“And fortune?” she interpolated.
“That, too. It enabled him to indulge the nattiest of whims! He drove and rode only gray horses, never wore any but black coats, and always, summer or winter, with a white camellia in his buttonhole.”
“Good God, what a quiz! How could she—Lady Sophia—have liked him?”
“Oh, make no mistake! he was a charming fellow! Besides, poor girl, she had become so devilish bored! Who could blame her for preferring an experienced Tulip to the callow tuft I was in those days? For the life of me I can’t conceive how she contrived to bear with my ardours and jealousies for as long as she did. There were no bounds to my folly: if you can picture Aubrey tail over top in love, I imagine I must have been in much the same style. Chuckfull of scholarship, and with no more commonsense than to bore her to screaming point with classical allusions! I even tried to teach her a little Latin, but the only lesson she learned of me was the art of elopement. She put that into practice before we had reached the stage of murdering one another— for which piece of prudence I’ve lived to thank her. She had her reward, too, for Vobster was so obliging as to break his neck before custom had staled her variety, and her Venetian was induced to marry her. I daresay she threatened to leave him, and he may well have despaired of finding another who would have blended so admirably with his taste for black and white. She had a milky complexion and black hair—raven’s wing black!—and eyes so dark as to appear black at least. A little plump beauty! I’m told she was never afterwards seen abroad except in white gowns and black cloaks, and I’ll swear the effect must have been prodigious!”
The note of derision was marked, but she was not deceived by it. Unable to trust her voice she said nothing, and afraid of showing in her face the indignation that swelled within her she kept her eyes lowered. She made the rather horrifying discovery that the slim fingers of a lady could curl into claws, and quickly straightened them. But perhaps she had not done so quickly enough; or perhaps her silence betrayed her; for after a moment Damerel said, more derisively stilclass="underline" “Did you fancy a tragedy to lie behind me? Nothing so romantic, I fear: it was a farce—not one of the ingredients lacking, down to the inevitable heroic meeting at dawn, with both combatants coming off scatheless—for which I am heartily obliged to my rival! He added superb marksmanship to his other accomplishments, and might have put a bullet through me at double the range, I daresay. In fact, he deloped—fired in the air!”
He had told her now as much as she would ever wish to know. He might jeer at the memory of his younger self, but as keenly as though she had been the sufferer did she feel the wound a light woman and a practised man-of-the-town had dealt his pride. She had brothers, and knew that in his pride a boy was most vulnerable. She thought she could see him quite clearly as he must have been: surely a fine young man, tall, straight, and big-shouldered as he was now, but with a face unlined, and eyes full of eagerness, not boredom. He must have been rash, ardent, and perhaps he had been desperately in earnest. Experience had made him a cynic, but he had not been cynical in his fiery youth. He had not then, she knew, been able even to smile at his own folly.
Everything he had done since he had seen himself as a laughing-stock (and she neither knew nor cared to what depths he might have sunk) she perceived to be part of a pattern made inevitable by a wanton’s betrayal. Had they supposed, his righteous parents, that he would return to enact the role of the prodigal son? They should have known better! He might have returned, wedded to his wanton, outfacing the censorious, not, though he ruined himself past recovery, as a cuckolded lover. Ishmael his family had declared him to be, and Ishmael he had chosen to remain, taking a perverse pleasure, she guessed, in providing the interested with rich evidence of his depravity. And all for a little, plump, black-eyed slut, older than himself, whose marriage-ring and noble degree hid the soul of a courtesan!
“Too bad, wasn’t it?” Damerel said. “Instead of dying heroically for love I was left disconsolate—though not, I must admit, for long!”
She raised her eyes at that, and said warmly: “I am excessively glad to hear that, and I do hope your next mistress was entertaining as well as pretty!”
The sneer vanished from his face; the smile that lit his eyes was one of pure amusement. “A charming little ladybird!” he assured her.
“Good! What a fortunate escape you had, to be sure! I daresay it may not have occurred to you, but I have little doubt that by this time Lady Sophia has grown sadly fat. They do, you know, little plump women! I believe the Italians use a great deal of oil in their cookery, too, which would be fatal! I only wish she may not be quite gross!” She added, as his shoulders began to shake: “You may laugh, but I assure you it’s more than likely. What’s more, if your father had warned you of it, instead of behaving in a very foolish and extravagant way, exactly like a Shakespearian father, it would have been very much more to the purpose! Pray, what good did it do old Capulet to fly into a ridiculous passion? Or Lear, or Hermia’s absurd father! But perhaps Lord Damerel was not addicted to Shakespeare?”
His head was down on his hands; he gasped: “It seems he cannot have been!”
Recollecting herself, she said apologetically: “I shouldn’t have said that. It is quite the worst of my bad habits—Aubrey’s too! We say precisely what we happen to be thinking, without pausing to reflect. I beg your pardon!”
He raised his head, still choking with laughter, and said: “Oh, no no! Sweet Mind, then speak yourself ... !”
She wrinkled her brow, and then directed a look of enquiry at him.
“What, lurched, O well-read Miss Lanyon?” he said provocatively. “It was written by Ben Jonson, of another Venetia. I turned it up last night, after you had left me.”
“No, is it indeed so?” she exclaimed, surprised and pleased. “I never heard it before! In fact, I didn’t know there had been any poems written to a Venetia. What was she like?”
“Like yourself, if John Aubrey is to be believed: a beautiful desirable creature!”
Quite unmoved by this tribute, she replied seriously: “I wish you won’t fall into flowery commonplace! It makes you sound like a would-be beau at the York Assemblies!”
“You little wretch!” he exclaimed.
“That’s much better—between friends!” she approved, laughing at him.
“So you think I’m offering you Spanish coin, do you? I can’t imagine why you should, for you know how beautiful you are! You told me so!”
“I?” she gasped. ‘“I never said such a thing!”
“But you did! You were picking blackberries at the time— my blackberries!”
“Oh! Well, that was only to give you a set-down!” she said, blushing a little.
“Good God, girl, and you said you had a mirror!”
“So I have, and it tells me that I am well-enough. I believe I take after my mother in some degree—at least, Nurse told me once, when I was indulging a fit of vanity, that I should never be equal to her.”
“She was mistaken.”
“Oh, did you know her?” she asked quickly. “She died when I was only ten years old, you know, and I can scarcely remember her. We saw so little of her: she and Papa were always away, and her likeness was never taken. Or, if it was, Papa destroyed it when she died. He could not bear even to hear her name spoken—forbade the least mention of her! And no one ever did mention her at Undershaw, except Nurse, on that one occasion. I think it an odd way of showing one’s devotion, but then he was odd. Do I resemble her at all?”
“I suppose some might think so. Her features—as I recall—were more perfect than yours, but your hair is a richer gold, your eyes a deeper blue, and your smile is by far the sweeter.”