Imprudent Lady

Chapter 5

Dammler called the next afternoon as promised, and by standing with her pelisse ready to fling on, Prudence escaped without subjecting him to teasing jokes from her uncle. They avoided the park this time, and drove north towards Harrow. It was his intention to draw out Miss Mallow about herself that day, but she felt her monotonous life could not be of much interest to him. While he was under sail over stormy oceans, she had sat in her backyard reading, or in her study writing. His talks with foreign kings and chiefs and emperors must be more entertaining than her visits to a sick friend with a bowl of restorative pork jelly, or cutting out an underskirt; and in the end he did most of the talking, and she most of the listening.

It was only their second outing, but they seemed already like old friends, and Prudence ventured to ask, “What was it that caused you to take your trip around the world? It is hinted at in the cantos, but not explained.”

"There was a good reason for leaving it vague. It wasn’t fit to print.”

“Yet another liaison in your crimson past?” she asked leadingly. She had already heard of a few.

“Mmm. It does me no credit, and the lady in the case even less. Why did you leave Kent?”

She told him in a few words. It seemed always thus. His questions could be answered in a second, whereas the answers to hers, she was sure, held an interesting story. She wished strongly to hear it. “Was she an English lady?” she asked to urge him along. He had already told of intrigues with a Russian and an Indian.

“Yes, a married lady, a neighbour of my uncle’s.” He then tried again to revert to her life. “And how did you come to take up writing novels?”

The tale of her copying experience was equally dull and explained in two sentences. “What was she like, the married lady?” Prue pressed a little harder.

“Now I wouldn’t think her anything out of the ordinary. A ripe lady-thirtyish-still very attractive, in a mature way that appealed to my youth. I was just down from Cambridge at the time, you remember. Not up to snuff at all.”

“She took care of the matter for you, I collect?”

“You are quite determined to hear the whole salacious tale, I see. So be it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. She was my uncle’s mistress. He was a widower, and she also was widowed. She lived in one of his houses, and the relationship between them was known by everyone except my green self. When he lay dying, she came every day to sit and talk to him, and stayed around in the evening to talk to me.”

He stopped, and Prudence said, “That’s not so bad.”

He looked at her askance. “The evenings were not entirely devoted to talk. You know how these things progress-or perhaps you don’t. But they do progress, believe me. Under the guidance of an expert, as my uncle’s friend most assuredly was, they progress far and fast. I fell in love with her in about two days, or minutes. The day after my uncle died, I asked her to marry me and was cut to the quick when she laughed in my face."

“You offered marriage to such a woman?”

“I was young, and so stupid I can hardly believe it myself. I knew nothing, but she had more sense. She didn’t want to be saddled with a jealous young hothead of a husband. No, indeed, my offer scared her out of her wits. She fled to the local innkeeper for solace, and I, my heart in tatters, couldn’t get far enough away.” A nostalgic smile at his foolish past made him look as if he almost regretted her refusal still. “Well, of course I really had an itch to travel anyway, or I shouldn’t have gone so far, or stayed so long. I never told anyone else that story, Miss Mallow. You worm everything out of me, and you are the very one I oughtn’t to tell such bawdy tales to, a proper little lady like you. And you tell me nothing of yourself, oyster. Tell me all about your suitors. I’ll wager you had a string of them in your salad days.”

Miss Mallow didn’t feel she was quite wilted yet, but she had the impression Dammler thought her older than she was. She tried to think of a romance from her youth. There was only Mr. Springer, whom she had idolized without ever a hope of return. He was the prize catch of her neighbourhood; all the girls were after him. She had known his mama fairly well, and she fashioned a piece of fiction around him, leaving it very vague, but not so one-sided as it had been.

“Why didn’t you have him?” Dammler asked when she finished.

“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling to think how quickly she would have had him, had he ever asked.

“Have you ever regretted not marrying?” Obviously he considered marriage at her advanced years out of the question. The cap, of course…

“No. Oh, no, I have my work, and I enjoy it.”

“And so do we all! I am happy you showed Mr. Springer the door. I know him you see, and always found him a bumptious fellow.”

“You know him!” she gasped, then remembered too late that Ronald Springer had gone to Cambridge, had been there, apparently, at the same time as Dammler.

“Yes, he was at college with me. Not the same department, but I remember him very well. A pompous ass, always getting straight A’s. He can’t be very old. I thought he was around my age.”

“Whereas I, of course, am seventy-five!” she retorted.

“Oh, ho, I've done it again. Pushed the foot right into the big mouth.” He put his face into his hands and grimaced. “Forgive me?” he asked, looking at her with playful fear. She laughed, but still some slight resentment lingered, and he set about talking it away. “It seems to me you managed to learn more of life in your backyard and study than I did in all my travels. There’s more sense in your books than in a tome of philosophy.”

She was forced to object to this flattery, but was overruled in his finest manner until she was restored to spirits. As well as thinking her older than she was, or perhaps because of it, he also assumed her to be worldlier. He spoke of things that shocked her, but she was determined not to show it. She had no desire to appear like an insular little country bumpkin, but occasionally she was found out, and he would laugh and say he was debauching her.

To Clarence’s and Miss Mallow’s delight, Lord Dammler called again a third day to drive her out. Prudence was bothered once again to have to put on her same plain round bonnet and navy pelisse, so very spinsterish- nowonder he took her for an old, unmarriageable lady. She was bothered even more that Clarence was on hand to tease them.

“So you two are off again,” he beamed, rubbing his hands in pleasure. “You are cutting all her other beaux out,” he added. Prudence hadn’t a beau to her name, and Clarence of all people must know it.

“I am making myself a host of enemies, no doubt,” Dammler returned pleasantly.

“Ho, they are all jealous as can be. This will make them look lively.”

“What nonsense you talk, Uncle,” Prudence said, tying up her bonnet strings as fast as her fingers could move.

“I guess I know a suitor when I see one,” he laughed merrily. “She is as sly as can hold together,” he added aside to Dammler. “She never tells us a thing. You will be having the banns read before she admits it. What a girl.”

Dammler looked more surprised than pleased at this, and took Prudence to task about it the minute they were in his carriage.

“Is it possible your uncle takes us for lovers?” he asked in a choked voice.

Prudence would gladly have put a noose around her uncle’s neck and pulled it tight, but she had to make it seem a joke. “You must know you cannot dance such attendance on me without having fallen under my spell. All my callers are suspected of concealing a ring in their pockets which they try at every opportunity to put on my finger. But you know what a sly creature I am. I keep both hands in my pockets. Mr.Murray was highly guilty, until he mentioned his four children. It is all that saved him from the altar.”

As he already had categorized Clarence as a fool, Dammler accepted this answer in good part. Eager to kill the subject, Prudence said immediately, “I ought really to be shopping today. I am in need of a new bonnet.”

“Don’t let me deter you,” he answered with the greatest alacrity.

“Oh dear, is it that bad?” she laughed. Strange how she could already accept anything from him without embarrassment. Really he was the easiest person to get on with.

He darted a look at her, hesitantly, but soon laughed. “You look a quiz in that round bonnet, Miss Mallow. It is for protection from your legions of suitors I know, but I have been wanting to suggest a new one since the first day we drove out together. Let me take you to Mlle. Fancot, in Conduit Street. All the go. I take all my-uh-friends there.”

“I don’t think I want that sort of bonnet,” she returned.

“Afraid you’ll be taken for a lightskirt? You won’t. But I would like you to look less like a maiden aunt as I mean to be a good deal in your company, and preferably not under your uncle’s roof.”

With such an enticement as this held out to her, he could have demanded a whole new wardrobe and got it. “Mlle. Fancot it is.”

A neat turn was executed in the middle of the road, and they proceeded to Conduit Street. “Oh, I haven’t much money with me,” she remembered.

“Put it on tick. Everyone does. I’ll vouch for your credit. I daren’t suggest paying for it.”

“You had better not. They’ll mistake me for one of your-ah, friends.”

“No they won’t!” he laughed, so hard that she could not like it. Was she that old looking?

Miss Mallow was in the habit of purchasing her bonnets, and most of her other necessities (she rarely bought a luxury), at the sale counter at the Pantheon Bazaar. Though she had lived in London for some years, she had never been in the elegant small shops, had no notion such grandeur existed in mere commercial buildings. There was glowing mahogany and velvet drapery everywhere, and the saleswoman looked like a very fashionable young lady.

“Good day, Fannie,” Dammler said, as they stepped in.

“Bon jour, Lord Dammler," Fannie replied. She smiled a smile Prudence could only describe as lascivious-looking up at him through her lashes with a parting of the lips.

“My-cousin wants a new bonnet. Something dashing.”

Fannie’s bold gaze flicked over Prudence with very little interest. “Bien entendu. This way, mam’selle.”

“No, no, don’t shove her off in a closet, Fannie. I want to see what she’s buying. Bring the bonnets out here.”

Fannie smiled and swayed across the store in such a provocative way that Prudence felt quite ashamed to be of the same sex. She looked out the window to avoid looking at Dammler, who was completely absorbed in Fannie’s departing figure. Fannie reappeared a moment later with an armful of bonnets surely designed in heaven. They were not hats at all-they were miniature gardens, with slips of satin roses nestled in beds of soft green, bound up with narrow bands of ribbon.

“How about this one?” Dammler asked, lifting out a buff coloured chip straw with a band of buds around the joining of the rim and poke. “Try this one, Miss Mallow.” She tried it, and it was so beautiful she decided to have it, even if it cost two or three guineas. Fannie mumbled a few words that sounded strangely like five guineas, but she surely could not have heard her aright.

“Do you just want the one?” Dammler asked.

Was it possible a lady ever bought two bonnets at one time? Even as he spoke he lifted another delight from Fannie’s hands. It was a glazed navy straw, with a daring tilt to the brim, and one blood red rose dripping over the tilt. It looked positively wicked, and totally irresistible. She tried it on. “That’s more the thing, don’t you think, Fannie?” Dammler asked.

“Very nice. Charming,” Fannie said to Prudence. “You like it, mam’selle?”

Prudence was too overcome to agree. She looked like the woman she had recently been longing to be. Sophisticated, a little naughty, almost beautiful.

"I'll take it,” she said, without even thinking about the price.

“Wear it,” Dammler said. “Throw the old round bonnet in a bag, Fannie-or do you want to bother taking it, Miss Mallow?”

Prudence was not utterly lost to thrift. She decided to keep it, but with a recklessness new to her, she took the chip straw and the navy glazed, and said airily to send the bill to Grosvenor Square.

“That’s more like it,” Dammler congratulated her. “Where shall we go to show off the new bonnet? Dare we risk the park?”

Prudence was strongly inclined to risk it, but it seemed Dammler had only been joking. They drove through Bond Street-and didn’t risk getting out and walking-to show it off. Prudence felt that just perhaps the male heads turned to view them took a look at her as well as her escort. The females, she knew, had their eyes turned on Dammler alone.

“This will put your suitors at each others’ throats,” he quizzed her. “Clarence will have to bar the door.”

On their next trip out-the trips were becoming a regular thing-she wore the chip straw. The bill that arrived the next day had been staggering but was worth it. She had the money saved from her parsimonious shopping in the past, so there was no worry of running into debt.

Dammler set his head on one side and declared, “Very chic. People will be saying you’re my new flirt if you keep this up.” This promising speech was followed by a chuckle to show how well they two understood the unlikelihood of such a thing. Prudence laughed a little harder than he, and waltzed gaily out the door with a heart slightly cracked.

Some subtle changes took place in their relationship as it progressed. Dammler’s attitude could not have been described as reverential or anything like it even at the beginning. He admired and respected Miss Mallow’s books and brains initially, then he began to like her dry wit, her understatement, her way of not pretending to be impressed with his past (and present) affairs, which he coloured bright, to shock her. When she wore her new bonnets, he thought she was rather sweet looking, in an old-fashioned way. They talked and laughed together for hours. If anyone had told him they were well suited, he would have been shocked.

More than one friend did enquire of Dammler the name of his new friend, and he was at pains to make clear she was a professional friend. “The new lady novelist Murray is all excited about,” he would explain. Murray had, in fact, taken more interest in her since Dammler had taken her up.“You must have read her marvelous books-very clever. I adore them.” Both the books and the author gained more from such speeches as these than from a hundred less exalted persons liking them. They were put on the reserved list at the lending libraries so that several ladies had to purchase a copy for themselves.

One day Dammler met an acquaintance as he came out of Hettie’s house. It was a Mr. Seville, a nabob with whom Hettie had become friends. She wasn’t overly particular, Dammler noticed. “Oh, Dammler, how have you been?” Seville asked.

“Splendid, what’s the news?"

“Little to tell. Say, who’s the pretty new chit I see you driving with these days?”

“You mean Miss Mallow, I believe. Not a chit, by the way, but a lady. A professional friend-a novelist. Very clever woman."

“That so? Not your chère amie then?”

“Good Lord, no! You must have seen me with Cybele. Well, you were at the opera last night.” Dammler spent many afternoons with Miss Mallow, but his evenings were still given over to his customary pursuits.

“Yes, I did see you, but since when do you limit yourself to one?”

“When the one is Cybele, who can afford two?”

“No, she didn’t come cheap, I’ll swear. Lovely gel, though. And this Miss Mallow is a writer you say.”

“Yes…” Dammler went on to mention her books. “A very superior person. The best female novelist we have today I think.”

“I’d like to make her acquaintance some time.”

“I’ll try to arrange it,” he said, and thought to himself, in a pig’s eye.