Babe

by Joan Smith

  “You might have told me! I didn’t mean to put you in such a position as that.”

  “I am in a worse fix than that. I have a bill from the wheeler who repaired my phaeton, and am beginning to receive rather inferior service from the servants here at your sister’s house too, who do expect a little pourboire from time to time.”

  “I’ll arrange some funds for you at once. How much do you require?”

  “Whatever you can find it in your hard accountant’s heart to forward me. Ten guineas would not go amiss. Make it fifteen if you can.”

  He pulled out his money pouch and counted some bills into her hands. “Now, here is progress!” she exclaimed. “I expect I may even see that pair of nags to go with my carriage one of these days. What is the delay? Is Tatt’s gone out of business, or is Romeo only letting them sell horses that come up to his ideal of equine beauty?”

  “It is myself who is hard to please, in this case. I am working on a deal, and expect to have something by the week’s end.”

  “Next thing I know, I’ll be sitting down to the fatted calf.”

  “We are pleased with your progress,” he allowed with a bow. “Yes, I think as soon as you send this pseudo-Greek packing, we shall anoint you with your own ball. Or are you considering having him?”

  “To marry, you mean?”

  “I trust he will not suggest any other sort of alliance.”

  “Well, he is fascinating certainly . . .”

  “In what way?” Clivedon asked, looking at her closely.

  “He is absorbed in something outside of himself, and that is always interesting. He speaks knowledgeably about Greece, but then, I haven’t known him long. He hasn’t started repeating himself yet. He is bound to eventually. Anyone so single-minded must e’er long, and I am not quite sure he won’t become a bore after another week.”

  He shook his head and smiled at her, fondly. “How very astute you are under those sun-kissed tresses. Where did I, and the rest of the Town, get the idea you were a featherhead?”

  “From my former behavior, very likely. But Romeo is teaching me serenity. Mens sana in corpore sano is his rule. He hasn’t quite grasped the mens sana himself, you are thinking, but Agnes and I are working to lead him down from Olympus.”

  “You three wise philosophers discuss other items than love, do you?” he asked.

  “We never discuss love. Romeo doesn’t believe in the existence of the heart. It is the soul that interests him. The psychë he tells me it is called.”

  “Still, I expect Romeo’s psychë serves pretty much the function of the heart in the non-Greek amongst us.”

  “I don’t ever recall hearing him use the word love. He talks a lot of beauty, and is interested in the body.”

  “The naked body for choice, Agnes tells me.”

  “Yes, he is quite shocking, except that somehow it doesn’t seem shocking in him, he is so outspoken and unashamed about it. I’ve never met anyone else like him,” she added, smiling in a dreamy way.

  “An innocent, in fact.”

  “Yes, he is a rather dissipated innocent. It is his having been raised away from home, amidst foreigners. And he was treated quite like a God by them, you know, which is bound to have given him a very good idea of himself.”

  “Something has certainly done so.” Again she smiled softly, and Clivedon suddenly changed the subject. “Ellingwood was asking for you today at Tatt’s. You might let him call, against the day Romeo begins repeating himself.”

  “Ellingwood? He often calls. I’ve met a hundred Ellingwoods in my life. He is not very interesting.”

  “He’s a good chap.”

  “I didn’t mean to disparage him. He is very nice, but so utterly predictable, whereas Romeo . . . When Ellingwood is a little older and begins thinking for himself, he might prove more engaging. At the moment, he only says what he hears everyone say.”

  “He is the same age as Romeo.”

  “No, he is several hundred years younger,” she answered, with an enigmatic smile that worried her guardian considerably.

  The next day, Lord Clivedon was on hand for the painting session. He stood at Romeo’s shoulder, looking at the work, surprised that it was so well done. He expressed polite appreciation to the creator.

  “It does not begin to do her justice. Still, a small victory has shifted to me,” Romeo allowed. “Of course, all those clothes hamper me. If she would undrape, I could do a proper job.”

  Aware of this streak of folly on the artist’s part, Clivedon expressed no great surprise, but only said, “That is impossible.”

  “Barbara has convinced me I must wait till we are married,” he said with resignation.

  “I never said I would marry you, Romeo,” she reminded him, for the conversation was carried on in normal tones, audible to them all.

  “You must,” she was told, with no emphasis or worry or anger. Romeo continued working, his concentration soon deafening him to any speech. At the end of an hour he set aside his brushes. “It is done,” he announced. This was an invitation for the three to gather around the portrait to admire it.

  “Exquisite!” Lady Withers sighed.

  “It flatters me immensely,” Barbara declared.

  “I did not capture the mood of your toes,” Romeo confessed. “It was the lack of a hyacinth. Those pretty little toes, like curled rosebuds wanting to unfurl. I think you might have removed your sandals at least, but I know you are too modest.”

  Noticing that Clivedon was biting back a smile and staring at her toes, Barbara said, “I am not that modest. I would have taken off my sandals.” Extraordinary the lack of understanding of these matters that cropped out in Romeo at times. He saw no difference between a sandal and a gown.

  Romeo subjected her to one of his lingering gazes, then shook his head. “No, I shan’t change it. I am becoming infected by this pernicious English Philistinism, and find I do not want the world to see your bare toes. We must go to Greece very soon, my dear, before my psychë is irrevocably warped. It grows stunted and deformed in this hostile climate of England. In Greece, under the shadow of the Acropolis, I shall paint you as you should be painted. I cannot do it here, after all.”

  “I wish you will not speak as though it is all set we are to get married. I haven’t the slightest notion of ever moving to Greece, I can tell you.”

  “We will go on our wedding trip, and you will beg me to let you stay,” he answered, slipping off his smock and laying it aside. “There you will blossom into mature womanhood, leaving behind this restless quality that displeases me. Your opposition is against the immortal gods, and will not long endure. See how even the cold English sun has brightened your cheeks.”

  “Barbara is looking remarkably healthy these days,” Lady Withers pointed out to her brother.

  “What do you mean to do with the painting?” Clivedon asked.

  “I shall keep it till I have created another. There is no fullness of admiring Aphrodite. When I am at home alone, it will warm me. Where do we go this evening, my dear?” he asked Barbara. The do was mentioned, and he nodded, then asked for his lunch.

  “I’m afraid Romeo doesn’t eat properly,” Agnes worried, after he was gone. “You must see he does so after you are married, Barbara.”

  “Cousin, pray don’t speak as though it is all settled! I don’t plan to marry him—that is—it is not settled at all. Certainly I don’t want to live in Greece.”

  “The sun and climate would be good for you,” her hostess mentioned.

  “Don't be so foolish!” Clivedon said angrily. Then he began looking around the room. “Where is the picture? He didn’t take it with him. I suppose it’s being sent home by Zeus on a thunderbolt.”

  Agnes gave him a withering stare and mentioned that Mercury, she believed, was the messenger of the gods.

  “Immortal gods! It’s his own puny hide is all he thinks of. To hear him speak as though he were on a first-name basis with Zeus! A little Romeo goes a long way in my boo
ks.”

  “The picture is in the study,” Agnes said.

  “I’m going to have another look at it. He is a little better than I thought.” When he returned he said, “I wouldn’t mind buying it, if he decides not to take it to Greece with him.”

  “He wouldn’t sell it,” Agnes said. “He is not a professional, commercial artist, but an amateur in the true sense of the word, a lover of painting. He would be offended if you suggested it. What do you want with Barbara’s picture?”

  “To keep you warm at night, Clivedon?” Barbara asked, laughing.

  “As an investment. Romeo has left behind no other painting, so far as I know, and it might be worth something in the future.”

  “Perhaps I will think about going to Greece with him,” Barbara announced suddenly in a piqued voice, then continued talking up the place till Clivedon arose abruptly and took his leave.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nothing was seen of Romeo for four days after the completion of the portrait. The caryatid mysteriously disappeared from the yard, the picture was picked up by a footman, but the artist did not call, nor did he appear at any evening functions. Oranges and pineapples wilted into decay at Cavendish Square, and Lady Withers too was on the decline. Lady Barbara was half disappointed and half relieved. But on the fourth night he showed up at Covent Garden, all alone, and made a bee line for Clivedon’s box at the first intermission.

  “Evening star—a delight to behold you,” he greeted her, dropping a kiss on her inner wrist. It was his preferred spot for kissing ladies, after the lips. “My ears hum, a tremble seizes me, I am near to death,” he went on, in his gentle voice.

  “Nearer than you know,” Clivedon informed him, less gently.

  “Brazen-voiced Stentor,” Romeo greeted him, bowing, then turned to include Lady Withers and her spouse, the latter whom he did not recognize, nor find either handsome or ugly enough to interest him. “I am angry with you, milady,” he chided Lady Withers, “for letting my Barbarian out in those hideous braids. They offend every delicate sense.” He returned his scrutiny to Barbara. “But even in that grotesque gown and with your hair in coils, you are ravishing, Aphrodite.”

  “Thank you, I think,” she answered. “Have you been ill, Romeo?”

  “Dare I hope you have missed me?”

  “Of course we have.”

  “Good. I have been neither ill nor idle. I have been visited by the inspiration of giving Pater a gift.”

  “Is your father in town?”

  “No, it is to be a surprise for him. I am redoing the facade of Stapford House. It is half a gift for myself as well. It bruises my psychë to have to enter that vicious portal. I swear my soul shrinks within this mortal frame at every entry. I wanted to put in a colonnade, with a little atrium, you know, thirty or forty feet wide, but the municipal people are being very obstinate about its projecting into the street, and I refuse to make it meager. Skimpiness is anathema to me. So I am only tearing down the door and pediment and pillars, and having new ones erected to my own design. And of course the dome must go.”

  “Romeo—I don’t think you should give your father such a gift as that!” she declared, horrified.

  “He will love it. And it won’t cost him more than three or four thousand pounds.”

  “I thought it was to be your gift.”

  “I am designing it free. There won’t be another like it outside of Greece.”

  “Oh—to be sure,” she answered weakly, and cast a worried eye to Clivedon, who hunched his shoulders in amusement.

  “But enough talk of Pater. Have you missed me, Divine One? I burn to kiss you.”

  “No, please don’t be impossible. Everyone is looking at us.”

  “Why should they not? Beauty is to be observed and appreciated.” He raised her hand and kissed it, muttering of a palpitating heart and warm, vibrant marble. Then he began working his way up her arm towards the inside of her elbow. She snatched her arm away hastily. “It was a mistake to stay away from you for so long. I have lost control,” he explained.

  “If you don’t stop being so silly, you must leave at once,” she said with a blush.

  “What an excellent idea. Let me get you a glass of wine, Romeo. Come along,” Clivedon said, and hauled him from the box.

  “The destroying wrath has o’ertaken me,” Romeo explained over his shoulder as he was dragged out.

  When Clivedon returned, he was alone. “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, if I may steal a Grecian epigram from Adonis.”

  “Clivedon—don’t you think you should warn Stapford of the gift preparing for him?”

  “You may be sure I will. I wish he’d come and take that boy home. And lock him up.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was complimenting three aging countesses on their resemblance to the Grecae when I left him. From their smiles, they cannot know the resemblance has to do with their sharing one eye and one tooth. Never mind, you have nothing to fear in them, Aphrodite. He will meet you at Swanson’s water party tomorrow afternoon. At least I trust his tangent regarding Poseidon and Bacchus referred to that. He wants you to wear something called a pepper, I think it was, and to have those golden snakes taken from your hair. The pepper sounds a scanty covering, but about the snakes, I am inclined to agree with him.”

  “You said . . .”

  “Hush, the play is beginning.” She was forced to smolder in silence, while recalling very well that Clivedon had lately complimented her on her plaited braids.

  Romeo did not accompany them home, but went to Clivedon’s carriage and waved Barbara a kiss “in front of the whole world,” as Clivedon said in a disgusted voice.

  But he was not completely out of humor. During Romeo’s short period of defection, Ellingwood had come into favor, and it was Ellingwood who was to accompany Lady Barbara to the Swansons’ water party. Lady Withers did not attend, and as it was a group of younger people, Barbara assumed Clivedon too would be away. It was a good reflection on her reformation that she felt not one jot of relief that she was to escape her two mentors for a whole afternoon. Rather, she felt it wouldn’t have hurt Clivedon to accompany her, as she saw less of him lately.

  She wore neither peplos nor braids, but a very dashing sprigged muslin of a rose shade, and had her hair arranged low on her head to allow a wide-brimmed bergère hat to rest on top of it and shade her face. Ellingwood told her she looked dashed pretty, and Romeo, when he saw her, said, “You did it on purpose to pay me back for saying I wanted to kiss you last night. But I forgive you. Perfection is allowed to err. And I still want to kiss you.”

  Ellingwood was all at a loss at to how he should defend the lady from such an outrage. “See here, my good chap,” he said, adopting a lofty tone.

  “Never mind, Charles,” Barbara told him, and, putting an arm through the extended arms of her two escorts, she went to join the party.

  Some of the gentlemen were wearing bathing costumes and swimming in a pond, where they complained about the lack of depth. Others rowed ladies about in flat-bottomed miniature barges, and some groups just sat at the water’s edge around tables, looking at the goings-on. There was some disheartened music wafting towards them, barely audible, from a deck behind the house.

  The body of water which Mrs. Swanson referred to as a man-made lake was in fact a pond of small dimensions. Romeo and Barbara first sat at one of the tables, with of course Ellingwood a jealous third, but they were not long happy with so little sport. As soon as Barbara expressed the slightest interest in going on the water, Ellingwood set off to find a free boat. There was none available, and he returned to tell her they would have Davey’s as soon as he was finished with it.

  “When Lady Barbara wishes to go on the water, she shall not wait,” Romeo informed Ellingwood. He first began examining the small wooden table at which they sat, but even his active imagination could not imagine it to be pond-worthy. He began poking amongst bullrushes till he found a precarious raft,
to which he then led her. Ellingwood was along, and with one glance at it, he said, “I can’t allow Barbara to go out on that. It’s not safe.”

  Barbara felt her spleen rise, to be told that Ellingwood was in a position to be allowing her not to do anything. Romeo was unperturbed, except to say, “I crossed the Hellespont on a smaller one. Come along, my dear.”

  “No, she’s not going,” Ellingwood insisted. “I am her escort, and I cannot allow it.” He had received some instructions from Lady Withers.

  He understood his twofold duties to be to protect her actual physical safety as well as her reputation, but hardly knew which was the more important. When Barbara boldly asked him, “How do you mean to prevent it?” his priorities sorted themselves out. He was clearly not expected to make a row in public. He did nothing but watch in frustration as she was helped onto the raft by Romeo, who accomplished the affair with great grace, considering the uncertain footing beneath him. With a pole, the pair advanced across the pond, which was not at all deep. The only danger was of collision with one of the three other vessels afloat on the water, but still Ellingwood was unhappy, and as soon as possible coerced a friend to give up his boat. He climbed in and skimmed alongside the raft.

  “This will be safer, Barbara. Climb in here with me,” he urged.

  “Don’t be foolish, Charles. Sit down before you topple over and get soaked,” she answered sharply.

  “I really must insist,” he declared, and reached across the water to take her hand, to assist her into the safer boat. Romeo took his pole and gave the barge a shove off, away from their raft. The suddenness of the lurch caused Ellingwood to lose his balance. He reached for the only support available, Romeo’s pole, and clung to it for half a minute, like a monkey, with two hands and two legs, in a very awkward and undignified manner, while the sickening knowledge washed over him that he was about to take an even more degrading plunge into the pond. Barbara, seeing his predicament, reached out a hand to try to steady him, and the two of them toppled over into the stagnant water with a shout and a loud splash.

  Romeo stood on the edge of the raft looking after them. “Don’t fear, my dear, it is not at all deep. I’ll save you,” he told her, in his gentle, unperturbed voice. But getting aboard either boat or raft proved more difficult than wading the ten feet to shore, and this was the option chosen by both the victims of the accident. Ellingwood spluttered and apologized, and tried to offer what aid he could to the lady, while dreadfully aware of the spectacle he presented and the muddle he had made of the affair.