The Buccaneers (35 page)

Her son, aware of this passion, which equalled his own for dismembering clocks, was in the habit of going straight to the conservatory when he visited her; and there he found her on the morning after his strange conversation with his wife.

The Dowager was always gratified by his visits, which were necessarily rare during the shooting-parties; but it would have pleased her better had he not come at the exact moment when, gauntleted and aproned, she was transferring some new gloxinia seedlings from one pan to another.

She laid down her implements, scratched a few words in a notebook at her elbow, and dusted the soil from her big gloves.

“Ah, Ushant—” She broke off, struck by his unusual pallor, and the state of his hair. “My dear, you don't look well. Is anything wrong?” she asked in the tone of one long accustomed to being told every morning of some new wrongness in the course of things.

The Duke stood looking down at the long shelf, the heaps of upturned soil and the scattered labels. It occurred to him that, for ladies, horticulture might prove a safe and agreeable pastime.

“Have you ever tried to interest Annabel in this kind of thing?” he asked abruptly. “I'm afraid I'm too ignorant to do it myself—but I sometimes think she would be happier if she had some innocent amusement like gardening. Needle-work doesn't seem to appeal to her.”

The Dowager's upper lip lengthened. “I've not had much chance of discussing her tastes with her; but of course, if you wish me to ... Do you think, for instance, she might learn to care for grafting?”

It was inconceivable to the Duke that anyone should care for grafting; but, not wishing to betray his complete ignorance of the subject, he effected a diversion by proposing a change of scene. “Perhaps we could talk more comfortably in the drawing-room,” he suggested.

His mother laid down her tools. She was used to interruptions, and did not dare to confess how trying it was to be asked to abandon her seedlings at that critical stage. She also weakly regretted having to leave the pleasant temperature of the conservatory for an icy drawing-room in which the fire was never lit till the lamps were brought. Such economies were necessary to a dowager with several daughters but whose meagre allowances were always having to be supplemented; but the Duchess, who was almost as hardened to cold as her son, led the way to the drawing-room without apology.

“I'm sorry,” she said, as she seated herself near the lifeless hearth, “that you think dear Annabel lacks amusements.”

The Duke stood before the chimney, his hands thrust despondently in his pockets. “Oh—I don't say that. But I suppose she's been used to other kinds of amusement in the States: skating, you know, and dancing—they seem to do a lot of dancing over there; and even in England I suppose young ladies expect more variety and excitement nowadays than they had in your time.”

The Dowager, who had taken up her alms-house knitting, dropped a sigh into its harsh folds.

“Certainly in my time they didn't expect much—luckily, for they wouldn't have got it.”

The Duke made no reply, but moved uneasily back and forth across the room, as his way was when his mind was troubled.

“Won't you sit down, Ushant?”

“Thanks. No.” He returned to his station on the hearth-rug.

“You're not joining the guns?” his mother asked.

“No. Seadown will replace me. The fact is,” the Duke continued in an embarrassed tone, “I wanted a few minutes of quiet talk with you.”

He paused again, and his mother sat silent, automatically counting her stitches, though her whole mind was centred on his words. She was sure some pressing difficulty had brought him to her, but she knew that any visible sign of curiosity, or even sympathy, might check his confidence.

“I—I have had a very—er—embarrassing experience with Annabel,” he began; and the Dowager lifted her head quickly, but without interrupting the movement of her needles.

The Duke coughed and cleared his throat. (“At the last minute,” his mother thought, “he's wondering whether he might not better have held his tongue.”) She knitted on.

“A—a really incomprehensible experience.” He threw himself into the chair opposite hers. “And completely unexpected. Yesterday morning, just as I was leaving the house, Annabel asked me for a large sum of money—a very large sum. For five hundred pounds.”

“Five hundred pounds?” The needles dropped from the Dowager's petrified fingers.

Her son gave a dry laugh. “It seems to me a considerable amount.”

The Dowager was thinking hurriedly: “That chit!
I
shouldn't have dared to ask him for a quarter of that amount—much less his father....” Aloud she said: “But what does she want it for?”

“That's the point. She refuses to tell me.”

“Refuses—?” the Dowager gasped.

“Er—yes. First she hinted it was for her dress-maker, but, on being pressed, she owned it was not.”

“Ah—and then?”

“Well—then ... I told her I'd pay the debt if she'd incurred it; but only if she would tell me to whom the money was owing.”

“Of course. Very proper.”

“So I thought; but she said I'd no right to cross-examine her—”

“Ushant! She called it that?”

“Something of the sort. And as the guns were waiting, I said that was my final answer—and there the matter ended.”

The Dowager's face quivered with an excitement she had no means of expressing. This woman—he'd offered her five hundred pounds! and she'd refused it....

“It could hardly have ended otherwise,” she approved, thinking of the many occasions when a gift of five hundred pounds from the late Duke would have eased her daily load of maternal anxieties.

Her son made no reply, and as he began to move uneasily about the room, it occurred to her that what he wanted was not her approval but her dissent. Yet how could she appear to encourage such open rebellion? “You certainly did right,” she repeated.

“Ah, there I'm not sure,” the Duke muttered.

“Not sure—?”

“Nothing's gained, I'm afraid, by taking that tone with Annabel.” He reddened uncomfortably, and turned his head away from his mother's scrutiny.

“You mean you think you were too lenient?”

“Lord, no—just the contrary. I ... oh, well, you wouldn't understand. These American girls are brought up differently from our young women. You'd probably say they were spoilt....”

“I should,” the Dowager assented drily.

“Welt—perhaps. Though in a country where there's no primogeniture I suppose it's natural that daughters should be more indulged. At any rate, I ... I thought it all over during the day—I thought of nothing else, in fact—and after she'd gone down to dinner yesterday evening I slipped into her room and put an envelope with the money on her dressing-table.”

“Oh, Ushant—how generous, how noble!”

The Duchess's hard little eyes filled with sudden tears. Her mind was torn between wrath at her daughter-in-law's incredible exactions, and the thought of what such generosity on her own husband's part might have meant to her, with those eight girls to provide for. But Annabel had no daughters—and no sons—and the Dowager's heart had hardened again before her eyes were dry. Would there be no limit to Ushant's weakness, she wondered?

“You're the best judge, of course, in any question between your wife and yourself; but I hope Annabel will never forget what she owes you.”

The Duke gave a short laugh. “She's forgotten it already.”

“Ushant—!”

He crimsoned unhappily and again averted his face from his mother's eyes. He felt a nervous impulse to possess himself of the clock on the mantel-shelf and take it to pieces; but he turned his back on the temptation. “I'm sorry to bother you with these wretched details ... but ... perhaps one woman can understand another where a man would fail....”

“Yes—?”

“Well, you see, Annabel has been rather nervous and uncertain lately; I've had to be patient. But I thought—I thought that when she found she'd gained her point about the money ... she ... er ... would wish to show her gratitude....”

“Naturally.”

“So, when the men left the smoking-room last night, I went up to her room. It was not particularly late, and she had not undressed. I went in, and she did thank me ... well, very prettily.... But when I ... when I proposed to stay, she refused, refused absolutely—”

The Dowager's lips twitched. “Refused? On what ground?”

“That she hadn't understood that I'd been driving a bargain with her. The scene was extremely painful,” the Duke stammered.

“Yes; I understand.” The Dowager paused, and then added abruptly: “So she handed back the envelope—?”

Her son hung his head. “No; there was no question of that.”

“Ah—her pride didn't prevent her accepting the bribe, though she refused to stick to the bargain?”

“I can't say there was an actual bargain; but—well, it was something like that....”

The Dowager sat silent, her needles motionless in her hands. This, she thought, was one of the strangest hours of her life, and not the least strange part of it was the light reflected back on her own past, and on the weary nights when she had not dared to lock her door....

“And then—?”

“Then—well, the end of it was that she said she wanted to go away.”

“Go away?” Could it be that, after all, Annabel had spoken to her husband in what the Duchess had hoped was a passing fit of hysteria?

“She wants to go off somewhere—she doesn't care where—”

Again the memory of her own past thrust itself between the Duchess and her wrath against her daughter-in-law. Ah, if she had ever dared to ask the late Duke to let her off—to let her go away for a few days, she didn't care where! Even now she trembled inwardly at the thought of what his answer would have been....

“—alone with her old governess. You know; the little Italian woman who's with Augusta Glenloe and came over the other night with the party from Champions.”

“You forget.” If the Dowager had been speaking to anyone but her son, she would have said it impatiently. “The woman was governess to your sisters.” And, she might have added, the recipient of a rare burst of confidence on her own part. She had once mentioned to the governess, apropos of the already scandalous reputation of young Lord Seadown, that the only worry her son had given herself and the late Duke was that at school he had neglected the classics, not for cricket (a preference her husband would have condoned), but for mechanics, in fact, for ... clocks, his fetish for which he had never divulged to his father and which he supposed was unknown to him.

“Well, she seems to be the only person Annabel cares for, or who, at any rate, has any influence over her.”

The Duchess, still thinking, pursed her lips. “I have wondered who planted that notion of an Anglican nunnery in Almina's head. One naturally suspects Italians of being Papists, and both Selina Brightlingsea and I made sure Testvalley was
not
; but how could we know that she was High Church?” The Duchess turned her mind from her foolish but duteous youngest daughter to the unguessable inconveniences and embarrassments crammed into a Pandora's box, thus far kept firmly under lid, which the perverse behaviour of her daughter-in-law might let loose. “Do you think her influence over Annabel is good?” she asked at length.

“I've always supposed it was. She's very much attached to Annabel. But how can I ask Augusta Glenloe to lend me her girls' governess to go—I don't know where—with my wife?”

“It's out of the question, of course. Besides, a duchess of Tintagel can hardly wander about the world in that way. But perhaps—if you're sure it's wise to yield to this ... this fancy of Annabel's ...”

“Yes, I am,” the Duke interrupted uncomfortably.

“Then why not ask Augusta Glenloe to invite her to Champions for a few weeks? I could easily explain ... putting it on the ground of Annabel's health. Augusta will be glad to do what she can....”

The Duke heaved a deep sigh, at once of depression and relief. It was clear that he wished to put an end to the talk and escape as quickly as possible from the questions in his mother's eyes.

“It might be a good idea.”

“Very well. Shall I write?”

The Duke agreed that she might—but of course without giving the least hint....

Oh, of course; naturally the Dowager understood that. Augusta would accept her explanation without seeing anything unusual in it.... It wasn't easy to surprise Augusta.

The Duke, with a vague mutter of thanks, turned to the door; and his mother, following him, laid her hand on his arm. “You've been very long-suffering, Ushant; I hope you'll have your reward.”

He stammered something inaudible, and went out of the room. The Dowager, left alone, sat down by the hearth and bent over her scattered knitting. She had forgotten even her haste to get back to the gloxinias. Her son's halting confidences had stirred in her a storm of unaccustomed emotion, and memories of her own past crowded about her like mocking ghosts. But the Dowager did not believe in ghosts, and her grim realism made short work of the phantoms. “There's only one way for an English duchess to behave—and the wretched girl has never learnt it....” Smoothing out her knitting, she restored it to the basket reserved for pauper industries; then she stood up and tied on her gardening-apron. There were still a great many seedlings to transplant, and after that the new curate was coming to discuss arrangements for the next Mothers' Meeting ... and then—