Escapade

by Joan Smith

  Ella told the story of Prissie Muckleton and Belle Prentiss in a confused, distracted manner, with such abject self-accusations that it was pointless to chastise her further. She was clearly on the edge of nervous collapse.

  “Oh, Ella, what a shame! And he this very day asked for you when I met him. He cannot have seen the column then. How came you to do it?"

  “I didn't know! It was the very next day that the Duchess took us to the orphanage and explained everything, and it was too late then to stop Thorndyke from publishing it. Sara, what am I to do?"

  “I think your best bet is to make immediate tracks to Fairmont, and I shall do my possible to conciliate him."

  “Yes, yes! I can't ever face him again."

  “My God, Ella, and you might have married him!” Ella did not bother to deny it.

  “He hadn't read this when he asked me."

  “Oh, it is out of the question now. This goes much beyond the bounds of what is forgivable. I only hope he will not blame me for it."

  “Tell him it was all my doing. He will know it anyway."

  “I wonder that Thorndyke printed such a thing."

  “He would not doubt it when he knew we were there, at the palace."

  “Well, I am surprised it did not occur to you to doubt it, but it is too late for that now."

  While they were still discussing their dilemma, a maid came to the door with a note for Miss Fairmont. “It's from him,” Ella said, looking at the crested envelope.

  “For God's sake, open it. He has seen the column."

  Ella's fingers were trembling so that she handed it to Sara. “You read it. I can't."

  Sara tore it open and read the curt message. “He means to sue, and who shall blame him?” she said, handing it to Ella, who read, shook in her shoes, and handed it back.

  “He wants an explanation. What shall I say?"

  “You'd better tell the truth. I shouldn't think he even knows what you were talking about."

  “Oh Sara, must I tell him I was gossiping with Belle? It is so vulgar..."

  “Not so vulgar as repeating the gossip to the whole town! I wonder you should scruple at private scandalmongering."

  “You wrote in the column, too,” Ella reminded her.

  “I know it. You needn't remind me. We are in this together—Mama, too, if it comes to that. Don't worry that we mean to desert you."

  “Will you help me write him an explanation? Perhaps if I apologize..."

  “Certainly you must apologize. I think it will be better if we go to see him."

  Ella's eyes widened in horror. “No! I couldn't face him in person. It must be a letter."

  “You may be right. We must take great pains with it—wheedle him into a good humor if we can."

  “Yes, and tell him I mean to give up the column."

  “My dear idiot! That goes without saying. What you must do is let him see you were jealous of what Belle told you. He would not be so inhuman as not to forgive jealousy. He told me once it was the easiest of all vices to pardon."

  “No, I shan't tell him I was jealous!"

  “This is no time for standing on your high ropes, my girl. Every wile must be used."

  “I refuse to write that."

  “Well, I think perhaps it will be best if I write the letter, dear. You are in no fit case to be composing. Leave it all to me."

  “I wish you would do it. But don't tell him I was jealous."

  “If you say so,” Lady Sara said agreeably, but when she had written a reply, she did not trouble to show it to Ella for approval, but sent it to Belgrave Square with the greatest speed.

  It was read with a similar speed, and sufficiently smoothed the ruffled noble feathers that no thoughts of suing were pursued. There was even a hint of satisfaction on Clare's brow as he read that Ella had been plunged into a positive ague of jealousy upon hearing Belle's story. He was not happy that the answer came from Lady Sara rather than Ella, but softened to read that the poor girl was prostrate on a bed of sorrow. He would let her stew a few days and then call on her. But upon consideration he thought he had still to repay her for not being home to him. He would ignore her for a week—resume with his other flirts, and give her jealousy time to ripen. Not cut her, of course, or pretend in the least that he was angry. He would be civil but distant, and enjoy himself hugely when they chanced to meet in public. He realized perfectly well that it was an odious trick, but Miss Prattle deserved it, whatever about Miss Fairmont.

  He looked forward with pleasure to the Ottley's rout that night, and felt a sense of letdown when neither Lady Sara nor Ella appeared. He thought then that he ought to have acknowledged Sara's letter, and told them he meant to drop the matter. Very likely they had stayed away because he had not made known his intentions in that regard.

  The next morning he wrote Sara a short note accepting her story and apology, and casually slipped in that he would likely see her at the Opera. In fact, he did see Lady Sara, but not her niece. Ella, she said, was not feeling quite the thing. A bout of flu, she feared. He thought it more likely it was a bout of pique that he had not been to see her, and accepted the lie without a blink.

  “There's a lot of it going around,” he said, then excused himself to go and admire Sherry's latest gown. He stayed with her for five minutes, confirming out of the corner of his eye that Lady Sara was not oblivious to the fact.

  He had to hear from several other members of society what a sly old dog he was, keeping his new flirt out of the city, but he assured them one and all he was not through with her yet.

  Ella stuck by both of her intentions. It was not necessary to go to Fairmont since Clare had forgiven the column, but she stayed at home, and said not a word about him in the few remaining pieces she had to write. Lady Watley and Sara told her what was going on, and she faithfully reported what was told her, so long as it did not involve Clare.

  Patrick was becoming impatient with her long absence, but had decided he would not go to call till he had the pleasure of paying her off in public first. He flipped through his invitations each day, deciding where she was most likely to be, and though he frequently encountered Lady Sara, he never inquired for her niece, nor did he see her.

  Ella was despondent and bored. It proved impossible to write a novel when she was so completely wrapped up in her own predicament, but she sat with the blank pages before her, doodling and telling herself she was planning an outline. She was surprised one afternoon, a week after returning to town, to receive a call from Belle Prentiss. Next to Clare, she could not think of anyone she would less like to see, but curiosity and ennui conspired to have the visitor admitted to her presence.

  Belle, like Clare, looked in vain at every social gathering for Ella and, unlike Clare, took the bull by the horns when a week passed and still she had not seen her. “I hear you have not been well, Ella, and decided to make a sick call. I am happy you are not in your bed."

  “Oh, no, I am not that sick. That is—I am recuperating, you know."

  “You look pulled. Well, I am come to cheer you up, and tell you all the latest on dits.” She proceeded to do this, though there was little Ella had not already heard from her family sources. “Wasn't it a shocking thing that Miss Prattle got hold of that story I told you at Clare? I can't think who could have told her."

  Belle looked closely to see how this comment was received, and was very well satisfied with the glint of malice it elicited from her listener. “I wish you never had told me,” Ella was goaded into saying.

  “Oh, Ella, it was you who leaked the story to Prattle, and everyone thinks it was I. Sherry accused me of it to my face."

  “I am sorry you had to take the blame. It happens I did mention it, but I had no notion it would get talked around so."

  “I see Prattle has quit writing about Clare. Byron is her latest target. I am surprised Prattle has not let the world know the baron's latest folly."

  “What is that?” Ella asked, with a certain eagerness. Neither her grandmot
her nor her aunt provided her with the sort of little follies she delighted in writing up.

  “Oh, haven't you heard? But you have been sick, of course. Everyone is saying he washes his hands and face in pure cream each morning and night, and that is what accounts for their beautiful color. He has such a romantic, pallid complexion, hasn't he?” This was pure fabrication, mentioned to not a soul but Ella, and its subsequent publication in ‘Miss Prattle Says’ would constitute Belle's proof of the author's identity.

  “Does he indeed?” Ella asked, smiling. “How absurd."

  “Yes, the very thing Prattle would revel in. I am surprised she hasn't taken him to task over it. But I daresay she will."

  “Oh, yes, I shouldn't be surprised to read it any day now, since Prattle has taken up Byron."

  Belle stayed half an hour in all. Before leaving she said, “Now that you are better, will you be going to some parties before the season is over?” She wished Miss Prattle's exposure to be as public and humiliating as possible.

  “No. No, I still feel a little weak."

  “What a pity! I had hoped we might see you at Almack's closing dance. But then, of course, Clare won't be there, and I bet that is why you aren't bothering to go to it.” The Duke, she felt very sure, would be there, but she had a sharp idea it was a reluctance to meet him that kept Ella out of society. Really, she was a widgeon of a girl, to be so discomposed at that odd dinner party they had all attended the last night at Clare Palace.

  “I believe the Duke is still in town,” Ella said.

  “Yes, but he was telling me he must go to Dorset the morning of Almack's last assembly, so he won't be at it."

  “I see."

  Belle took her leave, barely able to keep in her delight at having so successfully completed her mission, and Ella, lacking one item for that day's column, wrote up a bit on Byron's supposed use of cream in his toilette. She wrote:

  L—d B—n may be content to eat vinegar and potatoes to restrain his spreading girth, but on his beautiful exterior such stinting is not practiced. We have it that he uses pure cream instead of water to attain that maidenly complexion. He should try drinking it, to counteract the acidic quality of his conversation.

  Without a backward thought, she sealed up the paper and sent it off to Thorndyke.

  As the second week since the party in Dorset progressed, and still Ella remained immured within the walls of her aunt's mansion, Clare became impatient. His anger with Miss Prattle had been overcome, and he even took to scanning her column every morning to see what she had to say. He thought she might resume a more restrained mention of his own activities, but it was all Lord Byron now. He laughed with the rest of London at her roasting of him, but some jealousy was beginning to blend with the laughter. She was paying entirely too much attention to this handsome poet. And where the deuce did she see him and discover what he said and did, for she went nowhere these days.

  He chanced to encounter Byron once at Manton's Shooting Gallery, and teased him a little about Miss Prattle.

  “No, I don't mind,” the poet replied airily, looking dangerously handsome with his jacket tossed off, and his waistcoat hanging open. “It's my opinion, Clare, that she's actually in love with me. Such an excess of passion as she displays can't be all hate. There's bound to be some love mixed up in it. There's little difference between love and hate in any case. Two sides of the same coin. It's their indifference you have to look out for. Just stir a woman out of her indifference, and you can do anything with her."

  “You take an optimistic outlook. I was not so flattered when she pilloried me."

  “You should have been. Why, you have only to look at whom she chooses for her targets. You, me, Hartington—dashing beaux, all of us. She don't bother sticking her knife into any but handsome, young bachelors. I think you're jealous I've cut you out."

  It was so near the truth that Clare naturally contradicted it violently.

  “You've a right to your opinion,” Byron continued, “but if the truth of the matter ever comes to light, we'll see it's some romantic young chit that's doing the scribbling. And pretty fine scribbling it is, too."

  “You don't subscribe to the theory I've heard mentioned that it's Lady Caroline then?"

  “Lord, no, it's ten leagues above her style. Madame de Stael is more like it—but I still think it's some young chit."

  This conversation gave rise to some unpleasant reflections on the part of Clare after he had left the shooting gallery. There was some truth in it, and the part most likely to be true was that Ella had diverted her attention to Lord Byron and had become indifferent to himself. Not once had his name appeared since his return to town.

  He purposely performed a few rash and foolish acts to try to prod her into resuming her guardianship of him. He set up a race to Brighton with Alvanley, with a prize of one thousand pounds. This would have been worth two paragraphs at least when he was in favor with Miss Prattle, but she ignored it entirely and did a column on the indecency of the current vogue among ladies of damping their gowns. He won the bet with Alvanley and started a story, untrue but widely circulated as fact, that he meant to institute an annual pig race on Hampstead Heath with the proceeds. Harley dashed out to his country seat and put all his swine through their paces, to select the likeliest one to garner him the first prize. But Miss Prattle feigned ignorance of the whole affair and took on the debutantes that day, to warn them of the dangers of trotting too hard during the Season. Not more than three outings a day should be undertaken, she advised.

  Back at Clare Palace, the Dowager Duchess of Clare waited on tenterhooks for word from her son. She received none, nor did she get her books by Jane Austen, for that matter had completely slipped Clare's mind. She did hear, however, that Clare was making an ass of himself in London, and in an excess of impatience she had her traveling coach hitched up and put to for the wearisome journey to London. I'll pretend I came for the King's birthday party on the fourth of June, she thought to herself. It will please old Charlotte. She arrived in Belgrave Square in the late afternoon of the day of the closing assembly at Almack's. Though it was nearing dinnertime when she arrived, she found Clare at home, making no preparations to go out, nor to receive guests.

  “What, moping around the house?” she asked.

  “I've been out every night since I got here and decided to stay home and rest. Everyone will be at Almack's tonight, and I'm not in the mood for it."

  “I have been hearing very strange stories about you, Patrick. I didn't mind the race to Brighton. Congratulations, by the by. You must have flown to have beaten those famous grays of Alvanley's."

  “Sixteen miles an hour."

  “But to be setting up a pig race, love. So vulgar. Couldn't you have made it a horse race at least?"

  “That was a faradiddle, Mama. Of course I am not seting up a pig race."

  “Well, it is what everyone is saying, for I had letters from Aunt Sophronia and also your cousin Henry Wyatt, and they wrote of it as quite a settled thing. In fact, poor old Muggins is running the porkers at home till they'll be as tough as white leather when it is time to slaughter them.” Clare smiled, but the effort only emphasized the haggard lines, the weariness in his face.

  “Do you know what surprises me,” she continued innocently, “is that Prattle has stopped taking you to task. She is becoming quite derelict in her looking after you. It is all Lord Byron now. Is it true that the silly young fellow eats nothing but potatoes and turpentine?"

  “Vinegar, Mama. Turpentine would kill him."

  She shuddered. “I can't think what the world is coming to. But the real reason I am here, of course, is to discover what progress you are making with Miss Fairmont and also to see why I have not received my books."

  “I am sorry, Mama. It completely slipped my mind."

  “Slipped your mind? But my dear, did you not dash off here for the specific purpose of making it up with her?"

  “About the books, I mean,” he explained. “We'll go
down to Bond Street tomorrow and see if we can't find them."

  “Ella will tell me where to go,” she said, to get the conversation back on its proper track.

  “It won't be necessary to bother Miss Fairmont,” he replied.

  She directed a look of disgust at him, and said “Cloth head,” in a derogatory manner.

  “Actually, she has not been well,” he said, feeling some excuse necessary for his inaction.

  “And you have never heard of a pen and a piece of paper, I suppose? Certainly one would think them strangers to you for all the letters you ever write me."

  “These things are best done in person,” he said.

  “Yes, and they are best done now, before she goes home, for the Season is all but over, and you may be sure she will be bolting right home to Fairmont if she is in queer stirrups."

  “Yes, well, I had pretty well decided to call on her tomorrow."

  “What's wrong with tonight?"

  “I won't want to leave you alone your first night in town."

  “That is about the most hen-witted thing you've said yet. I had no idea I would find you home and had planned to go early to bed, after two days’ jostling along the potted roads, and spending a night at a very noisy inn which prevented me from closing an eye. In fact, I mean to retire the minute I've had a bit to eat, so I'm not to be your excuse."

  “Very well, shrew. I'll go over to Grosvenor Square after dinner. Lady Sara and Lady Watley will be at Almack's, I fancy. The closing assembly. They won't miss that."

  “And remember to ask her where I am to get my books, too."

  “I mean to make an invitation from you to call on her tomorrow my excuse. You can ask her then."

  “Lord, what a muddle you're making of it, Patrick. You don't need an excuse to call when you're offering for a girl, and certainly not such a lame-brained excuse as that. It doesn't make a bit of sense."

  “You're a lot alike, you and Ella. Always right there with the moral support and ego builders when a fellow most needs them."

  She laughed merrily. “We shall all deal famously. You won't need Prattle with me and Ella to keep you in line."