by Joan Smith
“The monstrous lies you perpetrated against Miss Burney and myself last night. Now I suppose you will tell me there is no such a thing as a lie, but only an absence of truth, which ill-bred persons like myself call by their plain old Saxon name, lie.”
“Old English, actually, from lyge, you know.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About five hundred years, but I didn’t mean to be petty.”
She lowered her brows at him, and was treated to one of his insouciant shoulder hunchings. “You are allowing lies to exist, are you?” she enquired.
“We always allow females to deal artistically and inventively with the truth,” he answered, taking her arm to stroll through a pebble walk, where statuary loomed above them. “I am shocked at your loose tongue, Prudence. Here I have been taking you for a properly reared young lady. If you didn’t hide behind your petticoats I would be impelled to call you out for that accusation. It is typical of women; you know you have us at this disadvantage of chivalry, and can say or do anything without fear of retribution.”
“Fine talking, milord. Just where are we heading, incidentally?”
“Beyond earshot of Hebe and her friends. You can’t trust a crowd of drinkers to hold their tongues.”
“Who is this intemperate crew you are worried about?” she asked, looking around the empty garden.
“You don’t know the vile habits of Hebe, wine-bearer to the gods? The gray lady up above you there in a very improper state of undress, tilting her jug precariously, urging a drink on all her companions.” He waved towards the statues, that stood on high columns. “Your education has become sorely neglected, my dear. Time I take it in hand for you again, introduce you to some of my ten thousand tomes.”
This leading remark sent her scruples into a state of shock, but he was rattling on before she could form any resolutions to be broken. “Let us get right on with the lessons. The gentleman with horns there beside Hebe is not a cuckolded husband, as you may be forgiven for thinking, but a rather inferior imitation of Michelangelo’s Moses, the horns resulting from a bad translation of the Bible or some such thing. The original in Rome is much better.” He drew her to a stop, and went on pointing out the other statues.
“The charming lady au naturel next Moses is some stone incarnation of Venus or Aphrodite, rendered so poorly it is impossible to tell whether she is copied from the original Greek, or is a third-hand job taken from the Roman copy. It is not only we dramatists who plagiarize, you see. A time-honored custom in the arts. That will come as news to Clarence’s niece,” he said with a bantering smile.
“Odd the way they are arranged--man and woman, like a polite dinner party. That would be Constance’s idea. What do you suppose Venus finds to say to Moses as they stand there, side by side, through the ages? Has to remind him of the Commandments, I daresay. Thou shalt not, Moses! Keep thy cold hands to thyself!”
She was surprised into a spontaneous laugh, but felt she ought to be enjoining him to behave. “You forget they are frozen in stone. He couldn’t lay a rude hand on her if he wanted. I doubt he would want to either, the law-giver himself.”
“Don’t forget he was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter when she fished him out of the Nile. Environment will tell. I always suspect a layer down of laws myself. I think Moses probably had a whitewash job done on him by his biographer--himself. Yes, he was a scribbler like us when all’s said and done, therefore a highly suspect fellow. At least the Pentateuch is attributed to him.”
“Oh, Dammler!” she said in exasperation, “is nothing sacred to you?”
“Nothing written--the matter of a human agent being required to sort out the words makes me suspicious. In the beginning was the act, not the word.”
As the next statue to be explained was Zeus, the perpetrator of too many crimes to go into, he abandoned the lesson. “Prudence, I’ve just had what Tom Moore would call a ‘gorgeous notion’--one I plagiarized from Omar Khayyam.”
“I tremble to hear it.”
“A crock of wine, a loaf of bread and a gorgeous female in the wilderness. We’ll pass on the bread, and see if we can’t get Constance to provide the wine and wilderness.” He beckoned to a gardener, and passed the interval until the wine came in selecting a private spot giving shelter without too much shade. When he had the wine and two glasses in his hand, he pointed off into the distance, so far from the house that she hesitated to go with him. She could not quite trust this mood he was in.
“I think I prefer the rose garden,” she said.
“Not the primrose path? It’s the wine you distrust. I’ll get rid of it,” he said at once, and lifted his arm to heave it away.
“Allan--no! Oh, you are outrageous,” she said, but she went with him, laughing and happy in spite of all.
“I only want to talk to you alone. Come along, I promise I won’t molest you. Word of a gentleman, and I don’t lie, Miss Prudence.”
She knew he referred to more than his present promise. He was telling her again he had been innocent of wrongdoing with Cybele. His meaningful look told her so.
They walked off into the park until they reached his chosen corner. “Here, you won’t want to dirty your pelisse,” he said, pulling off his jacket to lay on the ground.
“Oh, no! It will ruin your nice jacket,” she objected, while her eyes were treated to an equally nice flowered waistcoat, and a pair of shoulders that had no need of wadding to eke them out.
“Nonsense, chivalry isn’t dead. I can be as gallant as Sir Walter Raleigh. Go on, step on it. I expect no better from a female.”
“No really, it is too good to use as a blanket.” She reached down to pick it up, but with a playful push on the shoulder he shoved her down.
“Do as you’re told, woman. Sit. We don’t read of Queen Liz refusing to tread Walter’s coat into the mud.” He then stuck the neck of the wine bottle to his mouth to extract the loosened cork with his teeth, while Prudence looked on in fascination. He poured the two glasses, balancing both in one hand. She felt as sinful as Salome should have when she reached out to take it.
“I want to propose a toast to all put-upon gentlemen everywhere, and the ladies who do the putting,” he said, lifting his glass. “You don’t drink to that, Miss Mallow? Compose one of your own."
“Oh, no. I’ll drink to that. Behind every great genius there is a woman."
“Whispering in his ear he’ll never make it. We forge on in spite, you see, to show the little woman we have it in us."
“I give you fair warning, Dammler, I have spent the early morning frolicking through Malvern’s library, and am about to shoot all your cock-and-bull untruths down.”
“Now that is a great compliment to me, that you took my little jokes so seriously. En garde!” He held up his hand in a fencing gesture, and smiled with anticipation. “Go to it. You have first thrust.”
She took a sip of wine and made her thrust. “Very well then, let us begin with the Taj Mahal in India. It turns out, upon investigation, it was built as a burial place for that old shah’s wife, so I cannot believe she ever got much pleasure from it, or urged her husband on to do it. He probably beat her when she was alive, and only did it after her death to salve his conscience.”
He nodded judiciously. “Still, he did it for her, not himself. God, but it’s beautiful, Prue. I wish I could take you to see it--see it at night. It’s like a great fairy castle, the white marble glowing in the moonlight. There is nothing in Europe to equal it.”
“I consider that my point, all the same. Next we come to Madame Pompadour and her not so petit Petit Trianon.”
“You’ll have hard sledding to make anything of that expensive trollop.”
“Still, on the lady’s behalf let us point out she was a considerable patroness of the arts and learning, and gave Louis a pretty good hand in running the country. To each his just due. We give Prinney a pleasure dome at Brighton for making a worse mess than she did.”
“No, sorry! I refuse to
place Madame on the side of the angels. Let us couple her with Du Barry and her own sort. Not even half a point for you there. Next thrust.”
“Very well then, Hero. Isn’t that an odd name for a girl? You men stole it from her, but I sha’n’t say a word about plagiarism or you’ll lead me down the paths of etymology again. She threw herself into the Hellespont in a fit of grief and drowned when she heard of Leander’s death, so you can’t say she was heartless, or anything else but a confirmed ninnyhammer.”
“That’s two for you; one for me--but she’s only legend, you know.”
“Based on fact!”
“You have an excellent memory. Next?”
“Well, the books didn’t say anything about Nebuchadnezzar building the gardens for his wife, so he is a moot point, and I win.”
“You are jumping the gun, in typical female fashion. You have omitted Cleopatra.”
“Oh she was the most abused of the lot!”
“She killed her own brother, who was also to be her husband. No accounting for taste.”
“Only after he drove her into exile.”
“What reason did you find for her setting up house with Caesar and Mark Antony?”
“She did it because she had to secure her empire, and besides, she probably loved them.”
“You would allow that as an excuse for such a quantity of lovers, would you? Take care, your prudence is slipping,” he said, smiling at her consternation at what she had said. “I made sure you’d finger Cleo as a sinner.”
“Anyway, she killed herself when she heard Mark Antony was dead.”
“Friend, Roman, Countrywoman! Lend me your ears!” He reached out and tweaked her ear. “She killed herself when she heard Octavian meant to take her to Rome in chains, which of course coincided with the death of Mark.”
“You can’t know that was the reason.”
“You can’t imagine it wasn’t! I resort again to induction to make my own conclusion."
“I have got you at point non plus in other words.”
“You’ve talked yourself out on a limb, milady. Are you keeping score, by the by? That’s two all, and now we come to the case of Lord Dammler versus Miss Mallow.”
“It is presumptuous to include ourselves amongst the immortals,” she said hastily.
“Immortal lovers we are discussing, Prue. Let us keep our terms straight.”
She became flustered, and began looking with regret to the distance separating them from the house. “If you are talking about that dreadful book I wrote..."
“And my sonnets. Don’t leave me out of it. I want a line in history, too.”
“The circulation of your sonnets is hardly a phenomenon that will immortalize either of us, as you suppressed them.”
"Terms, Miss Mallow. I insist on proper terminology. It was a noumenon--a non-event, devoid of actual occurrence. I make you a present of the word. I know you enjoy collecting them up.”
“A noumenon is not likely to immortalize us in any case, is it?”
“It isn’t really the sonnets I was hoping to discuss with you. Why didn’t you come to see me after the duel?”
Regarding him, she noticed the evidences of offense on his face, and was unable to account for them. “It is more usual for the gentleman to call on a lady. I could hardly go trotting over to Berkeley Square alone.”
“You might have come with Clarence. As I was bedridden, there could be no question of my going to you."
"Bedridden?” she asked, her eyes widening in astonishment. “I heard nothing of it. What was the matter? Were you ill?” His look told her she was wrong. “Allan, you never mean you fought the duel, after all?” she asked, totally dumbfounded.
“Didn’t Clarence tell you?”
“Not a word! I had no idea at all. Oh, Allan, I’m sorry! But were you wounded? I hope it wasn’t serious. Why didn’t Uncle tell me?” The questions came tumbling out on top of each other.
“No, it wasn’t serious, but I can’t quite credit Clarence didn’t let it slip out,” he said, frowning at her.
“I promise you I had no idea! Oh, and that is why you didn’t come."
She looked so humbled, so sorry, that the possibility of her being angry at his part in the duel was forgotten entirely. All was explained in a highly satisfactory way to Dammler.
“And that’s why Hettie cut me dead. What must she think of me!” Prudence exclaimed.
“She thought you an unnaturally hardhearted woman, and so did I,” he said, taking her hand eagerly.
“You know I would have been there if I’d known. Where were you hit? How serious was it? I didn’t see you about for weeks.”
He rubbed his shoulder. “Just a scratch, but it became infected. I was in bed a week, and housebound for another, cursing you for a hussy the whole time. What did you think I was about last night, rhyming off all the female butchers to you and trying to look wounded?”
“I thought you were just showing off to Fanny.”
“No, to you.”
“Oh I’m surprised you should bother, if that’s what you thought of me. Why didn’t you tell me, Allan?”
“How could I ever imagine you didn’t know? I felt sure Clarence would have told you all about it within five minutes.”
They discussed it until Prudence knew the whole story, and she reached her own conclusions on her uncle’s unwonted silence. “He was ashamed of himself, and well he might be! Oh, and there’s another matter dealing with Uncle I must discuss with you. Who is the woman he is painting at his studio? Mama has taken the notion--she mentioned it in her letter today--that he has formed some sort of liaison with her. I know you know the whole, and I wish you will tell me.”
“Not woman, women. There’s safety in numbers. Actresses from Drury Lane. You saw one of them at Mademoiselle Fancot’s the day I went with her to buy a feather, for Clarence, I might add. It seemed hard I should be given such a frigid shoulder for it, too.”
"You arranged it for him, actresses from Shilla?”
“I got the first, and she sent along others. He pressed me to do it for him, but don’t lay the atelier in my dish, if you please. He was all set up for business before he asked me to hire him a model--and it is only a model I arranged, Prue, not anything else, if that is the notion germinating in your head. I know what to think when your brow darkens up in that way.”
Her brow lightened somewhat, but still she was worried. “You don’t think he might go fancying himself in love with one of them?”
“Much good it would do him! The Mogul’s ladies aim higher than a patron with two thousand pounds a year. Don’t fret your head on that score."
“Still, he makes himself look ridiculous. People are laughing at him. I wish he hadn’t done it. As you have been there during his painting sessions, tell me how he goes on. Is he a laughingstock?”
“He’s happy as a dog in a sausage factory. I never saw him so merry.”
“Yes, but is he making a fool of himself in public?”
“No, in the privacy of his own studio. Well, it’s not Clarence the men go to watch you may be sure. If he earns an occasional smirk, it is his right to make a bit of a fool of himself over the thing he loves. His art, I mean. He’s too old for you to try to rule his life, Prue. He’s your uncle, not your son. So a few fellows give a wink at his little folly--where’s the harm? The audience is as foolish in my book.”
“You are frequently in the audience, I assume?”
“I was there a few times, to keep an eye on him for you. He’s enjoying himself immensely, and doing no one any possible harm. He’s nudging sixty, having his last fling."
“I don’t like his being seen on the streets with one of the models, as Mama said in her letter.”
“That would be because I was not there to fetch and carry for him. He probably required some prop to dress one of the ladies up as a zephyr. It was a feather I was after when you saw me that day, but you will perhaps recognize it for a fern when you see his rendition of Rem
brandt’s Flora, or alternatively, a vine in a Botticelli.”
“What, has he switched allegiance from Rembrandt, and he with two gallons of brown paint at home that will go to waste?”
“I believe I spotted a Leonardo amongst the canvases. Changing as fast as his models.” He felt uneasy about one of the models, about Cybele, and toyed with the idea of mentioning her, but thought it gave too much significance for him to do so.
She felt some relief and said lightly, “I am dying to see the atelier, to view the new masterpieces.”
“You must see them, but make your visit in his off hours, or you’ll run into a bunch of females you would rather not know.” Oh dear, and see Cybele perched on her shell, too. Have to get rid of that! He’d ask Clarence for it--buy it. Send him a letter that very day, to deliver it to Berkeley Square.
“Mmm, such as the little lady you were buying a feather,” she added in a quizzing way. “And why is it, Lord Dammler, who speaks of a career in Parliament, fritters away his afternoons amidst the lightskirts?”
“Because his inspiration deserted him. He found himself unable to write a word, equally unable to bear the solitude of his home without you.” He squeezed her hand, bestowing a tentative, questioning smile on her.
“You lacked my presence behind you, whispering in your ear you’d never make it, in other words.”
“Just so. All we geniuses require that sort of encouragement.”
“One does not hear of Michelangelo ever having a woman behind him, or your old idol, Alexander Pope, or..."
“No!” he held up a hand. “I am hoarse de combat-- verbal combat that is, and don’t mean to pull that crow any more today.”
“Still making those inferior bilingual puns,” she smiled, shaking her head.
“Continue with the chorus. Don’t forget to remind me they are the lowest form of humor, that being the standard refuge of those too slow-witted to make one themselves. Shakespeare felt, and I myself feel, differently, however.”