The Buccaneers

by Edith Wharton

  “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.

  XV.

  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 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 although 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 continued 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 estate 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 water-colours 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 sack-cloth; 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 someone 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 anyone 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—!”

  “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 is!”

  “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. When he was 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 those clocks myself, every Sunday morning, before breakfast.”

  Later he felt that he would have been perfectly happy as a country squire, arbitrating in village disputes, adjusting differences between vicar and school-master, sorting fishing-tackle, mending broken furniture, doctoring the dogs, re-arranging his collection of stamps; instead of which, fate had cast him for the centre front of the world’s most brilliant social stage.

  Undoubtedly his mother had been a great help. She enjoyed equally the hard work and the pompous ceremonial incumbent on conscientious dukes; and the poor young Duke was incorrigibly conscientious. But his conscience could not compel him to accept a marriage arranged by his mother. That part of his life he intended to arrange for himself. His departure for Tintagel was an oblique reply to the Duchess’s challenge. She had told him to go to Scotland, and he was going to Cornwall instead. The mere fact of being seated in a train which was hurrying westward was a declaration of independence. The Duke longed above all to be free, to decide for himself; and though he was ostensibly going to Tintagel on estate business, his real purpose was to think over his future in solitude.

  If only he might have remained unmarried! Not that he was without the feelings natural to young men; but the kind of marriage he was expected to make took no account of such feelings. “I won’t be hunted—I won’t!” the Duke muttered as the train rushed westward, seeing himself as a panting quarry pursued by an implacable pack of would-be Duchesses. Was there no escape? Yes. He would dedicate his public life entirely to his country, but in private he would do as he chose. Valiant words, and easy to speak when no one was listening; but with his mother’s small hard eyes on him, his resolves had a way of melting. Was it true that if he did not offer himself to Jean Hopeleigh the world might accuse him of trifling with her? If so, the sooner he married someone else the better. The chief difficulty was that he had not yet met anyone whom he really wanted to marry.

  Well, he would give himself at least three days in which to think it all over, out of reach of the Duchess’s eyes....

  A salt mist was drifting to and fro down the coast as the Duke, the next afternoon, walked along the cliffs toward the ruins of the old Tintagel. Since early morning he had been at work with Mr. Blair, the agent, going into the laborious question of reducing the bills for the roof of the new castle, and examining the other problems presented by the administration of his great domain. After that, with agent and housekeeper, he had inspected every room in the castle, carefully examining floors and ceilings, and seeing to it that Mr. Blair recorded the repairs to be made, but firmly hurrying past the innumerable clocks, large and small, loud and soft, which from writing-table and mantel-shelf and cabinet-top cried out to him for attention. “Have you a good man for the clocks?” he had merely asked, with an affectation of indifference, and when the housekeeper replied, “Oh, yes, Your Grace, Mr. Trelly from Wadebridge comes once a week, the same that His Late Grace always employed,” he had passed on with a distinct feeling of disappointment; for probably a man of that sort would resent anyone else’s winding the clocks—a sentiment which the Duke could perfectly appreciate.

  Finally, wearied by these labours, which were as much out of scale with his real tastes as the immense building itself, he had lunched late and hastily on bread and cheese, to the despair of the housekeeper, who had despatched a groom before daylight to scour Wadebridge for delicacies.

  The Duke’s afternoon was his own, and, his meagre repast over, he set out for a tramp. The troublesome question of his marriage was still foremost in his mind; for, after inspecting the castle, he felt more than ever the impossibility of escaping from his ducal burdens. Yet how could the simple-hearted girl of whom he was in search be induced to share the weight of these great establishments? It was unlikely that a young woman too ignorant of worldly advantages to covet his title would be attracted by his responsibilities. Why not remain unmarried, as he had threatened, and let the title and the splendours go to the elderly clergyman who was his heir presumptive? But no—that would be a still worse failure in duty. He must marry, have children, play the great part assigned to him.

  As he walked along the coast toward the ruined Tintagel, he shook off his momentary cowardice. The westerly wind blew great trails of fog in from the sea, and now and then, between them, showed a mass of molten silver, swaying heavily, as though exhausted by a distant gale. The Duke thought of the stuffy heat of London, and the currents of his blood ran less sedately. He would marry, yes; but he would choose his own wife, and choose her away from the world, in some still backwater of rural England. But here another difficulty lurked. He had once, before his father’s death, lit on a girl who fitted ideally into his plan: the daughter of a naval officer’s widow, brought up in a remote Norfolk village. The Duke had found a friend to introduce him, had called, had talked happily with the widow of parochial matters, had shown her what was wrong with her clock, and had even contrived to be left alone with the young lady. But the young lady could say no more than “Yes” and “No,” and she placed even these monosyllables with so little relevance that, face to face with her, he was struck dumb also. He did not return, and the young lady married a curate.

  The memory tormented him now. Perhaps, if he had been patient, had given her time—but no, he recalled her blank bewildered face, and thought what a depressing sight it would be every morning behind the tea-urn. Though he sought simplicity, he dreaded dulness. Dimly conscious that he was dull himself, he craved the stimulus of a quicker mind; yet he feared a dull wife less than a brilliant one, for with the latter how could he maintain his superiority? He remembered his discomfort among those loud rattling young women whom his cousin Seadown had taken him to see at Runnymede. Very handsome they were, each in her own way; nor was the Duke insensible to beauty. One especially, the fair one, had attracted him. She was less noisy than the others, and would have been an agreeable sight at the breakfast-table; and she carried her head in a way to show off the Tintagel jewels. But marry an American—? The thought was inconceivable. Besides, supposing she should want to surround herself with all those screaming people, and supposing he had to invite the mother—he wasn’t sure which of the two elderly ladies with dyed fringes was the mother—to Longlands or Tintagel whenever a child was born? From this glimpse into an alien world the Duke’s orderly imagination recoiled. What he wanted was an English bride of ancient lineage and Arcadian innocence; and somewhere in the British Isles there must be one awaiting him....

  XVI.

  After their early swim the morning had turned so damp and foggy that Miss Testvalley said to Nan: “I believe this would be a good day for me to drive over to Polwhelly and call at the vicarage. You can sit in the garden a little while if the sun comes out.”

  The vicarage at Polwhelly had been Miss Testvalley’s chief refuge during her long lonely months at Tintagel with her Folyat pupils, and Nan knew that she wished to visit her old friends. As for Nan herself, after the swim and the morning walk
, she preferred to sit in the inn garden, sheltered by a tall fuchsia hedge, and gaze out over the headlands and the sea. She had not even expressed the wish to take the short walk along the cliffs to the ruins of Tintagel; and she had apparently forgotten Miss Testvalley’s offer to show her the modern castle of the same name. She seemed neither listless nor unwell, the governess thought, but lulled by the strong air, and steeped in a lazy beatitude; and this was the very mood Miss Testvalley had sought to create in her.

  But an hour or two after Trevennick’s only fly had carried off Miss Testvalley, the corner where Nan sat became a balcony above a great sea-drama. A twist of the wind had whirled away the fog, and there of a sudden lay the sea in a metallic glitter, with white clouds storming over it, hiding and then revealing the fiery blue sky between. Sit in the shelter of the fuchsia hedge on such a day? Not Nan! Her feet were already dancing on the sun-beams, and in another minute the gate had swung behind her, and she was away to meet the gale on the downs above the village.

  When the Duke of Tintagel reached the famous ruin from which he took his name, another freak of the wind had swept the fog in again. The sea was no more than a hoarse sound on an invisible shore, and he climbed the slopes through a cloud filled with the stormy clash of sea-birds. To some minds the change might have seemed to befit the desolate place; but the Duke, being a good landlord, thought only: “More rain, I suppose; and that is certain to mean a loss on the crops.”

  But the walk had been exhilarating, and when he reached the upper platform of the castle, and looked down through a break in the fog at the savage coast-line, a feeling of pride and satisfaction crept through him. He liked the idea that a place so ancient and renowned belonged to him, was a mere milestone in his race’s long descent; and he said to himself: “I owe everything to England. Perhaps after all I ought to marry as my mother wishes....”