Reprise Part 9

Dammler was slow to recover.The spreading poison in his arm weakened him, nor had he any emotional desire to get well quickly. For what? To face a life of disillusionment? He had feigned it in his first youthful cantos, but it had been a joyous cynicism, a good-natured wink at convention with a laugh at the hypocrisy of his own sort of people. This is what we say, and this is what we really do, he had pointed out, with lavish examples, whose very enthusiasm belied any condemnation. He was now feeling condemnatory, the very worst possible frame of mind to promote a cure. But with a hardy const.i.tution and the nursing of Knighton and Hettie, he gradually returned to health. Nor was he allowed to sequester himself in his study and put down on paper all his black thoughts.

"What you want is a new flirt to cheer you up," Hettie told him, her mind already having settled on the very girl, one of the performers in hisShilla. She mentioned her choice, and he frowned.

"When I am ready to take up with women again, it won't be an actress," he said. "One day I must find a suitable lady and settle down. 'Til that time, I mean to do some serious writing."

"Excellent! A new play, Allan. Something bright and lively to pull you out of the megrims."

"It was something in the nature of philosophy I had in mind. Possibly a translation of some Latin until I feel more creative."

"Oh, my dear, don't think of it! Enough to lay a healthy man low, and who on earth would be interested to read it?"

Having very little enthusiasm for this project, he did not forge ahead with it, but Hettie proceeded with his cure. If it was marriage that would joggle his mind out of this despond he was settling into, she would find him a bride.

It was not a particularly felicitous season for debs. Really no one she could welcome with open arms as a niece-in-law, but she could do better than Miss Mallow, at least. The Duke of Wykombe had a presentable daughter. A silly little ninny, pretty and eligible. Lady Dorothy was brought to meet him, out of his bed now, and often to be found in his study, surrounded by a depressing wall of books that must be enough to cast the healthiest mind into the dumps. Nor did that empty chair to match Madame du Barry's desk help in the least! The meeting was a disaster. What must Dammler take into his head to discuss that afternoon but physics! He was working out a theory that climate modified behavior, with heat the culprit in the story, from what Hettie could figure.

"Do you mean then that cold is at the bottom of morality?" Lady Dorothy asked, in forgivable confusion.

"There is no such a thing as cold," he told her. "There is only a relative absence of heat."

Lady Dorothy accepted this dictum without argument. "Did you find people more moral in cooler climates?" she asked politely.

"I found them less degenerate," he replied, realizing as he spoke that he preferred the warmer climes, for both bodily temperature and social mingling. He was tainted, a degenerate. He would move north.

"Less comfortable too I should think," Hettie threw in, yawning. "What we ought all to do is board up our fireplaces and put off our wraps and be chilled into goodness. But if there is no such a thing as cold, then there is no point in chasing after it, I suppose."

"It is a relative word-when we say cold, we mean usually less warm than our own body temperature. Though, of course, being relative, it may refer to something other than the human body."

"Tell me, wise philosopher, is there such a thing as foolishness? I must own that relative to your former conversation, I find this discussion without sense," his aunt teased him.

"Folly can be absolute," he decided instantly.

"I give you no argument on that p.r.o.nouncement. I have the evidence of it before my eyes. Come, Lady Dorothy, let us go before we take a chill in all this lack of heat. Dammler has begun his reformation by putting out his fires."

She gathered up her protege and took her home. For two days she left Dammler to his own lugubrious thoughts. He wrote three chapters of a horror story, then gave up on his reformation and lit a fire with them.

After two days Hettie hit on the notion of introducing to Dammler a lady of blue reputation, an intellectual who might argue him into spirits. Miss Samson had little looks and no excess of breeding, but she was reputed to be very clever. Hettie raised the matter of physics, telling Miss Samson that Dammler had decreed there was no such a thing as coldness. For three-quarters of an hour she sat back and listened to them go to it. Dictionaries were drawn out to support Miss Samson's theory, while the physics tomes counterattacked with their definition. Poetry and novels were applied to. Left out in the cold, for instance, used the word as a noun, therefore it must exist. Nonsense, that had nothing to do with temperature; it was used figuratively to denote rejection. It was an abstract idea merely.

Was it not possible for one to catch a cold then? An.o.bvious colloquialism-and more often accompanied by a fever than a lowering of temperature, thus indicating to the meanest capacity it had nothing to do with the matter under discussion. Miss Samson was ready to argue the point forever, long after Dammler was bored to tears with it. When next Hettie returned, she was commanded never to bring that demmed argumentative female near him again. She had given him a migraine.

"You are too much alone these days, Allan: Time to give a party. Have a housewarming party. I'll look after all the details for you."

"I've already had a housewarming party, the nightShilla opened." His glance to Madame du Barry's desk told his aunt what he was thinking.

"I met Miss Mallow on Bond Street the other day," she mentioned casually.

"What a treat for you," he said in a sardonic voice. "And did Miss Mallow deign to inquire how we go on?"

"I didn't give her the chance. I cut her dead. No, don't glare, gudgeon! I didn't make an issue of it. Merely I stopped to look in a window and admire an extremely ugly bonnet when I saw her approach. She knew what I was about, but no one watching would have been able to say I snubbed her."

This was acceptable to Dammler. Not one inch out of his way would he go to conciliate her. She was all in the wrong, and she would be the one to give in. He wouldn't even ask Hettie how she looked, and Hettie, her heart hardened against the girl, would not tell him she looked miserable. It occurred to him about this time, however, that he might see her on Bond Street himself with no loss of dignity, and to this end he began to go on the strut at the hour when females were likely to be seen perusing the shops. He haunted the bookstores and libraries, deeming them the likeliest spots to attract her, but saw instead copies of her novel, sitting on the shelves, laughing at him.

Once he met Clarence and nodded to him. This was sufficient encouragement for Elmtree, who was finding life dull without his former great friends to visit, to draw up for a chat. "I see the arm is all better. Glad to see it. What a day it was when we had that little duel, eh, Dammler? I often think of it-but keep it mum, of course!"

"It was a day best forgotten."

"I should say so. I have put it out of my mind long ago. I am very busy with my painting. I am still working in the old style-Rembrandt. I am looking about for a model. You wouldn't know of anyone who would like to pose for me?"

"What sort of person do you mean?"

"I was thinking of that little filly that is in your play. The one that Exxon has got tucked away in a corner. His cousin, I believe. Cybele someone told me her name is."

Dammler found to his surprise that it was still possible to smile. The image of Clarence turning Cybele into one of his mud-brown hags was too ludicrous to consider without a smile. How he would love to see such a picture! But Clarence worked in his home, and to be sending the likes of Cybele there was impossible. "She ain't his cousin, Clarence," he said, laughing, and using the first name against all his best intentions of being standoffish.

"Eh? Lives with him-must be some relation."

"She doesn't quite share his ancestral roof. His wife wouldn't like it. She is his mistress, they tell me at Drury Lane. Exxon picked her up the very nightShilla opened."

Clarence's jaw fell open. "Exxon is not an artist! What does he mean, setting up a mistress?"

"He means to cut us out, I guess. You artists aren't the only gents up to such tricks. In any case you could not well have Cybele to Grosvenor Square to paint her. Not the thing."

"Very true, Wilma would take it amiss. She is very straight-minded about such carryings on. Where did Rembrandt paint his mistress, I wonder."

"I don't know about Rembrandt, but the fellows nowadays have a studio discrete from their homes, where they do the deed. If it is such a highflyer as Cybele you have in your eye, you'd better open up an atelier."

"Eh?"

"A studio, I mean." He said it as something to say, with no thought Clarence would actually do it. Nor did Clarence's own thoughts head in this direction as yet. He only shook his head sadly.

"I am surprised at Exxon," was his comment. A sad comment, though he knew no more of the man than that he was old, and a lord.

"Yes, andI am surprised at Cybele." Cybele was but an excuse to prolong the conversation, to work it around to other women. "How is your sister?" he asked, determined not to inquire after the niece.

"She is bored to flinders. She says she won't pose for another picture until after the new year."

"Is there no one else who might pose for you?" he asked, as well as bringing the conversation to Prudence without mentioning her name.

"Sir Alfred promised to make up one of a group for a large painting, but I'm not sure I will tackle 'The Night Watch'-it is a great unwieldy thing, when all's said and done."

"You always excelled at painting women. Young women," Dammler forged on, still withholding the name.

"Aye, I do have a certain knack for a young girl, but if she is his mistress I can't ask her home. Well, I'm off, Dammler. Glad to see you're all better. Prudence will be glad to hear it."

Then he was gone, just as the talk got around to the one subject of interest to Dammler. He recalled the conversation to find hidden traces relating to Prudence in it, with very poor success. She was still at Grosvenor Square-that's all he knew for sure.

Clarence too thought of their talk; he seldom thought of anything else for two days. He must set up a studio- an atelier. How had he not done so, all these years? What interesting specimens he might paint, if he didn't have to choose people that might come into his own home. Derelicts-drunken creatures for instance were dandy subjects, and fallen women. There was nothing so interesting to paint as a woman with a shade of sin about her. Rembrandt, Rubens, all the chaps painted harlots. Why, way back in the days of the Bible wasn't Mary Magdalene herself a prime subject? It was his duty as an artist to record on canvas for posterity the flush of today's harlotry. Posterity would take the notion there wasn't a fallen woman in the country but Emma Hamilton, made to look like a little doll by Romney, if he didn't attend to it.

Without further ado, and without a word to Wilma or Prudence, he went to a real estate agent's office and hired an upper-story room on Bond Street, not far south of Oxford. The ladies saw without protesting that all his painting paraphernalia was being toted away, and soon learned from Sir Alfred what Clarence was up to. They were delighted. No more standing with a broom or mop in the hands for hours at a stretch. No more having to admire his brown blotches. No more lectures on chiaroscuro. It was a blessed relief.

When the atelier was ready for use, Clarence began to look about for a suitable model. Who he really wanted was Cybele, but she was taken, so he must find a subst.i.tute. If a man was after a looker, Dammler was the chap to see, and before many hours he was sitting in the saloon on Berkeley Square, waiting for Dammler to come to him.

Dammler's spirits soared to hear Elmtree was waiting for him. It was a rapprochement. He would be invited to Grosvenor Square for dinner. He hastily considered whether he ought to give in and go, when still Prudence had made no personal overture. Perhaps there would be a letter. He was smiling in antic.i.p.ation when he entered the saloon.

"Mr. Elmtree-Clarence, how kind of you to come," he said, extending his hand. He would relent.

"Not at all. We people in the arts, the creative few, ought to keep in touch. In fact, it is on the subject of art that I am come," he said, dispersing hope in Dammler's breast. He had forgotten all about the idea of a studio, but the conversation turned to it now.

"Yes, you recall you suggested that I ought to set up a discreet little studio, and I have done it, just as you advised."

"I didn't advise you to! I only mentioned others..."

"Just so. I ain't slow to take a hint. I have got a discreet little room on Bond and put my things in it. What I want now is a model, and I want you to recommend one for me. One of your ladies, what?" he laughed roguishly.

"I don't have any ladies!" Dammler answered, chagrined, and wondering if the old fool had been telling Prudence some story that he had.

"Eh? What about Cybele? I mean to say, you must have replaced her."

"No! No, I didn't! I am not in the petticoat line at all these days, Clarence," he said earnestly.

"What of the fillies in your play? Surely one of them would be happy to pick up a few pounds posing for me." "You want me to find a professional model for you? Is that what you mean?" "Exactly. A looker is what I want. A good looking young girl-any of your harem girls will do." "Oh but they are actresses. They don't pose for artists." "They don't act in the daytime." "It is just amodel you want, Clarence? You aren't thinking of-of anything else?" he asked carefully. "Oh ho, I see what you are up to, rascal! As to that,che sera sera, as the dagoes say. But it is a model I want, right enough," he added as he saw the frown on his host's face. "Can you recommend someone?" "I am not in the business of wh.o.r.e-mongering." "Had Cybele right in your rooms at Albany." "Yes, and I had a cheese in my pantry, but I am not a cheese merchant! I might provide you a model, not a mistress. I want that perfectly clear..." Clarence saw no distinction. What he wanted was a woman of the sort who wouldn't balk at posing without necessarily all her clothes on. What was the point in painting a harlot if you didn't show a spot of shoulder or ankle, or even the beginning of a breast? How was posterity to know she was a fallen woman and not a wife? "Exactly!" he said. "I'll ask if any of the girls are interested in posing. Will you have a chaperone present?" "What for?" "For propriety's sake." "There will be gawkers in and out all the time. The studio will be full of people. Sir Alfred makes himself quite at home there, and I hope you will too." This sounded public enough to satisfy Dammler the model would be subjected to no worse than having a very poor likeness taken. It also opened up a possible avenue of b.u.mping into Prudence, and he agreed.

"I imagine your family are anxious to get a look at the studio."

"They are burning with curiosity, both of them. But I didn't let them help me, or they'd be hanging

curtains and wanting to put cushions on the chairs. I might as well warn you, the place is not stylish at all. Have you found the ateliers in other countries to be stylish?" he asked, not quite sure he had done right to make the place as austere as possible.

"I generally found the more serious the artist, the less note he took of his surroundings."

This suited Clarence right down to the ground. He was glad he hadn't succ.u.mbed to the temptation to have the chairs painted. Lovely, rackety things they were.

The next afternoon Dammler offered the job to one of the worldly creatures at Drury Lane, who could

well handle a Clarence Elmtree, and the deal was set. He got in touch with Elmtree at the studio, and agreed to bring the girl himself to show her the route and make the introduction. Both were satisfied with the arrangement.

Chapter 12.

Prudence had thought.i.t was Clarence's presence that hindered her own work. Since he had abandoned Leonardo for Rembrandt, his customers had fallen off. Mrs. Hering, for instance, was not at all eager to pose any longer. When her mother was not doing it, the job fell to herself. With Clarence away for the better part of the day, she would get busy and finish up her latest work. But inspiration was lacking. She sat for hours at a stretch looking at the walls, the paper, the mirror, where she saw a sorrowful face, turning paler by the day. She should get out and take some air.

She went abovestairs to get her bonnet and pelisse. She wore a bonnet chosen for her by Dammler when they were hardly more than acquaintances. It was the prettiest one she owned, and had been insanely expensive, bought at Mademoiselle Fancot's shop. She remembered well the day they had gone together to buy it, and she had, for the first and last time in her life, chosen two bonnets in one day. It had lost its l.u.s.ter. A pretty black affair with a red rose tipping over the brim, but the rose was becoming frayed at the edges. It no longer made her look distinguished, yet it was her best bonnet. New gowns she had got for her trousseau; the bonnets were still to be purchased, due to a lack of funds. She ought to buy a new one. That's what she would do. Go down to Mademoiselle Fancot and buy a new, fabulously expensive chapeau to cheer her up. Maybe she would even see Dammler while she was out.

She'd take a stroll along Bond Street, wearing the new hat.

In the studio, Dammler observed that Sir Alfred was sitting in the watcher's seat with a cigar in his hand, waiting impatiently for the female to arrive. The paints were out, the brushes ready, Elmtree in his smock with a copy of Rembrandt's ugly Saskia as Flora propped up before him, the real model if the truth were allowed to be stated.

While Dammler was noticing that Saskia looked about eight months pregnant in the likeness, Clarence outlined his preparations. "I brought this silk curtain from the guest room to use as a gown. Of course it isn't a gown, but I have this runner to pull around the waist to hold it on, and I can get the sheen of the material well enough from the curtain. It will need a nice impasto to give the l.u.s.ter. I picked up this necklace at the Pantheon-gla.s.s beads, but it will give the effect I want. I have my walking stick here with flowers wrapped around it for her to hold, and I'll get the actual big bouquet for her hand later, when I get down to the hands. Today I mean to do the head." He glanced at the picture of Saskia.

"Odd, she is wearing an ostrich plume on her head. She is supposed to be Flora. That means flower, does it not, Dammler?"

"Yes, I think that is a bit of vine around her head, with one frond sticking up," he explained.

"Looks for the world like an ostrich plume to me."

The model arrived and was sent behind a screen to drape herself in the dusty silk curtain, and hang about her throat the gla.s.s beads. She was a vivacious woman, currently wearing the jet black tresses that distinguished the cast ofShilla. She was a trifle thin-faced, bearing not the slightest resemblance to Saskia's fair complexion and fullness of figure. All this lack of likeness was nothing to Clarence. She would do admirably, except that she required a weed for her hair, a weed that looked like an ostrich plume. None of his own weeds would do the trick. It must stick up, and bend just so over the head, like Saskia's. Weed after weed was put in her hair, only to tumble over her eyes in the most obstinate manner.

"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 highestton. 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 a.s.sumed, 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 ch.o.r.e. 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 a.s.sumed 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.