The Scandal of the Season (13 page)

Afterward, they sat together. Charlotte was lying on her back, and he traced the outlines of her nose and eyelids and cheekbones with his fingers.

“I don't believe that you hate your husband so much as you pretend, you know.”

She sat up, surprised by the remark. “Oh, I don't hate him,” she replied in an offhand voice, leaning back on her arms. “I am indifferent to him. Of course when he comes to fuck me I do worry that I'll catch the clap from one of his whores. But otherwise I don't mind marriage. I never expected that I would marry somebody heavenly like you,” she added, catching his eye.

He looked at her, trying to picture married life with Charlotte. They would have been easy with each other, he thought, but he knew that their ease existed because they felt no urgent desire. Although their relations were forbidden, and therefore deliciously enjoyable, he never felt a sick rush of temptation or an exhilarating release of abandon when he was with her.

“I think it would have been very pleasant,” he said at last. “I fear that none of the women chosen for me by my family will be endurable. What am I to do about it, Charlotte?”

She pushed her hair away from her face and smiled frankly. “You will do, Robert, exactly as we all expect,” she answered. “Marry the person they want you to, and seek your pleasures elsewhere. It is an excellent system, in successful operation for hundreds of years.”

“But suppose that I wish to take my pleasures from marriage?”

She laughed. “Then you must expect a very much less pleasurable existence than you are presently used to. But all this goes very much against your character,” she added. “To a lady's ear it sounds as though you are falling in love. Can this be so?”

“I should be a fool to fall in love, as you perfectly well know,” Lord Petre said after a short pause.

Her reply was ready. “I know that you are not a fool, but I did see you looking foolishly at that shepherdess at the ball tonight. Why was she carrying a bow?”

“She was not a shepherdess,” he answered, conceding her suggestion. “She was Diana, goddess of chastity.”

“Then it is a costume whose significance you would do well to remember,” Charlotte rejoined, “because she looked to me very much like Arabella Fermor—a woman to whom you owe some care.”

Now he sat up, too, and looked at her reproachfully. “I would not have expected you to take the lady's part in this, Charlotte,” he said.

“I take Miss Fermor's part because I see in it a reflection of what my own circumstances might have been,” she answered with more severity in her voice than before. “Arabella has not the security of great fortune or noble birth.”

“Oh, Arabella can take care of herself perfectly well,” he answered quickly. “I need not concern myself with that.”

She frowned, and he thought that she would argue with him. But her face cleared, and she shrugged. “In the interests of preserving good humor between us,” she said, “I will accept that you are right. Indeed I will say that Arabella's handsome face and composed manners are enough to frighten off all but the most determined suitors.”

“For all your bright and laughing ways, Charlotte, you have a great deal of wit and good sense,” he said. “My Lord Castlecomber is lucky to have you as a wife.”

“Do not forget that I am lucky to have him as my husband,” she replied seriously. “I could not have you in my bed if I were unmarried. I should be bent entirely upon safeguarding my reputation from attack.”

He stretched out again beside her, and put his arms around her waist, kissing the outside of her thigh.

“You will never be safe from attack, Charlotte,” he said. “Your face and breasts and thighs offer more temptation than any man can withstand.”

She uncurled her legs and lay down, too, turning her face upward to be kissed. “Put your hand upon my cunt, Rob,” she said. “I want you to make me spend again before you leave.” He slipped his hand between her thighs, and she mumbled into his neck, “You see; I am wet and ready for you.”

I
n the days after the masquerade ball the frost came to an end, and rain began to deluge unceasingly. Jervas walked downstairs to breakfast, tying the sash of his morning gown, his slippers scuffing on the treads of the stairs. He could hear a jet of water pouring onto the cobbles from the guttering above, but he was determined to go out, and not to allow the rain to depress his spirits. He heard a rustling from the drawing room. Looking in, he saw that Alexander was there already, leaning over a book with a sheaf of papers on a table beside him. It was only half past nine. Jervas felt indolent to be beaten out of bed by his guest.

Alexander looked up as he entered, but did not speak. Jervas walked across to his splendid fire and gave it a big, generous poke; putting his back to it, hands clasped behind him as he surveyed his guest. He could not credit the way that, in spite of his ill health, Alexander could sit so doggedly in one place, reading line upon line of Homer, barely glancing at the dictionary that he kept at one side. He noticed that Alexander did not smile at him. Surely he was not still cross with him about the business of Martha Blount and the wine. It had been nearly two days ago. He coughed.

Alexander had indeed been feeling out of sorts with Jervas since the ball, irritated by his endlessly easy manners and cheerful temper. It made him feel even more of an outcast than he already did, ashamed of his earnest labors and urgently felt ambitions. Jervas could never understand what it was to be dependent on the generosity of friends. But the thought made Alexander blush—it was because of Jervas's generosity that he sat here now. He found that he could not help but needle Jervas, however, by making a show of his own diligence and self-discipline. Hearing his host scuffing down the stairs, Alexander had gazed down at his book with increased concentration, pleased that Jervas would see him out of bed and working. He tapped his feet upon the little footstool, and waited for his host to appear in the doorway. There he was, smiling as usual. The same smile that he had bestowed upon Martha while he filled her wineglass. Alexander did not mind Jervas's gallantries to women, nor his joking descriptions of how charming he had been to his friends' maids and serving wenches. But Martha Blount was different. How was she to know that Jervas was always flirting with women, never falling in love? What if she were to form an attachment to him, only to find that he did not return it?

Alexander blew his nose loudly. He had woken with a nasty cold the morning after the ball, which now threatened to linger for several days. How cross Jervas had been when Alexander asked to go to bed at the end of the masquerade. In the coach home he had sat in the corner like a spoiled child, even though the ballroom had been practically empty. Alexander had made no attempt to cajole him, but instead had pondered the strange scene in the carriage yard. The pair had been dining openly in Pontack's less than a week before; why then were they meeting furtively in the darkness now? He could make neither head nor tail of it.

Alexander and Jervas were shaken from their reflections by a servant clattering the chocolate pot and china cups in the next room. Jervas gave a cheerful sigh, his back now warmed by the fire. He looked again at his guest, hunched in his chair, gazing down at his book. But Jervas saw that even Alexander was faltering; his finger had stalled on a line in his text.

“Ah ha! I
knew
you could not be as absorbed as you appeared,” Jervas exclaimed, breaking instantly into a smile. “Admit it, Alexander—for all his virtues, Homer is devilishly dull.”

Alexander glanced up and saw Jervas squinting down at him like a big hungry badger, tapping his paws on the sides of his gown. In spite of himself, he laughed, and set aside his volume.

“Oh, very well, then, so he is,” Alexander said. “But since so much pleasure comes from having read it, the
reading
is a necessary ill.”

The two friends stood up, and walked across the hall to the room where their breakfast had been laid out. “But you are no stranger to necessary ills, Alexander,” Jervas replied. “You already have more practice in fortitude than men whom we know of twice your age.” He threw himself down upon a chair, took a hot roll from the covered dish, and pushed it across to Alexander. “You have had your illness for so long, and yet you bear it patiently,” he went on. “Do you not dread the effects of its continuation?”

Alexander smiled back at him. “A headache, a fever, a pain in my back,” he said, “sometimes very bad, but often hardly there at all. These symptoms are nothing but the outward show of an illness that we all bear long and patiently—the disease that goes more often by the name of
life
.”

“What an excellent notion, Pope,” Jervas answered affably. “Your reading gives you a fine way of putting things. I stumble about, sometimes hitting upon the right phrase; more often than not only half-remembering what I have read.”

He stood up from the table, and walked back across to the drawing room, where Alexander heard him call out, “This talk of reading reminds me of a paper that I wanted to show you.” Jervas burst back into the room brandishing an old copy of the
Tatler
. “I have been keeping it for you,” he said. “It is excessively amusing—a satire upon hoop petticoats. Joseph Addison has written the piece in the assumed voice of a judge, passing sentence upon the garment's absurdity.”

“I know it well, Jervas,” said Alexander. “A celebrated essay!”

“But you probably do not recall all the details,” Jervas replied. “Did you notice that it is extremely bawdy? Listen to this!” He ran his finger across the page to find the lines he wanted. “‘Forthwith'—I am omitting some sentences—‘forthwith the Petticoat was brought into the Court. I directed the Machine to be set upon the Table, and dilated in such a manner as to show the Garment in its utmost Circumference; but my great Hall was too narrow for the Experiment….' Is it not amusing, Pope? Addison is making merry about the lady's intimate parts.”

“I do see that, Jervas,” said Alexander. “It is a diverting piece.”

“You should write in the same style.”

“There is a lightness to all that Mr. Addison thinks that makes his prose seem buoyant,” Alexander replied. “But the style is not mine.”

“You are being a dull dog today, Alexander,” Jervas said. “I am determined to cheer you up. There is a piece in the
Daily Courant
about Tuesday's masquerade. What a splendid evening it was. Gaiety unalloyed.”

Alexander marveled that Jervas seemed to have forgotten his dissatisfaction and crossness at the end of the night. When he became angry himself, he remained so until the matter was resolved.

But he answered Jervas by saying, “I enjoyed myself a great deal. James Douglass is an entertaining gentleman. What do you know of his character?”

“His character? I can hardly say. I knew him at school, and he was one of the brightest, brainiest lads in the place. He made his boyish fortune by marking out rings in the dirt, which we were all wild to play marbles upon. And then he hatched a scheme for the village sweet shop; he ran a kind of messenger service back and forth. It seemed a great lark at the time. Curious fellow. He has been abroad for many years—France, the West Indies—and who knows where else.”

“His friendship with Lord Petre is unlikely, do not you think?”

“Not really,” replied Jervas. “I'll wager that Lord Petre wants Douglass for some business he is engaged in. A joint stock venture, if I were to guess. Douglass is always to be found at the Exchange. But I hope that he will not be taken in by Lord Petre's easy manner. These noble fellows are pleasant enough, but they never forget that you are not one of them.”

“My sense of Douglass is of a man well able to look after himself.”

“You have the measure of him there, Pope.”

Jervas turned back to his paper. “Another slave run away in London,” he announced as he turned to the public notices. “‘A negro maid, aged about sixteen years, much pitted with the smallpox, speaks English well, having a piece of her left Ear bit off by a Dog.' Black servants are never gone long, and someone always catches them quickly, so the reward is trifling.”

He picked up his cup and put it down again impatiently. “I wonder what Hill can be about with our chocolate? I gave my footman Andrews and his sister some time away because their father died on Friday, but it appears to have brought the whole house to a standstill.” He jumped up from the table. “Will this rain never stop?” he exclaimed. “I cannot bear the rain!” He bustled out of the room to find his servant.

“It is perfectly fine again,” Jervas called from the hall. Alexander looked out of the window and saw that the rain had eased briefly, though the sky appeared heavy and sodden. A high wind was blowing, making the hanging street signs creak violently, and the loose tiles chatter on the rooftops. “I mean to have a walk before I go to the coffeehouse at noon. My kersey-coat and umbrella, Hill,” Jervas finished. “I shall be dressed in a moment.”

Jervas had not been out half an hour when the skies opened again and the streets, barely drained off from the last downpour, filled instantaneously with mud and filth that swirled around the ankles of hapless pedestrians. Looking along the street, Alexander watched while a dustman, shin deep in mud, freed a blockage by pulling a decomposing cat from the street drain and throwing it to the side of the road. At last Jervas rounded the corner, his coat sodden, his wig flattened and leaning to one side, his stockings coated entirely in mud.

“Good God!” Jervas cried, coming in, “I never saw anything like it! A drunkard has vomited over our town and then taken to pissing upon us for good measure. The streets are running in sewage, with water over the ankle. I'll swear that I had my foot caught around the puddings of a dog while I was crossing Albemarle Street.”

“Jervas, you have dirt even on the back of your cravat,” Pope exclaimed, as his friend removed his dripping surtout.

“Some empty-headed fop, employed in the vain attempt to save his shoes, rammed into me with the tip of a muddy cane that was tucked under his dainty arm. A wedge of cold filth, straight down my back!”

The wet articles were removed, and Jervas mounted the stairs to his bedroom, talking all the while. Alexander followed him, and the footman Hill came behind. They entered into Jervas's dressing closet, a cozy space where he sat to read when he wanted to be out of the way of his servants and guests. His little collection of erotic paintings, which Alexander remembered having seen on his previous visit, was displayed along one wall. He wondered where Jervas had bought them, reflecting sardonically that it would cause quite a stir in Binfield if he were to attempt a similar display on the walls of his own chamber.

“Will's coffeehouse is nothing to what it was,” Jervas said, turning his back to his guest while he fussed with his wig in the looking glass. “The coffee is Stygian; Beelzebub himself would send it back. I suggest that we go first to White's, where we can take a cup without mortal fear.”

 

While Jervas and Alexander prepared to go out, Arabella was sitting languidly in her bedroom. She had received the usual round of billets-doux from her admirers that morning, men whose habit was to send letters out to all and sundry, hoping that one day the strategy would succeed in springing a mate. Arabella generally enjoyed them as a flattering diversion from the real business of securing her own suitor, but this week the billets had appeared almost malevolent; mockeries of her unattached condition.

For the hundredth time she ran over her conversation with Lord Petre. It had been exquisite but hopelessly brief, and it had given her nothing of substance. She longed to engineer a private meeting between them, but she felt her powerlessness to do so. It would only make her look a fool. As she turned these thoughts over in her mind, the chamber door opened, and Betty entered with a letter.

Arabella instantly recognized the coat of arms on the seal, and her heart gave a leap. Betty was looking at her expectantly, obviously thinking that she would tear it open then and there. But Arabella was determined that nobody should know what she felt. Drawing herself up proudly, she turned away, telling Betty to leave the note upon the dressing table and to help her with the final arrangements of her hair. When Betty had finished, Arabella asked her to take Shock for a walk through the house, instructing her to pay particular attention to his use of the stairs. Only when Betty had left her bedroom did Arabella take up the letter and open it with more alacrity than she had shown to any other task during the last two days.

“My dear Miss Fermor,” Lord Petre began. He recalled the occasion of their meeting at the Exchange, and complimented Arabella's extraordinary beauty. He lamented that she had not adorned that or any other public place since the night of the masquerade, and he hoped that she would therefore attend the performance of Mr. Handel's new opera in the Queen's Theatre at Haymarket the following evening. To this he added, without any further gloss, a pair of lines from Rochester.

With the arrival of Lord Petre's note, the landscape of Arabella's social and sentimental universe changed in an instant. She had been invited to Mr. Handel's
Rinaldo
by Martha and Teresa, who were going with their dull aunt and their insufferable friend Henry Moore—and until this moment she had not been planning to attend. Now she cast aside the discontent of the last days, and found herself overcome with feelings of excitement and anticipation. And yet for the first time in her life, she was uncertain as to what would be expected of her; how she ought to behave. She was about to embark upon something altogether new, and it gave her a feeling of delicious restlessness.