on being pressed she owned it was not.”

  “Ah-and then?”

  “Well—then… I told her I’d pay the debt if she’d incurred it; but only if she would tell me to whom the money was owing.”

  “Of course. Very proper.”

  “So I thought; but she said I’d no right to cross-examine her—”

  “Ushant! She called it that?”

  “Something of the sort. And as the guns were waiting, I said that was my final answer—and there the matter ended.”

  The Dowager’s face quivered with an excitement she had no means of expressing. This woman—he’d offered her five hundred pounds! And she’d refused it…

  “It could hardly have ended otherwise,” she approved, thinking of the many occasions when a gift of five hundred pounds from the late Duke would have eased her daily load of maternal anxieties.

  Her son made no reply, and as he began to move uneasily about the room, it occurred to her that what he wanted was not her approval but her dissent. Yet how could she appear to encourage such open rebellion? “You certainly did right,” she repeated.

  “Ah, there I’m not sure,” the Duke muttered.

  “Not sure-?”

  “Nothing’s gained, I’m afraid, by taking that tone with Annabel.” He reddened uncomfortably, and turned his head away from his mother’s scrutiny.

  “You mean you think you were too lenient?”

  “Lord, no—just the contrary. I… oh, well, you wouldn’t understand. These American girls are brought up differently from our young women. You’d probably say they were spoilt…”

  “I should,” the Dowager assented drily.

  “Well—perhaps. Though in a country where there’s no primogeniture I suppose it’s natural that daughters should be more indulged. At any rate, I… I thought it all over during the day—I thought of nothing else, in fact; and after she’d gone down to dinner yesterday evening I slipped into her room and put an envelope with the money on her dressing-table.”

  “Oh, Ushant—how generous, how noble!”

  The Duchess’s hard little eyes filled with sudden tears. Her mind was torn between wrath at her daughter-in-law’s incredible exactions, and the thought of what such generosity on her own husband’s part might have meant to her, with those eight girls to provide for. But Annabel had no daughters—and no sons—and the Dowager’s heart had hardened again before her eyes were dry. Would there be no limit to Ushant’s weakness, she wondered?

  “You’re the best judge, of course, in any question between your wife and yourself; but I hope Annabel will never forget what she owes you.”

  The Duke gave a short laugh. “She’s forgotten it already.”

  “Ushant-!”

  He crimsoned unhappily and again averted his face from his mother’s eyes. He felt a nervous impulse to possess himself of the clock on the mantel-shelf and take it to pieces; but he turned his back on the temptation. “I’m sorry to bother you with these wretched details… but… perhaps one woman can understand another where a man would fail…”

  “Yes-?”

  “Well, you see, Annabel has been rather nervous and uncertain lately; I’ve had to be patient. But I thought—I thought when she found she’d gained her point about the money… she… er… would wish to show her gratitude…”

  “Naturally.”

  “So, when the men left the smoking-room last night, I went up to her room. It was not particularly late, and she had not undressed. I went in, and she did thank me… well, very prettily… But when I… when I proposed to stay, she refused, refused absolutely—”

  The Dowager’s lips twitched. “Refused? On what ground?”

  “That she hadn’t understood I’d been driving a bargain with her. The scene was extremely painful,” the Duke stammered.

  “Yes; I understand.” The Dowager paused, and then added abruptly: “So she handed back the envelope—?”

  Her son hung his head. “No; there was no question of th
at.”

  “Ah—her pride didn’t prevent her accepting the bribe, though she refused to stick to the bargain?”

  “I can’t say there was an actual bargain; but—well, it was something like that…”

  The Dowager sat silent, her needles motionless in her hands. This, she thought, was one of the strangest hours of her life, and not the least strange part of it was the light reflected back on her own past, and on the weary nights when she had not dared to lock her door…

  “And then-?”

  “Then—well, the end of it was that she said she wanted to go away.”

  “Go away?”

  “She wants to go off somewhere—she doesn’t care where—alone with her old governess. You know; the little Italian woman who’s with Augusta Glenloe and came over the other night with the party from Champions. She seems to be the only person Annabel cares for, or who, at any rate, has any influence over her.”

  The Dowager meditated. Again the memory of her own past thrust itself between her and her wrath against her daughter-in-law. Ah, if she had ever dared to ask the late Duke to let her off—to let her go away for a few days, she didn’t care where! Even now, she trembled inwardly at the thought of what his answer would have been…

  “Do you think this governess’s influence is good?” she asked at length.

  “I’ve always supposed it was. She’s very much attached to Annabel. But how can I ask Augusta Glenloe to lend me her girls’ governess to go—I don’t know where—with my wife?”

  “It’s out of the question, of course. Besides, a Duchess of Tintagel can hardly wander about the world in that way. But perhaps—if you’re sure it’s wise to yield to this… this fancy of Annabel’s…”

  “Yes, I am,” the Duke interrupted uncomfortably.

  “Then why not ask Augusta Glenloe to invite her to Champions for a few weeks? I could easily explain… putting it on the ground of Annabel’s health. Augusta will be glad to do what she can…”

  The Duke heaved a deep sigh, at once of depression and relief. It was clear that he wished to put an end to the talk, and escape as quickly as possible from the questions in his mother’s eyes.

  “It might be a good idea.”

  “Very well. Shall I write?”

  The Duke agreed that she might—but of course without giving the least hint…

  Oh, of course; naturally the Dowager understood that. Augusta would accept her explanation without seeing anything unusual in it… It wasn’t easy to surprise Augusta.

  The Duke, with a vague mutter of thanks, turned to the door; and his mother, following him, laid her hand on his arm. “You’ve been very long-suffering, Ushant; I hope you’ll have your reward.”

  He stammered something inaudible, and went out of the room. The Dowager, left alone, sat down by the hearth and bent over her scattered knitting. She had forgotten even her haste to get back to the gloxinias. Her son’s halting confidences had stirred in her a storm of unaccustomed emotion, and memories of her own past crowded about her like mocking ghosts. But the Dowager did not believe in ghosts, and her grim realism made short work of the phantoms. “There’s only one way for an English Duchess to behave—and the wretched girl has never learnt it…” Smoothing out her knitting, she restored it to the basket reserved for pauper industries; then she stood up, and tied on her gardening apron. There were still a great many seedlings to transplant, and after that the new curate was coming to discuss arrangements for the next Mothers’ Meeting… and then—

  “There’s always something to be done next… I daresay that’s the trouble with Annabel—she’s never assumed her responsibilities. Once one does, there’s no time left for trifles.” The Dowager, half way across the room, stopped abruptly. “But what in the world can she want with those five hundred pounds? Certainly not to pay her dress-maker—that was a stupid excuse,” she reflected; for even to her untrained eye it was evident that Annabel, unlike her sister and her American friends, had never dressed with the elegance her rank demanded. Yet for what else could she need this money—unless indeed (the Dowager shuddered at the thought) to help some young man out of a scrape? The idea was horrible; but the Dowager had heard it whispered that such cases had been known, even in their own circle; and suddenly she remembered the unaccountable incident of her daughter-in-law’s taking Guy Thwarte upstairs to her sitting-room in the course of that crazy reel…

  

  XXVII.

  At Champions, the Glenloe place in Gloucestershire, a broad-faced amiable brick house with regular windows and a pillared porch replaced the ancestral towers which had been destroyed by fire some thirty years earlier, and now, in ivy-draped ruin, invited the young and romantic to mourn with them by moonlight.

  The family did not mourn; least of all Lady Glenloe, to whom airy passages and plain square rooms seemed infinitely preferable to rat-infested moats and turrets, a troublesome over-crowded muniment-room, and the famous family portraits that were continually having to be cleaned and re-backed; and who, in rehearsing the saga of the fire, always concluded with a sigh of satisfaction: “Luckily they saved the stuffed birds.”

  It was doubtful if the other members of the family had ever noticed anything about the house but the temperature of the rooms, and the relative comfort of the armchairs. Certainly Lady Glenloe had done nothing to extend their observations. She herself had accomplished the unusual feat of having only two daughters and four sons: and this achievement, and the fact that Lord Glenloe had lived for years on a ranch in Canada, and came to England but briefly and rarely, had obliged his wife to be a frequent traveller, going from the soldier sons in Canada and India to the gold-miner in South Africa and the Embassy attaché at St Petersburg, and returning home via the Northwest and the marital ranch.

  Such travels, infrequent in Lady Glenloe’s day, had opened her eyes to matters undreamed-of by most ladies of the aristocracy, and she had brought back from her wanderings a mind tanned and toughened like her complexion by the healthy hardships of the road. Her two daughters, though left at home, and kept in due subordination, had caught a whiff of the gales that whistled through her mental rigging, and the talk at Champions was full of easy allusions to Thibet, Salt Lake City, Tsarskoë or Delhi, as to all of which Lady Glenloe could furnish statistical items, and facts on plant and bird distribution. In this atmosphere Miss Testvalley breathed more freely than in her other educational prisons, and when she appeared on the station platform to welcome the young Duchess, the latter, though absorbed in her own troubles, instantly noticed the change in her governess. At Longlands, during the Christmas revels, there had been no time or opportunity for observation, much less for private talk; but now Miss Testvalley took possession of Annabel as a matter of course.

  “My dear, you won’t mind there being no one but me to meet you? The girls and their brothers from Petersburg and Ottawa are out with the guns, and Lady Glenloe sent you all sorts of excuses, but she had an important parish meeting—something to do with almshouse sanitation; and she thought you’d probably be tired by the journey, and rather glad to rest quietly till dinner.”

  Yes—Annabel was very glad. She suspected that the informal arrival had been planned with Lady Glenloe’s connivance, and it made her feel like a girl again to be springing up the stairs on Miss Testvalley’s arm, with no groom-of-the-chambers bowing her onward, or housekeeper curtseying in advance. “Everything’s pot-luck at Champions.” Lady Glenloe had a way of saying it that made pot-luck sound far more appetizing than elaborate preparations; and Annabel’s spirits rose with every step.

  She had left Longlands with a heavy mind. After a scene of tearful gratitude, Lady Dick, her money in her pocket, had fled to London by the first train, ostensibly to deal with her more pressing creditors; and for another week Annabel had continued to fulfill her duties as hostess to the shooting-party. She had wanted to say a word in private to Guy Thwarte, to excuse herself for her childish outbreak when he had surprised her in the temple; but the day afte
r Conchita’s departure he too had gone, called to Honourslove on some local business, and leaving with a promise to the Duke that he would return for the Lowdon election.

  Without her two friends, Annabel felt herself more than ever alone. She knew that the Duke, according to his lights, had behaved generously to her; and she would have liked to feel properly grateful. But she was conscious only of a bewildered resentment. She was sure she had done right in helping Conchita Marable, and she could not understand why an act of friendship should have to be expiated like a crime, and in a way so painful to her pride. She felt that she and her husband would never be able to reach an understanding, and this being so it did not greatly matter which of the two was at fault. “I guess it was our parents, really, for making us so different,” was her final summing up to Laura Testvalley, in the course of that first unbosoming.

  The astringent quality of Miss Testvalley’s sympathy had always acted on Annabel like a tonic. Miss Testvalley was not one to weep with you, but to show you briskly why there was no cause for weeping. Now, however, she remained silent for a long while after listening to her pupil’s story; and when she spoke, it was with a new softness. “My poor Nan, life makes ugly faces at us sometimes, I know.”

  Annabel threw herself on the brown cashmere bosom which had so often been her refuge. “Of course you know, you darling old Val. I think there’s nothing in the world you don’t know.” And her tears broke out in a releasing shower.

  Miss Testvalley let them flow; apparently she had no bracing epigram at hand. But when Nan had dried her eyes, and tossed back her hair, the governess remarked quietly: “I’d like you to try a change of air first; then we’ll talk this all over. There’s a good deal of fresh air in this house, and I want you to ventilate your bewildered little head.”

  Annabel looked at her with a certain surprise. Though Miss Testvalley was often kind, she was seldom tender; and Nan had a sudden intuition of new forces stirring under the breast-plate of brown cashmere. She looked again, more attentively, and then said: “Val, your hair’s grown ever so much thicker; and you do it in a new way.”