Reprise (9 page)

“You’re not half as interesting as ‘Guelph,’ and don’t think it!” she said.

He was gone, and she sank down on her chair, her head in her hands, too bruised to think. She felt as if she had been physically beaten. With his tender poems still fresh in her mind, the evidence of a deep and true love, to have to hear this abuse, and to know nine-tenths of it was justified, was too much. She couldn’t think straight. She sat on disconsolate, remembering him at the play, with the crowds cheering him, at his house afterwards, showing her how he had fixed it up for her--he had done it for her, even if he hadn’t said so. Oh, why hadn’t she told him about her accursed book then, in the study? What had possessed her to infer she had never heard of it? Dammler hated a hypocrite worse than anything, and she had been a hypocrite of the worst sort. She mentally abased herself until the first shock of losing him was over.

Only then could she subject his tirade to a rational scrutiny. He had called her a prostitute, a worse prostitute than Cybele, for debasing her
slight
writing talent. Surely that was unfair. What would he know, wealthy beyond dreams, of poverty? What would he realize of trying to keep up appearances on the meager allowance she had? He liked her to look well, and with four parties a week, this required many outfits. Of course she had to sell what she wrote, and if she wrote of him in an unflattering way--well, she hadn’t said much that wasn’t true after all, and had taken some pains not to make anyone think it was he. To have called the book carrion was absurd. Murray liked it excessively. And what had he meant about the title being inaccurate?

This slur on her accuracy, her writing, was as hard to forgive as anything. He said himself his own stuff was claptrap. The new sonnets were not--indeed, even
Shilla
was pretty good, but she had helped. Her words, her speech patterns as he so grandly called them,
purloined,
half of them, were the best part of it. He had a high opinion of himself to call her book carrion. She went on fueling her anger, to keep despair at bay.

Chapter Seven

Clarence stayed with Sir Alfred
for lunch, which was a wonderful relief. Prudence had the opportunity to tell her mother she had not made it up with Dammler, after all. They had discussed it and decided they did not suit, is what Mrs. Mallow was told, and as she had not yet read the infamous book, she believed it.

“It is for the best,” the mother said. "That is not to say you need sink into a spinster, my dear. Plenty of gentlemen will take a second look at you now that you are a little known.”

“Yes,” Prudence said with an attempt at a smile. But would they? Would anyone take a second look at her once it became known Dammler was through with her--not only through with her, despised her. Never wanted to see her again. He was highly emotional, Dammler. In his present state she wouldn’t put it a bit past him to let it be known he did not wish to grace the same party as herself. No question which of them would be dropped. She couldn’t stand to think of never going out again among interesting people. She couldn’t work when she was so upset. If society, too, was to be denied to her, she would run mad. Even as she made these silent remarks to herself, she knew she hid from the truth. She wanted to go on seeing him. If she couldn’t marry him, she wanted at least to be able to see him. If he didn’t speak to her, she would hear him speak to others. She didn’t want to lose even the sight and sound of him.

They had scarcely put down their forks when the front knocker sounded. She knew it wouldn’t be Dammler. He might simmer down some day, some ten light years from now, but he was in too towering a rage to be back so soon. She was surprised to hear Lady Melvine wished to see her. Allan had sent Hettie over to add her insults. So be it. Get it over with once for all, and she wouldn’t apologize again, either!

“Hettie, my dear!” she said when she swept into the saloon. Hettie had asked her a dozen times to call her by her name, but the Lady Melvine had a way of coming out. She never really liked Hettie nor felt at ease with her.

“Darling!” Hettie said, arising to embrace her. “What a naughty puss you are!” she gurgled in delight.

It was all right then. Hettie wasn’t angry. Certainly Dammler would have told her, so she knew and didn’t care. Was thrilled, in fact. “Horrid of me, wasn’t it? I quite blush to think what I have done. Dammler is fed up with me,” she said brightly. She wouldn’t let Hettie run back to him and say she was in despair.

“He is white with rage! I never saw him so deranged. He won’t be himself for a week. But
I
think you are to be congratulated. Tell me, Prudence, is ‘Lady Alabaster’ really Lady Malvern?” She laid aside her kid gloves and settled in for a coze.

“You know I don’t work from life, Hettie. If people choose to see a resemblance, it is on their own heads.”

"It is,
you minx! I knew it. You made her too pretty. She doesn’t have dimples.”

“She has
one,”
Prudence laughed gaily.

“And who is the mysterious ‘Pierre’? It’s Peter Sotheby, I know it!”

This was the nature of their talk. The characters all had to be straightened out. Hettie felt in her heart Dammler would overcome his fit of pique and be back with Prudence within the week, and she herself was so pleased with the sly puss she had no thought of cutting her. Before leaving, she said, “You remember you are to come to me tomorrow night? My little rout party? No one will be there, but come, anyway.

There was no question of “remembering” a party to which she had not previously been invited, but this little deception was overlooked. “I suppose Dammler will be there?”

“He
was
to be. I fancy he won’t show up till midnight to show us how mad he is with you. Your uncle will bring you, I hope? I am in need of a
short
suitor-- Gratton is ten feet tall, and I always like to vary their height. Minx! How dare you catch me out at my little stunt?”

“He will be charmed to come,” Prudence agreed, knowing there was no fear of Clarence turning down the invitation, and happy to have an escort.

They had all given up on Mrs. Mallow months ago. She had been too long a country lady to feel at ease amidst this new set, and had converted an unwilling heart into an ailing one.

“Good. Now I mean to dash right home and read Volume Two. Allan threw it at me in pieces. I see the shops have it on sale today. I’ll pick up a copy on the way home, and you must autograph it for me at the party.
Ciao,
darling!” She waved her fingers merrily and was off.

Prudence felt it was a bit early yet to confront Allan. He would not remain so very angry forever, but if she refused this invitation, she might receive no more. There was one whole day and night to be got in before she could go to Hettie’s rout and gauge his temper. She spent it in the same manner as a good part of society, reading her own book that Murray had sent over. It was more cynical than she liked, but it was not carrion. The word was circulated in the magical way of a juicy piece of scandal, and by nightfall of the second day, it was all read, digested, and being discussed with an avid interest. Prudence hadn’t the heart to tell Clarence she had been jilted. Let him go on in his dream world; he would, anyway.

As Hettie had warned, Dammler did not arrive at the party till very late. He hadn’t intended coming at all, once Hettie told him Prudence “might” drop in, but decided that was nonsense. Was
he
to sit home alone because
she
had acted so badly? Certainly not; he would go, and show her (if she had the temerity to attend) by his indifference that he was unaware of her existence. If Lady Malvern were there, he would take her home. It would please the lady’s husband, who liked his wife to be popular with all the rakes. How had that bit escaped the book? Prudence mustn’t be aware of it.

His vexation reached a new peak to see Prudence not only there, but the center of attention--and looking lovely, too, in a stylish décolleté gown chosen as part of her trousseau. He feared she wasn’t noticing how stoically he stayed away from her for the crowd hovering around her. Constance, Lady Malvern, chatting to her like the rest, after being skewered in that book. Was it possible these people
liked
being paraded publicly as objects of scorn? Were they mad? Was he?

He could hardly have been more irate when the person he ended up talking to was Mr. Seville, her rescuer at the inn at Reading. Next to Prudence Mallow there wasn’t a person in London he hated more. “I see our little writer has pulled off a new trick,” Seville stated, smiling towards the crowd around her.

“New trick?” he asked in a frigid tone.
Our
little writer. Damn the fellow for an upstart! Prudence had turned him off--she had at least that much taste.

Seville examined him, sensing his hostility, and changed his tack. “They are saying
I
am ‘Mr. Rogers.’ All a hum, I daresay.”

‘Mr. Rogers’ was the uninspired name of her uninspired hero. “I daresay,” Dammler agreed, yawning behind his fingers.

“He is a nabob at any rate, and they call me The Nabob, you know.”

“So I hear.”

“You are ‘Guelph,’ of course.”

“Mmm, possibly.” His voice had assumed the drawling accents it took on when he disliked his companion.

“Must be you. Everyone is saying so.”

Hettie, fearing disaster to see these two together, dashed to Seville’s rescue. “Dammler, how late you are. Where have you been?”

“I had to see Cybele,” he said, hoping it would get back to Prudence, and having a pretty good idea it would.

“Such fun! I have assembled the whole cast of her book, without realizing I was doing it. Except for Cybele of course. Pity I couldn’t have asked her.”

“You don’t seem to care
who
you ask here anymore, Het,” Dammler replied, his scathing eye flickering off her star performer and Mr. Seville, the latter of whom turned and walked away. “It seems a monstrous dull do. I think I’ll wander on down to Brooks.”

“Nonsense, everyone who is in town is here. And having a grand time."

“Having a good laugh at me!”

"Truth to tell, they are laughing at
her.
Roasting her--all in fun, of course. She made her villain more attractive than her hero; he gets all the good lines.”

“Fair is fair. It is the
villain
who originally spoke them.”

“Constance has asked her to Finefields. Isn’t it
insane?
She says it is a good place to write, for you wrote your second batch of cantos there. I never thought I’d see the day!”

“What did she say?” Allan asked, pried by curiosity out of his sulks.

“She said thank you very much, but what had inspired Lord Dammler to such heights was not likely to have the same effect on her."

“Meaning I was carrying on with Constance?”

“But of course, goose! What else?”

“What else indeed?” he asked through clenched jaws, and walked forth angrily to detach Lady Malvern at least from Prudence’s circle of admirers. It wasn’t too hard to do.

“Constance, my dear, how ravishing you look this evening. Criminally beautiful. There ought to be a law against a woman having violet eyes. I wonder Parliament hasn’t gotten around to outlawing them. They have taken away all the other good things.”

“Or taxed them beyond the reach of most of us,” Hettie threw in, darting a look to Prudence, to see if she were aware of Dammler’s move. She was, but gave no indication of it.

“We’ll have to smuggle you into our boudoir, like a keg of brandy,” Dammler said, bending his head close to Lady Malvern’s.

“What are you writing next, Miss Mallow?” one of her court asked her. “Are you doing a sequel to
Babe?”

“No, something quite different,” she answered. “I am tired of that set of characters. They have ceased to amuse me.”

“They ceased to amuse the rest of us some time ago,” Dammler said in his drawling sarcastic voice, ostensibly to Lady Malvern, but pitching his words just loud enough that they might be audible to a sharp listener like Prudence.

“As we are amongst them, you are hard on us, Dammler,” Constance pointed out.

“You may understand yourself to be excepted,
a va sans dire,”
he told her with an intimate smile.

“Why don’t you try your hand at a play next, Miss Mallow?” some lady suggested to her.

“I had thought of it, but my best lines are already being shouted from the stage by someone else. Someone has plagiarized me,” she answered, never looking within a right angle of the plagiarist, who was bristling with the desire to announce that if
they
were her best lines, she had best lay aside her pen.

“She is writing a book called
Patience,”
Clarence spoke up. He was not far from his niece’s side that night. “She has been writing it forever. Didn’t dash it off like this last one. This one didn’t take her a month.”

“One would have thought a week more than sufficient,” Dammler remarked, again to Constance, who might have been an empty dress for all the note he was actually taking of her.

Prudence heard all his jibes, and knew they were meant for her ears. She was as angry as she could be, but also strangely exhilarated. She couldn’t talk to him, but she could let him know what she thought of him all the same, and proceeded to do it. “I feel the characters in
Patience
worthy of more than a month of my time.
Babe
was a mere diversion, a month’s pastime in the dullness of summer.”

“To provide us all a couple of hours’ dullness with the reading of it, now that autumn is come,” Constance was informed.

Before Prudence could reciprocate for this taunt, a flurry was created around Dammler by the approaching of a little group of ladies who wished to compliment him on
Shilla.
They hovered just beyond him, waiting for an opportunity to advance. He smiled and beckoned them forward, nodding at their praise. “Ladies, you may stroke me. I am tame,” he told them. “Now before someone has the poor taste to proclaim me a plagiarist, let me announce Dr. Johnson as the source of the
bons mots.
The
male
of the species of literary lion doesn’t scratch. We leave that to the females.’”