Babe (13 page)

Having paid several hundred pounds for this trifle, the owner was not best pleased to be either proven a dupe or possibly to have had a genuine masterpiece vandalized.

“Thank you,” he said in a voice laden with irony, laying the pieces aside.

“You’re welcome,” Lord Romeo answered in quite a different spirit, and resumed his seat.

“So you are come to sue for Lady Barbara’s hand,” Clivedon said, his eyes narrowing and a steely glint creeping into them. “She is quite an heiress, you realize. She is expected to make a good match.”

Lord Romeo smiled, an Attic smile, and nodded his shapely head in agreement. “I am the best match she could make,” was his simple answer.

“That is your opinion,” Clivedon pointed out, finding it strangely impossible to gauge the young man. “What is your financial position?”

“I do not concern myself with money—my exact position I cannot tell you, but I know the Gods smiled on me. I have wealth as well as talents and beauty.”

“What sum do you speak of?”

“My man of business has drawn all that up for me. It is in here. Isn’t this an exquisite bag? It is made of goatskin, lined with pink silk.” He opened it and, instead of drawing out the papers, ran his fingers over the watered silk, while Clivedon threw up his eyes in impatience. “Here it is for you to look over,” he said at length. “If it is not enough, pray tell me, and I shall get more.”

His host regarded him, wondering whether to laugh or call for a guard from Bedlam. “Fine. Just leave it with me, and I’ll be in touch with you. Where are you putting up, Lord Romeo?”

“You’ll take good care of Paros? My leather case. Paros was my favorite goat, from the island of the same name. You were asking—ah yes, where do I stay. I am at my father’s home, in Belgrave Square. I see you are surprised I could tolerate it. I am stronger than I look, but it grieves me daily, I confess. It is very ugly, monumentally so. I disapprove of every piece of stone in it, but it is my duty to spend some time with my family.”

“I hadn’t heard your family were in town.”

“They are not. I commune with their spirits.”

“I see.” What Clivedon was rapidly coming to see was that he dealt with a beautiful moron. Still, the boy was Stapford’s son. The home he abhorred was considered by the rest of the country to be one of the city’s finest, and until he got a look inside Paros, he would not turn him off.

“Are you finished with me now, sir?”

The speech was unpleasantly cringing, but there was no tone of self-abasement, nor any look of it. The beautiful face across from him was remote, with a soft smile curving the corners of the lips.

“I guess that’s about all for now. I’ll call on you after I’ve looked over these papers.”

“I could put you in touch with a real Clitias vase, if you are interested,” the boy said next.

“What would it cost me?”

“Cost? I have no idea. A great deal, probably. A price cannot be put on beauty. It would help to detract attention from the rest of this appalling room.” The blue eyes roamed slowly around a chamber the owner had spent considerable time and money on making elegant.

“Kind of you.”

“Merely an effort to ingratiate myself with Lady Barbara’s guardian, to see him in improved surroundings. My soul thrives on beauty. Your entranceway as well, if you will pardon my saying so, Sir, is barbaric. The pillars neither Doric nor Corinthian, but a poor pastiche, and the entablature . . . Shall I design a replacement for you, Lord Clydesdale?”

“The name is Clivedon,” the host said in a tight voice, “and I am satisfied with my entablature.”

“Clivedon? I must try to remember that. I have no memory for English names, they are all so ugly. My own included. I refer to the family name, for Fate was present at my christening and gave me a civilized first name, though it is no Grecian. Well, may I leave, then?”

“That would be nice.”

“Yes. I have been dreading this visit as well, and found it almost worse than my imaginings. Good day, sir.”

Lord Romeo sauntered from the room, stopping after four paces to frown in sorrow at an Adams doorway that did not agree with him. Clivedon sat on, looking at the empty doorway for two minutes after he was gone, then opened the case and pulled out an orderly set of papers.

He was now convinced Romeo was a fool, but his father or someone had seen to it that his business affairs were handled in a wise way. The lad possessed not only an estate in Hampshire, but another spread in Essex, and considerable monies in the funds. A regular nabob, in fact, which might possibly account for Society’s amused toleration of the boy. With his excellent family connections and no real shame attaching to his name, it was hard to turn him off. He hoped Lady Barbara would have the sense to do it.

Lord Romeo spent the remainder of the morning walking about London, shaking his head at various architectural atrocities. Wren’s dome at Saint Paul’s he found a vastly inferior imitation of Saint Peter’s in Rome, a pretentious little toy. Carlton House he assumed to be a freakish joke, and the Gothic spires of Westminster Abbey he consigned to immediate demolition. Indeed, there was scarcely a building in the whole city to give him the least pleasure. The Earl of Burlington’s Piccadilly mansion found a little favor with him, a doorway on Great Ormond Street had a decent pair of pillars, and Saint Thomas’s Hospital, from a distance, had enough purity of line to appeal mildly to him. For the rest, neither a dome nor an arch of any sort was permissible. The Greeks had not discovered the arch. A lintel supported by a line of columns was the Greek way, and the botched Palladian buildings that flourished in the city were all abominations. No wonder Englishmen all looked pale and sullen, he thought. This environment would be enough to do it.

He forgot to take any lunch, but remembered to begin wending his way towards Cavendish Square early enough to be there a little before the appointed hour. The ladies awaited him.

He stopped in the doorway to look at them. “Who has done this to you?” he asked angrily, in a tone at odds with most of his speech.

Barbara looked at a very pretty mulled muslin gown, quite in the highest kick of fashion. “What?” she asked, astonished.

“Where is your
peplos
? The outfit you wore last night. What are you doing in that disgusting thing? And your hair is all wrong.” He paced quickly towards her. “Who is responsible for this?” he demanded of Lady Withers.

“Pray have a seat, Lord Romeo,” the hostess replied, alarmed but still polite.

He sat down, but could not long remain seated in his state of agitation. His eyes flew to Barbara, disliking the plait of braids around her head, the gown that did not drape, and when he saw a pair of blue kid slippers on her feet, he was up.

“This is all wrong. This is not how I want to paint you. You must wear the
peplos
and sandals you had on last night. I shall arrange your hair. Those locks must fall forward wantonly, to make Olympus tremble. Lady Weather—do you have a decent room in your house to use for a background? Or a garden not disfigured by inferior statuary?”

The easiest remark, indeed the only one that occurred to the dame, was to correct him on her name. “I am Lady Withers, not Weather.”

“Withers? I knew there was a horse in the family somewhere. That is why I called your brother Cydesdale.”

Lady Barbara regarded him closely and concluded he was being purposely rude. “Do sit down and stop making such a cake of yourself,” she said quite sharply. “If you wish to paint me, you will behave, Lord Romeo.”

He sat, meek as a lamb, and began gazing at her, finding the face, despite its coils, as perfect as ever. “Now,” she went on, pleased with his docility, “I see you don’t mean to waste time on being polite, and as you are eager to find a background for the painting, let us decide on one.” She turned to Lady Withers. “Perhaps the morning parlor, in front of that pretty fanlit window.”

“I don’t paint windows,” Lord Romeo said at once. “And I most particularly dislike fanlights.”

She raised one supercilious brow. “The study then, in front of the Adams fireplace.”

“Adams has a deal to account for, destroying the saloons of half the homes in England with those atrocities. No, I see we will require an outdoor setting. You have let Adams loose in this house.” He glanced disdainfully at walls where Adams had defiled the surface with his designs. “I shall catch the play of the sun on your golden hair. Deathless Aphrodite, on your rich-wrought throne. There is a rather good doorway in Great Ormond Street—”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said baldly. “You must do it here, if I decide to let you do it at all.”

“Really, Lady Barbara is very busy,” her chaperone took it up at once.

“She must make time,” was the artist’s reply. “The glorious gifts of the gods are not to be cast aside. Let me see this house.”

He arose and went into the hallway, frowning at a very nice curved staircase, peering into a small private parlor with a shiver of revulsion. “I have seen enough. More than enough. Take me outside,” he demanded.

At her wits’ end, Lady Withers took him into a tiny garden, where two rosebushes in a shaded corner straggled vainly towards the sun, a few yards away.

“How ugly England is,” Lord Romeo said, looking at the roses with a sympathetic nod. “I know just how you feel, roses. But the far corner gets a drop of light. I shall bring a caryatid with me to put in that corner. It is done in the middle classical period, stiff and uncompromising. Similar to those adorning the Porch of the Maidens of the Erectheum. My plan is to do Lady Barbara in the late classical style, with more naturalism, and perhaps undraped to show the beauty of her body, her gentle foot trampling a hyacinth.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lady Withers gasped, unsure she had heard him aright.

“What of the
peplos
?” Barbara asked, curious but not totally shocked, as she assumed he was out to shock them.

“I have reconsidered. We shall discard the
peplos
, to heighten the contrast between periods.”

“We shall discard the whole project, if this is the way you mean to carry on,” she told him, with a flashing eye.

He was struck most forcibly at the beauty in her eye, and smiled with simple pleasure. “For such a woman, we will long suffer woes,” he said, to no one in particular.

“Well, sir, have you no more to say than that?” she pressed him.

“You are very ignorant,” he admitted sadly. “The body is not something to be ashamed of and to keep hidden. With a form such as yours, you should be proud to reveal it to the world. It is prudish England and her false modesty that perpetuate this folly of painting women in clothing. And such ugly clothing too. The female form is the most beautiful structure in the world. From that flowing bosom, all allurements flow—love, desire, blandishing persuasion, to stir mankind.”

“I think you had better leave,” Lady Withers decided.

“That is poetry, ma’am, not, alas, my own. My talents lie in another direction. Painting is poetry without words, and poetry painting that speaks. You have the Anglo
géne
at discussing the body and sexuality. But till we are married, I shall content myself to paint my Lady Barbarian draped, if you insist. I shall have my caryatid brought here, and tomorrow at three I shall come with my equipment, and my talent. I want you wearing the
peplos
you wore last night, my dear,” he said to Barbara. “I shall arrange your hair. We’ll begin the preliminary sketch tomorrow—that face, sweetly speaking, softly laughing.” Then he looked around the garden. “Shall we go inside and eat? I don’t believe I have thought to eat yet today.”

“It’s past three o’clock!” Lady Withers reminded, whi1e reminding herself luncheon was past, tea several hours away. “You cannot mean you have not taken anything yet?”

“I may have had a nectarine. I like nectarines. Do you have any?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” she confessed.

“Bread and cheese will do, and a bottle of ouzo.”

“What is that—ouzo?” the hostess enquired, giving herself over to confusion.

“A liqueur from Greece, flavored with anise. It tastes very bad, but it makes me drunk quickly—Homerically drunk. It is divine. I have come to adore it.”

Lady Withers took her charge’s hand and dashed quickly into the house to order bread, cheese, and tea. This meager repast was in the process of being consumed when Clivedon was announced. “You have decided to take the Clitias vase,” Romeo greeted him. “I am monstrously glad.”

“My mind is not quite made up.”

“Would you like some cheese?” Romeo offered. “It is extremely bland and quite stale. I blush to offer it, and of course tea does not go at all—”

“Thank you, no,” Clivedon replied, with a look at his sister, who looked back in helpless dismay.

Soon the unwanted guest arose. “Thank you very much for your efforts at hospitality, ma’am. I shall return tomorrow at three.” Then he turned to Barbara. “Where are we going this evening, my dear?” he asked her in a caressing tone.

“Lady Barbara is attending a ball at Lord Winchelsea’s house,” Clivedon told him

“Winchelsea? What names you people dream up. How is one expected to remember Winchelsea? Very likely I have been invited. I shall ask my valet. He handles my correspondence for me,” Lord Romeo said, in a vague way. “But in any case, I shall see you there.”

“You can’t go without an invitation,” Barbara reminded him.

“I go everywhere without invitations. I shall be there. Don’t wear anything ugly,” he pleaded, then left.

“Larry, the boy is impossible,” his sister wailed.

“As close to mad as makes no difference,” Larry allowed. “But I don’t think there’s any vice in him.”

“No vice! You are far out in your opinion. He wants to paint Barbara nude, in Great Ormond Street, and if he is not dead drunk on ouzo we may count ourselves fortunate.”

These statements had to be explained in considerable detail. As it seemed likely to take several minutes, Clivedon suggested Barbara get her bonnet to go out for a spin. When she was gone, he turned to his sister. “Yes, he is damned odd, but well-born, and very well to grass.”