Imprudent Lady

Chapter 8

Mr. Seville had called on Miss Mallow two days after the ball and found her out with Dammler. When he returned two days later, he found her at home and asked her to drive out in the park with him. It was not the same exciting adventure as going out with Dammler, but it was better than sitting home with Clarence, and her escort exerted himself to be entertaining. He was not a serious man; Prudence had his measure within a quarter of an hour. He was a man of the world. His conversation was of balls and the ton, of horses and fashion. He didn’t seem to think a lady capable of discussing more weighty matters, or perhaps he was incapable of it himself, but he was amusing.

“Have you heard the latest on dit about Clarence and the Princess?” he asked, leaning closer to her.

How very odd that she should know him to be referring to the Duke of Clarence, and either of two other princesses not of English royalty.

“Lieven or Esterhazy?” she asked, with a feeling of being very much in on things.

“Lieven,” he replied, not finding her answer remarkable, “was being shown to her carriage at the Pavilion t’other night by Billie, and what must the old slice do but pop in on top of her and try to make love to her.”

“He is a courageous man,” she answered, laughing at the picture called up by this incongruous couple.

“Aye, false courage-in his cups certainly. But Lieven is awake on all suits. She told him the Congress of Vienna was giving Hanover to Prussia, and England going along with it for a wedge of Westphalia. You may imagine his reaction-a confirmed Hanoverian. Lovemaking was forgotten. ‘God damn! Does my brother know this?’ says he. She assured him he did not, and he turned the carriage about to go back and tell Prinney the news. Famous it was. Prinney twigs him about it ten times a day. All a hum, of course.”

“I hear Miss Wyckham has given him his congé," she remarked, remembering Dammler’s gossip.

“She’d snap him up fast enough, but the Cabinet won’t hear of it. It’ll be some dull old Austrian princess for him, poor soul. But he’s had the best of Jordan, so he don’t need my pity.”

“Rather pity Mrs. Jordan.”

“Clarence will provide, never fear. He'll come down heavy. Thinks the world of his family-as any man should, of course,” he added hastily. “The least he can do. I have no opinion of men who seduce and abandon, as the saying goes.”

Prudence found the tone of this conversation displeasing and attempted to divert their discussion. “Lord Dammler is writing a new play,” she said as an opener.

“You are pretty thick with Dammler, I believe?”

“We are friends. Both being writers you know…"

“Professional thing, is it? Just a common interest.”

“A little more than that perhaps. We are friends.”

“He ain’t your lover?”

The bluntness of this question shocked her even more than its content. “Mr. Seville! Indeed he is not. The notion is absurd.”

“No offence, Miss Mallow. No offence in the world. But you ain’t seven years old, and his affairs are no secret. He’s not a bit too good for you. Not in the least.”

She was silent a while after this interchange. “Now I’ve gone and hurt your feelings, and that I didn’t mean to do. I would never have suspected it myself, but it’s only what’s being said. Wouldn’t have asked you out if I’d thought it for a minute. Just wanted to be sure. A man can’t be too careful of such details.”

Poor Prudence, reared in a retired village and unused to the ways of high life, took his concern to be for being seen with a lightskirt, when he was only worried that he was stealing Dammler's property. The talk went better after that, and when he deposited her at her door she had concluded that these ton people talked a little warm, but in their hearts they were strict moralists.

She was flattered to receive next day a bouquet from Seville, and not ill-pleased at the note with it requesting her company at the opera two nights hence. She had been there twice with her uncle, but not in a box with the upper members of Society. Her taste of high living had whetted her appetite, and she sent off a note accepting his offer. So this is all there is to it, she thought as she had her hair dressed and the gold gown worn to Mr. Wordsworth’s dinner party slipped over her head. One had only to meet a few of the right people and she was on her way to balls and the opera and drives in the park. She read both the Society column and the Court column to be up on the trivia that passed for conversation with Mr. Seville.

Before she left Uncle Clarence, decked out in garments suitable to escort her, though he was in fact staying home to play piquet with her mama, handed her a black leather box. “I want you to wear my dear late wife’s necklace,” he said.

She accepted with thanks and put it on-a small set of diamonds no bigger than grains of rice, but real diamonds, he assured her. “My, there is nothing like diamonds to make a lady sparkle,” he said, standing back to admire the chips. “Dammler will be sorry he lost you.” There had been a two-day interval since his last visit.

“We are still friends, Uncle. That’s all we ever were.”

“Ho, you are the slyest girl in town,” he ran on. “You think to make him jealous by parading yourself before him with another man. I hope it may turn the trick for you. Seville is well enough, but no title at all. He is just plain Mr. Seville, even if he has the name of a city. It was not named after him, you may be sure. Well, well, you look very nice. You are in looks tonight with Ann’s diamonds.”

“You will have to paint me thus, Uncle,” she teased in a merry mood.

Her amazement was great when he did not concur. “There is no painting a diamond,” he acknowledged sadly. “A pearl now comes out nicely with a dab of white for a highlight, but a diamond cannot be painted. None of the old masters had the knack of it. I’ve tried all their tricks, but a bit of red or blue or green doesn’t begin to do it. I can’t do it, and in short it can’t be done. It only comes out looking like a sapphire or a garnet. Well, water is the same. Water can’t be painted either. Turner thinks to hide his deficiency by always putting what he is painting upside down in the lake as a reflection, but he fools no one. We are all on to him. I’ll just step along to the saloon and meet Mr. Seville. We want him to know you have a family to protect you. A young lady on her own might be taken up as fair game. I shall just mention Sir Alfred and Lord Dammler to let him know we are not quite nobody.” He mentioned them so often that Seville could not but conclude they were indeed acquainted, intimately.

Seville had a box at the opera by the season. It held six seats, but only the two of them were in the party. Prudence had supposed she was only one of his guests; she was surprised to find herself quite alone with him, and worried a little at it; but they were not stared at or scorned, so she thought it must be all right. Several persons acknowledged Seville, and a few nodded and smiled to her.

At intermission she espied Dammler across the auditorium with a large party, one member of which occupied his whole attention. She was a lovely vision in white chiffon and diamonds, with a riot of some unnatural but lovely shade of curls on her head. She wore a very low-cut gown, and she never took her eyes from Dammler for a fraction of a second. They seemed indecently engrossed in each other, unaware that half the crowd was ogling them. Prudence knew from Dammler's conversation that he had a very active social life quite apart from his afternoons with her, but other than Hettie’s ball she had not actually seen him engaged in It. She found it a distressing sight, but such an interesting one that she could not draw her eyes away from his box.

“I see your friend Dammler is here tonight,” Seville remarked, noticing her staring at him.

“Yes. Who is the lady with him, do you know?”

“Some Phyrne or other,” he answered, raising his glass to examine her more closely with a smile of appreciation. Cybele, of course, but it wouldn’t do to let on to Miss Mallow he was interested in the girl.

“Not a maidenhair fern, I take it,” Prudence said, wondering by what adulteration the girl had achieved such a stunning hue to her hair.

She was at a loss to understand Mr. Seville’s bark of laughter, and why he should say, “That’s a good one, Miss Mallow. A very good one indeed. You are an Original!” No more did she think it worth repeating when a whole bevy of callers came to their box, everyone of them gentlemen. But they all agreed it was a gem of the first water.

This sudden influx into their box attracted a certain degree of attention to it. Lady Melvine, one of Dammler's group, noticed and called it to his attention, but by the time he was looking at them, Prudence’s attention was directed at their guests. They all seemed extremely lively and good-natured. Two of them were being called milord, but she didn’t catch the name, which Uncle Clarence would like to know when she got home.

“Can that possibly be Miss Mallow with the Nabob?” Hettie asked Dammler, levelling her glasses at them. “Yes, certainly it is. How well she looks when she smiles. Only see the collection of old roués with them-Seville should know better. For that matter, Miss Mallow should know better than to be here with him alone. Well, well, she’s flying high.”

“There’s Barrymore. Dash it, Seville shouldn’t present her to him,” Dammler said, frowning.

“Why don’t you drop in on them before intermission is over?”

“To lend the party an air of respectability? It would have rather the opposite effect, I’m afraid.”

“How true. To rush from one light o’ love to another. Too titillating. The cats would love it. I daresay Cybele wouldn’t.”

“Miss Mallow is not in the same category as…“ he slid an eye to his fair charmer, who pouted at him, demanding attention.

“You’d better slip her word when you next see her. Not the thing.”

“I will,” he said, with a last scowl across the hall, then he turned to his female.

Prudence did some soul-searching that night alone in her bed. After spending several hours in Mr. Seville’s jolly company, she immediately forgot him and considered another. She was becoming fonder of Dammler than was wise. For romance he would naturally favour Incomparables of the sort she had glimpsed this evening. It was a byword that every beauty in town was after him. How absurd for her to entertain the idea he felt anything but friendship for herself. He never had, and she had known it from the start. The wonder was that he found anything in her to attract him as a friend. Well, you prudent girl you, she said to herself, time to put all the prudence to use and get yourself in line. Don’t sit waiting at your desk for him to come. If your friend drops by, you will be happy to see him. Too happy, but never mind. You won’t show it, and it will never occur to him. He half thinks you are a man.

The next afternoon, Miss Mallow was honoured once again with a call from Dammler. It was raining, and she assumed they would not be going out. “Hard at it, I see,” he said, seeing she was at her desk, with her hair tousled and her fingers stained with ink. “With all your skylarking you must make use of any odd minute the suitors leave you. You make me realize how hard I should be working.”

“I am not entirely given over to dissipation,” she said, striking an expression that did not go a jot beyond the limits of platonic affection.

“You are on the pathway to hell, milady,” he jeered, waggling a finger at her and smiling more widely than she allowed herself to. “We will have to be rechristening you if you keep up this pace. Hobnobbing with nabobs-too many obs in there-your finely tuned ear won’t like it.”

“That’s all right. We may say what we daren’t write.”

“And sing what is too foolish to say.”

“How is Shilla doing? Leading you a merry chase, I hope.”

He sat in a casual fashion just short of sprawling which she felt instinctively he would not do if he wished to appear at his best with a lady in whom he was interested. “We were wrong to let her bolt on us. The hoyden has fallen in with a caravan of unholy men, and how Wills is to get a dozen camels on stage is beyond me.”

"The excitement occurs off-stage, does it not?”

“Damme, something must happen on stage. She’s become so brazen there’s not a move she makes that can be seen in polite company I can’t have the Mogul wringing his hands and cursing in frustration for two hours. I may have to bring her back to the harem and start all over. But I’ll put her into a novel later and let her go her length. I am too fond of her to give her up.”

“Cutting into my territory, I see. Take care or I’ll put Clarence into a play or a poem.”

“Good idea, but you are diverting me from my errand. I am here to ring a peal over you, Miss Imprudence. No my girl, widening your big blue eyes at me won’t save you from a scold. You know well enough you were the talk of the opera last night, with every rake and rattle in town drooling over you.”

“How nonsensical you are,” she said, happy to know he had seen her moment of glory.

“And as to making me a laughing stock with that curst viper’s tongue of yours. My Phyrne was furious; she is justly proud of her locks. You may be sure she heard of your wit.”

“There was no wit in it. I only said…"

“I know well enough what you said, and what you meant.”

“I only meant she coloured her hair.”

He sat up and stared at her. “Oh, no, you didn’t,” he contradicted flatly. “You said it very nicely, I grant you, but you called her a Phyrne. We all admit tacitly to these things, but we don’t run around broadcasting them, calling names.”

"Dammler, tell me so that I shan’t blunder again. Is her name not Fern?”

“Prudence Mallow,” he said, shaking his head, “you are either the biggest greenhead in town or the best actress.”

“What did I say?”

He hunched his shoulders, and threw up his hands in the gesture of helplessness so characteristic of him. “Where do I begin?" he asked himself. “Phyrne, sweet idiot, is not a name like Mary or Joan-it is a title, like Princess or Prostitute. Rather more like the latter, if you follow me."

Prudence was stunned, but she had resolved some time ago to match her new acquaintances in sophistication, and she tried gamely to rally. Still her shock was quite evident to him. “I see,” she said.

“You are disappointed in me."

“No,” she answered quickly. “Why should I be?”

“Why indeed, I never led you to believe I was a saint. Oh, Prudence, why did I ever meet you? You are giving me back my conscience. I was well rid of it. I haven’t felt such a reprobate since the first time I got drunk and Mama cried for two hours.”

"I am not crying,” she laughed at his boyish despair, and a little, too, at his using her first name without realizing it. “I am just a little surprised that you would be seen in such a public way with a-one of those women.”

“Well, everyone does. Half the females there last night were prostitutes. I hold them to be every bit as respectable as a married woman who commits adultery-more so, in fact. They’re not hypocrites. They have not promised to love, honour and obey anyone’s desires but their own. Why should it add to a woman’s virtue or reputation to deceive her husband with a lover? Surely that compounds the trespass. No, no, I won’t allow anyone to tell me I must restrict my amours to married ladies.”

“You ought to restrict yourself to an appearance at least of respectability.”

“Where did you get the bizarre idea my Phyrne is not respectable? Top of the frees. She has none but the most elevated of lovers, and only one at a time. Unlike the married ladies, who require at least two, and preferably three or four. It is better to consort with a Phyrne than with a married lady. There is no question of it in my mind. Tell me you disagree. On what logical grounds can you possibly refute me?”

“I don’t. There is much in what you say, but that is not to say that consorting with either one is good. You set up a home for ruined girls on one hand, and ruin them on the other. There is no logic in that.”

"Prudence, we’re talking about two very different species. Those little girls-young, ignorant without the sense to know what they’re getting into… My Phyrne-the mistresses of gentlemen, are in a different class entirely. They knowingly go into this sort of a life because they don’t want to work. They prefer a life of leisure and luxury, they have a beautiful body to buy it with, and they sell it. It is a business transaction.”

“Oh, don’t try to tell me it is a good thing to keep a mistress.”

“I didn’t say it was good.”

“You said it was better to have a mistress than to take another man’s wife. Surely better is a degree of good. Take it a step further, you lover of logic, and you must agree best would be to take no lovers at all. A chaste married lady or a spinster is better than either a Phyrne or an adulteress, surely.”

“Not to me she isn’t,” he replied unequivocally. “Oh, all right, if you’re talking theology or religion or some damned thing. I thought we were talking about real life, and not philosophy. In actual practice, it is less immoral-doesthat satisfy you-to keep an unmarried mistress than to go poaching on your friends’ private property.”

“Yes, I’ll accept that partial victory, before you convince me I’m a scoundrel for not selling my own old ramshackle body to help my uncle pay the bills.”

“Oh, I don’t go quite that far, Prudence,” he replied, throwing his head back in uncontrolled laughter. “And to think, I came here to read you a lecture! How did I end up giving you the notion you should take to the streets? We-Lady Melvine and myself-do not approve of your consorting with the Nabob.”

“Is Mr. Seville so rich then?”

“Full of juice. An uncle from the East India Company died and left him a million, literally.”

“I have no objection to the fact. Do you disapprove of money per se?”

“No, I am excessively fond of it, but…“

She looked, waiting.

“Your Mr. Seville-ah-likes the ladies. Of a certain sort.”

“The sort who use the title Phyrne?”

“Yes, those certainly, and those who use the title Duchess or Baroness even better. It is generally considered he is looking for a title, to ease his own way into the peerage. He cannot mean to marry you; he is well into negotiations with Baroness McFay, and for entertainment he prefers the muslin company. Why do I feel like a child molester telling you these things?”

“I don’t know, but you misjudge him. He is not like that at all. He has very strict notions of propriety.” She toyed with the idea of telling him Seville had feared she was Dammler’s lightskirt, but decided against it.

“Seville! He has no more notion of propriety than a jackrabbit.”

“How can you say so? He’s your friend. You introduced him to me.”

“Yes, and that is why I am worried. I never thought you’d catch his eye. You aren’t his type. I wonder if the old fool has decided to take up with the literary society. Might think it would lend him a vicarious air of intellect. God knows he could use it. He is very proper in his dealings with you?”

“Of course. Oh, he gossips about the ton, but you may be sure he does not take me for any loose piece of baggage.”

“There-I’ve depraved you. For Miss Mallow to be speaking of herself in terms of loose baggage! Well, he is up to something, but apparently it isn’t what we feared. I don’t like the company he introduces to you, however. I wish you would see less of him, or at least not go about with him without some other company. Some respectable married couple, or some such thing.”

“I am not really fond of him. I don’t expect I’ll be seeing much of him-we have little in common.”

“If the old Benedict gets out of hand, call on me, and I’ll come galloping ventre à terre on my white steed to rescue you. Promise me, Prudence.”

“Promise.” She found herself aping his shrug, and felt foolish.

“What a lot of bother you women are. Whoever would have thought I would end up playing Dutch uncle to a little greenhead of a spinster.” Prudence gave a mental wince at this, but concealed it quite well. At least he had come to realize she was not a man.

“Now I have shocked you with my heedless tongue again.” She realized she had not concealed it as well as she thought. “You are only twenty-four, and not a spinster any more, I suppose, since I foolishly induced you to take off your caps. Do me a favour, Miss Mallow, put them back on and start pretending you are forty or so again, so I can stop worrying about you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I have a family to protect me. Worry about Shilla and her Mogul. When is she due to tread the boards?”

“Not this season. It isn’t half done.” He arose. “I’m off, Miss Mallow. May I call on you tomorrow? I’d like you to look over Shilla for me and see what you think of her. There is no one whose opinion I respect more.”

“I should be happy to,” she answered with real pride. Her womanhood had been laid low by his thoughtless words, but how fine to have a poet of Dammler's stature pay her such a compliment.