The Buccaneers (50 page)

Murmuring, “Only pour
le sport
—why not?” Miss Testvalley took a volume of D. G. Rossetti's poems from a shelf, rested it on its spine, shut her eyes, and let it fall open. “Yes, quite so,” she thought, reading the poem thus revealed. “But is it meant for her, or for me?”

 
 
“Mrs. Robinson
approved of your leaving the Duke!?” Miss Testvalley widened her eyes at Annabel.

After a late breakfast, as soon as Miss Testvalley could gently extricate herself from old Gennaro, who happily patted her hand while the old sisters smiled and nodded, and Serafina spooned honey on to her bread, she had taken Nan into the sitting-room for a review of all that had been happening at Champions, at Belfield, and here in Denmark Hill since they had said goodbye at Hyde Park Corner.

“I was surprised too,” Nan replied in the same key of amazement; “so much so that, without thinking, I'm afraid, I told her I was coming here.”

Miss Testvalley considered. “Discretion seemed advisable, but if Mrs. Robinson was sympathetic she won't have told the Duke—or anyone else—where you are.”

“It was Mr. Robinson who told Mr.—who told Guy where to find me.”

Nan pronounced the Christian name with a self-conscious, bashful, expectant look at her governess, who, sitting upright in a high-backed cushionless armchair, remarked tonelessly, “I imagine that the Duke would welcome you back.”

“I don't think he would.” Nan perched on a footstool. “He was more than angry, he was ...
outraged;
I understand that word now. He'd gone
beyond
rage. By now he'll be erasing me from his life.—And I wouldn't go back to him even if I didn't love someone else.”

Miss Testvalley scrutinized her gravely. “Tell me about Mr. Thwarte.”

Nan eagerly welcomed her first mention of the name. “As you know, I'd made up my mind to go back to America. But now I find that he is leaving England, on
my
account.”

“Leaving—!” Miss Testvalley sat back, astounded. This was completely unexpected. She kept herself from asking: “Does his father know?”

“He wants me to go with him,” Nan continued in a rush, “and marry him as soon as Ushant divorces me—”

Miss Testvalley's mouth fell open. “To go with—before you are married?”

“To be with him, not to
live
with him.” An eloquent facial expression, and a deep blush, rather than her words, made Nan's distinction clear. “But I'm afraid it would be ruinous for him. I said I must talk with you. I don't want to be irrational, or selfish.”

But as she invoked reason and selflessness, Annabel's great dark-fringed eyes pleaded for encouragement to follow her heart; she had a bloom, a radiance, the governess had not seen since her marriage, and there was a new vibrancy in her voice as she said, “He's here!” almost before a knock on the door sounded and Serafina let the visitor in.

 
 
Guy too had changed since Miss Testvalley's last sight of him. His face was thinner, almost grim; and vertical lines were etched on either side of his mouth. But his eyes brightened and softened as they went instinctively to Nan before he turned and bowed to the older lady.

“I hope that Sir Helmsley is making a good recovery?” Miss Testvalley asked at the same moment that Nan asked: “Is your father very angry?”

“Thank you, yes—yes, to both questions,” Guy said unsmilingly.

He had no idea, the governess saw, that
ber
enquiry had been inspired by anything other than courtesy. He took a seat near her throne-like chair, across from the footstool from which Annabel informed him: “I was about to tell—” She turned to Miss Testvalley. “Oh, Val, don't think I don't know that you may suffer for sheltering me, but I hope I can help—”

“No!” Miss Testvalley, raising a prohibitive hand, achieved her most clipped, most authoritative tone. “I shall manage beautifully; there are more offers than I can accept, quite without regard to such employers as you know of. And in any case, Annabel, I would not allow
my
concerns to affect your future. Wherever that may lie,” she added, looking deliberately, but uncertainly, at Guy, who might well be reluctant to admit a third person to this discussion.

However, Guy addressed her with alacrity. “Annabel may have told you that I have a job in Greece? And after that, work in India. The pay is decent—or indecent; in those poor countries we'd be rich. I also have some money of my own. I can undertake to support Annabel!”

“He might be some young bank-clerk asking a parent for a daughter's hand in marriage,” Miss Testvalley thought, with a strange sense of
déjà vécu.
She had once interrogated Lord Richard Marable as to his feeling for Conchita Closson. (Well, the feeling had been as true as his nature allowed; no truer, though consecrated and legalized, than in his brief clandestine pursuit and conquest of the family governess.) Later, the Duke of Tintagel had sought her help in his wooing of Annabel St. George. And now, in the dissolving of the Duke's marriage, she was again being treated as Annabel's quasi-mother.

“But”—she silently told the tall, lean, fair young man, so like and so unlike his father—“I may be
your stepmother.”

As she phrased the thought, however, the “may be” tentatively modulated to “might be” ... and, tremblingly, to “might have been.” Just as her frail cockle-shell of a bark spoke the unhoped-for tiny island of Ithaca, a thunderhead was forming over it, and winds beyond her power to resist were sweeping it out to sea toward Scylla and Charybdis and the Symplegades....

“Greece!” Though she wasn't happy, Miss Testvalley smiled a little. “Mr. Thwarte, when she was sixteen Annabel said that if she loved a man—I believe that at that period he had to be a poet—she would leave her marble halls and follow him to the Isles of Greece. We didn't know then that she
would
live in marble halls. A cousin of mine,” she added, parenthetically, out of genealogical habit, “was Lord Byron's doctor.”

“Since Byron's time, few Westerners have gone to Greece, and they've gone mostly in comfort, on private yachts.” Guy became his own devil's advocate. “I don't want to mislead Annabel. It's a rugged country. I've been talking with people. It's as rough”—he turned to Nan—“as your Wild West. Few roads, no railways—hence my job—almost no doctors; it's still in a way under Turkish rule. Either you'd stay in Athens while I explored, or you'd ride a donkey and we'd sleep in villages and live on goat cheese and olives.”

Nan's eyes were shining. “It must be as beautiful as ever!”

Seeing an answering light in Guy Thwarte's eyes, Miss Testvalley coughed. “It may be a long time,” she said pointedly, “before you are free to marry. If Annabel goes to Greece now—?” She looked from one to the other.

“Miss Testvalley,” Guy said emphatically, “I'm not proposing it out of sheer selfishness. Think!”—he leaned forward, fists on his knees—“Think! If she stays here, defendant in a law suit, what life will she have?—even if Ushant does not want her to be persecuted. And in America, journalists—not only American but English, French—would swoop on her like harpies—”

With a shake of the head, Nan interrupted him. “From what I've heard,” she said wryly, “I could go to one of the new American territories.—In the Wild West!” she threw at Guy, half-smiling, “for a few days and buy a divorce. But I married Ushant in the Church of England. The Dowager says I should have thought before I made vows, and she's right. It's only fair to let Ushant divorce me according to the same rules.”

“He will have to anyway,” Miss Testvalley put in, “to be free to re-marry.”

Nan nodded. “In any case, until we are both free, I—I want to keep my word to him. But I'll write now and tell him that I am going away and... hope to be with someone else.”

“To serve as the ‘confession' one hears of?” Miss Testvalley suggested.

“I had not thought of it as a confession,” Nan said loftily.

Just as she was ceasing to be a duchess, thought her governess, Nan was beginning to display something of a duchess's hauteur. Then she realized that Nan was trying to express something that manifestly did not come easily.

“I wouldn't feel immoral living with Guy, even before we could marry. I
would
feel immoral if I went back to Ushant, not loving him and having to ... produce sons for him.” Nan addressed the speech to her governess, and the colour mounted to the roots of her tawny hair; but when she had finished she looked directly at Guy, who, with a “No matter how long, I will wait,” got up and kissed her hands.

All at once Miss Testvalley felt depressed and jaded. They would go off together; this discussion was farcical. And it was unlikely that they would keep a sword between them during the months of waiting. And why should they? The social deterrent would no longer affect Annabel, who'd already have lost her reputation. Still, she had to state the obvious, to make sure Annabel knew.

“Mr. Thwarte,” she said bluntly, “Annabel thinks that she may do you harm, but she will lose more than you ever could. The arduousness of life in Greece is irrelevant, as are marble halls. Wherever you go, you, as a man, will be accepted. She will be ostracized—even after you marry—by Europeans and the few Americans you'll meet. And by ‘respectable' natives. You have lived abroad; do you agree with what I say?”

“I d-do.” In his sincerity, Guy stuttered. “I have thought about it. I shall have to associate with Europeans, especially in India. But I will never c-c-consort, never have any but the unavoidable business contacts, with anyone, anywhere, where Annabel isn't honoured.” He stood up, energetic and buoyant, as if re-invigorated by Annabel's mettlesome flouting of convention, and said roundly: “Miss Testvalley! If Annabel were to be unhappy, or I to be unhappy for her, we wouldn't stay! We'd go to Canada, or Australia—New Zealand—where life is different. I'm a working man. A civil engineer. I care no more than Annabel does about society.”

Guy's self-assurance spoke in the high poise of his head, the direct gaze of his gray eyes; and it was a bold assurance new in kind in Miss Testvalley's experience of the privileged classes, deriving as it did from personal achievement in the ungentle world where ability mattered. “I can build railways,” he continued, “and they want railways all over the world. We can travel. Annabel wants to help poor people and teach children. She'll find more work than she can ever do. What can I say, Miss Testvalley, except that, that—I pledge Annabel my life.”

“It's true love,” Miss Testvalley thought. “I believe he will be loyal.” Her heart was gripped, as in a vise, by a pang of yearning; she shut her eyes a moment for the pain. Nevertheless her immediate comment was dry: “You would at least escape the great obstacle to casual elopers—boredom.” She had in mind various couples she knew of who had “bolted” dramatically to Biarritz or Monte-Carlo expecting that thenceforth life would be an endless holiday.... More kindly, she said to Guy: “You will understand my concern. Annabel is an idealist; she can easily be taken advantage of in this rough world.”

“Ah, but I've become a realist,” Nan protested, while Guy demanded: “Miss Testvalley, won't you trust me?”

Miss Testvalley blazed at them. “Oh, you are both impetuous, too impetuous! The trouble is that I too am a romantic! Last night I tried the
sortes Virgilianae
with Dante Gabriel's poems, and the book opened to:

 
“You see,
I
would act! I would seize the moment! That's why,” she lied, “I'm always glad to take off to some new post, some new country. But I do not feel entitled to be adventurous with
other
people's lives; and what you're doing will affect other people ... your families, their friendships....”

“Val!” Nan clasped her hands in her lap as she bent forward. “I think the only person I have a serious obligation to is Ushant, and he won't truly be hurt, only in his sense of correctness. I've thought and thought about it all.” She spoke like a good pupil expecting praise. But the teacher said nothing, and her stillness, rather than any expression, roused Nan's alarm. “There's something else, Val, isn't there? Have I another responsi—There's something you're not telling me!”

In her stillness, Miss Testvalley had made a decision. What she chose to say, however, was tangential. “When all this comes out, you realize, no one will be allowed to mention your name in front of Kitty and Corisande.”

Nan flinched. “Of course,” she said slowly, “I'll be a Fallen Woman....”

Nan's visceral jealousy of the two girls had vanished as quickly as it had smitten her, and she again thought of them fondly; the more fondly (naturally) because she knew how much they admired her. She was so jolted by Miss Testvalley's unsparing reminder that she failed to realize that
this
particular consequence of an elopement hardly accounted for the governess's somber mien; but Guy asked quietly:

“Miss Testvalley, is there more that we should know?—Some obligation?—Is there someone else who will suffer besides Ushant and”—he halted, but then went on firmly—“my father?”

Miss Testvalley looked into the friendly, worried eyes that were searching hers. Did he know, did he guess? She couldn't tell. But if he did, what difference would it make? Leadenly, she said: “Obligation? Yes. What you're doing lays a heavy obligation on you to be happy with each other.” Both young people were caught by her tone. But martyrdom was not in her combative nature. Drawing a deep breath, she summoned an encouraging smile. “And I am sure that you will be!—Besides, you are not going into exile forever. Mr. Thwarte, you will inherit Honourslove. Your son will inherit Honourslove, and at some time you'll return home. People forget. They forget even the unforgettable.... So,” she went on briskly, “I take it that you will not contest a charge of ... of infidelity, but will avoid the possible danger of actual arrest. Just what are your plans?”