Reprise Page 15

  “A church, you mean?” he asked, with the greatest interest. “Why do you say so?” It was not his intention to be argumentative, but only to keep the conversation ball rolling in this inoffensive groove.

  “Only because such a huge undertaking must have been inspired by religious motives. If you look at the ruins of antiquity, the Parthenon dedicated to Athena, the Temple of Nike and so on, all were religious buildings. Man requires an awe-inspiring reason to so exert himself.” Prue looked to Miss Burney for support, and received a silent nod of agreement.

  “The Colosseum had no such inspiration,” Dammler pointed out. “It was built for purposes of the most bloodthirsty sport and entertainment. In many other cases you will find self-defense to have been the motivating force. Survival is man’s strongest instinct. All the fortress castles scattered about the countryside of Europe, as well as Hadrian’s Wall and the Great Wall of China bear me out.”

  “Oh walls, that is something quite different,” Prudence said quickly, wishing they might change the subject. “I spoke of buildings. Naturally a wall would not be used for worship.”

  “They would be surprised to hear it in Jerusalem, where the Wailing Wall is usually pretty well occupied on Fridays with Jews lamenting and praying.”

  She gave him a vexed, frustrated look. It was an uneven match, that he who had traveled the world should choose his travels to argue about. He saw the signs of withdrawal on her countenance, and hastened on to contradict himself. “Of course it is on the site of Solomon’s Temple, a remnant of the great temple built by Herod, and has churchlike associations.”

  “Normally an ordinary wall would not be used for worship you must own, Dammler,” Miss Burney said with a laugh.

  “I do admit it, and neither are most huge buildings, either. Those that weren’t built for defense were built for a woman, nine-tenths of them.”

  “A woman? How can you say so?” Fanny asked, astonished.

  “How can a sane man say anything else? Look at the Taj Mahal, built by a Mogul emperor for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.”

  “You will observe he keeps track of the lady’s name, but not the emperor’s,” Miss Burney said in a playful spirit to Prudence.

  “Shah Jehan was the uxorious gentleman’s name,” Dammler said, smiling. “But he’s long gone, Fan. There is no hope of your getting a castle from him.”

  “It is news to me if one example proves a case. It is the exception rather than the rule,” Prudence said in a damping way that renewed Dammler’s attack.

  “How many examples do you require, ma’am? There is the Petit Trianon, and not so petit, either, built by Louis Quinze for his favorite mistress, Pompadour.”

  “You tread on dangerous ground when you go to France, Dammler. You forget I have some familiarity with it,” Fanny pointed out. “All the cathedrals there, the great gothic cathedrals, were built for worship.”

  “Called Notre Dame, everyone of them,” he said with a quizzing smile.

  "Called Notre Dame, for the Virgin, but built for worshipping God. That proves our point, does it not?”

  “It proves that in France there exists a great respect for the Virgin. I speak in terms of religion only, you understand,” he added with a dangerous sparkle that warned Prudence he was about to become even more outrageous.

  But, with Fanny to shoulder the burden of outwitting him, she entered into the discussion, and began to take some pleasure in it. “In any case, we have established most churches were built for purposes of worship, and that was our point,” she said.

  “No, you have surely lost track of the point,” he contradicted baldly. “I will go you a step better and concur that all churches were built for worship. It is redundant to say so, a church being by definition a place of divine worship, but it is large buildings in general that we are discussing.”

  “I cannot think Stonehenge in any case was built for a woman,” Fanny said. “Who in her right mind would want such a weird thing?”

  “Oh but women and a sound mind don’t usually go together,” Dammler said, smiling broadly now to indicate this was mere persiflage. "We’ll find out when the archaeologists get around to solving the riddle that some demanding wench wanted a larger colonnade than her neighbor, or a backdrop for her garden.”

  “Something new in the world, a garden of such dimensions,” Prudence said.

  “There is nothing new under the sun. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, you will recall, was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They would dwarf the monoliths of Stonehenge. Built by Nebuchadnezzar, at the behest of his queen, no doubt. You will notice I can’t supply the lady’s name, Fan.”

  “Not even one doubt he built it for his own greater glory?” Miss Burney asked.

  “Not in my mind. Men are all fools about pretty women. The pages of history are littered with our corpses, beggaring, wounding, even killing ourselves to please you tiresome creatures.” He rubbed his shoulder and leveled a meaningful look on Prudence, who hadn’t a notion what he was getting at.

  “I have usually found the pages of history littered with the corpses of men killing themselves to usurp a country that doesn’t belong to them,” she pointed out, very much in the spirit of her discussions with Allan at home in Grosvenor Square. She was beginning to wish Fanny Burney would discover some other party to go to.

  “Or a woman that doesn’t belong to them,” Dammler pointed out, wagging a slender finger at her. "Vide Helen of Troy.”

  It was Fanny who found an answer, however. “It is not established that the Trojan War was fought over Helen. There is myth and legend so mixed up in it--well, Eros, the Goddess of Discord..."

  “And love,” Dammler added quickly. “But then the two are practically inseparable. Sorry for the interruption.”

  “Eros is supposed to have been instrumental in starting it, so you cannot call it history.”

  “Myth based on fact, as myths usually are. They found the right culprit in a woman, in any case. You have only to look at literature--you don’t see Hero being so foolish as to swim the ice-cold Hellespont for Leander. No sir, a man making an ass of himself and as often as not getting killed, for the love of a woman, every time.” Prudence received another reproachful look, but took it as an indictment of her sex. “Cleopatra making fools of Caesar and Mark Antony, and even in the Bible, Delilah shearing Samson down to size. Salome--the word means 'peace,’ imagine!--ordering up poor John’s head on a platter, and Herod so infatuated he did it for her, too. Why, there is nothing a beautiful woman might not do once she has laid her conscience to rest.”

  “I am stunned into silence at such a plethora of evidence of our fallen nature,” Fanny laughed.

  “You, Prudence, nothing to say in defense of your sex?” he asked with a certain pointedness.

  “I expect what has been robbing you and me of a monument all these years, Miss Burney, is our conscience,” she answered.

  “Oh, have you grown one of those?” he asked, with a little laugh. “I daresay Salome felt a twinge when she saw John’s head coming in.”

  “He works by induction,” Prudence explained to the other lady, quite easy in her mind now. “He goes from the specific to the general, you see, which is never conducive to fact, only more or less to probability. You will notice he avoids deduction. It is the university teaches gentlemen these sly tricks to confuse us women.”

  “What, you refuse to believe the evidence of history when it is at such pains to repeat itself, ad nauseam? Would you like more examples? Let us quit trifling and begin at the beginning of our own species. Take Adam and Eve now, a typical case of man betrayed, and everyone of you since has followed in Eve’s footsteps.”

  “More induction!” Prudence cautioned. Yet, as she cast hurriedly about in her mind for some refutation, she could think of no good female except Hannah More, and she seemed sadly out of place in this historical and Biblical discussion. “There was Queen Elizabeth!” she announced at last. “Look at all the good she d
id, and without benefit of a king, too, I might add.”

  “By all means let us take Liz. A typical example. How did she go on now? Had her cousin Mary executed, killed her lover, Exeter, carried on quite shamelessly with all her courtiers, using them for her own ends, including poor Sir Walter Raleigh, whom she ultimately tossed into the Tower when she’d finished with him, and in a dirty coat, too. A typically heartless, selfish female. Only think what she might have accomplished if she hadn’t been as ugly as our present Queen! Yes, she is really an excellent argument on my side, ladies, but how about yours?”

  “Now he has sunk to roasting us,” Fanny said. “I have every assurance you can handle Dammler without my help, Miss Mallow, and I see Malvern is beckoning me to the card table, so I leave this sophist in your capable hands.”

  “Now we get down to an equal match,” he said, smiling with satisfaction as he arose to join her on the sofa, with a light of anticipation in his eyes.

  Prudence feared the match had become suddenly very uneven indeed, but was not about to let him know it. Nor did she feel the slightest dread he meant to be impossible. He was the old Dammler again, lively, engaging, and still the most interesting man she had ever met. “It astonishes me to learn you hold such a low opinion of females,” she said with a happy martial light glowing in her eye.

  “You know me better than that, Prudence! I am as eager as the next to be made a fool of by a beautiful woman. Come, do your worst. It won’t be the first time you’ve decked me out in cap and bells, to play the clown.”

  “You play Don Juan more convincingly.”

  “The greatest clown in history--I am a natural for the role. And will be delivered unto devils like Don one day; meanwhile, I am at your disposal to deliver to a more temporal fate. Or do I offend you, to intimate my role as ‘Guelph’ will not be immortal?”

  How quickly all her dread returned as he delivered this sentence. She looked up, alert to danger, to see him quizzing her with his best smile. “But I forgive you,” he went on. “The male of the species--what chance have I against a woman? It is your custom to prey on us. Futile to fly in the face of nature. And in return we glorify you."

  It was not raw nature he spoke of, but the novel and the sonnets. They were getting down to it, and she was half glad. “I have told you I am sorry about that.”

  “I have told you I forgive you. Let us not become repetitive. We were used to argue more fiercely.”

  Eager to be done with personalities, she turned to more objective matters. “Ah, well, if it is an argument you are after, I shall be happy to oblige you. I have been making use of the dull repetition time in my usual prudent fashion to gather my wits and present you with the following point. If it weren’t for us women, much as you deride our selfishness, the world would be bereft of massive architecture. To say nothing of the other arts--painting, sculpture, poetry.”

  “Very true. I have been saying for some time we exert our best efforts to immortalize you. Mona Lisa, Clarence’s old flirt, Heloise, Phryne--who would ever have heard of any of them if a man hadn’t written about them, or painted them? What is known of La Gioconda but that Leonardo thought her face worthy of recording? I fail to see the attraction myself--a very sly smile the lady wears. Or of a little French orphan if Abelard hadn’t fallen desperately in love with her and renounced a career that might have seen him Pope, to say nothing of other disastrous physical consequences for his pains?”

  “Well, but on the other hand, who would have heard of the men, if women hadn’t inspired them to greatness?”

  “I have an inkling we might have heard of Leonardo without Lisa. He did a few other things, you know. However, it was my point that men exert themselves to the limit for a woman. Somehow, you end up supporting me every time. Do you think it could be because I am right?”

  “No, I think it is probably because you have ten thousand books, while I have only two small shelves. Lady Malvern has more, however, and tomorrow I shall browse through them and discover who these Heloises and Phrynes are you speak of. Unless you wish to enlighten me now? I confess you know more cold facts that I do.”

  “More hot ones, too, I bet!” he laughed, then sobered up quickly. “Oh, dear, how did I come to mouth so much debauchery in two minutes? Neither a castrated cleric nor a Greek prostitute can be of any interest to you, Prudence.”

  She felt a sudden twinge of guilt that he was again muddying her with his black character. Yet how nice it was to hear him talk, knowledgeably and well about something of more interest to her than Clarence and his interminable painting. How long was it since a conversation with anyone had sent her to the library to learn a new fact?

  For some time they talked on about objective matters, not touching again on the state of affairs between themselves, but reaching at least a superficial peace. It was impossible to remain isolated all evening at a polite house party, however, and later Mr. Rogers and some others joined them.

  When Prudence went up to her bed, a ridiculously ornamental affair more closely resembling a gazebo or pleasure dome than a canopy, she was still excited from the encounter. Allan had not seemed so very angry about the book. Why had he stayed away for so long? But they had not really spoken at length on personal matters. Another day, she thought, might bring that about. What should she do if he was inclined to offer for her again? Throw her scruples to the wind and snatch at the chance, as she wanted to, or be wise. “An unstable character,” Fanny had called him, and it was true. Yet how attractive an unstable character was to her, when he came in the form of Lord Dammler.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The habits of a lifetime were not broken so easily that Prudence actually stayed in her bed past eight in the morning. She went down to breakfast at nine-thirty or ten like the others, but it meant dallying in her chamber for the better part of two hours. Today she would dally in the library, instead, to gain fuel for her discussions with Allan. She smiled happily as she roamed the shelves, peering into books of Grecian antiquity and Egyptian monuments, architecture and history--all matters that interested her because they interested him. Surely that was a point to ponder, that a man, even one who was not uniformly steady in character, should be the means of one continuing with her education. A small voice told her there was nothing to prevent her following a course of instruction apart from Dammler, but a louder one told her she wouldn’t do it.

  He was still not at the table when she finally went into the breakfast parlor. Again there was a letter for her, from her mother this time, with some unsettling news. Clarence was behaving oddly, worse than before. He now absented himself in the evenings as well as the days, and Mrs. Mallow had taken alarm that it was a female that took him away, as he would tell her nothing about his activities. Mrs. Hering had heard from Sir Alfred, and considered the item of enough importance to involve relaying, that he had been seen on the strut with a very beautiful woman, young woman. The business was gone beyond sittings in a studio. He was going public in the matter, and it caused Prudence some worry.

  She was frowning into her letter when Dammler came to the table. “What’s the matter, Prue?” he asked, stopping beside her.

  She hastily stuffed the letter into her pocket. “Nothing serious. Mama is a little worried about Uncle. That’s all.”

  Dammler did not look at all surprised at this, she noticed, and suspected he knew well about it. “Slipped the leash, has he?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “We’ll talk later,” he said, looking around and finding he must move to the end of the table to take a seat.

  Miss Burney began mentioning a drive over to see some church, but before a firm companion could be obtained in Miss Mallow, Lady Malvern said, “How long do you plan to remain with us, Dammler? I hope you won't rush off.” As he and Prudence were not bickering, she considered it eligible to encourage him to remain.

  “I must be at Longbourne today. I sent word I am coming. I’ll have to leave soon.”

  “It’s only a f
ew hours away. Stay for lunch, at least.”

  "I want to talk to Tom this morning,” he said, with a little questioning look to Prudence, that relayed he also wanted to talk to her.

  The church Fanny spoke of was close enough to insure their being back for lunch, and Prudence went with her, as she didn’t wish to announce she sat around waiting for a moment of Dammler’s time. She had very little idea what she had seen when she got back. She only knew that after lunch she would be with him, and she could hardly wait for the meal to be over.

  He walked to her side as they left the room. “Let’s go out into the garden to talk,” he suggested as the group broke up to inhabit various rooms, thus taking away the certainty of privacy.

  The idea appealed to her, though there was a brisk autumnal breeze in the air. In the hallway, she took up her pelisse. “I’ll take this, to ward off the cold,” she said.

  “There is no such a thing as cold, Prudence,” he said with a strange smile.

  “Indeed? The Eskimos will be surprised to hear it.”

  “No, I’m serious. There is physically no such a thing as cold. There is only a relative absence of heat.”

  “You are not serious, but only looking for an argument, and I have other crows to pull with you, so this ploy is not at all necessary.”

  “The matter can be argued for hours together. I’ve done it.”

  "Where did you find anyone foolish enough to humor you in this conceit? I hadn’t realized you were gallivanting with morons. I should have easy work winning today’s round. I wish you were right, but if you are, my study has not heard of this new turn of physics. It is penetrated with the most soul-destroying cold ever felt--or imagined.”

  She was too sensible to argue the matter; too sensible too to give in without an argument. He thought of her remark about her cold study, thought of the fine grate in her rooms at Longbourne Abbey and in London. He didn’t consider it the propitious moment to mention them, but some trace of his thoughts was in his eyes as he took her arm and opened the gate from the rose garden into the park. “What matter is it you wish to argue then?” he asked.