Reprise (24 page)

“What about her?” he asked, while a wave of fear washed over him. What had happened? It had such a final sound to it, almost as though she were dead!

“Did you not hear of her accident?”

“What accident? I heard nothing!” His voice was loud in the small saloon.

“She was thrown from a horse in Cornwall, and was badly hurt.”

“Prudence doesn’t ride!”

“Does she not? Then that explains the accident--she must have been learning. I was to pay her a visit, you know. I am going to friends in Bristol and was invited to run down to Padstow to spend a week with her, but she is unable to receive me. Her mother wrote to cancel the trip.”

“Her
mother
wrote? You mean she isn’t even able to hold a pen! Fanny, how bad is it?” He was on his feet.

“Why, she didn’t say it was so very serious, but she took quite a spill. Her back was damaged her mother said, and she was unable to walk.”

“Oh, my God! When did it happen?”

“Early in April. I wondered she stopped writing those articles in the paper. They were very good, don’t you think?”

“Fanny, you don’t mean she’s
crippled
for life!”

“Oh no, Mrs. Mallow didn’t say so. She is having trouble walking, is all she said.”

“Where is she staying? Can you give me her address?”

“Yes, but I have already written and should hear soon..."

“Get it for me!”

“I have it written down somewhere--Dammler, you don’t mean you are
going
to her?” she asked, as she began looking around herself for the address.

“Of course I’m going.”

She didn’t have to ask why. His face was white, his hand trembling so she had to write the address for him. She assured him the accident was not so terrible as he imagined, but he pictured Prudence lying on a bed, racked with pain, crippled, despondent,
dying.

While he drove at madman’s pace toward her, seeing in his mind this helpless wreck of a woman, she lay on a bed of pillows, being tempted with every delicacy the county offered. Her forgiving, understanding heart and her articles had made her a great favorite in the new neighborhood. There was a mystery and a romance around her, with the broken engagement and her solitary walks over the rocks. She was thought to have done the place a very pretty favor too, to write them up in the papers. Her back did give a twinge from time to time, of course. She had wrenched it rather badly when the mule--she would never have ventured on the back of a horse--slipped and she fell. She was sorry to have to put Fanny off, but the countryside offered so few diversions that if she couldn’t even walk about with her, it seemed a poor idea to ask her to come. Her fall, which had necessitated her walking home alone--the mule had bolted--had been less serious than the chill she had taken. She had a bad cold, and it was really this that confined her to her bed, and made her go off a little in her looks. She had lost three pounds, which Clarence was trying to get back on her by feeding her ass’s milk. The articles she had discontinued because she had already written all she could think of.

There was nothing to prevent her being up and about now but inertia, which Clarence called, and soon induced the doctor to call, melancholia, that she might have a known, discussable ailment. She hadn’t the heart to get up off of her bed. For what? To face another day of walking to the seaside, of walking home and taking tea with Clarence, of saying to get away from him she thought she’d do a little writing, only to sit with a hateful white sheet before her and nothing to say? No, she lay in bed, reading novels and London newspapers a good week old that never said anything about Allan. At least they didn’t say he had left, or got married. He might hear she was ill. If she got up and around, he could never hear she was ill. Oh, Dammler, you don’t know the worst of me yet, she thought. You never called me conniving, but I am!

Such a long trip it was, over two hundred and fifty miles. Time to picture her not only crippled but dead, cold and buried, without ever telling her he was sorry. Why had he been such a fool? How had he imagined he could live without her? He hadn’t imagined it, and he knew she couldn’t live without him, either. He had done it to punish her. That was it. To get the upper hand once and for all, that she not be pointing out to him how wretchedly, miserably
awful
he was. He knew she loved him; knew every time they met she hoped he would come to her. He could see her growing sorrier by the day, and wanted her to be good and sorry before he went back to her. Greece? He never intended to leave England, not alone in any case.

Chapter Nineteen

He arrived in Padstow late
in the afternoon. Dusk was approaching by the time he found their cottage. When he was admitted at the door, he looked more ill than Prudence. He was haggard from the long trip, from worry, from not eating or sleeping worth a damn.

“Lord Dammler!” Mrs. Mallow exclaimed in surprise.

“How is she?” were his first words, uttered before he removed his hat or said good day.

A caller at the cottage was enough of an occasion to bring Clarence trotting into the little hallway. Such a caller as Dammler was a rare and blessed event in this dull existence. It promised a new round of social doings. If Dammler came, society would not be far behind.

“She is flat on her back,” was his greeting, spoken in perfectly cheerful accents. “A terrible fall she took. She should never have tried riding, but she is so fond of those rocks out there we couldn’t keep her home. She is become a regular goat for clambering over them, and writes up every trip, too. You’ve no idea the history attaching to that bunch of rocks. Prudence is looking into it at the library.”

“Can I see her?”

“Prepare yourself for a shock,” Clarence warned, while Wilma slipped upstairs to tell Prudence he was here. “She’s fading away to a shadow.”

Abovestairs, the mother said, “Prue, Dammler has come.”

The answer was even less verbose. “Oh!” was all she could say. No more was necessary between them. It was all there. Wilma could not entirely approve of him, but she was happy he came, since it brought the light back to her daughter’s eyes. Got her at
last
up off her bed, flying to a mirror to brush her hair, put on a fresh cap and bed jacket. The exercise made her dizzy, bedridden as she had been for some time. She sunk weakly back on the mattress and pulled up the counterpane just as he tapped at the door.

“I’ll leave you,” Wilma said, feeling criminally irresponsible to do it. Her daughter didn’t hear her.

Dammler stepped in, hesitant, frightened at what he would see. The crisis robbed her of color, left her limp against the pillows, her breath short. He thought she looked appallingly thin and wan, but he looked worse himself. She smiled softly, unable to keep her eyes quite dry. His impulse was to rush forward and take her into his arms, but with Clarence come upstairs and peeking over his shoulder, he could not. “So, Miss Mallow, malingering in your bed, are you?” he asked in a tone of forced heartiness. “You mean to go into a decline and become an interesting consumptive, no doubt.”

“Come along, Clarence,” Wilma said, and led him protesting down the hall.

Dammler advanced to the bedside. “You won’t have the opportunity to lay it at
my
door, my girl.”

“I don’t intend to,” she answered weakly.

“Society will. Who but that loose liver of a Dammler could influence a maiden so ill? Loose liver--a terrible phrase! I envisage a discrete organ floating like a meringue in custard, waiting to attach itself to something it shouldn’t, or collide with an unwary intestine. I’m babbling. Forgive me.” The suddenly intense expression to his last speech indicated it was not his habitual babbling he asked to be forgiven.

She smiled to hear him speak so much like himself. “Incorrigible as ever.”

“No! I am eager to be corrected! I’ve missed your restraining hand on my grosser--metaphors. How are you, Prue?”

“They tell me I’ll live. You look pale, Allan. Why don’t you sit down?” She indicated a chair by the bedside. "What have you been doing with yourself’? Are you doing any writing?”

“A little.” This was not what he wished to discuss at all, but he took his cue from her. “Perhaps you’ll look it over when you are feeling better. It will return you into the hips very likely. Hit it hard with your red pencil. It’s dreadful stuff, really. Lugubrious.”

"That doesn’t sound like you.”

He was up from the chair, bending over her. "It was me without you, Prudence,” he said, gazing at her intently. “That is a different thing from me
with
you. I’ve missed you so,” he said, smiling a smile that was close to tears. “Oh what a poor thing language is! I’m supposed to be a poet, and what do I bleat out? I miss you! A banker would do better. I have been distracted, demented, half crazy,
empty
without you. When I heard you were ill I panicked. Came galloping down at a pace Clarence would admire, with my heart in my mouth every step of the way, picturing you dead when I got here--and there’s so much I want to say to you. It killed me to think I had been so foolish, so proud, so consummate an ass as to let my pride--oh yes, I’ve managed to corner the market on that one too!--my pride and a fear of rebuff stand in the way of making it up with you.”

“No, now you are stealing my sin.”

“It was worse than pride. It was vengeance. I wanted to
hurt
you, Prue, as you hurt me. And I love you better than anything in the world. Here I am, spilling out my soul again, while you lie there silent as a spy. You’ll have to brace yourself for one word at least. Yes or no. Can I stay?” He looked at her closely, biting her lower lip, unsure now of his reception.

“Oh Allan! Of course you can stay.”

“I don’t refer to Cornwall. Pray don’t tell me it is a free country, as you did in Bath. Can I stay with
you,
always?”

“Yes, if you want to attach your floating meringue to this old organ, feel free.”

“You have just bought yourself a most tenacious barnacle, lady,” he said smiling, and reaching down he kissed the top of her head.

“Cheap at the price, too! One word.”

“That, my dear heart, is but the down payment. I’ll pry more words out of you shortly, when you’re feeling better.” He stopped and looked acutely uncomfortable, not only physically, leaning over her, but at some mental disease as well. He sat gingerly on the side of the bed. “I doubt this is approved behavior for a sickroom. Does it disturb you?”

“No,” she answered, disturbed to the marrow of her bones, but in a highly felicitous way.

He grasped her two hands in his. “Prue--how sick are you? Tell me the truth--everything. I mean, even if it’s something unthinkable like being bedridden for life, or a year to live..."

She felt foolish indeed to have to confess her malady was no more than a broken heart, that she had, in fact, been malingering, cosseting herself quite shamelessly.

“Oh, no! It’s nothing like that. It’s more of an--an indisposition. A sort of melancholia, the doctor calls it,” she admitted.

“Fanny Burney said you had taken a spill from a horse and hurt your back.”

“Oh, is that how you heard? Well to tell the truth, Allan, the fall was not serious. It was only a mule, but I took a chill, you see.”

“I knew there was something wrong. I knew before I heard. I was uneasy all month. I had an apprehension something dreadful had happened to you. I should have come sooner.”

“It was only a bout of melancholia.”

“I’ve had one of those, too. You are going to be de-melancholized very swiftly, you hear? I’ll come and tell you amusing stories, do tricks, stand on my head if you like--even on Bond Street, put on my cap and jingle my bells until there isn’t
an atomy of melancholy
left in you. There’s a pun for you to start getting cured with.”

“The cure promises to be as bad as the disease.”

“And you’re too thin, too. I’ll stuff you with cream and eggs and champagne and caviar to get you back on your pins in time for a June wedding. All right?”

“It sounds so agreeable I won’t be in a hurry to get out of my convalescence. I might just malinger into a big, fat, cosseted, champagne-stuffed cat.”

“That you won’t! You’ll be out of that bed and into your wedding gown we had made up last spring before June. Then you can take to your bed for as long as you like, but you’ll take me with you.” He laughed. “I guess I haven’t changed so much after all, have I? Ever the reprobate. And I
really
thought I was cured!”

“It seems to be
me
who brings out the worst in you! You were as proper as a judge all the time you were away from me. But a cat and dog--what is to be expected of such a match but that they will fight to the finish. Nothing left but the claws and fur.”

“Oh, God, Prue, I was never so miserable in my life. This past fall and winter have been an
eternity
long. The only things that stand out with any clarity in my mind are the few times I met
you.
At Fanny’s remember? --where we talked about Rogers, and you said he was always building dungeons in the air? I wanted so much to follow you home that day and tell you we were doing the same, but I was too busy putting locks on all the doors of my dungeon, screwing racks and chains into the walls to torture you with. It’s so good to be able to talk to you again. A bracing
soul
-ar breeze for my tired spirit. That is spelled..."

“Yes, I know, Allan. It does not refer to the sun.”

“You always understood me so completely. Words are hardly necessary between us. Yet they are our stock-in-trade with the rest of the world. I like the notion that we are different, closer
entre nous deux
than to the rest.” There was a sound in the hallway, and he stopped. “I think the world is about to intrude, dammit.”

Clarence tapped on the door and stepped in. “Well, well, I see you have got the roses back in her cheeks, Nevvie. There is nothing like a little bundling to put the roses in a girl’s cheeks, try as we might with berries and ass’s milk.”

"What you required all along is a jackass, you see, not a milcher,” Dammler replied quizzingly, then a quick flash to Prudence, where no words were necessary to tell each what the other was thinking. There had been a prime jackass present all along.