Edith Wharton - Novel 21

by The Buccaneers (v2. 1)

  No one followed the Runnymede revels with a keener eye than Miss Testvalley. The invasion of England had been her own invention, and from a thousand little signs she already knew it would end in conquest. But from the outset she had put her charges on their guard against a too-easy triumph. The young men were to be allowed as much innocent enjoyment as they chose; but Miss Testvalley saw to it that they remembered the limits of their liberty. It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony, as English girls of good family.

  Miss Testvalley, when she persuaded the St Georges to come to England, had rejoiced at the thought of being once more near her family; but she soon found that her real centre of gravity was in the little house at Runnymede. She performed the weekly pilgrimage to Denmark Hill in the old spirit of filial piety; but the old enthusiasm was lacking. Her venerable relatives (thanks to her earnings in America) were now comfortably provided for; but they had grown too placid, too static, to occupy her. Her natural inclination was for action and conflict, and all her thoughts were engrossed by her young charges. Miss March was an admirable lieutenant, supplying the social experience which Miss Testvalley lacked; and between them they administered the cottage at Runnymede like an outpost in a conquered province.

  Miss March, who was without Miss Testvalley’s breadth of vision, was slightly alarmed by the audacities of the young ladies, and secretly anxious to improve their social education.

  “I don’t think they understand yet what a Duke is,” she sighed to Miss Testvalley, after a Sunday when Lord Seadown had unexpectedly appeared at the cottage with his cousin, the young Duke of Tintagel.

  Miss Testvalley laughed. “So much the better! I hope they never will. Look at the well brought-up American girls who’ve got the peerage by heart, and spend their lives trying to be taken for members of the British aristocracy. Don’t they always end by marrying curates or army-surgeons—or just not marrying at all?”

  A reminiscent pink suffused Miss March’s cheek. “Yes… sometimes; perhaps you’re right… But I don’t think I shall ever quite get used to Lady Richard’s Spanish dances; or to the peculiar words in some of her songs.”

  “Lady Richard’s married, and needn’t concern us,” said Miss Testvalley. “What attracts the young men is the girls’ naturalness, and their not being afraid to say what they think.” Miss March sighed again, and said she supposed that was the new fashion; certainly it gave the girls a better chance…

  Lord Seadown’s sudden appearance at the cottage seemed in fact to support Miss Testvalley’s theory. Miss March remembered Lady Churt’s emphatic words when the lease had been concluded. “I’m ever so much obliged to you, Jacky. You’ve got me out of an awfully tight place by finding tenants for me, and getting such a good rent out of them. I only hope your American beauties will want to come back next year. But I’ve forbidden Seadown to set foot in the place while they’re there, and if Conchita Marable coaxes him down you must swear you’ll let me know, and I’ll see it doesn’t happen again.”

  Miss March had obediently sworn; but she saw now that she must conceal Lord Seadown’s visits instead of denouncing them. Poor Idina’s exactions were obviously absurd. If she chose to let her house she could not prevent her tenants from receiving any one they pleased; and it was clear that the tenants liked Seadown, and that he returned the sentiment, for after his first visit he came often. Lady Churt, luckily, was in Scotland; and Miss March trusted to her remaining there till the lease of the cottage had expired.

  The Duke of Tintagel did not again accompany his friend. He was a young man of non-committal appearance and manner, and it was difficult to say what impression the American beauties made on him; but, to Miss March’s distress, he had apparently made little if any on them.

  “They don’t seem in the least to realize that he’s the greatest match in England,” Miss March said with a shade of impatience. “Not that there would be the least chance… I understand the Duchess has already made her choice; and the young Duke is a perfect son. Still, the mere fact of his coming…”

  “Oh, he came merely out of curiosity. He’s always been rather a dull young man, and I daresay all the noise and the nonsense simply bewildered him.”

  “Oh, but you know him, of course, don’t you? You were at Tintagel before you went to America. Is it true that he always does what his mother tells him?”

  “I don’t know. But the young men about whom that is said usually break out sooner or later,” replied the governess with a shrug.

  About this time she began to wonder if the atmosphere of Runnymede were not a little too stimulating for Nan’s tender sensibilities. Since Teddy de Santos-Dios, who had joined his sister in London, had taken to coming down with her for Sundays, the fun had grown fast and furious. Practical jokes were Teddy’s chief accomplishment, and their preparation involved rather too much familiarity with the upper ranges of the house, too much popping in and out of bedrooms, and too many screaming midnight pillow-fights. Miss Testvalley saw that Nan, whose feelings always rushed to extremes, was growing restless and excited, and she felt the need of shielding the girl and keeping her apart. That the others were often noisy, and sometimes vulgar, did not disturb Miss Testvalley; they were obviously in pursuit of husbands, and had probably hit on the best way of getting them. Seadown was certainly very much taken by I.izzy Elmsworth; and two or three of the other young men had fallen victims to Virginia’s graces. But it was too early for Nan to enter the matrimonial race, and when she did, Miss Testvalley hoped it would be for different reasons, and in a different manner. She did not want her pupil to engage herself after a night of champagne and song on the river; her sense of artistic fitness rejected the idea of Nan’s adopting the same methods as her elders.

  Mrs. St George was slightly bewildered when the governess suggested taking her pupil away from the late hours and the continuous excitements at the cottage. It was not so much the idea of parting from Nan, as of losing the moral support of the governess’s presence, that troubled Mrs. St George. “But, Miss Testvalley, why do you want to go away? I never know how to talk to those servants, and I never can remember the titles of the young men that Conchita brings down, or what I ought to call them.”

  “I’m sure Miss March will help you with all that. And I do think Nan ought to get away for two or three weeks. Haven’t you noticed how thin she’s grown? And her eyes are as big as saucers. I know a quiet little place in Cornwall where she could have some bathing, and go to bed every night at nine.”

  To every one’s surprise, Nan offered no objection. The prospect of seeing new places stirred her imagination, and she seemed to lose all interest in the gay doings at the cottage when Miss Testvalley told her that, on the way, they would stop at Exeter, where there was a very beautiful cathedral.

  “And shall we see some beautiful houses too? I love seeing houses that are so ancient and so lovely that the people who live there have them in their bones.”

  Miss Testvalley looked at her pupil sharply. “What an odd expression! Did you find it in a book?” she asked; for the promiscuity of Nan’s reading sometimes alarmed her.

  “Oh, no. It was what that young Mr. Thwarte said to me about Honourslove. It’s why he’s going away for two years—so that he can make a great deal of money, and come back and spend it on Honourslove.”

  “H’m—from what I’ve heard, Honourslove could easily swallow a good deal more than he’s likely to make in two years, or even ten,” said Miss Testvalley. “The father and son are both said to be very extravagant, and the only way for Mr. Guy Thwarte to keep up his ancestral home will be to bring a great heiress back to it.”

  Nan looked thoughtful. “You mean, even if he doesn’t love her?”

  “Oh, well, I daresay he’ll love her—or be
grateful to her, at any rate.”

  “I shouldn’t think gratitude was enough,” said Nan with a sigh. She was silent again for a while, and then added: “Mr. Thwarte has read all your cousin’s poetry—Dante Gabriel’s, I mean.”

  Miss Testvalley gave her a startled glance. “May I ask how you happened to find that out?”

  “Why, because there’s a perfectly beautiful picture by your cousin in Sir Helmsley’s study, and Mr. Thwarte showed it to me. And so we talked of his poetry too. But Mr. Thwarte thinks there are other poems even more wonderful than ‘The Blessed Damozel’. Some of the sonnets in The House of Life, I mean. Do you think they’re more beautiful, Miss Testvalley?”

  The governess hesitated; she often found herself hesitating over the answers to Nan’s questions. “You told Mr. Thwarte that you’d read some of those poems?”

  “Oh, yes; I told him I’d read every one of them.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said… he said he’d felt from the first that he and I would be certain to like the same things; and he loved my liking Dante Gabriel. I told him he was your cousin, and that you were devoted to him.”

  “Ah—well, I’m glad you told him that, for Sir Helmsley Thwarte is an old friend of my cousin’s, and one of his best patrons. But you know, Nan, there are people who don’t appreciate his poetry—don’t see how beautiful it is; and I’d rather you didn’t proclaim in public that you’ve read it all. Some people are so stupid that they wouldn’t exactly understand a young girl’s caring for that kind of poetry. You see, don’t you, dear?”

  “Oh, yes. They’d be shocked, I suppose, because it’s all about love. But that’s why I like it, you know,” said Nan composedly.

  Miss Testvalley made no answer, and Nan went on in a thoughtful voice: “Shall we see some other places as beautiful as Honourslove?”

  The governess reflected. She had not contemplated a round of sight-seeing for her pupil, and Cornwall did not seem to have many sights to offer. But at length she said: “Well, Trevennick is not so far from Tintagel. If the family are away I might take you there, I suppose. You know the old Tintagel was supposed to have been King Arthur’s castle.”

  Nan’s face lit up. “Where the Knights of the Round Table were? Oh, Miss Testvalley, can we see that too? And the mere where he threw his sword Excalibur? Oh, couldn’t we start tomorrow, don’t you think?”

  Miss Testvalley felt relieved. She had been slightly disturbed by Nan’s allusion to Honourslove, and the unexpected glimpse it gave of an exchange of confidences between Guy Thwarte and her pupil; but she saw that in another moment the thought of visiting the scenes celebrated in Tennyson’s famous poems had swept away all other fancies. The Idylls of the King had been one of Nan’s magic casements, and Miss Testvalley smiled to herself at the ease with which the girl’s mind flitted from one new vision to another.

  “A child still, luckily,” she thought, sighing, she knew not why, at what the future might hold for Nan when childish things should be put away.

  

  XIV.

  The Duke of Tintagel was a young man burdened with scruples. This was probably due to the fact that his father, the late Duke, had had none. During all his boyhood and youth the heir had watched the disastrous effects of not considering trifles. It was not that his father had been either irresponsible or negligent. The late Duke had no vices; but his virtues were excessively costly. His conduct had always been governed by a sense of the overwhelming obligations connected with his great position. One of these obligations, he held, consisted in keeping up his rank; the other, in producing an heir. Unfortunately the Duchess had given him six daughters before a son was born, and two more afterward in the attempt to provide the heir with a younger brother; and though daughters constitute a relatively small charge on a great estate, still a Duke’s daughters cannot (or so their parent thought) be fed, clothed, educated and married at as low a cost as young women of humbler origin. The Duke’s other obligation, that of keeping up his rank, had involved him in even heavier expenditure. Hitherto Longlands, the seat in Somersetshire, had been thought imposing enough even for a Duke; but its owner had always been troubled by the fact that the new castle at Tintagel, built for his great-grandfather in the approved Gothic style of the day, and with the avowed intention of surpassing Inveraray, had never been inhabited. The expense of completing it, and living in it in suitable state, appeared to have discouraged its creator; and for years it stood abandoned on its Cornish cliff, a sadder ruin than the other, until it passed to the young Duke’s father. To him it became a torment, a reproach, an obsession; the Duke of Tintagel must live at Tintagel as the Duke of Argyll lived at Inveraray, with a splendour befitting the place; and the carrying out of this resolve had been the late Duke’s crowning achievement.

  His young heir, who had just succeeded him, had as keen a sense as his father of ducal duties. He meant, if possible, to keep up in suitable state both Tintagel and Longlands, as well as Folyat House, his London residence; but he meant to do so without the continual drain on his fortune which his father had been obliged to incur. The new Duke hoped that, by devoting all his time and most of his faculties to the care of his estates and the personal supervision of his budget, he could reduce his cost of living without altering its style; and the indefatigable Duchess, her numerous daughters notwithstanding, found time to second the attempt. She was not the woman to let her son forget the importance of her aid; and though a perfect understanding had always reigned between them, recent symptoms made it appear that the young Duke was beginning to chafe under her regency.

  Soon after his visit to Runnymede he and his mother sat together in the Duchess’s boudoir in the London house, a narrow lofty room on whose crowded walls authentic Raphaels were ultimately mingled with watercolours executed by the Duchess’s maiden aunts, and photographs of shooting-parties at the various ducal estates. The Duchess invariably arranged to have this hour alone with her son, when breakfast was over, and her daughters (of whom death or marriage had claimed all but three) had gone their different ways. The Duchess had always kept her son to herself, and the Ladies Clara, Ermyntrude and Almina Folyat would never have dreamed of intruding on them.

  At present, as it happened, all three were in the country, and Folyat House had put on its summer sackcloth; but the Duchess lingered on, determined not to forsake her son till he was released from his Parliamentary duties.

  “I was hoping,” she said, noticing that the Duke had twice glanced at the clock, “that you’d manage to get away to Scotland for a few days. Isn’t it possible? The Hopeleighs particularly wanted you to go to them at Loch Skarig. Lady Hopeleigh wrote yesterday to ask me to remind you…”

  The Duchess was small of stature, with firm round cheeks, a small mouth and quick dark eyes under an anxiously wrinkled forehead. She did not often smile, and when, as now, she attempted it, the result was a pucker similar to the wrinkles on her brow. “You know that some one else will be very grieved if you don’t go,” she insinuated archly.

  The Duke’s look passed from faint ennui to marked severity. He glanced at the ceiling, and made no answer.

  “My dear Ushant,” said the Duchess, who still called him by the title he had borne before his father’s death, “surely you can’t be blind to the fact that poor Jean Hopeleigh’s future is in your hands. It is a serious thing to have inspired such a deep sentiment…”

  The Duke’s naturally inexpressive face had become completely expressionless, but his mother continued: “I only fear it may cause you a lasting remorse…”

  “I will never marry any one who hunts me down for the sake of my title,” exclaimed the Duke abruptly.

  His mother raised her neat dark eyebrows in a reproachful stare. “For your title? But, my dear Ushant, surely Jean Hopeleigh…”

  “Jean Hopeleigh is like all the others. I’m sick of being tracked like a wild animal,” cried the Duke, who looked excessively tame.

  The Duchess gave a
deep sigh. “Ushant—1”

  “Well?”

  “You haven’t—it’s not possible—formed an imprudent attachment? You’re not concealing anything from me?” The Duke’s smiles were almost as difficult as his mother’s; but his muscles made an effort in that direction. “I shall never form an attachment until I meet a girl who doesn’t know what a Duke isl”

  “Well, my dear, I can’t think where one could find a being so totally ignorant of everything on which England’s greatness rests,” said the Duchess impressively.

  “Then I shan’t marry.”

  “Ushant-!”

  “I’m sorry, mother—”

  She lifted her sharp eyes to his. “You remember that the roof at Tintagel has still to be paid for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dear Jean’s settlements would make all that so easy. There’s nothing the Hopeleighs wouldn’t do…”

  The Duke interrupted her. “Why not marry me to a Jewess? Some of those people in the City could buy up the Hopeleighs and not feel it.”

  The Duchess drew herself up. Her lips trembled, but no word came. Her son stalked out of the room. From the threshold he turned to say: “I shall go down to Tintagel on Friday night to go over the books with Blair.” His mother could only bend her head; his obstinacy was beginning to frighten her.

  The Duke got into the train on the Friday with a feeling of relief. His high and continuous sense of his rank was combined with a secret desire for anonymity. If he could have had himself replaced in the world of fashion and politics by a mechanical effigy of the Duke of Tintagel, while he himself went obscurely about his private business, he would have been a happier man. He was as firmly convinced as his mother that the greatness of England rested largely on her Dukes. The Dukes of Tintagel had always had a strong sense of public obligation; and the young Duke was determined not to fall below their standard. But his real tastes were for small matters, for the minutiae of a retired and leisurely existence. As a little boy his secret longing had been to be a clock-maker; or rather (since their fabrication might have been too delicate a business) a man who sold clocks and sat among them in his little shop, watching them, doctoring them, taking their temperature, feeling their pulse, listening to their chimes, oiling, setting and regulating them. The then Lord Ushant had never avowed this longing to his parents; even in petticoats he had understood that a future Duke can never hope to keep a clock-shop. But often, wandering through the great saloons and interminable galleries of Longlands and Tintagel, he had said to himself with a beating heart: “Some day I’ll wind all these clocks myself, every Sunday morning before breakfast.”