“To see where Plato and Aristotle and Kant and those other geniuses have gone astray, you mean?”
“That’s the idea,” he answered blandly. “They were only human, like me.”
Ignorance is bad enough; arrogance is worse, but an arrogant ignoramus is intolerable. When he pulled his monocle out of his pocket and rammed it into his eye, I could conciliate no more. “It is incredible that the Teutonic race, which gave us Leibniz, Kant and Schiller should have so far retrogressed as to throw up only a Ludwig Kessler to correct them.”
“I was born and bred in England, ma’am, and have never been in Germany in my life.” I was only rarely “ma’am” at the lowest ebb of our relations or the height of disagreements. I had touched a little nerve then, and was pleased.
“If you were born in a stable it wouldn’t make you a cow I suppose,” I suggested with a polite yawn.
“Oh, no, a bull, surely.”
The best way to deal with that sort of obtuseness is a dignified silence, and I wish I had kept a rein on my tongue. However, he took not the least exception to being called a Bierwurst. I doubt he knew it to be a beer sausage, or maybe he was gratified at having incited me to such a display of bad temper. I’m sure every jot of my considerable wrath was evident on my face. Nothing else would have rung that sardonic smile out of him. He lifted out the monocle. “I can be
led,
Rose, as you well know. I cannot be driven.”
“I had a
mule
like that once.”
“I once had a bitch with a particularly nasty disposition. I had to get rid of her.”
I don’t expect you have ever been called a bitch. It exerts an indescribable and in my case uncontrollable fury in the breast. I reached right out and slapped his face, hard. Caught off guard, he was not prepared to stop me. He just looked stunned, as I realized too late what I had done—the enormity of it, and the ill-timing.
“I’m sorry! Ludwig, I didn’t mean to . . .” I stopped in mingled horror and embarrassment, trying to read his expression. It was still stunned, but rapidly recovering to anger. My hands reached out involuntarily, and I grabbed his sleeve. He didn’t say a word of either vituperation or forgiveness. He regarded me like a man hypnotized for about forty seconds, then he smiled enigmatically and reached his arms out to encircle my waist. I felt such a great wave of relief he wasn’t angry that I was a little delayed in responding. Before anything more could come of this promising beginning, there was the sound of running in the hall. Abbie had come to haul us back to the Saloon.
I still wished to apologize, to explain my unpardonable behavior. I later secured about two seconds in which to do it, while Annie toured the room blowing out candles and Abbie poked down the fire, just before we all retired.
“Sir Ludwig,” I began, in a voice that sounded unnatural with propriety, even to myself.
“If you are rehearsing to apologize, Rose, don’t,” he said. “It was inconsiderate of me to goad you when you have so much on your mind.”
I had nothing on my mind but the apology. I do not often tender an apology, and for some reason I felt rather cheated. When we steel ourselves to do the right thing, we like to get on and do it. “Anyway, I’m sorry,” I said.
“Then I suppose you force me to say, with what sincerity I can find, there is nothing to be sorry for. But if you are standing there with that scowl on your face waiting for
me
to now apologize, you’ll have a long wait.”
“I only expected you to say I was forgiven.” This had an abject sound to it that disgusted me. “That you aren’t angry, I mean,” I adjusted rapidly.
“I am blazing angry—that Abbie interrupted us,” he said with a boyish smile. Then he walked off and took the poker from Abbie, for of course the final poking down of the fire is the peculiar prerogative of males. A mere female cannot be trusted with such an onerous chore unless she has the felicity of living apart from men.
* * * *
The next morning when I came downstairs, the paintings in the Saloon had been changed. I had found a new way to bearlead a gentleman—by slapping him on the face! Not a word was said about it, but when I went into the Saloon once more to lament this one bone in my throat, the Fragonards, dainty
fête-champêtre
scenes of lovely ladies in flower-bedecked swings being pushed by dashing cavaliers had replaced the horses. Gainsborough’s human animals remained. It was not complete capitulation. They were insignificant on a side wall and were not so bad as the horses, in any case. I stood in the center of the room, looking all around and smiling at the wonder I had created. It was a room anyone might be proud of, I thought.
Sir Ludwig entered at the door, looking rather sheepish at his giving in. “I suppose you will now start in on me about the cat and dog,” he said.
“No indeed I will not! You deserve one token of your own atrocious taste. There was a snake in Eden, after all,” I replied, but in a rallying good-natured way, to show him I appreciated his sense in following my advice. “You must own this is an improvement. Now you have a Saloon to be proud of.”
“Fool that I am, I was not ashamed of it before.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it was bad enough to be ashamed of, but now it is lovely.”
“I collect I ought to be thanking you for your help.”
“Just bear it in mind when you are adding up my bill. I daresay ten or twenty years from now, when your wife wishes to redo it again, Annie will be scolding her that Rose Trelawney especially wanted to have those Fragonards hung in the Saloon. Pray do not consider the room is to be set under glass, immutable forever.” I hoped the word ‘wife’ might joggle his memory as to his interrupted business in the library the night before, but it failed.
“Do you think then that in ten or twenty years Miss Trelawney will have left us?”
“It begins to look as though she has made herself a life tenant, does it not? I had thought we would have heard from Mr. Williker by now.”
“Scotland is a long trip, and the roads at this time of the year are not good. For him to get there and get a letter back to us would take two weeks, or close to it.”
It was to be business, but the servant in the hallway took an occasional peep in at us, which might account for his failing to grasp this opportunity.
“I feel I ought to be doing something in the meanwhile to find myself.”
“We can insert advertisements in the paper, if you are overcoming your aversion to it.”
Strangely enough, I had almost forgotten about my peculiar position. My mind was more bent on claiming the indisputable right to remain on than getting away. Busy with the renovations and the ball, with the excitement of the New Year approaching, I had resolutely pushed all conscious thoughts of my position back to a corner of my mind. It would, of course, intrude when I was alone, particularly at night when I lay in bed, but hard as I would try then to drag forth some pertinent memory or clue, nothing came. I had more dreams, my sleeping hours were more productive than my waking ones. I dreamed again of sheep and highlands, of myself sitting at a desk writing cards, of standing under a sweltering sun in Italy, looking at the Arno, and then painting Abbie as a Botticelli grace. I dreamed once again of the Medici triptych, after a visit from Mr. Gwynne, who dropped by occasionally to talk of art with Sir Ludwig and myself. I had not overcome my aversion to a public advertisement, but began to see I must be ruled by common sense, and was firming up my resolve to do it. “Maybe we should advertise,” I said, a little reluctantly.
“Shall we wait to hear from Mr. Williker?” he suggested.
“Very well,” I agreed at once, snatching at the delay.
“As to doing anything to discover who you are, outside of advertising I can think of nothing. Bow Street notwithstanding, I feel you must be wound up in the Grafton affair, and if he can run Uxbridge to earth, we’ll discover you have some corner in the muddle. So, Red Herring, let it not spoil our party. I am looking forward to our first party, Rose.”
Chapter Eleven
Christmas was not marred by any intrusion of my past. It was a happy event, celebrated in the customary way. The party for New Year’s was marred by a host of sundry annoyances, not least amongst them an echo from my past. Some of the guests arrived a day early, and I saw right away they were not the sort to merit champagne, nor the huge housecleaning we had undertaken. They were inelegant county people who would have been quite satisfied with the normal fare of Granhurst. I was introduced to two persons already familiar to me by anecdote. Valerie Hodgkins, the late Kessler’s first love was there, a dumpy woman whom it was difficult to imagine any man having loved, ever. Annie assured me well within the woman’s hearing, “She was not so Friday-faced when she was eighteen, nor so chubby.” The woman did not appear to recognize the satinwood commode; she scarcely glanced at it. Nor was there any tarnished tea pot in the kitchen; I had been down to check.
The other lady was the one Annie had castigated as muffin-faced, a former flirt of Sir Ludwig. She was not quite so ugly as Valerie, though I would have called her fubsy-faced myself. A squashed, fat face, with a figure to match. She was nudging thirty, still single, and still determined to try her hand at landing Kessler. He was surprisingly dexterous in avoiding her. He must have kept a sharp eye in her direction to move off every time she advanced towards him, and to do it always so nonchalantly that it could not be said he was running.
I was the object of much interest to all these relatives, who suggested variously that I was a French spy, an actress and a fortune hunter, though it was all done by innuendo of course, and in a perfectly forgiving way. It was Fubsy-face’s mother who insinuated the last-named charge. “How very odd you turned up at the door of a bachelor’s establishment,” she said, regarding me with a knowing look.
“Yes, though to be fair, Mrs. Veeley, I had no notion the Reverend Mulliner was a bachelor when I went there,” I answered, refusing to understand her significant glances to Sir Ludwig.
“Mulliner? Good gracious, were you there, too? Another bachelor! I hadn’t heard you had tried a hand with him. But you came to Ludwig, instead.”
“Yes,” I answered civilly, “for it was commonly said in Wickey that he was much richer.”
She bridled up and looked sharply to her daughter, who looked at Sir Ludwig with a warning glance. “Is the engagement to be announced at the ball then?” Mrs. Veeley asked him in a heavy-handed attempt at irony, while Fubsy-face smirked.
“Why, no, we think it more proper to discover Miss Trelawney’s real name first,” Sir Ludwig replied, impassive as a rock to all the jibes.
“What are you doing to discover it?” the mother asked.
“We are making investigations,” he answered vaguely. “Ah, Rose, would you mind coming with me to meet the Helterns, who are just arriving?” he asked, offering his arm and smiling politely as we walked away.
“You see how useful I am in guarding you from Miss Veeley,” I quizzed him. “I’ve noticed you darting off like a frightened hare every time she advances on you. This should be taken into consideration when you bill me for draperies and gowns.”
“I’ll add it on to your marriage settlement,” he answered. “I suppose I must make some provision for you as you are a fortune-hunting pauper.”
I was presented to the Helterns, who were as dowdy as all the rest, and viewed me with as much distrust. I was the freak again, the exotic bird to be examined for plumage and habits.
“What a charming party it promises to be after all,” Sir Ludwig said after he had turned the new guests over to the butler. “Do you not take the feeling you ought really to be behind bars?”
“It is an excellent idea. I feel a strong urge to bite. The Trelawney is possessed of a highly unstable temperament, you must know.”
“I come to understand why. I even understand why the Trelawney nearly bit my head off when first I met her.”
I did not bite, except verbally. I must own I gave the Veeleys a few sharp setdowns, and when the son of the Helterns suggested I was welcome to return with him to London, which I would find vastly more amusing that being Ludwig’s mistress in the country, I told him quite sharply I doubted London or anywhere would be at all amusing under his patronage. He did not take it in bad part at all, but continued putting his proposition to me at every opportunity.
When the evening of the ball arrived, we were all still on speaking terms. Scarcely a friendly word was exchanged, but we did speak of social nothings. I donned the bronze gown with a little assistance from Abbie, who looked very well in her gown with the satin waistband. I had no jewels, of course.
“Why don’t you borrow my topaz eardrops?” she offered.
“I should wear my diamonds with this outfit,” I answered heedlessly.
She looked at me, startled. “Do you have
diamonds,
Rose?”
“Good Lord! Whatever possessed me to say such a thing? Wishful thinking, I daresay.” Yet it had slipped out so naturally—’my diamonds.’ I had quite a clear picture of one particular set of diamonds in my mind, too. Not large, but well-matched, a necklace and bracelet and earrings. I could almost feel the lobes of my ears tingle.
They were always uncomfortable,
flashed into my head.
“Maybe Lud would let you wear mama’s diamonds,” Abigail suggested, uncertainly.
“No! Don’t think of it. What would all your relatives say?”
“Why, more of what they are already saying,” she laughed. “I’ll get the topazes.”
They added at least a little sparkle to my ensemble. When Ludwig gave me a careful perusal, however, I wished more strongly than ever that I were wearing someone’s diamonds.
“One would never take it for second-hand,” he complimented mildly. I could see right away he didn’t like the outfit.
“Your jacket isn’t showing its twenty-odd years, either,” I returned. It did look two or three years old though, and was added to my list of items in that house to be replaced.
“I should have thought to lend you some jewelry,” he mentioned, still regarding my gown without enthusiasm.
I don’t think this was actually the improvement he had in mind. The gauze overdress was designed to conceal, and it filled its function pretty well. With the likes of the McCurdles coming to our party, I was determined to appear in a respectable light. It was partly for this reason I coerced him into opening the ball with Miss Veeley. Partly, too, it was done to restore that pair of female pests to good humor. It put Ludwig in the boughs, but then he had been amazingly hostile throughout the entire visit, constantly repeating when he was beyond his guests’ earshot that this had been a wretched idea, and wondering when were they going home.