The Scandal of the Season (29 page)

And the river was so full! It was as though the Thames's green banks, now overflowing with the bounty of summer, had poured forth their profusion of growth into the very barges as they passed. Boxes of lettuces, leeks, cucumbers, and asparagus; onions and carrots and herbs and broad beans; cherries and strawberries and ripe melons, whose scent could almost be thought to infuse the balmy air like incense. There were flowers, too, nodding their bright erect heads to the sun: roses and sweet peas; nasturtiums, pinks, and larkspurs; peonies full blown and stained with crimson dye, or tightly curled in soft white-petaled globes.

The gardeners called out to one another as they passed, greeting their friends and cheerfully abusing other purveyors of the same wares, but there was no real resentment in their tones. The morning was affecting all alike with the sense that they had entered a Paradise, and that the day and its delights was a second Eden.

Alexander and Martha were dazzled, and they sat for a time in happy silence.

They passed by a barge filled with roses, alongside which a lighter craft had drawn up. A gentleman was buying a posy for his lady, and as the gardener lifted the blooms into the air, a shower of dew drops flew up and turned to vapor in the sun.

“Oh, Alexander! Thank you for showing this to me,” Martha exclaimed.

“I had not imagined that such a place could be,” Alexander answered her in a rapture, “least of all in the city. The air shimmers as though a million invisible spirits were about us, flicking their wings in the light.”

“It sounds as though you are thinking up verses, Alexander.”

“My imagination is greedily hoarding every picture that the morning presents, nearly surfeited, and yet I long to take in more. I compose quick lines at every discovery, as an artist struggles to sketch a fleeting impression even as a new one rushes upon him. Every sight is gone in an instant, and I have only my mind's eye in which to keep a mean copy of the glorious original.”

They were quiet again, then Alexander burst out, “I have long wanted to write a poem about an earthly Paradise, and the present scene is one that even Milton's matchless imagination could not conjure. And now suddenly I have an idea for who can inhabit the place. As in Milton's poem, there will be mortal creatures, but divine beings, too. Angels are too grand for my verses—I shall have lesser spirits; nymphs that live upon air. Delicate and magical, like this morning itself. You'll see,” he said grandly, “Milton will not outdo me.”

Martha watched him silently. Had Teresa been there, Martha knew that she would have laughed at him for being so earnest—and there was indeed something laughable about Alexander with his bright, darting eyes and eager movements. But when he boasted that he would not be outdone by Milton, she saw that he was entirely serious. The world was full of men whose ambition was to write a poem as great as
Paradise Lost,
but perhaps, just perhaps, Alexander would actually do it. It was an extraordinary thought, and she shivered, as though she had caught a glimpse of something uncanny.

Alexander broke into her thoughts, leaning forward and speaking in a rush, “What do you think of this, Patty? It is a description of the invisible spirits on the Thames: Some to the sun their insectwings unfold; waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold. Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight—their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. Loose to the wind their airy garments flew; thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, where light disports in ever-mingling dyes. While every beam new transient colors flings; colors that change whenever they wave their wings.”

As he spoke, it seemed to Martha that the air was filled with magical sounds, the ethereal music of poetry that is not quite of this world. She looked at Alexander with a kind of awe. She knew, with a calm detachment that had nothing to do with knowing him personally, that the young man sitting opposite her was destined to be a very great poet indeed. He was more than merely talented; he was—and even as she thought it she felt a thrill—he was a genius. She looked into his shining, faraway eyes, and saw that he knew it, too, and that this was what gave him the unearthly quality she now sensed.

She struggled to put her thoughts into words. “Alexander, I feel…I don't know what to say,” she said helplessly. “I feel as if you've given me a present that I long to show to others, and yet which is a precious jewel that only I will ever see. Your genius will make you famous; nothing can stop you now.” Something made her go on. “But I know that we shall always be dear to each other.”

Alexander's description of the fairies had loosened her tongue, and she spoke more freely than she had believed herself capable. Her heart overflowed, and she had admitted her most secret thoughts. But she feared that this enchantment would be of short duration.

“Dear to each other!” exclaimed Alexander. “Patty, I have realized that yours is the dearest friendship of my life. I could not live without it. Surely that is clear to you; you, with such remarkable understanding.”

Martha looked down; she could not meet his eye. She had imagined this conversation, or a version of this conversation, a thousand times, and now it was actually unfolding. She was overcome with embarrassment.

“I fear that I cannot be very clear when it comes to understanding you, Alexander,” she said quietly.

Alexander studied her face intently, and was surprised by what he saw. For the first time, he realized fully what it was that Martha felt for him. She saw him opening his mouth to speak; her heart beat wildly. But then he stopped abruptly. She knew that he was struggling to frame the right words in reply. The silence was unrelenting.

At last he spoke. “You know that I keep a portrait of Milton beside me when I write,” he said, “hoping that it will keep me humble, for I am otherwise liable to become puffed up with pleasure in my own cleverness.”

Her heart sank; he would not answer her plainly. Why was he talking of poetry—of
Milton
—again, at this most heart-wrenching of moments? Did he mean to be cruel? She could not believe such a thing. “I know it, Alexander,” she answered slowly, “but what has it to do with this?”

“Because a passage from
Paradise Lost
came suddenly to my mind,” he replied. “When Eve learns that she must leave the Garden. The fault is her own, but her lament is bitter.”

“I do not recall it.”

Alexander quoted the lines.

“How shall I part, and whither wander down into a lower world?” Martha held her breath as Alexander finished Eve's sorrowful cry. “How shall we breathe in other air Less Pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?” For a minute she made no reply; she felt unspeakably sad. She had always believed that if he never loved her it would be because of Teresa, and she knew that she had come to take consolation, even pleasure, from gathering up the light, discarded threads of his affection for her sister. But in the end it would not be Teresa who kept him from her. It would be his writing.

The discovery was more bitter than she could have imagined; she felt utterly alone. She thought back over their morning together and wanted to cry. The glorious enchantment; her realization that his genius could transform the ordinary world; the breathless exhilaration of hearing his verses as he composed them—would they serve only to leave her abandoned, forlorn, and alone, while Alexander found fresh woods and new pastures?

“Are you saying that you have grown accustomed to immortal fruits, Alexander?” she asked as lightly as she could, aware of the strain that was audible in her voice.

Alexander looked at her steadily; she saw that he wanted to speak truthfully, and she met his gaze, though it hurt her to do so.

“I begin to see that to follow poetry as one ought, one must forget father and mother, and all other mortal loves, and cleave to it alone,” he said. “If I am to succeed as a poet I cannot wander freely in this world, though I know it to be filled with earthly delights, and able to bring great happiness. Will you believe me when I tell you that it makes me desolate to say so?”

“I do believe you, Alexander,” she said, choking back tears. “But you must pay frequent visits, for I cannot do without your friendship.”

He took her hand. “You will never need to,” he said gently.

He went on in a stronger voice, “In any case, Patty, my recent experience of the world has made me skeptical of passionate attachments. Real affection holds fast to the very end, for it does not expect too much from human nature. But romantic friendships, like violent loves, begin with disputes, proceed to jealousies, and conclude in animosity.”

She laughed bravely, blinking back a last stray tear. They had come to a landing stage just beyond the stopping point for the markets at Covent Garden. It was half past eight.

Alexander let go of her hand, and looked around at the wharf. “Shall we alight, and walk to the market for breakfast?” he asked. He smiled at her, warily, and then added in his usual teasing tones, “I should like to be thinking high thoughts of Virgilian hexameters and Homeric similes, but I dwell instead on low thoughts of chocolate and hot rolls, and coffee with egg and bacon.”

Martha assented, presenting as bright a face as she could manage. They were almost at the landing, and she exclaimed in surprise, “Look, Alexander. We are not the only parties to have hatched this plan! It is my cousin Bell—and with
Lord Petre
!”

Alexander turned to look. Sure enough, the other couple was coming in to land at that very moment, Arabella holding a bunch of roses on her lap and smiling jauntily at her companion. She was quite unaware of their presence, but it looked as though Lord Petre had seen them. Martha looked down, horrified to catch Bell out upon an expedition so obviously unsanctioned. Perhaps she is engaged to him, she thought with wonder, but neither the Fermors nor the Petres would be disposed to keeping secrets of the nuptial variety. She looked apprehensively across to Alexander, who was surveying the pair with a cool, ironic smile.

Chance dictated that the two boats reached the landing platform almost together. To Martha's astonishment, though rather less to Alexander's, Lord Petre saluted them before they were even docked.

“Miss Martha Blount—Mr. Alexander Pope! Is not this a magnificent morning? Miss Fermor and I were on the river before sunrise, so we have seen the glorious pageant unfold from the start. We came directly from Miss Oldmixon's party. I insisted upon it—Miss Fermor had never seen the Lambeth Gardeners from the water.”

Alexander looked back at him, and said, “We have not the energies of you and Miss Fermor, my lord. A short sleep was required to fortify us for the spectacle. I called for Miss Blount at five.”

“Then I fear you missed the finest part of the morning! That interval between darkness and dawn, when the sun first appears upon the river.”

“Was not Miss Fermor rather cool in her plumage?” Alexander asked. “Even the swan, well adapted to the aquatic climes, is known to huddle closely to its fellows during the early hours before dawn.”

“She felt nothing,” Lord Petre replied. “Miss Fermor is of a robust constitution, and happily I had taken the precaution of bringing an extra cape—a provision that few swans are able to call upon.”

Arabella listened to Lord Petre's flippant speech with annoyance. He seemed determined to call further attention to the ludicrousness of her outfit—which that awful little Pope had so impertinently noted—and to the improbability of their having come straight from the party. What had Lord Petre been thinking of, bringing up the cape? Of course they would not have been on the water before dawn! She disliked the way that Pope looked at her so knowingly, as though he understood her situation more completely than she understood it herself. But was not he himself out with another woman—and Teresa's sister, of all people! If Martha Blount were alone with a man, it could not be so very wrong, she reasoned.

This unwelcome meeting made her feel naked and exposed. What if Martha guessed that she and Lord Petre were bedfellows? Not that she should mind, of course; she knew that he meant to marry her. But Martha's shocked face, all white and withdrawn under the hood of her cape, made Arabella feel suddenly self-conscious. No, it was more than that, she admitted to herself. It had made her feel humiliated.

When Lord Petre spoke, Alexander and Martha looked at Arabella. But she would not meet either party's eye, and seemed in a great hurry to be gone, though she had been laughing very pleasantly only a short time before.

“I am rather cold now, as a matter of fact, my lord,” Arabella said stiffly. “I should like to be taken home immediately. The sun will shortly be high in the sky; my parents will be anxious for my safety. I had not imagined that our trip would take so long.”

She nodded quickly to Martha, ignored Alexander altogether, and rushed into the carriage that was waiting by the landing. Lord Petre bowed a good deal more ceremoniously to both parties, and followed.

 

Lord Petre left a silent and morose Arabella at her parents' house. He regretted the way their encounter had ended, particularly after such a splendid trip on the river, but he knew that this was not the moment to worry about a trifling misunderstanding. There would be plenty of time for apologies later. He went directly to bed when he got home, and slept until evening. He got up, took a late dinner of pie and asparagus in his rooms, and prepared to read Menzies's papers. It was time now for serious matters. He had just embarked upon the task when Jenkins came into the room. He walked quietly about, lighting the candles and drawing the curtains, but when he was finished he did not leave. He stood, instead, beside Lord Petre's desk. “May I speak, my lord?” he asked.