Life Mask (46 page)

'You put it very eloquently,' he murmured.

'Reputation's a harsh goddess. In my position—' Eliza waved at the narrow walls of the dressing room and hoped to God that neither Mrs Siddons nor Mrs Hopkins was about to walk into the middle of this scene—'I can't afford to rouse her wrath by allowing myself to be associated with such an unspeakable vice. I'm no great lady, I'm plain Miss Farren, soon to be an actress without a theatre'—Derby looked puzzled by that, but she hadn't the patience to explain—'and I can't weather what you call
nonsense.
"

After a moment he said, 'I can see I've angered you.'

'No, no,' she said unconvincingly. Her heart was hammering.

'Again, forgive me. But I have to dispute one point: you're no mere
Miss.
You're the idol of the English nation and your position on Olympus is unassailable.' Derby's voice was smooth as cream. 'I only wish you'd confided your fears two years back and I could have said what I say now: this bizarre rumour withered away long ago.'

'It sprang up again, then,' she snapped. 'Mr Siddons wrote this epigram—'

'William Siddons?' asked Derby, incredulous. 'I never heard a thing about it. But in any case he's a nobody. All these scandalmongers are nobodies: jealous gossips, petty poetasters, newspaper hacks. They don't matter. They're just the scum that floats on society's river; the hungry curs snapping at our heels. An age of liberty is coming, my dear; the old proprieties and timidities won't matter any more.' His beady eyes were gleaming. 'Why, your daughters will laugh to hear how rule-bound and hedged-in your sex used to be back in 1791!'

Your daughters.
It came to Eliza then that the Earl expected to be widowed in time to marry and get children on her. For all his respectful gallantry, he never seemed to doubt that it would happen. His confidence staggered her.

Derby had remembered his point. 'And I can assure you that the true members of the Beau Monde—men and women alike—have the greatest respect for Mrs Damer. Speaking for myself, I'm honoured to count her as my friend.'

'I was too,' said Eliza, hoarse, avoiding her mother's eyes. 'But I'm afraid it's too late.'

'Surely not.'

'I treated her coldly,' said Eliza, wanting to cry. 'I dropped her and I wouldn't give an explanation. I didn't know what to say. I still don't.'

'But do come along on Wednesday. Won't you?' he asked, rising to take his leave.

'Perhaps,' she said, miserable.

When he'd gone Eliza turned to face Margaret Farren, who was clearly in a sulk. 'Mother, I know you're wondering why I never told you this before.'

A loud sniff. "No, no. Such filthy things are better not spoken of.'

Eliza wasn't sure how to take that. After a minute she asked, 'What do you advise, in view of what Derby said—should I go to Strawberry Hill or not?'

But Mrs Siddons and Mrs Hopkins came in together just then, discussing their mutual dislike of Gothic melodrama and the best shade of greasepaint for scars.

A
NNE ARRIVED
at Strawberry Hill at half past three. Walpole, encased in an old-fashioned but finely cut grey silk coat, told her she was looking marvellously Spanish. 'Not tanned, of course, but there's a warm glow about you; it suits your eyes and your dark hair.'

'Who's coming to this dinner?'

'Your sister, Richmond, your parents, Derby, Miss Farren and her mother, and Sir Charles Bunbury to even up the sexes.'

She looked at him hard. 'You invited Miss Farren?'

'I did,' said Walpole, fingers at his lips. 'I thought it a suitable occasion.'

'For what?' Anne asked almost rudely.

He gave a little shrug. 'Rapprochement.'

She let out a sharp sigh. 'There's no chance of that, I assure you.' He didn't know about the epigram—the real reason for the broken friendship. Anne had no intention of upsetting her godfather in his twilight years by revealing that William Combe's cruel and fantastical invention was dogging her again. 'Miss Farren will send her excuses.'

'No, I have a pretty note from her saying she and her mother will come,' said Walpole sleekly. 'And another acceptance from her
unalterable Earl,
as I've taken to calling him.'

Sometimes her cousin's fondness for his own phrases made Anne's hackles rise.

But his face had fallen. 'I keep thinking how perfect it would be if the Berrys could be here with us—but for that we must drag out perhaps six more endless months.'

To distract him from that topic she asked him about the recent theft of silver from his house in Berkeley Square.

'Oh, it wasn't much—just a strainer and a spoon.' Walpole lowered his voice. 'Philip looked into the matter and found the shop where they were pawned; the culprit's description sounded dreadfully like my footman John. I had no stomach to accuse the boy, so I let him ride behind the carriage to Twickenham just as usual—but Philip and Kirgate privately urged him to confess it to me. Instead, the boy ran away on Friday night; the housekeeper had locked all the doors as usual, so he seems to have dropped from the library window and gone off across the meadows, without his hat, even!'

Anne's mouth twitched at Walpole's concern for the hat. 'That is upsetting.'

'Poor fellow, he might have confided in me; I wouldn't have turned him off, only docked his salary somewhat for a lesson,' lamented Walpole. 'I should have kept my silver locked up and not put temptation in his way.'

Affection surged through her.

'Now I'll have to hire another footman; do you know of anyone reliable?'

Anne shook her head. 'Good ones like my Sam are diamonds at the moment.'

Her parents arrived with the Richmonds at ten to four and shortly afterwards Derby came up the drive on horseback with his friend Bunbury. But no Farrens, or
mère.
Walpole put off dinner by half an hour. Anne answered questions about her travels a little distractedly. 'Yes, via the plains of Andalusia to the kingdom of Granada.'

'Such stamina, through all privations,' marvelled Lady Ailesbury.

'Did you see the Alhambra?' asked Sir Charles Bunbury.

'Of course. I adore Moorish style,' Anne said, 'but the palace is miserably ruined and daubed with whitewash.'

'Ah, if only the thing could be shipped wholesale to England, we'd know how to preserve its glories,' said Derby.

He glanced over at the door. Was he thinking what Anne was thinking—that the actress wasn't going to show up?

The gentlemen were standing up. Anne leapt to her feet. There was dumpy Mrs Farren, lifting off her daughter's pleat-edged pelisse and passing it to the footman. Anne felt a blush mark her cheeks like a slap.
It's all right,
she thought,
no one's looking at me.
She was dizzy; she feared she might faint. It was simply the shock of such an encounter after all this time. The mortification of it. Eliza was making her apologies to Walpole: a rehearsal' had run late, the hackney driver had been unwilling to go as far as Twickenham, then the cab had cracked a wheel.

'Why, how very à la mode you are, Miss Farren,' murmured Lady Mary.

'And how you carry it off!' said Lady Ailesbury.

The actress was in the new French look from head to toe. Sheer white muslin with tinsel spots, shirred at the neck, which was very décolleté, showing creamy breasts; the dress was bound just below the bosom and hung down as straight as a candle, except where it touched the delicate curves of hipbones and belly and thigh; little slippers with no heels; short fair hair, curling round her ears like a baby's, with a single feather dancing from a headband above it. 'Oh, it's an easy style,' the young woman murmured, 'it flatters any wearer.'

'Not so,' said Anne, too loudly, and Eliza's eyes flicked up to hers. They hadn't greeted each other yet. 'Only the tall and slim can really achieve such a Grecian impression,' Anne went on as impersonally as she could. 'Last month in Paris I saw a terrible old dowager in one of these dresses, like a pudding forced into its bag.'

Sir Charles Bunbury brayed with laughter.

Eliza, who was wearing barely a hint of rouge, gave her a remarkable smile. It had amusement in it and a shadow, too, Anne thought. 'They're so comfortable and freeing. One seems to float along.' They had evidently decided not to be afraid to speak to each other.

Derby was watching his beloved,
like he watches a winning horse,
Anne thought. 'Was it a wrench to sacrifice your wonderful hair, Miss Farren?' The tide sounded strangely formal in her mouth.

'No, no,' said Eliza. 'I'm so used to altering my looks on stage, you know—brunette one evening, silver-wigged the next—that I never mind a change. It's not that I'm not vain, but my vanity pertains to the whole, not the parts.'

'You look exquisite, of course,' Walpole fretted, 'but mightn't you take cold in these delicate draperies?'

'It is almost June,' she reminded him sweetly, 'and I have a shawl.' It looked like Kashmir to Anne; the actress had draped it over one shoulder in the antique style.

'Oh, that reminds me,' cried Lady Ailesbury, 'our dear Sir William Hamilton's coming to England this summer, with Miss Emma Hart, whom he means to marry—you know, the lady who's won such fame for acting all the famous classical statues in an Indian shawl; people rave about her expressiveness.'

The girl was also famous for being his nephew's cast-off mistress. Anne shuddered with relief that she hadn't accepted the diplomat's proposal if his tastes were so low. 'I should have thought classical statues were known for their serene
lack
of expression,' she murmured.

'Let me take you in to dinner now, Miss Farren,' said Walpole, offering his left arm, as the right was swollen with gout. Bunbury, with a show of enthusiasm, asked Mrs Farren to do him the honour. Walpole had planned that well, Anne thought; Mrs Farren would be less embarrassed by a baronet than by a duke or an earl.

The dishes were laid out in neat patterns all along the table in the dim refectory. Walpole found Eliza a seat near the fire that was blazing within the arches of one of the villa's elaborate carved hearths. He drew everyone's attention to the fire screen—one of Lady Ailesbury's worsted pictures depicting a vase of flowers, inlaid in mahogany and ivory. Anne happened to know that he kept the thing in here because he only used this room about once a year.

Anne was describing to Richmond the swathings of black lace she'd had to wear in Spain. 'I beg your pardon?' she said, turning towards the actress.

'I only asked were you happy there?'

It occurred to Anne to say,
What concern of yours is my happiness?
'Yes,' she said defiantly, 'immensely happy. The climate—and such antiquity and grace in everything I saw, I was almost inclined to settle there.' Cries of protest from several of the guests. 'Really, to be reincarnated as a fine orange tree in a Moorish garden at Seville, with cooling fountains playing around one's roots, would be a fine fate.'

This bit of Oriental whimsy caused considerable amusement.

Anne had little appetite; she fiddled with some stewed lamb. Walpole was describing his consultations with mad-doctors on behalf of the young Lord Orford. 'My nephew's financial affairs are of a singularly chaotic nature and he's taking to harnessing his phaeton to four red deer.'

'Oh, dear,' said Lady Ailesbury.

'That's what I said,' he joked, 'oh,
deer!
'

The Richmonds started describing the new fashionable dance from Vienna, the
landler.
Bunbury, on Anne's left, was pestering the actress for information about her colleagues at Drury Lane. 'Is it true that Mrs Crouch and her husband live in a harmonious threesome with Mr Kelly?'

'It was,' Eliza said coolly, 'but the singers have recently sent Lieutenant Crouch packing with a good allowance.'

'And Dora Jordan—can you reveal what terms she's come to with the Duke of Clarence?'

Eliza's lips pursed. 'The papers have been so full of the royal negotiations, I don't see what I can add.'

'I read that her friends are asking an annuity of £12,000 a year and an equipage for her,' contributed Field Marshal Conway, 'with her children by all parties to be provided for.'

'Miss Farren is an expert on the arts of theatre,' Anne found herself commenting, 'not on the scandalous lives of other players.'

'Well said,' murmured Derby. There was a slightly awkward pause. 'Did any of you see Kemble play Cato the other night? When he fell on his sword rather than submit to the dictator Caesar, I wept like a babe.'

'Stupendous, isn't he?' said Conway.

'I've been reading Mrs Inchbald's
Simple Story,'
said Lady Ailesbury. 'Apparently she based the priest hero on Kemble; he was schooled in a seminary, did you know?'

So they were back to gossip about actors' private lives again; Anne sighed inwardly. Well, the one thing she was determined not to let the conversation sink to was political strife; too many dinners ended in a quarrel nowadays. There was a bad moment after dessert, when someone rashly mentioned Mirabeau's death. 'Yes, My Lord, I
do
call it good news,' Walpole said to Derby.

'The cause of liberty—' the Earl began.

'Liberty!' Walpole interrupted. 'No one's more devoted to true liberty than I am. That's why I abhor the Assembly, which has marred a good cause by the most outrageous extremism. A lion attacks only when hungry or provoked, but who can live in a desert full of hyenas?'

Walpole had a knack, Anne thought, for making his own hyperbole sound like the King James Version. 'No contention at table, gentlemen,' she said a little crisply. 'Might I suggest a game? Twenty Questions, perhaps?'

Walpole, a little sheepish, nominated Anne—as the guest of honour—to take on herself the responsibility of choosing a subject.

'It must be something generally known, though,' said Bunbury, 'none of your obscure Greek things.'

'Very well,' said Anne. 'Give me a moment...'

Richmond asked the standard opening question. 'Does what you've thought of belong to the animal, vegetable or mineral kingdom?'