Edith Wharton - Novel 21

by The Buccaneers (v2. 1)

  Annabel coloured, but with amusement, not annoyance. “Yes; it did occur to me; and one day I smuggled in a ladder and took them all down—every one.”

  “By jove, you did? It must have been glorious.”

  “Yes; that was the trouble. The Duchess—”

  She broke off, and he interposed, with an ironic lift to the brows: “But you’re the Duchess.”

  “Not the real one. You must have seen that already. I don’t know my part yet, and I don’t believe I ever shall. And my mother-in-law was so shocked that every single picture I’d taken down had to be put back the same day.”

  “Ah. that’s natural too. We’re built like that in this tight little island. We fight like tigers against change, and then one fine day accept it without arguing. You’ll see: Ushant will come round, and then his mother will, because he has. It’s only a question of time—and luckily you’ve plenty of that ahead of you.” He looked at her as he spoke, conscious that he was not keeping the admiration out of his eyes, or the pity either, as he had meant to.

  Her own eyes darkened, and she glanced away. “Yes; there’s plenty of time. Years and years of it.” Her voice dragged on the word, as if in imagination she were struggling through the long desert reaches of her own future.

  “You don’t complain of that, do you?”

  “I don’t know; I can’t tell. I’m not as sure as Ushant how I shall feel about things I’ve never tried. But I’ve tried this—and I sometimes think I wasn’t meant for it…” She broke off, and he saw the tears in her eyes.

  “My dear child—” he began; and then, half-embarrassed: “For you are a child still, you know. Have you any idea how awfully young you are?”

  As soon as he had spoken he reflected that she was too young not to resent any allusion to her inexperience. She laughed. “Please don’t send me back to the nursery! ‘Little girls shouldn’t ask questions. You’ll understand better when you’re grown up’… How much longer am I to be talked to like that?”

  “I’m afraid that’s the most troublesome question of all. The truth is—” He hesitated. “I rather think growing up’s largely a question of climate—of sunshine… Perhaps our moral climate’s too chilly for you young creatures from across the globe. After all, New York’s in the latitude of Naples.”

  She gave him a perplexed look, and then smiled. “Oh, I know—those burning hot summers…”

  “You want so much to go back to them?”

  “Do I? I can’t tell… I don’t believe so… But somehow it seems as if this were wrong—my being here… If you knew what I’d give to be able to try again… somewhere where I could be myself, you understand, not just an unsuccessful Duchess…”

  “Yes; I do understand—”

  “Annabel!” a voice called from the threshold, and Miss Testvalley stood before them, her small brown face full of discernment and resolution.

  “My dear, the Duke’s asking for you. Your guests are beginning to leave, and I must be off with Lady Glenloe and my girls.” Miss Testvalley, with a nod and a smile at young Thwarte, had linked her arm through Annabel’s. She paused a moment on the threshold. “Wasn’t I right, Mr. Thwarte, to insist on your coming up with us to see the Correggios? I told the Duke it was my doing. They’re wonderful by candle-light. But I’m afraid we ought not to have carried off our hostess from her duties.”

  Laughing and talking, the three descended together to the great hall, where the departing guests were assembled.

  

  XXIII.

  The house-party at Longlands was not to break up for another week; but the morning after the Christmas festivities such general lassitude prevailed that the long galleries and great drawing-rooms remained deserted till luncheon.

  The Dowager Duchess had promised her son not to return to the dower-house until the day after Boxing Day. By that time, it was presumed, the new Duchess would be sufficiently familiar with the part she had to play; but meanwhile a vigilant eye was certainly needed, if only to regulate the disorganized household service.

  “These Americans appear to keep such strange hours; and they ask for such odd things to be sent to their rooms—such odd things to eat and drink. Things that Boulamine has never even heard of. It’s just as well, I suppose, that I should be here to keep him and Mrs. Gillings and Manning from losing their heads,” said the Dowager to her son, who had come to her sitting-room before joining the guns, who were setting out late on the morning after the dance (thereby again painfully dislocating the domestic routine).

  The Duke made no direct answer to his mother’s comment. “Of course you must stay,” he said, in a sullen tone, and without looking at her.

  The Duchess pursed up her lips. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to oblige you, Ushant; but last night I really felt for a moment—well, rather out of place; and so, I think, did Selina Brightlingsea.”

  The Duke was gazing steadily at a spot on the wall above his mother’s head. “We must move with the times,” he remarked sententiously.

  “Well—we were certainly doing that last night. Moving faster than the times, I should have thought. At least almost all of us. I believe you didn’t participate. But Annabel—”

  “Annabel is very young,” her son interrupted.

  “Don’t think that I forget that. It’s quite natural that she should join in one of her native dances… I understand they’re very much given to these peculiar dances in the States.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Duke coldly.

  “Only I should have preferred that, having once joined the dancers, she should have remained with them, instead of obliging people to go hunting all over the house for her and her partner—Guy Thwarte, wasn’t it? I admit that hearing her name screamed up and down the passages, and in and out of the bedrooms… when she ought naturally to have been at her post in the Raphael room… where I have always stood when a party was breaking up…”

  The Duke twisted his fingers nervously about his watch-chain. “Perhaps you could tell her,” he suggested.

  The Dowager’s little eyes narrowed doubtfully. “Don’t you think, Ushant, a word from you—?”

  He glanced at his watch. “I must be off to join the guns… No, decidedly—I’d rather you explained… make her understand…”

  His hand on the door, he turned back. “I want, just at present, to say nothing that could… could in any way put her off…” The door closed, and his mother stood staring blankly after him. That chit—and he was afraid of—what did he call it? “Putting her off”? Was it possible that he did not know his rights? In the Dowager’s day, the obligations of a wife—more especially the wife of a Duke—had been as clear as the Ten Commandments. She must give her husband at least two sons, and if in fulfillment of this duty a dozen daughters came uninvited, must receive them with suitably maternal sentiments, and see that they were properly clothed and educated. The Duchess of Tintagel had considered herself lucky in having only eight daughters, but had grieved over Nature’s inexorable resolve to grant her no second son.

  “Ushant must have two sons—three, if possible. But his wife doesn’t seem to understand her duties. Yet she has only to look into the prayer-book… but I’ve never been able to find out to what denomination her family belong. Not Church people, evidently, or these tiresome explanations would be unnecessary…”

  After an interval of uneasy cogitation the Dowager rang, and sent to enquire if her daughter-in-law could receive her. The reply was that the Duchess was still asleep (at midday—the Dowager, all her life, had been called at a quarter to seven!), but that as soon as she rang she should be given her Grace’s message.

  The Dowager, with a sigh, turned back to her desk, which was piled, as usual, with a heavy correspondence. If only Ushant had listened to her, had chosen an English wife in his own class, there would probably have been two babies in the nursery by this time, and a third on the way. And none of the rowdy galloping in and out of people’s bedrooms at two in the morning. Ah, if
sons ever listened to their mothers…

  The luncheon hour was approaching when there was a knock on the Dowager’s door and Annabel entered. The older woman scrutinized her attentively. No—it was past understanding! If the girl had been a beauty one could, with a great effort of the imagination, have pictured Ushant’s infatuation, his subjection; but this pale creature with brown hair and insignificant features, without height, or carriage, or that look of authority given by inherited dignities even to the squat and the round—what right had she to such consideration? Yet it was clear that she was already getting the upper hand of her husband.

  “My dear—do come in. Sit here; you’ll be more comfortable. I hope,” continued the Dowager with a significant smile, as she pushed forward a deep easy-chair, “that we shall soon have to be asking you to take care of yourself… not to commit any fresh imprudence—”

  Annabel, ignoring the suggestion, pulled up a straight-backed chair, and seated herself opposite her mother-in-law. “I’m not at all tired,” she declared.

  “Not consciously, perhaps… But all that wild dancing last night—and in fact into the small hours… must have been very exhausting…”

  “Oh, I’ve had a good sleep since. It’s nearly luncheon-time, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite. And I so seldom have a chance of saying a word to you alone that I… I want to tell you how much I hope, and Ushant hopes, that you won’t run any more risks. I know it’s not always easy to remember; but last night, for instance, from every point of view, it might have been better if you had remained at your post.” The Dowager forced a stiff smile. “Duchesses, you know, are like soldiers; they must often be under arms while others are amusing themselves. And when your guests were leaving, Ushant was naturally—er—surprised at having to hunt over the house for you…”

  Annabel looked at her thoughtfully. “Did he ask you to tell me so?”

  “No; but he thinks you don’t realize how odd it must have seemed to your guests that, in a middle of a party, you should have taken Mr. Thwarte upstairs to your sitting-room—”

  “But we didn’t go on purpose. We were following the reel, and I dropped out because I was tired; and as Mr. Thwarte wanted to see the Correggios I took him in.”

  “That’s the point, my dear. Guy Thwarte ought to have known better than to take you away from your guests and go up to your sitting-room with you after midnight. His doing so was—er—tactless, to say the least. I don’t know what your customs are in the States, but in England—” the Dowager broke off, as if waiting for an interruption which did not come.

  Annabel remained silent, and her mother-in-law continued with gathering firmness: “In England such behaviour might be rather severely judged.”

  Annabel’s eyes widened, and she stood up with a slight smile. “I think I’m tired of trying to be English,” she pronounced.

  The Dowager rose also, drawing herself up to her full height. “Trying to be? But you are English. When you became my son’s wife you acquired his nationality. Nothing can change that now.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. Remember what you promised in the marriage service. ‘To love and to obey—till death us do part.’ Those are words not to be lightly spoken.”

  “No; but I think I did speak them lightly. I made a mistake.”

  “A mistake, my dear? What mistake?”

  Annabel drew a quick breath. “Marrying Ushant,” she said.

  The Dowager received this with a gasp. “My dear Annabel—”

  “I think it might be better if I left him; then he could marry somebody else, and have a lot of children. Wouldn’t that be best?” Annabel continued hurriedly.

  The Dowager, rigid with dismay, stood erect, her strong plump hands grasping the rim of her writing-table. Words of wrath and indignation, scornful annihilating phrases, rushed to her lips, but were checked by her son’s warning. “I want to do nothing to put her off.” If Ushant said that, he meant it; meant, poor misguided fellow, that he was still in love with this thankless girl, this chit, this barren upstart, and that his mother, though authorized to coax her back into the right path, was on no account to drive her there by threats or reproaches.

  But the mother’s heart spoke louder than she meant it to. “If you can talk of your own feelings in that way, even in jest, do you take no account of Ushant’s?”

  Annabel looked at her musingly. “I don’t think Ushant has very strong feelings—about me, I mean.”

  The Dowager rejoined with some bitterness: “You have hardly encouraged him to, have you?”

  “I don’t know—I can’t explain… I’ve told Ushant that I don’t think I want to be a mother of Dukes.”

  “You should have thought of that before becoming the wife of one. According to English law you are bound to obey your husband implicitly in… er… all such matters… But, Annabel, we mustn’t let our talk end in a dispute. My son would be very grieved if he thought I’d said anything to offend you—and I’ve not meant to. All I want is your happiness and his. In the first years of marriage things don’t always go as smoothly as they might, and the advice of an older woman may be helpful. Marriage may not be all roses—especially at first; but I know Ushant’s great wish is to see you happy and contented in the lot he has offered you—a lot, my dear, that most young women would envy,” the Dowager concluded, lifting her head with an air of wounded majesty.

  “Oh, I know; that’s why I’m so sorry for my mistake.”

  “Your mistake? But there’s been no mistake. Your taking Guy Thwarte up to your sitting-room was quite as much his fault as yours; and you need only show him, by a slightly more distant manner, that he is not to misinterpret it. I daresay less importance is attached to such things in your country—where there are no Dukes, of course…”

  “No! That’s why I’d better go back there,” burst from Annabel.

  The Dowager stared at her in incredulous wrath. Really, it was beyond her powers of self-control to listen smilingly to such impertinence—such blasphemy, she had almost called it. Ushant himself must stamp out this senseless rebellion…

  At that moment the luncheon-gong sent its pompous call down the corridors, and at the sound the Dowager, hurriedly composing her countenance, passed a shaking hand over her neatly waved bandeaux. “The gong, my dear! You must not keep your guests waiting… I’ll follow you at once…”

  Annabel turned obediently to the door, and went down to join the assembled ladies, and the few men who were not out with the guns.

  Her heart was beating high after the agitation of her talk with her mother-in-law, but as she descended the wide shallow steps of the great staircase (up and down which it would have been a profanation to gallop, as one used to up and down the steep narrow stairs at home) she reflected that the Dowager, though extremely angry, and even scandalized, had instantly put an end to their discussion when she heard the summons to luncheon. Annabel remembered the endless wordy wrangles between her mother, her sister and herself, and thought how little heed they would have paid to a luncheon-gong in the thick of one of their daily disputes. Here it was different: everything was done by rule, and according to tradition, and for the Duchess of Tintagel to keep her guests waiting for luncheon would have been an offence against the conventions almost as great as that of not being at her post when the company were leaving the night before. A year ago Annabel would have laughed at these rules and observances: now, though they chafed her no less, she was beginning to see the use of having one’s whims and one’s rages submitted to some kind of control. “It did no good to anybody to have us come down with red noses to a stone-cold lunch, and go upstairs afterward to sulk in our bedrooms,” she thought, and she recalled how her father, when regaled with the history of these domestic disagreements, used to say with a laugh: “What a lot of nonsense it would knock out of you women to have to hoe a potato-field, or spend a week in Wall Street.”

  Yes; in spite of her anger, in spite of her desperate sense of being trappe
d, Annabel felt in a confused way that the business of living was perhaps conducted more wisely at Longlands—even though Longlands was the potato-field she was destined to hoe for life.

  

  XXIV.

  That evening before dinner, as Annabel sat over her dressing-room fire, she heard a low knock. She had half expected to see her husband appear, after a talk with his mother, and had steeled herself to a repetition of the morning’s scene. But she had an idea that the Dowager might have taken her to task only because the Duke was reluctant to do so; she had already discovered that one of her mother-in-law’s duties was the shouldering of any job her son wished to be rid of.

  The knock, moreover, was too light to be a man’s, and Annabel was not surprised to have it followed by a soft hesitating turn of the door-handle.

  “Nan dear—not dressing yet, I hope?” It was Conchita Marable, her tawny hair loosely tossed back, her plump shoulders draped in a rosy dressing-gown festooned with swansdown. It was a long way from Conchita’s quarters to the Duchess’s, and Annabel was amused at the thought of the Dowager’s dismay had she encountered, in the stately corridors of Longlands, a lady with tumbled auburn curls, red-heeled slippers, and a pink deshabille with a marked tendency to drop off the shoulders. A headless ghost would have been much less out of keeping with the traditions of the place.

  Annabel greeted her visitor with a smile. Ever since Conchita’s first appearance on the verandah of the Grand Union, Annabel’s admiration for her had been based on a secret sympathy. Even then the dreamy indolent girl had been enveloped in a sort of warm haze unlike the cool dry light in which Nan’s sister and the Elmsworths moved. And Lady Dick, if she had lost something of that early magic, and no longer seemed to Nan to be made of rarer stuff, had yet ripened into something more richly human than the others. A warm fruity fragrance, as of peaches in golden sawdust, breathed from her soft plumpness, the tawny spirals of her hair, the smile which had a way of flickering between her lashes without descending to her lips.