Joan Smith - Imprudent Lady / An Imprudent Lady

“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.

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.”