Imprudent Lady (16 page)

How neatly she handled that, Prudence thought. She knew in her bones this squabble was all to do with herself. Dammler and Ashington were like two dogs fighting over a bone, and with about as much concern for the object over which they battled. If she were at all experienced, she would have known how to handle them, but dinner with Uncle Clarence and her mama had not developed any latent powers of diplomacy she possessed, and she waited in dread to see what the next horrible development would be.

Within half an hour, the gentlemen came to join the ladies in the saloon. Prudence died inside to see both Dammler and the Doctor walk at a jealous pace towards the one seat beside her. She arose at once, and flew to a chair beside Miss Burney, to engage her in a spirited discussion of bonnets, from which the gentlemen were excluded. A dozen times she heard slurs and innuendos exchanged between them, and at the end of an hour she arose with a very real headache to say she must leave.

As the party was going so poorly, the others quickly seconded her idea, and there was a general commotion of thanking and leaving.

“I'll take you home, Prudence,” Dammler said.

"I
am taking Miss Mallow home,” Ashington stated triumphantly.

“You will not want to leave your mother alone,” he countered.

“She is not alone. Miss Gimble lives here for the purpose of looking after her."

“There is no need for you to put your horses to for nothing. I know very well where Prudence lives, and will be passing by her door."

"I
shall be stopping at her door,” Ashington topped him. “And step in to say good evening to Mr. Elmtree and your dear mother, Miss Mallow, if it is not too late. Shall we go?"

“Well, Prudence?” Dammler said to her, throwing the whole decision of choice on her unwilling back.

“It was arranged beforehand that Dr. Ashington would take me home,” she said, and gave the Doctor her arm, with an apologetic smile at Dammler.

“I'll see you tomorrow then,” Dammler replied, and turned away with an air of the keenest indifference to offer Miss Burney his company. She had her own carriage coming, but sent it away empty for the honour of a drive on Dammler's tiger skin seats.

Ashington did not accompany Miss Mallow into the house, nor ever have the least intention of doing so, only to be cornered by Elmtree and be made to drink a glass of wine. His sole purpose in claiming he meant to do so was to take Dammler down a peg, and claim his ownership of Miss Mallow. Prudence, naturally not unaware of the bickering between the two the whole evening, undertook an apology on her absent friend's behalf.

“I fear Lord Dammler was not himself tonight. He seemed in a very bad mood. I have never seen him so out of curl."

“It is typical of him. His head is swollen with all the praise heaped on him for those shoddy verses. I would not have written him up but for Blackwood wanting a piece on him. Dammler was in his cups, very likely. It is the only thing to account for such behavior."

“It did not seem to me he drank to excess,” Prudence offered as a pacifier.

“I think he was foxed before ever he came. He was grossly offensive from the beginning. You will not want to have much to do with him. He makes himself too familiar, using your first name."

The party, so looked forward to, had been a disaster. Dammler had behaved abominably, and incomprehensibly, as well. Why had he taken such a dislike to Ashington? The strange thought entered Prudence's mind that he was jealous of her. He acted very like a jealous lover, but that was not possibly the reason, unless it was jealousy of her writing, and not herself. Yet he had implied Ashington's article did not do her writing justice. That he was not jealous of her as a woman was clear—he had thought her mad not to accept Mr. Seville's offer of marriage.
That
had not bothered him in the least. There was some other explanation, and she was curious to hear it. He had said he would see her tomorrow. She could hardly wait. And she would also tell him what she thought of his performance.

On the morrow, Dammler did not come. Anger with Prudence and shame with himself for having acted so badly kept him from making the promised call. To hell with her, he thought, and resumed his life of dissipation which he had been making some genuine efforts to curb since her lecture to him on love and degrees of goodness. What did she know or care about anything? Silly little chit—bowled over by that doddering old doctor. He shouldn't have let himself spout off so to Coleridge though, and with Miss Burney there, too, to broadcast it.

Instead of Dammler, it was once again Ashington who came to call on Prudence. His excuse was a book—a translation of Vergil into English for her to read, as she had expressed an interest in his books. He said he would like it back when she had perused it, but had another treat ready to thrill her. He was giving a speech at a lecture hall that night, and wished her to attend.

“It will be of some interest to you, I hope—a little talk on the decline of drama. We have fallen a distance from the days of Aristophanes and Marlowe to what passes for drama nowadays. Drivel written by Dammler and the likes, about a harem in the East. I hope you don't mean to attend it."

“It is not being presented this year."

“Is it not? I had hoped ... Well everyone knows what it is about anyway. It will be all violence and lust and such things as should be prohibited. He and Shelley are a fine pair of atheists."

Prudence did not much want to attend a lecture, but Clarence was having his cronies in for cards that evening, and a lecture might at least be instructive if not amusing. When Ashington mentioned that he had given Fanny Burney and Coleridge tickets the evening before, she decided to go. The glitter of famous names was still new enough that she enjoyed associating with them.

Clarence was disappointed that she would not be on display at his card party, but if there was anything that could bring him to accept it, it was her being so marvelously occupied elsewhere, in such company. The names of Coleridge and Burney and Ashington would be more mentioned at the card party than hearts, spades and clubs. Those notable persons might have been at the lecture, but if they were, Prudence saw none of them but Ashington. She sat alone in the front row of a sparsely filled hall on a chair of uncompromising hardness. The lecture was tedious and very long. Ashington knew a great many names of plays and playwrights, their plots and dates, and was determined to mention every one of them. From the Greeks to Sheridan, he could have not omitted one, in any language. The lecture began at eight-thirty; at eleven-thirty he was still at it. It seemed he would never end, but just before her eyes closed completely, he was bowing to light applause and walking towards her for congratulations.

There was not even a stop for refreshments to repay her for her long vigil. It was “right home and to bed” for her, Ashington smiled gaily. How he still found breath after his harangue was a wonder.

His jolting carriage lumbered along the streets from the lecture hall in an out-of-the-way part of town to Grosvenor Square, passing the lively entertainment section on its way. How many carriages were out, the occupants laughing and wearing evening clothes, and on the streets groups of friends met and chatted and laughed, planning more revels before “home and bed” for them. Prudence felt a twinge of envy. What was she doing with this old man, when she would much rather have been out at a play or at the opera? Mr. Seville's company was preferable to this. One particularly rowdy group of black-coated gentlemen and gaily-gowned women, the latter of whom Prudence suspected of being Phyrnes, one and all, was ahead of them, about to cross the street at the corner.

“That is Dammler there, is it not?” Ashington said, looking out the carriage window.

This speech was the most interesting thing he had said all evening in his companion's opinion, and she quickly leaned out her window. She sat across the banquette from Ashington, the better to see and hear him. She had no difficulty in spotting Dammler, because of his conspicuous eye patch. She thought she would have known him anyway by his walk. Her glance sped to his partner. It was not the blonde Phyrne this time, but a gorgeous redhead of the same calling.

Ashington rolled down his window and hailed Dammler. “Good evening, milord,” he called in a loud voice, to attract his attention.

“Good evening, Doctor,” Dammler said, smiling and raising his hand in quite a friendly way that led Prudence to suspect on this occasion he had been drinking freely. His eyes turned to the other window, and the smile froze on his face.

“Miss Mallow has been to hear my lecture on the Drama,” Ashington said. “Pity you did not come."

Dammler continued staring at Prudence, and said not another word. When Ashington rolled up the window and the carriage proceeded, he was still standing in the street, with a redhead pulling at his arm and pointing out that the others were yards ahead of them.

“That scheming weasel!” Dammler said.

The next afternoon he fulfilled his promise a day late and came to call on Prudence. His eye patch had finally come off, revealing no disfiguring scar, but a slight tilting of the left eyebrow at the outer tip, and a small white mark beneath. He wore no smile on this occasion, but entered the room with an angry face.

“Oh, Lord Dammler, you have your patch off!” Prudence said. “How well you look without it."

“I am
Lord
Dammler now, am I?” he asked in a curt tone. “A new sense of formality, to go with your cap and your hoary Doctor."

“Come in,” she said, peering down the hall to see if they were being overheard by anyone.

He strode in and slammed the door behind him with a bang. “You are busy writing an extract on the good Doctor's lecture I presume?"

“No, I was wondering whether they have hedgerows in Cornwall. My heroine is gone off there on a visit, and as I have never been there myself, I am having trouble describing the countryside. Have you been to Cornwall?"

“I think I have, but I may have imagined it, as I have a habit of doing.
You
had better check with your mentor."

“Dammler, for goodness sake sit down and quit glowering over me. What has got you in such a temper?” If anyone deserved to be in a temper it was herself, but she was behaving beautifully, she congratulated herself.

“What do you think has got me in a temper?” he shouted, ignoring the offer of a chair. “You, putting on your cap and grandmother's gown and your prim manner, nice as a nun's hen, to please that damned jackanapes of an Ashington."

“So that's it!"

“God, how I wanted to go across that room and box your ears. The gall of him. The consummate effrontery to treat your work as though you were a clever little schoolgirl writing a pretty description of a garden, and
you
smiling and simpering like a Bath miss. He hasn't the least notion what you're all about. He thinks you write...” The hands flew up in frustration. “...love stories or domestic comedy. I don't know. Dammit, Prue, you should have given him a taste of your tongue, instead of sitting at his feet as though he were a tin god."

“I
do
write love stories, domestic comedies. He is used to reading Greek tragedies and philosophy. He has five thousand books!"

"And
knows every one of them by heart, complete with name and date, to bore his hearers and pretend he has a thought of his own."

“You are unjust. He knows a great deal. Why, he speaks
six languages."

“He hasn't an interesting word to say in any of them. How
can
you be humbugged by that great bloated, self-important bore?"

“He is thin as a rail!"

“I am speaking of his egotism."

“Well, he is important! It was inexcusable the way you behaved last night—the night before I mean—at the dinner party."

“Yes, now we get down to it. I suppose he had a good deal to say about last night. He made a point of calling your attention to me."

“He only stopped to say good evening to you. It was well done of him, considering the way you had behaved."

“Well done? Oh, it was marvelously done. It was pure spite. He wanted you to see me making a damned fool of myself. He wouldn't let that chance pass."

“It's not
his
fault that
you
were out carousing and drinking and—and so on."

“Especially so on! That must have tickled him, to catch me red-handed."

“And redheaded,” Prudence said, laughing at his chagrin.

He looked at her, and in a moment was laughing, too. “Prudence Mallow ... you, putting on your cap and prissy face. You're a baggage at heart, passing for a lady. You did it all to butter up the old slice, didn't you?"

“I did not! I have a high opinion of Dr. Ashington."

“A high opinion of the good he can do you, hussy."

“I am not so
conniving
as that. He is an eminent authority on..."

“Everything. He's a rasher of wind. Don't bother to let on you admire him. You have more sense than that. Do you think I care if you put the old goat to good use? Get what you can from him, and welcome. You may be sure he'll get back what he can by asking you to copy his essays for him, to save him the four pence a sheet to have it done. I'm pleased to see you taking advantage of him."

“I am not! It never entered my head to butter him up so he would give me a good review. It sounds a horrid, dishonest thing to do."

“You can't mean you're taken in by his insufferable air of knowing everything. Only see who he had to dinner— that old court card of a Coleridge, and cardess of a Burney."

“And Lord Dammler,” Prudence reminded him.

“I only went because you were to be there. Until he let that slip out I had no intention of going. I daresay he wrote that to me in his note to get me there."

“And you didn't accept until the last minute either—
more
bad manners."

“He has been giving you a list of my virtues, I see. But truly, Prudence, you can't
like
him."

“I respect him. He knows so much more than I do about everything—literature I mean."