The Scandal of the Season (27 page)

Looking outward again he saw that Lady Mary Pierrepont stood beside him.

“Mr. Steele has told me that you have considered making a translation of the
Iliad,
” she said. “What an undertaking! The greatest poem ever written. I long to ask you everything about it: your preparations, your methods, your manner of proceeding. Do you puzzle over each passage, or translate freely in the spirit of Homer's verse?”

Alexander felt a thrill. “I long to do Homer justice,” he replied, “but I fear that I never shall.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Pope!” she answered. “I do not believe that you have the slightest apprehension on that score. You think yourself the equal of Homer—and why should you not? Nobody was ever great who was afraid of great men who have come before!”

Alexander was delighted. So Lady Mary's approach at the picnic had not been a moment of rashness after all. She wished to pursue the acquaintance! His anger with Teresa, even his regret over Martha, began to fade. A noblewoman—the cleverest woman in London!—had sought him out.

“I long to know which parts of Homer are your favorites,” she said. “My own is when—”

But before she could finish her sentence she was interrupted by a man whom Alexander had not previously noticed. The newcomer faced Lady Mary squarely, bumping Alexander out of the way with his strong, stocky body.

He addressed her peremptorily. “When you have finished speaking with this gentleman, madam, I pray that you step aside a moment,” he said.

Alexander heard a tremor in her voice that seemed out of character. “Do not you know Mr. Pope, Mr. Wortley?” she replied.

So this was Edward Wortley, the gentleman to whom Lady Mary was reputed to be secretly engaged. Wortley looked at Alexander with a malicious sneer, and said, “I congratulate you on the
Essay,
Mr. Pope. I hope that your readers will turn first to your poem before consulting Mr. Dennis's remarks upon your personal defects.”

“Dennis himself would do well to follow your advice,” Alexander answered, with an attempt at humor. “His attack is so full of remarks upon my person that he has hardly space to censure my
Essay
.”

Wortley replied by peering down at Alexander in an exaggerated way, as if wanting to show him that he was so insignificant as to be barely visible. “He had space enough to call you a Jacobite,” he said rudely.

His rudeness made Alexander all the more determined to be charming, wanting to show up Lady Mary's suitor as the petulant boor that he was. “In so doing, Mr. Dennis shows his talents as a storyteller as well as a critic,” he said. “Neither my person nor my writings can possibly give him reason for the charge.”

But Wortley was determined that Alexander would suffer. “His accusations will do you harm in the present climate,” he said.

“I am not afraid of it, sir,” Alexander replied, hoping that he could bring the conversation to a close, and indeed, Wortley did not answer him.

“I will meet you on that sofa beside the window, Mr. Wortley,” Lady Mary said. Alexander was astonished by her tone of voice. He had expected her to be as forthright with her suitor as she had been with him. Wortley glared at her for a moment, but she said no more, and neither did Alexander. After another pause he stalked away and sat staring at her pointedly from his position on the little sofa.

“Forgive Mr. Wortley's manner, sir,” she said, in a low voice, afraid of being overheard. “There is a matter—I mean that we had arranged to speak this evening—and he thought that I did not remember. He is not himself. When you see him again he shall be in much improved spirits.”

“You should go to him, madam,” Alexander replied, confused by her unexpected submissiveness.

As she walked away, she turned back with some resumption of her former sparkle. “When next we speak, Mr. Pope, I shall expect you to be ready with passages from the
Iliad,
translated by your own hand,” she said smilingly, and he replied:

“I shall be prepared, madam.”

As Alexander made his way back to the supper table, people whom he had never seen before came up and congratulated him. He was thrilled. Until now he had hoped that his writing would bring him an invisible kind of fame, so that nobody need know of his deformity. But he found that he liked this attention after all. It was Dennis's attack that had done it—the very words that Teresa had spoken aloud tonight were making his celebrity. The Toad of Grub Street. It was as such a creature that he was destined to become famous.

 

After supper, the guests were invited to repair to another large reception room on the first floor of the town house for cards and conversation. When Alexander reached the room it was already crowded. White candlelight blazed from every bracket, and in the corners of the room were great urns of fresh flowers: striped tulips, pleated opium poppies, tuberoses, and sweet jasmine, filling the room with a powerful, overblown scent. The windows at each end of the house were wide open, but there was no breeze blowing; the air was close.

Everybody was crowded around a game of cards played between Henrietta Oldmixon, the Duke of Beaufort, Arabella, Lord Petre, and—Alexander saw with surprise—Lady Mary herself. He caught sight of Martha standing across the room from him; and this time when their eyes met she did not turn aside. His first impulse was to rush over to her, but something held him back. He was ashamed of his behavior in the park, and he feared that if he were to stand before her now he would see only her disappointment and disaffection. He turned back to the card game.

They were playing Ombre. The three ladies responsible for the play held the hands of cards; the two gentlemen stood beside Henrietta and Arabella, ready to place bets on their behalves. It was apparent from the handwritten bills in the center of the table that considerable sums had already been staked on the outcome of the game. The cards were dealt, and Henrietta, to the left of the Ombre, led the betting.

“Upon Miss Oldmixon's success, I stake a hundred pounds,” the duke announced, and looked around the room with a wide smile, making sure that the lavishness of his outlay had been noticed.

“I answer His Grace by venturing two hundred pounds upon Miss Fermor's behalf,” Lord Petre answered immediately.

There was a general sensation in the room. The guests began to whisper among themselves, crowding more nearly around the table to see what would happen. The gathering became quieter, though people halfheartedly attempted to continue their conversations.

An expectant silence fell as the players turned to Lady Mary, the last to place a bet. Alexander noticed that Edward Wortley had slunk away, hoping to avoid spending money, he surmised.

“The baron and the duke play boldly for the ladies' sakes,” Lady Mary said in her clear voice. “But I answer them by betting three hundred pounds that I will beat you all.”

And she threw a note of hand into the center, without the slightest trace of agitation or heightened feeling. Alexander was dumbfounded.

When the hands were played out, Lady Mary was declared the winner. She wore no expression of exultation or excitement at the outcome, but said simply, “I thought that I would have the best of the cards.”

The dealer cleared the table at the end, and she added to Lord Petre, “Your bet was rather foolhardy, my lord.”

“'Tis only a game of cards,” he replied, with as much indifference as he could muster. “What is lost on one night is easily to be gained on another. That is the best of Lady Fortune. Capricious as she may be, she is with us as often as she is against us.” But as he turned from her he wiped his brow.

Henrietta Oldmixon seemed entirely unaffected by the fact that six hundred pounds had just been staked on the outcome of a single hand of cards, and picked up a conversation where it had been left off moments earlier.

“What extraordinary news about the Duke of Newcastle's death,” she said to Arabella. “The fortune has gone to his daughter, Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles. His wife is left with very little, of course.”

Alexander noticed that Arabella had gone rather white at the end of the card game, aghast at Lord Petre's throwing away so large a sum of money on her behalf. But she collected herself quickly and turned to Henrietta with only the faintest trace of anxiety around her eyes. “I heard two gentlemen the other day praising Lady Henrietta for her great beauty and sparkling wit,” she said with a dull smile. “When I heard her thus described, I knew that the duke must be gravely ill. But I did not think he could already be dead.” Alexander could not help but admire her capacity for self-possession, though her dispassion was chilling.

“He fell from his horse and was killed instantly,” Miss Oldmixon answered carelessly. “His daughter is a nice enough girl, though, as you say, not handsome. I hope that the match made for her will not be too irksome.”

As Lady Mary Pierrepont stood up from the table and moved away, telling the men that her winnings might be brought to the house in the morning, Alexander stepped forward to compliment her on the boldness with which she had played.

“You are the Achilles of the present age,” he said. “No need for new translations of Homer when epic battles are to be won and lost at the card table.”

To his dismay, her reply was distant.

“I am glad that you have enjoyed the evening's assembly, Mr. Pope,” she said, and turned away coldly.

Alexander kicked himself for speaking. Once again he had been naive, thinking that he could presume on so insubstantial a friendship. With all her wit and cleverness, Mary Pierrepont had made him forget that she was the daughter of an earl. She was at liberty to speak to him, and she delighted in so doing, rejoicing in her ability to flout convention. When she had addressed him earlier, it had no doubt been partly in an attempt to make Wortley jealous. He had been a fool not to see it—not to see that however unsatisfactory a suitor Wortley might be, his intimacy with Lady Mary was well established, hardly likely to be dislodged by the son of a Catholic textile importer. The night had delivered a good number of lessons in folly to himself and to others alike. But though he knew that he should have been ready for it, Lady Mary's slight piqued him—the attentions paid to him this evening had spurred his ambitions. Now that he had been noticed at last, he could not bear the thought of being insignificant once again.

Martha watched with interest while these events unfolded. She saw Arabella's face go white when Lady Mary won; she saw Lady Mary collect the money from Lord Petre without a flicker of apology. Their reactions prompted her to reflect that even if Lord Petre had fallen in love with Arabella, the gulf between the nobility and commoners was profound, perhaps deeper even than that between Catholic and Protestant. She wondered whether Arabella would ultimately possess the iron nerve required to succeed in Lord Petre's world. But then Martha watched as she left the card tables, laughing as Lady Salisbury put a hand on her arm, glancing neither right nor left. Perhaps she would have what was needed after all.

She watched next as Alexander walked up to Mary Pierrepont and spoke to her. To Martha's surprise, Lady Mary slighted him—Alexander stepped back with an embarrassed, confused expression. Instinctively Martha felt for him: his face crumpled into a fierce twist of self-reproach, and she guessed that he was scolding himself for having spoken.

Something about Alexander's expression made her realize that she could not remain angry with him. Alexander might be foolish, he might be proud and selfish, but he would always be his own severest critic. Tonight, after all, he had tried to catch her eye to show that he was sorry; it had been she who had looked away. But Martha decided that she could not approach him in order to reestablish the friendship. She was determined to make a new beginning in her dealings with Alexander. She would wait for him to seek her out.

The room was very warm, and her head had begun to ache. To recover she removed herself to a seat that had been placed close to an open window. The night air was refreshing, and, since the room made a lively spectacle, she was happy to be apart from it for a time. She had been sitting there for only a few minutes when Alexander caught sight of her pained expression. He guessed that she was feeling faint, and hurried to the buffet to bring her a glass of wine. As he came over to her seat, Martha turned to him with a little heightening of color in her face. He smiled shyly, finding that he, too, was awkward.

He did not ask her whether he might sit down, but did so at once. He handed her the glass, and she raised it to her lips. For a moment they sat together without speaking.

“Thank you, Alexander,” she said.

“How are you now?”

“I feel very much better,” she said, not quite willing to tell him how pleased she was that he had come. “But I should like to stay seated a few minutes more,” she added.

“Of course. I hope that we may sit for a little while at least.”

Though she hesitated to do so, aware that it would mark a change in their relationship, she forced herself to raise the subject of Teresa.

“My sister has been troubled this evening, do not you think?” she said after a short pause.