by Joan Smith
We then removed to the saloon, where I hoped—half hoped—we would not be troubled by our grate. I would not have been totally unhappy to let my aunt see that it did indeed perform stunts, but on that occasion it was as quiet as a grate ought to be. The birthday party was as well as over. No very baroque entertainment to be sure, but not unenjoyable. It was nine o clock, and though it was the hour at which George often arrived, I could see that both he and his mama were rehearsing to take their leave, and was not sorry, either. But before they managed to invent an excuse for leaving so early—no more than a few yawns had been indulged in yet—the knocker sounded. As George sat before my eyes, I suspected it was Clavering.
“That will be His Grace,” Slack said, and jumped up to run into the hall in her eagerness to thank him for the gift.
“Does he come that often, then?” Lady Ing asked me, her eyes like saucers.
“No, certainly not,” I told her and said no more, for I could hear Slack thanking him, and his deep voice replying. They entered immediately, stopping in the archway. He bowed to Lady Ing and me, nodded to George, and entered.
“How maladroit of me, bursting in on a family party,” he said, then turned to Slack. “You most particularly told me you were not entertaining this evening, Miss Slack, or I would not have come bothering you. There is nothing so unwanted as an uninvited guest, but I disliked to have your birthday pass without wishing you well.”
“We were going to ask you to come, too, but were sure you would be busy,” she gushed back.
“You were wrong,” he said, leaning toward her and waving a finger under her nose. “I dined alone, thinking of you, and would have been delighted to come. So, you liked the statuette?”
“Immoderately!” she breathed happily.
“The subject is particularly appropriate for us two cherryphiles. That was a bunch of cherries the little boy held, but unfortunately only one remains.
“So that’s what it is! I thought it was a tiny little ball,” she told him, with a proud smile toward me to show me how she had him under her thumb. Really, it was better than a farce to watch her carry on with a man young enough to be her son.
“Lady Inglewood and George gave me this handsome netting box,” she said, picking it up to show him.
“Very nice. Now tell me the big news. Which of your beaux gave you that diamond you are flashing around? Out with it, Miss Slack. I know you have relented and accepted an offer from one of your court. Who is he, so that I may begin hating him?”
She was pink and puffed with pleasure. “Miss Denver gave it to me. I don’t know what possessed her to waste such a sum. I am very angry with her,” she said, with a broad smile in my direction.
“I got ahead of you!” I told him. “But you had your chance.”
“One of your own many leftovers?” he quizzed. “You really ought not to accept the ring unless you mean to have the gentleman, as well.”
He came in and sat down between George and myself, and proceeded to flirt outrageously with Slack and me. I was about to say I don’t know what my aunt thought of his performance, but she did know, or thought she did. She thought he was my beau and was incensed at his cutting George out.
“You will be putting George’s nose out of joint with talk of my niece accepting diamond rings from gentlemen, Your Grace,” she said, with a nod in our direction. How she put so much expression into a nod is difficult to explain. It said more loudly than words, this pair are matched. Don’t go trying to make mischief between them.
Clavering looked at me with a laughing question in his black eyes. “Indeed! I hadn’t realized that was the way the wind blows. But I should have known when Miss Denver is so elegantly attired to entertain her cousin that there was romance in the air. She does not bother to dress up for me, you see.”
“I am dressed up for Slack’s birthday party,” I said to the door, for I didn’t feel up to looking at either of them.
“And looking very well, ma’am, if I neglected to mention it,” Clavering said.
George, I believe, must have received a mute blast from his mama's direction, for he, too, said, “Yes, Cousin, dashed fine.”
“Thank you, George.”
“You didn’t thank me," the Duke pointed out.
“Thank you.”
“You are most welcome.” He bowed formally, only his eyes revealing that all this was a charade, pure and simple.
“How does friend grate go on?” he asked next. “Not likely to take a leap at me tonight, I trust?”
“No, it has been behaving well since I threatened it with Mr. Pickering.”
I had not mentioned his coming to Aunt Ethelberta, so she took the idea I was keeping things from her, also the idea that Clavering was completely in our pocket. “What’s this? What’s all this about Mr. Pickering? It seems to me you are wasting a deal of money, Priscilla, buying extravagant presents for servants and..."
“Miss Slack is not a servant.”
“Well, she is not family.”
“We consider Slack family,” Clavering said in a proprietary way, with one of his damned winks at Slack, which was not unobserved by my aunt. I don’t know what he was up to, unless it was plain perverse pleasure in discomfiting me.
“Do we indeed?” she asked him, in a tone of heavy irony.
“Yes, we do!” I told her, not to defend Clavering, but because I was so angry with her for offending Slack. “And she is family, related to Papa.” Actually she was only a tenuous connection.
“Do we also feel it necessary for Mr. Pickering to come and look at the grate?” my aunt asked the Duke, her nose pinched in displeasure.
“Do you know, the ladies did it without consulting me?” he replied, behaving quite as irately as she was herself at our independence. “You’d think the place was their own and they were answerable to no one. Becoming very headstrong, these girls of ours. It’s time we trimmed them back into line.”
Lady Ing was bereft of speech, a unique occurrence in all my dealings with her. Clavering spoke on uninterrupted. “And while we are in the midst of this pleasant little family discussion, I mean to take you to task for selling Priscilla that wild nag, Lady Inglewood.”
This was going too far, a “Priscilla” on top of “these girls of ours,” as though he actually were a relative and not a virtual stranger. “Really!” I gasped, staring at him.
“You are about to tell me you can manage your own affairs, Priscilla,” he went on calmly, “but you can’t, you know. You’ll come to grief on that nag yet.”
“I don’t see it’s anyone’s business but our own if my niece and I arrange a bargain between us,” Lady Ing told him, recovering her speech.
“I take a strong interest in your niece, ma’am, George notwithstanding, and I object,” he answered reasonably.
“Well, you may go to the devil!” I told him bluntly, about fed up with his officiousness.
“All in good time,” he agreed blandly, while Lady Ing nodded her head in vigorous agreement with my words.
“Don’t you think Juliette is too wild for your cousin, George?” Clavering asked, turning to include George in the family squabble.
“She’s full of juice,” was George’s answer.
“Certainly she is, but I still don’t think she can handle Juliette.”
“He didn’t mean me! He meant the horse,” I said angrily.
“Forgive me. It was meant as a compliment, Priscilla. Ought I to have said full of pluck?”
“George is teaching her to ride,” Lady Ing said.
“Yes, I have been told George has the monopoly in that sphere,” Clavering replied mischievously.
“He will make certain nothing happens to her, and if you can’t handle Juliette, Priscilla dear, I’m sure you have only to tell me, and we will make some other arrangement.”
“I can handle her.”
I suggested a glass of wine to bring harmony to the meeting, but achieved only a brief peace. “Let us propose a toast to Miss Slack
,” the Duke suggested. “Happy birthday, my dear, and may you have many more of them.”
This was well enough, except for the “my dear,” but his next speech threw my aunt quite into a fit. “When do we take that trip to Aquae Sulis, Miss Slack?” he asked.
“Eh, what is this? You aren’t taking a trip with the Duke, Miss Slack? It is entirely unseemly,” Lady Ing flared up.
“Not in the least. Priscilla will chaperone us,” he told her.
“He is joking, Auntie,” I said, with a glare at the joker.
“It seems a pretty funny joke to me.”
“Oh, but jokes are supposed to be funny, you know,” he pointed out.
“Well it isn’t funny,” she snapped.
“It is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. I didn’t see any humour in it myself. When do we go, Miss Slack?”
“I am more interested in going to Belview to visit your library, since you were kind enough to offer,” Slack replied, with more diplomacy than I would have given her credit for. But it was a fresh offence to my aunt that we should have the run of Clavering’s library.
“We have all kinds of books at Inglewood. I’m sure you are welcome to read them,” she told Slack.
“It is literature on Roman ruins that particularly interests us,” Clavering said.
“It is news to me that Miss Slack is interested in anything of the sort. She never opened a book at Inglewood, nor so much as looked at one of my husband’s coins or shards.”
“Your late husband had but an indifferent collection, ma’am,” he remarked. “She will do better to come to me.”
I could see my aunt wouldn’t take much more of this without coming to cuffs, possibly outright blows. When she looked at her watch and said it was getting late, I didn’t stir a finger to detain her. “Time we all should be going,” she said again, with an imperative glare at Clavering.
“I stay up past half past nine myself, and if memory serves, you ladies do not retire with the hens, either; but don’t let us detain you, Lady Inglewood,” he answered, arising to see her out. Not just politely arising in deference to a lady’s doing so, but actually taking her elbow and piloting her toward the door, quite firmly, with a look over his shoulder to garner in George.
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow, Priscilla,” she said.
Speak to you, not see you, and the tone told the manner in which she would speak, a lecture.
“You’ve been warned,” he said aside to me, but in no low voice. Lady Ing heard and glared.
“Don’t stay up too late,” my aunt cautioned as she left.
“We are celebrating Miss Slack’s birthday,” Clavering reminded her. And after the Inglewoods had left, we celebrated it much more pleasantly, too, with more wine, quite a good deal of it.
“What was the meaning of that performance, Clavering?” I asked bluntly.
“Always happy to oblige a lady in distress.”
“I was not in distress prior to your arrival.”
“You are in distress one way or the other, my girl. If you want George, you need to give him some competition. Really, you know, he ain’t half convinced to have you. And if you don’t, I will make an excellent excuse to turn him off. Oh, I know I’m ugly as sin and twice as reprehensible, but I’m the richest gent in the parish.”
“How nice for you.”
“It softens the blow of having a face only a mother could love,” he said, looking at me with his bold, black, gypsy eyes.
Slack made some clucking demurs to this self-insult; I did not, for what he said was true enough.
“Don’t you agree?” he asked, point-blank.
“Yes.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Well, you’re frank anyway."
“I see no reason to mince words. You are darker than is stylish this year.”
“Or any other year, except possibly in Africa. I must say, however, personal vanity is not one of my failings.” I made no reply to this, and he went on to add in a spirit of pure malice, “Nor yours either, I think? This is the first time I have ever seen you dressed up a little.”
It was the “a little” that rankled. I had never been more dressed up in my life. “And a lady who gives diamonds to her friends when she does not wear them herself surely sets a precedent for lack of vanity that will rarely be equalled.”
“I don’t quite shower them over all my friends. Slack is more than a friend to me. Well, she is a diamond herself, and a more valuable one than the stone she wears.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. But we are causing our diamond to blush, become a rose diamond. Forgive us, Miss Slack. Next time we wish to puff you up, we shall take care you don’t overhear us. The more sensitive amongst us dislike praise. I am not so sensitive myself.”
He stopped and looked around at us. “I see no one means to try me with a compliment. I was once told I had nice hands—by a sculptor, too, and he should know. But they are not so diamond-worthy as Miss Slack’s. You have elegant hands, Miss Slack.”
Slack was wriggling with embarrassment, and I wished to change the subject for her sake. Personally I would rather be abused to my face any day than hear praise, and I know she is the same. Repeated, secondhand praise is fine, but not to the face.
“We heard you had a little trouble at Belview today?” I remarked. “Mr. McMaster stopped in and told us about Bill McCormick. How is he?”
“He’ll do. The blood was flowing quite freely, but the bone wasn’t touched. Mr. McMaster, you say, told you?”
“Yes, he stopped in on his way home.”
“But Seaview isn’t on his way home.”
“Well, it is not far out of his way,” I pointed out.
“Planning another trip to Eastbourne?” he asked, with a sly smile. “I wonder what the attraction is at Eastbourne, when Porchester does not draw you at all.”
“It’s the open carriage, Your Grace,” Slack explained. “Mr. McMaster always brings his open carriage, to ensure my staying at home, you see.”
“He’s not such a slow top as I thought,” Clavering said, then looked around the room, as though searching for something. “You have no pianoforte here. What a pity; it would go well on this festive occasion, and soothe this savage breast, too. Why have you no pianoforte, Priscilla? The food of love is quite lacking here.”
“I should get one; Miss Slack plays very well,” I replied, suppressing any mention of cherries as a suitable substitute for music in fuelling love.
“I have a clavichord at home that no one plays,” he said. “Since getting the pianoforte, the clavichord has been consigned to a dark corner, unused, and probably completely out of tune, while the pianoforte has the place of honour, also unused and out of tune. If you would like to have the use of the clavichord, I will have it shipped down.”
“Now that is poorly done of you, Your Grace! Having an instrument to while away our evenings will only encourage us to stay about. You’ll never be rid of us,” I cautioned, while wondering furiously what he was up to.
“You notice I didn't offer the pianoforte. I’m hedging my bets; but as you seem determined to stay, we might as well have some music. And my friends call me Burne, by the way.”
“What an odd name!” I said.
“Short for Wedderburne, my first name. Actually another last name, Mama’s, but I had the misfortune to inherit it as a Christian name.”
“Sounds heathen,” Slack said, “Burne.”
“Quite like an injunction to incinerate myself; but I prefer it to being regularly ordered to Wed, which is the alternative,” he explained.
“You aren’t in favour of marriage, then?” Slack asked.
“While there are housetops to jump from, I don’t see why anyone commits the folly. But then the human race dotes on torturing itself. Ladies lace and ride sidesaddle and do needlework, and gentlemen go to Parliament and waltz and shave. And most of this torture, barring Parliament, is designed to make ourselves attractive
to the other sex, so that we might achieve the ultimate folly of marriage. Very odd when one considers it, is it not?” he asked with a sardonic smile, thinking to engage us in a futile argument.
“Very odd,” I said quickly, before Slack could enter on a defence of marriage. “But I thought you involved yourself in Parliament.”
“I do. We must all satisfy our little urge to self-flagellation, and it is the least likely to make me a husband.”
“You won’t get any argument from me,” Slack said, “I have no opinion of it either.” I don’t know whether she said this in a mistaken idea that it would please him to agree, or to create the illusion she could have married had she chosen, but in any case it surprised me, and it surprised the Duke, too.
“And you, Miss Denver, do you, too, agree with me?” he asked.
“Absolutely. Especially I think ladies are foolish to marry if they don’t have to, for the advantage is all the man’s. He continues free as a bird, but she becomes an unpaid housekeeper and bearer of children, while losing control of her fortune."
He blinked twice and looked from one of us to the other. “She gains a protector, and a certain position in society. The advantage is not all the man’s. What would become of the human race if everyone thought as you do?”
“It would die out, of course, and good riddance, too,” I replied calmly. “Nine-tenths of the people one meets are worthless. People by and large destroy the paradise God created. It should be left to the birds and bees and animals who appreciate it. You don’t see them ruining the air with coal dust, nor making war on each other, nor laying mantraps..."
“I never heard such nonsense!” he said, taking the woman’s prerogative and changing his mind.
“Indeed? But surely it is an extension of your own view. Or did you have in mind some means of continuing procreation without benefit of marriage? I almost think that would be worse than anything. Children running wild, with no parents nor home to curb them, nor family unit to raise them as civilised people.”
He settled back with a satisfied smile and continued to argue the point from whichever point of view suited him and made lively discussion. For an hour we discussed half-formed theories of raising children in houses with paid guardians, while the adult population ran about, the men unshaved and the women unlaced, both free to do pretty well as they pleased. His Utopia sounded considerably like Sodom and Gomorrah, with clothing being abandoned entirely at one point, except for the cold weather; but it was all a conceited tease to try to shock Slack and me, who sat impassive, adding such ideas as occurred to us.