The Scandal of the Season

by Sophie Gee

  “She is not married, my lord,” Jenkins replied. Of course she is not, Lord Petre thought, repressing a smile.

  “I believe, indeed, that my sister is known here, my lord,” Jenkins added angrily.

  Lord Petre groaned inwardly. This was really becoming too much. Was he to become the Jenkins family’s patron? “Known?” he repeated listlessly. “Who is your sister, Jenkins?”

  “Her name is Molly Walker, sir,” he said.

  Molly Walker! Good God! Confused thoughts assailed him. Had Jenkins not known of their affair? But of course he had—he had seen Lord Petre with Molly many times. He had even helped to arrange their meetings. Why had neither he nor Molly said something when it was going on? Perhaps Jenkins was ashamed of what his sister had become. Lord Petre was horrified by the revelation.

  His mind racing, he asked, “Why is Molly’s name not Jenkins?”

  “My mother’s first husband was called Walker,” came the explanation.

  But Lord Petre hardly heard him. He remembered that Molly had been visibly pregnant that day at the cookshop. Could Jenkins be about to beg him to duel with Molly’s seducer? A preposterous idea. Then a dreadful thought struck him. Might the child be his? But no, it was impossible. It was now late June, and his affair with Molly had ended last August.

  But as though he had read Lord Petre’s mind, Jenkins said, “My sister says that you are the father of her child, my lord.”

  Petre leapt to his feet. “But you know that is not so, Jenkins! Our intimacy ended too long ago. Why did you say nothing before? You of all people know it—you must defend me.”

  “I am here to defend my sister, my lord,” Jenkins answered.

  “But your sister is lying,” Lord Petre exclaimed, and he saw a look of possessive anger in his footman’s eye. In a more careful voice, he said, “I have not seen Miss Walker since August,” and he sat down again.

  “Molly says that the child is yours, my lord,” Jenkins repeated coldly. “She asks that you support it.” As Lord Petre watched Jenkins, a suspicion dawned on him. Had Molly and her brother been planning all along to trap him?

  But he was determined to remain in control of the interview. “I cannot do that, Jenkins,” he said firmly. “I am sorry for your sister’s condition, but the child is not mine.” He had heard of situations such as this—wenches claiming noble fathers for their children—but he had never imagined it happening to himself.

  “I am sorry to say that you and your sister are taking advantage of your position in my house.” It was too bad that Jenkins should charge him with the offense at a moment when he knew so much that might damage him.

  “My sister is not a liar, my lord,” said Jenkins, unrelenting.

  Lord Petre looked up at him coldly. “And I am not a fool.”

  But as he observed Jenkins’s face, he realized that this would not do. Molly had put him up to it, he guessed. Jenkins was a decent fellow, the sort of man who would always look after his family. Suddenly an image of Molly came into his mind: that proud, defiant bearing. She must be desperate to go to such lengths as this.

  He began to regret what he had said.

  “Wait a moment, Jenkins,” he said as the footman began to leave the room. “I shall give you a hundred pounds for your sister,” Lord Petre continued. “But I cannot assume responsibility for a child that is not my own.” He hesitated, and then said, “In all likelihood I am shortly to marry.”

  Jenkins’s face was flushed as he walked back to Lord Petre’s desk to take the money. “I thank you, my lord,” he said.

  “You need not fear for your own position, Jenkins,” Lord Petre added. “I will not mention this matter again.”

  Jenkins bowed, but his face was still hardened with anger. After he left the room Lord Petre sat for a few minutes, thinking of what had passed. The matter was an annoyance, but at least it had made him articulate his desire to marry Arabella. The thought exhilarated him, but reluctantly he pushed her from his mind, and returned to the papers on his desk.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to Fate”

  The following day Alexander and Jervas sat at the breakfast table. Their conversation was desultory; Jervas tucked into his meal, and Alexander read his letters.

  “Thank heavens I have an appetite again,” Jervas said, biting into a slice of thickly buttered toast. “I was as sick as a dog after the Oldmixons’ party—the punch must have been stronger than I thought.”

  “I’m sorry I was not aware of it, Jervas,” Alexander replied, cracking the top of a boiled egg that had been sitting with a little cover on the eggcup to keep it warm. “I spent the day in bed myself.”

  “I told you that you had no business to be venturing out on the water, Pope,” Jervas said. “That sort of vigorous early-morning exercise is only for men of strong constitution.”

  Alexander dipped a piece of toast into his egg and changed the subject. “I am reading a letter from John Caryll,” he said. “His eldest son is to be married at last to a lady by the name of Mary Mackenzie—daughter of Kenneth Mackenzie, first Marquis of Seaforth.”

  Jervas swallowed with much nodding of his head, and then said, “Caryll must be relieved to be rid of one of his brood.” He took a drink of his coffee. “There is such a prodigious number of them—neither the daughters pretty nor the sons rich. Awkward. But I thought young Caryll was to marry one of the Throgmorton daughters.”

  “They were too much inclined to enter into nunneries,” Alexander answered. “Caryll could not be sure that the lady would share his son’s bed, and feared that she might wish to live in France.”

  Jervas laughed. “Not ideal in a wife,” he replied. “But awful as married life must be, it must surely be preferable to a French convent.” He ate a slice of bacon.

  “Well, a match has been achieved,” Alexander said, “and Caryll comes to London soon to make the arrangements. Indeed, I see that this letter was wrongly directed, so he may be here already.”

  “Kenneth Mackenzie, Marquis of Seaforth,” said Jervas. “He sounds rather grand. Will the happy couple require an artist to paint their picture, I wonder?”

  Alexander smiled. “I should not be looking to Mackenzie for a commission,” he replied. “They are a noble family, but impoverished. The marquis is a Jacobite.”

  “A Jacobite! Good God—what is Caryll thinking of? I thought he had just managed to struggle out from under the traitors’ yoke with his uncle.”

  “Caryll says that the Mackenzies are not spies or conspirators, Jervas. Merely supporters of the Jacobite cause. To tell the truth, though, I do not understand it myself. I suppose he did not think a better match could be achieved.” Alexander finished his egg, looking thoughtfully into the depths of the cup. “At least, I hope that they are not spies and conspirators, because Caryll has asked me to accompany the young couple from London to Ladyholt at the end of July. I should not like to be arrested on the road home.” He laughed. “My father would be far too pleased.”

  Jervas laughed, too. “Yes, his worst fears would be answered, and he would have nothing left to wish for.”

  Alexander thought about the journey. It might be a good idea, after all, to return to Binfield for a time. He had done almost no work since being in London, and the poem he had begun to compose on the water begged to be written. He wondered whether he should surprise his father and mother by arriving unannounced.

  His attention was reclaimed by Jervas, who had started to pace about the breakfast room.

  “If you insist on traveling about the country with young John Caryll and his Jacobite bride, you are doing yourself no favors.”

  “The Caryll family are old friends of my childhood. I cannot abandon them merely upon political grounds,” Alexander replied, though he wondered whether Jervas might not be right.

  “’Tis as good a reason as any to abandon one’s friends,” Jervas replied, walking back to the table. “But you see that I grow restless, Pope, and b
egin to tease you. Let us go out to Will’s and hear the news of the town.”

  They were not the first to arrive at the coffeehouse that day. As they walked in the door, Alexander was saluted by his publisher Tonson, who was drinking coffee with Jonathan Swift and John Gay. On the other side of the room Jervas’s friends Tom Breach and Harry Chambers leapt to their feet and called him over. The murmur of talk was louder than usual—there was a palpable air of excitement in the room—and Alexander felt certain that something important had happened. As he watched Jervas walk over to Tom and Harry he saw that James Douglass was there, too. Their eyes met, and Douglass raised a brow, but Alexander looked away.

  His attention was immediately claimed by Tonson, who had rushed to his feet. “Have you heard the news, Pope?” he cried excitedly, thrusting a copy of the Daily Courant into his hands. “A party of Jacobites was arrested. They were trying to enter the city last night.”

  Involuntarily, Alexander glanced back at Douglass, who was still staring at him. Could Douglass know his suspicions? Perhaps Douglass and Petre had seen him the night of the masquerade. Caryll had told Lord Petre the truth about Francis Gerrard. He must have repeated it to Douglass. What if Petre had mentioned that Alexander had been at the coffeehouse that morning, too? But he set aside his speculations and replied to Tonson lightly, hoping to change the subject.

  “What a curious enterprise to be involved in,” he said, glancing at the paper. “If a person wants to be hanged, there are easier ways of achieving it than by treason. A trifling theft, for example, will have one upon the gallows in no time, with much less trouble to the criminal.”

  “Ah,” said John Gay, “these days every nobleman and politician in England makes his living by stealing. It is called ‘going into debt,’ and is held to be a mark of good breeding. No: for a man of good birth and character, treason is the only remaining path to a hanging.”

  But Tonson was not to be deflected. “The Jacobites are on the march again,” he said. “It will be a blow to their forces to lose these men to a single night’s operation.”

  Alexander wondered what Tonson’s view of a Jacobite rebellion would be. The old publisher was adept at keeping his political opinions to himself.

  But Tonson interrupted his reflections. “Why do not you write a satire upon the scandal, Pope?” he asked.

  Alexander saw that Tonson’s expression was serious. But he knew that Alexander did not write political poetry. Perhaps he was trying to tell him, once again, that he did not think Windsor Forest worth printing. Or was he still resentful that Alexander had taken his Essay to another publisher?

  “Satire relies upon the making of witty comparisons,” Alexander replied abruptly. “It has been discovered that a band of desperate traitors was plotting to bring James Stuart back from France. They have been stopped, but everybody wonders whether others may still be at large. This is the stuff of tragedy, not of satire.”

  “It is the stuff of great public interest—which is why you would do well to compose a poem about it,” Tonson said curtly.

  “Scandals concerning the court and the fashionable world are where readers are to be found,” Alexander said. “Nobody cares for the escapades of a few obscure Scotsmen who will soon lose their heads.”

  “Mark my words, Pope,” Tonson declared. “It is the way to fame and fortune.”

  “What do you think of all this talk of plots and counterplots, Dr. Swift?” Alexander asked.

  “I think it becomes the patrons of Will’s better than their usual subjects,” Swift replied. “They generally converse upon literature, a subject ill suited to men of no information. But nobody has the least idea as to the facts when the talk is of spies and traitors. What could be better?”

  Alexander smiled. “But the denizens of Will’s coffeehouse enjoy a reputation for being the most learned and the most literary men in town.”

  Swift replied with a twinkle in his eye. “That, sir, is merely another way of expressing my own view, that Will’s is the place in which I have endured the worst conversations of my life.”

  On the other side of the room, Jervas was still sitting with Douglass, Tom, and Harry. Alexander wondered whether they were speaking about the arrests. Jervas could not be relied on to remember the conversation, and he realized he was curious to know what Douglass would say. Impulsively, Alexander left the conversation with Tonson and the others to join Jervas’s group.

  “They were arrested last night, Charles,” Harry was saying, seemingly less concerned by this than he had been by Lady Purchase’s refusal to receive him some weeks before. He took a lazy sip of coffee. “The fatal tree will be pressed into service again, for there is no doubt that they will hang.”

  Douglass looked sharply at Alexander as he sat down. “What a credulous fool you are, Harry,” Douglass cut in. “I’ll wager a hundred pounds that these three men have been arrested for outward show. The government is trying to make people think that it is in control of the Jacobites, but they are not. A rebellion is coming.”

  “Oh, the Jacobites cannot last long,” Tom replied laconically. “They do not have enough money nor men.”

  “Their eventual failure is certain, of course,” Douglass said. “When people are prepared to give anything for the sake of their beliefs, they are sure to be taken advantage of.”

  Tom gave a guffaw. “If you had the nerve to be as unscrupulous in action as you are in conversation, Douglass, you would have become rich long ago,” he said. “I know your type! Principle always gets the better of you in the end.”

  Douglass scoffed at this. “If being unscrupulous was all that was required to become rich,” he answered, “Will’s coffeehouse would be filled with the greatest lords in England. But success in financial enterprise needs something more. Let us call it good luck.”

  Alexander came away from the conversation more confused than before. Douglass had cheerfully prophesied rebellion! The man became more opaque each time he appeared. He was Jervas’s schoolfriend, a person of respectable family, seemingly of good fortune. And yet there was still nothing familiar about him, nothing certain. How could it be that a man with so powerful a presence left no lasting mark of his character behind?

  Lord Petre, too, paid close attention to the news of the arrests. He knew that they had been arranged in order to conceal the action. He had finished reading the papers Menzies had given him, knew that Jacobite troops were beginning to gather north and south of London, and that he was to give Douglass another five hundred pounds at the end of the week—money to raise a guard to bring the King from the coast to London. The moment was approaching. The directions were clear. He was to meet the other agents in Greenwich in a week’s time, when the command would be given to mobilize the armies. He had been told to make sure of the Queen’s whereabouts for the remainder of the season. But he was as yet unsure what role he would play in the actual assassination. This part of the plan continued to unnerve him. Even now it was vague, and Douglass had been no more specific than at the first discussion, long ago. Every time Lord Petre pressed him for information he was evasive, claiming to be no more than a conduit for directions from the leaders. But Petre was tired of being always in the dark. He decided to press Douglass for details when he saw him.

  The night before Lord Petre was to give Douglass the money, he returned home early from an evening of cards at his club. He was tired, and had taken too much to drink, and he ran quickly up to his chamber, hoping that none of his family would be disposed for conversation.

  But when he entered his apartments Lord Petre discovered that a man was seated in a chair next to the fire. He stopped short.

  “Who are you?” he called out from the door.

  The man turned to face him. To Petre’s astonishment, it was John Caryll.

  “Caryll!” he exclaimed. His old guardian had not stood up to greet him, and sat staring at him silently from his chair. The casual air he had adopted at their last meeting was gone. “How did you get here?” Lo
rd Petre asked, suddenly uneasy.

  “I arrived this evening from the country,” Caryll replied in a too calm voice. “I have spent the evening with your mother.”

  “I am surprised to see you,” said Lord Petre, superfluously.

  “I am here to speak upon a matter of business,” Caryll said. He looked sinister in the half light of the room, sitting in the chair as watchful as a cat. Nervous, Lord Petre began to walk toward the fire.

  “Pray close the door,” Caryll said.

  He did so, then moved to sit down. But before he could, Caryll began.

  “Five hundred pounds in bank bills are in your desk,” he said. His voice was clear and deliberate.

  Lord Petre froze. But he was determined to give nothing away. “May I ask why you were looking in my desk, sir?” he asked. “I keep that article locked.”

  “I was with your mother,” Caryll replied. “She asked that I look. Your man Jenkins opened the desk for us—he appeared to know that you kept the money there.”

  Lord Petre struggled to comprehend what was happening. Could John Caryll be one of the agents involved in the plan? But if he was here to reveal that fact, why did he speak so coldly—and why had he said nothing before? And what of his mother? It was inconceivable that she could be complicit. She had a horror of the Jacobites. Lord Petre shuddered. What was going on?

  “It is not customary to have such a large sum upon one’s person, my lord,” Caryll said. His calm was menacing.

  “I was not aware that my private affairs were subject to scrutiny,” Petre answered. “The money is to pay a gambling debt.”

  “To whom do you owe this sum?” Caryll asked with a cold smile. “Perhaps I can assist in delivering it more promptly.”

  “I pay my debts myself,” Lord Petre replied. He paused, uncertain, wondering how he might force Caryll to show his hand. “I owe the money to James Douglass, a gentleman with whom you are not acquainted.”

  “Douglass!” John Caryll exclaimed in a mocking voice. “Your taste is not so nice in point of friendships as in other matters, I perceive. Why do you owe James Douglass five hundred pounds?”