Nan was silent. She knew that Virginia’s survey of the world was limited to people, the clothes they wore, and the carriages they drove in. Her own universe was so crammed to bursting with wonderful sights and sounds that, in spite of her sense of Virginia’s superiority—her beauty, her ease, her self-confidence—Nan sometimes felt a shamefaced pity for her. It must be cold and lonely, she thought, in such an empty colourless world as her sister’s.
“But the house is terribly grand, don’t you think it is? I like to imagine all those people on the walls, in their splendid historical dresses, walking about in the big rooms. Don’t you believe they come down at night sometimes?”
“Oh, shut up, Nan. You’re too old for baby-talk… Be sure you look under the bed before you blow out the candle…”
Virginia’s head was already on the pillow, her hair overflowing it in ripples of light.
“Do come to bed, Nan. I hate the way the furniture creaks. Isn’t it funny there’s no gas? I wish we’d told that maid to sit up for us.” She waited a moment, and then went on: “I’m sorry for Lord Seadown. He looks so scared of his father; but I thought Lord Brightlingsea was very kind, really. Did you see how I made him laugh?”
“I saw they couldn’t either of them take their eyes off you.”
“Oh, well—if they have nobody to look at but those daughters I don’t wonder,” Virginia murmured complacently, her lids sinking over her drowsy eyes.
Nan was not drowsy. Unfamiliar scenes and faces always palpitated in her long afterward; but the impact of new scenes usually made itself felt before that of new people. Her soul opened slowly and timidly to her kind, but her imagination rushed out to the beauties of the visible world; and the decaying majesty of Allfriars moved her strangely. Splendour neither frightened her, nor made her self-assertive as it did Virginia; she never felt herself matched against things greater than herself, but softly merged in them; and she lay awake, thinking of what Miss Testvalley had told her of the history of the ancient Abbey, which Henry VIII had bestowed on an ancestor of Lord Brightlingsea’s, and of the tragic vicissitudes following on its desecration. She lay for a long time listening to the mysterious sounds given forth by old houses at night, the undefinable creakings, rustlings and sighings which would have frightened Virginia had she remained awake, but which sounded to Nan like the long murmur of the past breaking on the shores of a sleeping world.
In a majestic bedroom at the other end of the house the master of Allfriars, in dressing-gown and slippers, appeared from his dressing-room. On his lips was a smile of retrospective satisfaction seldom seen by his wife at that hour.
“Well, those two young women gave us an unexpectedly lively evening—eh, my dear? Remarkably intelligent, that eldest girl; the beauty, I mean. I’m to show her the pictures tomorrow morning. By the way, please send word to the Vicar that I shan’t be able to go to the vestry meeting at eleven; he’d better put it off till next week… What are you to tell him? Why—er—unexpected business… And the little one, who looks such a child, had plenty to say for herself too. She seemed to know the whole history of the place. Now, why can’t our girls talk like that?”
“You’ve never encouraged them to chatter,” replied Lady Brightlingsea, settling a weary head on a longed-for pillow; and her lord responded by a growl. As if talk were necessarily chatter! Yet as such Lord Brightlingsea had always regarded it when it issued from the lips of his own family. How little he had ever been understood by those nearest him, he thought; and as he composed himself to slumber in his half of the vast bed, his last conscious act was to murmur over: “The Hobbema’s the big black one in the red drawing-room, between the lacquer cabinets; and the portrait of Lady Jane Grey that they were asking about must be the one in the octagon room, over the fire-place.” For Lord Brightlingsea was determined to shine as a connoisseur in the eyes of the young ladv for whom he had put off the vestry meeting.
The terrace of Honourslove had never looked more beautiful than on the following Sunday afternoon. The party from Allfriars—Lady Richard Marable, her brother-in-law Lord Seadown, and the two young ladies from America—had been taken through the house by Sir Helmsley and his son, and after a stroll along the shady banks of the Love, murmuring in its little glen far below, had returned by way of the gardens to the chapel hooded with ivy at the gates of the park. In the gardens they had seen the lavender-borders, the hundreds of feet of rosy brick hung with peaches and nectarines, the old fig-tree heavy with purple fruit in a sheltered corner; and in the chapel, with its delicately traceried roof and dark oaken stalls, had lingered over kneeling and recumbent Thwartes, Thwartes in cuirass and ruff, in furred robes, in portentous wigs, their stiffly farthingaled ladies at their sides, and baby Thwartes tucked away overhead in little marble cots. And now, turning back to the house, they were looking out from the terrace over the soft reaches of country bathed in afternoon light.
After the shabby vastness of Allfriars everything about Honourslove seemed to Nan St George warm, cared-for, exquisitely intimate. The stones of the house, the bricks of the walls, the very flags of the terrace, were so full of captured sunshine that in the darkest days they must keep an inner brightness. Nan, though too ignorant to single out the details of all this beauty, found herself suddenly at ease with the soft mellow place, as though some secret thread of destiny attached her to it.
Guy Thwarte, somewhat to her surprise, had kept at her side during the walk and the visit to the chapel. He had not said much, but with him also Nan had felt instantly at ease. In his answers to her questions she had detected a latent passion for every tree and stone of the beautiful old place—a sentiment new to her experience, as a dweller in houses without histories, but exquisitely familiar to her imagination. They had walked together to the far end of the terrace before she noticed that the others, guided by Sir Helmsley, were passing through the glass doors into the hall. Nan turned to follow, but her companion laid his hand on her arm. “Stay,” he said quietly.
Without answering she perched herself on the ledge of the balustrade, and looked up at the long honey-coloured front of the house, with the great carven shield above the door, and the quiet lines of cornice and window-frames.
“I wanted you to see it in this light. It’s the magic hour,” he explained.
She turned her glance from the house to his face. “I see why Conchita says it’s the most beautiful place in England.”
He smiled. “I don’t know. I suppose if one were married to a woman one adored, one would soon get beyond her beauty. That’s the way I feel about Honourslove. It’s in my bones.”
“Oh, then you understand!” she exclaimed.
“Understand-?”
Nan coloured a little; the words had slipped out. “I mean about the beyondness of things. I know there’s no such word…”
“There’s such a feeling. When two people have reached it together it’s—well, they are ‘beyond’.” He broke off. “You see now why I wanted you to come to Honourslove,” he said in an odd new voice.
She was still looking at him thoughtfully. “You knew I’d understand.”
“Oh, everything!”
She sighed for pleasure; but then: “No. There’s one thing I don’t understand. How you go away and leave it all for so long.”
He gave a nervous laugh. “You don’t know England. That’s part of our sense of beyondness: I’d do more than that for those old stones.”
Nan bent her eyes to the worn flags on the terrace. “I see; that was stupid of me.”
For no reason at all the quick colour rushed to her temples again, and the young man coloured too. “It’s a beautiful view,” she stammered, suddenly self-conscious.
“It depends who looks at it,” he said.
She dropped to her feet, and turned to gaze away over the shimmering distances. Guy Thwarte said nothing more, and for a long while they stood side by side without speaking, each seeing the other in every line of the landscape.
Sir Helmsley,
after fulminating in advance against the foreign intruders, had been all smiles on their arrival. Guy was used to such sudden changes of the paternal mood, and knew that feminine beauty could be counted on to produce them. His father could never, at the moment, hold out against deep lashes and brilliant lips, and no one knew better than Virginia St George how to make use of such charms.
“That red-haired witch from Brazil has her wits about her,” Sir Helmsley mumbled that evening over his after-dinner cigar. “I don’t wonder she stirs them up at Allfriars. Gad, I should think Master Richard Marable had found his match… But your St George girl is a goddess… patuit dea—l think I like ’em better like that… divinely dull… just the quiet bearers of their own beauty, like the priestesses in a Panathenaic procession…” He leaned back in his armchair, and looked sharply across the table at his son, who sat with bent head, drawing vague arabesques on the mahogany. “Guy, my boy—that kind are about as expensive to acquire as the Venus of Milo; and as difficult to fit into domestic life.”
Guy Thwarte looked up with an absent smile. “I daresay that’s what Seadown’s thinking, sir.”
“Seadown?”
“Well, I suppose your classical analogies are meant to apply to the eldest Miss St George, aren’t they?”
Father and son continued to look at each other, the father perplexed, the son privately amused. “What? Isn’t it the eldest—?” Sir Helmsley broke out.
Guy shook his head, and his father sank back with a groan. “Good Lord, my boyl I thought I understood you. Sovran beauty… and that girl has it…”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“You suppose—?”
Guy held up his head and cleared his throat. “You see, sir, it happens to be the younger one—”
“The younger one? I didn’t even notice her. I imagined you were taking her off my hands so that I could have a better chance with the beauties.”
“Perhaps in a way I was,” said Guy. “Though I think you might have enjoyed talking to her almost as much as gazing at the goddess.”
“H’m. What sort of talk?”
“Well, she came to a dead point before the Rossetti in the study, and at once began to quote ‘The Blessed Damozel’.”
“That child? So the Fleshly School has penetrated to the backwoods! Well, I don’t know that it’s exactly the best food for the family breakfast-table.”
“I imagine she came on it by chance. It appears she has a wonderful governess who’s a cousin of the Rossettis.”
“Ah, yes. One of old Testavaglia’s descendants, I suppose. What a queer concatenation of circumstances, to doom an Italian patriot to bring up a little Miss Jonathan!”
“I think it was rather a happy accident to give her some one with whom she could talk of poetry.”
“Well—supposing you were to leave that to her governess? Eh? I say, Guy, you don’t mean—?”
His son paused before replying. “I’ve nothing to add to what I told you the other day, sir. My South American job comes first; and God knows what will have become of her when I get back. She’s barely nineteen and I’ve only seen her twice…”
“Well, I’m glad you remember that,” his father interjected. “I never should have, at your age.”
“Oh, I’ve given it thought enough, I can assure you,” Guy rejoined, still with his quiet smile.
Sir Helmsley rose from his chair. “Shall we finish our smoke on the terrace?”
They went out together into the twilight, and strolled up and down, as their habit was, in silence. Guy Thwarte knew that Sir Helmsley’s mind was as crowded as his own with urgent passionate thoughts clamouring to be expressed. And there were only three days left in which to utter them! To the young man his father’s step and his own sounded as full of mystery as the tread of the coming years. After a while they made one of their wonted pauses, and stood leaning against the balustrade above the darkening landscape.
“Eh, well—what are you thinking of?” Sir Helmsley broke out, with one of his sudden jerks of interrogation.
Guy pondered. “I was thinking how strange and far-off everything here seems to me already. I seem to see it all as sharply as things in a dream.”
Sir Helmsley gave a nervous laugh. “H’m. And I was thinking that the strangest thing about it all was to hear common-sense spoken about a young woman under the roof of Honourslove.” He pressed his son’s arm, and then turned abruptly away, and they resumed their walk in silence; for in truth there was nothing more to be said.
XII.
A dark-haired girl who was so handsome that the heads nearest her were all turned her way, stood impatiently at a crowded London street-corner. It was a radiant afternoon of July; and the crowd which had checked her advance had assembled to see the fine ladies in their state carriages on the way to the last Drawing-room of the season.
“I don’t see why they won’t let us through. It’s worse than a village circus,” the beauty grumbled to her companion, a younger girl who would have been pretty save for that dazzling proximity, but who showed her teeth too much when she laughed. She laughed now.
“What’s wrong with just staying where we are, Liz? It beats any Barnum show I ever saw, and the people are ever so much more polite. Nobody shoves you. Look at that antique yeilow coach coming along now, with the two powdered giants hanging on at the back. Oh, Liz!—and the old mummy inside! I guess she dates way back beyond the carriage. But look at her jewels, will you? My goodness—and she’s got a real live crown on her head!”
“Shut up, Mab—everybody’s looking at you,” Lizzy Elmsworth rejoined, still sulkily, though in spite of herself she was beginning to be interested in the scene.
The younger girl laughed again. “They’re looking at you, you silly. It rests their eyes, after all the scare-crows in those circus-chariots. Liz, why do you suppose they dress up like queens at the waxworks, just to go to an afternoon party?”
“It’s not an ordinary party. It’s the Queen’s Drawing-room.”
“Well, I’m sorry for the Queen if she has to feast her eyes for long on some of these beauties… Oh, good; the carriages are moving! Better luck next time. This next carriage isn’t half as grand, but maybe it’s pleasanter inside… Oh!” Mab Elmsworth suddenly exclaimed, applying a sharp pinch to her sister’s arm.
“‘Oh’ what? I don’t see anything so wonderful—”
“Why, look, Lizzy! Reach up on your tip-toes. In the third carriage—if it isn’t the St George girls! Look, look! When they move again they’ll see us.”
“Nonsense. There are dozens of people between us. Besides, I don’t believe it is… How in the world should they be here?”
“Why, I guess Conchita fixed it up. Or don’t they present people through our Legation?”
“You have to have letters to the Minister. Who on earth’d have given them to the St Georges?”
“I don’t know; but there they are. Oh, Liz, look at Jinny, will you? She looks like a queen herself—a queen going to her wedding, with that tulle veil and the feathers… Oh, mercy, and there’s little Nan! Well, the headdress isn’t as becoming to her—she hasn’t got the style, has she? Now, Liz! The carriages are moving… I’m not tall enough—you reach up and wave. They’re sure to see us if you do.”
Lizzy Elmsworth did not move. “I can survive not being seen by the St George girls,” she said coldly. “If only we could get out of this crowd.”
“Oh, just wait till I squeeze through, and make a sign to them! There—. Oh, thank you so much… Now they see me! Jinny—Nan—do look! It’s Mab…”
Lizzy caught her sister by the arm. “You’re making a show of us; come away,” she whispered angrily.
“Why, Liz… Just wait a second… I’m sure they saw us…”
“I’m sure they didn’t want to see us. Can’t you understand? A girl screaming at the top of her lungs from the side-walk… Please come when I tell you to, Mabel.”
At that moment Virginia St Geor
ge turned her head toward Mab’s gesticulating arm. Her face, under its halo of tulle and arching feathers, was so lovely that the eyes in the crowd deserted Lizzy Elmsworth. “Well, they’re not all mummies going to Court,” a man said good-naturedly; and the group about him laughed.
“Come away, Mabel,” Miss Elmsworth repeated. She did not know till that moment how much she would dislike seeing the St George girls in the glory of their Court feathers. She dragged her reluctant sister through a gap in the crowd, and they turned back in the direction of the hotel where they were staying.
“Now I hope you understand that they saw us, and didn’t want to see us!”
“Why, Liz, what’s come over you? A minute ago you said they couldn’t possibly see us.”
“Now I’m sure they did, and made believe not to.
I should have thought you’d have had more pride than to scream at them that way among all those common people.”
The two girls walked on in silence.
Mrs. St George had been bitterly disappointed in her attempt to launch her daughters in New York. Scandalized though she was by Virginia’s joining in the wretched practical joke played on the Assembly patronesses by Lord Richard Marable and his future brother-in-law, she could not think that such a prank would have lasting consequences. The difficulty, she believed, lay with Colonel St George. He was too free-and-easy, too much disposed to behave as if Fifth Avenue and Wall Street were one. As a social figure no one took him seriously (except certain women she could have named, had it not demeaned her even to think of them), and by taking up with the Clossons, and forcing her to associate publicly with that divorced foreigner, he had deprived her girls of all chance of social recognition. Miss Testvalley had seen it from the first. She too was terribly upset about the ball; but she did not share Mrs. St George’s view that Virginia and Nan, by acting as bridesmaids to Conchita Closson, had increased the mischief. At the wedding their beauty had been much remarked; and, as Miss Testvalley pointed out, Conchita had married into one of the greatest English families, and if ever the girls wanted to do a London season, knowing the Brightlingseas would certainly be a great help.
Edith Wharton - Novel 21 Page 11
