Escapade

by Joan Smith

  “That is true,” Sherry pointed out. She was never tardy to compliment the aristocracy on an achievement.

  “Dash it, it's supposed to be a poem,” Lord Harley complained. “Never mind if it's true or not."

  “Told me I wrote too much,” Bippy interposed. “Now you tell Lady Honor she didn't write enough. No pleasing you."

  “A poem of five lines, not a dashed epic."

  “The rhyme scheme is all wrong in yours, too, Bip,” Belle informed him.

  “What have you got, Miss Fairmont?” Bippy asked, to avoid a reply to Belle, who would start with her old pentameters and hexameters again if he let on that he heard her.

  She cleared her throat and read:

  There once was a baron named Byron

  Who found that of life he was tirin',

  Till he journeyed to Turkey

  And wrote a poem murkey.

  Now for Byron, all London's expirin'.

  Peters, who was becoming fond of Miss Fairmont, said this was the best they'd had yet. Belle felt obliged to point out “tiring” was not a true rhyme for “Byron,” and showed them how it should rhyme, as in her limerick on Anne Boleyn, where “head” and “dead” rhymed perfectly, and even had the same spelling so that it looked well on the page. “But that is a fine point I don't expect to find in amateur writing,” she added kindly.

  Lord Harley had mistakenly attributed Richard III's humpback to William of Lyons, and as Belle's interruptions had robbed him of his rhyming words—which he assured them had been quite excellent, only he forgot them—his effort won no prize.

  “Let's hear from one of the ladies now,” Harley requested, after he had read his effort, to resounding boos.

  “I didn't do Caroline after all; I did Henry VIII,” Lady Sara announced, preparatory to reading hers.

  Henry the Eighth had many wives.

  Some of them were killed with knives,

  Or axes was it, never mind,

  Their heads they never more could find.

  So you who'd marry Kings, beware:

  You'll lose your heads, also your hair.

  “Aren't you clever, Lady Sara!” Sherry marveled.

  “Only two of his wives were actually beheaded, of course,” Belle had to straighten them out. “He divorced Katharine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves, and..."

  “Yes, we know you've been reading all about it for your play, but let's get on with the poems,” Harley interrupted.

  “Actually, the rhyme scheme was all wrong too,” Belle threw in. She was miffed at not getting to rhyme off the fates of Henry's other wives, which she had at her fingertips.

  “A gentleman next, since we are going turn about,” Sara said. “How about you, Clare? Prattle is it you are doing?"

  “A sad comedown from kings and queens, n'est-ce pas?” he asked.

  “Oh, but Prattle is the Queen of Gossip,” Belle laughed. “I'm dying to hear what you have to say of her."

  “Why don't you give him a chance to read then?” Harley inserted sharply.

  After this jibe, no one else interrupted, and Clare read.

  There once was a person named Prattle,

  Who scribbled up all of the tattle

  With a libelous mind

  Neither cultured nor kind

  About beaux, and their women, and cattle.

  “You were too easy on her,” Belle asserted.

  “Lady Sara or Miss Fairmont, with their clever pens could have done better,” he agreed.

  Miss Prentiss resented being left out of the list of clever pens and read hers on Anne Boleyn again, while Sherry struggled with a rhyme for Beau Brummell. Finding it beyond her, she left off the Brummell and did better than anyone expected.

  The others read their verses, and it was Peters who suggested a write-off, in the same manner as the frog race, with the three best writing another limerick.

  After some heated discussion, and another reading of Anne Boleyn, the three chosen were Lady Sara, Ella, and Clare.

  “What should we write about this time?” Ella asked.

  “Oh, I know! Do Clare,” Belle said.

  All three of the contestants demurred, and at last Miss Prentiss had to do one herself to show them how easy it was.

  “I'm not doing myself,” Clare stated firmly. “I'll do Godiva. No one has done her."

  Ella and Sara shrugged and began to tread the thin line between sycophancy and insult in writing a poem to their host. Sara found herself slipping into the easy trap of rhyming Clare with fair, and in disgust crumpled hers into a ball and wrote on Lady Godiva too. Ella's tended in the other direction towards insult. She wrote:

  There once was a young Duke of Clare

  Who would do anything for a dare.

  Throw a party, not come,

  Snub the ladies, in sum,

  What one thought of him he didn't care.

  She was dissatisfied with the result, and after a few moments she too squashed up her sheet and threw it into the basket. From the corner of his eye, Clare observed the discarded papers and wondered what was on them. Ella dashed off five lines in a hurry on Farmer George, and the prize in theory, though in fact there was none, went to Lady Sara. Miss Prentiss was not an official candidate for the prize, but she insisted on reading her work anyway. It was so warm in its praise of the Duke that not only he, but anyone with a jot of sensitivity, was embarrassed at it.

  After this brief poetic interlude, the party was happy to switch to cards, puzzles, and letter writing, with repeated hopes that the storm would let up soon. Clare excused himself to see to some business matters, but before leaving he tossed a log on the smouldering fire and pocketed the papers thrown aside by Sara and Ella while he bent over the wood basket.

  At dinnertime the wind was still howling with rain streaking against the windows. It was impossible for any company to venture out on such a night and, after their port, the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room. Upon their arrival, the Duchess forsook the elder ladies with whom she usually sat and went to Miss Fairmont.

  “How are you enjoying Pride and Prejudice, ma'am?” Ella asked.

  “Heaven. Simply heaven. I have been at it all afternoon without letup, and am only waiting a bit so that I may slip back to it without offending anyone.” She glanced at the Marchioness as she spoke. “I have got to the part where Elizabeth goes to visit Collins and Miss Lucas, only they are married by now, of course, and I think Darcy is working up to a proposal. Does he? ... no, no ... don't tell me. She is the absolute end, your Miss Austen. I don't know how it comes I haven't heard of her, only I never see anyone out here in the country who can tell me what is the latest rage."

  “She is not a rage precisely. Only a few have discovered her thus far."

  “Her characterizations are superb. That mother!"

  “And Mr. Collins. She puts him on the pan and turns up the heat bit by bit, simmering him till he is done brown."

  “What a phrase! You ought to be a writer yourself, my dear."

  Ella gave a start, but the Duchess took it for shyness at such praise and thought nothing of it. She chatted for a little while longer with Miss Fairmont then joined the mothers for a quarter of an hour before claiming a headache. She winked at Ella on her way out, holding a hand to her head as though it were killing her. Sara observed the pass and questioned Ella about it.

  “You have gotten on mighty close terms with the mama,” she said leadingly.

  “I told you I lent her a book. We were discussing it."

  A short while later, Clare went up to his mother to see that she was comfortable and was a little surprised to find her lounging on a chaise longue, a box of her favourite salted nuts by her side, reading avidly.

  “Headache all gone, Mama?” he asked quizzingly.

  “Yes, Patrick, I've left them all downstairs to bore each other to distraction. I've fed them and done my duty by praising all the young ladies to their mothers. What more do you expect of me? Why don't you do something to k
eep them entertained?"

  “Shall I turn Miss Prentiss loose at the harpsichord?"

  “I said entertain, not torture. That girl has no idea when to stop."

  “That is invariably the way with these talented women. A definite point in Lady Honor's favour. She neither sings nor plays."

  “Nor speaks, unless you draw a word out of her with a pair of pliers. Sit down if you want to,” the Dowager invited, with no great sign of encouragement. Still, her son took up a seat at the end of her chaise longue.

  “What are you reading, a new gothic?” he asked.

  “No such thing. A very superior novel lent me by that nice little Miss Fairmont."

  “Pride and Prejudice,” he read. “Never heard of it."

  “No, you never bother to dig out a new writer for me. Why could not you have found out about her—this Miss Austen, I mean, who wrote it. Miss Fairmont tells me she has been publishing for some years. She has given me a list of her books, and I wish you to get them and send them to me when you return to London.” She fished the list out from between the leaves of the book and handed it to him. He slipped it into his pocket without looking at it.

  “Yes, Mama,” he replied, with so much mock humility that she laughed reluctantly.

  “Well, hadn't you better return to your guests?"

  “Which means you, my unnatural mother, would rather read than talk to your only son."

  “Doesn't an unnatural mother mean something horrid, Patrick? Or am I thinking of natural mother?"

  “I collect you are thinking of natural son, and don't try to change the subject."

  “Well, I would rather we not both abandon our guests belowstairs. I hope this rain doesn't continue tomorrow, or we'll have them cluttering up the house all day again. I wonder if Miss Fairmont has another novel tucked away in her trunk."

  “She came prepared for the dull time they are having."

  “I have been wondering why you brought them on such short notice."

  “I made the mistake of begging off a party at Straywards by telling the Marchioness I was coming here, and before I got away she had kindly given me permission to bring Lady Honor along."

  “But why the others?"

  “You can imagine how it would be construed in town if I brought no one but Lady Honor and her mother. They are becoming damned persistent this season."

  “Very wise. I knew Miss Sheridan and Miss Prentiss to be your current flirts, but Miss Fairmont is a new one, is she not?"

  He smiled quite boyishly. “Miss Fairmont was a happy accident,” he admitted. “A friend of Tredwell's and, of course, I have known Sara forever."

  The duchess was a little sorry to hear Miss Fairmont was Bippy's friend, still she thought from his smile Patrick was not quite immune to her either. “She's nice. I like her better than those dull beauties you usually drag down here."

  “Yes, Sara is nice,” he returned, misreading his mother's meaning, so that she had to straighten him out.

  “I was referring to Miss Fairmont. A nice sensible girl."

  “Sensible? How can you say so, when I told you about her escapade on the pond?"

  “Pooh, that is merely high spirits. I have been wondering, Patrick, did she actually induce Lady Honor to go chasing frogs?"

  “No, Lady Honor induced me to do it for her."

  “That's more like it. Well, don't let me keep you,” she said, fingering her book impatiently.

  “I can take a hint, Mama. I shall tell the Marchioness you are lying down with your vinaigrette."

  “Tell her I took a few drops of laudanum, or she may take it into her head to drop in and see how I do. I'd hate her to catch me red-handed."

  “It would serve you right,” he remarked, rising.

  “And don't lose my list of books,” she called after him.

  “I have it right here.” He reached into his pocket, but felt some larger pieces of paper, and remembered the limericks.

  He waited till he was outside his mother's door to read them. One had only the two lines, and he knew that it was Lady Sara who had abandoned hers after a minute. He was therefore very well aware who had written the other. He was amused—a clever way with words, due to her haunting of libraries he supposed. He was about to return them to his pocket, then read Ella's again. That last line—'What one thought of him he didn't care.’ Not quite justified. Still, he supposed the general impression was that he didn't give a damn for public opinion. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to the drawing room, to find Miss Fairmont recounting a story she had read in the books of supernatural phenomena borrowed from his library.

  “...and when the heir died, all the swans left the lake, and there was a horrid eerie cry in the chimneys, and the parson passing by saw a white cloudlike thing leave by the outer chimney, only it wasn't smoke, but much more substantial, he said, and it circled three times around the roof, then dissipated."

  “Nonsense!” Clare said firmly, a light kindling in his eye.

  “Very likely,” she agreed. “I am only telling what I read in a book from your library, and supposedly it happened right here at Clare Palace, in the year 1699."

  “I should have warned Shane to keep those volumes away from you."

  “You forget my powers of persuasion with Mr. Shane, Your Grace,” Ella replied meaningfully.

  “There is nothing wrong in a ghost story,” Belle interjected.

  “No, I imagine it is the others on the same shelf dealing with black magic and necromancy and such things that His Grace is worried about,” Ella explained.

  “How horrid!” Belle squealed. “You must show me where, Miss Fairmont."

  “Going to write up a ghost story, Miss Prentiss?” Bippy asked.

  Before she replied, Sherry had to have a portion of the duke's attention. He had not said a word about her latest gown.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Clare?” she asked.

  “No. And don't tell me you people are gullible enough to believe, either. Now I know Lady Sara, for instance,” he bowed in her direction, “is much too sensible a dame to swallow such slum."

  “Except on nights like this,” Sara returned. Wind came down the chimney and the flames danced in the grate. There was a whining of the storm at the windows, and somewhere in the great house a shutter banged ominously.

  “That would be your great-great Uncle Ethelred come back to scold you for saying he didn't rise up the chimney,” Ella told him.

  Miss Sheridan shivered and pulled her paisley shawl closer about her. She nudged closer to Lord Harley, who sat beside her on the settee. He looked shocked and moved away a little.

  “That would be the loose shutter in the yellow guest suite,” Clare contradicted.

  “Spoilsport,” Bippy chided. “Tell us another one, Miss Fairmont."

  “We have a ghost at Strayward,” Lady Honor said in a sonorous voice.

  “A monk,” Miss Sheridan quoted. She had a good memory for anything pertaining to the nobility.

  “Yes, tell them about Crazy Nellie, Miss Fairmont,” Clare added, suddenly changing his tack. An evening of ghost stories would be preferable to an evening of Miss Prentiss performing Shakespeare solo.

  “I didn't read anything about her,” Miss Fairmont said. “But there was an excellent story about some ancestor in the fifteen hundreds, in Elizabethan times, who was a witch. In the sketch she had one of those ruffs around her neck."

  A murmur of interest ran through the collected company, and Miss Fairmont settled back to unfold the tale of Lady Matilda, as Clare informed her the ancestor was named.

  “She was very beautiful,” Ella began, in a hushed voice.

  “It is a family characteristic,” Clare added.

  “Very beautiful and ill-natured,” Ella said, with a pointed look at her interrupter. “She kept all the important and eligible gentlemen of the neighborhood dangling after her in the worst way, so that the other ladies all hated her."

  “Another family characteristic,” Lord Har
ley shot in.

  “And every time one of them would start to desert her and settle on any other lady,” Ella continued, “he would meet with some horrid fate."

  “Bear that in mind,” Clare said to Harley.

  “Stop interrupting, you two,” Belle scolded. “Pray continue, Miss Fairmont."

  “Well, I'm not sure I remember all the details, for there were scores of suitors, but one of them got stung on the eye by a bee and went blind. It was particularly bad, for he was an artist, and the lady he was to marry a great beauty. They had an apiary at Clare in those days, and..."

  “Still have,” Clare commented. Several hostile pairs of eyes were turned on him.

  “We have an apiary at Strayward, with one hundred and fifty hives,” Lady Honor said.

  Sherry looked at her and smiled, and after a respectful silence to ensure that no more was coming, Miss Fairmont continued. “Another suitor went swimming, an excellent swimmer he was, but he took a cramp and drowned."

  “Can't blame that on poor old Matilda,” Clare pointed out.

  “There was some circumstance that linked her to it— she was with the party at the time, I believe. And finally, the most mysterious bit of all, one gentleman called on Lady Matilda to tell her he was offering for a neighbor, and he was never seen to leave the house. He just vanished. Now that, you must own, looks highly suspicious."

  “It's a big house. Perhaps he got lost."

  “Ain't that big,” Bippy objected.

  “You get lost every time you come here,” his host reminded him.

  “Not forever. May wander about for half an hour or so, but I always meet a maid or someone who can show me the way. Deuce take it, this fellow's been lost since the days of Queen Elizabeth. He must have been done in by Matilda."

  “That was certainly the feeling in the neighborhood at the time,” Ella resumed. “That is when it was decided she was a witch, and no one would have anything to do with her."

  “Thought they dunked witches, or some such thing,” Bippy mentioned.

  “Not when she was a lady of so much consequence,” Belle explained. What she didn't know she made up out of whole cloth, for she had a high reputation for erudition to maintain.

  “That's a good story,” Peters complimented Ella. “You know any more?"