Talk of the Town

by Joan Smith

  The bright balloon received its first puncture when Daphne announced blithely that she had no intention of going to Almack’s. “I have given Mrs. Wintlock the voucher, and she may take Stephanie if she likes, but I shan’t go.”

  “Why not?” Effie asked, astounded.

  “You have told me a dozen times it is a dull old party.”

  “What has that to do with anything? It is the place to go. You shall meet everyone and be firm in your position. It is not to be thought of to stay away. The patronesses will take it as a personal insult.”

  “I don’t care if they do. I never wanted to go, and if they hold themselves too high to invite you, then I shan’t go either.” This indeed was half the reason, but having tried to blackmail St. Felix into gaining her a voucher, she meant as well to show him how little value she actually placed on it. If he had any lingering doubts as to their having been engaged in blackmail; this must remove it.

  Beau Brummell, having heard of the Prince’s morning visit, tried to find out what had transpired when he called for Daphne. Though Mrs. Pealing had imposed a stricture of silence on St. Felix, she proved unreticent herself and was soon pouring into his ears the whole story. He was vastly disappointed. In his mind the only possible hitch in the plan was that the Prince would not come up to scratch. He had never doubted a second that the silly old lady would snap at the chance to be taken up by Prinney. His plan of making his Prince Regent look ridiculous had been thwarted by this babbling creature, and he was highly vexed with her.

  His own sole ambition was to rule Society, and that anyone in her right mind should turn down the chance to sit by the reigning monarch’s side was inexplicable to him. In vain he tried to persuade her. He was given to understand the matter was settled. She had turned the Prince of Wales off. She was clearly deranged, and when he was further told that Miss Ingleside, whose wits he had not yet had any occasion to doubt, was not using her voucher to Almack’s, he washed his hands of the pair of them. He didn’t even take Daphne out for the drive but let on his gouty knee was bothering him. With his own position becoming slippery, he couldn’t afford any but respectable friends.

  Almack’s managed to be entertaining without Miss Ingleside, for her absence caused a lively deal of gossip. The talk was given a nice fillip by the unexpected arrival of the Prince Regent and Mrs. Hertford. Having failed to pick up a new love, Prinney was now anxious to retain the old till he found a suitable replacement. A certain Lady Conyngham was beginning to smile in his direction, but no negotiations were yet underway and he had learned to place no reliance on a smile. Only see how Mrs. Pealing had let him down. He looked lively when Beau Brummell entered, fearing this collapse of his suit with the Pealing was to be laid at his door, but rumours were soon drifting about of a quite different sort.

  The Beau was on the outs with her, too, and more especially the niece. What had the silly chit done but refused to come to Almack's because the Patronesses had quite rightly refused a voucher to a divorcée.

  “I. never heard such gall!” Emily Cowper announced in injured accents. Her mama, Lady Melbourne, was angry with the Pealing for turning down the Prince. Who would ever believe he had offered? Her spleen was taken out on both of them.

  “It was nip and tuck whether we should allow a voucher to Miss Ingleside,” Lady Sefton declared, also injured.

  “I was never consulted on the matter,” Mrs. Drummond-Burrell said, “and would have refused a voucher to a young lady making her bows from the home of a divorced woman."

  “Quite right!” the Countess de Lieven agreed. “It couldn’t be better that she stayed away. She won’t have another chance. I think we are agreed on that?”

  Agreement was unanimous. Miss Ingleside was to be stricken from the list of Almack’s, and she and the Pealing were likewise stricken from the party list of anyone who wished to continue coming to the club. In a night they had tumbled from the very pinnacle of success to the depths of disgrace and didn’t even know it. Effie sustained a “feeling” around eleven p.m., but its significance was not explained and she half thought it was heartburn.

  By the time St. Felix arrived with Sir Lawrence and Lady Elizabeth, rather late, and began scanning the room for Miss Ingleside, there was nothing else being discussed but the young lady’s brass and the lesson she would be taught. He was her mentor—why had he not gone himself and brought her? What was he doing while she strayed into this perilous path but sitting waiting for Sir Lawrence to prepare a speech he would never make in the House?

  “Thank God I haven’t mailed the invitations to my ball,” Lady Elizabeth said when she heard the story.

  St. Felix glared at her. “I see no reason to withhold their invitations only because Beau Brummell has taken them in dislike. We are not to be ruled by a clerk’s son, I hope.”

  “It isn’t only Beau. Everyone is saying the same thing. And it is exactly what you said yourself, Dickie. You said we ladies should get together and show them a cold shoulder. Besides, if it’s only a travelogue they are writing, Larry won’t be in it, for he’s never been abroad.”

  Richard wished to do something to dispel the prevailing mood, which was so strongly anti-Pealing and Ingleside that if the young lady had entered the room at that moment, she would have been cut by everyone except himself. He could see no way in which to help her. Miss Ingleside had flouted an unwritten law in rejecting the invitation. She had implied her disdain of the ton and had not even added the sop of pretending illness. She announced boldly to Beau Brummell, of all people, that she stayed away because her aunt was not invited. It couldn’t be worse. It would take a miracle to reinstate her, and being only a nominal saint, no miracle was within St. Felix’s power.

  He left early and went home to consider the matter. Bess had turned coat on him and let him down. She would send no card to her ball when the Patronesses had decreed it was not to be done. He would have to toss a ball himself and haul Mama up from Kent to lend countenance to the ladies. How would Mama take to the idea of his inviting Mrs. Pealing to his ball, with herself to chaperone it? Could he in fairness ask it of her? And would she do it if he did ask? Most importantly of all—for he had answered himself in the affirmative to all his questions—would it work? He left for Kent to find out.

  While he plotted and worried and drove to Kent, the town buzzed with their disgrace. And while it buzzed, the ladies, all unaware, planned their gowns for a small party to which they had accepted an invitation the next evening. It was Lady Pamela Thurston to whose home they were invited. She had been one of the first to take up Effie again, after paying her for the diamonds.

  Lady Pamela was in a state of trepidation bordering on hysteria. Surely they wouldn’t come! But what if they did? Should she have her butler turn them from the door? If she did anything so rash, might not Effie take it into her head to reveal the past? Borrowing money for the diamonds was not the worst of it. That had been paid back eventually. There was also an interlude with a Mr. Winchester. She was not sure Effie knew a thing about it, but for six months Pamela had been regularly in his company when her husband thought she was paying visits to her sick mama. Effie might know, for Mr. Pealing had been a friend of Mr. Winchester. She dare not turn them from the door—they could ruin her. She dare not let them come in either. She made the clever but cowardly decision to cancel her party, and the awful honour of having the extortionists’ company fell to the unwitting Mrs. Deitweiller, who thought herself perfectly safe when Effie had accepted Lady Pamela’s invitation.

  The Deitweiller do was to be only a small one, but it turned out larger than they thought when Lady Pamela cancelled. Many cards had been sent out to secure a party of forty or so, and with nothing better to do, sixty accepted, half of them at the last minute. That party was to live long in Mrs. Deitweiller’s memory as one of the worst days of her life. As the streams of guests kept pouring in, she first worried about refreshments running short; then it was borne in on her that Lady Pamela had called her do off, and why
she had done so. From that point on she was on tenterhooks. When Mrs. Pealing and her niece came tapping at the door, the saloon was full to overflowing and buzzing with the latest on dit in town—themselves.

  Their entrance had the effect of a cannon going off in the middle of the Deitweiller room. There was first a stunned silence while every avid eye stared at them. Mrs. Deitweiller, already weak from anticipating this very thing, succumbed to a fainting spell. But in the fraction of a second between seeing them and toppling over, such an expression of horror had been on her face that both the newcomers knew something was terribly amiss. The hostess fallen in a heap on the floor caused some little stir, but only those immediately beside her had their attention torn from the more interesting spectacle of the outcasts receiving their just desserts.

  First there was the staring of the crowd to be endured, then the turning away of every head to find someone else to speak to and pretend not to recognize the newcomers, who looked at each other in helplessness. Mrs. Deitweiller, in a most unappealing state of disarray, was being carried out the door by two footmen and two male guests, and Miss Ingleside, with a rapid recovery from her initial shock, followed them out as though to offer aid to Mrs. Deitweiller. Effie wasn’t a terribly swift thinker, but she had enough wits to tag off behind Daphne. Miss Ingleside’s intention was to make a hasty exit from the house, but Effie, kinder or less acute, wanted to stay behind to see Mrs. Deitweiller recovered. She had the pleasure of seeing her hostess’s eyes open, only to screw up again while she turned her head aside in a moan.

  “I’m ruined,” Mrs. Deitweiller said, and refused to open her eyes again though she was clearly conscious now.

  “Because of our coming?” Daphne asked.

  Despite her advanced state of discomposure, the hostess got out a faint “yes.”

  “Don’t fear. We’re going,” Daphne said, and they did.

  “Good gracious me, what was all that about?” Effie asked, while their carriage was brought around.

  “There is some new scandal circulating about us,” Daphne told her, but she was not able to enlighten her aunt as to the nature of it.

  “St. Felix has been up to something,” the niece declared.

  “St. Felix? No such a thing. When he left me yesterday he was in good spirits and promised to come to call on us again.”

  “What else could it be? The Prince of Wales calls on you; Beau Brummell has taken us up. Who could have said anything against us?”

  “It’s that crowd of biddies at Almack’s. I knew it was a mistake not to go. A voucher to Almack’s is like—it’s like a command performance, Daphne. No one refuses a voucher.”

  “I didn’t refuse it. I just didn’t use it.”

  “That’s probably worse—and never a word to any of them that you were ill.”

  “I wasn’t ill. Would a lie have made it better?”

  “Oh, my, yes. That is, it would have made it look better. We must discover what is being said about us.”

  “If anything untrue is being said, the liar will live to regret it,” Daphne said in a grim voice.

  She had never had any plan of cutting a swathe in Society. Having come to London for a family visit, she had been amused to find herself the center of so much attention, but she suddenly found that while she did not much care for success, she minded total failure very much, indeed. To be stared at by the whole room, as though she were a pariah, and especially to see from the corner of her eye Lady Elizabeth turn away like the rest was unbearable. She had not seen St. Felix—did not believe he had been present—but he would hear from his sister of their rejection and think it served them right.

  “The best thing for us to do is to go to Bath or Brighton for a week,” Effie decided. “No one will be there yet, but at least it will get us out of town. I can say I’m taking the waters, and there’s some money left over, so we can afford it.”

  “We’re not going to run out of town like felons,” Daphne said. “We have a card to Mrs. Layton’s ball tomorrow night, and you have your party coming up. We can’t leave before it.”

  “There won’t be a soul come to it,” Effie prophesied glumly. “When the tide turns against you in this city, it turns fast and strong. I’ve been through this before, you recall. Yesterday we were queens; today we’re nobody again.”

  “Auntie, such chicken-heartedness from you! After all the scandals you’ve been through, I should think this would be nothing to you. This is not like your divorce. It is only some little misunderstanding. The thing to do is hold our ground.”

  “The thing to do is run. I always turn tail and run,” Effie admitted shamelessly. “And the only regret I have is that we have no one to help us in our flight. It is much more comfortable if one has a man to run off with. I wonder if St. Felix..."

  “Don’t you dare suggest such a thing to him!”

  “His papa was all for running off with me, love; and really, the young duke is terribly like his papa, only he has no wife, which makes it so much better.”

  “Not so like his papa that he bothered to call on us, after asking your permission,” Daphne reminded her aunt. She had looked forward to seeing him that afternoon, as he had asked permission to call. “He heard the new rumours after leaving us—at Almack's, I suppose—and has deserted us like all the rest.”

  “It is odd he didn’t come,” Effie was forced to admit.

  * * * *

  St. Felix did not come for the reason that he was out of town, gone home to the Hall to try to convince his mama to come to town and prop up the reputations of her husband’s ex-lover and her niece.

  The Dowager Duchess of St. Felix was now sixty-five and no longer given to trotting to London for the Season. She had given it up several years ago and lived a quiet life of retirement in the country, making herself useful to her tenants and local life at large.

  “You know I don’t bother with balls and routs, Dickie,” she explained. She alone was allowed the use of the childish nickname without injunctions from her son. “Bess will be happy to be your hostess, as she always is. Why do you ask me to come?”

  “There is a special reason, Mama.”

  “Is there someone you want me to meet, at last?” she asked eagerly.

  Between these two, “someone” was understood to mean a prospective bride. “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is."

  “Bring her here. We can have a much better visit in the country. Now, sit down and quit that pacing like a tiger and tell me all about her. I suppose she’s pretty.”

  “More than pretty. Beautiful.”

  “What is her style? Is she a blonde or brunette?”

  “She is a brunette, much in the style of the Countess of Standington in her youth, I am given to understand,” he said, as an introduction to her identity.

  His mother revealed very little trace of emotion, though he discerned a slight blanching of the cheeks. “Oh, yes, she was very pretty. How do you come to know of her, Dickie? She was long before your time.”

  “The girl is Countess Standington’s, now Mrs. Pealing’s, niece,” he admitted.

  “I see,” his mother said in a weak voice. “How nice.” She looked closely at her son and knew from his quizzing glance that he was aware of at least some part of the truth.

  “I know about Papa and Countess Standington,” he said. “It is unfortunate, but really, you know, all that past history has nothing to do with Miss Ingleside and myself. I was not aware of it when first I met her.”

  “Who told you?”

  “I had the story from Uncle Algernon,” he replied, only half truthfully.

  “I didn’t know Algie knew. We kept it hushed up as well as we could; but if anyone could weasel it out of your papa, it would be Algie. He was rather sweet on her himself at onetime. I don’t suppose he told you that.”

  “No, but I suspected as much. Do you dislike the idea very much?” Dickie ventured.

  His mother smiled resignedly. “She wasn’t the worst lady in the world,”
she admitted.

  “The worst in your view, however, I suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Your papa might have fallen into worse clutches. An actress or someone of that sort..."

  “Like Perdita, you mean?” Dick suggested with a tentative smile.

  “You know that, too, do you? And your father trying so hard to keep all that from you. Well, it wouldn’t have been hard to discover. Everyone knew about her. She’d have snapped him up fast enough if he’d ever offered, though of course it was never marriage he had in mind with that one. Countess Standington could have married your papa if she’d wished it. I don’t know why she didn’t. She loved him, and he was infatuated with her. She might have ruined the reputation of this whole family, and I owe her some debt of gratitude that she chose not to do it. So you are dangling after her niece, eh? The family was good enough. The Countess’s father was made an earl when he was quite old. He was only the nephew of Lord Basford and never thought to inherit, but old Basford’s son got himself killed in a duel, though they put about it was a hunting accident and her father came into the title. Now, how exactly is Miss Ingleside related to this aunt—is it a direct relationship or through one of her husbands?”

  “Mrs. Pealing’s sister is her mother. Her father is Sir James Ingleside, a baronet from Wiltshire. Quite unexceptionable, I believe.”

  “I’ve heard of the family. But why do you not bring her here, Dickie?”

  “That wouldn’t do, Mama,” he said, and went on to explain the murky waters into which his beloved had pitched herself by her involvement with the aunt’s book and her flouting the Patronesses of Almack’s.

  “The Countess was always a fool, but I never knew her for a demmed fool till this day,” the mother said angrily. “How did she come to allow her niece—but it is all of a piece. Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “Have you ever tried to stop a whirlwind?” he asked.