Reprise (7 page)

Once at the party, she realized she was not just one guest, but a very special one. Allan had claimed the saloon would not hold more than fifty comfortably, but there were close to four times that number of people milling about within various rooms--writers and politicians, ambassadors and dukes, even a royal prince or two, but when she entered she felt she was the one he had been waiting for. She knew him well enough to read his thoughts by his mobile face. A look almost of peace descended on his features when he took her hand. He said no more than, “Hi, Prudence. Glad you could come.” The eyes said the rest. He made the rest of the party welcome, then turned back to her. “How do you like the house?” he asked. She had thought it would be the play he inquired about.

“It looks wonderful,” she complimented, drawing her eyes away from him to glance at newly done walls, new furnishings, new mirrors and huge tubs of flowers everywhere. The place had been old, poorly furnished. He had had it refinished from ceilings to floors.

“I hope you like the way I have fixed it up?” he asked. Did she imagine the nervous tone in this question. She read volumes into the platitude. What should it matter what she thought of it if she were to spend only an evening here as a guest at a party? “No oriental splendor, you see. The ottomans and hassocks all done away with. Good old Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Hettie gave me a hand with it. I left the black and white marble entrance floor. You said you liked the patterned floor.”

Not too hard to read meaning into this remark. When he went on to point out the red carpeting on the stairs, he was as well as saying the place was hers. He had already told her he thought red carpeting a trifle nouveau riche, but she had proclaimed it of particular appropriateness to herself in that case, and if he had put in red carpeting, it was not for his own pleasure.

“It’s bright as afternoon in here,” Clarence said, frowning at this phenomenon.

“Gaslight,” Dammler explained aside. There were other guests waiting to be welcomed, but he held on to her hand a moment longer. “I want to show you the study later. I have something for you there.”

In her mind she felt it must be the engagement ring, and went off into the main saloon with a heart that was in flight. It took a little plummet when the first face she saw was Lady Malvern, talking to Hettie, but when Hettie made an excuse and fled right to her side, she rallied. Hettie and Dammler were as close as peas in a pod, so that this distinction was not negligible.

“Well, Prudence, nice to see you again. Are you satisfied with the job we have done on the house?” she asked eagerly.

“Dandy. Just dandy,” Clarence answered for her. “Gaslight--I like it excessively. I am thinking of installing it myself.” The thought had flashed into his head the minute he saw the bright illumination of the place. Here was a step up on Sir Alfred, and how it would show up his paintings! The brown paintings required a better light than his orange and blue da Vincis had.

Hettie nodded at this praise, but her eyes rested on Prudence. “It’s lovely. Very rich,” she answered, her glance running from freshly-painted walls that threw the embossings into relief, to silk window hangings, to chandeliers throwing off a million prisms.

“Not too rich for your taste, I hope? Allan vetoed gilt lamps. I tried to talk him into velvet settees, but he insisted you prefer brocade. Done in
blue,
you see,” she added, blue being well established as Prudence’s preferred color.

“Charming,” she replied, coloring up noticeably.

“He hasn’t shown you your desk yet?” Hettie went on, with a mischievous twinkle. She wore a puce turban topped off with a pair of pink ostrich plumes, tethered with a hideous garnet pin.

Miss Mallow replied, all af1uster, that Allan was to show her the study later. “You will like it I think. He got the desk from France--beat me to it, and it was I who heard it was up for auction. But I don’t begrudge it to you. You will put it to better use than I would. I never write a word if I can help it.”

The desk--was that then what he had got for her? She was disappointed, but it was impossible to fall into actual depression with so much singular attention being showered on her. The desk, surely, was not to be carted off to Grosvenor Square. She was to use it here, under his and her own roof.

The party necessarily began late, after the play, and it was well after two before Dammler, busy seeing to his guests and of course receiving many congratulations, managed to slip away to Prudence’s side for a moment. Hettie was showing some people through the downstairs chambers, and Prudence had attached herself to this group, curious to see how the place was done up. Suddenly he was at her elbow, taking her arm. “Would you like to see the study now?” he asked. She must be imagining that trace of uncertainty, shyness, in him. “I locked the door to keep out the throng. My study is sacred. At Hettie’s place last summer a souvenir hunter waltzed off with one of my sonnets. But I had made a copy of it, so it was no matter. It’s this way."

He led her off from the others, pulling a key from his pocket to open the door. It was dark within, and he busied himself lighting the gas lamps.

“Uncle is very impressed with your gaslight,” she said. “He speaks of installing it at home. You’ll bankrupt him, with so many luxuries to have to compete with.”

The room sprang into illumination, showing her the pair of desks, sitting at right angles. She suppressed a gasp, but it was not with the pleasure or admiration he expected. On the corner of his desk, right under her nose, sat her book
Babe in the Woods.
She didn’t have a copy herself yet, but the title and author’s name were easily legible. Dammler, gone to pick up his own sonnets, had been given one of the first copies by Murray. She looked away, her face a shade paler, then darted a fearful look to Dammler, who was regarding her steadily.

“You don’t like it,” he said, disappointed. More than disappointed, dejected.

She felt a wretched traitor, and in guilty confusion forced herself to look around the room, hardly seeing any of his careful work. In her mind’s eye the green volume loomed larger than the whole house. “It’s very nice, elegant.”

He looked on, unconvinced. If she really liked it, she would be making some joke about her own spartan little cubbyhole of a study.
"Too
elegant?” he asked, anxious to discover the cause of her displeasure.

“No--not at all. It is perfect. And the gaslight will make night work easy, too.”

He continued to observe, frowning. It was as close to perfect as he could make it. The rest of the house she had approved, but here, where he had gone to the most pains, she was not only indifferent, she was distressed. It was the lady’s desk, he decided. She thought it a presumption. He hastened on to make clear he presumed nothing. “Hettie found this treasure for me in France--heard of it from an agent. It was too good to pass up. I may have it sent home to Longbourne,” he said. “It used to belong to Madame du Barry. She was an awful woman, but she had good taste in desks, don’t you think? It would be interesting to know what epistles were written here.”

“Yes,” was all she said. She had been reading too much into his politeness and Hettie’s. Nothing had been meant by it. They were only making conventional remarks, sounding like saying more because she had been involved in the discussion of the house and its furnishing earlier.

“Mine, so they tell me, belonged to Alexander Pope. I doubt I’ll be able to write a word here, with his shadow hanging over me. He casts a large shadow for so small a man.”

“You overestimate him, I think. He is all head and no heart.”

“A good balance for me then--all heart and no head.” He reached down, to her great consternation, and picked up her book. “Have you seen this one?" he asked.

“No--this is the first I have seen it,” she answered, the words truthful enough, but the meaning utterly false.

“Murray gave it to me today, hot off the press. I don’t usually read novels except yours and Scott’s, but he tells me this one will be the rage. Perhaps you would like to have it?” He started to hand it to her, then suddenly set it down. “No,” he went on, “I have something else I want you to read instead. I told you I had something for you.” He went to her desk and picked up his sonnets. They were contained in a single volume, bound in morocco leather, a deluxe edition. “With my compliments, Miss Mallow,” he said, handing them to her.

She looked at the title, smiling in pleasure, the surprise sufficient to make her forget her chagrin for a moment. “Oh, thank you. I have been looking forward to reading this.”

“Open it,” he suggested, regarding her steadily as she turned back the cover to read the inscription. She was the happiest girl who was ever miserable. She looked at him with tears swimming in her eyes.

“Prudence!” He took the single step that separated them, and folded her in his arms. “Prudence, forgive me. I was a fool to take Cybele in, a damned blundering jackass, but she doesn’t mean a thing to me. No one ever has but you.”

She lifted her face to answer, and he kissed her, a long, impassioned kiss until her head was spinning. It was all perfect, just as she had hoped and dreamed, except for the book, the malevolent novel she had dashed off in pique, and that stared at her from the edge of his desk. Oh, if only he had given it to her, if only he would never read it, or hear of it. But already it was out, would be in the stores soon, and the money earned from it partly spent, too, so short as she had been. There was no way of stopping its circulation. She must tell him, make a confession and count on his good nature to forgive her. She felt at this moment he would forgive her anything. “Allan, I ..."

He looked at her expectantly, and the words stuck in her throat.

“I love you, too,” he said joyfully, and kissed her again.

It seemed a shame to intrude on this precious moment with so unpleasant a piece of information, and too soon the opportunity was over. Clarence came barging in on them, thrilled to death to find them in an embrace.

With his most debonair air he proceeded to ignore it by saying, “Don’t mind me. I’ll be out in a minute and let you get on with it, Nevvie.” How sweet, to be able to say Nevvie again!

“Do come in, Uncle. You haven’t seen our study. I was just telling Prue my desk used to belong to Alexander Pope. Quite a find for me.”

“A Pope, eh? You’re flying high. You’ll be wanting a throne chair to go with it. Mind you don’t turn Roman on us. I see you have got your books all laid out, all ten million of them. Makes a very good impression. Looks very like Prue’s study. All that is lacking is a couple of pictures there to set off your little mirror. I’ll give them to you. No need to go wasting your blunt on them. I have half a dozen in my new style looking for a home.” He looked around critically then said aside to Prudence, “You will be able to fix it up very nicely. A couple of pictures will do the trick.”

Dammler just caught Prudence’s eye, and they exchanged a silent look.

“So this is where you’ll be scribbling up your rhymes, is it, where papal bulls were used to be writ. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.”

“Very true,” Dammler answered unfazed. “Pope Alexander would turn in his grave to know what base use his desk is to be put to.”

“Oh, your verses ain’t that bad, Nevvie. I like them excessively. I hadn’t heard they had run so short of cash in Rome they were auctioning their pieces off.”

“Shall we go on out before we have the whole throng in here?” Dammler asked as he heard Hettie’s group approach.

“They are at my heels, are they?” Clarence asked, not at all annoyed with the persistence of his fans. “We had better run along then. I see the crowd is thinning. I’ll take you home, Prudence. It is after three, and you will be getting sleepy.” It was himself who was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He was sorry to have to pull himself away, but with the euphoria of having patched up things between the lovers, he did it.

Dammler accompanied them to the front door, thanking them for coming, and assuring them he would go to them the next day. Prudence clutched his book, resigned to leave only because she was so anxious to begin reading it. Tomorrow when he came she would tell him about her own awful book, and
make
him understand.

Chapter Six

Dammler’s party was not over
before four. He went into his study for a last look around to see what it was that had annoyed Prudence when first she entered. It wasn’t the lady’s desk, after all. She still loved him, so it should have pleased her, but it hadn’t. Really it seemed to be his own desk that bothered her. Did she want a private study; was that it? His mind ran over possible rooms that could be turned into one, though he particularly wanted to share this room with her. He went to give a last good night to Alexander Pope’s desk, with a lingering smile at Uncle’s nonsense. The man was better than a joke book.

Absentmindedly he picked up the book,
Babe in the Woods,
and carried it with him upstairs. He always read half an hour before sleeping. As he felt his reading would be little attended this night, he didn’t much care what he read. Glancing at the title, he made himself a bet the title was wrongly interpreted. The female author would take it to mean a child lost in the woods, or some more civilized symbol, probably a girl out of her element in society, whereas the true origin of the phrase referred to a person set in the stocks. He read two pages, enough to realize he had won his bet with himself, but as he rather enjoyed the author’s style, he read on a little further. A phrase here and there reminded him of Prudence, enough to keep him going. By the end of the first chapter, he had concluded someone was copying her style, using her trick of saying one thing and letting it be known by the circumstances quite another was meant. But not so well done as Prudence, he decided loyally.

The end of Chapter Two made him think that not only her style but a little something of her own story was creeping in, too. Someone, some jealous cat--really there was a viperish touch here that was not at all like Prue--was writing a parody of the two of them, or so it seemed to him. He read on with the keenest interest now, confirming that it was about them. He was finished with Volume One in an hour, as he was a quick reader, and when he laid it down, there was a question on his face. It wasn’t possible
Prudence
had written this thing. But how very odd that so many of his own ideas were running around in the book, distorted, placed in a new context to make them worse, but still his own ideas--original ones. He hadn’t read far into the second volume without realizing that the perpetrator was none other than Prudence Mallow. Certain passages left not a single doubt. Ideas he had shared with no one but herself, and here they were, coming back at him, word for word. Hettie too--certainly “Lady Maldire” was Hettie, with an assortment of rings replacing her customary excess of brooches.