'I, didn't know you had a visitor.'
Mrs Damer let out a shriek of laughter. She covered her mouth. 'I keep getting things wrong and the performance hasn't even begun.' She leaned to whisper in Eliza's ear, 'We say the French lady for our monthlies.'
Eliza flushed in annoyance at herself.
Derby came up then, in Mr Lovemore's nightgown. Eliza had never seen him without breeches before; she looked away at once. With his little calves, he was like a child, only hairier.
'Prinny's just swanned in,' Mrs Damer told him, 'with Mrs Fitzherbert, of course.'
'I'm surprised she came, given how shamefully she's been treated in the press this week. There's the Duke of York with him,' said Derby, his eye to the crack in the curtains. 'I'm glad he only brought one little brother; seven princes and six princesses is more than England will ever need, even if an epidemic of cholera were to run through St James's Palace.'
'Treasonous talk.' Eliza giggled.
'Gad,' murmured Derby, 'here comes Fox, arm in arm with the Prime Minister. Now that's a gracious gesture.'
'Wouldn't you do the same yourself, for the occasion?'
'Well, I might, but I'd be tempted to break Pitt's twig of an arm once I had it in my grasp.' Derby looked round with a grin, then seized each lady by a hand. Eliza let him, for once. His palm was hot. 'You know, we three...'
'Yes, Derby?' said Mrs Damer.
'I think we're alike, aren't we?' He looked from face to laughing face; he squeezed their fingers. 'We each know what it is to be pre-eminent in our field, whether it be sculpture, or acting, or sport—and we know the pressures that distinction brings too. Fame! As Milton dubs it, the spur that pricks us to labour in the cause of greatness, but also our weakness, that last infirmity of noble mind. We three understand each other.'
'Have you been drinking, My Lord?'
'Oh, not more than a couple of bottles over dinner,' Derby assured Eliza. 'Just enough to help my lines flow.'
Mrs Damer rolled her eyes.
The bell rang, to Eliza's relief. For a moment she found herself searching her mind for her first cue. How absurd: she'd forgotten she was the manager.
Mrs Hobart, in front of the curtain, began delivering Field Marshal Conway's prologue. 'Well, at least she's loud,' Eliza whispered in Mrs Darner's ear to make her laugh. They were on their own in the wings, Prompt Side, while on the Opposite Side, in the shadows, Sir Harry Englefield was giving them a manic wave. The band was playing a musical overture. Mrs Damer pressed her fingers to her mouth, then took them away; she looked at them to see if they were stained with rouge. 'Are you in pain?' Eliza whispered, remembering the French lady.
'Not much. I was up very late last night, reading over my lines; I'm so afraid I'll forget them and let you down.'
'Oh, but you won't,' she assured her, touched that the woman seemed to care less about acting well than about Eliza's approval.
'Did you suffer from stage fright, when you began your career?'
Eliza tried to cast her mind back to those crude pantomimes in Liverpool. 'Really, I can hardly remember a time before I was on the boards, one way or another. And when I advanced to Drury Lane, well, it was only a bigger house. I find acting strangely relaxing; to play a part gives me the confidence of always knowing what to say. No, I sometimes suffer from life fright, if anything,' she added quietly.
'Life fright?' Mrs Damer stared at her.
'The difficulty of being Miss Farren,' she said, 'and knowing my lines. Deciding what to wear, what to do, whom to see, what to say.'
The sculptor was nodding.
'But yes, of course,' said Eliza more lightly, 'there've been a few occasions when my heart's been in my mouth before curtain-up. I trust my own powers, but I don't trust the crowd.'
'But don't we—don't your audiences always love you?'
Eliza made a face. 'What I hate is a spirit of controversy and titillation; it's so distracting. Sometimes the newspapers have been so full of nonsensical talk about me—my character, my connections'—she didn't want to say Derby's name—'that nobody in the crowd is following the play.'
'I know. I know exactly. I suffered that way after my husband's death. And Derby,' she said bluntly, 'how does he bear it? Does he always laugh off publicity, as he claims?'
'He and I never speak of it.'
The bell went again and they both jumped. The music had ended without Eliza noticing. The stagehand came to lower the chandeliers and light the scores of tapers. Mrs Lovemore's drawing room flickered to life.
The green curtain was winched open. Everything was slower than at Drury Lane, but this was an audience of friends, Eliza reminded herself. They immediately recognised the six ladies hung up in gold-edged frames and there was a thunderclap of applause. Eliza's own portrait was leaning against a chair, in what she realised now was quite the most prominent position on the stage.
Sir Harry bounded on to the stage. He pronounced the opening line with such gulping clarity—A plague ... go with iti—that he provoked another round of clapping. Eliza felt oddly moved. They were really trying to please her, all her Players. She gave Mrs Damer's shoulders a gentle push and she was off, crossing the stage and settling herself at the tea table. She stared into her cup with what Eliza almost mistook for an air of contemplation. The fixed gaze gave her away. Eliza began to panic. Go on. You don't need a prompt, not for your first line. 'This trash of tea'—
'This trash of tea!' declaimed Mrs Damer with such vehemence that the pent-up audience broke into another wave of laughter. She glanced up at them, startled. 'I don't know why I drink so much of it,' she admitted. 'Heigho!'
They roared, they shrieked, as if they were all tea addicts and had never heard a wittier sally. Eliza could see the colour warm Mrs Darner's cheeks, pinched by an invisible hand.
At the interval Richmond had ices served in bowls. Mrs Farren and Eliza stayed backstage to avoid the crowd. 'It's stifling hot,' observed her mother, fanning Eliza. 'Too much of a crowd for this tiny playhouse.'
'It's going well enough, isn't it, don't you think?'
'Splendidly,' said Mrs Farren.
In the second half Derby caused whoops of mirth when he fell asleep during dinner. The crowd even tittered on painful lines, such as when Mrs Lovemore cried out, 'I am lost beyond redemption.' But they weren't mocking the actors—Eliza could always tell what kind of laugh she was hearing—they were just keyed up. Meeting her husband at Lady Constant's, Mrs Damer drew herself up to her full height. 'Do you come disguised under a mask of friendship?'
As for Derby, he was quite the libertine. Did everyone contain their opposite, Eliza wondered, and did it only take some play-acting to let the demon out? 'Hell and destruction!' he roared, when all his plots were exposed in the last act.
The curtain swung shut and the applause rang out like brass. Strange, thought Eliza. For one night only a few ladies and gentlemen put on an old play and it was an event worth interrupting Parliament for.
Mrs Damer came in front of the curtain for the epilogue her father had written for her. The point of the piece seemed to be that theatre thrilled her even more than chiselling marble.
Oh, could my humble skill, which often strove
In mimic stone to copy forms I love,
By soft gradation reach a higher art,
And bring to view a sculpture of the heart!
She took her bows and walked off, straight into Elizas arms. 'Thank you,' she said, cheek to hot powdered cheek, 'thank you, thank you!'
The footmen were removing the chairs from the theatre, to let the crowd mill around, and bringing chilled champagne on trays. Eliza feared her face was scarlet from the heat; she tried to mingle unobtrusively, but people kept rushing up to congratulate her. John Philip Kemble, the gravely handsome rising star of Drury Lane, appeared at Eliza's side; he must have been invited by his sister Mrs Siddons. Somehow he always had the air of an ancient Roman wrapped in a cloak. 'A very creditable job, Miss Farren,' he murmured, 'considering what you h
ad to work with.'
There was Horace Walpole, spindly as a spider, declaiming that his cousin Mrs Damer was the most wonderful actress ever to grace the boards. 'Well, who should act genteel comedy so perfectly but genteel people? The generality of actors and actresses—though I exclude the divine Miss Farren, of course'—catching sight of Eliza and making a stooped little bow—'have seen so little of high life that they can only guess at its tone and put on second-hand airs.'
Smiling, Eliza thought his theory nonsensical. As if one needed to have killed a man to act Macbeth!
'How the nobility of the last century would have thought themselves degraded, though, to see their descendants play at being players.' The remark came from a plainly dressed woman Eliza recognised as an authoress who'd recently given up playwriting, because of the sinfulness of the stage.
'What old-fashioned views you hold, Miss More,' said Walpole, regarding her quizzically. 'You make me feel so young.' He waited for the round of laughter. 'What I say is, let each of us express our particular genius however we can, whether with speeches or songs or—a chisel,' he added, as Mrs Damer joined them. 'Ars longa, vita brevis, as Seneca puts it.'
'Well, yes, of course,' said Miss More awkwardly, 'true talent never degrades.'
Sheridan had come up a moment before and given Eliza a casual nod for greeting. Now he remarked loudly, 'One might go further and say that there's a glory in the name of poet or painter, actor or politician, that will outlive any merely hereditary titles.'
'Hear, hear,' said Mrs Damer mischievously.
'One might, if one were a downright leveller,' said Walpole, squinting at the newcomer over his tiny glass of champagne.
Sheridan wandered off with the gaudy-suited Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert, telling them something that made them laugh uproariously. 'Do you notice how Fox keeps his distance?' murmured Mrs Damer in Eliza's ear.
'Hm?'
'From Prinny. Fox hasn't spoken to him all evening! Derby says Fox is still too furious about the secret wedding. It's caused a dreadful breach between the Prince and the Party.'
'You're so au courant when it comes to politics,' said Eliza, 'it's a shame you don't campaign any more.'
'Nonsense! All I pick up are scraps. Now for true insight into Foxite affairs there's no one like Georgiana,' said Mrs Damer, pronouncing it to rhyme with saner, as everyone did. 'Do you know her?'
'I haven't had the honour...' Eliza looked over at the swarm of guests around the red-haired Duchess of Devonshire, splendid in blue satin.
'Then come with me.'
It wasn't that the Duchess was so very beautiful, Eliza thought as they got closer, it was that she wore her clothes so naturally. That rather shocking novel, The Sylph, was said to be the Duchess's own story, but of course she couldn't admit to its authorship. On one side of her stood the long-limbed, sleepy-looking Duke, and on her other arm hung the tiny and coquettish • Lady Bess Foster, in matching blue—beloved companion to the Devonshires for the last five years. Recently there'd been talk of Devonshire putting Georgiana aside—as punishment for her gambling away so much of his fortune—but they all looked perfectly happy tonight. The financial affairs of the Beau Monde were mysterious to Eliza; they could owe so much and be in such straits, yet never be seen in last year's fashions.
Georgiana embraced Mrs Damer as frankly as a child. 'Oo star, oo! We've decided to forgive you for hiding away at Richmond House all these months.' She and Lady Bess were wearing little jewelled miniatures on chains, Eliza saw—oh, yes, they must be portraits of each other—and the same flowery scent.
'Have you noticed our latest invention, by the way?' asked Lady Bess. She and Georgiana tossed their heads, showing off an unusual arrangement of ostrich feathers that stuck out sideways.
'It'll be copied all over Mayfair by Saturday,' Mrs Damer assured them.
'They nearly put my eye out a few times tonight,' grumbled the Duke of Devonshire. 'Delightfully acted, I must say, Mrs D., and delightfully managed too'—with a nod to Eliza.
Mrs Damer made the formal introductions.
'It was all simply ravish,' said Georgiana. 'We've only ever read aloud from Shakespeare. Why couldn't we put on some theatricals of our own at Chatsworth? Something with childies in, so our Little G. and Harry-o can play.'
Eliza remembered that the Duchess was much resented by her in-laws for having produced only daughters so far. 'I could supply you with some charming comedies featuring little girls,' she offered.
'Oh, yes,' said Lady Bess, clutching Georgiana. 'Let's us, Canis, pwitty pweez'—turning to the Duke.
'Well, perhaps, Racky,' he said, 'if you and Rat are vewy dood,'
Eliza kept her face pleasantly blank, but when she and Mrs Damer moved off she risked a grin. 'Do they always go on that way?'
'I'm afraid so,' said Mrs Damer. 'Vastly affected—but one can't help but love Georgiana for her warm heart.'
It was on the tip of Eliza's tongue to ask if it was true what people said, that Lady Bess went out riding alone with the Duke, betraying her friend behind her back. Could such an astute politician as Georgiana really be oblivious to what was going on at Devonshire House, or was it possible that she didn't mind? But no, she'd better not say any of this to Mrs Damer, for fear of offending; as a newcomer, Eliza was better off keeping her eyes and ears open and her lips sealed.
TONIGHT EVERYTHING had changed, Derby thought, with a light-headedness that didn't come from the champagne. The World was treating Miss Farren as the next Lady Derby. He'd introduced her to Prinny and Mrs Fitzherbert, to the Duke of York, to Field Marshal Conway and Lady Ailesbury, to a brace of other tides—and she'd been received by them all with rapturous respect. For Derby, it was like that moment in a cockfight when one's bird got the other by the throat.
He felt like laughing aloud. He was in a spin. In all the confusion he'd forgotten his cane. Could he have set it down in a dark corner of the stage after making his last exit? He ran up the steps and went in behind the flats.
There was Eliza. She must have retreated from the crowd of guests; she was picking up bits and pieces, a handkerchief, a folded page torn from somebody's part. For a moment there was no glamour to her, no brilliance; she was simply a young woman picking things up off the floor and Derby had never seen anything lovelier.
She must have heard his breathing; she turned.
'Ah, I was just hunting for my cane,' he said, aware that he sounded drunk. 'Have you seen it?'
Eliza shook her head.
It was the first time that they had ever been alone together. The thought struck Derby like a knife in the ribs. This was no accident, this was a stage set for the great scene. He took a step closer. 'I wonder,' he said, 'I wonder, Miss Farren, whether you saw that paragraph in the newspaper the other day? In The World! His tone was uneven.
'Oh, I don't read such stuff,' she told him.
That was an equivocal answer. 'Perhaps some friend brought the item to your attention? It was a libel, about—' He had been going to say my wife, but he feared to pronounce the phrase and break the bubble. 'About me. I just wanted to tell you there's no truth in it.'
'I wouldn't credit anything said of you in a newspaper.'
He couldn't tell if she was lying. It didn't much matter. His destiny was the manager and Derby knew his lines by heart; hadn't he been practising them for years? He went close to her. 'How long are we to go on pretending?'
'Pretending, My Lord?'
'Six years is a long time.'
'I pretend nothing,' she said.
'Rehearsing, then, if you like. For six years I've paid you every possible attention, every homage of the most particular and striking kind.'
A lesser woman would have stepped back, but Eliza only narrowed her eyes. It was a tiny gesture, not one that would be visible from the gallery.
He rushed on. 'You can't be in any doubt about the nature of my feelings.'
'Feelings?' she retorted. 'I think I should call my mother.'
/>
Derby seized her by the hand, astonished by his own gall. 'For once, just this once. Let's speak privately.'
She looked down at his knuckles till he lifted them. A more ordinary woman would have tugged her arm away, he thought; Eliza could do it with a single glance. 'I've nothing to say of feelings.'
'Let me speak, then.' Derby disliked the note of pleading. 'Just listen,' he said more firmly.
'What kind of speech am I to listen to?'
'Not a declaration of love—' he assured her.
'I'm glad to hear it.'
'Not that,' Derby pressed on, 'because after six years you can't need me to spell out what every look, every word's revealed to you and the whole World beside. Also because I'm not a boy of eighteen to declaim starry-eyed speeches.'
She jumped in as soon as he paused for breath. 'Also because you're a married man.'
Derby was chewing his lip. 'Irrespective—'
'It's true.' Eliza's heart was banging. She'd never said those words to the Earl before, never thrown the fact in his face. She'd thought—hoped—it need never come to this. Why should he need reminding? Why did he have to wreck everything? The scene was all wrong, she thought. Leave off, ladies and gentlemen, "we'll try that again from the top.
'I don't deny it, in a strictly legal sense,' Derby blustered. 'Though I've never laid eyes on the lady in question since she left Knowsley nine years ago, I swear it.'
Why didn't you divorce her then, and be done with it? Eliza wouldn't say it; she'd made herself that promise a long time ago. She'd never protest, never beg, never let him believe she was waiting for him.
'You know my peculiar situation as well as I do,' he pleaded, 'everyone knows it, despite those lies in the newspaper about a reconciliation.'
She stiffened. What reconciliation?
'But surely two sophisticated individuals—surely in these awkward and exceptional circumstances, it could still be possible for us to ... to rise above our difficulties and come to some kind of discreet arrangement,' he said unhappily. He blinked twice, three times.
The word stuck in her craw. Arrangement. It was a petty, sneaking, shopkeeping sort of word. Had Eliza come so far and made so many sacrifices, won the nation's respect as a new kind of actress, kept her dignity, turned herself from a pauper into a lady, only to be accosted with an offer of an arrangement? 'Good night, Your Lordship,' she said loathingly and turned on her heel.