by Joan Smith
“I would appreciate it if you would do that.”
“I’ll do it,” he said eagerly. “So, are you still mad at me?”
“Yes, to tell the truth, I am about fed up to the gills with you."
“I should have told you at Finefields.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid to.”
“You knew perfectly well you had behaved badly, in other words.”
“Yes, I knew I had been damnably unwise."
“So you had, and so you always are.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.”
“I don’t like any of it. I don’t like that she can twist you around her thumb, that you’re at her beck and call.”
“I’m not. It was an impulsive gesture. If I had considered all the possible consequences I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
“You’d stand on your head in the middle of Bond Street if she told you to.”
“Don’t be so foolish!”
"I don’t intent to be. I can’t tell you I won’t marry you when you haven’t asked me recently, but I will just drop the hint that any offer that spray of flowers might betoken will not be welcome.”
“Prudence, you’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“No, I have been making a molehill out of the mountain of your dissolution. I don’t honestly think you know right from wrong. You don’t even think you have been immoral to get my poor innocent uncle to set himself up as a clown in that studio with the whole city laughing their heads off at him, and to trot actresses around to take his diamonds.”
“I’ll get the diamonds back.”
“You won’t get back his self respect! So far as I am concerned, you won’t retrieve your own, either. You’ve gone beyond the pale.”
“You set a pretty narrow pale,” he said, his hot temper rising. “We hear a great deal about what is acceptable to the irreproachable Miss Mallow. I never thought I was auditioning for the role of Caesar’s wife, only Prudence’s husband. It seems the requirements are equally stringent. Not only wrongdoing but the very least appearance of it must be avoided.”
“I don’t suggest you audition for the role of anyone’s husband, Dammler. It is a part that requires at least a modicum of maturity.”
“On the part of both parties. We don’t hear mentioned in this fine tirade that your only concern in the matter is what people will think. We don’t hear that Clarence--or yourself--has had the heart broken. Oh, no, you are unaware of that organ, considered vital in us mere mortals. We don’t hear that Miss Mallow is a jealous, narrow-minded, unforgiving woman, always ready to believe the worst of those she claims to love.”
“I no longer claim to love you."
“You did when you rang a peal over Cybele’s staying with me that night. You didn’t wait to hear how or why, but leapt immediately to the worst possible conclusion. The worst in your righteous eyes, that is. The act of love between two people seems to be considered the worst crime on your list. I consider it one of the lesser ones, one nevertheless of which I have been innocent since being engaged to you. You’re not perfect, Prudence. Far from it.”
“I never said I was."
“Such swift accusations as you make ought to be rooted in perfection. I think they are rooted in the misconception that you haven’t a single flaw. Let me tell you, I would rather have my own dissolute character, capable of imprudent, spontaneous acts of kindness and folly, than your puritanical self-righteousness. There isn’t a drop of Christian kindness in your whole body. Not once did it ever occur to you to inquire of me after the duel.”
“I didn’t know you had fought it.”
“No, but you knew I was ready to, wanted to defend you. You knew I loved you, and wouldn’t stay away from you for no reason. If our positions had been reversed, Prudence, I would have put my pride in my pocket and sent a note, or a word with Clarence at least. Pride is a fault too, you know, one you share with lesser mankind.”
“You ought to have more pride than to carry on as you do.”
“Yes I ought. Whoever would have thought we would find a lack of any of the deadly sins in Lord Dammler? But my pride has been lacking where you are concerned. I have groveled to you, been made a fool of in that book, been called a dog and treated like one, coming back for more with my tail between my legs. No more. I said it before and failed to keep my word. You have played Jehovah with me for the last time. I’m tired of being treated like a schoolboy who must account to his mistress for every move he makes, getting my knuckles regularly rapped for misbehavior. I’m an adult, independent human being. I make mistakes-- bad ones--terrible ones! But I sin ready to forgive them in myself, as I would be ready to in anyone else. You’re not. You are unrelenting. Find yourself a fellow puritan, Prudence. You’re too good for me.”
“I know I am!” she answered hotly.
“Of course you know it. Your pride tells you so. But it will be cold consolation when I am gone.”
“I won’t need any consolation when you’re gone.”
“I think you will. I think somewhere underneath all those wads of misdirected religiosity there is a very nice girl, trying to get out. I see tantalizing glimpses of her at times, when her humor betrays her into humanity. We should have suited very well, Prudence. I never met any girl I liked half so well as you, but I don’t intend to be measured for a new straitjacket every quarter.”
“Any more insults to hurl at my head before you leave?”
“The truth hurts, does it? I didn’t take it so much amiss when you used to hint me to a more proper course, but then my pride was deficient. I have no more to say. I hope we aren’t enemies. I don’t consider you an enemy, but a misguided friend.”
“It seems to me your misguided friends were always your favorites.”
"You most of all, Prudence,” he said, his voice pitched low, but not unsteady. There was no rancor in the speech, only regret. He looked at her for a long moment with unblinking eyes, as if he were looking at her for the last time. “I guess this is goodbye.” Then he turned and left the room.
Chapter Eighteen
Clarence got back his diamonds. They came in a plain brown wrapper with a footman wearing Lord Dammler’s livery. There was no note enclosed. Clarence’s spirits gradually restored. He first finished Cybele’s picture, then was beguiled by its beauty into making a copy, for Sir Alfred wanted one as well. He could not speak of “commissions” for a painting, which made him feel very professional and businesslike, though no money actually changed hands. Cybele became bored with the play after a while, and went back to Exxon when he dangled a rope of diamonds before her eyes. She dropped out of Shilla just as he wanted, and also dropped pretty well out of all minds but Clarence’s.
It seemed Dammler, too, had endured the break between Prudence and himself. She read in the papers that he was doing something in Parliament, had made a speech that was praised for its lucid logic, which surprised her. She had thought it would be the passionate delivery and eloquence that would be mentioned. She even met him occasionally. He had taken up Fanny Burney, and it was there that Prudence met him at tea one afternoon about ten days after the break. He was friendly, not at all angry or standoffish, as she had feared. He treated her exactly as he treated Miss Burney, as an old friend, and she was desolate. He called her Prudence, laughed and joked and argued with both of them, just as though his feelings for both were identical. She was distinguished in no small way, from the other writer in her sixties.
She still thought after the meeting that he might call one day at Grosvenor Square, but he never came. There were no scandals involving him. He was living a decent, useful life without her. It was more than she did herself. She was dully decent, but of no use to man nor beast. She couldn’t believe this was to be the end of it. She was ready to forgive him again, but he didn’t come for remission. After a month, she was even ready to get down to the hard chore of admitting there was some justice in his attack. She had judged too
quickly, was too unforgiving. What did all his crimes amount to, in the end? He didn’t lie or cheat or steal, was not avaricious, greedy, proud. He had only a hot temper, and of course a fondness for women. It was a fault of loving, at least, not hating. Who was she to sit in judgment on anyone? Hadn’t she in effect lied about not having seen her book when he asked her? She had poked fun at all his friends and most of all himself in Babe. Even while condemning him, she had jumped at every chance to get him back, and would do it again. What a low opinion he must hold of her.
She became a perfect pattern-card of Christian forgiveness and kindness. Was never sharp with the servants or Clarence, and how she wanted to be! Really she was very hard on people. Clarence couldn’t help being a fool; the servants wouldn’t be servants if they were wise or clever people. Naturally one had to overlook their faults. Dammler wouldn’t be Dammler if he weren’t impulsive and generous and sometimes unwise. Oh, but never so unwise as herself, to have lost him! The worm of discontent gnawed away at her.
In December, Dammler patched it up with Murray and the sonnets were circulated, causing a stir around him again, but there was no outrageous behavior on his part. No private indication either that she was involved in them in any way. She heard at one of the literary do’s she still attended that Dammler was “seeing” a Lady Catherine somebody or other. A girl who had lately been jilted by some fellow. That would appeal to him. An announcement, they said, was imminent. Mercifully, no announcement came.
“What is he writing these days? Does anyone know?” she asked, with just the right shade of interest to indicate that they were old friends, and nothing more.
“He has done some critical essays on drama, but he spends very little time on literature nowadays,” Tom Moore told her. “They are to be run in Blackwood’s Review starting in March.”
“I look forward to reading them,” she said, with only mild enthusiasm.
“They are excellent,” Moore went on. “Not gay ribald tales like his Cantos, of course. He matures in style. I must own I liked the old Dammler better. He has grown a little too staid to suit me.”
“Whoever would have thought it?” she asked lightly, hiding a heavy heart.
“Usually the way with those wild young blades. They make the best men after all, when they settle down. They are more understanding from having been about the world a bit. He has certainly settled down.”
“He hasn’t quite settled into an old man, yet,” Fanny Burney told them. “He was telling me he plans to go to Greece next spring. We may have another installment of the Cantos from that trip.”
“Thought he was thinking of getting married?” Moore asked.
“It may be a honeymoon he plans,” she replied. “Odd, the match hasn’t come off yet. I know Lady Melvine is all in favor of it. No doubt she is pushing him too hard. One can only push Dammler so far, then he digs in both heels and bucks.”
How well Prudence knew it!
“He’s young yet,” Moore answered, then the talk turned to other matters.
Prudence went home to consider that soon he would be out of the country. It would be almost a relief not to scan the streets for his form every time she went out, to go to a party without the churning in her breast in hopes of seeing him, to think every time the door knocker sounded that it was he, come to make it up at last. She was coming to realize there was to be no making up. He hadn’t even been angry when he left, nor when they met since. His hot anger had turned to cold judgment against her. She couldn’t believe it.
Dammler thought he had got his life under control at last. He was busy, useful, by no means dull. He attended many social functions, as many as his work in Parliament and his writing allowed. No one called him a wild buck any longer, nor was there any reason to. He had grown up. Had abandoned his lightskirts, but not women. He looked with the greatest interest at the eligible ladies, fancying himself from time to time to be falling in love with a bright eye or a flashing dimple. Lady Catherine had lovely dimples. If only he weren’t so busy he might find time to fall in love with her. That there was a great gaping hole at the center of all his busyness never occurred to him. He was too busy writing speeches, models of reasoning, and essays, brilliant analyses of the works of others with nothing of himself in them but his literary judgment.
It was impossible not to entertain a passing thought of Prudence Mallow occasionally. Any mention of Shilla or the sonnets must bring a vision of her into mind. He wished her well. Sincerely he wished her success, and rather wished he might see a little more of her, too, for he always enjoyed talking to her. He felt he ought to explain to her why he had decided to publish the sonnets, only he didn’t quite know himself, except that their suppression was given so much significance, and Murray kept after him to do it. He was always putty in the hands of his friends. He wanted to get married, so that any possible association with Prudence might become once and for all impossible. If you had to lose something you had loved, it was better to do it with a quick cut, and while they two were single, there seemed to be some invisible cord drawing him back to her. He was determined that would never happen. He liked her, he told himself, but love with such a woman was impossible. He could never live with her. If he patted a servant girl’s head or visited a female neighbor she’d be at his throat. It was his way--he was warm, impulsive, he reasoned coldly. Still he was finding it difficult to live in London without running back to her, so he decided to go on another trip. That would give him something to look forward to, something he could really put his heart into, and until spring rolled around he would plan his route and finish getting his bill through Parliament. Writing became such a bore he hardly bothered with it. Nothing creative was possible to him.
Christmas came and went, a lonely, miserable time for Prudence; a family affair at Longbourne Abbey with his aunt and some relatives for Dammler, then it was back to London. Things became dull at Grosvenor Square for Clarence. He missed his atelier. He missed Dammler and the rest of the set that had once favored him through his niece. He could not be hard on Prudence, losing Dammler, for he knew what she was going through. His heart, too, was broken, and a foolish heart aches as hard as a clever one. He mentioned going to Bath, a stunt that had worked in the past to send Dammler running back to Prue, but she was disinterested in going. As spring hovered in the not too distant future, he mentioned a tour of the lake district, a spot he thought might appeal to her, famous as it was for a poetic colony. This, too, was spurned. It seemed she wanted to stay exactly where she was. In desperation, he hit on Cornwall--had something to do with the book she was writing, taking her an age to get on with it. Oddly enough, this bleak spot hit a responsive cord.
It sounded different enough from London and Bath to provide some interest of a picturesque nature. The cold sea, the bleak, barren rock shore and the winds appealed to her present mood. There she might get Patience into her proper setting, and finish up her book. That it was on the coast, and she could look at the sea carrying Dammler away from her, held the sort of morbid fascination she indulged in at that dismal time of her life. Plans were forwarded, and at the end of January they were off in the traveling carriage with four horses to go to Cornwall. She did not prevent her uncle from inserting a notice in the Observer to the effect they were leaving, and though it brought several callers, it did not bring Dammler. He read it, feeling a wrench inside that she was leaving, but he would be leaving himself soon, so it was best to get used to the idea of their being miles apart.
With her safely outside the city, he could think of her more often without any danger of going to her. As a member of Parliament, he could also nip into the library and scan the Cornwall papers for her name. There was no mention of her having arrived, but as February drew to a close there began to appear a series of essays of a travelogue nature about the countryside and customs under her name. He read them all eagerly, picturing her walking over the hills, thinking these thoughts she wrote, and could almost imagine he was with her. Throughout March the
y appeared weekly, then the last week there was none. She had left, then, would be back before he had to leave the first week of June. He would call, say goodbye to her. It was foolish to act as though they were strangers. He had never denied to himself he liked her. He would be going to say goodbye to Fanny Burney, to Tom and all his friends. Certainly he must say goodbye to Prudence Mallow and her family. He kept looking out in the London papers for her return, and began to wonder as mid-April turned into late-April and still she didn’t come. A feeling of uneasiness came over him at the delay. What was taking her so long? Something must have happened.
The last week of April he stopped by Fanny Burney’s to visit, thinking he might hear if she were back unannounced. He had hardly taken a seat before Fanny said, “It was too bad about Miss Mallow, was it not?”
“What about her?” he asked, while a wave of fear washed over him. What had happened? It had such a final sound to it, almost as though she were dead!
“Did you not hear of her accident?”
“What accident? I heard nothing!” His voice was loud in the small saloon.
“She was thrown from a horse in Cornwall, and was badly hurt.”
“Prudence doesn’t ride!”
“Does she not? Then that explains the accident--she must have been learning. I was to pay her a visit, you know. I am going to friends in Bristol and was invited to run down to Padstow to spend a week with her, but she is unable to receive me. Her mother wrote to cancel the trip.”
“Her mother wrote? You mean she isn’t even able to hold a pen! Fanny, how bad is it?” He was on his feet.
“Why, she didn’t say it was so very serious, but she took quite a spill. Her back was damaged her mother said, and she was unable to walk.”
“Oh, my God! When did it happen?”
“Early in April. I wondered she stopped writing those articles in the paper. They were very good, don’t you think?”
“Fanny, you don’t mean she’s crippled for life!”