Reprise Part 11

"Miss Mallow and I are off to your excellent library, Constance," Miss Burney said, intimately aware of what Prudence must be feeling. "We are interested in looking up that set of letters by Horace Walpole you have. They are not in circulation, I think you mentioned. I should adore to see them."

Prudence was grateful for the woman's tact, and happy to get into the quiet of the library to ponder how she should proceed. She wondered if Dammler knew she was there, or if it was Constance that brought him. That he came to see Moore never so much as entered her head, though it was the truth.

Dammler hadn't the faintest notion Prudence was at Finefields. Not a word could he get out of Clarence on her doings, and quizzing was difficult with the throng always in the atelier. Nor was he interested in Constance either. For a few confused weeks he had dabbled a bit in physics and the novel, then become interested in Clarence's studio. He first hoped Prudence would turn up there to see for herself that Miss Penny was her uncle's model. He realized as the audience grew that there was no likelihood of that, but was too unsettled to write. He often spent an hour in the afternoon with Clarence, watching him daub away and explain all his new techniques. Lately, he spent more than an hour. Cybele had never ceased to attract Clarence. Again and again, he was pestered to arrange for her to pose for Clarence. Ever versatile, he had a million excuses to fob him off. Exxon wouldn't allow it. Then Clarence learned from some other watchers that Exxon was gone home to his estate in Warwick, and it seemed the ideal time for it, to get it over with. Still disliking to do it, he claimed the Rembrandt style wouldn't suit her.

"I know that! Obviously she must be done as Venus, in the style of Botticelli. I have thought it all out. There's no sh.e.l.l in the world large enough for her to stand on, of course, and her hair ain't long enough to trail around her body-'Birth of Venus,' of course, will be the picture. Venus floating along the water on her sh.e.l.l, with Miss Penny and another gel from the theater to hold the cape and blow wind on her. I'll stand her on a chair, and paint up a big picture of a sh.e.l.l, using a small one for a model. No trouble in it. Here, I have the cartoon sketched up in the way I mean to do her."

A tracing of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" was thrust into Dammler's hands. "I'm afraid Exxon wouldn't like it," he insisted, determined to leave it at that.

Cybele, however, heard of the new artist from her sister actresses, and was eager to be painted for posterity. Much she cared for Exxon! She was through with him. A much more das.h.i.+ng buck was ogling her, and besides, Exxon was always pestering her to drop out of the play. She adored that play. To be wearing the pretty chiffon costumes, and a black wig and dancing! It was like a party every night. And they paid her for it, too. With Clarence shouting in one ear and Cybele wheedling in the other, Dammler gave in and brought her to the studio, where Clarence, within the s.p.a.ce of three seconds, realized he had finally met the woman to replace his late wife.

He would marry her. But first he would paint her half a dozen times. She would be Venus rising from the waves, and she would be Mona Lisa with that tantalizing smile. She would be Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary, as well, but Dammler knew nothing of all these plans. He saw Clarence was hypnotized by the girl, and sat faithfully protecting him until Venus had risen from the waves. She was such a troublesome model he never thought Clarence would tackle her again. Like a child, she required constant amus.e.m.e.nt. Work must stop while he procured ices for her. She brought her little pug along, to pester Clarence to distraction with his yapping and heel-nipping. She babbled and giggled throughout the sessions, never standing still a minute, and all the while Clarence fell deeper and deeper in love.

When the first picture was finished, Dammler realized he had been wasting a good deal of time, and with a guilty conscience decided that as he couldn't write, he would go to Longbourne Abbey and oversee estate matters. Constance had invited him to her house party, and while he had no thought of wasting a weektalking about writing, he would spend an afternoon with Moore, his old friend, and take him some notes he wanted on the east. He mistakenly thought Clarence's long face indicated a disenchantment with Cybele, and hadn't a single worry on that score when he left the city.

He went off to Finefields pretty well resigned to making a life for himself that was worthwhile and very dull. Why must the two go together? It could have been worthwhile and interesting with Prue.

Knowing he was coming, Prudence contrived to be well away from the house by late afternoon, when he was believed to be arriving. She took a run into the closest village with Miss Burney and Mr. Moore, to see what authors the bookshop was carrying. The expressed purpose was to buy a pair of silk stockings for Miss Burney, but they all three turned in at the first bookstore without the need of a word being spoken. It seemed an unnecessarily cruel prank on the shopkeeper's part that Dammler'sCantos from Abroad should reside side-by-side withBabe in the Woods mocking her and causing Burney and Moore to exchange a secret, laughing smile. The works of Miss Burney were also on prominent display, as was Mr. Moore'sThe Two-penny Post Bag, so that the trip was thought to be well worthwhile despite the forgetting of the stockings.

Until dinnertime, Prudence kept away from Dammler, though she saw the tiger skin-seated curricle in the stable, and knew he was there. By then he had learned as well of her presence, had had time to wonder if she thought he was chasing her, and to determine he would show by his manner it was nothing of the sort. He considered an outrageous flirtation with Constance, made more difficult by the fact she had her latest conquest always at her heels, a very high-toned philosophical evening with Tom to show her how far beneath himself and the others she ranged intellectually, and lastly to get right down to it and wonder whether she would speak to him at all after the episode in the hat shop. He still hadn't set on his course when he went below a quarter of an hour before dinner, to find her sitting with f.a.n.n.y Burney in the saloon, sipping sherry and wondering together how they had forgotten the silk stockings. Tom Moore was with them, which provided Dammler an excellent reason-even Prudence couldn't call it an excuse-to join them. He had come here for the sole purpose of speaking to Tom.

"Tom, I have been meaning to call on you," Dammler said, walking to the sofa, nodding with an impartial smile to Tom and the two ladies, who nodded back in unison, like a pair of Siamese cats, Prudence thought.

"Thought you was dead," Moore said in reply. "Sent half a dozen notes around to your place, and never got an answer from any of them."

"You know I'm a shockingly bad correspondent, but I have the notes with me-the ones you asked about in your letters. What is it you're writing that has to do with details of oriental splendor? Planning to invade my territory and do something on the east?"

Miss Burney replied lightly, "If we any of us stray from a polite English saloon, Dammler, we are invading your territory. You write about the whole world."

"Very true, but I don't do it nearly so well as Tom. Just what is it you're planning to write, Tom?" he asked, turning back to the man, to indicate who in the circle had drawn him.

"A hodgepodge thing-narrative verses set in the Orient, held together like raisins in a bun by a wad of prose.Lalla Rookh, I call it."

"Ah ha, about a lady, I see. More stealing from Dammler."

"Oh, I thought it must be about a blackbird-a rook," Miss Burney intruded.

Dammler decided to let her join their discussion. "It is a name, Fan.Lalla Rookh is a name."

"Daughter of an emperor, she is," Tom added. "I set her off on a voyage as Fielding did with his character inJoseph Andrews, to while away the time on the trip with stories as Chaucer did in his Canterbury Tales. I borrow from all the very best sources, you see- Dammler, Fielding and Chaucer."

"You'll mix up a better pudding than any of us," Dammler said generously. "And now it's time for you to ask me whatI am doing."

This had, to Prudence at least, the sound of an announcement. She listened without saying a word to hear it. "Hear you're taking up painting," Moore said in a quiet aside.

Dammler frowned him down, then proceeded. "I am going into politics," he said. "My literary inspiration has deserted me, and I have been talked into introducing a bill in Parliament by Lord Holland." The speech, once out, struck him as disastrous. "To Prudence, my inspiration," was before his eyes, in letters two feet high. He daren't glance towards her.

"Oh, Dammler, no!" Miss Burney lamented. "How can you say so, when your love sonnets are so widely acclaimed? They were marvelous. Any old prose-talker can introduce a bill in Parliament. You must continue writing your poetry."

The love sonnets were not even officially out. He fell deeper and deeper into shame with every utterance, to hear them spoken of as "widely acclaimed."

"Oh, they were drivel-puerile ramblings I did well to suppress," he said quickly, then thought that was ill-advised, too. Prue was the inspiration; to suggest they were puerile might lead her to believe he had outgrown the sentiments, which was not at all what he meant to convey.

"They were excellent," Moore took it up. "Nonsense to hold them back, but about politics, my lad, leave it to the professionals. It is no place for a babe in the woods like you." Even this harmless suggestion must contain the t.i.tle of her book! And used wrongly too, as she had used it herself. Probably not wrongly, if Tom said it. Language grew, changed subtly. "But did I not hear you are writing a novel?" Tom asked.

"No," he answered. Prudence looked at him in surprise. He couldn't even answer a question today. "That is, I tried my hand at it, but found it impossible. I leave the field to the ladies, and of course Mr. Scott, the best of them all." Oh, G.o.d! Why did he have to add that last, withtwo novelists staring at him.

"He is very condescending, is he not, Miss Mallow?" Miss Burney continued on in her playful vein. " Poetryis beyond our poor talents, you see. We are to leaveit for the gentlemen, while we vex ourselves with the inferior ch.o.r.e of constructing mere novels, in emulation of Mr. Scott. Of course we daren't aspire to equalhim!"

"I didn't mean anything of the sort!" he exclaimed in chagrin. "I couldn't do it to save my soul. It requires too much planning and thinking. Poetry you have only tofeel, a novel must be thought out as well."

"There was a good deal of thought in your latest sonnets, I think," f.a.n.n.y continued.

"No, I felt them and transposed my thoughts to paper."

"Without the intervening step of words having to be sorted out. I see how it is. It was done under the influence of opium, like Mr. Coleridge'sKubla Khan. We must try that technique, Miss Mallow. It will save us a deal of thinking. Shall we go and have a cup of opium? Or do you recommend a pipe, Lord Dammler?" f.a.n.n.y asked roguishly.

"I don't recommend it at all, ma'am. The use of drugs at least has never been laid in my dish." This speech displeased him as much as the others. There was an inference in it that he had had all the other shattered commandments attributed to him. And why did Prudence sit there like a d.a.m.ned oyster, pretending to take no interest in the talk? He straightened his shoulders and turned towards her purposefully.

"How doesPatience go on, Prudence?" he asked.

"We two dull virtues plod on as ever. I should perhaps add a little of your vice to liven it up."

As bad as all the rest! The whole crew were out to roast him. "I can well spare it," he answered with a c.o.c.ky laugh that hid entirely his growing anger. "Which of my sorts do you think would add the right flavor? Drunkenness, sloth, avarice?"

"It was none of those I had in mind," she answered offhandedly, and turned to f.a.n.n.y, but he was not about to let her off the hook.

"No? Which have I omitted? You must let me know, so that I can get on with the job of ruining myself in good earnest."

"You don't appear to need any help in that pursuit, Lord Dammler."

He glared at her, but Moore jumped in to forestall disaster. "Rogers is here somewhere. He has been lying in for four weeks, and has lately had the midwife in to deliver a couplet. Such a ch.o.r.e it is for him. He'll want to be congratulated on it. Be sure you ask him how the delivery went. Ah, there he is off in the corner by himself, sulking. Come along, Allan, we'll inquire for the infant's health. Excuse us, ladies." He got Dammler by the elbow and took him away, with just one angry glance at Prudence.

"Dammler can be quite the most charming man, but he is a sadly unstable character, don't you think?" Miss Burney asked.

"He is very excitable," Prudence answered mildly. She had found him more exciting than excitable. He had got her so excited she could hardly speak, and knew she wouldn't be able to eat a bite of dinner-done it with no more than a glance and a few jibes. If he took into his head to come to cuffs with her, she would claim a migraine and go straight to her bed. He would know she was lying too, and say so to the whole group.

Chapter 15.

Lady Malvern had to dosome juggling of her seating arrangement with the arrival of Dammler for dinner.

Satisfied with her own current flirt, a Sir Lyle Wharton, she gave the poet to f.a.n.n.y Burney. It was a dreadful waste to place him next a lady in her sixties, but, until she saw how they went on together these days, she would not inflict him on Miss Mallow, and he was too fast for her country guests. f.a.n.n.y regaled him very satisfactorily over dinner with an account of her internment in France by Napoleon. So well, in fact, that he returned to her side when the gentlemen finished their port and joined the ladies in the gold saloon. That she was sitting with Prudence, as she usually was, was no reason he shouldn't continue a particularly lively discussion they had been engaged in at the meal's end.

He took up a chair at Miss Burney's end of the sofa and said at once, "I think it a particularly barbarous custom that the ladies are shunted off to the saloon just when the meal is over, and some decent conversation is possible."

"It is but one of the barbarous customs perpetrated against us," Miss Burney replied, quite flattered at his attentions. She had of course no interest of a romantical nature in him, but always liked to be on terms with her fellow writers, and the best way to be on terms with Dammler was to provide a good argumentative partner in whatever he was in a mood to discuss.

"No, really! It is we men who suffer by it. I daresay you and Miss Mallow have been having an enlightened discourse on some matter of interest, while I have been subjected to an hour of politics."

"Subjected! But surely you said not two hours ago that you meant to take the subject up full time," f.a.n.n.y pointed out.

He laughed uneasily, seeing that he was falling right back into idiocy, as soon as he was in Prue's company again. "Caught me dead to rights! But I consider the new career as a duty. Very likely writing will remain my avocation. You were just telling me something about a cathedral in France, Fan, when you left."

"Are you really interested in discussingchurches, Dammler?" she asked with an arch smile.

"I am interested in ma.s.sive architecture of all sorts," he replied, refusing to recognize any slur on his morals in this shot. To fill the silence he went on with some interests in this line. "After having seen the Sphinx in Egypt, for instance, the Colosseum at Rome and the Parthenon in Greece, one is at a loss to imagine how they were constructed so long ago, with no knowledge of modern engineering. I doubt we could reproduce such mammoth things today in England, with all our technology."

A few timid glances towards Prudence were attempted during this speech, and at its end his eyes settled on her, to include her in the discussion.

"I don't know about today, but something similar was done in the past, was it not, at Stonehenge?" she asked, rather tentatively.

"Ah, Stonehenge!" he took it up eagerly. "A queer thing, a real mystery, those great monoliths standing in the middle of Salisbury Plain. Extraordinary! Ioften think of them when I see the lords standing around the grate at the House, talking mystical nonsense."

"I suppose they were some sort of place of wors.h.i.+p in their day," Prudence suggested hesitantly, for she had no great interest in or knowledge of antiquity.

"A church, you mean?" he asked, with the greatest interest. "Why do you say so?" It was not his intention to be argumentative, but only to keep the conversation ball rolling in this inoffensive groove.

"Only because such a huge undertaking must have been inspired by religious motives. If you look at the ruins of antiquity, the Parthenon dedicated to Athena, the Temple of Nike and so on, all were religious buildings. Man requires an awe-inspiring reason to so exert himself." Prue looked to Miss Burney for support, and received a silent nod of agreement.

"The Colosseum had no such inspiration," Dammler pointed out. "It was built for purposes of the most bloodthirsty sport and entertainment. In many other cases you will find self-defense to have been the motivating force. Survival is man's strongest instinct. All the fortress castles scattered about the countryside of Europe, as well as Hadrian's Wall and the Great Wall of China bear me out."

"Oh walls, that is something quite different," Prudence said quickly, wis.h.i.+ng they might change the subject. "I spoke ofbuildings. Naturally awall would not be used for wors.h.i.+p."

"They would be surprised to hear it in Jerusalem, where the Wailing Wall is usually pretty well occupied on Fridays with Jews lamenting and praying."

She gave him a vexed, frustrated look. It was an uneven match, that he who had traveled the world should choose his travels to argue about. He saw the signs of withdrawal on her countenance, and hastened on to contradict himself. "Of course it is on the site of Solomon's Temple, a remnant of the great temple built by Herod, and has churchlike a.s.sociations."

"Normally an ordinary wall would not be used for wors.h.i.+p you must own, Dammler," Miss Burney said with a laugh.

"I do admit it, and neither are most huge buildings, either. Those that weren't built for defense were built for a woman, nine-tenths of them."

"A woman? How can you say so?" f.a.n.n.y asked, astonished.

"How can a sane man say anything else? Look at the Taj Mahal, built by a Mogul emperor for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal."

"You will observe he keeps track of the lady's name, but not the emperor's," Miss Burney said in a playful spirit to Prudence.

"Shah Jehan was the uxorious gentleman's name," Dammler said, smiling. "But he's long gone, Fan. There is no hope of your getting a castle from him."

"It is news to me if one example proves a case. It is the exception rather than the rule," Prudence said in a damping way that renewed Dammler's attack.

"How many examples do you require, ma'am? There is the Pet.i.t Trianon, and not sopet.i.t, either, built by Louis Quinze for his favorite mistress, Pompadour."

"You tread on dangerous ground when you go to France, Dammler. You forget I have some familiarity with it," f.a.n.n.y pointed out. "All the cathedrals there, the great gothic cathedrals, were built for wors.h.i.+p."

"Called Notre Dame, everyone of them," he said with a quizzing smile.

"CalledNotre Dame, for the Virgin, butbuilt for wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d. That proves our point, does it not?"

"It proves that in France there exists a great respect for the Virgin. I speak in terms of religion only, you understand," he added with a dangerous sparkle that warned Prudence he was about to become even more outrageous.

But, with f.a.n.n.y to shoulder the burden of outwitting him, she entered into the discussion, and began to take some pleasure in it. "In any case, we have established most churches were built for purposes of wors.h.i.+p, and that was our point," she said.

"No, you have surely lost track of the point," he contradicted baldly. "I will go you a step better and concur thatall churches were built for wors.h.i.+p. It is redundant to say so, a church being by definition a place of divine wors.h.i.+p, but it is large buildings in general that we are discussing."

"I cannot think Stonehenge in any case was built for a woman," f.a.n.n.y said. "Who in her right mind would want such a weird thing?"

"Oh but women and a sound mind don't usually go together," Dammler said, smiling broadly now to indicate this was mere persiflage. "We'll find out when the archaeologists get around to solving the riddle that some demanding wench wanted a larger colonnade than her neighbor, or a backdrop for her garden."

"Something new in the world, a garden of such dimensions," Prudence said.

"There is nothing new under the sun. One of the seven wonders of theancient world, you will recall, was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They would dwarf the monoliths of Stonehenge. Built by Nebuchadnezzar, at the behest of his queen, no doubt. You will notice I can't supply the lady's name, Fan."

"Not evenone doubt he built it for his own greater glory?" Miss Burney asked.

"Not inmy mind. Men are all fools about pretty women. The pages of history are littered with our corpses, beggaring, wounding, even killing ourselves to please you tiresome creatures." He rubbed his shoulder and leveled a meaningful look on Prudence, who hadn't a notion what he was getting at.

"I have usually found the pages of history littered with the corpses of men killing themselves to usurp a country that doesn't belong to them," she pointed out, very much in the spirit of her discussions with Allan at home in Grosvenor Square. She was beginning to wish f.a.n.n.y Burney would discover some other party to go to.

"Or a woman that doesn't belong to them," Dammler pointed out, wagging a slender finger at her."Vide Helen of Troy."

It was f.a.n.n.y who found an answer, however. "It is not established that the Trojan War was fought over Helen. There is myth and legend so mixed up in it-well, Eros, the G.o.ddess of Discord..."

"And love," Dammler added quickly. "But then the two are practically inseparable. Sorry for the interruption."

"Eros is supposed to have been instrumental in starting it, so you cannot call ithistory."

"Myth based on fact, as myths usually are. They found the right culprit in a woman, in any case. You have only to look at literature-you don't see Hero being so foolish as to swim the ice-cold h.e.l.lespont for Leander. No sir, a man making an a.s.s of himself and as often as not getting killed, for the love of a woman, every time." Prudence received another reproachful look, but took it as an indictment of her s.e.x. "Cleopatra making fools of Caesar and Mark Antony, and even in the Bible, Delilah shearing Samson down to size. Salome-the word means'peace,' imagine!-ordering up poor John's head on a platter, and Herod so infatuated he did it for her, too. Why, there is nothing a beautiful woman might not do once she has laid her conscience to rest."

"I am stunned into silence at such a plethora of evidence of our fallen nature," f.a.n.n.y laughed.

"You, Prudence, nothing to say in defense of your s.e.x?" he asked with a certain pointedness.

"I expect what has been robbing you and me of a monument all these years, Miss Burney, is our conscience," she answered.

"Oh, have you grown one of those?" he asked, with a little laugh. "I daresay Salome felt a twinge when she saw John's head coming in."

"He works by induction," Prudence explained to the other lady, quite easy in her mind now. "He goes from the specific to the general, you see, which is never conducive to fact, only more or less to probability. You will notice he avoidsdeduction. It is the university teaches gentlemen these sly tricks to confuse us women."

"What, you refuse to believe the evidence of history when it is at such pains to repeat itself,ad nauseam? Would you like more examples? Let us quit trifling and begin at the beginning of our own species. Take Adam and Eve now, a typical case of man betrayed, and everyone of you since has followed in Eve's footsteps."

"More induction!" Prudence cautioned. Yet, as she cast hurriedly about in her mind for some refutation, she could think of no good female except Hannah More, and she seemed sadly out of place in this historical and Biblical discussion. "There was Queen Elizabeth!" she announced at last. "Look at all the good she did, and without benefit of a king, too, I might add."