Reprise (20 page)

He was still not at the table when she finally went into the breakfast parlor. Again there was a letter for her, from her mother this time, with some unsettling news. Clarence was behaving oddly, worse than before. He now absented himself in the evenings as well as the days, and Mrs. Mallow had taken alarm that it was a female that took him away, as he would tell her nothing about his activities. Mrs. Hering had heard from Sir Alfred, and considered the item of enough importance to involve relaying, that he had been seen on the strut with a very beautiful woman,
young
woman. The business was gone beyond sittings in a studio. He was going public in the matter, and it caused Prudence some worry.

She was frowning into her letter when Dammler came to the table. “What’s the matter, Prue?” he asked, stopping beside her.

She hastily stuffed the letter into her pocket. “Nothing serious. Mama is a little worried about Uncle. That’s all.”

Dammler did not look at all surprised at this, she noticed, and suspected he knew well about it. “Slipped the leash, has he?”

“It looks like it.”

“We’ll talk later,” he said, looking around and finding he must move to the end of the table to take a seat.

Miss Burney began mentioning a drive over to see some church, but before a firm companion could be obtained in Miss Mallow, Lady Malvern said, “How long do you plan to remain with us, Dammler? I hope you won't rush off.” As he and Prudence were not bickering, she considered it eligible to encourage him to remain.

“I must be at Longbourne today. I sent word I am coming. I’ll have to leave soon.”

“It’s only a few hours away. Stay for lunch, at least.”

"I want to talk to Tom this morning,” he said, with a little questioning look to Prudence, that relayed he also wanted to talk to her.

The church Fanny spoke of was close enough to insure their being back for lunch, and Prudence went with her, as she didn’t wish to announce she sat around waiting for a moment of Dammler’s time. She had very little idea what she had seen when she got back. She only knew that after lunch she would be with him, and she could hardly wait for the meal to be over.

He walked to her side as they left the room. “Let’s go out into the garden to talk,” he suggested as the group broke up to inhabit various rooms, thus taking away the certainty of privacy.

The idea appealed to her, though there was a brisk autumnal breeze in the air. In the hallway, she took up her pelisse. “I’ll take this, to ward off the cold,” she said.

“There is no such a thing as cold, Prudence,” he said with a strange smile.

“Indeed? The Eskimos will be surprised to hear it.”

“No, I’m serious. There is physically no such a thing as cold. There is only a relative absence of heat.”

“You
are
not
serious, but only looking for an argument, and I have other crows to pull with you, so this ploy is not at all necessary.”

“The matter can be argued for hours together. I’ve done it.”

"Where did you find anyone foolish enough to humor you in this conceit? I hadn’t realized you were gallivanting with morons. I should have easy work winning today’s round. I wish you were right, but if you are, my study has not heard of this new turn of physics. It is penetrated with the most soul-destroying cold ever felt--or
imagined.”

She was too sensible to argue the matter; too sensible too to give in without an argument. He thought of her remark about her cold study, thought of the fine grate in her rooms at Longbourne Abbey and in London. He didn’t consider it the propitious moment to mention them, but some trace of his thoughts was in his eyes as he took her arm and opened the gate from the rose garden into the park. “What matter is it you wish to argue then?” he asked.

“The
monstrous
lies you perpetrated against Miss Burney and myself last night. Now I suppose you will tell me there is no such a thing as a lie, but only an absence of truth, which ill-bred persons like myself call by their plain old Saxon name, lie.”

“Old English, actually, from
lyge,
you know.”

“What’s the difference?”

“About five hundred years, but I didn’t mean to be petty.”

She lowered her brows at him, and was treated to one of his insouciant shoulder hunchings. “You are allowing lies to exist, are you?” she enquired.

“We always allow females to deal artistically and inventively with the truth,” he answered, taking her arm to stroll through a pebble walk, where statuary loomed above them. “I am shocked at your loose tongue, Prudence. Here I have been taking you for a properly reared young lady. If you didn’t hide behind your petticoats I would be impelled to call you out for that accusation. It is typical of women; you know you have us at this disadvantage of chivalry, and can say or do anything without fear of retribution.”

“Fine talking, milord. Just where are we heading, incidentally?”

“Beyond earshot of Hebe and her friends. You can’t trust a crowd of drinkers to hold their tongues.”

“Who is this intemperate crew you are worried about?” she asked, looking around the empty garden.

“You don’t know the vile habits of Hebe, wine-bearer to the gods? The gray lady up above you there in a very improper state of undress, tilting her jug precariously, urging a drink on all her companions.” He waved towards the statues, that stood on high columns. “Your education has become sorely neglected, my dear. Time I take it in hand for you again, introduce you to some of my ten thousand tomes.”

This leading remark sent her scruples into a state of shock, but he was rattling on before she could form any resolutions to be broken. “Let us get right on with the lessons. The gentleman with horns there beside Hebe is not a cuckolded husband, as you may be forgiven for thinking, but a rather inferior imitation of Michelangelo’s Moses, the horns resulting from a bad translation of the Bible or some such thing. The original in Rome is much better.” He drew her to a stop, and went on pointing out the other statues.

“The charming lady
au naturel
next Moses is some stone incarnation of Venus or Aphrodite, rendered so poorly it is impossible to tell whether she is copied from the original Greek, or is a third-hand job taken from the Roman copy. It is not only we dramatists who plagiarize, you see. A time-honored custom in the arts. That will come as news to Clarence’s niece,” he said with a bantering smile.

“Odd the way they are arranged--man and woman, like a polite dinner party. That would be Constance’s idea. What do you suppose Venus finds to say to Moses as they stand there, side by side, through the ages? Has to remind him of the Commandments, I daresay. Thou shalt
not,
Moses! Keep thy cold hands to thyself!”

She was surprised into a spontaneous laugh, but felt she ought to be enjoining him to behave. “You forget they are frozen in stone. He couldn’t lay a rude hand on her if he wanted. I doubt he would want to either, the law-giver himself.”

“Don’t forget he was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter when she fished him out of the Nile. Environment will tell. I always suspect a layer down of laws myself. I think Moses probably had a whitewash job done on him by his biographer--himself. Yes, he was a scribbler like us when all’s said and done, therefore a highly suspect fellow. At least the Pentateuch is attributed to him.”

“Oh, Dammler!” she said in exasperation, “is
nothing
sacred to you?”

“Nothing written--the matter of a human agent being required to sort out the words makes me suspicious. In the beginning was the act, not the word.”

As the next statue to be explained was Zeus, the perpetrator of too many crimes to go into, he abandoned the lesson. “Prudence, I’ve just had what Tom Moore would call a ‘gorgeous notion’--one I plagiarized from Omar Khayyam.”

“I tremble to hear it.”

“A crock of wine, a loaf of bread and a gorgeous female in the wilderness. We’ll pass on the bread, and see if we can’t get Constance to provide the wine and wilderness.” He beckoned to a gardener, and passed the interval until the wine came in selecting a private spot giving shelter without too much shade. When he had the wine and two glasses in his hand, he pointed off into the distance, so far from the house that she hesitated to go with him. She could not quite trust this mood he was in.

“I think I prefer the rose garden,” she said.

“Not the primrose path? It’s the wine you distrust. I’ll get rid of it,” he said at once, and lifted his arm to heave it away.

“Allan--no! Oh, you are outrageous,” she said, but she went with him, laughing and happy in spite of all.

“I only want to talk to you alone. Come along, I promise I won’t molest you. Word of a gentleman, and I
don’t
lie, Miss Prudence.”

She knew he referred to more than his present promise. He was telling her again he had been innocent of wrongdoing with Cybele. His meaningful look told her so.

They walked off into the park until they reached his chosen corner. “Here, you won’t want to dirty your pelisse,” he said, pulling off his jacket to lay on the ground.

“Oh, no! It will ruin your nice jacket,” she objected, while her eyes were treated to an equally nice flowered waistcoat, and a pair of shoulders that had no need of wadding to eke them out.

“Nonsense, chivalry isn’t dead. I can be as gallant as Sir Walter Raleigh. Go on, step on it. I expect no better from a female.”

“No really, it is too good to use as a blanket.” She reached down to pick it up, but with a playful push on the shoulder he shoved her down.

“Do as you’re told, woman. Sit. We don’t read of Queen Liz refusing to tread Walter’s coat into the mud.” He then stuck the neck of the wine bottle to his mouth to extract the loosened cork with his teeth, while Prudence looked on in fascination. He poured the two glasses, balancing both in one hand. She felt as sinful as Salome should have when she reached out to take it.

“I want to propose a toast to all put-upon gentlemen everywhere, and the ladies who do the putting,” he said, lifting his glass. “You don’t drink to that, Miss Mallow? Compose one of your own."

“Oh, no. I’ll drink to that. Behind every great genius there is a woman."

“Whispering in his ear he’ll never make it. We forge on in spite, you see, to show the little woman we have it in us."

“I give you fair warning, Dammler, I have spent the early morning frolicking through Malvern’s library, and am about to shoot all your cock-and-bull untruths down.”

“Now that is a great compliment to me, that you took my little jokes so seriously.
En garde!”
He held up his hand in a fencing gesture, and smiled with anticipation. “Go to it. You have first thrust.”

She took a sip of wine and made her thrust. “Very well then, let us begin with the Taj Mahal in India. It turns out, upon investigation, it was built as a burial place for that old shah’s wife, so I cannot believe she ever got much pleasure from it, or urged her husband on to do it. He probably beat her when she was alive, and only did it after her death to salve his conscience.”

He nodded judiciously. “Still, he did it for her, not himself. God, but it’s beautiful, Prue. I wish I could take you to see it--see it at night. It’s like a great fairy castle, the white marble glowing in the moonlight. There is nothing in Europe to equal it.”

“I consider that
my
point, all the same. Next we come to Madame Pompadour and her not so petit Petit Trianon.”

“You’ll have hard sledding to make anything of that expensive trollop.”

“Still, on the lady’s behalf let us point out she was a considerable patroness of the arts and learning, and gave Louis a pretty good hand in running the country. To each his just due. We give Prinney a pleasure dome at Brighton for making a worse mess than she did.”

“No, sorry! I refuse to place Madame on the side of the angels. Let us couple her with Du Barry and her own sort. Not even half a point for you there. Next thrust.”

“Very well then, Hero. Isn’t that an odd name for a girl? You men stole it from her, but I sha’n’t say a word about plagiarism or you’ll lead me down the paths of etymology again. She threw herself into the Hellespont in a fit of grief and drowned when she heard of Leander’s death, so you can’t say
she
was heartless, or anything else but a confirmed ninnyhammer.”

“That’s two for you; one for me--but she’s only legend, you know.”

“Based on fact!”

“You have an excellent memory. Next?”

“Well, the books didn’t say anything about Nebuchadnezzar building the gardens for his wife, so he is a moot point, and I win.”

“You are jumping the gun, in typical female fashion. You have omitted Cleopatra.”

“Oh she was the most abused of the lot!”

“She killed her own brother, who was also to be her husband. No accounting for taste.”

“Only after he drove her into exile.”

“What reason did you find for her setting up house with Caesar and Mark Antony?”

“She did it because she had to secure her empire, and besides, she probably loved them.”

“You would allow that as an excuse for such a quantity of lovers, would you? Take care, your prudence is slipping,” he said, smiling at her consternation at what she had said. “I made sure you’d finger Cleo as a sinner.”

“Anyway, she killed herself when she heard Mark Antony was dead.”

“Friend, Roman, Countrywoman! Lend me your ears!” He reached out and tweaked her ear. “She killed herself when she heard Octavian meant to take her to Rome in chains, which of course coincided with the death of Mark.”

“You can’t know that was the reason.”

“You can’t imagine it wasn’t! I resort again to induction to make my own conclusion."

“I have got you at
point non plus
in other words.”

“You’ve talked yourself out on a limb, milady. Are you keeping score, by the by? That’s two all, and now we come to the case of Lord Dammler versus Miss Mallow.”

“It is presumptuous to include ourselves amongst the immortals,” she said hastily.

“Immortal
lovers
we are discussing, Prue. Let us keep our terms straight.”

She became flustered, and began looking with regret to the distance separating them from the house. “If you are talking about that dreadful book I wrote..."