Edith Wharton - Novel 21

by The Buccaneers (v2. 1)

  The “little Duchess’s” note had evoked no very clear memory when he first read it; but as he wandered down the glen through the fading heath and bracken he suddenly recalled their walk along the same path in its summer fragrance, and how they had stayed alone on the terrace when the rest of the party followed Sir Helmsley through the house. They had leaned side by side on the balustrade, he remembered, looking out over that dear scene, and speaking scarcely a word; and yet, when she had gone, he knew how near they had been… He even remembered thinking, as his steamer put out from the docks at Liverpool, that on the way home, after he had done his job in Brazil, he would stop a few days in New York to see her. And then he had heard—with wonder and incredulity—the rumour of her ducal marriage; a rumour speedly confirmed by letters and newspapers from home.

  That girl—and Tintagel! She had given Guy the momentary sense of being the finest instrument he had ever had in his hand; an instrument from which, when the time came, he might draw unearthly music. Not that he had ever seriously considered the possibility of trying his chance with her; but he had wanted to keep her image in his heart, as something once glimpsed, and giving him the measure of his dreams. And now it was poor little Tintagel who was to waken those melodies; if indeed he could! For a few weeks after the news came it had blackened Guy’s horizon; but he was far away, he was engrossed in labours and pleasures so remote from his earlier life that the girl’s pale image had become etherealized, and then had faded out of existence. He sat down on the balustrade of the terrace, in the corner where they had stood together, and pulling out her little note, re-read it.

  “The writing of a school-girl… and the language of dictation,” he thought; and the idea vaguely annoyed him. “How on earth could she have married Tintasiel? That girl!… One would think from the wording of her note that she’d never seen me before… She might at least have reminded me that she’d been here. But perhaps she’d forgotten—as I had!” he ended with a laugh and a shrug. And he turned back slowly to the house, where the estate agent was awaiting him with bills and estimates, and long lists of repairs. Already Sir Helmsley had slipped that burden from his shoulders.

  

  XXII.

  When their Graces were in residence at Longlands the Dowager did not often come up from the dower-house by the gate. But she had the awful gift of omnipresence, of exercising her influence from a distance; so that while the old family friends and visitors at Longlands said: “It’s wonderful, how tactful Blanche is—how she keeps out of the young people’s way,” every member of the household, from its master to the last boots and scullion and gardener’s boy, knew that her Grace’s eye was on them all, and the machinery of the tremendous establishment still moving in obedience to the pace and pattern she had set.

  But at Christmas the Dowager naturally could not remain aloof. If she had not participated in the Christmas festivities the county would have wondered, the servants gossiped, the tradesmen have thought the end of the world had come.

  “I hope you’ll do your best to persuade my mother to come next week. You know she thinks you don’t like her,” Tintagel had said to his wife, a few days before Christmas.

  “Oh, why?” Nan protested, blushing guiltily; and of course she had obediently persuaded, and the Duchess had responded by her usual dry jerk of acquiescence.

  For the same reason, the new Duchess’s family, and her American friends, had also to be invited; or at least so the Duke thought. The Dowager was not of the same mind; but thirty years of dealings with her son (“from his birth the most obstinate baby in the world,”) had taught her when to give way; and she did so now.

  “It does seem odd, though, Ushant’s wanting all those strange people here for Christmas,” she confided to her friend Miss March, who had come up with her from the dower-house, “for I understand the Americans make nothing of any of our religious festivals—do they?”

  Miss March, who could not forget that she was the daughter of a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of America, protested gently, as she so often had before: “Oh, but, Duchess, that depends, you know; in our church the feasts and observances are exactly the same as in yours…” But what, she reflected, have such people as the St Georges to do with the Episcopal Church? They might be Seventh Day Baptists, or even Mormons, for all she knew.

  “Well, it’s very odd,” murmured the Dowager, who was no longer listening to her.

  The two ladies had seated themselves after dinner on a wide Jacobean settee at one end of the “double-cube” saloon, the great room with the Thornhill ceiling and the Mortlake tapestries. The floor had been cleared of rugs and furniture—another shock this to the Dowager, but also accepted with her small stiff smile—and down the middle of the polished parquet spun a long line of young (and some more than middle-aged) dancers, led, of course, by Lady Dick Marable and her odd Brazilian brother, whose name the Dowager could never remember, but who looked so dreadfully like an Italian hairdresser. (A girl who had been a close friend of the Dowager’s youth had rent society asunder by breaking her engagement to a young officer in the Blues, and running away with her Italian hair-dresser; and when the Dowager’s eyes had first rested on Teddy de Santos-Dios she had thought with a shudder: “Poor Florrie’s man must have looked like that.”)

  Close in Lady Dick’s wake (and obviously more interested in her than in his partner) came Miles Dawnly, piloting a bewildered Brightlingsea girl. It was the custom to invite Dawnly wherever Conchita was invited; and even strait-laced hostesses, who had to have Lady Dick because she “amused the men”, were so thankful not to be obliged to invite her husband that they were glad enough to let Dawnly replace him. Every one knew that he was Lady Dick’s chosen attendant, but every one found it convenient to ignore the fact, especially as Dawnly’s own standing, and his fame as a dancer and a shot, had long since made him a welcome guest.

  The Dowager had always thought it a pity that a man with such charming manners, and an assured political future, should seem in no hurry to choose a wife; but when she saw that he had taken for his partner a Marable rather than a Folyat, she observed tartly to Miss March that she did not suppose Mr. Dawnly would ever marry, and hoped Selina Brightlingsea had no illusions on that point.

  At the farther end of the great saloon, the odd little Italian governess who used to be at Longlands with the Duchess’s younger daughters, and was now “finishing” the Glenloe girls, sat at the piano rattling off a noisy reel which she was said to have learnt in the States; and down the floor whirled the dancers, in pursuit of Lady Richard and the Brazilian.

  “Virginia reel, you say they call it? It’s all so unusual,” repeated the Dowager, lifting her long-handled eye-glass to study the gyrations of the troop.

  Yes; it certainly was unusual to see old Lord Brightlingsea pirouetting heavily in the wake of his beautiful daughter-in-law Lady Seadown, and Sir Helmsley Thwarte, incapacitated for pirouetting since his hunting accident, standing near the piano, clapping his hands and stamping his sound foot in time with Lady Dick’s Negro chant—they said it was Negro. All so very unusual, especially when associated with Christmas… Usually that noisy sort of singing was left to the waits, wasn’t it? But under this new rule the Dowager’s enquiring eye-glass was really a window opening into an unknown world—a world in whose reality she could not bring herself to believe. “Ushant might better have left me down at the dower-house,” she murmured with a strained smile to Miss March.

  “Oh, Duchess, don’t say that! See how they’re all enjoying themselves,” replied her friend, wondering, deep down under the old Mechlin which draped her bosom, whether Lord Brightlingsea, when the dance swept him close to her sofa, might not pause before her with his inimitable majesty, lift her to her feet, and carry her off into the reel whose familiar rhythm she felt even now running up from her trim ankles… But Lord Brightlingsea pounded past her unseeingly… Certainly, as men grew older, mere youth seemed to cast a stronger spell over them; the fact had not escaped Miss
March.

  Lady Brightlingsea was approaching the Dowager’s sofa, bearing down on her obliquely and hesitatingly, like a sailing-vessel trying to make a harbour-mouth on a windless day.

  “Do come and sit with us, Selina dear,” the Dowager welcomed her. “No, no, don’t run away, Jacky… Jacky,” she explained, “has been telling me about this odd American dance, which seems to amuse them all so much.”

  “Oh, yes, do tell us,” exclaimed Lady Brightlingsea, coming to anchor between the two. “It’s called the Virginia reel, isn’t it? I thought it was named after my daughter-in-law—Seadown’s wife is called Virginia, you know. But she says no: she used to dance it as a child. It’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”

  The Dowager was always irritated by Lady Brightlingsea’s vagueness. She said, in her precise tone: “Oh, no, it’s a very old dance. The Wild Indians taught it to the Americans, didn’t they, Jacky?”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s wild enough,” Lady Brightlingsea murmured, remembering the scantily clad savages in the great tapestry at Allfriars, and thankful that the dancers had not so completely unclothed themselves—though the décolletage of the young American ladies went some way in that direction.

  Miss March roused herself to reply, with a certain impatience. “But no, Duchess; this dance is not Indian. The early English colonists brought it with them from England to Virginia—Virginia was one of the earliest English colonies (called after the Virgin Queen, you know), and the Virginia reel is just an old English or Scottish dance.”

  The Dowager never greatly cared to have her statements corrected; and she particularly disliked its being done before Selina Brightlingsea, whose perpetual misapprehensions were a standing joke with everybody.

  “I daresay there are two theories. I was certainly told it was a Wild Indian war-dance.”

  “It seems much more likely; such a very odd performance,” Lady Brightlingsea acquiesced; but neither lady cared to hazard herself farther on the unknown ground of American customs.

  “It’s like their valse—that’s very odd too,” the Dowager continued, after a silence during which she had tried in vain to think up a new topic.

  “The valse? Oh, but surely the valse is familiar enough. My girls were all taught it as a matter of course—weren’t yours? I can’t think why it shocked our grandparents, can you?”

  The Dowager narrowed her lips. “Not our version, certainly. But this American valse—’waltz’ I think they call it there—”

  “Oh, is it different? I hadn’t noticed, except that I don’t think the young ladies carry themselves with quite as much dignity as ours.”

  “I should say not! How can they, when every two minutes they have to be prepared to be turned upside down by their partners?”

  “Upside down?” echoed Lady Brightlingsea, in startled italics. “What in the world, Blanche, do you mean by upside down?”

  “Well, I mean—not exactly, of course. But turned round. Surely you must have noticed? Suddenly whizzed around and made to dance backward. Jacky, what is it they call it in the States?”

  “Reversing,” said Miss March, between dry lips. She felt suddenly weary of hearing her compatriots discussed and criticized and having to explain them; perhaps because she had had to do it too often.

  “Ah—’reversing’. Such a strange word too. I don’t think it’s English. But the thing itself is so strange—suddenly pushing your partner backward. I can’t help thinking it’s a little indelicate.”

  The dowager, with reviving interest, rejoined: “Don’t you think these new fashions make all the dances seem—er—rather indelicate? When crinolines were worn the movements were not as—as visible as now. These tight skirts, with the gathers up the middle of the front—of course one can’t contend against the fashion. But one can at least not exaggerate it, as they appear to do in America.”

  “Yes—I’m afraid they exaggerate everything in America… My dear,” Lady Brightlingsea suddenly interrupted herself, “what in the world can they be going to do next?”

  The two long rows facing each other (ladies on one side of the room, gentlemen opposite) had now broken up, and two by two, in dancing pairs, forming a sort of giant caterpillar, were spinning off down the double-cube saloon and all the length of the Waterloo room adjoining it, and the Raphael drawing-room beyond, in the direction of the Classical Sculpture gallery.

  “Oh, my dear, where can they be going?” Lady Brightlingsea cried.

  The three ladies, irresistibly drawn by the unusual sight, rose together and advanced to the middle of the Raphael drawing-room. From there they could see the wild train, headed by Lady Dick’s rhythmic chant, sweeping ahead of them down the length of the Sculpture gallery, back again to the domed marble hall which formed the axis of the house, and up the state staircase to the floor above.

  “My dear—my dear Jacky,” gasped Lady Brightlingsea.

  “They’ll be going into the bedrooms next, I suppose,” said the Dowager with a dry laugh.

  But Miss March was beyond speech. She had remembered that the fear of being late for dinner, and the agitation she always felt on great occasions, had caused her to leave on her dressing-table the duplicate set of fluffy curls which should have been locked up with her modest cosmetics. And in the course of this mad flight Lord Brightlingsea might penetrate to her bedroom, and one of those impious girls might cry out: “Oh, look at Jacky March’s curls on her dressing-table!” She felt too faint to speak…

  Down the upper gallery spun the accelerated reel, song and laughter growing louder to the accompaniment of hurrying feet. Teddy de Santos-Dios had started “John Peel”, and one hunting song followed on another in rollicking chorus. Door after door was flung open, whirled through, and passed out of again, as the train pursued its turbulent way. Now and then a couple fell out, panting and laughing, to rejoin the line again when it coiled back upon itself—but the Duchess and Guy Thwarte did not rejoin it.

  Annabel had sunk down on a bench at the door of the Correggio room. Guy Thwarte stood at her side, leaning against the wall and looking down at her. He thought how becomingly the dance had flushed her cheeks and tossed her hair. “Poor little thing! Fun and laughter are all she needs to make her lovely—but how is she ever to get them, at Longlands and Tintagel?” he thought.

  The door of the Correggio room stood wide as the dance swept on, and he glanced in, and saw the candlelit walls, and the sunset glow of the pictures. “By Jove! There are the Correggios!”

  Annabel stood up. “You know them, I suppose?”

  “Well, rather—but I’d forgotten they were in here.”

  “In my sitting-room. Come and look. They’re so mysterious in this faint light.”

  He followed her, and stood before the pictures, his blood beating high, as it always did at the sight of beauty.

  “It sounds funny,” he murmured, “to call the Earthly Paradise a sitting-room.”

  “I thought so too. But it’s always been the Duchess’s sitting-room.”

  “Ah, yes. And that ‘always been’—.” He smiled and broke off, turning away from her to move slowly about from picture to picture. In the pale amber candle-glow they seemed full of mystery, as though withdrawn into their own native world of sylvan loves and revels; and for a while he too was absorbed into that world, and almost unconscious of his companion’s presence. When at last he turned he saw that her face had lost the glow of the dance, and become small and wistful, as he had seen it on the day of his arrival at Longlands.

  “You’re right. They’re even more magical than by daylight.”

  “Yes. I often come here when it’s getting dark, and sit among them without making a sound. Perhaps some day, if I’m very patient, I’ll tame them, and they’ll come down to me…”

  Guy Thwarte stood looking at her. “Now what on earth,” he thought, “does Tintagel do when she says a thing like that to him?”

  “They must make up to you for a great deal,” he began imprudently, heedless of
what he was saying.

  “For a good deal—yes. But it’s rather lonely sometimes, when the only things that seem real are one’s dreams.”

  The young man flushed up, and made a movement toward her. Then he paused, and looked at the pictures with a vague laugh. She was only a child, he reminded himself—she didn’t measure what she was saying.

  “Oh, well, you’ll go to them, some day, in their Italian palaces.”

  “I don’t think so. Ushant doesn’t care for travelling.”

  “How does he know? He’s never been out of England,” broke from Guy impatiently.

  “That doesn’t matter. He says all the other places are foreign. And he hates anything foreign. There are lots of things he’s never done that he feels quite sure he’d hate.”

  Guy was silent. Again he seemed to himself to be eaves-dropping—unintentionally leading her on to say more than she meant; and the idea troubled him.

  He turned back to his study of the pictures. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he began again after a pause, “that to enjoy them in their real beauty—”

  “I ought to persuade Ushant to send them back where they belong?”

  “I didn’t mean anything so drastic. But did it never occur to you that if you had the courage to sweep away all those… those touching little—er… family mementoes—” His gesture ranged across the closely covered walls, from illuminated views of Vesuvius in action to landscapes by the Dowager Duchess’s great-aunts, funereal monuments worked in hair on faded silk, and photographs in heavy oak frames of ducal relatives, famous race-horses, Bishops in lawn sleeves, and undergraduates grouped about sporting trophies.