“Strange talk for the Romancer of the Western World.”
“Romance, that is something quite different. Fiction, in fact, of the sort you and I in our different ways deal in. It’s easy to be in love with a paper character. I adore Shilla-have been in love with her for a week-a new record for me. We can make them into our idealized version of a mate, with the dull and annoying bits left out. We have them at our beck and call, and if we choose to let them run amok a little, we know with the stroke of a pen we can bring them to their senses. What has that to do with love?"
“We don’t see eye to eye on the matter. I conceive of love as something quite different.”
“What?”
“Caring for someone else more than you care for yourself.”
“But that’s not love-it’s a maternal instinct or devotion or some such thing-another form of self-love really. Ourchildren are parts of ourselves. I’m talking about mature love between a man and a woman.”
“So am I.”
“Then you’re talking nonsense, and I expect you know it very well, or you wouldn’t be blushing like a schoolgirl. Never mind, I never did understand women. But I know this, when they talk of love they only want you to take them out to show off to their friends, or to buy them some new jewels or an annuity. They’re after something.”
“If a woman is interested in a man at all, she takes what is offered by him. If those are the terms in which you couch your offers, then you can’t blame a woman for accepting them. For myself, I shouldn’t have thought it had anything to do with love.”
“You’re either a fool or a very wise woman, I don’t know which. In any case, your Seville seems to share my opinion on the matter. It was diamonds he offered, was it not?”
“Yes, and they were not accepted. I didn’t mistake them for love.”
“You can’t know so much of the matter as you let on. You never have loved anyone but that jackanapes of a Springer, and you didn’t love him enough to accept him in the long run. I’ll not be bludgeoned into taking lessons in love from a sp-ahem, fellow writer.”
“It wasn’t intended for a lesson, but an opinion. A solicited opinion, I might add.”
“My apologies, ma’am. You have put me firmly in the wrong, as usual. Now shall we proceed to the good news? You put it out of my mind with your conquest of the Nabob. It is a conquest of a different sort for you. A literary conquest.”
“What, have you been to Murray?” She thought a new edition might be required as her books were selling better now.
“No, Murray came to me yesterday, with Dr. Ashington in tow. It is why I had to break our date.”
“Ashington of the Blackwood Magazine? Does he mean to do a piece on your cantos?”
“Yes, but that could not be good news for you. He is doing your books, too. He’s devoting an issue to new young writers. You are to represent the novelist, myself the poet, Sheridan the dramatist though he’s not young any longer, but he’s the best living dramatist they could come up with. Hunt and Hazlitt are running in tandem for the essayist. We’re in good company.”
“Me? But he cannot have heard of me. I am not a serious writer.”
“No more am I, but they mean to make us serious by lionizing us. They’ll be reading philosophy and politics and religion into our stuff till we won’t know what we meant when we scribbled it down. I daresay you’ll turn out to be a cynic when he’s through with you, and here you take yourself for a romantic.”
“And you a moralist, when you think you’re a rake.”
“He wants an introduction. That’s why I am come, to see when it would be convenient to bring him. You have no objection, I take it?”
“I’m thrilled out of my wits. Does he mean to come here?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. I’ll bring him along and introduce him, then shab off to let him pick your brain in peace. Don’t let him talk to Clarence, he’ll discover your trick and you’ll be revealed for the nasty little baggage you really are.”
“I can’t believe it-Dr. Ashington. What is he like? Is he old?”
“Yes, a dull old stick-too old for you to charm. You’d better count on your considerable powers of conversation, and not your big blue eyes. He has no use for Scott, by the by, and thinks the world of Coleridge and Southey, if you want to butter him up a bit. I can’t see how he reconciles two such different sorts as that last pair, but then if he likes your stuff and mine, he must have catholic tastes. Or more likely Blackwood has urged us on him, to get Ashington out of the past. A classicist by inclination. Just think, Miss Mallow, we’ll be bound up for eternity in one magazine together. Does it appall you? I see you are underwhelmed at the idea, but you’ll have Hunt and Hazlitt to spell you from me. They are both sensible fellows, and Sherry can provide the comic relief. I don’t mean that in any disparaging way; I wish I had half his comic genius.
“I can’t believe it’s true-Dr. Ashington-the Blackwood Magazine-it’s like a dream come true.”
“You had dreams of such conquests, had you? And when you wake up, you can consider having wangled an offer of marriage from the Nabob. No mean feat that. I still can’t believe it. It surprised me more than Ashington’s article. Quite took the wind out of my sails, in fact. Will tomorrow be all right to bring the Doctor along?”
“Yes, any time he likes.”
“Don’t be so available. Impress him with your heavy calendar. We’ll make it the day after tomorrow.”
“No, tomorrow! He might change his mind.”
“You underestimate yourself, but if you like, it will be tomorrow. I’ll drop by Hettie and tell her the news.”
“She’ll never believe I am to be interviewed by Ashington.”
“Ninnyhammer, she’ll never have heard of him. I meant the news about your other victory.”
“Oh, no, I do not mean to tell it around, since I refused him. It would not be at all the thing. I wish you would not tell anyone.”
“Just let me tell Hettie. She won’t tell anyone if I ask her not to.”
“But she prattles-you said so yourself.”
“She can be as discreet as a diplomat when she likes. Why, the stories she could tell about me if she wanted to but she will love to hear it.”
“Very well, but let her know it is a secret.”
“Yes, Miss Prudence. Well now, you’ve turned him down, so we shan’t have any excuse to come serenading you.” Prudence naturally looked mystified at this, and he explained. “Did I not tell you what I did last night? Oakhurst is being married soon, you know, and I was telling him of the custom in Spanish countries of serenading the bride-to-be. The groom hires a group of minstrels and they serenade her under her window. She comes out and throws some flowers at them. We decided to get a band of us together and go serenading Miss Philmont. Had a merry time. Philmonts had us in after for a drink. Oakhurst and some of the others went on to a club, but I went home to work on Shilla. I'm hard at it revising, and didn’t bring her along for you to see today.”
There seemed a certain pointedness in his telling her of his innocent evening’s entertainment, conveyed more by his conscious manner than by the words themselves. “When shall I see her?” she asked.
“I can drop her off with Ashington tomorrow, and perhaps you will be kind enough to scan her over the next day or so. Let me know if she’s too risqué. She is developing a streak of propriety, I'm happy to say. I believe she’s given up Mrs. Radcliffe’s stuff and taken to your novels. She is beginning to talk up marriage to me.”
“To the Mogul?”
“No, she’s got clean away from him and is reforming one of the unholy men in that caravan I told you about. She’s after me to make him a prince in disguise or something. She’ll be wanting a cottage with a picket fence next. I absolutely draw the line at a batch of chickens. Don’t you agree?”