The Duke's Agent

by Rebecca Jenkins

  ‘Earewith sends you – but how delightful. And how is the sweet boy? You have come just in time to join me on my promenade, Mr Jarrett. Smithers!’

  This last proved to be a command to the groom who stood by the head of the plump grey pony snoozing between the shafts. Touching his hat to his mistress, Smithers roused the animal and they set off, Jarrett striding to keep pace with the chaise, while its occupant offered up conversation in a penetrating voice.

  ‘There is a repose, a freedom and a security in a vie de château, do you not agree, Mr Jarrett?’ she announced, looking about her with a proprietary air. ‘When I set out to walk, I feel as if alone in the world — nothing but trees and birds.’

  Jarrett tried to look agreeable while he searched his mind for an appropriate response to this opening gambit. His hostess’s head was turned from him, regally contemplating the view while awaiting some apposite riposte. They jogged comfortably past an exquisitely clipped hedge. The hedge terminated and behind it a woman in a gingham dress and a black bonnet appeared on her knees picking up weeds. Nature in Lady Yarbrook’s solitary world was remarkably well schooled. His companion was becoming restless. Her fingers drummed a tattoo on the carriage side in the manner of a grand master waiting on a dilatory pupil.

  ‘And add to these retired leisure, That in trim gardens takes his pleasure,’ he quoted with as much air as he could muster.

  Lady Yarbrook shot him an acute look. ‘Milton?’ she demanded, swift to congratulate herself on her own erudition. The mood that had looked likely to turn stormy set fair with a playful smile. ‘Frederick Jarrett,’ she mused. ‘As I recall, you are a kinsman of Earewith’s, are you not? On the dear Duke’s side?’

  Jarrett bowed diplomatically. ‘I am fortunate to be held as one of the family, ma’am.’

  His hostess’s shrewd dark eyes weighed him up. ‘I believe you are a soldier and a painter, sir,’ she stated abruptly. It clearly amused her to see she had taken him aback. Jarrett’s intimate circle knew of his hobby but it was not a talent he boasted of. The liquid brown eyes held a note of triumph as well as humour. ‘Ha!’ the lady exclaimed complacently, settling back once more.

  Jarrett recognised the type. One of those capable women born with too much energy and intelligence to suit the confines of society; under-employed souls in whom boredom breeds a passion for ferreting out the secrets of others. He would need to step warily. Her small coup, however, seemed to have assuaged Lady Yarbrook’s mischievous curiosity for the moment.

  ‘Well, this is delightful. I was feeling very dull today and now I am sent an unexpected cavalier to improve my constitutional. Fortune smiles indeed!’ she announced, bestowing a particularly winsome smile of her own on her guest.

  The path before them turned and a brick orangery appeared, set above a lawn. Its high windows were unpegged and removed for the summer, leaving an open cloister. Through the arches the orange trees could be seen, ripening fruit nestling among the dark leaves. Scattered artlessly before the trees was a collection of cherubs with foreshortened legs, posed on speckled marble plinths.

  ‘How do you like my Seasons?’ asked Lady Yarbrook as the chaise paused before the arcade. ‘That is Winter – the sweet boy.’

  The sweet boy was plumply naked. In concession to the cold of his theme he had a sort of fat blanket draped over his head and shoulders. The resigned look of stately piety he wore deflected any sympathy Jarrett might have felt for his predicament. He produced a polite sound of general appreciation while he made a show of inspecting the group. His hostess’s rich voice cut short his performance.

  ‘And what brings you to me, Mr Jarrett? I fancy you are not come to admire my statuary.’

  He turned to find her contemplating him, her fantastic head cocked to one side. She had a plain face but her countenance was animated by wit and a directness of spirit that was engaging.

  ‘You are not going to try gammoning me that you are in the habit of doing the pretty about the neighbourhood? I would not believe you, you know,’ she ended, a roguish lift of an eyebrow robbing the statement of any offence.

  He grinned back. ‘To tell you the truth, Lady Yarbrook,’ he lied, ‘I have a fascination with playhouses. I intend to build one of my very own at my house in Lincolnshire,’ he elaborated, as if in a rush of enthusiasm. ‘Learning of the theatre you have constructed here and finding myself within calling distance, I begged Charles to give me an introduction.’

  The lady crowed with delight. ‘A fellow Thespian! But I am charmed. My good angel must have sent you, Mr Jarrett. Your visit is perfectly timed. Why, at this very moment my guests and I are getting up a performance of Volpone – Jonson’s play, you know. You are not familiar with his work? Oh, but Ben Jonson is a great discovery!’ She snatched up a leather-bound volume from the seat beside her and began to search through it as she talked. ‘I have the part of Celia. A female of great virtue and much beset by perfidious men. The play is most curious. I swear you will be mightily amused. There – you may read Volpone for me while I rehearse my lines; he is a great rogue who wishes to seduce me. Let me begin.’ She pointed at the opened page and cleared her throat. ‘“Oh, God and his good angels! Whither, whither is shame fled human breasts?”’

  She had a formidable voice and she threw it with great clarity. At this rate they would be overheard in Gainford, he thought, as he attempted to gather his wits to respond. He scanned the page. Celia’s speech was short. Volpone’s part appeared to bear the burden of the scene.

  It is no simple matter to declaim a passage sight unseen whilst walking alongside a carriage along an unfamiliar path. Somehow he managed to reach the end of his allotted piece without stumbling either vocally or physically. His hostess appeared to approve of his reading. She fastened her eyes on him as he spoke, following every shift of expression, her features rapt with attention. Out of the corner of one eye he saw her swell and gather herself up as he came to his last line.

  ‘“Now art thou welcome!”’ he declared.

  ‘“Sir!”’ his Celia responded with energy.

  ‘“Nay, fly me not”,’ Jarrett read on gamely.

  His hostess waved a practical hand. ‘Aye, aye and all the rest. You may skip the song. Only give me my cue. Come now: “To be taken, to be seen, these have crimes accounted been”,’ she prompted. ‘I think that very fine, do you not agree?’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am, very good,’ he responded and repeated the cue obediently.

  ‘“Some serene blast me”,’ exclaimed Celia, rocking the little chaise as she flung up one massive arm in a classical gesture, ‘“or dire lightening strike this”,’ she paused, modulating her rich voice, ‘“my offending face”,’ she intoned.

  The painted clock over the stables chimed. Smithers slowed the pony and a polite cough drifted up from his stolid back view.

  ‘The clock has struck three, my lady.’

  His mistress dropped her part with disarming swiftness.

  ‘Dear me, but you are right, Smithers! When I am with the muse I am quite forgetful of the passing of time! Mr Jarrett, I must return for my rest. The doctor insists upon it. Regular rest and a careful diet – lamb and potatoes with raspberry vinegar and a little light wine. ’Tis the one remedy for biliousness. It is tiresome but I must have a care, I am so easily done up.’ She sighed gustily. ‘It is an affliction to be born with a fragile constitution but I never complain, for what is the use, say I?’ She favoured her guest with a sunny smile. ‘You make an elegant Volpone, Mr Jarrett, your voice is excellent. I could hardly believe you did not know the play, you read so well.’

  She flung out her hands towards him, her sturdy body swept up by a sudden thought. ‘I wonder – might I persuade you to join my little band of players? To be candid, my current Volpone is not up to the task. It is a part that requires a reserve and dry wit he lacks, but you, sir…’ Her eyes pleaded with him.

  ‘You flatter me more than I can say, Lady Yarbrook, but I regret I cannot. Besides, I fear you ha
ve formed too high an opinion of my talent. I understood you have some professional players among your troop; I could not hope to rival their skill.’

  ‘Professionals!’ she scoffed, then relented. ‘I dare say Francis Mulrohney makes a tolerable Mosca but he cannot double up to play Volpone as well, and so for the present my chaplain takes the part. Don’t mistake me, my boys are well enough, but they are outward men, entirely unstuffed, not one idea or qualité of understanding between them. Will you not take pity on me, Mr Jarrett?’

  They were back at the house by the time he managed to convince her that pressing business forced him to forgo the considerable pleasure of performing opposite her Celia.

  ‘If you cannot join my players, Mr Jarrett, will you return to dine with me? The hour is too advanced to be thinking of journeying on today. Why do you not rest at Gainford for tonight? The Blue Boar on the green is the best hostelry. You must go there. But first my man will show you my jewel, my little theatre. It will amuse you.’

  He suspected, given the complacent look with which she said this, that Lady Yarbrook would in truth be mightily offended if her theatre did anything less than profoundly impress him. He countered her dazzling smile with one of his most charming and bowed his eager acceptance of her kindness.

  ‘Smithers will see to you. Until five o’clock then.’

  *

  He was standing in what had once been an elegant dining room of regular shape on the ground floor. The fine proportions of the room had been stopped up and unbalanced by a proscenium stage that took up a good third of the space. The exterior of the arch was painted in soft blue and white and adorned with cartouches within which Greek gods disported themselves, picked out in gilt. A half-finished backdrop, held within a painting frame, filled the back wall. Before it was slung a painting bridge on which the artist could be winched up and down his canvas. The ghost of his recent presence lingered around a carelessly pushed-aside trestle table, covered with a muddle of pots of paint and long-handled brushes.

  Jarrett climbed the miniature flight of gilt steps up on to the boards to take a closer look. The flat depicted a grand Italian interior in which a pair of glass doors opened out on to a sun-baked terrace with a prettily rendered perspective of green countryside beyond. The English view sat oddly beyond the Italian setting. As he inspected the half-finished canvas with professional curiosity he had an odd association. In colour, light and space the scene through the windows somehow recalled to his mind the view from the white rock opposite his folly. He shook off the thought. The matter was so much on his mind it intruded in everything.

  He whiled away twenty minutes to give his supposed admiration decent rein, then allowed the bored servant to show him out. As he followed in the wake of the man across the chequered marble hall he heard voices. Through the open door of a library he sensed the presence of a convivial group.

  ‘I don’t believe a word of it, Mulrohney! Don’t listen to the rogue!’ exclaimed an unseen listener.

  ‘Neither do I,’ chimed in another. ‘But he tells the tale so well I hardly care. Go on, Mulrohney – what happened next?’

  Mulrohney resumed his tale in a voice redolent with Irish charm. There was a ripple of laughter and movement in the room as the story-teller repositioned himself. He stood bisected by the half-open door, his back to the hall. He was a medium-sized man, about Jarrett’s own height and build. A glancing shaft of sunlight illuminated his bright hair – as bright as a guinea of gold.

  *

  ‘Have you come from London, Mr Jarrett? Do you bring news? How fares the Government? I hear His Highness the Prince Regent is to be found dining with the ministers. The wretch! I never thought to see us so betrayed!’

  His neighbour was a lively person of a certain age, an actress who had gained some popularity in comic roles at Drury Lane. Although she had a pretty figure, she suffered from a massive nose, the protrusion of which pulled every other feature after it. Rarely had a nose tyrannised so completely over a human face. Since its owner was also good-humoured and in the habit of baring the white teeth beneath it, Jarrett’s fixed impression of his dinner companion was dominated by bone and teeth, behind the mass of which lurked a pair of merry eyes.

  ‘You are a Whig, ma’am?’

  ‘And you are not, sir?’

  ‘I am no politician, ma’am.’

  ‘Surely you cannot be so careless of the affairs of the nation as to be content to abandon them to the petty plots and ploys of puny politicians, sir!’ A philosopher leant across the table towards him with the staring intensity of a human carp moulded in wax. ‘See where that attitude has led us, sir! To sink our prosperity in the mire of Spain and Portugal, that is where, sir!’

  ‘Mr Price, I cannot allow you that!’ exclaimed his neighbour, leaping to engage this challenge with obvious relish.

  He left the antagonists to bombard each other with verbal salvoes. Lady Yarbrook held court opposite him, seated between an aging poet with a vast appetite and the actor, Francis Mulrohney. The impression of nakedness was startling. Not that the lady of the house displayed a greater proportion of flesh than any of the other females scattered about her board, it was merely that the ampleness of Lady Yarbrook’s charms covered a greater acreage. It was as if he faced a mountain of nakedness across the table; a mountain topped by a mercurial countenance about which humour and emotion flashed like a summer storm. There was an undeniable fascination about her. Her vitality was mesmerising. One minute she entranced with her lightning wit, the next she appeared almost clownish in her exuberance and foolish prejudices. She had a habit of folding her vast naked arms across her ample chest when the debate became fierce or the wit too barbed. Jarrett found himself touched by an unexpected hint of vulnerability under the mass of brilliance and clumsy arrogance. To her clients and protégés, however, Lady Yarbrook was clearly a hard mistress.

  ‘This play is too long, Mr Mulrohney. You must cut it again. The business between that dreadful knight and Peregrine – it gives me a headache it is so tedious.’

  A full-face view of Mr Mulrohney revealed him to have the even features and colouring of the best actors. They combined to give him a countenance bland enough to be thought unremarkable or handsome according to the light and character he chose to play. His manner towards his patroness was charming and easy; nevertheless Jarrett discerned a weary glaze in the attentive look he wore as he waited for his chance to speak.

  ‘But Lady Yarbrook, Mr Nugent is most skilful as Sir Politic and Mr Nesbitt makes a comely Peregrine – you have said so yourself. He would be mortified to have his part cut, you know he worships you.’

  She glanced down the table at the handsome profile of Mr Nesbitt, a youth barely out of his teens, and softened. ‘Poor boy!’ she exclaimed indulgently. ‘Perhaps you are right, but the scene is most dreadfully dull. Can you not find a way to shorten it while leaving poor Perry some place to shine? Of course you can, Francis, you are a clever, clever man. You will do this for me. And perhaps you may also contrive for Celia to be on stage more,’ she added as if tacking on some small, inconsequential request. ‘The play cannot hang without her and yet she is hardly ever seen! I cannot imagine what Mr Jonson was thinking of.’

  Jarrett’s sympathy for the unfortunate Mulrohney grew as the dinner wound on its discursive way; it reached a peak when the conversation happened on the topic of the Irish. Mr Price was practically choleric on the subject.

  ‘Make ’em cower, that’s what I say. Why, they would treat with Boney at the first opportunity, the mischievous dogs!’

  ‘Mr Price! You insult me. I am Irish!’ stated his hostess, her cheeks flushed. Lady Yarbrook might not wish to reside in the country of her husband’s birth but she had a strong affection for being contrary to strongly held opinions.

  ‘Dear lady, I do not refer to you, nor to your respected spouse, nor to any of our kind, but to the native paddy. There is a mean spirit about him that cannot be trusted.’

  ‘What think you
, Francis?’ Lady Yarbrook turned to the actor by her side. ‘Do you hate the English?’

  It was plain to anyone who paid the least attention to his frozen expression that Mr Mulrohney was finding the conversation painful. Jarrett wondered whether his hostess was being mischievous or merely remarkably dull-witted.

  ‘Ogh, no!’ replied Mulrohney in a parody of a pantomime paddy. ‘For to be sure England is a wonderful place – plenty of tai and fine craim for breakfast and all the convaniences. I’m fairly out of Ireland, I’ll be tellin’ you!’

  ‘So you are content among us, Francis?’ Lady Yarbrook dipped a flirtatious look under long eyelashes, oblivious to the sharp edge concealed in her neighbour’s words.

  ‘’Tis like Heaven himself, lady. I might be in the air with the angels, that I might.’

  ‘For shame, sir!’ protested Mr Price, sensing what his hostess did not.

  Lady Yarbrook flicked a puzzled glance in his direction and back to Mulrohney. ‘Is it joking you are, dear joy?’ she enquired coyly.

  Mulrohney bowed gracefully over her hand. ‘No,’ he replied in a low voice, ‘sure enough, ma’am, I am not joking.’

  In the loud pause that followed every observer waited for some outburst, but none came. Lady Yarbrook’s smile remained pinned up while a bewildered look flickered in her bright eyes. All at once diversionary conversations started up around the table like birds flushed from a covert.

  Jarrett found the remainder of the dinner an endurance. His sympathies were with Francis Mulrohney. The Irishman barely contained himself until the company rose to remove to the drawing room. Jarrett watched him drop back and slip away. Unnoticed he strolled out behind him.

  Mulrohney was standing by a stone urn at the edge of the lawn, lighting a cigar from a burning taper. The actor greeted him with a rueful face.

  ‘She will flourish about. All the world praises Will Shakespeare, so my lady critic must discover greater wit in some unknown scribbler. Ben Jonson was better acquainted with the Ancients, says she. That’s what comes of teaching your females Greek and Latin! And yet she’ll cut him without shame! We’d be better doing a farce, that we would.’ He gave a twisted, apologetic smile and held out his case. ‘An evil habit, but will you join me, Mr Jarrett?’