Joan Smith: Imprudent Lady / An Imprudent Lady

Mr. Elmtree could not understand why his niece went into a fit of desperate giggles, but charitably assumed it was due to her great luck in nabbing Lord Dammler for a beau. He was dismayed he had forgotten to get the fellow’s address to drop him a line for his appointment. Prudence did not mention the efficacy of Mr. Murray as an intermediary, and the subject dropped.

The following week was a calm one for Miss Mallow, allowing her to catch her breath after her spate of public life. She sat home working most days and went with Uncle Clarence and her mama to one very dull dinner party and with an aged female friend of her uncle to a concert of antique music. Lord Dammler was feted at Carlton House by the Prince Regent, found that an unknown young female had smuggled herself into his apartment during his absence one evening and was waiting for him in his bedroom, was requested to write a comedy for presentation at Drury Lane, won a thousand pounds at faro, enjoyed a flirtation with Lady Margaret Halston, and was presented with a paternity suit for a child conceived while he was still in America, by a girl who knew his reputation but not his itinerary. It was a calm week for him, too.

On Friday evening he stopped at Lady Melvine’s to take her to a rout he would prefer to have missed. He found her dressed and ready, a hideous purple turban on her head and an excess of diamonds sparkling about her person.

“Setting up as a shop window, Het?” he quizzed her.

“Don’t I look horrid? But I haven’t a stitch to wear, and the diamonds detract attention from this old gown, don’t you think?”

“They certainly detract from your elegance. Nothing is so vulgar as too many diamonds. You don’t need both the necklace and that awful cluster of brooches, do you?”

“No matter, when I walk in with you I will be the envy of them all.”

“You forget I have a reputation to maintain, Auntie.”

“The reason I am so ill prepared is that I have spent the whole afternoon reading another book by that Miss Mallow you recommended.”

“Oh, has she written more than one?”

‘Three-all delightful. The Cat in the Garden is the one I have just put down.”

“Sounds monstrously exciting,” he drawled, then yawned behind long fingers. “Is it about animals then?”

“No, it is a two-legged cat referred to in the title. An old tabby like me who lurks about her garden seeing things she shouldn’t, and telling.”

“Which she also shouldn’t. I’m surprised at such dissipation coming from Miss Mallow’s pen.”

“You cannot know her well!” Hettie laughed.

“Hardly at all. Don’t tell me you have her acquaintance."

"I've met her. Fanny Burney brought her to call on me last week, and sat with her lips pursed the whole visit at her protegée’s impertinence.”

“I think we must be speaking of two different ladies. My Miss Mallow could not by the broadest interpretation be called impertinent.”

“Not to your face maybe. She does a fine job of ripping you up behind your back.”

“Indeed!” He looked stunned. “May I ask what she said? We are virtual strangers. It is odd she should speak to my discredit.”

“It is rather your works she dislikes than yourself.”

“I seem to recall she complimented me on the cantos.”

“Ask her sometime for her true opinion.”

“I am asking you, Hettie. What did she say?”

“My, how your head has become swollen! A fellow writer may not find a single fault in your work without your mounting your high horse. Well, it was nothing so very bad after all. She only took exception to your being chased by Indians and rescuing three women and emerging unscathed to attend a ball and dally with the governor’s wife the same night. I must say, it seemed a point well taken.”

He shrugged. “I am not a novelist who counts up the hours in a day, but a poet. Was there anything else?”

“She was not happy at your hogging the whole world for your setting. She is to launch her next heroine off into the cosmos and out-do you in wonders.”

“She is welcome to try her hand at it. I make no claim to having visited the stars. Is that the sort of thing she writes?”

A peal of laughter escaped Lady Melvine. “Good God, no! She was funning. Very down to earth indeed. She couldn’t be more so. Well, I have her three books here. See for yourself.”

“I don’t read novels.”

“Suit yourself. You’re missing a good bet.”

He picked up The Composition and glanced at it. “Very well, I’ll try it. It will lull me to sleep one night, I expect.”

“Indian giver!” Hettie charged. “Oh, by the way, if you chance to be speaking to her again, she knows you gave me the book-and the very day you received it, too, so don’t put your foot in it.”

With a tapered finger, he reached up and adjusted his black patch. “Now I wonder if that is what got her hackles up? I've already told her how much I enjoyed it.”

“Oh, when did you see her again?” Lady Melvine naturally had no hope of making a romantic conquest of her nephew, but she took a proprietary interest in his affairs.

“Last week. I found her a dead bore-not a word to say for herself, but she has an uncle whose acquaintance I could come to cherish.”

Hettie teased him to say more, knowing by his smile there was some joke in the matter, but he refused to satisfy her vulgar curiosity. The rout was a squeeze, at least until Lord Dammler took his leave, when several others left as well. He went to a club and lost half the money he had won the week before. As he was about to step out of his carriage before his apartment, his hand brushed Miss Mallow’s book, and with a shrug he carried the three slim volumes into the building. It was not yet late. Taking a glass of ale, he opened Volume One, skimming a line here and there. He smiled at a telling phrase or a description, and before long was reading in earnest. Unlike his aunt, he was a fast reader. Before he went to bed, rather late, he had finished the second volume, and before he had his breakfast in the morning, he finished the third and was converted to Miss Mallow’s growing list of supporters.

Had he been informed beforehand that the novel was about a youngish spinster and her boring aunt, living alone in a quiet neighbourhood with only a country person for romantic interest, he wouldn’t have opened the cover. But though nothing much happened, he kept turning the pages, eager to peer into the minds and hearts of these normal people. It had an air of reality about it- that, he fancied, was the trick. No preposterous doings of the sort he wrote about-no, to face the dreadful truth, here was literature, and what he wrote was claptrap. He sat musing for some time on the matter, and the more he compared the prim little lady’s work with his own tales, the more dissatisfied he became. He went out and bought copies of the other two novels, and spent an afternoon reading The Cat in the Garden. Having already met her uncle, he recognized him as the musical lady in The Composition. He marvelled at her nerve in serving up such a parody-she, who looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She knew, of course, that the old boy didn’t read. But who was she writing about in this other one? He was convinced it was a real person, and one he was curious to meet. Tired with reading, he went out to a dinner party that evening and found himself seated beside “Silence” Jersey, the most renowned chatterbox in London. He smiled to think what Miss Mallow would make of her. The fact that she was never silent removed nine-tenths of the burden of conversation from him, and he thought again of Miss Mallow. On an impulse he decided he would call on her again-take her out for a drive to get her away from the babbling uncle, and see what she had to say for herself. He figured he could draw out a shy young lady without too much trouble. How the ton would goggle to see him driving in the park with an unknown little spinster! This too amused him.