The Buccaneers (5 page)

IV.

Miss Laura Testvalley stood on the wooden platform of the railway station at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and looked about her. It was not an inspiriting scene; but she had not expected that it would be, and would not have greatly cared if it had. She had been in America for eighteen months, and it was not for its architectural or civic beauties that she had risked herself so far. Miss Testvalley had small means, and a derelict family to assist; and her successful career as a governess in the households of the English aristocracy had been curtailed by the need to earn more money. English governesses were at a premium in the United States, and one of Miss Testvalley's former pupils, whose husband was attached to the British Legation in Washington, had recommended her to Mrs. Russell Parmore, a cousin of the Eglintons and the van der Luydens—the best, in short, that New York had to offer. The salary was not as high as Miss Testvalley had hoped for, but her ex-pupil at the Legation had assured her that among the “new” coal and steel people, who could pay more, she would certainly be too wretched. Miss Testvalley was not sure of this. She had not come to America in search of distinguished manners any more than of well-kept railway stations; but she decided on reflection that the Parmore household might be a useful spring-board, and so it proved. Mrs. Russell Parmore was certainly very distinguished, and so were her pallid daughter and her utterly rubbed-out husband; and how could they know that to Miss Testvalley they represented at best a
milieu
of retired colonels at Cheltenham, or the household of a minor canon in a cathedral town? Miss Testvalley had been used to a more vivid setting, and accustomed to social dramas and emotions which Mrs. Russell Parmore had only seen hinted at in fiction; and as the pay was low, and the domestic economies were painful (Mrs. Russell Parmore would have thought it ostentatious and vulgar to live largely), Miss Testvalley, after conscientiously “finishing” Miss Parmore (a young lady whom Nature seemed scarcely to have begun), decided to seek, in a different field, ampler opportunities of action. She consulted a New York governesses' agency, and learned that the “new people” would give “almost anything” for such social training as an accomplished European governess could impart. Miss Testvalley fixed a maximum wage, and in a few days was notified by the agency that Mrs. Tracy St. George was ready to engage her. “It was Mrs. Russell Parmore's reference that did it,” said the black-wigged lady at the desk as they exchanged fees and congratulations. “In New York she counts more than all your duchesses”; and Miss Testvalley again had reason to rate her own good sense at its just value. Life at the Parmores', on poor pay and a scanty diet, had been a weary business; but it had been worth while. Now she had in her pocket the promise of eighty dollars a month, and the possibility of a more exciting task; for she understood that the St. Georges were very “new,” and the prospect of comparing the manners and customs of the new and the not-new might be amusing. “I wonder,” she thought ironically, “if the Duchess would see the slightest difference”—the Duchess meaning always
hers,
the puissant lady of Tintagel, where Miss Testvalley had spent so many months shivering with cold, and bandaging the chilblains of the younger girls, while the other daughters, with their particular “finishing” duenna, accompanied their parents from one ducal residence to another. The Duchess of Tintagel, who had beaten Miss Testvalley's salary well-nigh down to the level of an upper house-maid's, who had so often paid it after an embarrassingly long delay, who had been surprised that a governess should want a fire in her room, or a hot soup for her school-room dinner—the Duchess was now (all unknown to herself) making up for her arrears toward Miss Testvalley. By giving Mrs. Parmore the chance to say, when she had friends to dine, “I happen to know, for instance, that at Tintagel Castle there are only open fires, and the halls and corridors are not heated at all,” Miss Testvalley had gained several small favours from her parsimonious employer; and by telling her, in the strictest confidence, that Their Graces had at one time felt a good deal of anxiety about their only son—oh, a simple sweet-natured young man if ever there was one; but, then, the temptations which beset a marquess who was heir to a dukedom!—Miss Testvalley had obtained from Mrs. Parmore a letter of recommendation which placed her at the head of the educational sisterhood in the United States.

Miss Testvalley needed this, and every other form of assistance she could obtain. It would have been difficult for either Mrs. Parmore or the Duchess of Tintagel to imagine how poor she was, or how many people had (or so she thought) a lien on her pitiful savings. It was the penalty of the family glory. Miss Testvalley's grandfather was the illustrious patriot Gennaro Testavaglia of Modena, fomenter of insurrections, hero of the Risorgimento, author of those once famous historical novels
Arnaldo da Brescia
and
La Donna della Fortezza,
but whose fame lingered in England chiefly because he was the cousin of the old Gabriele Rossetti, father of the decried and illustrious Dante Gabriel. The Testavaglias, fleeing from the Austrian inquisition, had come to England at the same time as the Rossettis, and, contracting their impossible name to the scope of English lips, had intermarried with other exiled revolutionaries and anti-Papists, producing sons who were artists and agnostics, and daughters who were evangelicals of the strictest pattern, and governesses in the highest families. Laura Testvalley had obediently followed the family tradition; but she had come after the heroic days of evangelical great ladies who required governesses to match; competition was more active, there was less demand for drawing-room Italian and prayerful considerations on the Collects, and more for German and the natural sciences, in neither of which Miss Testvalley excelled. And in the intervening years the mothers and aunts of the family had grown rheumatic and impotent, the heroic old men lingered on in their robust senility, and the drain on the younger generation grew heavier with every year. By the time she reached her late thirties, Laura had found it impossible, on her English earnings, to keep the grandmother (wife of the Risorgimento hero), and to aid her own infirm mother in supporting an invalid brother and a married sister with six children, whose husband had disappeared in the wilds of Australia. Laura was sure that it was not her vocation to minister to others, but she had been forced into the task early, and continued in it from family pride—and because, after all, she belonged to the group, and the Risorgimento and the Pre-Raphaelites were her chief credentials. And so she had come to America.

At the Parmores' she had learned a good deal about one phase of American life, and she had written home some droll letters on the subject; but she had suspected from the first that the real America was elsewhere, and had been tempted and amused by the idea that among the Wall Street
parvenus
she might discover it. She had an unspoiled taste for oddities and contrasts, and nothing could have been more alien to her private sentiments than the family combination of revolutionary radicalism, Exeter Hall piety, and awestruck reverence for the aristocratic households in which the Testvalley governesses earned the keep of their ex-
carbonari.
“If I'd been a man,” she sometimes thought, “Dante Gabriel might not have been the only cross in the family.” And the idea obscurely comforted her when she was correcting her pupils' compositions, or picking up the dropped stitches in their knitting.

She was used to waiting in strange railway stations, her old black beaded “dolman” over her arm, her modest horsehair box at her feet. Servants often forget to order the fly which is to fetch the governess, and the lady herself, though she may have meant to come to the station, is not infrequently detained by shopping or calling. So Miss Testvalley, without impatience, watched the other travellers drive off in the spidery high-wheeled vehicles in which people bounced across the humps and ruts of the American country roads. It was the eve of the great race-week, and she was amused by the showy garb of the gentlemen and the much-flounced elegance of their ladies, though she felt sure Mrs. Parmore would have disdained them.

One by one the travellers scattered, their huge “Saratogas” (she knew that expression also) were hoisted into broken-down express-carts that crawled off in the wake of the owners; and at last a new dust-cloud formed down the road and floated slowly nearer, till there emerged from it a lumbering vehicle of the kind which Miss Testvalley knew to be classed as hotel hacks. As it drew up she was struck by the fact that the driver, a small dusky fellow in a white linen jacket and a hat-brim of exotic width, had an orange bow tied to his whip, and a beruffled white poodle with a bigger orange bow perched between himself and the shabby young man in overalls who shared his seat; while from within she felt herself laughingly surveyed by two tiers of bright young eyes. The driver pulled up with a queer guttural cry to his horses, the poodle leapt down and began to dance on his hind legs, and out of the hack poured a spring torrent of muslins, sash-ends, and bright cheeks under swaying hat-brims. Miss Testvalley found herself in a circle of nymphs shaken by hysterical laughter, and as she stood there, small, brown, interrogative, there swept through her mind a shred of verse which Dante Gabriel used to be fond of reciting: and she smiled at the idea that Endymion should greet her at the Saratoga railway station. For it was clearly in search of her that the rabble rout had come. The dancing nymphs hailed her with joyful giggles, the poodle sprang on her with dusty paws, and then turned a somersault in her honour, and from the driver's box came the twang of a guitar and the familiar wail of: “
Nita, Juanita, ask thy soul if we must part?”

“No, certainly not!” cried Miss Testvalley, tossing up her head toward the driver, who responded with doffed sombrero and hand on heart. “That is to say,” she added, “if my future pupil is one of the young ladies who have joined in this very flattering welcome.”

The enchanted circle broke, and the nymphs, still hand in hand, stretched a straight line of loveliness before her. “Guess which!” chimed simultaneously from five pairs of lips, while five deep curtsies swept the platform; and Miss Testvalley drew back a step and scanned them thoughtfully.

Her first thought was that she had never seen five prettier girls in a row; her second (tinged with joy) that Mrs. Russell Parmore would have been scandalized by such an exhibition, on the Saratoga railway platform, in full view of departing travellers, gazing employés, and delighted station-loafers; her third that, whichever of the beauties was to fall to her lot, life in such company would be infinitely more amusing than with the Parmores. And still smiling she continued to examine the mirthful mocking faces.

No dominant beauty, was her first impression; no proud angelic heads, ready for coronets or halos, such as she was used to in England; unless indeed the tall fair girl with such heaps of wheat-colored hair and such gentian-blue eyes—or the very dark one, who was too pale for her black hair, but had the small imperious nose of a Roman empress.... Yes, those two were undoubtedly beautiful, yet they were not beauties. They seemed rather to have reached the last height of prettiness, and to be perched on that sunny lower slope, below the cold divinities. And with the other three, taken one by one, fault might have been found on various counts; for the one in the striped pink-and-white organdy, though she looked cleverer than the others, had a sharp nose, and her laugh showed too many teeth; and the one in white, with a big orange-coloured sash the colour of the poodle's bow (no doubt she was his mistress), was sallow and red-haired, and you had to look into her pale starry eyes to forget that she was too tall, and stooped a little. And as for the fifth, who seemed so much younger—hardly more than a child—her small face was such a flurry of frowns and dimples that Miss Testvalley did not know how to define her.

“Well, young ladies, my first idea is that I wish you were all to be my pupils; and the second”—she paused, weighed the possibilities, and met the eyes—“the second is that this is Miss Annabel St. George, who is, I believe, to be my special charge.” She put her hand on Nan's arm.

“How did you know?” burst from Nan, on the shrill note of a netted bird; and the others broke into laughter.

“Why, you silly, we told you so! Anybody can tell you're nothing but a baby!”

Nan faced about, blazing and quivering. “Well, if I'm a baby, what I want is a nurse, and not a beastly English governess!”

Her companions laughed again and nudged each other; then, abashed, they glanced at the newcomer, as if trying to read in her face what would come next.

Miss Testvalley laughed also. “Oh, I'm used to both jobs,” she rejoined briskly. “But, meanwhile, hadn't we better be getting off to the hotel? Get into the carriage, please, Annabel,” she said with sudden authority.

She turned to look for her trunk; but it had already been shouldered by the nondescript young man in overalls, who hoisted it to the roof of the carriage, and then, jumping down, brushed the soot and dust off his hands. As he did so, Miss Testvalley confronted him, and her hand dropped from Nan's arm.

“Why—Lord Richard!” she exclaimed; and the young man in overalls gave a sheepish laugh. “I suppose at home they all think I'm in Brazil,” he said in an uncertain voice.

“I know nothing of what they think,” retorted Miss Testvalley drily, following the girls into the carriage. As they drove off, Nan, who was crowded in between Mab Elmsworth and Conchita, burst into sudden tears. “I didn't mean to call you ‘beastly,' ” she whispered, stealing a hand toward the new governess; and the new governess, clasping the hand, answered with her undaunted smile: “I didn't hear you call me so, my dear.”