Reprise (8 page)

He was so angry the blood thumped in his temples, and so intrigued he had no thought of putting the book down without finishing it that night, which was already nearly morning. The sun was rising when he laid the second volume aside, his face set in a rigid mask of fury. So this was the mystery of her having given Murray a manuscript and not wishing to tell him about it! This was why she had been distraught in the study-- and saying she had never
seen
the book! How she must have been laughing up her sleeve! While he had all but idolized her, writing the finest poems he had ever written in her honor, she had been wallowing in this muck. Making him a laughingstock, and herself a saint. She must have thought she had well and truly lost him, to have pulled this stunt. This was her payment for Cybele, and Cybele was in the book to the life, with her platinum curls tarnished to copper. Her sweet smiles, her joy at winning him back--how to explain that? She’d rather have a real live marquess than mere revenge, perhaps. She had used a pseudonym in case he was fool enough to come trotting back to her. There’d be no going back after this. Even a mutt--how
dare
she call him a mutt!--would not grovel this low.

In his anger he pulled the two books apart and flung them into the cold grate, then fished in after the pieces, reading the loose pages again, with a new shot of anger at every line. He didn’t bother with the farce of going to bed. He changed into morning clothes and went to Hettie’s a good four hours before she was likely to have her head off the pillow. His message to her dresser was violent enough to insure his being received bright and early this morning. She greeted him from her bed, still wearing her cap and an elegant but garish peach satin jacket, dripping with lace.

“You didn’t have to wake me from my sleep to tell me the news. I know you and Prudence are reconciled, love. Just tell me the date of the wedding and let me get back to sleep,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Wedding be damned! Get into your turban, Het, and you’ll be in on the execution!” he said sharply.

She rubbed her eyes again, looking at him with the dawning of a brighter interest. “What has the silly girl done now? Don’t tell me she doesn’t like the house, after the ten dozen shops you dragged me into to pick out all that stuff.”

“It is a matter of the most complete indifference to me whether Miss Mallow cares for my house. After you’ve scanned this piece of libel you’ll see what I mean.” He threw the two dismantled books at her, their spines broken, the sheets tumbling out all over the counterpane.

She picked up one of the green covers and read it. “Jane White. Pray, what is a Miss Jane White to us, Allan?”

“Alias Miss Prudence Mallow. Look at it! Look at what she has had the damnable gall to publish! Not only
me,
oh, no, she included
you
in her tirade too, Het. ‘Lady Maldire’--that is you. A nice touch, don’t you think, ‘Lady Curse’? Only, of course, with her usual ignorance of French she has got it wrong. It ought to be ‘Maudit’

“Has she written about me, the minx?” Hettie asked, snatching up pages at random and scanning them for a “Maldire.” Like so many fashionable fribbles, she couldn’t have cared less what was said of her or written, so long as something was. She found herself soon enough. “Lady Maldire, whose greatest labor in life was to vary the color of her gowns and the height of her lovers... Oh!” She looked at him, feigning horror, secretly thrilled to death. She was soon rummaging about in the heaps of paper for more “Maldires,” and finding a sufficient quantity of them to keep her happy, reading each aloud to Dammler, who was all but frothing at the mouth.

“What should we do about it?” he asked Hettie, pacing the floor and urging her to get up. “I have a good mind to sue. That would stick Murray with the settlement I expect. Not that
he
will escape scot-free, either.
He
knew what she was up to, well enough, probably urged her on to it. And telling me this was the first work of a new writer! But it’s not his fault of course, primarily. This is
her
doing.”

“Listen to this, Allan,” Hettie said, tittering in pleasure. “This must be Cybele--’His current mistress was noted for the metallic luster of her tresses, and the metallic hardness of her heart!’ How horrid! What does she say of you? Who are you in this story?”

“‘Guelph.’ The name won’t be hard to find.”

She scrabbled around through the sheets till she found it. "'He dabbled in the arts, but his real vocation was lechery.’ That is coming it a bit strong. Are you sure ‘Guelph’ is
you?”

“Of course he’s me! And there’s worse than that. I’d like to ring her neck, but strangling is too good for her. She should be whipped at the cart’s tail.”

Hettie meanwhile had settled against the pillows and was reading merrily, quoting a phrase at him from time to time. “Dammit, Hettie, get out of bed. Come with me and prevent me from killing her.”

“Why don’t you run along and talk to Murray, Allan? Pick me up later. You can’t go storming down her door at eight-thirty in the morning. My God, it’s only eight-thirty! I didn’t go to bed till three hours ago.”

“I should murder him while I’m about it. Not to give me a warning of this, he with my sonnets ready to be distributed:
Love
sonnets to that
creature!
What a jackass I’ll look! Publicly declaring my undying devotion while she bastes me and serves me up done to a turn, with an apple stuck between my jaws. I’ve got to stop him. Yes, you’re right. I’ll see Murray and slap an injunction on him to stop circulation. Glad you thought of it.”

Hettie hadn’t even heard him. She was reading and chuckling, trying to sort the pages into order for a proper perusal. Dammler made only one stop before going to Murray. When he entered the office, he was accompanied by the sharpest lawyer in town, but was too incensed to allow this expensive minion to speak for him.

“Ah, Dammler,” Murray said, rising to greet him.

“I am here on business,” Dammler said abruptly. “I have an injunction stopping distribution of my sonnets. I want to serve notice, Mr. Murray, that henceforth you are not my publisher.”

Murray, who had been worried for some days, was in no doubt as to what had happened. He had given Dammler the book in a seemingly casual way, hoping to divert his suspicions by this ruse, but clearly it had not worked. “What seems to be..."

“Cut line, Murray. You know what this is all about. I want every one of those copies of my sonnets delivered to my home on Berkeley Square. If I hear of so much as
one
in circulation, you’ll regret it.”

“We have a contract!”

“We
had
a contract. If you’re wise you’ll tear it up, as I have done mine. Go ahead with circulation and you’ll have a suit for a hundred thousand pounds damages for that scurrilous piece of trash of Miss’ Mallow’s you had the ill judgment to publish.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have, Dammler. It’s done anonymously. No reason to think anyone will suspect..."

"The whole town will know it’s me!
You
knew it. The book is out, and I won’t have my sonnets on the same shelves as that tripe. Do you understand?”

“It might be possible to get the copies of Miss Mallow’s book back..."

“Let her have her little joke, but I won’t add to it by having the sonnets out for a comparison of our
styles.”

Murray was not simple enough to think the styles had anything to do with it, and tried once more to talk him around. “Those poems are the best thing you’ve done, Dammler. The finest poetry I’ve seen in several years. Surely you’re not going to suppress them entirely.”

“Come to the bonfire,” Dammler said, and stomped from the office, while his lawyer wordlessly laid the injunction on Murray’s desk, tipped his hat, and trotted out at his master’s heels. He wondered why he had been brought along. It was still only nine-thirty, an unseemly hour to call on a lady, but not too early, Dammler felt, to rouse a vulture. He got rid of the lawyer and went on to Grosvenor Square. He was too impatient to go back for Hettie.

He felt if he had to spar with Mr. Elmtree this morning he might do the innocent old fool an injury. He was relieved on that score at least. Clarence had gone out half an hour since, to tell Sir Alfred about the play and the party afterwards. Sir Alfred had attended both himself, but this didn’t save him from the visit. Dammler was admitted to Prudence’s study by a servant, and found her sitting over her desk, demure in a dark gown with a white collar, a quill between her fingers, a curl falling over her ear. He had seen her like this dozens of times, hundreds in his mind’s eye. It was the main way in which he pictured her, the image a sort of icon. It jarred him, to see her look so sweet, so innocent, and to compare the nunlike appearance with the recent behavior. When she looked up, she smiled and held out her hand to him. He stood a moment looking and shaking his head, as if he would make sense of the senseless.

She observed the strange look on his face, and her smile faded. He had found out, had read it already! “Allan?” she said in a soft, frightened voice.

He felt a weakening stab of love, and fought to control it. “It would be better if you call me Lord Dammler, Miss Mallow,” he said, his voice as cold as ice.

“Oh you know,” she said simply. “I wanted to tell you myself first. To explain..."

“Why did you not, Miss Mallow? Last night, when I offered you the book and you
told me you had never seen it before,
for instance, might have been an opportune moment. Of more interest to me is why you chose to write such a piece of carrion.”

She wet her lips, stinging under the ‘carrion.’ “I don’t know. I was angry I suppose, hurt, when you had Cybele at your apartment.”

“Surely
you,
of all people, know very well my real vocation is lechery. You didn’t think I would pass a whole night alone!”

“‘Guelph’ wasn’t really you!” she said at once, recognizing her own phrase.

“He was me! You made the portrait quite clear, just prettying up my face a little, like your uncle who so kindly painted out my crooked eyebrow. I must confess I am in some doubt as to whether that saintly female ‘Mary,’ prone to vapors and hysteria is
you,
but about the others there can be no doubt, in our or anyone else’s mind.”

“‘Mary’ is not me! You know I don’t use real people.”

“You used me, Prudence. When I didn’t pan out as a husband, you got the next best thing out of me, a character for one of your books.”

“I don’t know why you always think I am writing about you!” she said, her own anger rising at his sharp attack.

 “Do you think I don’t recognize my own ideas, my patterns of speech? The best part of that very inferior hack job, if I may say so. I want to thank you. You have managed at one stroke to bring me to my senses. I had you on a pedestal, and I should be eternally grateful you tumbled yourself off before I erected a scaffold and tried to vault to your celestial heights. Tell me, Miss Mallow, for I confess this one point escapes me, if you have such a holy aversion to one of my low principles, why in God’s name did you ever agree to marry me?”

“It was just a book--I only wrote it to pass the time."

“You gave it to Murray for publication!”

“I needed the money.”

“That, my sainted sinner, is known as prostitution. Cybele’s sort is better. At least she smears no one in the process. She uses her God-given talents, such as they are, for man’s pleasure. You take a gift--I grant you some slight talent in writing--and use it to persecute your friends. Ex-friends! Now, who is worse, you or Cybele?”

She was on her feet by this time. “Allan, I’m sorry!” she said. “I shouldn’t have done it.” She reached her hands out towards him in an impulsive gesture.

He just swayed towards her, but his anger firmed his resolve. “Well you might be! That’s the difference between us, Prudence. I poured out my heart to you in those poems. I wasn’t ashamed to tell the world how I felt about you, and you reciprocate by making me a caricature in a satire on love--do it behind my back for money. Hang on to your copy of the sonnets. You have the only one that will survive. You will be deprived of having society laugh at my slavish devotion, but the fact that it may one day be worth some
money
will comfort you.”

“What are you doing with the sonnets?” she asked, aghast.

“I have become uninspired. You’ll have to jog along on your laurels from
Babe in the Woods.
A misnomer, by the way, but then accuracy is clearly of little account to you.”

“If Murray isn’t circulating
your
book, maybe he can stop distribution of
mine
as well. No one need know.”

"I know, Prudence. But then, I begin to understand
my
feelings count for nothing. It is less the snickers of the mob that trouble me than the knowledge that you despise me. You felt like that, and were still willing to marry me. Yes, you would have had me last night had I offered for you, and I thank God I didn’t!”

She was battered by so much hate and bad luck. She just looked, wordless, too sunk to explain anything.

“Well?” he asked, in a sharp curt way that was not easy to answer. “Speechless, I see. A pity your communication is limited to the printed word. I shall be looking forward to your next book, to see which victim you choose to perform a vivisection on, and to discover what new virtues you can find to heap on yourself.”

He turned to leave and she took a step after him, with some thought of further supplication. He lifted a brow and looked at her with such a sneer her blood ran hot. No more supplicating, like a beggar. “A fine rant, Dammler, worthy of a place in one of your vulgar melodramas, if you haven’t purloined it from someone else’s.”

“I am not often accused of
vulgarity,
ma’am. For that particular talent, I direct you to your own latest work.”

“I assumed a linguist like yourself would take the word ‘vulgar’ at its historical value--'popular,' of the people, but let us not be diverted to a discussion of semantics.”

“I expect you mean etymology, and as to
purloining
speeches, the less said of that the better. Take my words out of ‘Guelph’s’ mouth and your novel would be half empty pages. As you have proclaimed poverty as your reason for publishing that thing, it will be pointless for me to sue for damages, but it’s what you deserve.”