The Buccaneers (32 page)

“No! That's why I'd better go back there,” burst from Annabel.

The Dowager looked at her in incredulous wrath. Really, it was beyond her powers of self-control to listen smilingly to such impertinence—such blasphemy, she had almost called it. Ushant himself must stamp out this senseless rebellion....

At that moment the luncheon-gong sent its pompous call down the corridors, and at the sound the Duchess, hurriedly composing her countenance, passed a shaking hand over her neatly crimped
bandeaux.
“The gong, my dear! You must not keep your guests waiting.... I'll follow you at once....”

Annabel turned obediently to the door, and went down to join the assembled ladies and the few men who were not out with the guns.

Her heart was beating high after the agitation of her talk with her mother-in-law, but as she descended the wide shallow steps of the great staircase (up and down which it would have been a profanation to gallop, as one used to up and down the steep narrow stairs at home) she reflected that the Dowager, though extremely angry, and even scandalized, had instantly put an end to their discussion when she heard the summons to luncheon. Annabel remembered the endless wordy wrangles between her mother, her sister, and herself, and thought how little heed they would have paid to a luncheon-gong in the thick of one of their daily disputes. Here it was different: everything was done by rule, and according to tradition, and for the Duchess of Tintagel to keep her guests waiting for luncheon would have been an offence against the conventions almost as great as that of not being at her post when the company were leaving the night before. A year ago Annabel would have laughed at these rules and observances; now, though they chafed her no less, she was beginning to see the use of having one's whims and one's rages submitted to some kind of control. “It did no good to anybody to have us come down with red noses to a stone-cold lunch, and go upstairs afterward to sulk in our bedrooms,” she thought, and she recalled how her father, when regaled with the history of these domestic disagreements, used to say with a laugh: “What a lot of nonsense it would knock out of you women to have to hoe a potato-field, or spend a week in Wall Street.”

Yes; in spite of her anger, in spite of her desperate sense of being trapped, Annabel felt in a confused way that the business of living was perhaps conducted more wisely at Longlands—even though Longlands was the potato-field she was destined to hoe for life.

XXV.

That evening, before dinner, as Annabel sat over her dressing-room fire, she heard a low knock. She had half expected to see her husband appear, after a talk with his mother, and had steeled herself to a repetition of the morning's scene. But she had an idea that the Duchess might have taken her to task only because the Duke was reluctant to do so; she had already discovered that one of her mother-in-law's duties was the shouldering of any job her son wished to be rid of.

The knock, however, was too light to be a man's, and Annabel was not surprised to have it followed by a soft hesitating turn of the door-handle.

“Nan dear—not dressing yet, I hope?” It was Conchita Marable, her tawny hair loosely tossed back, her plump shoulders draped in a rosy dressing-gown festooned with swansdown. It was a long way from Conchita's quarters to the Duchess's, and Annabel was amused at the thought of the Dowager's dismay had she encountered, in the stately corridors of Longlands, a lady with tumbled auburn curls, red-heeled slippers, and a pink deshabille with a marked tendency to drop off the shoulders. A headless ghost would have been much less out of keeping with the traditions of the place.

Annabel greeted her visitor with a smile. Ever since Conchita's first appearance on the verandah of the Grand Union, Annabel's admiration for her had been based on a secret sympathy. Even then the dreamy indolent girl had been enveloped in a sort of warm haze unlike the cool dry light in which Nan's sister and the Elmsworths moved. And Lady Dick, if she had lost something of that early magic, and no longer seemed to Nan to be made of rarer stuff, had yet ripened into something more richly human than the others. A warm fruity fragrance, as of peaches in golden sawdust, breathed from her soft plumpness, the tawny spirals of her hair, the smile which had a way of flickering between her lashes without descending to her lips.

“Darling—you're all alone? Ushant's not lurking anywhere?” she questioned, peering about the room with an air of mystery.

Annabel shook her head. “No. He doesn't often come here before dinner.”

“Then he's a very stupid man, my dear,” Lady Dick rejoined, her smile resting approvingly on her hostess. “Nan, do you know how awfully lovely you're growing? I always used to tell Jinny and the Elmsworths that one of these days you'd beat us all; and I see the day's approaching....”

Annabel laughed, and her friend drew back to inspect her critically. “If you'd only burn that alms-house dressing-gown, with the horrid row of horn buttons down the front, which looks as if your mother-in-law had chosen it—ah, she did? To discourage midnight escapades, I suppose? Darling, why don't you strike, and let me order your clothes for you—and especially your underclothes? It would be a lovely excuse for running over to Paris, and with your order in my pocket I could get the dress-makers to pay all my expenses, and could bring you back a French maid who'd do your hair so that it wouldn't look like a bun just out of the baking-pan. Oh, Nan—fancy having all you've got—the hair and the eyes, and the rank, and the power, and the money....”

Annabel interrupted her. “Oh, but, Conchie, I haven't got much money.”

Lady Dick's smiling face clouded, and her clear eyes grew dark. “Now why do you say that? Are you afraid of being asked to help an old friend in a tight place, and do you want to warn me off in advance?”

Annabel looked at her in surprise. “Oh, Conchita, what a beastly question! It doesn't sound a bit like you.... Do sit down by the fire. You're shaking all over—why, I believe you're crying!”

Annabel put an arm around her friend's shoulder, and drew her down into an armchair near the hearth, pulling up a low stool for herself, and leaning against Lady Dick's knee with low sounds of sympathy. “Tell me, Conchie darling—what's wrong?”

“Oh, my child, pretty nearly everything.” Drawing out a scrap of lace and cambric, Lady Dick applied it to her beautiful eyes; but the tears continued to flow, and Annabel had to wait till they had ceased. Then Lady Dick, tossing back her tumbled curls, continued with a rainbow smile: “But what's the use? They're all things you wouldn't understand. What do you know about being head-over-ears in debt, and in love with one man while you're tied to another—tied tight in one of these awful English marriages, that strangle you in a noose when you try to pull away from them?”

A little shiver ran over Annabel. What indeed did she know of these things? And how much could she admit to Conchita—or, for that matter, to anyone—that she did know? Something sealed her lips, made it, for the moment, impossible even to murmur the sympathy she longed to speak out. She was benumbed, and could only remain silent, pressing Conchita's hands, and deafened by the reverberation of Conchita's last words: “These awful English marriages, that strangle you in a noose when you try to pull away from them.” If only Conchita had not put that into words!

“Well, Nan—I suppose now I've horrified you past forgiveness,” Lady Dick continued, breaking into a nervous laugh. “You never imagined things of that sort could happen to anybody you knew, did you? I suppose Miss Testvalley told you that only wicked queens in history-books had lovers. That's what they taught us at school.... In real life everything ended at the church door, and you just went on having babies and being happy ever after—eh?”

“Oh, Conchie, Conchie,” Nan murmured, flinging her arms about her friend's neck. She felt suddenly years older than Conchita, and mistress of the bitter lore the latter fancied she was revealing to her. Since the tragic incident of the Linfry child's death, Annabel had never asked her husband for money, and he had never informed himself if her requirements exceeded the modest allowance traditionally allotted to Tintagel duchesses. It had always sufficed for his mother, and why suggest to his wife that her needs might be greater? The Duke had never departed from the rule inculcated by the Dowager on his coming of age: “In dealing with tenants and dependents, always avoid putting ideas into their heads”—which meant, in the Dowager's vocabulary, giving them a chance to state their needs or ventilate their grievances; and he had instinctively adopted the same system with his wife. “People will always think they want whatever you suggest they might want,” his mother had often reminded him: an axiom which had not only saved him thousands of pounds, but protected him from the personal importunities which he disliked even more than the spending of money. He was always reluctant to be drawn into unforeseen expenditure, but he shrank still more from any emotional outlay, and was not sorry to be known (as he soon was) as a landlord who referred all letters to his agents, and resolutely declined personal interviews.

All this flashed through Annabel, but was swept away by Conchita's next words: “In love with one man, and married to another...” Yes; that was a terrible fate indeed ... and yet, and yet... might one perhaps not feel less lonely with such a sin on one's conscience than in the blameless isolation of an uninhabited heart?

“Darling, can you tell me ... anything more? Of course I want to help you; but I must find out ways. I'm almost as much of a prisoner as you are, I fancy; perhaps more. Because Dick's away a good deal, isn't he?”

“Oh, yes, almost always; but his duns are not. The bills keep pouring in. What little money there is is mine, and of course those people know it.... But I'm stone-broke at present, and I don't know what I shall do if you can't help me out with a loan.” She drew back, and looked at Nan beseechingly. “You don't know how I hate talking to you about such sordid things.... You seem so high above it all, so untouched by anything bad.”

“But, Conchie, it's not bad to be unhappy—”

“No, darling; and goodness knows I'm unhappy enough. But I suppose it's wrong to try to console myself—in the way I have. You must think so, I know; but I can't live without affection, and Miles is so understanding, so tender....”

Miles Dawnly, then ... Two or three times Nan had wondered—had noticed things which seemed to bespeak a tender intimacy; but she had never been sure.... The blood rushed to her forehead. As she listened to Conchita she was secretly transposing her friend's words to her own use. “Oh, I know, I know, Conchie—”

Lady Dick lifted her head quickly, and looked straight into her friend's eyes. “You know—?”

“I mean, I can imagine ... how hard it must be not to ...”

There was a long silence. Annabel was conscious that Conchita was waiting for some word of solace—material or sentimental, or if possible both; but again a paralyzing constraint descended on her. In her girlhood no one had ever spoken to her of events or emotions below the surface of life, and she had not yet acquired words to express them. At last she broke out with sudden passion: “Conchie—it's all turned out a dreadful mistake, hasn't it?”

“A dreadful mistake—you mean my marriage?”

“I mean all our marriages. I don't believe we're any of us really made for this English life. At least I suppose not, for they seem to take so many things for granted here that shock us and make us miserable; and then they're horrified by things we do quite innocently—like that silly reel last night.”

“Oh—you've been hearing about the reel, have you? I saw the old ladies putting their heads together on the sofa.”

“If it's not that it's something else. I sometimes wonder—” She paused again, struggling for words. “Conchie, if we just packed up and went home to live, would they really be able to make us come back here, as my mother-in-law says? Perhaps I could cable to Father for our passage-money—”

She broke off, perceiving that her suggestion had aroused no response. Conchita threw herself back in her armchair, her eyes wide with an unfeigned astonishment. Suddenly she burst out laughing.

“You little darling! Is that your panacea? Go back to Saratoga and New York—to the Assemblies and the Charity balls? Do you really imagine you'd like that better?”

“I don't know.... Don't you, sometimes?”

“Never! Not for a single minute!” Lady Dick continued to gaze up laughingly at her friend. She seemed to have forgotten her personal troubles in the vision of this grotesque possibility. “Why, Nan, have you forgotten those dreary endless summers at the Grand Union, and the Opera boxes sent on off-nights by your father's business friends, and the hanging round, fishing for invitations to the Assemblies and knowing we'd never have a look-in at the Thursday Evening dances? ... Oh, if we were to go over for a visit, just a few weeks' splash in New York or Newport, then every door would fly open, and the Eglintons and van der Luydens, and all the other old toadies, would be fighting for us, and fawning at our feet; and I don't say I shouldn't like that—for a while. But to be returned to our families as if we'd been sent to England ‘on appro' and hadn't suited—no, thank you! And I wouldn't go for good and all on any terms—not for all the Astor diamonds! Why, you dear little goose, I'd rather starve and freeze here than go back to all the warm houses and the hot baths, and the emptiness of everything—people and places. And as for you, an English duchess, with everything the world can give heaped up at your feet—you may not know it now, you innocent infant, but you'd have enough of Madison Avenue and Seventh Regiment balls inside of a week—and of the best of New York and Newport before your first season was over. There—does the truth frighten you? If you don't believe me, ask Jacky March, or any of the poor little American old maids, or wives or widows, who've had a nibble at it, and have hung on at any price, because London's London, and London life the most exciting and interesting in the world, and once you've got the soot and the fog in your veins you simply can't live without them; and all the poor hangers-on and left-overs know it as well as we do.”