The Buccaneers (2 page)

Week after week, day after day, the anxious mother had gone over Miss Elmsworth's points, comparing them one by one with Virginia's. As regards hair and complexion, there could be no doubt; Virginia, all rose and pearl, with sheaves of full fair hair heaped above her low forehead, was as pure and luminous as an apple-blossom. But Lizzy's waist was certainly at least an inch smaller (some said two), Lizzy's dark eyebrows had a bolder curve, and Lizzy's foot—ah, where in the world did an upstart Elmsworth get that arrogant instep? Yes; but it was some comfort to note that Lizzy's complexion was opaque and lifeless compared to Virginia's, and that her fine eyes showed temper, and would be likely to frighten the young men away. Still, she had to an alarming degree what was called “style,” and Mrs. St. George suspected that in the circles to which she longed to introduce her daughters style was valued even more highly than beauty.

These were the problems among which her thoughts moved during the endless sweltering afternoon hours, like torpid fish turning about between the weary walls of a too-small aquarium. But now a new presence had invaded that sluggish element. Mrs. St. George no longer compared her eldest daughter and Lizzy Elmsworth with each other; she began to compare them both with the newcomer, the daughter of the unknown Mrs. Closson. It was small comfort to Mrs. St. George (though she repeated it to herself so often) that the Clossons were utterly unknown, that though Colonel St. George played poker with Mr. Closson, and had what the family called “business connections” with him, they were nowhere near the stage when it becomes a pleasing duty for a man to introduce a colleague to his family. Neither did it matter that Mrs. Closson's own past was if anything obscurer than her husband's, and that those who said she was a poor Brazilian widow when Closson had picked her up on a business trip to Rio were smiled at and corrected by others, presumably better informed, who suggested that
divorcée
was the word, and not “widow.” Even the fact that the Closson girl (so called) was known not to be Closson's daughter, but to bear a queer exotic name like Santos-Dios (“the Colonel says that's not swearing, it's the language,” Mrs. St. George explained to Mrs. Elmsworth when they talked the newcomers over)—even this was not enough to calm Mrs. St. George. The girl, whatever her real name, was known as Conchita Closson; she addressed as “Father” the non-committal pepper-and-salt-looking man who joined his family over Sundays at the Grand Union; and it was of no use for Mrs. St. George to say to herself that Conchita was plain and therefore negligible, for she had the precise kind of plainness which, as mothers of rival daughters know, may suddenly blaze into irresistible beauty. At present Miss Closson's head was too small, her neck was too long, she was too tall and thin, and her hair—well, her hair (oh, horror!) was nearly red. And her skin was dark, under the powder which (yes, my dear—at eighteen!) Mrs. St. George was sure she applied to it; and the combination of red hair and sallow complexion would have put off anybody who had heard a description of them, instead of seeing them triumphantly embodied in Conchita Closson. Mrs. St. George shivered under her dotted muslin ruffled with Valenciennes, and drew a tippet edged with swansdown over her shoulders. At that moment her own daughters, Virginia and Nan, wandered by, one after the other; and the sight somehow increased Mrs. St. George's irritation.

“Virginia!” she called. Virginia halted, seemed to hesitate as to whether the summons were worth heeding, and then sauntered across the verandah toward her mother.

“Virginia, I don't want you should go round any more with that strange girl,” Mrs. St. George began.

Virginia's sapphire eyes rested with a remote indifferent gaze on the speaker's tightly buttoned bronze kid boots, and Mrs. St. George suddenly wondered if she had burst a buttonhole.

“What girl?” Virginia drawled.

“How do I know? Goodness knows who they are. Your pa says she was a widow from one of those South American countries when she married Mr. Closson—the mother was, I mean.”

“Well, if he says so, I suppose she was.”

“But some people say she was just divorced. And I don't want my daughters associating with that kind of people.”

Virginia removed her blue gaze from her mother's boots to the little mantle trimmed with swansdown. “I should think you'd roast with that thing on,” she remarked.

“Jinny! Now you listen to what I say,” her mother ineffectually called after her.

Nan St. George had taken no part in the conversation; at first she had hardly heeded what was said. Such wrangles between mother and daughter were of daily, almost hourly, occurrence; Mrs. St. George's only way of guiding her children was to be always crying out to them not to do this or that. Nan St. George, at sixteen, was at the culminating phase of a passionate admiration for her elder sister. Virginia was all that her junior longed to be: perfectly beautiful, completely self-possessed, calm and sure of herself. Nan, whose whole life was a series of waves of the blood, hot rushes of enthusiasm, icy chills of embarrassment and self-depreciation, looked with envy and admiration at her goddess-like elder. The only thing she did not quite like about Virginia was the latter's tone of superiority with her mother; to get the better of Mrs. St. George was too easy, too much like what Colonel St. George called “shooting a bird sitting.” Yet so strong was Virginia's influence that in her presence Nan always took the same tone with their mother, in the secret hope of attracting her sister's favourable notice. She had even gone so far as to mime for Virginia (who was no mimic) Mrs. St. George looking shocked at an untidy stocking (“Mother wondering where we were brought up”), Mrs. St. George smiling in her sleep in church (“Mother listening to the angels”), or Mrs. St. George doubtfully mustering new arrivals (“Mother smelling a drain”). But Virginia took such demonstrations for granted, and when poor Nan afterward, in an agony of remorse, stole back alone to her mother, and whispered through penitent kisses: “I didn't mean to be naughty to you, Mamma,” Mrs. St. George, raising a nervous hand to her crimped
bandeaux,
would usually reply apprehensively: “I'm sure you didn't, darling, only don't get my hair all in a muss again.”

Expiation unresponded to embitters the blood, and something within Nan shrank and hardened with each of these rebuffs. But she now seldom exposed herself to them, finding it easier to follow Virginia's lead and ignore their parent's admonitions. At the moment, however, she was actually wavering in her allegiance to Virginia. Since she had seen Conchita Closson she was no longer sure that features and complexion were woman's crowning glory. Long before Mrs. St. George and Mrs. Elmsworth had agreed on a valuation of the newcomer, Nan had fallen under her spell. From the day when she had first seen her come whistling around the corner of the verandah, her restless little head crowned by a flapping Leghorn hat with a rose under the brim, and dragging after her a reluctant poodle with a large red bow, Nan had felt the girl's careless power. What would Mrs. St. George have said if one of her daughters had strolled along the verandah whistling, and dragging a grotesque-looking toy-shop animal at her heels? Miss Closson seemed troubled by no such considerations. She sat down on the upper step of the verandah, pulled a lump of molasses candy from her pocket, and invited the poodle to “get up and waltz for it”: which the uncanny animal did by rising on his hind legs and performing a series of unsteady circles before his mistress while she licked the molasses from her fingers. Every rocking-chair on the verandah stopped creaking as its occupant sat upright to view the show. “Circus performance!” Mrs. St. George commented to Mrs. Elmsworth; and the latter retorted with her vulgar laugh: “Looks as if the two of 'em were used to showing off, don't it?”

Nan overheard the comments, and felt sure the two mothers were mistaken. The Closson girl was obviously unaware that anyone was looking at her and her absurd dog; it was that absence of self-consciousness which fascinated Nan. Virginia was intensely self-conscious; she really thought just as much as her mother of “what people would say”; and even Lizzy Elmsworth, though she was so much cleverer at concealing her thoughts, was not really simple and natural; she merely affected unaffectedness. It frightened Nan a little to find herself thinking these things, but they forced themselves upon her; and when Mrs. St. George issued the order that her daughters were not to associate with “the strange girl” (as if they didn't all know her name!) Nan felt a rush of anger. Virginia sauntered on, probably content to have shaken her mother's confidence in the details of her dress (a matter of much anxious thought to Mrs. St. George); but Nan stopped short.

“Why can't I go with Conchita if she wants me to?”

Mrs. St. George's faintly withered pink turned pale. “If she
wants you to?
Annabel St. George, what do you mean by talking to me that way? What on earth do you care for what a girl like that
wants
?”

Nan ground her heels into the crack between the verandah boards. “I think she's lovely.”

Mrs. St. George's small nose was wrinkled with disdain. The small mouth under it drooped disgustedly. She was “Mother smelling a drain.”

“Well, when that new governess comes next week, I guess you'll find she feels just the way I do about those people. And you'll have to do what
she
tells you, anyhow,” Mrs. St. George helplessly concluded.

A chill of dismay rushed over Nan. The new governess! She had never really believed in that remote bogey. She had an idea that Mrs. St. George and Virginia had cooked up the legend between them, in order to be able to say “Annabel's governess”; as they had once heard that tall proud Mrs. Eglinton from New York, who had stayed only one night at the hotel, say to the landlord: “You must be sure to put my daughter's governess in the room next to her.” Nan had never believed that the affair of the governess would go beyond talking; but now she seemed to hear the snap of the hand-cuffs on her wrist.

“A governess—me?”

Mrs. St. George moistened her lips nervously. “All stylish girls have governesses the year before they come out.”

“I'm not coming out next year—I'm only sixteen,” Nan protested.

“Well, they have them for two years before. That Eglinton girl had.”

“Oh, that Eglinton girl! She looked at us all as if we weren't there.”

“Well, that's the way for a lady to look at strangers,” said Mrs. St. George heroically.

Nan's heart grew black within her. “I'll kill her if she tries to interfere with me.”

“You'll drive down to the station on Monday to meet her,” Mrs. St. George shrilled back, defiant. Nan turned on her heel and walked away.

II.

The Closson girl had already disappeared with her dog, and Nan suspected that she had taken him for a game of ball in the rough field adjoining the meagre grounds of the hotel. Nan went down the steps of the porch and, crossing the drive, espied the slim Conchita whirling a ball high overhead while the dog spun about frantically at her feet. Nan had so far exchanged only a few shy words with her, and in ordinary circumstances would hardly have dared to join her now. But she had reached an acute crisis in her life, and her need for sympathy and help overcame her shyness. She vaulted over the fence into the field and went up to Miss Closson.

“That's a lovely dog,” she said.

Miss Closson flung the ball for her poodle, and turned with a smile to Nan. “Isn't he a real darling?”

Nan stood twisting one foot about the other. “Have you ever had a governess?” she asked abruptly.

Miss Closson opened with a stare of wonder the darkly fringed eyes which shone like pale aquamarines on her small dusky face. “Me? A governess? Mercy, no—what for?”

“That's what I say! My mother and Virginia have cooked it up between them. I'm going to have one next week.”

“Land's sake! You're not? She's coming here?”

Nan nodded sulkily.

“
Well—
” Conchita murmured.

“What'll I do about it—what would you?” Nan burst out, on the brink of tears.

Miss Closson drew her lids together meditatively; then she stooped with deliberation to the poodle, and threw the ball for him again.

“I said I'd kill her,” broke from Nan in a hoarse whisper.

The other laughed. “I wouldn't do that; not right off, anyhow. I'd get round her first.”

“Get round her? How can I? I've got to do whatever she wants.”

“No, you haven't. Make her want whatever you want.”

“How can I? Oh, can I call you Conchita? It's such a lovely name. Mine's Annabel, really, but everybody calls me Nan.... Well, but how can I get round that governess? She'll try to make me learn lists of dates—that's what she's paid for.”

Conchita's expressive face became one grimace of disapproval. “Well, I should hate that like castor-oil. But perhaps she won't. I knew a girl at Rio who had a governess, and she was hardly any older than the girl, and she used to ... well, carry messages and letters for her, the governess did ... and in the evening she used to slip out to ... to see a friend ... and she and the girl knew all each other's secrets; so you see they couldn't tell on each other, neither one of them couldn't....”

“Oh, I see,” said Nan, with a feigned air of knowingness. But she was suddenly conscious of a queer sensation in her throat, almost of physical sickness. Conchita's laughing eyes seemed whispering to her through half-drawn lids. She admired Conchita as much as ever—but she was not sure she liked her at that moment.

Conchita was obviously not aware of having produced an unfavourable impression. “Out in Rio I knew a girl who got married that way. The governess carried her notes for her.... Do you want to get married?” she asked abruptly.