Lady Churt stood staring at the two girls with a hard bright intensity which, as the silence lengthened, made Mr. Robinson conscious of a slight shiver down his spine. At length she too broke into a laugh. “Really—” she said, “really…” She was obviously struggling for the appropriate word. She found it in another moment.
“Engaged? Engaged to Seadown? What a delightful surprise! Almost as great a one, I suspect, to Seadown as to Miss St George herself. Or is it only another of your American jokes—just a way you’ve invented of keeping Seadown here over Sunday? Well, for my part you’re welcome either way…” She paused and her quick ironic glance travelled from face to face. “But if it’s serious, you know—then of course I congratulate you, Seadown. And you too, Miss St George.” She went up to Virginia, and looked her straight in the eyes. “I congratulate you, my dear, on your cleverness, on your good looks, on your success. But you must excuse me for saying that I know Seadown far too well to congratulate you on having caught him for a husband.”
She held out a gloved hand rattling with bracelets, just touched Virginia’s shrinking fingers, and stalked past Lord Seadown without seeming to see him.
“Conchita, darling, how cleverly you’ve staged the whole business. We must really repeat it the next time there are tableaux vivants at Stafford House.” Her eyes took a rapid survey of the young men. “And now I must be off. Mr. Dawnly, will you see me to my fly?”
Mr. Robinson turned from the group with a faint smile as Miles Dawnly advanced to accompany Lady Churt. “What a tit-bit for Dawnly to carry back to town!” he thought. “Poor woman… She’ll have another try for Seadown, of course—but the game’s up, and she probably knows it. I thought she’d have kept her head better. But what fools the cleverest of them can be…” He had the excited sense of having assisted at a self-revelation such as the polite world seldom offers. Every accent of Lady Churt’s stinging voice, every lift of her black eyebrows and tremor of her red lips, seemed to bare her before him in her avidity, her disorder, her social arrogance and her spiritual poverty. The sight curiously re-adjusted Mr. Robinson’s sense of values, and his admiration for Lizzy Elmsworth grew with his pity for her routed opponent.
XVII.
Under the fixed smile of the Folyat Raphael the Duchess of Tintagel sat at breakfast opposite two of her many daughters, the Ladies Almina Folyat and Gwendolen de Lurey.
When the Duke was present he reserved to himself the right to glance through the morning papers between his cup of tea and his devilled kidneys; but in his absence his mother exercised the privilege, and had the Morning Post placed before her as one of her jealously guarded rights.
She always went straight to the Court Circular, and thence (guided by her mother’s heart) to the Fashionable Marriages; and now, after a brief glance at the latter, she threw down the journal with a sudden exclamation.
“Oh, Mamma, what is it?” both daughters cried in alarm. Lady Almina thought wistfully: “Probably somebody else she had hopes of for Ermie or me is engaged,” and Lady Gwendolen de Lurey, who had five children, and an invalid husband with a heavily mortgaged estate, reflected, as she always did when she heard of a projected marriage in high life, that when her own engagement had been anounced every one took it for granted that Colonel de Lurey would inherit within the year the immense fortune of a paralyzed uncle—who after all was still alive. “So there’s no use planning in advance,” Lady Gwendolen concluded wearily, glancing at the clock to make sure it was not yet time to take her second girl to the dentist (the children always had to draw lots for the annual visit to the dentist, as it was too expensive to take more than one a year).
“What is it, Mamma?” the daughters repeated apprehensively.
The Duchess laid down the newspaper, and looked first at one and then at the other. “It is—it is—that I sometimes wonder what we bring you all up for!”
“Mamma!”
“Yes; the time, and the worry, and the money—”
“But what in the world has happened, Mamma?”
“What has happened? Only that Seadown is going to marry an American! That a—what’s the name?—a Miss Virginia St George of New York is going to be premier Marchioness of England!” She pushed the paper aside, and looked up indignantly at the imbecile smile of the Raphael Madonna. “And nobody cares!” she ended bitterly, as though including that insipid masterpiece in her reproach.
Lady Almina and Lady Gwendolen repeated with astonishment: “Seadown?”
“Yes; your cousin Seadown—who used to be at Longlands so often at one time that I had hoped…”
Lady Almina flushed at the hint, which she took as a personal reproach, and her married sister, seeing her distress, intervened: “Oh, but Mamma, you know perfectly well that for years Seadown has been Idina Churt’s property, and nobody has had a chance against her.”
The Duchess gave her dry laugh. “Nobody? It seems this girl had only to lift a finger—”
“I daresay, Mamma, they use means in the States that a well-bred English girl wouldn’t stoop to.”
The Duchess stirred her tea angrily. “I wish I knew what they are!” she declared, unconsciously echoing the words of an American President when his most successful general was accused of intemperance.
Lady Gwendolen, who had exhausted her ammunition, again glanced at the clock. “I’m afraid, Mamma, I must ask you to excuse me if I hurry off with Clare to the dentist. It’s half past nine—and in this house I’m always sure Ushant keeps the clocks on time…”
The Duchess looked at her with unseeing eyes. “Oh, Ushant—!” she exclaimed. “If you can either of you tell me where Ushant is—or why he’s not in London, when the House has not risen—I shall be much obliged to you!”
Lady Gwendolen had slipped away under cover of this outburst, and the Duchess’s unmarried daughter was left alone to weather the storm. She thought: “I don’t much mind, if only Mamma lets me alone about Seadown.”
Lady Almina Folyat’s secret desire was to enter an Anglican Sisterhood, and next to the grievance of her not marrying, she knew none would be so intolerable to her mother as her joining one of these High Church masquerades, as the evangelical Duchess would have called it. “If you want to dress yourself up, why don’t you go to a fancy-ball?” the Duchess had parried her daughter’s first approach to the subject; and since then Lady Almina had trembled, and bided her time in silence. She had always thought, she could not tell why, that perhaps when Ushant married he might take her side—or at any rate set her the example of throwing off their mother’s tyranny.
“Seadown marrying an American! I pity poor Selina Brightlingsea; but she has never known how to manage her children.” The Duchess folded the Morning Post, and gathered up her correspondence. Her morning duties lay before her, stretching out in a long monotonous perspective to the moment when all Ushant’s clocks should simultaneously strike the luncheon hour. She felt a sudden discouragement when she thought of it—she to whom the duties of her station had for over thirty years been what its pleasures would have been to other women. Well—it was a joy, even now, to do it all for Ushant, neglectful and ungrateful as he had lately been; and she meant to go on with the task unflinchingly till the day when she could put the heavy burden into the hands of his wife. And what a burden it seemed to her that morning!
She reviewed it all, as though it lay outlined before her on some vast chart: the treasures, the possessions, the heirlooms: the pictures, the jewels—Raphaels, Correggios, Ruysdaels, Vandykes and Hobbemas, the Folyat rubies, the tiaras, the legendary Ushant diamond, the plate, the great gold service for royal dinners, the priceless porcelain, the gigantic ranges of hot-houses at Longlands; and then the poor, the charities, the immense distribution of coal and blankets, committee-meetings, bazaar-openings, foundation-layings; and last, but not least onerous, the recurring court duties, inevitable as the turn of the seasons. She had been Mistress of the Robes, and would be so again; and her daughter-in-la
w, of course, could be no less. The Duchess smiled suddenly at the thought of what Seadown’s prospects might have been if he had been a future Duke, and obliged to initiate his American wife into the official duties of her station! “It will be bad enough for his poor mother as it is—but fancy having to prepare a Miss St George of New York for her duties as Mistress of the Robes. But no—the Queen would never consent. The Prime Minister would have to be warned… But what nonsense I’m inventing!” thought the Duchess, pushing back her chair, and ringing to tell the butler that she would see the groom-of-the-chambers that morning before the housekeeper.
“No message from the Duke, I suppose?” she asked, as the butler backed toward the threshold.
“Well, your Grace, I was about to mention to your Grace that his Grace’s valet has just received a telegram instructing him to take down a couple of portmanteaux to Tintagel, where his Grace is remaining for the present.”
The door closed, and the Duchess sat looking ahead of her blindly. She had not noticed that her second daughter had also disappeared, but now a sudden sense of being alone—quite alone and unwanted—overwhelmed her, and her little piercing black eyes grew dim.
“I hope,” she murmured to herself, “this marriage will be a warning to Ushant.” But this hope had no power to dispel her sense of having to carry her immense burden alone.
When the Duke finally joined his mother at Longlands he had surprisingly little to say about his long stay at Tintagel. There had been a good many matters to go into with Blair; and he had thought it better to remain till they were settled. So much he said, and no more; but his mere presence gradually gave the Duchess the comfortable feeling of slipping back with him into the old routine.
The shooting-parties had begun, and as usual, in response to long-established lists of invitations, the guns were beginning to assemble. The Duchess always made out these lists; her son had never expressed any personal preference in the matter. Though he was a moderately good shot he took no interest in the sport, and, as often as he could, excused himself on the ground of business. His cousins Seadown and Dick Marable, both ardent sportsmen and excellent shots, used often to be asked to replace him on such occasions; and he always took it for granted that Seadown would be invited, though Dick Marable no longer figured on the list.
After a few days, therefore, he said to his mother: “I’m afraid I shall have to go up to town tomorrow morning for a day or two.”
“To town? Are you never going to allow yourself a proper holiday?” she protested.
“I shan’t be away long. When is Seadown coming? He can replace me.”
The Duchess’s tight lips grew tighter. “I doubt if Seadown comes. In fact, I’ve done nothing to remind him. So soon after his engagement, I could hardly suggest it, could I?”
The Duke’s passive countenance showed a faint surprise. “But surely, if you invite the young lady—”
“And her Mamma? And her sister? I understand there’s a sister—” the Duchess rejoined ironically.
“Yes,” said the Duke, the slow blood rising to his face, “there’s a sister.”
“Well, you know how long in advance our shooting-parties are made up; even if I felt like adding three unknown ladies to my list, I can’t think where I could put them.”
Knowing the vast extent of the house, her son received this in a sceptical silence. At length he said: “Has Seadown brought Miss St George to see you?”
“No. Selina Brightlingsea simply wrote me a line. I fancy she’s not particularly eager to show off the future Marchioness.”
“Miss St George is wonderfully beautiful,” the Duke murmured.
“My dear Ushant, nothing will convince me that our English beauties can be surpassed.—But since you’re here will you glance at the seating of tonight’s dinner-table. The Hopeleighs, you remember, are arriving…”
“I’m afraid I’m no good at dinner-tables. Hadn’t you better consult one of the girls?” replied the Duke, ignoring the mention of the expected guests; and as he turned to leave the room his mother thought, with a sinking heart: “I might better have countermanded the Hopeleighs. He has evidently got wind of their coming, and now he’s running away from them.”
The cottage at Runnymede stood dumb and deserted-looking as the Duke drove up to it. The two mothers, he knew, were in London, with the prospective bride and her friends Lizzy and Mab, who were of course to be among her bridesmaids. In view of the preparations for her daughter’s approaching marriage, Mrs. St George had decided to take a small house in town for the autumn, and, as the Duke also knew, she had chosen Lady Richard Marable’s, chiefly because it was near Miss Jacky March’s modest dwelling, and because poor Conchita was more than ever in need of ready money.
The Duke of Tintagel was perfectly aware that he should find neither Mrs. St George nor her eldest daughter at Runnymede; but he was not in quest of either. If he had not learned, immediately on his return to Longlands, that Jean Hopeleigh and her parents were among the guests expected there, he might never have gone up to London, or taken the afternoon train to Staines. It took the shock of an imminent duty to accelerate his decisions; and to run away from Jean Hopeleigh had become his most urgent duty.
He had not returned to the cottage since the hot summer day when he had avoided playing blindman’s-buff with a bevy of noisy girls only by letting himself be drawn into a tiresome political discussion with a pushing young man whose name had escaped him.
Now the whole aspect of the place was changed. The house seemed empty, the bright awnings were gone, and a cold gray mist hung in the cedar-boughs and hid the river. But the Duke found nothing melancholy in the scene. He had a healthy indifference to the worst vagaries of the British climate, and the mist reminded him of the day when, in the fog-swept ruins of Tintagel, he had come on the young lady whom it had been his exquisite privilege to guide back to Trevennick. He had called at the inn the next day, to re-introduce himself to the young lady’s governess, and to invite them both to the new Tintagel; and for a fortnight his visits to the inn at Trevennick, and theirs to the ducal seat, had been frequent and protracted. But, though he had spent with them long hours which had flown like minutes, he had never got beyond saying to himself: “I shan’t rest till I’ve found an English girl exactly like her.” And to be sure of not mistaking the copy he had continued his study of the original.
Miss Testvalley was alone in the little upstairs sitting-room at Runnymede. For some time past she had craved a brief respite from her arduous responsibilities, but now that it had come she was too agitated to profit by it.
It was startling enough to be met, on returning home with Nan, by the announcement of Virginia’s engagement; and when she had learned of Lady Churt’s dramatic incursion she felt that the news she herself had to impart must be postponed—the more so as, for the moment, it was merely a shadowy affair of hints, apprehensions, divinations.
If Miss Testvalley could have guessed the consequences of her proposal to give the St George girls a season in England, she was not sure she would not have steered Mrs. St George back to Saratoga. Not that she had lost her taste for battle and adventure; but she had developed a tenderness for Nan St George, and an odd desire to shelter her from the worldly glories her governess’s rash advice had thrust upon the family. Nan was different, and Miss Testvalley could have wished a different future for her; she felt that Belgravia and Mayfair, shooting-parties in great country-houses, and the rest of the fashionable routine to which Virginia and the Elmsworth girls had taken so promptly, would leave Nan bewildered and unsatisfied. What kind of life would satisfy her, Miss Testvalley did not profess to know. The girl, for all her flashes of precocity, was in most ways immature, and the governess had a feeling that she must shape her own fate, and that only unhappiness could come of trying to shape it for her. So it was as well that at present there was no time to deal with Nan.
Virginia’s impending marriage had thrown Mrs. St George into a state of chaotic despair. It w
as too much for her to cope with—too complete a revenge on the slights of Mrs. Parmore and the cruel rebuff of the Assembly ladies. “We might better have stayed in New York,” Mrs. St George wailed, aghast at the practical consequences of a granted prayer.
Miss Jacky March and Conchita Marable soon laughed her out of this. The trembling awe with which Miss March spoke of Virginia’s privilege in entering into one of the greatest families in England woke a secret response in Mrs. St George. She, who had suffered because her beautiful daughters could never hope to marry into the proud houses of Eglinton or Parmore, was about to become the mother-in-law of an earl, who would one day (in a manner as unintelligible to Mrs. St George as the development of the embryo) turn into the premier Marquess of England. The fact that it was all so unintelligible made it seem more dazzling. “At last Virginia’s beauty will have a worthy setting,” Miss March exulted; and when Mrs. St George anxiously murmured: “But look at poor Conchita. Her husband drinks, and behaves dreadfully with other women, and she never seems to have enough money—” Miss March calmed her with the remark: “Well, you ask her if she’d rather be living in Fifth Avenue, with more money than she’d know how to spend.”
Conchita herself confirmed this. “Seadown’s always been the good boy of the family. He’ll never give Jinny any trouble. After all, that hateful entanglement with Idina Churt shows how quiet and domestic he really is. That was why she held him so long. He likes to sit before the same fire every evening… Of course with Dick it’s different. The family shipped him off to South America because they couldn’t keep him out of scrapes. And if I took a sentimental view of marriage I’d sit up crying half the night… But I’ll tell you what, Mrs. St George; even that’s worth while in London. In New York, if a girl’s unhappily married there’s nothing to take her mind off it; whereas here there’s never really time to think about it. And of course Jinny won’t have my worries, and she’ll have a position that Dick wouldn’t have given me even if he’d been a model son and husband.”
Edith Wharton - Novel 21 Page 17
