Reprise Part 2

"Then I'll give you nine or ten or a hundred other reasons! You are immoral, conceited, a liar, a libertine and d.a.m.ned impertinent, sir, to send me threats by my mother."

"I am not a libertine!" he jumped in at once, lighting instinctively on her real objection. "It is a reflection of your mind that you impute lechery to me when I was doing no more than housing the afflicted."

"You ought to have clothed the naked while you were about it."

"She wasn't naked!"

"Next to it. If I had arrived five minutes sooner..."

"If you had arrived five minutes sooner, you would have discovered me on the sofa in the drawing room. I had to go into my bedroom to get my jacket."

"Odd you found it necessary to warn Hettie toget rid of me, if picking up a jacket was your only business in Cybele's room. Odd, too, you were having a cup of coffee with her, now I come to think of it, with a breakfast tray for two by the bedside."

"That wasn't my idea-the tray! I was in a hurry, and carried my coffee in with me. I only told Hettie to take you away for a minute because Iknew what you'd think. I know the way your mind works."

"If you had the least conception how my mind works, you wouldn't be wasting my time and your own with this scene.I am of the opinion that the position in which I found you allows me no other course than to be finished with you. Any woman in Christendom would say the same."

"It is a sad reflection on Christendom to take this high-handed tone with me. I found you in a very similar position with Mr. Seville at an inn in Reading not so very long ago, and didn't feel it necessary to raise a fuss about it."

"You found me having a cup of tea with Mr. Seville, who was kind enough to help me when Mama took ill. She was lying in the next room, and youdid make a considerable fuss. You threatened to shoot him."

"I should have! To be in your bedroom at midnight."

"We were both fully dressed, at least. The circ.u.mstances were entirely different."

"No, they were very much the same. Seville helped you when you were in trouble, and it chanced he ended up in your room at an unseemly hour.I helped Cybele when she was in trouble, with the same result. Also with the same result in both cases ofmy ending up in the wrong, being kicked out as though I were a mutt."

"You are no better than a mutt!"

His body tensed, and a cold anger shook him. "You were happy enough to make use of themutt, however. To use my connections and influence to ingratiate yourself with society, and get your books reviewed inBlackwood's Review. To make an advantageous marriage. What changed your mind, as you apparently recognized me for a cur from the beginning?"

"I thought you had changed, but you can't teach an old dog new tricks, after all."

"You taught me a few, Prudence. I thought you were different from other girls, immeasurably better. I thought we had a relations.h.i.+p of mutual trust and respect and understanding." "I can't respect a man who doesn't respect himself. To invite that trollop into your house, and us on the very edge of being married."

"She's gone. I took her away."

"Back to the love nest, Dammler? Swallow Street, was it not, where all the ladybirds roost?"

"No, she's gone to stay with some friend on the corner of Conduit and Bond."

"That would be handy for you, with your own new house in Berkeley Square within whistling distance.

Chosen with that convenience in mind, no doubt."

"I didn't choose the apartment. Wills arranged it. She's got a job with him in the play."

"Better and better! An unexceptionable excuse to see her every day. That will give society a good laugh, to see your mistress starring in your new play, while the bride sits home, ignorant of the fact."

"She isn't starring, and you are not ignorant of the fact that she has a small part, as I just told you."

"I am not going to be the bride, either, so it's no matter."

"I won't be back, Prudence," he said, studying her with a carefully controlled expression. "If you send me away now, I won'tever be back. Even a mutt will grovel only so far."

"I'm glad to hear it. Pray don't slam the door when you go out."

"This is the end then."

"The end, finis, curtain. Make a nice bow."

He made no bow, but turned and walked briskly out the door, giving it a good slam behind him.

She was half glad it was irrevocably over and done with, and wholly sorry that it had ended this way. Her next step was to reconsider their argument, and find an insult in every word he had uttered. To imply she hadused him to advance herself was unforgivable. Hehad arranged the interview that got her books reviewed inBlackwood's Review, but she had not egged him on to it, had been ignorant of his part in it until it was all over. The rest of it was pure fabrication. She had not wanted to travel in his set, he had dragged her into it. As to dredging up the Seville business again! A wealthy gentleman who had asked her to marry him, and later, after she had refused him, had accidentally been staying at the same inn in Reading, and got her a doctor when Mama was poisoned by sh.e.l.lfish. He had been in her room late, and it was unfortunate in the extreme Dammler had come bursting in to insult the poor man, but to suggest there was any impropriety in it was absurd. Talk about a reflection of one's own mind! He was only trying to excuse his own behavior, but it was inexcusable, and he must know it.

Chapter 4.

The summer in London was hot and tiresome. With company thin, Dammler went out only seldom, and when he did so, there was no sign of Prudence. What she was doing he could only guess. He remained in town himself only because of his play in rehearsal. Prudence was not accustomed to the luxury of spending her summers anywhere else than in the city, so that was no added burden. She tried to work on her book, but it went poorly. She had lost interest in virtuous Patience. She wanted a new character, a girl involved in more lively pursuits than going to the greengrocer for her mother. With the past weeks reeling in her head, she wanted a heroine who was involved with the high and mighty. Her sharp eye had been busy to note the foibles of theton, and she longed to give them a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g down. A girl who came to society with a fresh eye would do the thing as she wished to do it. Someone like herself, who had not grown up amongst them, and thus saw their behavior for what it was.

Almost she felt it a duty to point out the immorality that ran rampant amongst those she had lately been a.s.sociating with. Adultery was a way of life with them, with gambling, debts and dissipation all a part of it. Yes, it would make an excellent, instructive book. When she sat down, the words seemed to come of their own accord. Hettie was there, leading her young relative astray, but she was careful to give no similar physical characteristic to her book people when she wrote from life. The relations.h.i.+ps were changed. She made herself the daughter of a minister to give the girl a little extra whitening, and to insure the character's not being taken for herself. She eliminated her mother but revived her own father for the minister. Dammler she elevated to a duke (so he couldn't say, if he ever found out, she had lowered him). She also gave him blond hair, while his world travels were limited to a stint in France. Never having been there, she knew only its reputation and didn't feel the rest of the world could possibly outdo it in infamy. Not a mention of his being a poet. Mr. Seville became her real hero, for of course her heroine must have a happy ending, and the duke be delivered of a suitably bad fate. She equivocated between the gallows and Bedlam, settling in the end for his sheering off to America, for even in fiction she couldn't quite bear to kill him. As she wrote, she had uphill work making Seville interesting. He became a shadow figure, with the villain taking over as the central character. Too close to her work, she was blinded to this flaw in the story, the playing down of the supposed hero. To increase the difference between the villain and heroine, the lady was endowed with every imaginable virtue.

It was a wonderful diversion for her. She could think of Dammler all day long, twisting him into a form that was easy to hate, but the real Dammler had no such diversion. He was frustrated, bored, and still ferociously angry. To call him amutt! It was infamous. Yet as he reviewed his past life, it didn't seem so far fetched. What had he, born to wealth and position, accomplished? A thin volume of inferior verse, and a play that was presentable only because he had put some of Prudence's wisdom into his heroine. His life had been as hapless and promiscuous as a dog's. She was right, as usual. The play progressed satisfactorily, the rewriting all done by early August. He thought of going to Longbourne Abbey, but to go alone where he had thought to go with Prudence-he couldn't face it. When Hettie invited him to her place in Surrey, he accepted.

Hettie, a confirmed socialite, had no thought of going alone or only with her nephew. She had a host of friends joining her at intervals for varying lengths of time. She took pains to invite several eligible young ladies to amuse Dammler, and with a mischievous chuckle, she also invited the Malverns. Lady Malvern was reputed to have been Dammler's mistress. She didn't know whether it was true, but it was certainly possible, as he had spent sundry holidays at Finefields with the lady and her husband. Had finished off his second batch of cantos there, in fact. The alacrity with which the invitation was accepted tended her to think there was more than friends.h.i.+p between the two.

Her plans bore little fruit. Dammler soon fell into the routine of walking off into the park or woods with his notebook right after breakfast and staying there for the greater part of the day. What he was writing she didn't know, but it seemed to keep him in good humor, so that he helped her entertain the company in the evenings. He discussed his work with no one. Occasional notices appeared in the London papers of the departure and arrival of guests at Lady Melvine's place. Such celebrities as Lord Dammler and the Malverns did not go unannounced.

"I see Lady Melvine has got the Malverns to go to her for the last half of August," Clarence said, sipping his tea one fine morning. "And the Swazies. I expect you know all these folk, eh, Prudence?"

"I know of them," she replied, clenching her jaw to control her anger. Lady Malvern! He had gone running back to her! "A pity she didn't ask us. I would like to get away from the sweltering heat of the city for a week or two. But they will all be back in September. All our friends will be turning up one of these days. I confess I miss them."

To call these people "friends" was another of Clarence's delusions. To hear he expected to continue a.s.sociation with them filled Prudence with forebodings of despair. Clarence would not like having all his vicarious glory s.n.a.t.c.hed from him. He had remained civil to her all summer long, but if September did not return him to his recent pinnacle of fame, he would soon turn on her. Uncle was capable of wretched behavior under the strains of deprivation. She tried to give him a hint that things would be different. He wouldn't hear of it.

"Pooh-Dammler ain't the only fish in the sea. Glad you turned him off. I always thought you would have done better to take Seville. There was a man knew how to treat a lady. Called in Knighton when Wilma took sick at Reading. That was well done in him."

"Mr. Seville is married now, Uncle," she reminded him.

This was too much reality to quibble with. "So he is. To that Scots baroness, wasn't it? Well he had an odd knot or two in him. A foreigner, after all. I didn't like him nearly so well as that Springer lad that hounded your every step in Bath."

"Mr. Springer has gone home to Kent. He does not come to London."

"Just as well. He is n.o.body, when all's said and done. Do you mind that royal duke that used to trail at your skirts, Prue? York was it, or Kent...?

"The Duke of Clarence-I remember him, certainly."

She remembered as well that his trailing at her skirts was limited to once standing up with her at one of Hettie's b.a.l.l.s.

"That would be something, eh? A royal duke."

"Yes," Prudence said weakly, unable to say more.

"Oh, Clarence, that is looking a good deal too high," his sister told him.

"Aye, so it is. The old king would never let him do it. But we will have Dammler pounding down our door soon, if I know anything." They had gone full circle, right back to Lord Dammler. "What a lad he is. Up to anything. The women are all over him." In this manner he whiled away the summer. He had a few actual activities as well. He visited Stultz for a new pair of coats, dashed off a couple of Rembrandts a week, the dispersal of which consumed a good deal of his time. Not every one of his friends wanted a brown picture in the saloon. His most outstanding activity, however, outshone all of these. It quite wiped Dammler and Lady Melvine from his mind for three days.

He mentioned his plan over breakfast one morning, sliding it in calmly between bites of egg, not to lessen its wonder, but to show how very much he had fallen into his new role as confidant of lords and ladies. "I guess it's time I take a run down to Drury Lane and pick out our box," he said.

Never in his life before had he hired a box for the season. Seldom did he even go to the theatre. He got all the astonishment he craved.

"Oh, Clarence, that will be very dear," Wilma said at once.

"You don't mean you are going to hire a box!" Prudence said, right on top of her mother's exclamation.

There was a good deal of discussion, with Wilma against the extravagant plan and Prudence delighted with it. Clarence was actually interested in no one's opinion but his own, however, and didn't let Wilma talk him out of it. He wore one of his new jackets for the trip down the Strand, sitting on the high perch of his phaeton, and toying with the notion of taking the ribbons himself, a thing he had never dared to tackle thus far. But a man who could hire a box for the season was up to anything, and if the coal carrier had looked what he was about as he came ripping out of St. Martin's Lane, there wouldn't have been a hitch in it. The scratch on the side of the phaeton hardly showed, and the horses weren't hurt in the least.

The summer seemed to them all to last a very long time, but at last it was over. When September rolled around, Prudence, who had done little but write the past six weeks, sent her new ma.n.u.script to her publisher. Mr. Murray read it with astonishment. It was so very different from her customary work! She, who usually wrote of her own cla.s.s in an understated way, had tackled high society, and done a successful job of it. It was not as sound a book as she generally turned out. The characters were thin, superficial except for the two main protagonists, and these he soon recognized for herself and Dammler.

He came around to Grosvenor Square to discuss the matter. "Are you sure you want to go ahead with this, Miss Mallow?" he asked with diffidence. He was dying to publish it. It would be an immediate hit, but Dammler after all was still his major writer, and it wouldn't do to antagonize him.

"Why else do you think I wrote it?" she asked. "You forget I am not one of the privileged few who write for my own amus.e.m.e.nt. I write for money, and I happen to be in need of funds." Her trousseau, hanging idle in a closet, had rendered her bankrupt. She had actually had to borrow from Mama to buy a new set of pens. "It seems a little personal is all I meant."

"Personal? How can you say so, Mr. Murray? There are no real people in it. Just my imaginary characters, as usual."

"I think your Duke of Guelph has just a little something of your ex-fiance in him?" he asked.

"I could have written of an aged humpback and it would be taken for Dammler at this point. That can't be helped."

"Yes, but you haven't written of an aged humpback; you have chosen for your hero a handsome young peer."

"Guelph is not the hero!"

"Well-major character-you know what I mean. I am not at all sure it is wise." But as he thumbed through the ma.n.u.script, picking out lively scenes, dialogues sparkling with witty repartee, he felt a very strong urge to get it between covers. If he didn't, someone else would. Colchester, now, would die to get his hands on it.

After a moment's consideration he suggested, "What do you say we put it out under anom de plume?"

"An anonymous gentlewoman, you mean?"

"Your anonymity would not last long. A name, I think, would be better, and we'll invent a biography for her."

Prudence felt just a twinge of concern when Murray had so quickly found out her stunt. She had gone a little far, she admitted, and leapt on the idea of hiding her authors.h.i.+p. "Excellent! Who shall I be?"

"You've made your heroine a minister's daughter. Why not make yourself the same? A Miss Brown would lend a nice touch. Plain, without quite giving it away for an alias by using Smith or Jones."

"Why not Miss White, as I have made her so pure? Miss Mary White. How does that strike you?"

"You've called your heroine Mary. Let's make it Jane."

"Jane White. I like it excessively. As bland as pap- it doesn't give a single hint of anything."

"Done! I shall launch my new auth.o.r.ess as soon as possible. I've just got a ma.n.u.script from Dammler,"

he went on.

She was on tiptoes to hear all about it, but could not sink so low as to show her eagerness. "What is it, poetry, a play, what?" she asked nonchalantly.

"Poetry," he replied, a little ill at ease.

"Another batch of the cantos?"

"No, sonnets. A collection of love sonnets."

"Ah, he has got his summer's experience on paper already, has he? There will be a good profit for you, Mr. Murray."

"I expect they will do very well. They are excellent, in my estimation. Perhaps you'd like to look them over when I have the proofs ready?"

"I can wait till they're in the stores. I am not that interested in Lord Dammler's work any more. Now, about myBabe in the Woods, sir, it is not a large book. I think two volumes will do for it?"

"Yes, there's not enough here to require three volumes this time."

"I hope you don't mean to pare down my money accordingly? I am very short at the moment."

"Same price. I'll send the cheque right over, if you're short. And you won't tell anyone who wrote it?"

"Not unless it is a runaway success," she returned impishly.

"It will be that. It's Dammler I'm thinking of, actually."

"Tell him what you like. Tell him Jane White wrote it, and has since entered a convent. That is bound to divert any incipient interest he may have felt in the auth.o.r.ess."

"He won't take the idea it's about him if he believes it was actually written by someone he doesn't know." John Murray, not so very intimate with the day-to-day doings of his two favorite writers, had no way of knowing Dammler would recognize a phrase of his own on every page.

"He is convinced he is the hero of my other book,Patience, and won't be looking for himself so soon in anything written by me. But we won't say I wrote this. Meanwhile, I shall go on withPatience."

"Do that. I like the chapters you showed me. If we could bringPatience out soon, no one would think you had written this one as well. You did a fast job of it, this time."

"I was inspired."

They discussed printing and finances, and soon Murray was leaving. Prudence sat behind, wondering how soon she might get ahold of a copy of Dammler's sonnets, and realizing her eagerness would be less if she had put him out of her mind and heart as she had hoped she could do. That he had written love sonnets intrigued her. She sat wondering if she could guess from the poems whom he was writing to. The images of Cybele and Lady Malvern were in her mind, along with those names visiting Hettie to which she could put a face. She was required to chase out the scampering thought that there might be one or two to herself. She was becoming as foolish as Uncle Clarence, to think he would write love poems to a lady who jilted him, and called him a mutt.

There had never been any formal cancellation of the wedding in the papers. Clarence couldn't bring himself to do it, and Prudence was so distracted she forgot all about it. It devolved on Mrs. Mallow to send out individual cards telling the news. As a result, those returning to town in the fall, those who had not been invited, were in some little confusion as to what had happened. Prudence received some few calls from the more elevated persons she had come in contact with through Dammler. Even a few invitations were extended to her. Accepting them smacked of using him, the worst of his charges in her view, but turning them down augured such a tedious autumn that when Clarence set a pen in her fingers and commanded her to accept-on his behalf as well as her own-she s.n.a.t.c.hed at this poor excuse, of pleasing Uncle, and did as she was told. She was only human flesh and blood after all; she wasn't Jane White.

There lurked as well the unworthy hope that she would see Dammler at some of these do's. She had tried her very best to root him out of her heart, but like a mint plant or an ivy, the last corner of root refused to be eradicated, and flourished without a bit of encouragement. Two consecutive evenings she made a careful toilette, accepted Clarence's delighted escort toton parties, and spent the better part of her time scanning the crowds for Allan, without any luck.