Reprise

by Joan Smith

  He looked on, unconvinced. If she really liked it, she would be making some joke about her own spartan little cubbyhole of a study. "Too elegant?” he asked, anxious to discover the cause of her displeasure.

  “No--not at all. It is perfect. And the gaslight will make night work easy, too.”

  He continued to observe, frowning. It was as close to perfect as he could make it. The rest of the house she had approved, but here, where he had gone to the most pains, she was not only indifferent, she was distressed. It was the lady’s desk, he decided. She thought it a presumption. He hastened on to make clear he presumed nothing. “Hettie found this treasure for me in France--heard of it from an agent. It was too good to pass up. I may have it sent home to Longbourne,” he said. “It used to belong to Madame du Barry. She was an awful woman, but she had good taste in desks, don’t you think? It would be interesting to know what epistles were written here.”

  “Yes,” was all she said. She had been reading too much into his politeness and Hettie’s. Nothing had been meant by it. They were only making conventional remarks, sounding like saying more because she had been involved in the discussion of the house and its furnishing earlier.

  “Mine, so they tell me, belonged to Alexander Pope. I doubt I’ll be able to write a word here, with his shadow hanging over me. He casts a large shadow for so small a man.”

  “You overestimate him, I think. He is all head and no heart.”

  “A good balance for me then--all heart and no head.” He reached down, to her great consternation, and picked up her book. “Have you seen this one?" he asked.

  “No--this is the first I have seen it,” she answered, the words truthful enough, but the meaning utterly false.

  “Murray gave it to me today, hot off the press. I don’t usually read novels except yours and Scott’s, but he tells me this one will be the rage. Perhaps you would like to have it?” He started to hand it to her, then suddenly set it down. “No,” he went on, “I have something else I want you to read instead. I told you I had something for you.” He went to her desk and picked up his sonnets. They were contained in a single volume, bound in morocco leather, a deluxe edition. “With my compliments, Miss Mallow,” he said, handing them to her.

  She looked at the title, smiling in pleasure, the surprise sufficient to make her forget her chagrin for a moment. “Oh, thank you. I have been looking forward to reading this.”

  “Open it,” he suggested, regarding her steadily as she turned back the cover to read the inscription. She was the happiest girl who was ever miserable. She looked at him with tears swimming in her eyes.

  “Prudence!” He took the single step that separated them, and folded her in his arms. “Prudence, forgive me. I was a fool to take Cybele in, a damned blundering jackass, but she doesn’t mean a thing to me. No one ever has but you.”

  She lifted her face to answer, and he kissed her, a long, impassioned kiss until her head was spinning. It was all perfect, just as she had hoped and dreamed, except for the book, the malevolent novel she had dashed off in pique, and that stared at her from the edge of his desk. Oh, if only he had given it to her, if only he would never read it, or hear of it. But already it was out, would be in the stores soon, and the money earned from it partly spent, too, so short as she had been. There was no way of stopping its circulation. She must tell him, make a confession and count on his good nature to forgive her. She felt at this moment he would forgive her anything. “Allan, I ..."

  He looked at her expectantly, and the words stuck in her throat.

  “I love you, too,” he said joyfully, and kissed her again.

  It seemed a shame to intrude on this precious moment with so unpleasant a piece of information, and too soon the opportunity was over. Clarence came barging in on them, thrilled to death to find them in an embrace.

  With his most debonair air he proceeded to ignore it by saying, “Don’t mind me. I’ll be out in a minute and let you get on with it, Nevvie.” How sweet, to be able to say Nevvie again!

  “Do come in, Uncle. You haven’t seen our study. I was just telling Prue my desk used to belong to Alexander Pope. Quite a find for me.”

  “A Pope, eh? You’re flying high. You’ll be wanting a throne chair to go with it. Mind you don’t turn Roman on us. I see you have got your books all laid out, all ten million of them. Makes a very good impression. Looks very like Prue’s study. All that is lacking is a couple of pictures there to set off your little mirror. I’ll give them to you. No need to go wasting your blunt on them. I have half a dozen in my new style looking for a home.” He looked around critically then said aside to Prudence, “You will be able to fix it up very nicely. A couple of pictures will do the trick.”

  Dammler just caught Prudence’s eye, and they exchanged a silent look.

  “So this is where you’ll be scribbling up your rhymes, is it, where papal bulls were used to be writ. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.”

  “Very true,” Dammler answered unfazed. “Pope Alexander would turn in his grave to know what base use his desk is to be put to.”

  “Oh, your verses ain’t that bad, Nevvie. I like them excessively. I hadn’t heard they had run so short of cash in Rome they were auctioning their pieces off.”

  “Shall we go on out before we have the whole throng in here?” Dammler asked as he heard Hettie’s group approach.

  “They are at my heels, are they?” Clarence asked, not at all annoyed with the persistence of his fans. “We had better run along then. I see the crowd is thinning. I’ll take you home, Prudence. It is after three, and you will be getting sleepy.” It was himself who was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He was sorry to have to pull himself away, but with the euphoria of having patched up things between the lovers, he did it.

  Dammler accompanied them to the front door, thanking them for coming, and assuring them he would go to them the next day. Prudence clutched his book, resigned to leave only because she was so anxious to begin reading it. Tomorrow when he came she would tell him about her own awful book, and make him understand.

  Chapter Six

  Dammler’s party was not over before four. He went into his study for a last look around to see what it was that had annoyed Prudence when first she entered. It wasn’t the lady’s desk, after all. She still loved him, so it should have pleased her, but it hadn’t. Really it seemed to be his own desk that bothered her. Did she want a private study; was that it? His mind ran over possible rooms that could be turned into one, though he particularly wanted to share this room with her. He went to give a last good night to Alexander Pope’s desk, with a lingering smile at Uncle’s nonsense. The man was better than a joke book.

  Absentmindedly he picked up the book, Babe in the Woods, and carried it with him upstairs. He always read half an hour before sleeping. As he felt his reading would be little attended this night, he didn’t much care what he read. Glancing at the title, he made himself a bet the title was wrongly interpreted. The female author would take it to mean a child lost in the woods, or some more civilized symbol, probably a girl out of her element in society, whereas the true origin of the phrase referred to a person set in the stocks. He read two pages, enough to realize he had won his bet with himself, but as he rather enjoyed the author’s style, he read on a little further. A phrase here and there reminded him of Prudence, enough to keep him going. By the end of the first chapter, he had concluded someone was copying her style, using her trick of saying one thing and letting it be known by the circumstances quite another was meant. But not so well done as Prudence, he decided loyally.

  The end of Chapter Two made him think that not only her style but a little something of her own story was creeping in, too. Someone, some jealous cat--really there was a viperish touch here that was not at all like Prue--was writing a parody of the two of them, or so it seemed to him. He read on with the keenest interest now, confirming that it was about them. He was finished with Volume One in an hour, as he was a quick reader, and when he laid i
t down, there was a question on his face. It wasn’t possible Prudence had written this thing. But how very odd that so many of his own ideas were running around in the book, distorted, placed in a new context to make them worse, but still his own ideas--original ones. He hadn’t read far into the second volume without realizing that the perpetrator was none other than Prudence Mallow. Certain passages left not a single doubt. Ideas he had shared with no one but herself, and here they were, coming back at him, word for word. Hettie too--certainly “Lady Maldire” was Hettie, with an assortment of rings replacing her customary excess of brooches.

  He was so angry the blood thumped in his temples, and so intrigued he had no thought of putting the book down without finishing it that night, which was already nearly morning. The sun was rising when he laid the second volume aside, his face set in a rigid mask of fury. So this was the mystery of her having given Murray a manuscript and not wishing to tell him about it! This was why she had been distraught in the study-- and saying she had never seen the book! How she must have been laughing up her sleeve! While he had all but idolized her, writing the finest poems he had ever written in her honor, she had been wallowing in this muck. Making him a laughingstock, and herself a saint. She must have thought she had well and truly lost him, to have pulled this stunt. This was her payment for Cybele, and Cybele was in the book to the life, with her platinum curls tarnished to copper. Her sweet smiles, her joy at winning him back--how to explain that? She’d rather have a real live marquess than mere revenge, perhaps. She had used a pseudonym in case he was fool enough to come trotting back to her. There’d be no going back after this. Even a mutt--how dare she call him a mutt!--would not grovel this low.

  In his anger he pulled the two books apart and flung them into the cold grate, then fished in after the pieces, reading the loose pages again, with a new shot of anger at every line. He didn’t bother with the farce of going to bed. He changed into morning clothes and went to Hettie’s a good four hours before she was likely to have her head off the pillow. His message to her dresser was violent enough to insure his being received bright and early this morning. She greeted him from her bed, still wearing her cap and an elegant but garish peach satin jacket, dripping with lace.

  “You didn’t have to wake me from my sleep to tell me the news. I know you and Prudence are reconciled, love. Just tell me the date of the wedding and let me get back to sleep,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

  “Wedding be damned! Get into your turban, Het, and you’ll be in on the execution!” he said sharply.

  She rubbed her eyes again, looking at him with the dawning of a brighter interest. “What has the silly girl done now? Don’t tell me she doesn’t like the house, after the ten dozen shops you dragged me into to pick out all that stuff.”

  “It is a matter of the most complete indifference to me whether Miss Mallow cares for my house. After you’ve scanned this piece of libel you’ll see what I mean.” He threw the two dismantled books at her, their spines broken, the sheets tumbling out all over the counterpane.

  She picked up one of the green covers and read it. “Jane White. Pray, what is a Miss Jane White to us, Allan?”

  “Alias Miss Prudence Mallow. Look at it! Look at what she has had the damnable gall to publish! Not only me, oh, no, she included you in her tirade too, Het. ‘Lady Maldire’--that is you. A nice touch, don’t you think, ‘Lady Curse’? Only, of course, with her usual ignorance of French she has got it wrong. It ought to be ‘Maudit’

  “Has she written about me, the minx?” Hettie asked, snatching up pages at random and scanning them for a “Maldire.” Like so many fashionable fribbles, she couldn’t have cared less what was said of her or written, so long as something was. She found herself soon enough. “Lady Maldire, whose greatest labor in life was to vary the color of her gowns and the height of her lovers... Oh!” She looked at him, feigning horror, secretly thrilled to death. She was soon rummaging about in the heaps of paper for more “Maldires,” and finding a sufficient quantity of them to keep her happy, reading each aloud to Dammler, who was all but frothing at the mouth.

  “What should we do about it?” he asked Hettie, pacing the floor and urging her to get up. “I have a good mind to sue. That would stick Murray with the settlement I expect. Not that he will escape scot-free, either. He knew what she was up to, well enough, probably urged her on to it. And telling me this was the first work of a new writer! But it’s not his fault of course, primarily. This is her doing.”

  “Listen to this, Allan,” Hettie said, tittering in pleasure. “This must be Cybele--’His current mistress was noted for the metallic luster of her tresses, and the metallic hardness of her heart!’ How horrid! What does she say of you? Who are you in this story?”

  “‘Guelph.’ The name won’t be hard to find.”

  She scrabbled around through the sheets till she found it. "'He dabbled in the arts, but his real vocation was lechery.’ That is coming it a bit strong. Are you sure ‘Guelph’ is you?”

  “Of course he’s me! And there’s worse than that. I’d like to ring her neck, but strangling is too good for her. She should be whipped at the cart’s tail.”

  Hettie meanwhile had settled against the pillows and was reading merrily, quoting a phrase at him from time to time. “Dammit, Hettie, get out of bed. Come with me and prevent me from killing her.”

  “Why don’t you run along and talk to Murray, Allan? Pick me up later. You can’t go storming down her door at eight-thirty in the morning. My God, it’s only eight-thirty! I didn’t go to bed till three hours ago.”

  “I should murder him while I’m about it. Not to give me a warning of this, he with my sonnets ready to be distributed: Love sonnets to that creature! What a jackass I’ll look! Publicly declaring my undying devotion while she bastes me and serves me up done to a turn, with an apple stuck between my jaws. I’ve got to stop him. Yes, you’re right. I’ll see Murray and slap an injunction on him to stop circulation. Glad you thought of it.”

  Hettie hadn’t even heard him. She was reading and chuckling, trying to sort the pages into order for a proper perusal. Dammler made only one stop before going to Murray. When he entered the office, he was accompanied by the sharpest lawyer in town, but was too incensed to allow this expensive minion to speak for him.

  “Ah, Dammler,” Murray said, rising to greet him.

  “I am here on business,” Dammler said abruptly. “I have an injunction stopping distribution of my sonnets. I want to serve notice, Mr. Murray, that henceforth you are not my publisher.”

  Murray, who had been worried for some days, was in no doubt as to what had happened. He had given Dammler the book in a seemingly casual way, hoping to divert his suspicions by this ruse, but clearly it had not worked. “What seems to be..."

  “Cut line, Murray. You know what this is all about. I want every one of those copies of my sonnets delivered to my home on Berkeley Square. If I hear of so much as one in circulation, you’ll regret it.”

  “We have a contract!”

  “We had a contract. If you’re wise you’ll tear it up, as I have done mine. Go ahead with circulation and you’ll have a suit for a hundred thousand pounds damages for that scurrilous piece of trash of Miss’ Mallow’s you had the ill judgment to publish.”

  “If I hadn’t, someone else would have, Dammler. It’s done anonymously. No reason to think anyone will suspect..."

  "The whole town will know it’s me! You knew it. The book is out, and I won’t have my sonnets on the same shelves as that tripe. Do you understand?”

  “It might be possible to get the copies of Miss Mallow’s book back..."

  “Let her have her little joke, but I won’t add to it by having the sonnets out for a comparison of our styles.”

  Murray was not simple enough to think the styles had anything to do with it, and tried once more to talk him around. “Those poems are the best thing you’ve done, Dammler. The finest poetry I’ve seen in several years. Surely you’re not going
to suppress them entirely.”

  “Come to the bonfire,” Dammler said, and stomped from the office, while his lawyer wordlessly laid the injunction on Murray’s desk, tipped his hat, and trotted out at his master’s heels. He wondered why he had been brought along. It was still only nine-thirty, an unseemly hour to call on a lady, but not too early, Dammler felt, to rouse a vulture. He got rid of the lawyer and went on to Grosvenor Square. He was too impatient to go back for Hettie.

  He felt if he had to spar with Mr. Elmtree this morning he might do the innocent old fool an injury. He was relieved on that score at least. Clarence had gone out half an hour since, to tell Sir Alfred about the play and the party afterwards. Sir Alfred had attended both himself, but this didn’t save him from the visit. Dammler was admitted to Prudence’s study by a servant, and found her sitting over her desk, demure in a dark gown with a white collar, a quill between her fingers, a curl falling over her ear. He had seen her like this dozens of times, hundreds in his mind’s eye. It was the main way in which he pictured her, the image a sort of icon. It jarred him, to see her look so sweet, so innocent, and to compare the nunlike appearance with the recent behavior. When she looked up, she smiled and held out her hand to him. He stood a moment looking and shaking his head, as if he would make sense of the senseless.

  She observed the strange look on his face, and her smile faded. He had found out, had read it already! “Allan?” she said in a soft, frightened voice.

  He felt a weakening stab of love, and fought to control it. “It would be better if you call me Lord Dammler, Miss Mallow,” he said, his voice as cold as ice.

  “Oh you know,” she said simply. “I wanted to tell you myself first. To explain..."

  “Why did you not, Miss Mallow? Last night, when I offered you the book and you told me you had never seen it before, for instance, might have been an opportune moment. Of more interest to me is why you chose to write such a piece of carrion.”