Devil Water (39 page)

Jenny was alarmed. “He hasn’t found out anything about -- about you and Sir Wilfred?”

“Oh no,” said Evelyn. Her huge dark eyes suddenly softened and glowed as they always did when she thought of Wilfred Lawson. ”My father’s not
that
angry. And we must be so careful this afternoon at Lord Peterborough’s, Wilfred and I, lest he guess.” Across Evelyn’s oval face there ran a tremor of passionate anticipation. “Jenny, hurry!” urged the girl.

Jenny complied, rushing from her school frock into her best one -- a sky-blue silk with black velvet bows which Lady Betty had given her last year. It was much too short, and too tight across the bust, but no matter. Jenny was largely unaware of her appearance. “Why then is Mr. Byrd upset?” Jenny asked running a comb through her thick yellow curls and tying them back at the nape of her neck with a blue ribbon.

“Oh, poor Papa,” said Evelyn impatiently indulgent. “I suppose that some lady’s refused him again, or hasn’t as much fortune as he thought. I wonder if he’ll
ever
get a wife to his taste who will have him.”

Jenny was startled by this speech, which seemed unfilial. Yet Evelyn often talked in that pert way of her father, though she seemed to love and fear him too. It was puzzling, though Jenny knew humbly that she had no way of gauging feelings such as Evelyn’s, either for a father, or for a lover -- like Sir Wilfred.

William Byrd rose as his daughter entered the reception room with her friend. He was the very model of a fashionable Londoner, in a gold-buttoned plum velvet coat with stiffened skirts, waistcoat of embroidered mauve brocade, a tricorne edged with ostrich feathers perched on the long flowing gray-powdered wig which emphasized the darkness of his skin. His heavy-lidded black eyes were belied by a firmly compressed mouth. It was a haughty face which combined sensuality, pride, and yet a puritanical restraint, and he did not look his forty-nine years, since he was temperate in diet, and his frequent sexual excesses were balanced by a meticulous attention to his health.

Byrd bowed politely over Jenny’s hand, and asked without interest how she did. He did not quite disapprove of Evelyn’s friendship with Jenny -- who was sponsored by an earl -- and he felt that the society of a girl so much younger might curb in his daughter some of the willful tendencies of which he had lately become uneasily aware. Still, he dismissed Jenny as negligible, and once they were seated in the coach, and trundling up the Thames towards the Earl of Peterborough’s seat at Parson’s Green, he began to catechize his daughter sternly. Was she following the diet he had prescribed? Meat only once a day, no chocolate or fruit whatsoever? Was she doing her morning exercises? Had she taken the physic he left last time he called, and how often had it worked? Did she remember her evening prayers?

Evelyn answered yes to everything, and submitted to his rearrangement of the orange velvet rose she had pinned in her dark hair. She exerted herself to please him by reciting one of Horace’s odes, and then asking him sweetly if he had lately written any poems which she and Jenny might hear.

At this Byrd finally smiled. He was proud of his rhymed eulogies to various ladies whom he designated by such names as Sempronia, Cleora, Zenobia -- an elegant amusement much in vogue.

“I’ve written none lately,” he said patting Evelyn’s hand, “but I’ll concoct one for your birthday, my dear, if you like. I shall call you Amasia. Do you know what that means?”

“Not exactly, Papa,” said Evelyn, lowering her lashes.

“Why, the ‘Beloved One,’ of course,” said Byrd tenderly. “And indeed she is that to me, Miss Jenny,” he added turning towards the latter. “For she is my good obedient beautiful daughter, who shall see someday how much I cherish her, and what provision I’ll make for her happy future!”

Jenny felt Evelyn stiffen and heard her take a sharp breath.

“What do you mean by
that,
Father?”

“Nothing for you to fret about, child,” said Byrd. “You needn’t fear I’d part with you for a long time -- yet
someday
of course -- it must be faced. You’d not wish to be a spinster -- now would you!”

“Have you found me a husband?” asked Evelyn in a peculiar, rough voice, staring hard at her father.

“That is not a proper question,” said Byrd repressively. “You are far too young, as yet.”

His daughter turned her head away, and gazing out of the window at the village of Chelsea fell into one of her dark silent moods, which annoyed Byrd, whose good humor ebbed. Evelyn’s question incited several uncomfortable thoughts. He had not begun to search for a husband suitable to Evelyn, because it was first necessary to settle his own matrimonial state. A wife with some fortune was essential, more essential than anyone knew except Micajah Perry, his business agent. Only Perry was aware of the crippling debts Byrd had inherited from his dead wife’s father, or knew of the new debts incurred by the necessities of fashionable life in London. Byrd’s mouth tightened, and his eyes grew as somber as Evelyn’s while he thought of the five times he had proposed marriage in the last years, and of the embarrassments, the humiliations, inflicted by the five ladies of wealth and quality who had first encouraged his gallantries and then callously refused him as a husband. The last was the worst. Minionet, Byrd thought with a pang. Little Mrs. Jeffreys, who was a plump comely widow of good family and independent means. She had a pretty wit too, and in their exchange of amorous letters had called him the “Black Swan” and signed herself his “entranced and fluttering Minionet.” He had then sent her a persuasive word picture of himself signed “Inamorato L’Oiseau.” At that time he was amused by puns on his name.

Then, despite his frenzied entreaties she had suddenly ceased writing and she had obviously abandoned discretion about their courtship, for at Will’s Coffeehouse, Byrd finally discovered what had changed her. Ridicule. His friends were sniggering over a lampoon, which they were passing from hand to hand.

Sweet Jeffreys netted by a Byrd
Had better straggle loose
Or she will find when ‘tis too late
Black Swan is but an old gray goose.

Everyone denied authorship, of course, but Byrd had seen a mocking glint in Wilfred Lawson’s merry brown eyes, and his hatred for the young man crystallized. Long past were their days of real companionship or their jaunts together in quest of gambling and debauchery. Two years ago a quarrel had arisen over another woman and their friends had narrowly averted a duel. Since they had mutual acquaintances, and inevitably met, they resumed distant courtesies. Then Sir Wilfred, who was M.P. for his family borough at Cockermouth in Cumberland, had run into debt, and been publicly accused of corruption in the South Sea scandal. Worse than that, he took to voting Tory. Even last November Sir Wilfred had spoken
against
Walpole in a motion of the Grand Committee for the further punishing of all Papists. Byrd, who had known and admired Wilfred’s father, felt compelled to remonstrate acidly with the young Baronet, who rudely shrugged off the rebuke. This happened at a small ball to which Byrd had brought Evelyn, and Sir Wilfred had there further infuriated the father by singling out the girl and sitting with her for hours in a hidden alcove.

I
soon put a stop to
that!
Byrd thought, glancing at his daughter’s averted profile. He had dragged her back to school, and forbade her ever to speak to the Baronet again, should chance throw them together. She had wept and promised, and seemed so abashed by the whole episode that Byrd had been very gentle with her, and ended by sending her a new ivory fan as consolation. She needed a mother’s guidance, Byrd thought, and so did little Wilhelmina, who was seven, and still living with his Horsmanden cousins in Essex. Though it was Evelyn who seemed to have inherited the violent willfulness of her mother, and of her maternal grandfather, Daniel Parke, Governor of the Leeward Islands, who had there contrived to get himself most gruesomely murdered.

Byrd moved irritably on the coach seat, dismissing painful memories and considering the wifely possibilities of Maria Taylor, who had neither high birth, beauty, nor large fortune to recommend her, and was moreover encumbered by a veritable gorgon of a mother. Yet, on the other hand Miss Taylor was young, healthy, and well educated, and she dispensed balm to an oft-wounded heart for she showed genuine signs of attachment to himself.

Jenny huddled between the two silent Byrds, and being unable to see over them out of the windows, fell to picturing scenery in her head, as she often did. Sometimes she thought about the sea -- tumultuous waves, white-flecked under moonlight, but always she ended by picturing a moor-clad mountain; dark, craggy, and yet for some reason comforting. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Mrs. Strudick had read this out of the Psalter during morning prayer last month, and the words had caught Jenny’s attention. They gave her a delighted shiver of recognition, like certain pieces of music. Jenny began to sing, “Over the hills and far away . . .” in her head, and felt a bitter-sweet pleasure, mixed with a great longing.

She wasn’t sure what the longing was for, except that joined to the image of somber lowering hills was a memory of Rob. Rob had left London three years ago, “going back North,” he said in a triumphant way which had wounded her, for he scarcely seemed sorry to say goodbye. Lady Betty had been there at this farewell, and very kind to Jenny later, explaining that Rob had made quite a lot of money as running footman to the Duke of Wharton. That he had won a famous footrace for the Duke, all the way from Woodstock to Tyburn. The Duke had rewarded him well, and then invested Rob’s money in the South Sea Company, which was making all their fortunes -- had said Lady Betty happily. So Rob would be his own master up North, and a landowner too. And Jenny was only a little girl, and mustn’t fret .for a rough serving-lad who was not a suitable friend for her at all. Jenny had tried to obey, and often forgot about Rob; yet the feeling of being lost and rootless had deepened in her.

The Byrd coach trundled on through the flat Thames-side villages and drew up before the Peterborough mansion at Parson’s Green.

Byrd ushered the two girls into the house and towards their host. Charles Mordaunt, Third Earl of Peterborough, a brisk, dapper gentleman of sixty-five, was -- after a singularly hectic military and personal career -- beginning to enjoy a quieter life. He stood alertly greeting his guests at the door of his ballroom, which was set out for a concert with sofas and rows of gilded chairs.

“Ha, Byrd!” said Lord Peterborough jovially. “You’ve brought with you
two
beautiful birds, I see!” He chucked Evelyn under the chin and gave a slight start as he examined Jenny. His wrinkled lids opened wider, his eyes lit with a connoisseur’s appreciation.
“This
one yours too?” he asked of Byrd. “What a toast she’ll make! Would I were forty years younger!”

Byrd disclaimed Jenny, who blushed and curtsied, thinking the old Earl agreeable, for all he looked very much like a cricket. “You know my family?” continued the Earl, indicating two young people who stood behind him. He introduced the Byrd party to his fourteen-year-old grandson and heir, Lord Mordaunt, and then to his niece, Elizabeth Lucy Mordaunt, who was a plain dumpy girl of about twenty. Both young Mordaunts made polite murmurs, then turned away to greet other friends. “And you know Mrs. Robinson?” said the Earl with special emphasis, and unmistakable pride. He reached out his hand to a large sweet-faced lady who had been standing quietly in the doorway. “She has consented to sing for us today.”

Byrd did indeed know Anastasia Robinson. She was the reigning prima donna at the Opera House, yet managed to maintain such a formidable respectability, that rumor said Lord Peterborough, balked of his desire, had actually married her in secret. Deplorable weakness, if so, Byrd thought, since the lady was not only a public performer but a Catholic. Still Mrs. Robinson was accepted by high society, many of whom were present today, and Byrd perceived complacently that he himself knew most of them, at least by sight.

Byrd settled his two charges on a sofa in the empty ballroom, told them to stay there, then, seeing that the musicale would not start for some time, he began a leisurely tour around the rooms.

In the withdrawing room he saw the Twickenham group chatting together animatedly. Alexander Pope, the famous poet -- a hunchback with sharp probing little features --was laughing at some sally of John Gay’s. This minor poet was considered to be Pope’s satellite, and a chubby beaming moon he looked, too. Miss Martha Blount was seated with them, and everybody knew that Pope was as much in love with her as his warped body and mind would permit.

Byrd had met Miss Blount, and considered joining their party, when he suddenly spied the young dissolute Duke of Wharton, sprawling in an armchair and drinking brandy. Over the Duke hovered two of his particular protégés. One was Edward Young, an aspiring middle-aged playwright, who lived on the Duke’s bounty, and had lately gone in for writing tragedies. In consequence Young’s narrow short-chinned face wore an appropriate air of studied melancholy. The other dependent was Guido Serpini, an Italian musician whom the Duke had picked up somewhere on his travels. The Italian acted as general factotum for his patron -- secretary, procurer, and even more private roles, it was said. Serpini was a North Italian and had sandy eyebrows above squinting green eyes; he smiled quickly and incessantly, disclosing pointed yellowish teeth. Byrd considered that he had a vicious look, and was just such a fellow as Wharton
would
pick for an intimate.

Philip, Duke of Wharton, was only twenty-four, and he had a girlishly pretty face beneath the wig of cascading white curls. But he was president of the blasphemous Hell-Fire Club, and he had a reputation for wildly fantastic depravity, second to none in England.

He also had a lowborn wife hidden away somewhere, though her existence was disregarded alike by society and the Duke. At the moment he was ignoring his toadies and flirting languidly with Kitty, the lovely Duchess of Queensbury, and he was half tipsy no doubt. The latest lampoon about him in the coffeehouses went: