The Buccaneers (28 page)

It was now well over a year since that had happened, and after long weeks of illness a new Annabel—a third Annabel—had emerged from the ordeal. Life had somehow, as the months passed, clumsily readjusted itself. As far as words went, the Duke had forgiven his wife; they had left the solitude of Tintagel as soon as the physicians thought it possible for the Duchess to be moved; and now, in their crowded London life, and at Longlands, where the Dowager had seen to it that all the old ceremonial was re-established, the ducal pair were too busy, too deeply involved in the incessant distractions and obligations of their station, to have time to remember what was over and could not be mended.

Yet sometimes unwelcome remembrance forced itself upon them. After the move to Longlands, when Annabel was strong enough to walk a fifth of a mile, the Duke had taken her from the Correggio room to the classical sculpture gallery, again accompanied by Mr. Rossiter, who had pointed out busts of the Emperors Hadrian and Trajan, Roman copies of Greek Athenas and Apollos, and black-and-umber pottery of various periods. Nan was reproaching herself for an ignorance of the “classical” which must explain her tepid response to the exhibits, when, approaching the far end of the gallery, she caught her breath at the sight of a bas-relief in warm, almost breathing, marble. A seated woman had one hand on the shoulder of a young girl who was turning away from her. Both figures were in profile. Their drapery rippled as if the stone were liquid, but in their sad faces was the stillness of eternity.

Annabel stood transfixed. “It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.... Is it Greek?”

“Yes, Your Grace, from Naxos.” Mr. Rossiter spoke instructively. “It represents Demeter, or Ceres, goddess of fields and crops, and her daughter Persephone, or Proserpine, who, as you know, was abducted by Dis, or Pluto, god of the underworld. Ceres, disguised as a peasant woman, sought her everywhere. She neglected the agriculture of men, and her absence brought winter. Jupiter commanded Pluto to restore Ceres' daughter to earth for six months of every year. It is a pre-scientific explanation of the seasons.”

“I believe the bas-relief is of considerable artistic importance,” said the Duke, “but one cannot take great satisfaction in a fragment.”

As Annabel looked a question, Mr. Rossiter explained, “It is one side of a throne which originally had a high back and sides. The other side was described by an eighteenth-century traveller who saw the throne entire. It depicted Hera—Juno—seated with an infant on her knees. She, of course, was the goddess who protected women in childbirth.”

Annabel winced, and the Duke stiffened. Mr. Rossiter went on hastily: “Its present whereabouts are unknown.”

“It is probably in America,” the Duke said dourly.

“Probably, pirates that they are over there! ... That is ...” Mr. Rossiter, having floundered from one gaffe to another, rattled off more information: “Bonaparte took the sculpture as loot, but the British captured the ship it was on and rescued it. Unfortunately, by the time Your Grace's great-grandfather Tintagel purchased this, the central part and the other side had vanished.”

“It should not have been allowed to leave England,” said the Duke.

“But why,” Annabel asked, “should it not be returned to Naxos?”

The two men smiled indulgently. But the Duke, morose again, repeated: “There is no satisfaction in owning a fragment.”

Since then, Annabel had sometimes gone to look at the relief by herself, without Mr. Rossiter's well-meaning commentary. Grave, beyond merriment, it was the antithesis of the Correggios, yet gave her a sense of happiness. It was like the music for the Dance of the Blessed Spirits in the opera
Orphée,
which she had seen in London in the months before Jinny's marriage, sad, calm, and sweet.... Perhaps it was the “beyondness” of the Elysian Fields.

Annabel gradually learned that it was not only one's self that changed. The ceaseless, mysterious flow of days wore down and altered the shape of the people nearest one, so that one seemed fated to be always a stranger among strangers. The mere fact, for instance, of Annabel St. George's becoming Annabel Tintagel had turned her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Tintagel, into a dowager duchess, over whose diminished head the mighty roof of Longlands had shrunk into the modest shelter of a lovely little rose-clad dower-house at the gates of the park. And everyone else, as far as Annabel's world reached, seemed to have changed in the same way.

That, at times, was the most perplexing part of it. When, for instance, the new Annabel tried to think herself back onto the verandah of the Grand Union Hotel, waiting for her father and his stock-broker friends to return from the races, or in the hotel ball-room with the red damask curtains, dancing with her sister, Conchita Closson, and the Elmsworth girls, or with the obscure and infrequent young men who now and then turned up to partner their wasted loveliness—when she thought, for instance, of Roy Gilling and the handkerchief she had dropped, and he had kissed and hidden in his pocket—it was like looking at the flickering figures of the magic lanterns she used to see at children's parties. What was left, now, of those uncertain apparitions, and what relation, say, did the Conchita Closson who had once seemed so ethereal and elusive bear to Lady Dick Marable, beautiful still, though she was growing rather too stout, but who had lost her lovely indolence and detachment, and was now perpetually preoccupied about money, and immersed in domestic difficulties and clandestine consolations—or to Virginia, her own sister Virginia, who had seemed to Annabel so secure, so aloof, so disdainful of everything but her own pleasures, but who, as Lady Seadown, was enslaved to that dull half-asleep Seadown, absorbed in questions of rank and precedence, and in awe—actually in awe—of her father-in-law's stupid arrogance, and of Lady Brightlingsea's bewildered condescensions?

Yes; changed, every one of them, vanished out of recognition, as the lost Annabel of the Grand Union had vanished. As she looked about her, the only figures which seemed to have preserved their former outline were those of her father and his business friends; but that, perhaps, was because she so seldom saw them, because when they appeared, at long intervals, for a hurried look at transatlantic daughters and grandchildren, they brought New York with them, solidly and loudly, remained jovially unconscious of any change of scene and habits greater than that between the east and west shores of the Hudson, and hurried away again, leaving behind them cheques and christening-mugs, and unaware to the last that they had been farther from Wall Street than across the ferry.

Perhaps Mabel Elmsworth was unchanged; no one knew. Mabel had gone back to America after Virginia's wedding to Seadown and almost immediately had married. Mrs. Elmsworth had described Caleb Whittaker as an “older” widower from Magnesia, Illinois, and very rich. He collected “pictures and things.” Mabel had stood godmother, by proxy, at the christening of Virginia's first-born son. (Lizzy, Jinny's first choice, had suggested that she ask poor Mabel, to whom it would mean so much, so far away from her friends....) Mabel had sent silver mugs, silver spoons, and a golden bowl. Her rare letters told Lizzy that she was well, sent love to all the girls, and wished they'd come and visit.

Ah, yes—and Laura Testvalley, her darling old Val! She had remained her firm sharp-edged self. But then she too was usually away, she had not suffered the erosion of daily contact. The real break with the vanished Annabel had come, the new Annabel sometimes thought, when Miss Testvalley, her task at the St. Georges' ended, had vanished into the seclusion of another family which required “finishing.” Miss Testvalley, since she had kissed the bride after the great Tintagel wedding, had re-appeared only at long intervals, and as it were under protest. It was one of her principles—as she had often told Annabel—that a governess should not hang about her former pupils. Later they might require her—there was no knowing, her subtle smile implied—but, once the school-room was closed, she should vanish with the tattered lesson-books, the dreary school-room food, the cod-liver oil, and the chilblain cures.

Perhaps, Annabel thought, if her beloved Val had remained with her, they might between them have rescued the old Annabel, or at least kept up communication with her ghost—a faint tap now and then against the walls which had built themselves up about the new Duchess. But as it was, there was the new Duchess isolated in her new world, no longer able to reach back to her past, and not having yet learned how to communicate with her present.

“In fact”—the realization came to Annabel—“the Duchess Ushant has in his possession is only a fragment. And he doesn't value fragments highly.”

She roused herself from these vain musings, and took up her pen. A final glance at the list had shown her that one invitation had been forgotten—or, if not forgotten, at least postponed.

 
Underneath she added: “P.S. Perhaps you'd remember me if I signed Nan St. George.” But what was the sense of that, when there was no longer anyone of that name? She tore the note up, and re-wrote it without adding the postscript.

XXII.

Guy Thwarte had not been back at Honourslove long enough to expect a heavy mail beside his breakfast plate. His years in Brazil had cut him off more completely than he had realized from his former life; and he was still in the somewhat painful stage of picking up the threads.

“Only one letter? Lucky devil, I envy you!” grumbled Sir Helmsley, taking his seat at the other end of the table and impatiently pushing aside a stack of newspapers, circulars, and letters.

The young man glanced with a smile at his father's correspondence. He knew so well of what it consisted: innumerable bills, dunning letters, urgent communications from book-makers, tradesmen, the chairmen of political committees or art-exhibitions, scented notes from enamoured ladies, or letters surmounted by mysterious symbols from astrologers, palmists, or alchemists—for Sir Helmsley had dabbled in most of the arts, and bent above most of the mysteries. But today, as usual, his son observed, the bills and the dunning letters predominated. Guy would have to put some order into that; and probably into the scented letters too.

“Yes, I'm between two worlds yet—‘powerless to be born' kind of feeling,” he said as he took up the solitary note beside his own plate. The writing was unknown to him, and he opened the envelope with indifference.

“Oh, my dear fellow—don't say that; don't say ‘powerless,' ” his father rejoined, half-pleadingly, but with a laugh. “There's such a lot waiting to be done; we all expect you to put your hand to the plough without losing a minute. I was lunching at Longlands the other day and had a long talk with Ushant. With old Sir Hercules Loft in his dotage for the last year, there's likely to be a vacancy at Lowdon at any minute, and the Duke's anxious to have you look over the ground without losing any time, especially as that new millionaire from Glasgow is said to have some chance of getting in.”

“Oh, well—” Guy was glancing over his letter while his father spoke. He knew Sir Helmsley's great desire was to see him in the House of Commons, an ambition hitherto curbed by the father's reduced fortune, but brought into the foreground again since the son's return from exile with a substantial bank-account.

Guy looked up from his letter. “Tintagel's been talking to you about it, I see.”

“You see? Why—has he written to you already?”

“No. But she has. The new American Duchess—the little girl I brought here once, you remember?” He handed the letter to his father, whose face expressed a growing satisfaction as he read.

“Well—that makes it plain sailing. You'll go to Longlands, of course?”

“To Longlands?” Guy hesitated. “I don't know. I'm not sure I want to.”

“But if Tintagel wants to see you about the seat? You ought to look over the ground. There may not be much time to lose.”

“Not if I'm going to stand—certainly.”

“
If!
” shouted Sir Helmsley, bringing down his fist with a crash that set the Crown Derby cups dancing. “Is that what you're not sure of? I thought we were agreed before you went away that it was time there was a Thwarte again in the House of Commons.”

“Oh—before I went away,” Guy murmured. His father's challenge, calling him back suddenly to his old life, the traditional life of a Thwarte of Honourslove, had shown him for the first time how far from it all he had travelled in the last years, how remote had become the old sense of inherited obligations which had once seemed the very marrow of his bones.

“Now you've made your pile, as they say out there,” Sir Helmsley continued, attempting a lighter tone, but unable to disguise his pride in the incredible fact of his son's achievement—a Thwarte who had made money!—“now that you've made your pile, isn't it time to think of a career? In my simplicity, I imagined it was one of your principal reasons for exiling yourself.”

“Yes; I suppose it was,” Guy acquiesced.

 
After this, for a while, father and son faced one another in silence across the breakfast-table, each, as is the way of the sensitive, over-conscious of the other's thoughts. Guy, knowing so acutely what was expected of him, was vainly struggling to become again the young man who had left England over three years earlier; but, strive as he would, he could not yet fit himself into his place in the old scheme of things. The truth was, he was no longer the Guy Thwarte who had left, and would probably never recover that lost self. The break had been too violent, the disrupting influences too powerful. Those dark rich stormy years of exile lay like a raging channel between himself and his old life, and his father's summons only drove him back upon himself.