The Scandal of the Season (15 page)

Alexander was surprised by how angry Wycherley's attack had made him. He had certainly never considered himself a defender of the Jacobites, nor even of his own religion, but Wycherley had forced from him a loyalty that he had not known before. After all, he himself had been barred from attending university, excluded from property and position. It was easy enough to forget now that he was staying with Jervas in Westminster, but only a few weeks previously it had seemed to blight his fortunes. He felt a perverse pleasure in seeing Wycherley stumble as he lumbered out of the carriage at Will's. Barely able to mutter a good-bye, Alexander turned away from his old friend and slammed the coach door.

Jervas was in a good temper on the way home. “How luxuriously comfortable we are without Wycherley's immense bulk in here,” he said. But Alexander was scowling and quiet, staring out the window and kicking his foot against the seat. After a while Alexander's kicks began to grate on Jervas's ear, and he exerted himself to pull his friend out of his brooding silence.

“Were Wycherley's remarks about your friend Caryll true, Pope?” he asked.

Still looking out the window, Alexander replied, “Oh, true and yet untrue. Old Lord Caryll was a Jacobite, but I do not believe that his nephew is involved.”

“What a strange, old-fashioned world it seems,” Jervas said. “Plots, counterplots, imprisonment, treason. Old Lord Caryll, Wycherley, even your friend John Caryll seem like men from another time to me.”

Alexander replied sharply. “Happy for you that they seem so, Jervas. But the taint of popery still hangs over me as well; I shall probably never shake free of its deadening grip.”

“I cannot understand the attractions of Jacobitism,” Jervas replied. “It renders rich people poor and sane people mad. It is perfectly plain that James III will never be installed upon the throne, and yet, year after year, men cast their fortunes, and their family's fortunes, into the Channel, believing that they will wash ashore in France and lure him back.”

“That is not precisely how the Jacobites arrange their affairs,” Alexander said in a censorious tone. “To you, the Jacobites seem merely diverting lunatics, for you have nothing to lose by their actions. But suppose that the persecutions begin again. I might find that nobody will print my poems.”

Jervas wanted to laugh at Alexander's determined gloominess, but he kept himself from smiling, and said instead, “You think that because it is raining, and we have not yet dined.”

But Alexander was not to be consoled. “When I am with men like Wycherley I find that my energy for poetry ebbs away entirely. Their verses and plays are as feeble as ass's milk—but how can I succeed, if I cannot be like them?”

Jervas looked at Alexander in alarm. He never knew what to say to these outbursts of his friend's, and his silence merely goaded Alexander to further outrage.

“Most writers are insufferable, always complaining of their failures: that the style of their verse is not in fashion; that they have not the patronage to succeed; that they are not rich enough, not poor enough; that they have not a loud enough voice to be heard. Anything, in short, except that their talents are insignificant, their writing of the meanest kind.”

“But your verses are not mean, Pope,” said Jervas consolingly. “Has not Jacob Tonson said some flattering things to you?”

“I will not be beguiled by flattery!” Alexander answered, biting back the words
as you allow yourself to be
. He saw Jervas shrink back from him; he knew that he was behaving badly, but the sight of Jervas's anxious, conciliatory face made him feel more frustrated still. It was not his fault that he could not be easy with everybody, and find all the world charming, as his friend did.

“Do you not long to show the world its vanity, its hypocrisy?” Alexander barked. “When you find yourself doing the portrait of some vain, idle whimperer, do you not want to crush him with the strokes of your brush? No! You do not. I have never known you to judge the subjects that sit before you, Jervas.”

“But I am not a judge, Pope; I am a painter. Thank heavens!” Jervas gave a little laugh, looking warily at Alexander for his response. “I would not care to be a judge, though my father thought the law might do well for me. What right have I to determine the merits of those I paint? My patrons pay me to show them as they would have the world see them—not as I happen to feel on a wet morning after too many oysters the evening before!”

“But I am a
poet,
” Alexander replied, with such a combination of pride and uncertainty in his voice that Jervas nearly laughed again. “Nobody pays me to praise them.” He paused, and then, unable to stop himself, said, “The trouble with men like you is that you hesitate to be bold. You only ever
hint
at a person's faults; you hesitate to suggest anything so forthright as enmity. I believe that you are afraid to strike!”

He looked defiantly at Jervas, half hoping, half dreading that he had provoked him to anger at last. But Jervas looked back at him composedly, and said, “It has nothing to do with fear, Alexander. It is because I have no desire to wound.”

Alexander sank back in his seat as Jervas spoke, suddenly ashamed of his outburst, and wishing, far too late, he knew, that he had shown more self-control.

But after a minute or two, Jervas put out his hand to Alexander and said, “At home there will be beef and mutton and cheese waiting for us, and pudding and a fire to warm us through the evening. Enough of this ranting and raving, Pope. I command you to cheer up!” Alexander smiled gratefully, and gave Jervas's hand an apologetic shake.

 

Some days earlier Martha and Teresa Blount had invited Alexander to visit, but with his cold and the bad weather he had not gone. When the sun came out on the day after his argument with Jervas, Alexander decided that he would pay a visit to the girls.

“So you are come at last,” Teresa said as he was shown in to the sisters' sitting room. “Patty believed that you had commenced an amour with that little milkmaid to whom you were speaking at the masquerade.” She stood up to kiss him on both cheeks.

Alexander wondered why she was in such a good mood. Was it the effect of London, or had she seen Lord Petre again?

“You have been ill, Alexander—I am sure of it,” Martha said, looking at Alexander's troubled face.

But Alexander, thinking of Lord Petre, wanted to show Teresa that he, too, could be gallant when he chose. “Yes, I suffered a constant ache at being apart from you both, and a dreadful fever from longing to see you once again,” he said. “But having brought the condition upon myself, I cannot be nosing about for sympathy.”

“Have you been busy writing poetry, Alexander?” Martha asked.

“Only the commonest, meanest kind, having no muse nearby to inspire the higher sentiments,” he replied.

“It would be a shame were so much wit as you have not to be recorded for posterity,” Teresa said in her old tone of teasing challenge.

In spite of himself, Alexander took the bait. “If I do have wit,” he answered, “I had better
write
to show it off than not. For as any lady who has seen me will attest, I have nothing to show that is better.”

“If you pass the plate for compliments too often, Alexander, you will collect fewer than you deserve,” Teresa answered. “I am happy to praise your verses—and Patty is willing to compliment your person—but only when you do not clamor for it.”

The door opened, and a footman announced that Miss Arabella Fermor was waiting for the ladies in her carriage. The mood in the room changed immediately.

“Heavens, I had forgotten that Bell was coming this morning,” said Teresa, jumping up to look at herself in the mirror. “I must buy a headdress to wear to the opera tonight. Patty, you said yesterday that you would come.” From the glass, she looked commandingly at her sister.

“But Alexander is here, and we have not finished our sewing from this morning,” Martha replied, testily meeting Teresa's reflected gaze. “I believe that I shall stay behind.”

At this Teresa wheeled around, saying in an accusatory voice, “Oh, do not start talking in that tone, invoking Alexander and the sewing as though it were an offense against religion to be seen in a lace headdress.”

Alexander had risen also, and was standing stiffly between the two girls, not knowing which of them to turn to.

But he wanted Teresa to leave the house feeling well-disposed toward him. “Madam, though there may be pride and vanity in the wearing of a lace headdress, your friends will consider it one of the highest acts of charity that you can exercise,” he said.

At this Teresa gave Martha a triumphant smile, and gathered her things for going out.

Wishing to be evenhanded, Alexander turned to Martha. “But you need not worry that Teresa will become too much accustomed to pleasure, Patty,” he said. “She will return soon enough to the country, with its cold, old-fashioned halls, morning walks, and three hours of prayer a day.”

“I shall not!” Teresa replied defiantly. “But if we are to do nothing in London but sit about the house sewing, we might as well go home directly. Why do we come to town, if not to attend balls and plays and assemblies? And why go to those, if not to look handsome?”

“You should take care, Teresa,” said Martha sharply. “Some winters hence your face about the town will be like a rich old-fashioned silk in a shop, which everybody has seen and nobody will buy.” Alexander suppressed a smile, and Teresa shot him a resentful glance.

“Oh, very witty, Patty!” she answered. “But in your conceit I should be more like a richly admired brocade—far too good to be cut and made up to suit just anybody's humor.”

With this riposte she swept out of the room, leaving Martha and Alexander standing awkwardly side by side. Martha looked at Alexander and he reached out as if to take her hand, but then, suddenly, changed his mind.

Martha gave a sigh as she sat down. “Teresa is catching Bell's habit of believing that she can persuade any man into admiring her,” she said. “She does not seem to understand that where there is no fortune, there can be no persuasion.”

Alexander smiled at her. “I can only say in reply that if your sister's stubborn nature were to be set against ten thousand pounds, I would call them pretty evenly matched. Any man that she cannot overcome by argument, she very likely will by temptation.”

Martha looked grave. “You do not suppose that Teresa could be so foolish as to fall into an affair, Alexander?”

He was about to answer glibly when he suddenly noticed that he was enjoying the exchange; there was a substance to Martha's conversation that Teresa's lacked, and he reflected how much he might come to depend on her judgment and advice. He wondered how long this had been the case without his noticing.

“I hope that even your sister has sense enough to avoid that fate,” he said. “But if she does not, our constant proximity to all her scenes of pleasure will remove any residual risk.” He smiled reassuringly.

But Martha replied in a low voice. “I only wish that Teresa could be happier. She seems always to be striving for something that she can never have.”

“Were I of an ecclesiastical temperament, I should offer you and your sister as well as myself a piece of advice,” said Alexander. “To aim not at joy, but rest content with ease.”

Martha looked up at him in exasperation. “You are always giving advice in which you do not believe, Alexander,” she answered, but smiled as she said it.

“Well—perhaps aim
not only
at joy,” he conceded. “But I do have a great regard for ease. I should have been born a baron, for they seem the easiest men alive. Lord Petre has nothing at all to do, and yet he appears constantly occupied,” he added. “Your brother knows the Petre family, does he not, Patty?”

Martha's answer was ready, as though she had thought about the subject a good deal. “There was talk at one time of his going into business with Lord Petre's father, but Michael had not the capital for it,” she said.

“What business would a baron have with your brother?”

“Stockjobbing,” she answered. “There is a venture called the South Sea Company that will make everybody very rich, and Lord Petre's father hoped to begin another like it,” she said. “But investors do not like to put their money with Catholics, so it went no further. I suppose that Lord Petre wanted Michael for our family's good name.”

Alexander was surprised to find Martha so assured on the subject of her brother's interests. They had never spoken about it before. How could she have such a firm grasp of financial affairs? Teresa did not, he was sure.

“Why would Lord Petre's father have cared for Michael's name?” he asked, feeling naive.

“The Blounts have never been Jacobites.”

Alexander was puzzled. “But neither have the Petres, surely.”

Martha hesitated for a moment, cautious, and again Alexander was amazed by the new side of Martha he was seeing. He wished that he had listened more closely in the past to his father when he had tried to explain the complexities of the Jacobites and their politics.