The Buccaneers

by Edith Wharton

  “Lord Richard,” continued Miss Testvalley, “always has to have his little joke.” Her tone seemed to dismiss him, and all his titled relations with him. Mrs. St. George was relieved. “But your daughter Annabel—perhaps,” Miss Testvalley continued, “you would like to give me some general idea of the stage she has reached in her different studies?” Her manner was now distinctly professional, and Mrs. St. George’s spirits drooped again. If only the Colonel had been there—as he would have been, but for that woman! Or even Nan herself... Mrs. St. George looked helplessly at the governess. But suddenly an inspiration came to her. “I have always left these things to the girls’ teachers,” she said with majesty.

  “Oh, quite,” Miss Testvalley assented.

  “And their father; their father takes a great interest in their studies—when time permits...” Mrs. St. George continued. “But of course his business interests... which are enormous...”

  “I think I understand,” Miss Testvalley softly agreed.

  Mrs. St. George again sighed her relief. A governess who understood without the need of tiresome explanations—was it not more than she had hoped for? Certainly Miss Testvalley looked insignificant; but the eyes under her expressive eyebrows were splendid, and she had an air of firmness. And the miracle was that Nan should already have taken a fancy to her. If only the other girls didn’t laugh her out of it! “Of course,” Mrs. St. George began again, “what I attach most importance to is that my girls should be taught to—to behave like ladies.”

  Miss Testvalley murmured: “Oh, yes. Drawing-room accomplishments.”

  “I may as well tell you that I don’t care very much for the girls they associate with here. Saratoga is not what it used to be. In New York, of course, it will be different. I hope you can persuade Annabel to study.”

  She could not think of anything else to say, and the governess, who seemed singularly discerning, rose with a slight bow, and murmured: “If you will allow me ...”

  Miss Testvalley’s room was narrow and bare; but she had already discovered that the rooms of summer hotels in the States were all like that; the luxury and gilding were reserved for the public parlours. She did not much mind; she had never been used to comfort, and her Italian nature did not crave it. To her mind the chief difference between the governess’s room at Tintagel, or at Allfriars, the Brightlingsea seat, and those she had occupied since her arrival in America, was that the former were larger (and therefore harder to heat) and were furnished with threadbare relics of former splendour, and carpets in which you caught your heel; whereas at Mrs. Parmore’s, and in this big hotel, though the governess’s quarters were cramped, they were neat and the furniture was in good repair. But this afternoon Miss Testvalley was perhaps tired, or oppressed by the heat, or perhaps only by an unwonted sense of loneliness. Certainly it was odd to find one’s self at the orders of people who wished their daughters to be taught to “behave like ladies.” (The alternative being—what, she wondered? Perhaps a disturbing apparition like Conchita Closson.)

  At any rate, Miss Testvalley was suddenly aware of a sense of far-away-ness, of a quite unreasonable yearning for the dining-room at the back of a certain shabby house at Denmark Hill, where her mother, in a widow’s cap of white crape, sat on one side of the scantily filled grate, turning with rheumatic fingers the pages of the Reverend Frederick Maurice’s sermons, while, facing her across the hearth, old Gennaro Testavaglia, still heavy and powerful in his extreme age, brooded with fixed eyes in a big parchment-coloured face, and repeated over and over some forgotten verse of his own revolutionary poems. In that room, with its chronic smell of cold coffee and smouldering coals, of Elliman’s liniment and human old age, Miss Testvalley had spent some of the most disheartening hours of her life. “La mia prigione,” she had once called it; yet was it not for that detested room that she was homesick!

  Only fifteen minutes in which to prepare for supper! (She had been warned that late dinners were still unknown in American hotels.) Miss Testvalley, setting her teeth against the vision of the Denmark Hill dining-room, went up to the chest of drawers on which she had already laid out her modest toilet appointments; and there she saw, between her yellowish-backed brush and faded pincushion, a bunch of freshly gathered geraniums and mignonette. The flowers had certainly not been there when she had smoothed her hair before waiting on Mrs. St. George; nor had they, she was sure, been sent by that lady. They were not bought flowers, but flowers lovingly gathered; and someone else must have entered in Miss Testvalley’s absence, and hastily deposited the humble posy.

  The governess sat down on the hard chair beside the bed, and her eyes filled with tears. Flowers, she had noticed, did not abound in the States; at least not in summer. In winter, in New York, you could see them banked up in tiers in the damp heat of the florists’ windows: plumy ferns, forced lilac, and those giant roses, red and pink, which rich people offered to each other so lavishly in long white card-board boxes. It was very odd; the same ladies who exchanged these costly tributes in mid-winter lived through the summer without a flower, or with nothing but a stiff bed of dwarf foliage plants before the door, or a tub or two of the inevitable hydrangeas. Yet someone had apparently managed to snatch these flowers from the meagre border before the hotel porch, and had put them there to fill Miss Testvalley’s bedroom with scent and colour. And who could have done it but her new pupil?

  Quarter of an hour later Miss Testvalley, her thick hair re-braided and glossed with brilliantine, her black merino exchanged for a plum-coloured silk with a crochet lace collar, and lace mittens on her small worn hands, knocked at the door of the Misses St. George. It opened, and the governess gave a little “Oh!” of surprise. Virginia stood there, a shimmer of ruffled white drooping away from her young throat and shoulders. On her heaped-up wheat-coloured hair lay a wreath of corn-flowers; and a black velvet ribbon with a locket hanging from it intensified her fairness like the black stripe on a ring-dove’s throat.

  “What elegance for a public dining-room!” thought Miss Testvalley; and then reflected: “But no doubt it’s her only chance of showing it.”

  Virginia opened wondering blue eyes, and the governess explained: “The supper-bell has rung, and I thought you and your sister might like me to go down with you.”

  “Oh—” Virginia murmured; and added: “Nan’s lost her slipper. She’s hunting for it.”

  “Very well; shall I help her? And you’ll go down and excuse us to your mamma?”

  Virginia’s eyes grew wider. “Well, I guess Mother’s used to waiting,” she said, as she sauntered along the corridor to the staircase.

  Nan St. George lay face downward on the floor, poking with a silk parasol under the wardrobe. At the sound of Miss Testvalley’s voice she raised herself sulkily. Her small face was flushed and frowning. (“None of her sister’s beauty,” Miss Testvalley thought.) “It’s there, but I can’t get at it,” Nan proclaimed.

  “My dear, you’ll tumble your lovely frock—”

  “Oh, it’s not lovely. It’s one of Jinny’s last-year’s organdies.”

  “Well, it won’t improve it to crawl about on the floor. Is your shoe under the wardrobe? Let me try to get it. My silk won’t be damaged.”

  Miss Testvalley put out her hand for the sunshade, and Nan scrambled to her feet. “You can’t reach it,” she said, still sulkily. But Miss Testvalley, prostrate on the floor, had managed to push a thin arm under the wardrobe, and the parasol presently reappeared with a little bronze slipper on its tip. Nan gave a laugh.

  “Well, you are handy!” she said.

  Miss Testvalley echoed the laugh. “Put it on quickly, and let me help you to tidy your dress. And, oh dear, your sash is untied—” She spun the girl about, re-tied the sash, and smoothed the skirt with airy touches; for all of which, she noticed, Nan uttered no word of thanks.

  “And your handkerchief, Annabel?” In Miss Testvalley’s opinion no lady should appear in the evening without a scrap of lace-edged cambric, folded into a
triangle and held between gloved or mittened finger-tips. Nan shrugged. “I never know where my handkerchiefs are—I guess they get lost in the wash, wandering round in hotels the way we do.”

  Miss Testvalley sighed at this nomadic wastefulness. Perhaps because she had always been a wanderer herself, she loved orderly drawers and shelves, and bunches of lavender between delicately fluted under-garments.

  “Do you always live in hotels, my dear?”

  “We did when I was little. But Father’s bought a house in New York now. Mother made him do it, because the Elmsworths did. She thought maybe, if we had one, Jinny’d be invited out more; but I don’t see much difference.”

  “Well, I shall have to help you to go over your linen,” the governess continued; but Nan showed no interest in the offer. Miss Testvalley saw before her a cold impatient little face—and yet...

  “Annabel,” she said, slipping her hand through the girl’s thin arm, “how did you guess I was fond of flowers?”

  The blood rose from Nan’s shoulders to her cheeks, and a half-guilty smile set the dimples racing across her face. “Mother said we’d acted like a lot of savages, getting up that circus at the station—and what on earth would you think of us?”

  “I think that I shall like you all very much; and you especially, because of those flowers.”

  Nan gave a shy laugh. “Lord Richard said you’d like them.”

  “Lord Richard?”

  “Yes. He says in England everybody has a garden, with lots of flowers that smell sweet. And so I stole them from the hotel border.... He’s crazy about Conchita, you know. Do you think she’ll catch him?”

  Miss Testvalley stiffened. She felt her upper lip lengthen, though she tried to smile. “I don’t think it’s a question that need concern us, do you?”

  Nan stared. “Well, she’s my greatest friend—after Jinny, I mean.”

  “Then we must wish her something better than Lord Richard. Come, my dear, or those wonderful American griddle-cakes will all be gone.”

  Early in her career Miss Testvalley had had to learn the difficult art of finding her way about—not only as concerned the tastes and temper of the people she lived with, but the topography of their houses. In those old winding English dwellings, half fortress, half palace, where suites and galleries of stately proportions abruptly tapered off into narrow twists and turns, leading to unexpected rooms tucked away in unaccountable corners, and where school-room and nurseries were usually at the far end of the labyrinth, it behoved the governess to blaze her trail by a series of private aids to memory. It was important, in such houses, not only to know the way you were meant to take, but the many you were expected to avoid, and a young governess turning too often down the passage leading to the young gentlemen’s wing, or getting into the way of the master of the house in his dignified descent to the breakfast-room, might suddenly have her services dispensed with. To anyone thus trained, the simple plan of an American summer hotel offered no mysteries; and when supper was over and after a sultry hour or two in the red-and-gold ball-room the St. George ladies ascended to their apartments, Miss Testvalley had no difficulty in finding her way up another flight to her own room. She was already aware that it was in the wing of the hotel, and had noted that from its window she could look across into that from which, before supper, she had seen Miss Closson signal to her brother and Lord Richard, who were smoking on the gravel below.

  It was no business of Miss Testvalley’s to keep watch on what went on in the Closson rooms—or would not have been, she corrected herself, had Nan St. George not spoken of Conchita as her dearest friend. Such a tie did seem to the governess to require vigilance. Miss Closson was herself an unknown quantity, and Lord Richard was only too well known to Miss Testvalley. It was therefore not unnatural that, after silence had fallen on the long corridors of the hotel, the governess, finding sleep impossible in her small suffocating room, should put out her candle and gaze across from her window at that from which she had seen Conchita lean.

  Light still streamed from it, though midnight was past, and presently came laughter, and the twang of Santos-Dios’s guitar, and a burst of youthful voices joining in song. Was her pupil’s among them? Miss Testvalley could not be sure; but soon, detaching itself from Teddy de Santos-Dios’s reedy tenor, she caught the hoarse barytone of another voice.

  Imprudent children! It was bad enough to be gathered at that hour in a room with a young man and a guitar; but at least the young man was Miss Closson’s brother, and Miss Testvalley had noticed, at the supper-table, much exchange of civilities between the St. Georges and the Clossons. But Richard Marable—that was inexcusable, that was scandalous! The hotel would be ringing with it tomorrow....

  Ought not Miss Testvalley to find some pretext for knocking at Conchita’s door, gathering her charges back to safety, and putting it in their power to say that their governess had assisted at the little party? Her first impulse was to go; but governesses who act on first impulses seldom keep their places. “As long as there’s so much noise,” she thought, “there can’t be any mischief...” and at that moment, in a pause of the singing, she caught Nan’s trill of little-girl laughter. Miss Testvalley started up and went to her door; but once more she drew back. Better wait and see—interfering might do more harm than good. If only some exasperated neighbour did not ring to have the rejoicings stopped!

  At length music and laughter subsided. Silence followed. Miss Testvalley, drawing an austere purple flannel garment over her night-dress, unbolted her door and stole out into the passage. Where it joined the main corridor she paused and waited. A door had opened half way down the corridor—Conchita’s door—and the governess saw a flutter of light dresses, and heard subdued laughter and good nights. Both the St. George and Elmsworth families were lodged below, and in the weak glimmer of gas she made sure of four girls hurrying toward her wing. She drew back hastily. Glued to her door, she listened, and heard a heavy but cautious step passing by, and a throaty voice humming “Champagne Charlie.” She drew a breath of relief, relit her candle, and sat down before her glass to finish her toilet for the night.

  Her hair carefully waved on its pins, her evening prayer recited, she slipped into bed and blew out the light. But sleep did not come, and she lay in the sultry darkness and listened, she hardly knew for what. At last she heard the same heavy step returning cautiously, passing her door, gaining once more the main corridor—the step she would have known in a thousand, the way she used to listen for at Allfriars after midnight, groping down the long passage to the governess’s room.

  She started up. Forgetful of crimping-pins and bare feet, she opened her door again. The last flicker of gas had gone out, and, secure in the blackness, she crept after the heavy step to the corner. It sounded ahead of her half way down the long row of doors; then it stopped, a door opened... and Miss Testvalley turned back on leaden feet....

  Nothing of that fugitive adventure at Allfriars had ever been known. Of that she was certain. An ill-conditioned youth, the boon companion of his father’s grooms, and a small brown governess, ten years his elder, and known to be somewhat curt and distant with everyone except her pupils and their parents—who would ever have thought of associating the one with the other? The episode had been brief; the peril was soon over; and when, the very same year, Lord Richard was solemnly banished from his father’s house, it was not because of his having once or twice stolen down the school-room passage at undue hours, but for reasons so far more deplorable that poor Lady Brightlingsea, her reserve utterly broken down, had sobbed out on Miss Testvalley’s breast: “Anything, anything else I know his father would have forgiven.” (Miss Testvalley wondered....)

  VI.

  When Colonel St. George bought his house in Madison Avenue it seemed to him fit to satisfy the ambitions of any budding millionaire. That it had been built and decorated by one of the Tweed ring who had come to grief earlier than his more famous fellow-criminals, was to Colonel St. George convincing proof that it
was a suitable setting for wealth and elegance. But social education is acquired rapidly in New York, even by those who have to absorb it through the cracks of the sacred edifice; and Mrs. St. George had already found out that no one lived in Madison Avenue, that the front hall should have been painted Pompeian red with a stencilled frieze, and not with naked Cupids and humming-birds on a sky-blue ground, and that basement dining-rooms were unknown to the fashionable. So much she had picked up almost at once from Jinny and Jinny’s school-friends; and when she called on Mrs. Parmore to enquire about the English governess, the sight of the Parmore house, small and simple as it was, completed her disillusionment.

  But it was too late to change. The Colonel, who was insensitive to details, continued to be proud of his house; even when the Elmsworths, suddenly migrating from Brooklyn, had settled themselves in Fifth Avenue, he would not admit his mistake, or feel the humiliation of the contrast. And yet what a difference it made to a lady to be able to say “Fifth Avenue” in giving her address to Black, Starr and Frost, or to Mrs. Connelly, the fashionable dress-maker! In establishments like that they classed their customers at once, and “Madison Avenue” stood at best for a decent mediocrity.

  Mrs. St. George at first ascribed to this unfortunate locality her failure to make a social situation for her girls; yet after the Elmsworths had come to Fifth Avenue she noted with satisfaction that Lizzy and Mabel were not asked out much more than Virginia. Of course, Mr. Elmsworth was an obstacle; and so was Mrs. Elmsworth’s laugh. It was difficult—it was even painful—to picture the Elmsworths dining at the Parmores’ or the Eglintons’. But the St. Georges did not dine there either. And the question of ball-going was almost as discouraging. One of the young men whom the girls had met at Saratoga had suggested to Virginia that he might get her a card for the first Assembly; but Mrs. St. George, when sounded, declined indignantly, for she knew that in the best society girls did not go to balls without their parents.