by Joan Smith
“It will be of some interest to you, I hope—a little talk on the decline of drama. We have fallen a distance from the days of Aristophanes and Marlowe to what passes for drama nowadays. Drivel written by Dammler and the likes, about a harem in the East. I hope you don’t mean to attend it.”
“It is not being presented this year.”
“Is it not? I had hoped... Well everyone knows what it is about anyway. It will be all violence and lust and such things as should be prohibited. He and Shelley are a fine pair of atheists.”
Prudence did not much want to attend a lecture, but Clarence was having his cronies in for cards that evening, and a lecture might at least be instructive if not amusing. When Ashington mentioned that he had given Fanny Burney and Coleridge tickets the evening before, she decided to go. The glitter of famous names was still new enough that she enjoyed associating with them.
Clarence was disappointed that she would not be on display at his card party, but if there was anything that could bring him to accept it, it was her being so marvelously occupied elsewhere, in such company. The names of Coleridge and Burney and Ashington would be more mentioned at the card party than hearts, spades and clubs. Those notable persons might have been at the lecture, but if they were, Prudence saw none of them but Ashington. She sat alone in the front row of a sparsely filled hall on a chair of uncompromising hardness. The lecture was tedious and very long. Ashington knew a great many names of plays and playwrights, their plots and dates, and was determined to mention every one of them. From the Greeks to Sheridan, he could have not omitted one, in any language. The lecture began at eight-thirty; at eleven-thirty he was still at it. It seemed he would never end, but just before her eyes closed completely, he was bowing to light applause and walking towards her for congratulations.
There was not even a stop for refreshments to repay her for her long vigil. It was “right home and to bed” for her, Ashington smiled gaily. How he still found breath after his harangue was a wonder.
His jolting carriage lumbered along the streets from the lecture hall in an out-of-the-way part of town to Grosvenor Square, passing the lively entertainment section on its way. How many carriages were out, the occupants laughing and wearing evening clothes, and on the streets groups of friends met and chatted and laughed, planning more revels before “home and bed” for them. Prudence felt a twinge of envy. What was she doing with this old man, when she would much rather have been out at a play or at the opera? Mr. Seville’s company was preferable to this. One particularly rowdy group of black-coated gentlemen and gaily-gowned women, the latter of whom Prudence suspected of being Phyrnes, one and all, was ahead of them, about to cross the street at the corner.
“That is Dammler there, is it not?” Ashington said, looking out the carriage window.
This speech was the most interesting thing he had said all evening in his companion’s opinion, and she quickly leaned out her window. She sat across the banquette from Ashington, the better to see and hear him. She had no difficulty in spotting Dammler, because of his conspicuous eye patch. She thought she would have known him anyway by his walk. Her glance sped to his partner. It was not the blonde Phyrne this time, but a gorgeous redhead of the same calling.
Ashington rolled down his window and hailed Dammler. “Good evening, milord,” he called in a loud voice, to attract his attention.
“Good evening, Doctor,” Dammler said, smiling and raising his hand in quite a friendly way that led Prudence to suspect on this occasion he had been drinking freely. His eyes turned to the other window, and the smile froze on his face.
“Miss Mallow has been to hear my lecture on the Drama,” Ashington said. “Pity you did not come.”
Dammler continued staring at Prudence, and said not another word. When Ashington rolled up the window and the carriage proceeded, he was still standing in the street, with a redhead pulling at his arm and pointing out that the others were yards ahead of them.
“That scheming weasel!” Dammler said.
The next afternoon he fulfilled his promise a day late and came to call on Prudence. His eye patch had finally come off, revealing no disfiguring scar, but a slight tilting of the left eyebrow at the outer tip, and a small white mark beneath. He wore no smile on this occasion, but entered the room with an angry face.
“Oh, Lord Dammler, you have your patch off!” Prudence said. “How well you look without it.”
“I am Lord Dammler now, am I?” he asked in a curt tone. “A new sense of formality, to go with your cap and your hoary Doctor.”
“Come in,” she said, peering down the hall to see if they were being overheard by anyone.
He strode in and slammed the door behind him with a bang. “You are busy writing an extract on the good Doctor’s lecture I presume?”
“No, I was wondering whether they have hedgerows in Cornwall. My heroine is gone off there on a visit, and as I have never been there myself, I am having trouble describing the countryside. Have you been to Cornwall?”
“I think I have, but I may have imagined it, as I have a habit of doing. You had better check with your mentor.”
“Dammler, for goodness sake sit down and quit glowering over me. What has got you in such a temper?” If anyone deserved to be in a temper it was herself, but she was behaving beautifully, she congratulated herself.
“What do you think has got me in a temper?” he shouted, ignoring the offer of a chair. “You, putting on your cap and grandmother’s gown and your prim manner, nice as a nun’s hen, to please that damned jackanapes of an Ashington.”
“So that’s it!”
“God, how I wanted to go across that room and box your ears. The gall of him. The consummate effrontery to treat your work as though you were a clever little schoolgirl writing a pretty description of a garden, and you smiling and simpering like a Bath miss. He hasn’t the least notion what you’re all about. He thinks you write..." The hands flew up in frustration. "... love stories or domestic comedy. I don’t know. Dammit, Prue, you should have given him a taste of your tongue, instead of sitting at his feet as though he were a tin god.”
“I do write love stories, domestic comedies. He is used to reading Greek tragedies and philosophy. He has five thousand books!”
“And knows every one of them by heart, complete with name and date, to bore his hearers and pretend he has a thought of his own.”
“You are unjust. He knows a great deal. Why, he speaks six languages.”
“He hasn’t an interesting word to say in any of them. How can you be humbugged by that great bloated, self-important bore?”
“He is thin as a rail!”
“I am speaking of his egotism.”
“Well, he is important! It was inexcusable the way you behaved last night—the night before I mean—at the dinner party.”
“Yes, now we get down to it. I suppose he had a good deal to say about last night. He made a point of calling your attention to me.”
"He only stopped to say good evening to you. It was well done of him, considering the way you had behaved.”
“Well done? Oh, it was marvelously done. It was pure spite. He wanted you to see me making a damned fool of myself. He wouldn’t let that chance pass.”
“It’s not his fault that you were out carousing and drinking and—and so on.”
“Especially so on! That must have tickled him, to catch me red-handed.”
“And redheaded,” Prudence said, laughing at his chagrin.
He looked at her, and in a moment was laughing, too. “Prudence Mallow...you, putting on your cap and prissy face. You’re a baggage at heart, passing for a lady. You did it all to butter up the old slice, didn’t you?”
“I did not! I have a high opinion of Dr. Ashington.”
“A high opinion of the good he can do you, hussy.”
“I am not so conniving as that. He is an eminent authority on..."
“Everything. He’s a rasher of wind. Don’t bother to let on you admire him. You ha
ve more sense than that. Do you think I care if you put the old goat to good use? Get what you can from him, and welcome. You may be sure he’ll get back what he can by asking you to copy his essays for him, to save him the four pence a sheet to have it done. I’m pleased to see you taking advantage of him.”
“I am not! It never entered my head to butter him up so he would give me a good review. It sounds a horrid, dishonest thing to do.”
“You can’t mean you’re taken in by his insufferable air of knowing everything. Only see who he had to dinner— that old court card of a Coleridge, and cardess of a Burney."
“And Lord Dammler,” Prudence reminded him.
“I only went because you were to be there. Until he let that slip out I had no intention of going. I daresay he wrote that to me in his note to get me there.”
“And you didn’t accept until the last minute either— more bad manners.”
“He has been giving you a list of my virtues, I see. But truly, Prudence, you can’t like him.”
“I respect him. He knows so much more than I do about everything—literature I mean.”
“In six languages—two of them dead, and the other four rapidly expiring at his hands. I speak six languages, too, and I don’t see you showing me this great respect.”
“Do you? What languages do you speak?”
“English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian—a bit of Hindustani and Chinese—well, a dozen phrases in each. And I don’t include the dead ones, you see.”
“I didn’t know that. How very stupid I am compared to you two.”
“What—am I elevated to Ashington’s stratosphere with my six languages? I should have told you sooner. And I have 10,000 books, more or less. That must give me a rung up, eh?”
“Uncle Clarence speaks of setting up another shelf,” she said with exaggerated modesty. “To hold the Backwoods Review, you know.”
“He didn’t call it that! I esteem your uncle. When will he paint me?”
“At the drop of a hint. You have only to name the three days you have available. With your patch gone, there will be nothing to it,” she laughed lightly. How very comfortable it was with Dammler. He might get angry and scold and rage, but in the end she could say anything to him without fear of giving offence, and he took the same liberty with her.
“Are you really an atheist?” she asked suddenly.
“I don’t trot off to church every Sunday, but I certainly believe in God. Can’t you tell when I’m being facetious? I only said it to get a rise out of Ashington.”
“You shouldn’t be facetious about God.”
“Why, do you think He has no sense of humour? You’re slipping into your friend’s mistake of picturing Him in the image of Dr. Ashington.”
“Why were you so angry at his party?”
“Initially because of that nasty piece he wrote about you, but it didn’t improve my fit of pique to see you two so close. I think Clarence is right. The old devil would have you if he could.”
“Well, you know Uncle Clarence. Any single gentleman is suspect on the first visit, and a confirmed adorer on the second.”
“What must he make of me?”
“Oh it is all my fault. I am not giving you the sort of encouragement you want, being so shy and behindhand in your dealings with the fair sex.”
“I’d better smarten up if I mean to have you,” he laughed, very much in the old joking way.
“You still haven’t told me why you antagonized poor Ashington so. You didn’t object to Mr. Seville’s offering for me. You can’t compare the two. If Ashington is interested in me, he is in every way superior to Mr. Seville, except in wealth, of course.”
“I acknowledge nothing of the sort. Seville liked you. He would have treated you like a queen, and given you anything you wanted, asking in return only that you look pretty and say smart things to show a clever lady could tolerate him. Ashington is a different article altogether. He wants you to adore him, to spend your time helping him puff himself up, yes, and he’d make you his copy girl in the bargain.”
“He likes a little praise to be sure, who does not? But he would never ask me to waste my time copying for him. He thinks I write well.”
“For a lady. And speaking of praise, how did you like Shilla? Isn’t she charming? I like her better all the time.”
“Yes, once I got over the description of her wanton way of draping herself over an Ottoman, I took to her a good deal. The first part must be radically altered though. You have put so much of an English nature into her, I doubt you’ll pass her off as an Easterner at all. Could she be an English orphan who somehow got marooned in Turkey?”
“Possibly. That might be an idea. Have I told you her latest spree?” Prudence shook her head. “She’s through with her prince, fickle creature. I no sooner get a crown rammed on his head than she turns pious on me, and is at present making up to a fakir the caravan chanced upon in Constantinople. An older man, and a hypocrite to boot. Fills her head with religious mumbo-jumbo, but he’s only after her tender body.”
“The beast. If she is to be a bonne bouche, as she calls it, for anyone, she would do better to stick with her prince. Do you think if you relented and gave her the chicken coop..."
“We’ve been all through that,” he shook his head. “I even promised to throw in a couple of geese and a duck, but she took it for a canard.” The hands went up in derision at his own poor pun.
“What a fowl—that’s f-o-w-l thing to do.”
“You don’t have to spell it out to me, Miss Mallow. You are falling into bad habits with your new suitor. But I had better withdraw that, before you have a few words to say on the subject of bad habits yourself. Reverting to Shilla, it was my letting her away from the harem in the first place that did the mischief. All your fault. I followed your intuition.”
“I had an inkling it might be laid at my door. I wonder you still care for her. Her attachment to the fakir seems enough to turn off any sensible fellow.”
“I am conspicuously lacking in sense where women are concerned. I am taking her away for a holiday to see if I can bring her to reason.”
“Usually works, does it?”
“Shrew. Wills is anxious to get her on the boards for the fall Season, and she’s a long way from finished. There are too many distractions in London.”
“Are you going home then, to Longbourne Abbey?”
“No, the Malverns have asked me to Finefields. I finished the last batch of my cantos there earlier.”
“I see.” It was pretty generally known that he had done more than write his cantos there. Even Prudence had heard of his affair with Lady Malvern. “Are you sure you won’t find distraction there waiting for you?” she asked pertly.
“Yes, Mama, quite sure. And I shan’t drink to excess or stay up too late either. You refer, I collect, to the Countess. The rumours of my indecent affairs are grossly exaggerated, Prudence. I am not quite the lecher I am made out.” He looked at her long and searchingly as he said this, as if to reinforce his meaning.
“It is none of my business. I had no right to infer...”
“No, and no right to look at me last night as though I were a ghost either. You looked—awful.”
“I was merely surprised—coming on you so suddenly and unexpectedly. And I was very tired, too.”
“So was I. In fact, I went straight home to bed. Alone,” he added the last word deliberately.
“Dammler!” she said impatiently, colouring quickly. “You know you should not say such things to me. It is quite improper.” Her eyes slid to the carefully closed door. Improper, too, for her to be here alone with him, cap or no.
“Surely my specifying I was alone saves it from any taint of depravity,” he said, following her eyes to the door and smiling.
“It is exactly what makes it wrong, and you know it well. The question ought not to have arisen.”
“I thought it had arisen in your mind, however, and wished to remove the doubt. The
statement, in short, was unexceptionable, and the fault lies in yourself. ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense,’ as our polyglot friend the Doctor would say, if he had the wit. We have established by repeating two or three times with no foundation that you are a baggage, Prudence, and you have just confirmed it. If you were half the prude you let on you are, your mind would not have coloured my innocent statement red.”
“I was a prude—a proper lady, I mean,” she corrected as his smile widened into a grin, “until I met you. It is you with your voluptuous harem girls and double-entendres and so on that has been the undoing of me.”
“I wouldn’t say you’re quite undone yet,” he said rather seriously, but he was never serious for long, and was soon back teasing her. “Have I not a dozen times hinted you off from rakes and roués, and pointed out the danger of an excess of flowers and diamonds?”
“Yes, and brought more mischief into my study than ever you kept out of it.”
“I do apologize for Ashington. I ought not to have inflicted that bore on you.”
“He is the least reprehensible person you have introduced me to.”
“God knows he is reprehensible enough.”
“If you pass me in the streets two years hence hanging on some Cit’s arm, wearing the title Phyrne, I hope you will feel at least a pang of guilt.”
“My sweet conscience, don’t say such appalling things to me,” he laughed uncomfortably. “Emotional blackmail is the lowest form of trick. Still, I had rather see you in that title than Mrs. Ashington. I would not think you so utterly lost to any chance of temporal happiness."
“I suspect our ideas of happiness are as divergent as those of love.”
“You are bringing me round to a more proper notion of love. You and Shilla between you. I remember what you said, and she might give me her views while I am at Finefields with her.”
“And Lady Malvern.”