Reprise (16 page)

“What we’ll do is get an ostrich feather and paint it into a fern,” Clarence decided.

“Bring one with you next day,” Dammler suggested, “and go ahead with the head itself today.”

“I start at the top,” Clarence told him. “The weed is at the top.”

“For this once, could you not..."

“I don’t tell you how to rhyme up your verses--I daresay you don’t begin in the middle of a line--and you may count on it I know a little more about art than yourself. I can’t begin without an ostrich feather. We’ll have to go out and buy one.”

“We” soon became “you,” however. While Clarence mixed up his greens, Dammler was to take Miss Penny out to a milliner’s and hold ostrich feathers on her head till one drooped just so, bending over the crown of the head without touching the hair, then the painting could proceed.

Shaking his head at the foolishness of it, but with really nothing better to do, Dammler gave in. Miss Penny put off the curtain and he led her down Bond to Conduit Street, to his favorite milliner, Mademoiselle Fancot. Together they tried on feather after feather, finding none that would quite do. The blue hung at just the right tilt, but it was blue. The green was the right shade, but too short, another too long. The proprietress herself, an old business acquaintance of his lordship, entered into the spirit of the thing. There were merry laughs echoing through the shop, audible even behind the curtain, where Miss Mallow sat with three confections before her, choosing first one, then another. She thought it sounded very like Allan, but knew she was imagining him in every shadow, and chided herself for her nonsense. That Mademoiselle Fancot stayed with the company told her the party was no ordinary one, but of the highest
ton.
She herself was completely abandoned. For five minutes she sat, waiting for mademoiselle to come and help her make up her mind. In the end, pushing the three bonnets away, she decided to take her patronage elsewhere, if this was how she was to be treated. She had received better attention when she had first come with Allan! She looked about for her bonnet, then remembered having left it out in the shop. The laughter, she noticed, had subsided.

She came out from behind the curtain of the private room to find Lord Dammler standing with her black bonnet in his hands, looking at it with the strangest expression on his face, half sad, half smiling. The unexpectedness of it, the shock, sent her heart fluttering. He must know it was her bonnet--he had seen it often enough. The look he wore suggested the bonnet had aroused memories, fond memories, surely, of those past days. The tender expression suggested it. She wondered at his being here, and assumed, after a quick glance around the shop, that he had seen her enter, and come in after her. There were a few other patrons about, but none of them being paid any heed by him. There was also one gentleman--the laugher, no doubt.

When he looked up and saw her, he said, “Prudence!” in quite a startled voice, that would have told her he had no notion she was there, had she not been too shaken to think of it.

She smiled nervously and reached out for her hat. “I see you have designs on this bonnet, Dammler, but I must caution you it is already taken. It is mine.”

“Good Lord! So that’s how it came to be here! I recognized it. You have often worn it in the past.”

“Yes, often enough that I had plans to retire it, but can find none I like better.” And still he held on to it, though her hands had been outstretched for a long minute. “Well, are you going to steal it from me?” she laughed, quickly concluding he was as ill at ease as herself.

“Sorry.” He gave it over to her, and stood looking as she peeped into the mirror to put it on. He stayed at her elbow, watching her perform this feminine chore. When she had it on, he reached out to tilt it at a little more rakish angle than she usually wore. It was hardly the act of an inveterate enemy.

Each looked at the other with a conscious eye, wondering what to say, and what to do. It. seemed too good an opportunity to let slip away. Dammler had sworn a dozen times he would make no move towards reconciliation, but with no move having been made on her part over a period of a few weeks now, and with so few chances to meet her, he was losing all his patience. He was also aware that Miss Penny lurked in the corner with Mademoiselle, wishing to grab his attention. One did not present an actress to a lady, and he assumed both Miss Penny and Mademoiselle Fancot were aware of it, and would bear with him a moment.

“Well, and how do you go on, Prudence?” he asked, striking a compromise between what he wished to say and what he had sworn he would not.

“You have stolen my line,” she answered with a laugh, prey to much the same feelings as himself.

“Again,” he added. “I refer obliquely to plagiarism, if that remark seems inappropriate.”

“It will hardly do you credit. Not one of my brighter epigrams. But to answer your question, I am fine, thank you. And yourself?”

"Fine.”

“He steals my answer, too. My bonnet, my question, my answer. I had better have an eye to my change purse, or he’ll be relieving me of my shillings and pence."

“You
will require all you possess, if you mean to shop here. Shockingly expensive.”

“I know it well. I am throwing caution to the winds to venture in here. You have led me into these expensive habits. It was you who introduced me to the establishment.”

Dammler was bereft of a clever answer. He had been away from her too long. His wits had become rusty, and to add to his
gene,
there stood Miss Penny, casting questioning glances on him. Still he wished to stay with Prudence, prolong the casual meeting. “What are you writing these days?” he asked.

“You wish to steal my plots and characters, too, I suppose, but I still carry on with
Patience.
Truth to tell, I become impatient with the girl. What are you doing?”

“Oh--this and that. A few translations, nothing of much interest.”

“Ah, well, if it is
translations
you are into, show off, my opinion would be of no use to you. I am quick enough to criticize Lord Dammler, but if it is Homer or one of those lofty gents you are tackling, I leave your fate to the reviewers.”

This sounded marvelously encouraging. As good as an offer to call. How should she give her opinion on what he was doing if he didn’t bring it for her to see? He quickly invented some work that would make a visit plausible. “I have started a novel,” he said, then remembered he had also finished the novel at the end of Chapter Two by burning it. He’d scribble it up again.

“Indeed! How interesting! What is it about?”

Her eager friendliness dissolved any last traces of being standoffish. “Why don’t I give you a drive home and we can discuss it? I have my chaise right around the corner.” Oh, Lord--how was he to get it here from the studio? And what was he to do with Miss Penny? “Or do you have a carriage waiting?” he asked, in some little doubt and confusion.

“No, I came in a hired cab. Uncle, you must know, has set up a studio off the premises and keeps his carriage away all day. I am bursting with curiosity to have a look at the studio.”

“Have you not seen the atelier? I have been there several times.”

“He didn’t say so!” she answered, surprised.

There were a million .things she wanted to say to him, and the feeling was mutual. With a worried glance over his shoulder to Miss Penny, he tried to think of some way of getting out without letting on he was with her. But Miss Penny, overhearing that he was offering to take the lady home, came towards him.

“I hope you don’t plan to leave me here alone!” she said in an injured voice.

Prudence looked at the girl and felt a perfect fool. Dammler had come here with that woman! It was what she should have expected. The girl was a high flyer, pretty, a shade vulgar. And here she had thought he followed herself into the shop. The laughing and talking--it was him with this woman! All his little bits of constraint were clear to her now. He had been wanting to be rid of her the whole time. Watching her, Dammler read her every thought.

“Prudence, it’s not what you think,” he said, taking her by the elbow and leading her quickly to the door. “She is an actress from
Shilla.
I only brought her here to buy a feather.”

“Only a feather! You are become clutch-fisted in your old age. You used to buy them the whole bonnet, and a gown to go with it.”

“The girl is nothing to me. I scarcely know her. I’ll send her off in a cab. Wait!” He turned to speak to Miss Penny.

Prudence could not trust herself to speak. She left quickly without another word, but a look that expressed all her disgust with him.

Chapter Thirteen

The incident provided just
the incentive Prudence needed to jostle her out of her lethargy. No point thinking if she sat around waiting long enough Dammler would come back. He was into his old habits of carrying on with the lightskirts, straight on the road to hell, and it was the right road for him. Her new friends had fallen off with a sudden rush after the duel. She didn’t know whether Dammler himself had a hand in it, but in any case Hettie was cutting her dead, and Hettie wielded considerable influence in society. No matter, there was more than one society in London. In the literary circles her credentials were still untarnished. She invited a few of the lesser luminaries in her own sphere to a social evening at Grosvenor Square. Miss Burney, the well-known novelist, sent in her regrets, but others came and soon a few invitations were being received to genteel do’s. She did not precisely enjoy them, but they helped to get by the long days and interminable evenings.

Dammler, she assumed, had given up literature entirely, for there was never a sign of him. Even at a small, select dinner given by Mr. Moore for quite the cream of writers, he was not present, and he was known to be a particular friend of Thomas Moore. His name did arise, however, when Leigh Hunt inquired if anyone had heard of him recently.

“Hunt wants to borrow money,” Moore warned her aside. “Always putting the bite on his friends. Keep your reticule closed, Miss Mallow, or he’ll be hitting you up for a loan.” Then Moore turned to the group and said he had heard Dammler was doing some translations.

“He is also working on a novel,” Prudence added.

“Humbug!” Mr. Rogers laughed. “Dammler ain’t writing at all nowadays. He has taken up painting, instead.”

“Really! Well, he always was interested in art,” Moore mentioned.

“More interested in the models,” Rogers pointed out with a knowing look. “He is to be found two afternoons out of three at Bond Street, where a new artist has set up his shop.”

Prudence listened, trying to suppress her gasps of astonishment. They could not mean Clarence’s studio! Yet Dammler had mentioned being there, and it was on Bond Street. And hadn’t Uncle been acting very sly lately? Wearing Belcher kerchiefs for one thing, but she had thought he was only aping the artistic school. Was it possible Clarence was painting young women of shady reputations? What else could account for Dammler’s being there?

“Whose shop is that?” one of the throng asked.

“Fellow name of Oaktree, something of the sort,” Rogers replied.

“Was it, by any chance, Elmtree?” Prudence asked, trembling inside.

“That’s it! Fellow’s a regular block in any case. It struck me he was well named. Churns out portraits as if they were sausages--cooked sausages. He uses a deal of brown. Yes, it was quite a pretty little sausage he was dabbing up on canvas t’other day I stopped by. An actress from Drury Lane. Dammler’s flirt, I believe. He was there dancing attendance, in any case.”

At this point it was recalled by Mr. Moore that the young lady at his left had an historical interest in Lord Dammler, and he adroitly steered the conversation aside. It chanced to be a subject that also interested the lady greatly. “I am going to Finefields for a house party,” he mentioned to the group. “Lady Malvern is having a literary gathering next week. You go, I think, Mr. Rogers?”

“I go, but I have warned Malvern I will take my paper and books with me and excuse myself from the duty of making up to his wife. I fancy she’ll ask Dammler along, as the rest of the party is such dull dogs as you and I, Tom,” he said in a joking way to Moore.

Mr. Moore was having uphill work getting off the topic of Lord Dammler. In desperation, he turned to Prudence. “Have you been to Finefields, Miss Mallow?”

“No, I was invited earlier this year, actually, but was unable to attend.”

“You should come along next week. You will find the company to your liking, I think.”

“Yes,” she answered, a little wistfully. But how was it possible to go without an invitation? She was the last person in the world to be asked, when she had specifically told Constance she disliked being in company with writers. Such a foolish thing to have said, but it was only a jibe at Allan.

The conversation that evening was bright. These men and women possessed some of the keenest minds and liveliest wits in London, but they might as well have discussed the weather for all the attention Prudence paid to them. What was going on in Clarence’s studio? Had Dammler led Clarence into leading the sort of life he led himself? It sounded strangely like it, yet Clarence was generally to be found at home in the evenings, or his absence accounted for by some innocent diversion. She must get down to that studio.

She tackled Clarence on the subject the next morning over breakfast. So involved as she had been in her own life, she had hardly observed the gradual change in his appearance, but as she scrutinized him across the breakfast table, she observed he had been metamorphosed into a poor caricature of an artist. He had let his hair grow down past his ears. It was not brushed sedately back as he used to wear it, but floated wildly about him in a henna halo. He had tinted his hair before--the shade was not entirely new, perhaps brighter. Around his neck rested not a white cravat but a gaudy scarf in blue and green. His shirt was open at the neck, and a small golden chain hung there, partially concealed by the scarf. The chain she felt was a recent enough addition to warrant a comment.