Meanwhile, since the present grandeur of Mrs. Elmsworth, Mrs. St. George, and Mrs. Closson savoured sweetest when set against the past they had shared in Saratoga and New York City, and against deeper, murkier pasts known only partially to each other, the three matrons often met on slight or no pretext. The theme of today’s convocation, though, was not trivial. They were talking about the recently widowed Mabel Whittaker, née Elmsworth.
Caleb Whittaker, the Steel King, a man so inordinately rich as to be invulnerable to the “market” that affected Elmsworths, Clossons, and St. Georges, had been a hero of industry and a celebrated patron of the arts for many years. But his apotheosis had come with his marriage late in life to the young and beautiful Miss Mabel Elmsworth, after which funds that had nourished the cultural life of Magnesia, Illinois, were extended to support the art and music of New York, New York. It was known that Mr. Whittaker’s wife had guided the extension of his beneficence to New York, and in particular that she had inspired his gift to the newly founded, though not yet opened, Metropolitan Museum of his Meissoniers, Winterhalters, and Bouguereaus.
The Steel King’s vast remaining private collection, now his widow’s, included Old Masters (Titians, Raphaels, Correggios); sculptures (Berninis, Clodions, Houdons, classical pieces); prints (Rembrandts and Dürers).... New York looked forward to a Golden Age of donation and patronage. But last week, after gracious farewells to her fellow-devotees of the arts, Mabel had departed for Europe with her infant daughter, Rosabel Whittaker, and it was to discuss this move that her mother had convened Mesdames St. George and Closson.
Mrs. St. George felt obscurely that Mabel was taking unfair advantage—was, as the Colonel might have said, jumping the gun—in transporting her baby in its very cradle from New York to the scene of international action. But Mrs. Elmsworth exuded maternal pride, not grandmotherly calculation.
“I never realized Mabel was so cultured till I saw these!” Mrs. Elmsworth retrieved the morocco-bound portfolio of newspaper cuttings, compiled by her social secretary, which her guests had been examining. “If I do say so myself, I always made a point of her and Lizzy not getting eye-wrinkles by reading too much. But from a child she was quick to get the gist of a thing—music, art, whatever. People said she married Mr. Whittaker for his money, but it was for the chance to do things.... Fashion, too, she always had an eye. She promised me she’ll tell me about those terrible new narrow gowns.”
This was a grievance to which Mrs. St. George could respond. “It was bad enough when we had to stop wearing crinolines, but now! Jinny says the bustle is gone forever, she wouldn’t be seen dead in one. And when I asked how they can get enough petticoats under such tight skirts she said... she said: ‘We don’t. We wear long drawers instead.’—Pantalettes, you understand!” Mrs. St. George gestured at a large framed drawing of the Empress Josephine, placed by Mrs. Elmsworth’s decorator between two gilt-eagle wall-sconces as a final touch to his Empire interior. It was typical of Mrs. Elmsworth, thought Mrs. St. George, to display a portrait of someone with such a reputation as a ... a ... Well, Napoleon must have had some good reason to end their marriage! ... In a voice a-tremble with indignation, Mrs. St. George declared: “It’s getting to be almost as bad as in those days, when they wore those loose flimsy dresses with nothing whatever underneath, to judge by pictures.”
“It depends on the figure, of course.” Mrs. St. George’s moral fervour had gone over the head of the more pragmatic Mrs. Closson, who continued: “I guess Conchita’s going to be like me, full-figured, but your girls, and Lizzy, have the shape. And Mabel looked to me as slim as before the baby.”
“And—ain’t she pretty?” Mrs. Elmsworth patted a recent photograph of Mabel. “While Lizzy was there it didn’t show so much, but now!”
“Very pretty,” Mrs. St. George conceded. Mrs. Closson nodded happily. Reclining on an Empire sofa, layered in satin over-skirts and petticoats of silk, wrapped in a feather cape dyed peacock-blue—an obelisk on the banks of the Hudson—she was as indolently good-natured as ever. She rejoiced in the triumphs of the other “girls” as in Conchita’s, and would have been a perfectly happy woman but that now and then the unpromising situation of her son by Mr. de Santos-Dios set her casting, as in some great fish-pond full of golden carp just beyond her range of vision, for “ideas.” Last month she had, yet once again, asked Conchita if there surely didn’t have to be some girl in Nan’s family, since there wasn’t any in hers, who Teddy and his guitar could settle down with.
(Conchita, giggling, had shown the letter to Nan, who had said gravely: “Tell your mother that at Longlands we have twenty-five balconies overlooking gardens where Teddy could serenade, but no suitable serenadees.” Nan had, in fact, invited Teddy to Longlands for Christmas, but Conchita had been obliged to report to their mother that no young lady had conceived a passion for him.)
Mrs. Elmsworth’s latest news of Mabel gave Mrs. Closson a new thought. “Now that Mabel’s staying at Lizzy’s house—that’s in London, ain’t it?—do you suppose Teddy could go to visit? He might meet some nice girl there, better than in the country. He wouldn’t have to travel.”
Mrs. St. George could not deny that, since Conchita was related by marriage to Jinny and Nan, her mother was a St. George connection; but when Mrs. Closson, her person swathed in luxuriant furs to almost globular effect, had descended to her carriage, Mrs. St. George, waiting for her own conveyance, followed what was now a ritual conclusion to meetings of the three friends. “I am more certain than ever,” she darkly confided to Mrs. Elmsworth, “that Mrs. Closson... Mrs. de Santos-Dios ... is a divorcée—something we have never had in my family, or the Colonel’s!”
XXXIV.
Belfield was not, as Mrs. Closson supposed, in London, but it was so close that Mr. Robinson had no need to keep the house in Vincent Square open, or maintain a pied à terre in Westminster, for nights when the House sat into the small hours. An eighteenth-century-Gothic structure slowly accumulating moss and ivy, capacious enough for the entertainment of many people, it lacked land; but guests so inclined could keep their horses in the Robinsons’ stables and enjoy the hunting country on which the Belfield gardens abutted, as did those of nearby Bainton, a house the Prince of Wales was known to visit.
With Mabel’s arrival at Belfield after her ocean crossing and Nan’s arrival from the Cotswolds, the five girls who had met in Saratoga almost six years ago were together for the first time since Virginia’s wedding.
All but one of them were mothers. The infant Rosabel Whittaker and her cousin Aeneas Robinson were here in the house. Conchita’s son (conceived, though the few who knew had forgotten, in Saratoga) and Jinny’s two were in their nurseries at home. But Annabel, who was responsible for a dynasty, had miscarried of an heir by her own fault and, though only she and her husband, and his mother, knew it, was refusing to cooperate in producing a new one. When Mabel, delighted to be with her friends again and eager to catch up with their stories, asked what it felt like to be called “Your Grace,” Nan answered ruefully: “I often feel... graceless. I’ve been slow to learn the rules.”
It was five o’clock, and they were at tea in the drawing-room. Nan was still in travelling dress. The others wore loose graceful tea-gowns of coral, peach, vermilion, and, Mabel’s, necessarily black—but black with a difference; confected with a thousand tiny pleats and delicate ruchings and bands of ethereal jet-dark lace, it set off a clear face enlivened by a smile that was no longer toothy.
“After all this time, girls—!” Lizzy flourished the silver tea-pot at her guests, who responded by raising their teacups. “And it’s the last time we’ll be alone together,” she told them. “The others will be here before dinner.”
“Who else is coming?” Virginia was languidly playing with an amethyst bracelet.
“I think you know them all. The Dashleighs, the Clydes, Horace Beagles... and Sir Blasker Tripp,” Lizzy ended with a demure side-glance at Conchita, who merely complained: “I thought Guy Th
warte was coming?”
“He was.” Lizzy’s circling gaze took in Nan, but Nan had turned to place her cup and saucer on the table beside her. “However, I had a note from him this morning, ‘regretting.’ ... Some political crisis, I dare say.”
“Who is Guy Thwarte?” asked Mabel.
“A charmer, darling,” Conchita informed her, “who doesn’t try to be one.—But I’m positively stricken that he won’t be here, Lizzy! He’s a widower”—Conchita turned to Mabel again—“who doesn’t seem eager to change his status.”
“He may be afraid of Mabel.” Virginia’s rosy lips curved in a teasing smile.
“More likely of Conchita’s fatal beauty,” Mabel laughed.
“But of course all the men are afraid of me.” Conchita lazily stretched her arms in their long floating sleeves behind her head. “Actually, I suspect it’s you he dreams of, Lizzy.”
“I doubt it.” Lizzy sent an arch smile in Annabel’s direction. “It was when he learned Nan was coming that he begged off. I think he cherishes a guilty passion for little Nan and doesn’t dare trust himself in her company.”
“Ah, you’ve guessed the truth!” Nan took it up merrily, screwing her features into the funny face she used to produce to make the other girls laugh. They laughed now, and Lizzy said gaily, “So, that secret’s out! But now”—she glanced out the window—“here’s someone driving up.... We’ll all meet at dinner.”
The older girls—slight differences in age seemed to matter again; Nan caught herself thinking: “the big girls”—wafted from the room like butterflies, pastels and black.
Nan followed more slowly. While she submitted herself to Mabbit’s ministrations, she tried to understand why Guy had, according to Lizzy, changed his mind about coming to Belfield when he learned that she would be there.
Was she only imagining that he loved her? No. Since their meeting in the park three days ago she had known beyond doubt that he did. She had hugged the knowledge to her day and night—knowing that she ought not to, but, in her wretchedness, clinging to it as she’d once clung to a tree in a hurricane, trying to clasp her short childish arms around the trunk so as not to be blown off her feet.... And because he loved her he was keeping away from her. Realizing that loving her was impossible, he didn’t want to see her only among other people, having to guard every word, every look.... he didn’t want to compromise her.
And perhaps, a sore heart admonished her, he also—naturally—didn’t want to compromise himself... his whole future.
Of course, he didn’t know that his love was returned! If Llewellyn the Welsh groom hadn’t come up, so exultant at having won his point about attending her and Comet, she’d have said something that would have shown Guy that she felt as he did.... But once she had emerged from a dazzle of amazement and senseless joy, she had resolved that Guy should not learn that she loved him. No one must ever know that they loved each other.
“In a fairy story,” she thought, kneeling at her Perpendicular bedroom window and contemplating through its casement, not perilous seas, but dun fields drably extending toward a gray horizon, “I would say, ‘You are the only man I’ve ever loved,’ and we’d fly away together. But it can’t be so.”
When she first met Guy he had been on the eve of self-imposed exile in order to save Honourslove. He had saved Honourslove, and now he must not lose it, lose the whole immemorial fabric of friendships and alliances—Folyats, Marables, and Glenloes, the county—the country; Parliament. Nan did not esteem herself highly enough to suppose that he would relinquish his birth-right for her; but, had he wanted to, she would not have let him. He would carry on with his life, even if for one impulsive moment he’d thought he could not. And she would strive to carry on being a duchess. But how could she bear seeing him only at Longlands, at Folyat House... with Ushant? And how could he not marry? ... But she would have to endure it. “You must, therefore you can,” Miss Testvalley would have said.
That first night at Belfield she dreamed that she was at Longlands, looking at the sad girl in the Naxos bas-relief, and then suddenly was that girl, walking through a field of weeds and outworn flowers toward a black hole into which she automatically began to lower herself, carefully gathering in the folds of her simple Grecian chiton, to return to the Duke. The next instant the free tunic was a tight-laced Worth gown with puffed sleeves and flounces. “This is only a dream,” Nan reasoned, immediately; “she’s younger than I am, and besides, I can’t speak Greek.” She woke abruptly.
But Proserpine, Queen of Hades, would return to earth, and crops and flowers would grow again. Annabel Tintagal was living in the unmythological world of railways and gaslight—and the telephone—in the reign of Queen Victoria.
Annabel, convinced that she was still the stupidest and most awkward of the five girls now reunited at Belfield, was nevertheless one of the greatest noblewomen in the United Kingdom. It was thanks to her presence, Hector Robinson pointed out to Lizzy, that their house-party was invited en masse to Bainton for the afternoon by neighbours hitherto oblivious of the Robinsons’ existence.
Mr. Robinson was detained in town by a meeting and arrived at Bainton House late. So mild was the day that he found everyone outside on a wide stone terrace. He looked about for his Belfield contingent and saw them grouped as if posing for a tableau vivant.
Glorious Lizzy. Merely Mrs. Robinson, but that would change. Mabel. Softer than in the past, Mabel was handsome and sparkling without being showy, poised without being cold; a modest womanly owner of steel mills and railways. Conchita was more bewitching than ever, Virginia more beautiful. But Virginia’s sister—Mr. Robinson still felt not quite right in calling a duchess “Annabel”—lovely Annabel seemed pensive, even sad. With a bow to her and his other guests—Beagles; the Dashleighs and the Clydes; and Sir Blasker Tripp with his out-of-fashion Dundreary whiskers—he took Lizzy’s arm in his.
As he did so, the company, as if the wind were cutting a swathe through a stand of wheat, undulated in deeper bows and deep curtsies, opening the way for a bearded man, heavy but erect and of great presence, who slowly came within view of the Belfield party.
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales! And at his side, her left arm prettily crossing a bosom on which diamonds glittered amid the frills of a Valenciennes fichu, the fingers of her left hand playing on his left sleeve—fringe, tip-tilted nose, powder and rouge—it was Lady Churt! Mr. Robinson’s mind flew back to the day at the Runnymede bungalow when Lady Churt and his Lizzy had settled Virginia’s fate. The same cast of characters—no; Annabel had been in Cornwall then, meeting the Duke of Tintagel.
The Prince of Wales halted—staring, Mr. Robinson thought for one giddy moment, at him, the Honourable Hector Robinson, M.P.... But no—at the glowing dark-haired Mrs. Robinson. It was the look of a satyr in a frock-coat, Hector thought, and to his own subsequent astonishment he took a savage grip on the tense arm of his wife: which relaxed as the princely survey of the field swept on and the princely eyes dilated at the sight of the blonde divinity that was Virginia Lady Seadown.
Lady Churt tapped the Prince with a feathery fan, daintily, to recall his attention. Unnoticing, he glanced at a groom-in-waiting, evidently experienced in preparing the battue, who discreetly brought Lady Seadown forward. Her obeisance had the kinetic grace of ... a Venus—clothed, of course.... Mr. Robinson abandoned the quest for comparisons and merely watched as the Prince took Virginia’s hand and raised her to her feet. After some words inaudible to bystanders, who had respectfully backed away, and with a bow to Virginia, who curtsied again, the Prince turned back toward the house.
Planted where H.R.H. had left her, her fetching tragic-comic mask fixed in a grimace, Lady Churt took the arm of the groom-in-waiting and, as if continuing a conversation, declared in penetrating tones:
“Yes, an American. But they behave so oddly. Like pirates. You know the Duchess of Tintagel, who’s one of them, squeezed eight hundred pounds out of the wretched Duke. She said it was for someone who was being
blackmailed on account of her, but everyone knows it was she who was being blackmailed. It seems she’d had someone in her bedroom on Christmas Eve: Sir Helmsley Thwarte’s son, Guy.”
Breathless, Hector Robinson watched the unfolding of this new act in the drama he had seen open at Runnymede. Nan’s great brown eyes widened and she went red and then ash-white, almost reeling under such an assault by a woman who was a total stranger to her. Virginia blazed at Lady Churt: “You know the Duchess is my sister!” Conchita put her arm around Nan; Lizzy, on Nan’s other side, took her hand; and Mabel told Lady Churt distinctly: “This is the Duchess of Tintagel!”
As the invaders closed ranks, Lady Churt raised a lorgnette to examine Nan from head to foot and then, shrugging, again addressed the company at large. “How shamingly idiotic of me. But how could one possibly guess that she was a duchess?”
“Darling, of course you couldn’t.”
Lady Churt swung to face Conchita, who let her eyes travel over her old friend’s face, from scowling forehead to mascara-ed lashes to painted mouth taut with hatred, before continuing: “No one could, Idina darling, because she is so young and fresh—unlike poor old scare-crows like you and me.”
“We must leave,” Mr. Robinson muttered.
“Not till the Prince goes,” his wife admonished him sotto voce.
While they waited, Conchita whispered to Nan, “I didn’t tell anyone about the five hundred, only Miles, but I haven’t seen him for ages, he was becoming a bore....”
The Buccaneers Page 32
