by Joan Smith
“Oh dear, is it that bad?” she laughed. Strange how she could already accept anything from him without embarrassment. Really he was the easiest person to get on with.
He darted a look at her, hesitantly, but soon laughed. “You look a quiz in that round bonnet, Miss Mallow. It is for protection from your legions of suitors I know, but I have been wanting to suggest a new one since the first day we drove out together. Let me take you to Mlle. Fancot, in Conduit Street. All the go. I take all my—uh—friends there.”
“I don’t think I want that sort of bonnet,” she returned.
“Afraid you’ll be taken for a lightskirt? You won’t. But I would like you to look less like a maiden aunt as I mean to be a good deal in your company, and preferably not under your uncle’s roof.”
With such an enticement as this held out to her, he could have demanded a whole new wardrobe and got it. “Mlle. Fancot it is.”
A neat turn was executed in the middle of the road, and they proceeded to Conduit Street. “Oh, I haven’t much money with me,” she remembered.
“Put it on tick. Everyone does. I’ll vouch for your credit. I daren’t suggest paying for it.”
“You had better not. They’ll mistake me for one of your—ah, friends.”
“No they won’t!” he laughed, so hard that she could not like it. Was she that old looking?
Miss Mallow was in the habit of purchasing her bonnets, and most of her other necessities (she rarely bought a luxury), at the sale counter at the Pantheon Bazaar. Though she had lived in London for some years, she had never been in the elegant small shops, had no notion such grandeur existed in mere commercial buildings. There was glowing mahogany and velvet drapery everywhere, and the saleswoman looked like a very fashionable young lady.
“Good day, Fannie,” Dammler said, as they stepped in.
“Bon jour, Lord Dammler," Fannie replied. She smiled a smile Prudence could only describe as lascivious—looking up at him through her lashes with a parting of the lips.
“My—cousin wants a new bonnet. Something dashing.”
Fannie’s bold gaze flicked over Prudence with very little interest. “Bien entendu. This way, mam’selle.”
“No, no, don’t shove her off in a closet, Fannie. I want to see what she’s buying. Bring the bonnets out here.”
Fannie smiled and swayed across the store in such a provocative way that Prudence felt quite ashamed to be of the same sex. She looked out the window to avoid looking at Dammler, who was completely absorbed in Fannie’s departing figure. Fannie reappeared a moment later with an armful of bonnets surely designed in heaven. They were not hats at all—they were miniature gardens, with slips of satin roses nestled in beds of soft green, bound up with narrow bands of ribbon.
“How about this one?” Dammler asked, lifting out a buff coloured chip straw with a band of buds around the joining of the rim and poke. “Try this one, Miss Mallow.” She tried it, and it was so beautiful she decided to have it, even if it cost two or three guineas. Fannie mumbled a few words that sounded strangely like five guineas, but she surely could not have heard her aright.
“Do you just want the one?” Dammler asked.
Was it possible a lady ever bought two bonnets at one time? Even as he spoke he lifted another delight from Fannie’s hands. It was a glazed navy straw, with a daring tilt to the brim, and one blood red rose dripping over the tilt. It looked positively wicked, and totally irresistible. She tried it on. “That’s more the thing, don’t you think, Fannie?” Dammler asked.
“Very nice. Charming,” Fannie said to Prudence. “You like it, mam’selle?”
Prudence was too overcome to agree. She looked like the woman she had recently been longing to be. Sophisticated, a little naughty, almost beautiful.
"I'll take it,” she said, without even thinking about the price.
“Wear it,” Dammler said. “Throw the old round bonnet in a bag, Fannie—or do you want to bother taking it, Miss Mallow?”
Prudence was not utterly lost to thrift. She decided to keep it, but with a recklessness new to her, she took the chip straw and the navy glazed, and said airily to send the bill to Grosvenor Square.
“That’s more like it,” Dammler congratulated her. “Where shall we go to show off the new bonnet? Dare we risk the park?”
Prudence was strongly inclined to risk it, but it seemed Dammler had only been joking. They drove through Bond Street—and didn’t risk getting out and walking—to show it off. Prudence felt that just perhaps the male heads turned to view them took a look at her as well as her escort. The females, she knew, had their eyes turned on Dammler alone.
“This will put your suitors at each others’ throats,” he quizzed her. “Clarence will have to bar the door.”
On their next trip out—the trips were becoming a regular thing—she wore the chip straw. The bill that arrived the next day had been staggering but was worth it. She had the money saved from her parsimonious shopping in the past, so there was no worry of running into debt.
Dammler set his head on one side and declared, “Very chic. People will be saying you’re my new flirt if you keep this up.” This promising speech was followed by a chuckle to show how well they two understood the unlikelihood of such a thing. Prudence laughed a little harder than he, and waltzed gaily out the door with a heart slightly cracked.
Some subtle changes took place in their relationship as it progressed. Dammler’s attitude could not have been described as reverential or anything like it even at the beginning. He admired and respected Miss Mallow’s books and brains initially, then he began to like her dry wit, her understatement, her way of not pretending to be impressed with his past (and present) affairs, which he coloured bright, to shock her. When she wore her new bonnets, he thought she was rather sweet looking, in an old-fashioned way. They talked and laughed together for hours. If anyone had told him they were well suited, he would have been shocked.
More than one friend did enquire of Dammler the name of his new friend, and he was at pains to make clear she was a professional friend. “The new lady novelist Murray is all excited about,” he would explain. Murray had, in fact, taken more interest in her since Dammler had taken her up. “You must have read her marvelous books—very clever. I adore them.” Both the books and the author gained more from such speeches as these than from a hundred less exalted persons liking them. They were put on the reserved list at the lending libraries so that several ladies had to purchase a copy for themselves.
One day Dammler met an acquaintance as he came out of Hettie’s house. It was a Mr. Seville, a nabob with whom Hettie had become friends. She wasn’t overly particular, Dammler noticed. “Oh, Dammler, how have you been?” Seville asked.
“Splendid, what’s the news?"
“Little to tell. Say, who’s the pretty new chit I see you driving with these days?”
“You mean Miss Mallow, I believe. Not a chit, by the way, but a lady. A professional friend—a novelist. Very clever woman."
“That so? Not your chère amie then?”
“Good Lord, no! You must have seen me with Cybele. Well, you were at the opera last night.” Dammler spent many afternoons with Miss Mallow, but his evenings were still given over to his customary pursuits.
“Yes, I did see you, but since when do you limit yourself to one?”
“When the one is Cybele, who can afford two?”
“No, she didn’t come cheap, I’ll swear. Lovely gel, though. And this Miss Mallow is a writer you say.”
“Yes...” Dammler went on to mention her books. “A very superior person. The best female novelist we have today I think.”
“I’d like to make her acquaintance some time.”
“I’ll try to arrange it,” he said, and thought to himself, in a pig’s eye.
Chapter Six
The day finally came when Prudence received her first invitation to a ton party. It was Lady Melvine, eager to attach a new talent and always inviting twice as many peo
ple as her rooms would hold to ensure a squeeze, who sent her her first card. Prudence was greatly thrilled, yet there were problems, too. The card had only her name on it; her mama and uncle were not known to Lady Melvine. She was not a little girl, yet to go all alone to her first fine social occasion could not but be intimidating. Suppose she got there and didn’t know a soul except the hostess? And even she might very well not recognize her to see her again. She really wondered that her name had been recalled, imagining Dammler to have been instrumental in the invitation. A further difficulty loomed in that both her mother and Uncle Clarence assumed she was going with Dammler. She disliked to disabuse them of the assumption lest they should think she ought to stay home, or worse, that Clarence would start to be happy to escort her.
Dammler, she knew, had begun his play for Drury Lane and was not calling as often as formerly. The day of the ball arrived and though she had sent in an acceptance and had a new gown ready, she was by no means sure she wouldn’t develop a migraine when the hour for leaving rolled around. It was three o’clock. Writing proved impossible with such a decision before her and she sat in her study, now not only shelved but with several portraits of literary giants decorating the walls. Uncle Clarence had been busy while she gallivanted. There were Shakespeare and Milton on the east wall, and Aristotle between the windows, all regarding her with enigmatic smiles between closed lips, and all with their hands folded, a pen or a book to indicate their calling. With startling ingenuity, Shakespeare held a candle, which in some obscure manner represented his particular field to be drama. It was at the candle that Prudence was looking when a servant came to the door and announced Dammler. The marquis was not a foot behind her, for he never paid much heed to formality.
“Thank you,” he said over his shoulder to Rose and stepped in. “Do I disturb the genius at work? You should keep a dish of apples to throw at inconsiderate scoundrels like myself who barge in uninvited when you are busy. Shall I leave? I can come back later—just tell me when you will be free.”
“No, do come in. I am particularly stupid today. I can’t get a word down on paper."
“That was exactly my problem, so I came to you.”
“What, are you run into difficulties with the play? You said it was going well.”
“So it was, till this hussy of a heroine I’ve saddled myself with started cutting up on me. She is supposed to be a concubine of a Mogul but she has taken the notion into her head she’s real, and I can’t keep her in line.”
“But that is marvelous! When that happens, I know I am on the right foot. Give her her head. She will know what to do better than you.”
“But I have a plot of whose exigencies she is unaware, you see.” He sat down and threw one leg over the other. As usual, he was dressed in the height of fashion, and Prudence was aware of her own plain bombazine gown. “Her name is Shilla. She was sold to the Mogul at the tender age of eight—they snare ‘em young in the East. She is now a virgin of sixteen, having by a series of ingenious ruses saved herself from his advances, but he is quite determined to have her.”
“Will they put such a thing on the stage, milord? I hadn’t realized it was so risqué a story you were engaged in."
“You should have!” He threw back his head and laughed. “Really, Miss Mallow, the name is Prudence, not prude. It is a comedy, but in the best classic tradition, anything of interest will occur offstage. You didn’t think I planned to show the seduction?” Prudence was shocked but hid it as best she could, for like any lady of strict upbringing she was anxious to be thought more worldly than she was.
"The thing is,” he went on, “she is supposed to pretend she is sick to stave him off a little longer—waiting for God only knows what—I have no plan to rescue her. But the silly chit is falling in love with him. Now, what shall I do with her?”
“What is she telling you she wants to do?”
“I blush to confess it, but she plans to run away in the dead of night in the melodramatic manner of popular fiction. She must have been dipping into Mrs. Radcliffe’s Gothic novels when my back was turned. She hopes for him to come after her and make her number one wife, I imagine.”
“It sounds an excellent plan. The ladies will adore it, whatever the gentlemen may think. They would prefer him to use brute force or some vile scheme to have his way with her, I suppose, but if Shilla has decided she will bolt, bolt it is.”
“You don’t think it too hackneyed?”
“No, you will wrap it up in your fine silver phrases and the world will take it for a new thing.”
“It would never happen in the East,” he shook his head dubiously.
“Who will know that except yourself?”
“Only you. Can I count on your discretion?”
“You may be sure I won’t mention it to a soul.”
“I’ll let her bolt then. Now, you have helped me. What is your stumbling block? If you have a refractory hero on your hands I will be happy to trim him into line for you.”
“No, it’s not that. I'm not in the mood, that’s all.”
He looked around the room, and for the first time spotted Uncle Clarence’s pictures. “Good God! No wonder you’ve run dry with such a gallery to watch you. The work of Mr. Elmtree, no doubt. I recognize the pose. Oh, yes, and a symbol apiece. Who are they?”
“What an ignoramus,” she jeered. “You don’t recognize Shakespeare? Don’t be fooled by the luxuriant head of curls. Uncle did not like him to have a receding hairline."
“It was the candle that fooled me. But I won’t ask its significance. And the other fellow?”
“Milton, of course. Looking quite like his old self, but for the inch or so Uncle took off the end of his nose. And the other in the night gown is Aristotle.”
“They bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, do they not?”
“How can you say so? Shakespeare has a moustache.”
“Still, they could be taken for brothers.”
“There is a certain similarity between all my uncle’s pictures. You must develop an eye for the fine points. You will come out looking much like them when he gets around to doing you. You can’t escape forever you know.”
“You do me too much honour, but I must always be distinguished by my black patch.”
“Cretin!” she laughed. “You cannot think he would paint anything so different. You will have two round agates like the rest of us.”
He smiled, but picked her up on it all the same. “What a little diplomat you are, Miss Mallow. He wouldn’t paint anything so different. So grotesque you mean. He only paints over a fault. But you must not regard me in disgust because of it. The patch comes off shortly.”
“It is not in the least grotesque. Quite makes you, in fact. I like it excessively.”
“You put me at a disadvantage,” he smiled oddly.
"What can you mean? You are going to start finding fault with me. That’s it.”
“No, but I had hoped to ask you to exchange your cap for my patch one of these days. Today, in fact, or tonight rather, for the ball. My patch will have to stay on 'til a little later.”
“Oh, you go to the ball?” she said, relieved. She had hoped he would be there, that she would have at least one friend.
“I thought we were going together. But it was presumptuous of me. No doubt you have made other plans.”
“No,” she corrected hastily, smiling so there was no possibility of offence taken on his side, and clearly none on hers.
“I should have told—asked you sooner. I meant to bring the invitation myself and arrange it, but I have been busy writing and I see Hettie has bungled it. No matter; you don’t know her set yet, and I’ll have you to myself this once.”
Such gallantry as this set her maiden heart aflutter. There was never any flirtation between them. Their friendship was real friendship and no more, but her heart was not stone and it beat faster at such words as these.
“I had planned to go alone; I shall be happy for your escort.”
“You are not living up to your reputation, Miss Prudence Mallow. If you went alone, you would be taken up by the most raffish element at the party. Hettie will have a very mixed company. A brace of the royal dukes, rubbing elbows with nabobs and other parvenus.”
"Am I so abandoned-looking? I made sure my cap would protect me.”
“Ah, but you are not going to wear your cap, are you?” He looked at the cap she wore as he spoke.
“I had planned to, certainly.”
“I wish you would not. But about your question, no, you are not abandoned-looking in the least. It is only that a new lady coming on the scene is discovered first by the blades. Your finer specimen waits for an introduction, but the caper merchants will be all over you.”
She laughed this warning away, believing herself too old and much too plain to attract anything in the nature of a rake.
“I’ll hold them all at bay, and introduce you to nothing but bishops and vegetarians.” He arose. “I am taking up too much of your time with my foolishness. I’ll call for you at eight. 'Til then!” He raised one hand in a salute and was off.
Her writing block was miraculously cured. She wrote away till dinner time, and over the meal she was able to inform her protectors at what hour her ‘beau,’ as Clarence would persist in calling him, was calling for her, without ever having to reveal there was ever any question of his coming.
Clarence would not miss such an event as his niece setting off for a ball at the home of a countess on the arm of a marquis. In fact, he was so thrilled he too rigged himself in formal black satin breeches and white silk hose to see them off.
"A fine looking couple we have together there,” he congratulated his sister. “A pity he is maimed, but I will paint it out. I see Prue has taken off her cap. That will give him the clue she is thinking of accepting him. I shall paint her without her cap. It was a mistake for her to set it on. I urged her not to do it, but girls will be girls. Well, Wilma, will it be piquet or Pope Joan? We haven’t played Pope Joan for a week.”