His daughter turned her head away, and gazing out of the window at the village of Chelsea fell into one of her dark silent moods, which annoyed Byrd, whose good humor ebbed. Evelyn’s question incited several uncomfortable thoughts. He had not begun to search for a husband suitable to Evelyn, because it was first necessary to settle his own matrimonial state. A wife with some fortune was essential, more essential than anyone knew except Micajah Perry, his business agent. Only Perry was aware of the crippling debts Byrd had inherited from his dead wife’s father, or knew of the new debts incurred by the necessities of fashionable life in London. Byrd’s mouth tightened, and his eyes grew as somber as Evelyn’s while he thought of the five times he had proposed marriage in the last years, and of the embarrassments, the humiliations, inflicted by the five ladies of wealth and quality who had first encouraged his gallantries and then callously refused him as a husband. The last was the worst. Minionet, Byrd thought with a pang. Little Mrs. Jeffreys, who was a plump comely widow of good family and independent means. She had a pretty wit too, and in their exchange of amorous letters had called him the “Black Swan” and signed herself his “entranced and fluttering Minionet.” He had then sent her a persuasive word picture of himself signed “Inamorato L’Oiseau.” At that time he was amused by puns on his name.
Then, despite his frenzied entreaties she had suddenly ceased writing and she had obviously abandoned discretion about their courtship, for at Will’s Coffeehouse, Byrd finally discovered what had changed her. Ridicule. His friends were sniggering over a lampoon, which they were passing from hand to hand.
Sweet Jeffreys netted by a Byrd
Had better straggle loose
Or she will find when ‘tis too late
Black Swan is but an old gray goose.
Everyone denied authorship, of course, but Byrd had seen a mocking glint in Wilfred Lawson’s merry brown eyes, and his hatred for the young man crystallized. Long past were their days of real companionship or their jaunts together in quest of gambling and debauchery. Two years ago a quarrel had arisen over another woman and their friends had narrowly averted a duel. Since they had mutual acquaintances, and inevitably met, they resumed distant courtesies. Then Sir Wilfred, who was M.P. for his family borough at Cockermouth in Cumberland, had run into debt, and been publicly accused of corruption in the South Sea scandal. Worse than that, he took to voting Tory. Even last November Sir Wilfred had spoken against Walpole in a motion of the Grand Committee for the further punishing of all Papists. Byrd, who had known and admired Wilfred’s father, felt compelled to remonstrate acidly with the young Baronet, who rudely shrugged off the rebuke. This happened at a small ball to which Byrd had brought Evelyn, and Sir Wilfred had there further infuriated the father by singling out the girl and sitting with her for hours in a hidden alcove.
Isoon put a stop to that! Byrd thought, glancing at his daughter’s averted profile. He had dragged her back to school, and forbade her ever to speak to the Baronet again, should chance throw them together. She had wept and promised, and seemed so abashed by the whole episode that Byrd had been very gentle with her, and ended by sending her a new ivory fan as consolation. She needed a mother’s guidance, Byrd thought, and so did little Wilhelmina, who was seven, and still living with his Horsmanden cousins in Essex. Though it was Evelyn who seemed to have inherited the violent willfulness of her mother, and of her maternal grandfather, Daniel Parke, Governor of the Leeward Islands, who had there contrived to get himself most gruesomely murdered.
Byrd moved irritably on the coach seat, dismissing painful memories and considering the wifely possibilities of Maria Taylor, who had neither high birth, beauty, nor large fortune to recommend her, and was moreover encumbered by a veritable gorgon of a mother. Yet, on the other hand Miss Taylor was young, healthy, and well educated, and she dispensed balm to an oft-wounded heart for she showed genuine signs of attachment to himself.
Jenny huddled between the two silent Byrds, and being unable to see over them out of the windows, fell to picturing scenery in her head, as she often did. Sometimes she thought about the sea -- tumultuous waves, white-flecked under moonlight, but always she ended by picturing a moor-clad mountain; dark, craggy, and yet for some reason comforting. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” Mrs. Strudick had read this out of the Psalter during morning prayer last month, and the words had caught Jenny’s attention. They gave her a delighted shiver of recognition, like certain pieces of music. Jenny began to sing, “Over the hills and far away . . .” in her head, and felt a bitter-sweet pleasure, mixed with a great longing.
She wasn’t sure what the longing was for, except that joined to the image of somber lowering hills was a memory of Rob. Rob had left London three years ago, “going back North,” he said in a triumphant way which had wounded her, for he scarcely seemed sorry to say goodbye. Lady Betty had been there at this farewell, and very kind to Jenny later, explaining that Rob had made quite a lot of money as running footman to the Duke of Wharton. That he had won a famous footrace for the Duke, all the way from Woodstock to Tyburn. The Duke had rewarded him well, and then invested Rob’s money in the South Sea Company, which was making all their fortunes -- had said Lady Betty happily. So Rob would be his own master up North, and a landowner too. And Jenny was only a little girl, and mustn’t fret .for a rough serving-lad who was not a suitable friend for her at all. Jenny had tried to obey, and often forgot about Rob; yet the feeling of being lost and rootless had deepened in her.
The Byrd coach trundled on through the flat Thames-side villages and drew up before the Peterborough mansion at Parson’s Green.
Byrd ushered the two girls into the house and towards their host. Charles Mordaunt, Third Earl of Peterborough, a brisk, dapper gentleman of sixty-five, was -- after a singularly hectic military and personal career -- beginning to enjoy a quieter life. He stood alertly greeting his guests at the door of his ballroom, which was set out for a concert with sofas and rows of gilded chairs.
“Ha, Byrd!” said Lord Peterborough jovially. “You’ve brought with you two beautiful birds, I see!” He chucked Evelyn under the chin and gave a slight start as he examined Jenny. His wrinkled lids opened wider, his eyes lit with a connoisseur’s appreciation. “This one yours too?” he asked of Byrd. “What a toast she’ll make! Would I were forty years younger!”
Byrd disclaimed Jenny, who blushed and curtsied, thinking the old Earl agreeable, for all he looked very much like a cricket. “You know my family?” continued the Earl, indicating two young people who stood behind him. He introduced the Byrd party to his fourteen-year-old grandson and heir, Lord Mordaunt, and then to his niece, Elizabeth Lucy Mordaunt, who was a plain dumpy girl of about twenty. Both young Mordaunts made polite murmurs, then turned away to greet other friends. “And you know Mrs. Robinson?” said the Earl with special emphasis, and unmistakable pride. He reached out his hand to a large sweet-faced lady who had been standing quietly in the doorway. “She has consented to sing for us today.”
Byrd did indeed know Anastasia Robinson. She was the reigning prima donna at the Opera House, yet managed to maintain such a formidable respectability, that rumor said Lord Peterborough, balked of his desire, had actually married her in secret. Deplorable weakness, if so, Byrd thought, since the lady was not only a public performer but a Catholic. Still Mrs. Robinson was accepted by high society, many of whom were present today, and Byrd perceived complacently that he himself knew most of them, at least by sight.
Byrd settled his two charges on a sofa in the empty ballroom, told them to stay there, then, seeing that the musicale would not start for some time, he began a leisurely tour around the rooms.
In the withdrawing room he saw the Twickenham group chatting together animatedly. Alexander Pope, the famous poet -- a hunchback with sharp probing little features --was laughing at some sally of John Gay’s. This minor poet was considered to be Pope’s satellite, and a chubby beaming moon he looked, too. Miss Martha Blount was s
eated with them, and everybody knew that Pope was as much in love with her as his warped body and mind would permit.
Byrd had met Miss Blount, and considered joining their party, when he suddenly spied the young dissolute Duke of Wharton, sprawling in an armchair and drinking brandy. Over the Duke hovered two of his particular protégés. One was Edward Young, an aspiring middle-aged playwright, who lived on the Duke’s bounty, and had lately gone in for writing tragedies. In consequence Young’s narrow short-chinned face wore an appropriate air of studied melancholy. The other dependent was Guido Serpini, an Italian musician whom the Duke had picked up somewhere on his travels. The Italian acted as general factotum for his patron -- secretary, procurer, and even more private roles, it was said. Serpini was a North Italian and had sandy eyebrows above squinting green eyes; he smiled quickly and incessantly, disclosing pointed yellowish teeth. Byrd considered that he had a vicious look, and was just such a fellow as Wharton would pick for an intimate.
Philip, Duke of Wharton, was only twenty-four, and he had a girlishly pretty face beneath the wig of cascading white curls. But he was president of the blasphemous Hell-Fire Club, and he had a reputation for wildly fantastic depravity, second to none in England.
He also had a lowborn wife hidden away somewhere, though her existence was disregarded alike by society and the Duke. At the moment he was ignoring his toadies and flirting languidly with Kitty, the lovely Duchess of Queensbury, and he was half tipsy no doubt. The latest lampoon about him in the coffeehouses went:
Some folks are drunk in fine, and some in foul weather
And some, like His Grace of W -- n, are drunk twelve years together.
Drunk or not, Wharton was no fool. He occasionally made brilliant speeches in the House of Lords, and by judicious switching of sides at the right moment, he had managed to get himself endowed with extraordinary honors, first from the Pretender in France, then from King George here.
Though in May the Duke had spoken eloquently in defense of the Jacobite Bishop Atterbury, Wharton was still considered a Whig, no matter how erratic a one; and Byrd wondered whether there was any help to be got from that quarter in the matter of Virginia’s acting governorship. Other influential friends, though full of promises, had achieved nothing.
Last year Governor Spotswood had been quietly replaced by a nonentity called Drysdale. Byrd, overlooked again, had perforce remained content to be Virginia’s agent. This bitter disappointment sprang from two things, as Byrd well knew --that he held no English military title, and that he was born a Colonial. Yet bigger obstacles than that had been surmounted when pressure was brought to bear in the right places. And here was a channel not yet explored. Byrd stared thoughtfully at the Duke of Wharton. He abandoned that scheme upon seeing Mrs. Howard entering the room. Henrietta Howard was not only the Prince of Wales’s official mistress and had great influence at Court, but she was an old acquaintance of Byrd’s and invariably charming to him. He rushed up to her, bowing and smiling.
From the sofa in the ballroom the two girls also examined the company, Jenny with dazzled interest and Evelyn with a nervous urgency. Finally she gave a start, and whispered to Jenny, “Thank God! There he is! Look, just behind the screen!”
Jenny looked, saw a young man eying them intently, and knew it must be Sir Wilfred Lawson. He smiled and made a slight beckoning motion to Evelyn, who rose in confusion, “If Father asks, tell him I’ve gone to the Necessary House, tell him ‘tis the physic,” she whispered, and darted towards her lover.
Jenny nodded and stared hard at a statue of Juno, praying that Mr. Byrd would not come back and question. Her every sympathy was with Evelyn, though she was puzzled by her glimpse of Sir Wilfred. He was no taller than Evelyn, and rather square; even at this distance she had seen that he was not handsome. Hardly the romantic figure Jenny had pictured on all those nights when she stood guard and Evelyn had stolen down to the school garden-gate and met him. Love must be a very strange thing, Jenny thought, which was followed by a mature inkling. Did Evelyn’s passion for Sir Wilfred have something to do with her feeling for Mr. Byrd -- was it partly defiance of her father?
Jenny’s musings dissolved in panic as someone approached her sofa, and said, “Well!” in an emphatic voice.
It was not Mr. Byrd. It was a magnificent willowy youth, wearing diamond rings, and starry medals on the breast of his rose-brocaded coat. He was gazing down at her, a peculiar expression in his half-shut pale blue eyes, and Jenny jumped up with a frightened apology.
“No. Sit down,” said the youth, shoving her on the shoulder so she had to. “I’m Wharton.” Then, as Jenny looked blank as well as frightened, he added, “I’m the Duke of Wharton. Who are you?” He sat down beside her.
“Jane Lee,” said the girl, recovering her courage. She surveyed him almost as steadily as he did her, and discovered with a mixture of fascination and repulsion that he was not a youth but a man, though his face was painted and powdered like a lady’s, and he had a black crescent patch on his forehead. Also his breath reeked of something unpleasant she did not recognize, though it was certainly not wine.
“Where did you come from?” said the Duke. He pulled out his quizzing glass, and screwing it into one myopic eye, examined her insolently from the crown of her yellow hair to the undue expanse of silk-stockinged ankle.
“I came from school, with Miss Byrd, your grace,” said Jenny, resenting the appraisal. Inexperienced as she was, she knew it to be sexual and almost impersonal.
“Exceedingly young--” he said with relish and a high-pitched laugh. He smacked his rouged lips, and ran one well-polished fingernail down her bare arm. “Don’t wince, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re the tastiest piece of girl-flesh I’ve seen since leaving Paris.”
Had Jenny been older, a dozen acid retorts would have occurred to her. As it was she simply voiced her prime amazement, “So you are the Duke of Wharton, Rob was running footman to!”
“What!” Wharton was startled out of his lascivious thoughts. “What do you mean?”
“I once knew a running footman who was in your service,” explained Jenny hastily, wondering if she had said too much. Never before had she dared mention Rob to anyone but Lady Betty.
“I’ve had many footmen,” said the Duke, raising a plucked eyebrow. “I shouldn’t have thought a young lady would interest herself -- but wait! Did you say your name was Lee? Are you Lord Lichfield’s niece?”
“No,” said Jenny. “I’m just, just a ward of -- of the Lees.” And she blushed uncomfortably.
“Ah --” The Duke gave a lazy laugh. “Now, I remember. The little bastard, of course,” he added to himself. Bastard either of his distant cousin Betty’s or of that paralytic lunkhead of a colonel she’d married. It had greatly amused him when he came back from abroad to find that there existed such an irregularity in the pompous Lee household. And what a byblow one of them had begot, to be sure! She’s exquisite, thought the Duke -- green fruit, and I would like to ripen it. “I know the footman you mean. I hired him away from Lichfield,” he said pleasantly. “Best runner I ever had. Robert Wilson. I grew quite fond of him -- fonder as it happened than he was of me -- great male hairy brute that he was.” The Duke gave a high laugh and a shrug, which Jenny did not understand. “I treated him very well -- but he left me, invested his savings in the South Sea Company, thought he was rich -- poor devil.”
“And isn’t he?” asked Jenny anxiously.
The Duke shrugged again. “Not if he was caught when the bubble burst -- like most of us.”
Jenny bit her lips and was silent. She knew about the South Sea Bubble. The Lees had lost a great deal of money in it, and Colonel Lee had suffered an apoplexy as a result. Valuable paintings had been sold from the mansion on George Street, the staff cut down to four, and Jenny could not have stayed at school without Lord Lichfield’s help; since Lady Betty had three children of her own to rear, and an invalid husband to care for.
“Guido!” called the Duke suddenly, and
gestured towards his Italian secretary, who had been hovering some feet away. “Bring another brandy!”
“Wiz pleasure, your grace,” said the Italian, running over. “Then it is permitted that I begin the accompaniments? His lordship wishes la Signora Robinson to start singing.”
“Aye, indeed,” said Wharton languidly. “You can do your tweedling and twanging -- that’s what I brought you here for. Yet stay --” The Italian turned and waited. “What do you think of my discovery?” The Duke put his hand on Jenny’s neck, pinched it gently, then wound his fingers through her thick yellow hair, and pulled her head towards him. She shuddered at his touch; rage such as she had never known exploded through her body. She violently slapped the insinuating painted face which was approaching hers.
“Per Bacco!” whispered Guido, appalled. One or two people turned to stare curiously, wondering who the pretty girl was who seemed to have discomfited Wharton. The Duke sat immobile on the sofa, pressing his hand to his rapidly reddening cheek.
“I’m s-sorry, your grace,” stammered Jenny, collapsing. “I can’t b-bear to be touched.”
The Duke looked at her without expression. “ ‘Tis plain to see you’ve peasant blood in you, my sweet,” he said. “I dislike coarseness.” He got up and walking away from her, seated himself on the other side of the room, which was rapidly filling up.
Jenny sat stiff-necked on the sofa, fiercely trying not to cry. She knew that by any of the codes she was being taught, she had been unbearably childish and ill-bred. One did not insult a duke who condescended to admire one, and who had not even hinted at what Mrs. Strudick warned all the girls were “dishonorable proposals.” Yet she was not contrite. The Duke, and that Guido too, emanated a sort of decay -- like rosebuds which never opened and remained hard and glossy but rotted within, giving forth at last an evil smell because of a hidden black worm inside them.
There was a bustle at the end of the ballroom. Guido glided onto the harpsichord bench, Mrs. Robinson stood up in her gentle stately way and waited for the rustlings and chair-creakings to cease.