Life Mask (47 page)

'The animal.'

'Is it living or dead?' asked Walpole.

Anne made a little face. 'Living, I suppose.'

'You suppose?' repeated Walpole severely.

'Well, I suppose it's not quite dead.'

'My coz is toying with us,' he told the group. 'Trying to throw us off the scent. May I remind you that your father and I have been playing Twenty Questions for the last half-century?'

Eliza giggled, showing her pearly teeth.

'Third question?' asked Anne.

'Is the thing entire in itself, or in parts?' said the Duchess of Richmond, covering a tiny yawn with her hand.

'Entire in itself.'

'Is it private or public?' asked Eliza after a second's pause.

'Private,' said Anne with some significance. She let herself look at the actress.

'Does it exist in England or abroad?' said her father craftily.

'In England.'

'Oh,' said Conway, 'I was sure it would prove to be something foreign.'

'It could be foreign, but presently in England,' said Walpole, tapping the side of his nose.

'It could indeed,' said Anne.

'Is that a hint?' asked Mrs Farren.

'Not a bit of it,' said Derby. 'Mrs Damer would never give a hint. Is it unique or are there others of the same kind?'

She hesitated. 'I would have to say ... unique.'

He fixed her with his eyes. 'Meaning there are things that are similar to it but not identical?'

'Is that question seven?' she asked innocently.

'No, it's a clarification of question six.'

'Perhaps you should have clarified question six before you asked it.'

Derby chuckled and had a long draught of claret.

'Ah! You're a hard player, my dear,' said her father, shaking his head.

She smiled like a sphinx.

Gently elbowed by her daughter, Mrs Farren ventured a question. 'May I ask, what is its shape?'

'The question's too particular!' came a chorus and she shrank back.

'Ask something else,' Eliza whispered.

'Is it large? I mean to say,' Mrs Farren corrected herself hastily, 'is it larger than, say ... this apricot?' Her hand held the fruit up nervously.

'It is,' said Mrs Damer, giving her a reassuring nod.

'Larger than this table?' asked Bunbury.

'No.'

'That leaves us with quite a range,' complained Richmond to his wife.

'Question nine, I believe,' said Lady Ailesbury. 'Has it any connection with the person of the King?'

'Oh, Caroline,' complained Conway, 'you always ask that.'

'None,' Anne told her parents.

'Is it generally stationary or movable?' asked Walpole.

'Movable. Moving, in fact,' she added.

He furrowed his brows. 'I'll get it, you know. You've never beaten me yet.'

'There's always a first time.'

'Question eleven—' began Richmond.

But Derby was there before him. 'Is it historical or does it exist at present?'

'Both,' she said.

Mrs Farren looked puzzled.

'Meaning it's existed for some time?'

'Yes, if that's question twelve,' she said.

Walpole folded his skinny arms. 'No, your first answer was obscure.
This
is question twelve. What—'

'I hate to interrupt you,' drawled Richmond, 'but Derby here stole my go. My question is: is it for ornament or for use?'

'Neither,' she said, smiling to herself.
They'll never guess it.

This caused some consternation.

'If it provides neither ornament nor use, neither beauty nor utility, what's it for?' complained Walpole.

'Is that a rhetorical question?'

'Not a bit of it.'

'Of course I'm not going to tell you what it's for,' Anne answered. 'Besides, I don't believe I know the answer.'

'You won't weasel out of it that way,' said Bunbury.

'To know a thing's name is not fully to understand it, sir.'

'Question thirteen: is it a bottle of brandy?' asked Walpole, which raised a laugh. His cheeks were scarlet. She shook her head at him fondly. 'Question fourteen—'

Derby wagged his finger at him. 'You, sir, must hold your tongue, even if you are the host. Mrs Damer, has the thing in question any connection with any person here present?'

'It has.'

A stir of interest. 'Which person?' wondered Eliza.

'Too particular!' they all shouted and she laughed.

'Has it any connection with ... the Duke, say?' asked Lady Mary, putting her hand over her husband's.

'None,' said her sister.

'You'll use up all our questions that way; the company numbers ten,' objected Walpole. 'Question fifteen—'

'Sixteen,' she corrected him.

'Is it?' he asked suspiciously.

Conway, counting on his fingers, nodded.

'Sixteen, then. Has it any connection with any gentleman here present?'

'None,' she said demurely.

'Ah, that narrows the field,' said Lady Ailesbury. 'So we know it's to do with a female guest.'

'Unless she's not counting one of us as a gentleman,' Derby told Bunbury with a chuckle.

'Question seventeen,' Walpole rattled out before anyone could stop him, 'has it any connection with yourself?'

She rewarded him with a long smile.

'Well hit, Walpole,' said Derby.

'I know how the little demon's mind works,' he told the company. 'After all, I've had to put up with her since she was in swaddling clothes.'

'I never swaddled either of my daughters,' objected Lady Ailesbury. 'Even before I read Rousseau I was all for liberty.'

'Well, I suppose I mean those tiny dresses Missy used to run about in when you'd leave her with me at Strawberry for the summers.'

'That's quite enough reminiscence,' said Anne, mortified at the image.

'We need an eighteenth question,' Derby pointed out. 'Mrs Farren, would you be so good?'

'Oh. Oh, dear, my turn again. Is it, is the thing green?' the old woman ventured.

The company couldn't help but laugh.

'How could an animal thing be green, Mother?' asked the actress with a hint of irritation.

'Oh, I'm sorry, I'd forgotten, I thought she said vegetable.'

'Were you thinking of the asparagus soup, Mrs Farren?' asked Conway merrily.

'A bird could be green,' objected Bunbury, 'or an insect, or a frog.'

'They're not classed as animals,' Richmond put in.

'Never mind,' said Mrs Farren, sucking in her lips, 'somebody else ask something.'

'No, no, your question is perfectly valid,' Anne told her. 'The thing is sometimes ... metaphorically green, yes. And that's a vital clue.'

'Oh, thank you,' said the older woman, but her face was more confused than ever.

'Only two left, and just about all we've established is that it's something that's occasionally green, to do with my sister,' said the Duchess with mild despair.

'No,' said Derby, 'we know that it's something entire and more or less unique, which has existed in relation to Mrs Damer for some time and still does. It moves, it's of an animal nature, for private use—' That sounded somehow obscene, Anne thought, and Derby must have thought so too because he hurried on. 'Or rather, a private thing, of no clear use nor ornamental value. It's currently in England and has no connection with any gentleman here, nor with the King. In size it's something between an apricot and a table.'

Several of them laughed. 'Clearly put, Derby,' murmured Richmond. 'We could do with a mind like yours in the Cabinet.'

Anne gave him a startled look; was this a joke or a bait thrown out in full view of the company?

Derby smiled blandly.

'It's her dog!' roared Conway. Bunbury laughed and so did Mrs Farren. 'I've hit it. That charming little greyhound, what's her name?'

His wife gave him a glare.

'Fidelle,' said Anne into the silence. 'She was of a highly ornamental and useful nature,' she added as lightly as she could, 'but I'm afraid she died in Lisbon.'

'Oh, terribly sorry, of course, my dear,' mumbled her father, 'I don't know how it slipped my mind.'

'Question nineteen,' said Walpole, wiping one eye. 'Is the thing hot or cold?'

'Sometimes the one, sometimes the other,' she told him.

'Oh, you equivocating chop-logical female!'

She grinned at him. 'Last question, anyone?'

'Does it beat?' asked Eliza.

Anne looked her in the eye. She laughed softly and started clapping.

'What?'

'Has Miss Farren hit it?'

'What's the answer?'

'Oh. Poor show. We should have guessed,' said Derby ruefully.

'What?'

'I don't understand,' wailed Mrs Farren.

'It's her heart,' her daughter told her.

'What?'

'Mrs Darner's heart.'

'Oh, I call that a very hard one,' said Lady Ailesbury reproachfully.

'I'm fairly vanquished,' said Anne, giving the actress a little bow. Philip came in just then and whispered in his master's ear. It was probably time for Anne to lead the ladies off to the drawing room so the gentlemen could get on with the serious drinking. She was about to suggest this, but then she noticed Walpole's stricken face. 'What? What is it?' she asked him.

His fingers were pressed to his shaking lips.

'Bad news, Horry?' asked the Field Marshal.

Walpole cleared his throat. 'The worst.'

'France?' asked Derby.

Their host shook his head. 'John.'

For one ridiculous second Anne thought of her husband.
Don't be absurd.
Which John could Walpole mean?

'My footman,' he said brokenly. 'The poor creature's hanged himself. One of the gardener's men just found him in a tree near the chapel.'

There was a terrible silence. 'He'd stolen some silver,' Anne told the company. She meant it as an explanation but it sounded like a judgement. She wished she could take the words back.

'I suppose he feared he'd hang for it anyway,' said Walpole, 'but I never would have sent him to the magistrate for the sake of a spoon! I have more spoons than I'll ever need. I meant to pardon him as soon as he confessed to the theft; I'm not a harsh master.'

'Of course you aren't,' Lady Ailesbury told him.

'Oh, but I should have called him in and forgiven him; I should have set the boy's mind at rest. Why did I wait? He couldn't have been more than eighteen,' sobbed their host.

The company were looking at each other uncomfortably.

'He's already half putrid—oh, excuse me, ladies!—which means he's been hanging there since Friday!'

Anne thought she might be sick.

'Don't blame yourself, Horry, my dear,' said Conway hoarsely.
'Felo de se
is getting shockingly common these days; there's always one or two in the papers.'

'That's true,' said Richmond, glancing at Anne despite himself. She knew they were thinking of her husband. 'It's said that the English temperament, by its tendency to melancholy, is more prone to it. When
The Sorrows of Young Werther
came out there was a rash of imitations.'

'Perhaps people don't fear God as they used to,' suggested Lady Ailesbury.

'Or they're lonely,' said Eliza.

A tear fell on Walpole's dessert plate.

Bunbury spoke up suddenly. 'Too much sitting around and dwelling on things, that's the problem. More hunting and horse riding would clear out the cobwebs.'

Anne looked at the Baronet coldly.

'But Hume—the philosopher, you know, he was my secretary once,' said the Field Marshal. 'Hume had a theory that every rational man is free to kill himself if he wants to.'

The party broke up fast after that.

J
UNE 1791

Eliza chattered over the tea table. 'So Lord Derby and I mean to go to see the wreckers start next week. His theory is that if we observe the destruction of Old Drury as a grand spectacle we won't find it upsetting. Audiences are all for spectacle, these days, you know.'

'Miss Farren—' said Anne Damer.

'Why, just last week some workers at the Albion Mills Company, across Blackfriars Bridge, they'd been laid off because of new machinery, so they went in a mob and burnt the place down—and a huge crowd gathered to watch the fun!'

The visitor set down her cup. 'Shall we speak frankly?'

Eliza's pulse was pounding in her throat. She nodded.

'I must confess I was surprised when you asked me to call here at Green Street.'

She couldn't speak. A sort of paralysis gripped her. She hoped her mother wouldn't come back early from shopping for lace.

'You and I were once on close terms,' said the sculptor, almost businesslike, 'till something happened to alienate us. Forgive me for venturing on this mortifying subject, but am I right in thinking that you'd heard something—were told something—which reflected on my reputation?'

Eliza nodded again, like a scolded child.

'May I simply ask, was it in the form of ... a verse?'

'It was.' Oh, the relief; she didn't need to spell it out.

This time it was Anne Damer who nodded. 'The very same bit of filthy doggerel was sent anonymously to me, before I left for Lisbon.'

She doesn't know it was I who sent it,
thought Eliza.
She has no idea.

'I don't mean to dwell on this ridiculous calumny, but may I just say ... might I just clarify—' The older woman spoke almost sternly, but with hesitation. 'I've been puzzling over what to say to you since I got your note.'

'No need,' said Eliza, frantic. It was enough that they understood each other. She'd been right to give way to the overwhelming temptation to meet. 'No need to speak of it. I simply—'

'But I must tell you, Miss Farren—since you've given me this unexpected opportunity—I want to assure you, to give you my word, that there's no truth in the slander. No truth at all.' She spoke so plainly that no one could have disbelieved her.

It was a curious thing, Eliza thought, that the sculptor had never looked handsomer. 'No, I never thought so,' she answered, her throat raw.

'That vice is unknown to me. I've never committed—'

Eliza rushed in. 'It wasn't that I believed it, I assure you.'

A nod. 'In the case of our sex, private virtue is almost irrelevant.' The words came out bitterly. 'Shame doesn't depend on guilt. Why else did Richardson's Clarissa have to die after the rape, though her soul was still pristine?'