The Scandal of the Season (14 page)

Arabella could not bear to be indoors, but there was little to do. She could buy something new to wear when she saw him, yet she feared that it might make no impression. She could prepare herself for the meeting tomorrow night, and yet still be taken by surprise. She could not be steady. After a short time, she rang her bell for Betty, and when the maid entered she announced, “There are no more silk stockings in my possession! We must go out to get some the moment that it stops raining.”

As it happened, Betty knew that Miss Fermor was well supplied with stockings, having taken a pair of her best to wear to the tavern and the playhouse earlier in the week. But she knew better than to correct her mistress on matters of dress.

Arabella was attired in a pale blue gown. She had been expecting to spend the day indoors, receiving a visit from old friends of her mother's, and the dress was unsuitable for wearing out in wet weather. But although it was still threatening rain, she decided not to change her apparel; it seemed now more important than ever to be faultlessly arrayed when she appeared in public. She asked Betty to bring her frieze cape and muff. She knew that it was a terrible choice for rainy weather, when the water would ruin the nap of the fabric. But it was new, and she looked well in it, and she could not resist the temptation it presented to her newly roused spirits.

Taking her umbrella from the servant who opened the front door, Arabella prepared to step onto the street. She saw with dismay that the cobblestones were running two inches deep in muddy water, and realized that she would have to change into patten clogs. Their wooden soles would make her look like a horse when she walked, but she was not likely to meet any acquaintances on the streets of St. James's this morning. Still, she kept her frieze cape on, just in case she did.

When she had at last struggled up to Piccadilly, she opened the door of the hosier's shop, looking a great deal less presentable than when she left the house. To her dismay, she discovered that Lady Castlecomber had arrived only a moment before, accompanied by two footmen: one holding an umbrella above her head, the other lifting her skirts from the level of the ground. Like Arabella, she was wearing a cape made of frieze, though hers looked quite a lot nicer on account of having remained dry. Arabella looked around the shop desperately, hoping that she could avoid speaking. Perhaps Lady Castlecomber would not remember her, Arabella caught herself wishing, before realizing that this would be an even more humiliating turn of events. But Arabella checked herself. She had nothing to fear. If there was anxiety in the exchange, it should all be Charlotte's: What if Arabella, in a fit of spite, were to let Lord Castlecomber know of the affair with Lord Petre? The thought made her smile as she turned to greet her rival.

“Good day, Miss Fermor,” Lady Castlecomber answered. “What a lovely cape you have.
Such
a shame that its nap got wet. No stuff is worse than frieze in wet weather, though I could not resist it, either. Are you going to Lady Salisbury's levee? I hope that you will ride there with me.”

“Alas, I have only the shoes that I am wearing,” Arabella said. “Much as it would give me pleasure to accept your invitation, I shall not do so.” She turned away from Charlotte to hide her expression. She had not been invited to the levee, and she knew that the Salisburys were friends of Lord Petre's. She had seen him speaking to Lady Salisbury at the masquerade.

“I was envious of your pattens the very moment I entered the shop,” replied Lady Castlecomber pleasantly. “They are the only thing for a day like this.”

Arabella glanced down at Lady Castlecomber's feet and saw that she was wearing a pair of heeled leather shoes, as unspoiled as her coat. She bit her lip, resenting Betty's even stare from the doorway, so plainly curious to know the cause for Miss Fermor's embarrassment.

She walked over to the counter where the most expensive stockings were displayed, but then checked herself. She must wait for Lady Castlecomber to leave. She felt a fool turning over the goods idly, as though she did not know what to buy, but she ought not be seen making an extravagant purchase on the day before so seemingly insignificant an occasion as the opera; it would give the impression that she was angling for a gentleman's attention. At last Lady Castlecomber said good-bye and quit the shop.

By the time Arabella and Betty left with their package of new stockings, the rain had eased to a drizzle, and they had not gone ten yards down Piccadilly when Charles Luxton, the modestly entailed gentleman with whom she had danced at the ball, drove by in his carriage. Seeing her, Luxton stopped and stepped out of his vehicle into the wet street, insisting on handing her in. He shepherded Betty in behind and then jumped inside, declaring that he would drive Miss Fermor home safely.

No sooner had the door closed upon them than Charles leaned toward her with red-faced eagerness, delighted to see her, and saying that he wanted to speak privately. Arabella, tired out from her morning, moved away from him, a headache beginning to strike at her temples as she pressed back against the carriage side. She had not expected this. She had barely even considered Charles Luxton a suitor—let alone a man on the point of declaring himself. She had danced with him only once at the ball, and she had not seen him for months before that. She could not bear to hear his ardors when she had just been reminded of Lord Petre's intimacy with Charlotte Castlecomber. But Charles insisted upon speaking. Stammering slightly with unaffected bashfulness, reaching toward her, he told Arabella that he was to become the happiest man alive.

“Miss Fermor—I hardly know how to say it—but I long to tell you!” he breathed. “I can think of nothing else. This morning I applied for permission to marry Miss Emily Eccles, my distant cousin, whom I have admired ardently for many months. And permission has been granted!” His brow, which was damp from the rain, glowed with sincerity and warmth as he spoke, almost causing the windows of the carriage to steam over.

Despite herself, she heard it with a shock. Of course she did not
want
to marry Charles, but not even to be asked! How entirely she had misunderstood his motives for stopping. She attempted to collect herself so that she might respond properly to the news.

“The person who marries you, Mr. Luxton, must always be sensible of the greatest good fortune,” she said. As she spoke, she remembered that she had met Miss Eccles once or twice in the country the year before. How amusing that Charles had entertained a moment's doubt of his offer being accepted.

But Charles, who was always so much kinder and more generous than Arabella remembered, said, “When you become acquainted with the lady in question, Miss Fermor, you will see that the good fortune in this matter falls entirely to my share.”

When the carriage arrived in Albemarle Street and stopped outside Arabella's town house, Luxton sprang down and escorted her to the front door. As he bowed good-bye, and returned smiling to his carriage, Arabella felt a most unexpected twinge of regret. What a strange morning it had been. The elation brought on by Lord Petre's note—and the humiliation of seeing Charlotte Castlecomber on her way to Lady Salisbury's levee. It had reminded Arabella once again that her position was precarious, and, for an instant, she wished that kind, good-natured Charles Luxton might have done for herself. To be settled; to be secure. But she knew that it could never have been; even while she watched him return to his carriage, she felt a pricking of amusement to see that he turned his feet out and bobbed his head enthusiastically as he walked. And as she handed the troublesome frieze cape to a footman and instructed him to see what could be done with it, Arabella decided that she was pleased to hear of Luxton's engagement to Emily Eccles. Had Charles inherited a larger fortune, he could have married very well indeed. But it was nice to know that in spite of his being poorer than he appeared, he had found a woman with whom he believed that he would be happy.

W
hite's Chocolate House, at the end of St. James's Street near the palace, was not a place that Alexander would ever visit upon literary business. His acquaintances in the literary world thought of St. James's as a sink of aristocratic indulgence that would ring devastation upon any traveler who crossed its bourn. They would often speak of the region and its inhabitants with high-minded disdain: “His poems are trifling, and his prose crude. He lives in St. James's, of course.” Their affectation incited in Alexander something very close to rage against his fellow scribblers. Why could they not acknowledge their envy of the rich and powerful, as the rest of the world was content to do?

Jervas and Alexander entered together and were greeted by two schoolfriends of Jervas's, Harry Chambers and Tom Breach. Harry invited them to sit down in a pair of empty chairs, moving his muff off one of the seats with a great smile of accommodation. Tom asked if he could fetch Jervas and Pope coffee or chocolate, glancing doubtfully at Alexander as if to inquire whether he had ever heard of either beverage. Jervas said that he would take chocolate; Alexander, bohea.

They were just settled when Harry remarked, “But your wig is still perfectly curled, Charles, in spite of this devilish weather. Surely you did not buy it from Monsieur Duvillier, you extravagant dog!”

Jervas denied it. “Even I do not travel to Paris for my wigs. But I will allow that it is my second of the day,” he confessed. “I was soaked to the skin this morning.”

“This is my second shirt!” Harry sympathized. “I wore fifteen last week, and I would not be at all surprised if it were twenty this time.” He took out his snuffbox and gave it a careless tap; then he lifted the lid. Tom, who had returned with the drinks, looked at him with surprise.

“It is the fashion to tap the snuffbox before opening, Tom,” Harry said with a lazy smile. “I cannot show you here, but if I were to do the same thing at the play, twenty woman would turn toward me upon hearing the sound.”

“Oh, Harry,” Tom replied. “How dedicated a follower of fashion you are. But the gentleman leaning upon the counter has stolen a march on you, for he is already wearing red heels, though it is not the evening.”

Harry gave a grunt of disbelief, and craned his head around to look at the offending shoes. “But you will see that he also has a shoulder knot,” he added with a meaningful glance at Tom; the man in question was an unspeakable vulgarian.

Alexander was pleased that Jervas had brought him to White's and given him the chance to observe the absurdities of Tom and Harry's conversation. He wondered whether it might be the sort of thing he could work into a new poem—even Tonson would have to admit that readers would be diverted—everybody liked to read about characters whom they recognized. But how could it be done? When people talked in poems, it was not in the colloquial language of everyday speech; indeed he could not think of a modern poem that concerned itself with daily life at all, least of all to laugh at it. Alexander looked at Jervas sitting and smiling at the pair's careless banter, giving every appearance of unironic enjoyment. It would never occur to Jervas, of course, to make fun of men like Tom and Harry. His paintings were not satirical; he was far too reverent an admirer of the fashionable world to mock its absurdities. Jervas asked Tom what news there was from the town.

“I called last Wednesday upon my Lady Purchase, but found her not at home,” Tom said with a yawn. “And yet she was standing at the window of the drawing room, looking down upon me quite clearly while the servant spoke.”

“Lady Purchase is at home to visitors only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I am not at all surprised to hear that she would not see you,” Harry drawled in reply, looking down to smooth his stockings more evenly over his legs. “It is a rule very strictly observed. My Lady Sandwich regards it as such a point of good breeding that on days when she is not officially ‘at home,' she denies herself to visitors with her own mouth.” He finished with his stockings and leaned back in his chair.

“I can hardly believe that my Lady Sandwich is still able to move her own mouth,” Tom rejoined, “she is so varnished over these days with paint and powder.”

“Tom—do not pretend to be innocent of the devices of women,” Harry bayed in reply. “You are an artist, Charles, and will know how it is done—do not all women wear faces that are painted on in the morning and washed off again at night?”

Jervas knew better than to proffer his own observation, saying instead, “I'd rather hear about your adventures in feminine painting, Harry!”

“Mine are nothing in comparison with my friend Dicconson's,” Harry replied, still in the same offhand tone of voice. “Do you know him, Charles? Excellent chap; always ready to buy a man a drink. He swears that he never saw his wife's face until he married her. Her skin is so battered about from makeup that when she wakes in the morning, she scarcely seems young enough to be the mother of the woman he carried to bed the night before.”

Alexander was listening to this conversation, much amused, when Harry suddenly changed course. “Tom,” he exclaimed, “there is an elderly gentleman coming toward us in a waistcoat that must have been made half a century ago. I believe that it is William Wycherley.”

“Wycherley the dramatist?” Tom answered. “Don't be a fool, Harry.
The Country Wife
was presented in the theaters forty years ago. He must be dead almost as long as Shakespeare.”

“No, I believe that it is he,” Harry replied. “But though he is not dead, he must at the very least be blind, for he has been sitting at the servants' end of the room without noticing.”

Alexander looked over his shoulder in dismay. Indeed it was William Wycherley walking to their table. He was unmistakable, tall and corpulent, dressed formally in a style now thirty years old. He moved with a distinctive limp caused by his gout, but no doubt made worse by lumbering about town under the weight of so much flesh. By the luckiest stroke, Alexander thought, he had just written to let Wycherley know that he had arrived in London—but had implied that ill health would make a meeting difficult to arrange. He felt particularly ashamed of having used his health for an excuse, knowing that the old playwright was unwell himself. Tonson had said he was losing his memory. He corrected the careless slouch into which he had slipped in unconscious imitation of his companions.

When Sir Anthony Englefield had arranged his introduction to William Wycherley three or four years previously, Alexander had felt more excitement than from any other meeting in his life. But he had realized almost immediately that their friendship would not be what he had hoped. Wycherley had once been the greatest playwright of his age, but even then he was already in a much enfeebled state, and openly craved the admiration of a young, talented poet. Wycherley had asked Alexander to help him prepare a volume of his poems for publication, and although Alexander had known that the verses were inferior, he had nonetheless helped to make them respectable, telling himself that it was an honor to assist so great a writer. He had been so shocked by Wycherley's fallen condition that he could not bring himself to acknowledge it frankly.

“Mr. Wycherley!” said Alexander, springing to his feet as soon as the dramatist was near him.

The old man had grown even fatter since they had met the previous year; his great bulk dwarfed Alexander and his little bow of greeting. Wycherley regarded him in silence. His wig, piled high and ornately, sat slightly awry. He was accompanied by his page, a middle-aged man whom Alexander had met before. Alexander reddened. He knew that they were watched by everyone in the room, and feared suddenly that Wycherley was about to cut him. But the page stepped up to his master and said very quietly, “'Tis Mr. Pope, sir. Your young friend.”

Wycherley said immediately, “Ah, Mr. Pope; I do not see so well as I once did. Are you visiting the town with Mr. Caryll?”

“No, sir. I am staying with my friend Charles Jervas, whom I believe you know.” Jervas bowed, but stayed clear of their exchange.

Wycherley appeared not to notice Jervas at all. “And how does Mr. Caryll do?” he asked.

Alexander wondered whether he ought to correct Wycherley, and tell him that he had not seen Caryll for three weeks. He could hardly bring himself to look at the older man, aghast at this evidence of his further deterioration. Only a few years ago he had still been commanding; now he was a figure of fun—it was hardly dignified for him to be seen out. How bitterly ephemeral was fame, Alexander thought.

“He is well, sir,” he replied, adding, “he remains in the country this year.” There was a pause, and Alexander glanced across at Jervas, widening his eyes in a gesture of mute appeal.

But suddenly the fog of Wycherley's confusion cleared away and he said confidently, “I am glad to see you returned to health, Mr. Pope. I feared that you might not be able enjoy the pleasures of the season. Mr. Tonson tells me that your
Essay Upon Critics
is soon to appear.” He was entirely unlike the self of two minutes previously. Alexander was astonished.

“
Essay on Criticism,
yes. I am delighted with it, sir, though apprehensive of its reception,” Alexander replied, feeling no apprehension at all at that moment, but only relief that Wycherley had returned to something approaching a normal manner.

“When I do have the happiness of reading your new poem, Mr. Pope,” Wycherley replied in a mannered voice, “I shall praise it immoderately.”

Alexander answered him with as much deference as he could summon. “If you find pleasure in my green verses, sir,” he said, “it must be the pleasure a man takes in observing the first shoots and buddings of a tree which he has raised himself. Your compliments will shame me.”

“If I displease you by commending you, I shall please myself nonetheless,” came the overwrought reply. “Remember that incense is sweeter to the offerer than the Deity to whom it is offered; he being too much above it to take pleasure.”

Jervas, sensing Alexander's discomfort and hoping to bring the meeting to a close, stepped in at this moment to ask Wycherley where he was traveling to, and to offer him a ride in his carriage. Wycherley accepted readily, saying that he was going to Will's coffeehouse. Jervas took leave of Tom and Harry and they set off immediately.

 

Alexander could hardly suppress a laugh at three such vastly different men crammed into a small London coach, struggling to appear at ease while their mismatched forms were compacted ever more tightly together. Alexander and Jervas had been wedged in on either side of Wycherley, as if to protect the safe passage of the larger man. Being, Alexander suspected, the only person in the carriage who still had unrestricted access to his respiratory system, Wycherley began the conversation. “Why does our friend John Caryll come to town so seldom?” he asked Alexander.

“Caryll's family is of a retiring temperament, sir,” he replied, thinking that Caryll came more frequently than Wycherley probably knew. “They do not enjoy the bustle of London, and Caryll would not think of coming without them.”

Wycherley gave a scornful humph, which served to stuff the two other men still more firmly into their corners, and countered, “I think it is because the family's fortunes are still not recovered from his late uncle's foolish extravagances. Caryll cannot afford to be in town.”

Alexander believed that this guess was nearer the mark, but he had no intention of gratifying Wycherley's appetite for gossip by admitting it. “I would not describe old Lord Caryll's misfortunes as extravagances, sir,” he said in as prim a voice as his position allowed. “He was unfairly imprisoned for the Popish Plot—although he manifestly played no part—and then he lost his lands over an assassination attempt that he knew nothing about.”

“Knew nothing about it; what nonsense! Lord Caryll was a Jacobite. He confessed it openly. He more than confessed it; he lived in France when James's court was exiled there. I have even heard that he was the exiled king's secretary of state. He was undoubtedly involved in plans to bring James back to the throne.”

In a more pious tone than he would normally use, Alexander said, “Whatever his uncle may have done, John Caryll has suffered wrongly at the hands of those people who wish harm to the Roman Catholic Church.”

“I did not think you were a defender of the Jacobites, Mr. Pope.”

“I am defender of my friends the Carylls, sir.”

“And of the Catholics, I wager. Well, I suppose you cannot help it. But why did John Caryll not stay out of the affair altogether? I heard that he actually went to prison for it—and now his whole family are held to be traitors.”

“Caryll's imprisonment was only for two weeks, and he was unjustly convicted,” Alexander argued in an impassioned tone.

“Well, if they were my fortunes, or my family, I should have become a Protestant long ago,” Wycherley said complacently. “All of Caryll's troubles might then have been avoided.”

“I do not think that Caryll ought to be censured for protecting his family,” said Alexander. “Nor old Lord Caryll for being a Jacobite. His generation of Catholics suffered cruelly. If the Catholics are safe now, it is only because they—we—have learned to keep silent.”