The Buccaneers (11 page)

 
“In America?” Lady Brightlingsea's vagueness was streaked by a gleam of interest. “She's been in America?”

“In the States. In fact, I think she was governess to that new beauty who's being talked about a good deal just now. A Miss St. George—Virginia St. George. You may have heard of her?”

Lady Brightlingsea drew herself up and said testily: “But of course she was in America... and with some people called St. George. How else would I have known where to send my cable?”

“You—cabled Miss Testvalley?”

“When we learned of my son Richard's engagement, I asked Testvalley if the young woman was black, and I received such an odd reply. ‘No but comely.' Such a strange expression.”

“The Psalms... ?” Miss March suggested gently. “The Song of Songs... ‘My love is black but comely'? But do tell me if you have heard of Virginia St. George—the beauty?”

Lady Brightlingsea sighed at this new call upon her powers of concentration. “I hear of nothing but Americans. My son's house is always full of them.”

“Oh, yes; and I believe that Miss St. George is a particular friend of Lady Richard's.”

“Very likely. Is she from the same part of the States—from Brazil?”

Miss March, who was herself a native of the States, had in her youth been astonished at enquiries of this kind, and slightly resentful of them; but long residence in England, and a desire to appear at home in her adopted country, had accustomed her to such geography as Lady Brightlingsea's. “Slightly farther north, I think,” she said.

“Ah? But they make nothing of distances in those countries, do they? Is this new young woman rich?” asked Lady Brightlingsea abruptly.

Miss March reflected, and then decided to say: “According to Miss Testvalley, the St. Georges appear to live in great luxury.”

Lady Brightlingsea sank back wearily. “That means nothing. My daughter-in-law's people do that too. But the man has never paid her settlements. Her step-father, I mean—I never can remember any of their names. I don't see how they can tell each other apart, all herded together, without any titles or distinctions. It's unfortunate that Richard did nothing about settlements; and now, not even two years after their marriage, the man says he can't go on paying his step-daughter's allowance. And I'm afraid the young people owe a great deal of money.”

Miss March heaved a deep sigh of sympathy. “A bad coffee-year, I suppose.”

“That's what he says. But how can one tell? Do you suppose those other people would lend them the money?”

Miss March counted it as one of the many privileges of living in London that two or three times a year her friend Lady Brightlingsea came to see her. In Miss March's youth a great tragedy had befallen her—a sorrow which had darkened all her days. It had befallen her in London, and all her American friends—and they were many—had urged her to return at once to her home in New York. A proper sense of dignity, they insisted, should make it impossible for her to remain in a society where she had been so cruelly, so publicly offended. Miss March listened, hesitated—and finally remained in London. “They simply don't know,” she explained to an American friend who also lived there, “what they're asking me to give up.” And the friend sighed her assent.

“The first years will be difficult,” Miss March had continued courageously, “but I think in the end I shan't be sorry.” And she was right. At first she had been only a poor little pretty American who had been jilted by an eminent nobleman; yes, and after the wedding-dress was ordered—the countermanding of that wedding-dress had long been one of her most agonizing memories. But since the unhappy date over thirty years had slipped by; and gradually, as they passed, and as people found out how friendly and obliging she was, and what a sweet little house she lived in, she had become the centre of a circle of warm friends, and the oracle of transatlantic pilgrims in quest of a social opening. These pilgrims had learned that Jacky March's narrow front door led straight into the London world, and a number had already slipped in through it. Miss March had a kind heart, and could never resist doing a friend a good turn; and if her services were sometimes rewarded by a cheque, or a new drawing-room carpet, or a chinchilla tippet and muff, she saw no harm in this way of keeping herself and her house in good shape. “After all, if my friends are kind enough to come here, I want my house and myself, tiny as we both are, to be presentable.”

All this passed through Miss March's active mind while she sat listening to Lady Brightlingsea. Even should friendship so incline them, she doubted if the St. George family would be able to come to the aid of the young Dick Marables, but there might be combinations, arrangements—who could tell? Laura Testvalley might enlighten her. It was never Miss March's policy to oppose a direct refusal to a friend.

“Dear Lady Brightlingsea, I'm so dreadfully distressed at what you tell me.”

“Yes. It's certainly very unlucky. And most trying for my husband. And I'm afraid poor Dick's not behaving as well as he might. After all, as he says, he's been deceived.”

Miss March knew that this applied to Lady Richard's money and not to her morals, and she sighed again. “Mr. St. George was a business associate of Mr. Closson's at one time, I believe. Those people generally back each other up. But of course they all have their ups and downs. At any rate, I'll see, I'll make enquiries....”

“Their ways are so odd, you know,” Lady Brightlingsea pursued. It never seemed to occur to her that Miss March was one of “them,” and Miss March emitted a murmur of sympathy, for these new people seemed as alien to her as to her visitor. “So very odd. And they speak so fast—I can't understand them. But I suppose one would get used to that. What I
cannot
see is their beauty—the young girls, I mean. They toss about so—they're never still. And they don't know how to carry themselves.” She paused to add in a lower tone: “I believe my daughter-in-law dances to some odd instrument—quite like a ballet dancer. I hope her skirts are not as short. And sings in Spanish. Is Spanish their native language still?”

Miss March, despairing of making it clear to Lady Brightlingsea that Brazil was not one of the original Thirteen States, evaded this by saying: “You must remember they've not had the social training which only a Court can give. But some of them seem to learn very quickly.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Lady Brightlingsea exclaimed, as if clutching at a floating spar. Slowly she drew herself up from the sofa-corner. She was so tall that the ostrich plumes on her bonnet might have brushed Miss March's ceiling had they not drooped instead of towering. Miss March had often wondered how her friend managed to have such an air of majesty when everything about her flopped and dangled. “Ah—it's their secret,” she thought, and rejoiced that at least she could recognize and admire the attribute in her noble English friends. So many of her travelling compatriots seemed not to understand, or even to perceive, the difference. They were the ones who could not see what she “got out” of her little London house, and her little London life.

Lady Brightlingsea stood in the middle of the room, looking uncertainly about her. At last she said: “We're going out of town in a fortnight. You must come down to Allfriars later, you know.”

Miss March's heart leapt up under her trim black satin bodice. (She wore black often, to set off her still fair complexion.) She could never quite master the excitement of an invitation to Allfriars. In London she did not expect even to be offered a meal; the Brightlingseas always made a short season, and there were so many important people whom they had to invite. Besides, being asked down to stay in the country,
en famille,
was really much more flattering—more intimate. Miss March felt herself blushing to the roots of her fair curls. “It's so kind of you, dear Lady Brightlingsea. Of course, you know there's nothing I should like better. I'm never as happy anywhere as at Allfriars.”

Lady Brightlingsea gave a mirthless laugh. “You're not like my daughter-in-law. She says she'd as soon spend a month in the family vault. In fact, she'd never be with us at all if they hadn't had to let their house for the season.”

Miss March's murmur of horror was inarticulate. Words failed her. These dreadful new Americans—would London ever be able to educate them? In her confusion she followed Lady Brightlingsea to the landing without speaking. There her visitor suddenly turned toward her. “I wish we could marry Seadown,” she said.

This allusion to the heir of the Brightlingseas was a fresh surprise to Miss March. “But surely—in Lord Seadown's case it will be only too easy,” she suggested with a playful smile.

Lady Brightlingsea produced no answering smile. “You must have heard, I suppose, of his wretched entanglement with Lady Churt. It's much worse, you know, than if she were a disreputable woman. She costs him a great deal more, I mean. And we've tried everything.... But he won't look at a nice girl....” She paused, her wistful eyes bent entreatingly on Miss March's responsive face. “And so, in sheer despair, I thought perhaps, if this friend of my daughter-in-law's is rich, really rich, it might be better to try.... There's something about these foreigners that seems to attract the young men.”

Yes—there was, as Jacky March had reason to know. Her own charm had been subtler and more discreet, and in the end it had failed her, but the knowledge that she had possessed it gave her a feeling of affinity with this new band of marauders, social aliens though they were: the wild gypsy who had captured Dick Marable, and her young friends who, two years later, had come out to look over the ground, and do their own capturing.

Miss March, who was always on her watch-tower, had already sighted and classified them: the serenely lovely Virginia St. George, whom Lady Brightlingsea had singled out for Lord Seadown, and her younger sister, Nan, negligible as yet compared with Virginia, but odd and interesting too, as her sharp little observer perceived. It was a novel kind of invasion, and Miss March was a-flutter with curiosity, and with an irrepressible sympathy. In Lady Brightlingsea's company she had quite honestly blushed for the crude intruders; but, freed from the shadow of the peerage, she felt herself mysteriously akin to them, eager to know more of their plans, and even to play a secret part in the adventure.

Miss Testvalley was an old friend, and her arrival in London with a family of obscure but wealthy Americans had stirred the depths of Miss March's social curiosity. She knew from experience that Miss Testvalley would never make imprudent revelations concerning her employers, much less betray their confidence; but her shrewd eye and keen ear must have harvested, in the transatlantic field, much that would be of burning interest to Miss March, and the latter was impatient to resume their talk. So far, she knew only that the St. George girls were beautiful, and their parents rich, yet that fashionable New York had rejected them. There was much more to learn, and there was also this strange outbreak of Lady Brightlingsea's to hint at, if not reveal, to Miss Testvalley.

It was certainly a pity that their talk had been interrupted by Lady Brightlingsea; yet Miss March would not for the world have missed the latter's visit and, above all, her unexpected allusion to her eldest son. For years Miss March had carried in her bosom the heavy weight of the Marable affairs, and this reference to Seadown had thrown her into such agitation that she sat down on the sofa and clasped her small wrinkled hands over her anxious heart. Seadown to marry an American—what news to communicate to Laura Testvalley!

Miss March rose and went quickly to her miniature writing-desk. She wrote a hurried note in her pretty flowing script, sealed it with silver-gray wax, and rang for the beruffled parlour-maid. Then she turned back into the room. It was crowded with velvet-covered tables and quaint corner-shelves all laden with photographs in heavy silver or morocco frames, surmounted by coronets, from the baronial to the ducal—one, even, royal (in a place of honour by itself, on the mantel). Most of these photographs were of young or middle-aged women, with long necks and calm imperious faces, crowned with diadems or nodded over by Court feathers. “Selina Brightlingsea,” “Blanche Tintagel, “Elfrida Marable”, they were signed in tall slanting hands. The handwriting was as uniform as the features, and nothing but the signatures seemed to differentiate these carven images. But in a corner by itself (pushed behind a lamp at Lady Brightlingsea's arrival) was one, “To Jacky from her friend Idina Churt,” which Miss March now drew forth and studied with a furtive interest. What chance had an untaught transatlantic beauty against this reprehensible creature, with her tilted nose and impertinent dark fringe? Yet, after studying the portrait for a while, Miss March, as she set it down, simply murmured: “Poor Idina.”

IX.

Mrs. St. George had been bitterly disappointed in her attempt to launch her daughters in New York. Scandalized though she was by Virginia's joining in the wretched practical joke played on the Assembly patronesses by Lord Richard Marable and his future brother-in-law, she could not think that such a prank would have lasting consequences. The difficulty, she believed, lay with Colonel St. George. He was too free-and-easy, too much disposed to behave as if Fifth Avenue and Wall Street were one. As a social figure no one took him seriously (except certain women she could have named, had it not demeaned her even to think of them), and by taking up with the Clossons, and forcing her to associate publicly with that divorced foreigner, he had deprived her girls of all chance of social recognition. Miss Testvalley had seen it from the first. She too was terribly upset about the ball; but she did not share Mrs. St. George's view that Virginia and Nan, by acting as bridesmaids to Conchita Closson, had increased the mischief. At the wedding their beauty had been much remarked; and, as Miss Testvalley pointed out, Conchita had married into one of the greatest English families, and if ever the girls wanted to do a London season, knowing the Brightlingseas would certainly be a great help.