“How do you find life in a fish bowl?” he asked with a disparaging smile during a brief interlude when he was let alone.
“Very exciting, but I don’t know how you stand the pace if it’s always like this.”
“It is frequently worse,” he said tersely. “This was a poor idea coming here. We can’t talk. I should have known how it would be. We’ll head for the outskirts.”
The excitement died down as they entered the Chelsea Road, and conversation was again possible. They drove and talked for a long time-about their work, his travels, but very little about Prudence herself. As he left her at the door he said, “Next time we’ll talk about you, Miss Mallow. I have been running off at the mouth about myself, which is a poor way of getting to know you. Tomorrow?”
She nodded and entered the house in a dreamlike state to be rallied by her uncle about her new beau. “Knew all along he was sweet on you. I could tell by his eyes-eye. I’ll have to remember to paint that patch out. He is a good-looking fellow but for that one little blemish. What had he to say for himself?”
“He spoke highly of your work, Uncle.”
“Did he indeed? Odd as he has never seen it, but I daresay they are whispering about me at Court. Sir Alfred, you know, would slip them the word about my symbols. He is often at Court. So he is anxious to see my work, is he? Well, I shan’t mind to show him about my studio as he is practically one of the family. When does he come again?”
“Soon I expect,” Prudence answered prudently.
“If he happens to drop by while I am in the studio, don’t hesitate to send for me. I am only doing the twins. I shan’t mind stopping for a minute. Or bring him. Let him see how to pose.” This about a gentleman whose likeness had been taken by the greatest artists across the whole of Europe, and who knew the Mona Lisa’s pose as well as she knew it herself. Prudence bit her lip. Her uncle’s nonsense, which had long since become nearly unbearable, was funny again, for in her mind she shared it with Dammler.
“We must not make too much of it, Clarence,” Mrs. Mallow warned. “It is just courtesy on his part because they are both writers.”
“Pooh, he is in love with her. I have already told Mrs. Hering. She was green with envy. She would like you to take him to call one day, Prue, when you and Dammler have nothing better to do.”
“Uncle, you mustn’t say such things. What if he should hear? I’d be mortified.”
“You are too shy, my dear. Such a fellow as Dammler wants a little encouragement. He is bound to be backward, being handicapped as he is.”
“What do you mean? How is he handicapped?”
“Why, his eye, to be sure. But don’t let it put you off. I’ll take care of that, and posterity will never know the difference. What symbol would he like?”
"It is not settled you are to paint him, Uncle.”
“I have agreed to it. There is no problem. The only question is a symbol. Mention it to him the next time he comes ‘sparking’ you.”
“He is not ‘sparking’ me.”
“What a girl. She won’t say a thing 'til she has his ring on her finger.”
The matter was settled in his mind, and any objections were only coyness. He had already told Mrs. Hering, and would tell everyone else he met in the next two days.
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.