by Hill, Fiona
It was nearly six o’clock. Maria had invited the Highets mère et fils to arrive at eight. Anne allotted herself exactly one quarter of an hour to sit still, after which she was determined to go over the house with Miss Veal. She did her sitting still in a drawing-room Susannah (requested to fetch some lemonade there once Maria had been attended to) identified as merely that—“the Drawing-Room.” Anne tried not to think, while she waited, how strongly this suggested there was only one in the house. If so—well, it was comfortable enough, at least, furnished with deep chairs and sofas covered in flowered chintz, with a set of French windows opening onto a brickwork terrace that afforded a view of the park, and a large marble fireplace. A small pianoforte kept, she soon discovered, tolerably in tune stood in one corner. In another was a clever, many-drawered work table, with good lamps and every kind of scissor and needle ready furnished. Anne suspected strongly that Miss Veal had sat at this table many an evening, bearing the bachelor Mr. Guilfoyle company while she darned his socks.
She had no intention, however, of attempting to verify her conjecture. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” was the adage in her head when the old lady duly arrived to escort her through the rooms. The tour, mercifully for Anne’s tired bones, did not take long. On the ground floor were this drawing-room, the dining- and household rooms she had already seen, a study which had been used by Mr. Guilfoyle, a snug parlour furnished, in shades of green, rather more plushly than the other apartments, and a quite large library filled with the works of every kind of radical and free-thinker, as well as scores of tomes on farming. Upstairs were eight bedrooms, of which she had already seen her own and Maria’s. None of the others was at all grander or more elegant than the one she had slept in, though each, like it, was airy, scrubbed, and comfortable in a homely way. Besides these there were two small sitting-rooms obviously not much in use, and a large, carefully tended conservatory at the end of one wing. Above this floor were the servants’ rooms and the attics—and that was all. Saving the pianoforte, there was not a stick of fruitwood in the place, not a gilt frame (nor even a family portrait!), not an inch of inlay, not a scrap of silk on the walls.
Anne thanked Miss Veal and went at once to the desk in her great uncle’s study, which she intended to make her own. She found a good supply of writing paper and some pens and ink in a tolerable state, and at once dashed off a brief but impassioned letter to Celia Grypphon begging her to come to Cheshire. To be sure, she included the anecdotes saved from this morning, with an account (as humorous as she could make it) of the afternoon with Rand; but the heart of the letter was a plea that her friend should join and comfort her here. “For a week at least—no, even for a day. I can offer you nothing but cheese and fine walking (there might be a pheasant hiding in the wood nearby, though I rather doubt it), a plain feather bed, and all the barley you like. It is little to tempt you with, but pray do come. I deserve it. I need the solace of your wit. My life is overturned, not only because of E.—whose news I guess you have heard—but for a reason even he does not know. Anyhow, if you will not come, put this letter into Charles’ hands and let him persuade you to it.”
She closed after asking Lady Grypphon to bring with her the latest numbers of certain journals she felt sure could not be had in Cheshire. The mere act of writing made her feel better, as if Celia invited were Celia half arrived, and she rose from the desk with a lighter step than she had had all day. She was just looking for Charlotte Veal to ask where she must leave the letter to be posted when that lady came into the front hall looking for her, carrying a letter just arrived.
The two missives were exchanged. Anne, looking at the one confided to her, felt her heart lurch with relief and could hardly repress a lunatic smile. She hurried upstairs. In the privacy of her room, with fingers that trembled idiotically, she broke the seal and read,
My dearest Anne,
If you do not mean to return to London before next week, pray allow me to come to you. I must see you at once. I have a thousand things to say. Be merciful and tell me I may come.
ENSLEY
Anne rang her bell, opened the ebony lap-desk, wrote “Come,” on a clean sheet, folded, directed, and sealed it. Susannah arrived to collect it a moment later. Then Anne summoned Lizzie to help her bathe and dress for dinner.
Curiously, Miss Guilfoyle found herself almost looking forward to her guests from Fevermere. When Maria (neatly and soberly dressed as usual) went in to tell her they had arrived, she was delighted to hear Anne actually singing, and to see her robed in a delicate gown of celestial blue, with a bandeau to match.
“Enter, enter, my dear,” trilled Anne, looking over her shoulder while Lizzie put a finishing touch to her golden curls. “Quite rested now, I hope? My reliance is all on you, you know, to make this evening ‘go.’ Not but what,” she added mischievously, “I am sure Mrs. Highet is a brilliant conversationalist. Like her son.”
“You seem happier,” observed Mrs. Insel, wisely letting this slur pass without comment.
“Who would not be happy, who has one hundred Shropshire cows to call her own?” Anne hopped up from her chair, sneezed, provisioned her reticule with a second handkerchief, and tucked her arm under Maria’s. “Oh, Ensley will come to see us soon,” she remarked carelessly, as they strolled to the stairs. “I have invited Celia and Charles as well. Is there any other person you would like to have? Some one hardy, with a sense of comedy?”
A few more light observations such as these and they were in the snugly fitted Green Parlour, saying good evening to their guests. Henry Highet, quite correctly attired now in a blue coat, a white waistcoat, and black pantaloons, stood and bowed rather deeply. His cravat puzzled Anne a little—it appeared to have started life as a Noeud Gordien, yet ended with more than a hint of the Bergami twisted into it—but even with her disposition to find fault in him, she could not help but be favourably struck by the regularity of his strong features, the mobility of his mouth, the freshness of his high colour, and the liquidity of his sleepy-lidded eyes. His black hair, she noticed now, he wore rather long. It curled (without encouragement, she supposed) en Cherubin. The blue coat fitted his broad shoulders well, if not perfectly, and he was so tall as quite to tower over her when he had finished bowing. His was not, all in all, a style of handsomeness that had ever interested Anne (as she noted silently); but she had to confess it was impressive.
Now Mr. Highet gave his slow smile and introduced his mother, who had also risen when the ladies came in. Mrs. Highet was discovered to be an immensely gawky person, tall, large-boned, almost hulking. It was difficult to imagine how a woman could have gone through so much of her life—Miss Guilfoyle judged her to be above sixty years of age—yet acquired so little of gracefulness; but there she was. The strong features she had passed on to her son still survived in her wrinkled face but, as so often happens with women, what suited and enhanced him made her plain. Anne thought she caught a shrewd glimmer in the mother’s eye which was not to be found in the son’s. The ladies shook hands. Anne was surprised to notice her own hand was damp. Her mind began to tick. Might a cold make one’s hands damp? She could hardly be worried about meeting an elderly country widow, she reflected. But then why—
Her thoughts were turned from this confusing channel by the intrusion of Mrs. Insel’s voice. Maria was thanking the Highets for accepting the invitation to dine, describing to the old lady all the various, generous feats her son had performed the night before, expressing her delight in knowing them…Anne listened with a guilty apprehension that she herself ought to have been saying these things; only she had been so occupied with her private prejudices and strictures that she had neglected her duty. She resolved to mend her ways henceforth and set herself especially to be gracious to Mr. Highet. Maria having entered with that gentleman’s mother into a discussion of needlework (for she had remembered the pincushion Mr. Highet sat upon last night) Anne was free to initiate her program of amiability at once. So she begged Mr. Highet to join her on the chintz-covered
settee and gaily confided,
“Mr. Rand has been showing us over the home farm of Linfield today. I confess, he quite terrifies me. Such a brusque fellow; I wonder if he is so to everyone. I suspect he is but indifferent pleased to find himself employed by me.”
Though Anne’s tone had been light and cheerful, Mr. Highet listened to her very seriously, and answered with a gathered brow: “Indeed, I am sorry to hear it. Such an attitude must hamper you severely in managing the estate.”
“Oh dear,” said Anne, disconcerted by his solemnity, “I cannot blame him so very much after all. I dareswear he considers a town-bred lady has no business to run such a place as Linfield—and I dareswear he is not far wrong.” As she spoke she could not help but wonder again whether Mr. Highet knew who would have inherited if she had not. Perhaps Rand knew; perhaps the two of them were in a plot to make her uncomfortable at Linfield, so that she would leave. But that was preposterous. Mr. Rand was a mere common garden-variety misogynist, while Mr. Highet was a mere common country—but no, she must, she would learn to be tolerant of Mr. Highet. Making an effort she continued, “I have a very great deal to learn if I am to fill my benefactor’s shoes. I hope I may ask you to help me now and then?”
“I shall be glad indeed to assist you in whatever way possible,” Mr. Highet replied, just as gravely as before, “but I fear I do not know enough myself to teach you to be Herbert Guilfoyle. He was a gifted farmer indeed, and a sage and kindly friend. You must feel his loss keenly.”
“To be quite truthful, I hardly knew him. I met him only once, when I was twelve.” Out of patience with all this reverence of her eccentric relation, she added impulsively, “Actually, he refused to speak with me until I had read Rousseau.”
To her annoyance, Mr. Highet seemed to find in this ridiculous incident only another rich example of the late Herbert’s worthiness. To be sure, he did laugh—throwing back his head and waiting, as he had last night, quite two seconds before exploding noisily—but when he had recomposed his countenance it was only to say warmly, “How like him; what a wonderful story. A most remarkable man!”
Finding nothing to say, Miss Guilfoyle listened to this tribute in uncomfortable silence.
“But about Mr. Rand,” Henry Highet at last reverted, “you must certainly ask me whatever he fails to make clear to you.”
“I am most grateful.”
“How do you like the farm? It is a model, is not it?”
“If you say so, I must think it is. I have no other farm with which to compare it.”
“But have you always lived in London, then?” he asked, his tone profoundly pitying, as if the mere idea distressed him terribly.
Ignoring his intonation, “Not always,” she replied. “Before my father died I lived at Overton, in Northamptonshire. But then his brother inherited and my mother and I removed to town.”
“What, for ever? How sad for both of you! How dreadful,” continued he sympathetically, “to be obliged to quit your home.” And he shook his head as if for very sorrow.
“We preferred it, in all candour,” Anne coldly rejoined. If she hated to be laughed at, she fairly squirmed to be pitied. Anyway, the theme of being obliged to quit one’s home struck closer to the bone than she could bear just now. How was it Mr. Highet contrived to see her as luckless and pitiable? No one else did. “We throve in London. My mother loved London,” she declared. “So do I.”
“You speak of your mother in the past tense,” he observed quietly. “Have you lost her?”
“Many years ago,” Anne snapped. What a genius this dolt had for making her look pathetic! But could he really be sincere? There was something almost womanish, she found, in his gentle, tiresome sympathy; and whatever his intention, the effect of his commiseration was certainly to torment her.
“I am so sorry,” said Mr. Highet simply, with a glance at his large, very lively mother which seemed to say, “Thank God, I have been spared that loss as well.”
“Are you often in London?” Anne demanded, hoping to turn the topic (and wondering yet again if he knew the terms of her inheritance).
“Not often. Never, actually, since coming down from Oxford. Now I think of it, that means—good heavens, sixteen years ago. I have been at Fevermere sixteen years,” he repeated wonderingly, then called across the room, “Mother, we have been at Fevermere sixteen years!”
“Have we?” answered that lady, much struck, and evidently not at all surprised to have her conversation interrupted by such news. “Dear me, so we have.” And she turned placidly back to Maria.
“I had never stopped to count it up,” Mr. Highet explained blandly, turning back also. “But about London—I am afraid I find it intolerably dirty, and noisy, and crowded. Not at all the way you think of it, I daresay. But—what do you do there all day, day after day, with no riding, nor hunting, nor—well, occupation?” And he fixed Anne with such a sleepy, earnest gaze that she felt ready to scream.
“Oh, one manages to amuse oneself,” she responded tersely, not trusting herself to point out that there were museums there, and libraries, and the Court, and Parliament, and Hyde Park, and thousands of the best minds in the country, lest her tone betray the wild exasperation he provoked in her. Immeasurably frustrated by the sputtering conversation, she cast about for something that would interest this clunch, a topic he could understand and expand upon. Finally, she hit on the obvious. “But pray tell me about Fevermere. Is your farm very different from Linfield’s?”
Yes, here was a topic Mr. Highet could like. As she sat back and listened, Anne blamed herself for not asking the question sooner. Easily, with palpable enjoyment, Mr. Highet warmed to his subject. Fevermere’s was a mixed farm, like Linfield’s, but it was bigger. He had had it from his older brother, who gave it him when (their father dying while Henry was still in school) the brother fell heir to the family’s chief estate in Staffordshire. The father had always run the Cheshire holding through a bailiff; but Henry devoted himself to it utterly, as Miss Guilfoyle could guess. His brother being a married man, with a numerous family, their mother chose to reside with her younger son, where she could continue to command her own household. And so they had been here for sixteen years, as he had just become aware.
And was Herbert Guilfoyle always at Linfield since Mr. Highet came here?
Yes, indeed, Herbert had taught Mr. Highet all he knew of farming. Why, it was Herbert who had persuaded him to give up a fallow year in his rotation and try turnips instead, Herbert who had induced him to practise sheep housing during bad weather, Herbert who…Anne listened, suppressing sneezes and yawns, and longing to hear of Colonel Whiddon’s India days, or to watch Tom Maitland drink himself into a stupor, anything except endure these everlasting tales of turnips and her sainted great uncle. She was determined to learn about farming, since she must needs run a farm; but did Mr. Highet have to talk about it with such enthusiasm? Such passion, rather! He was just explaining the Duke of Portland’s irrigation scheme for the Nottinghamshire sands when Miss Veal (who acted as butler till Dolphim arrived) appeared and announced dinner.
“Oh dear,” said Anne, rising. “You must tell me more of this later. So fascinating.”
Mr. Highet nodded seriously and, without speaking, offered his arm to take her in to dinner. Anne accepted it; but because she turned round to see the others follow she chanced not to notice an expression on Henry Highet’s face which must have interested her a good deal. If one had not already observed him to be in every particular a most sober and straightforward gentleman, one would almost have called the expression a smirk. One would almost have thought he was laughing, albeit silently, at Miss Anne Guilfoyle—that he knew she had been feigning interest, perhaps, and was amused. But since one has, after all, observed him to be so especially earnest and frank a country gentleman, one must instead suppose he was suppressing a cough, or had been tickled on the wrist by the deep flounce of Anne’s celestial blue sleeve.
Among such a small party conversation at tab
le must perforce be general, and Anne was spared any further tales of ditches and drainage for the moment. Mrs. Highet, who had a peculiarly loud, unmodulated voice, dominated the discourse with an informative catalogue of the local gentry. She spoke approvingly of Mr. Samuels, the rector at Faulding Chase, and of Lord and Lady Crombie, who had brought him into the county. Miss Guilfoyle and Mrs. Insel remembered to have met Baron Crombie and his wife on several occasions in town (and Miss Guilfoyle to have been highly diverted by the latter’s maniacal devotion to her children). Mrs. Highet confirmed that they did indeed go up to town pretty often. She mentioned London with none of the disapprobation her son had displayed. On the contrary, Mrs. Highet professed herself quite astonished that the ladies should chuse to remove themselves to Cheshire, when town life must have been so stimulating. She was afraid they would find it very dull hereabouts. The weather was scarcely ever fine, so that they would find themselves indoors a good deal, and the society was sadly limited. Particularly so, she went on, in the matter of eligible gentlemen—a matter (she directed her shrewd twinkle at Miss Guilfoyle) which must always interest a young single lady. In fact, there was scarcely an unattached gentleman to be seen here. “For my Henry is a confirmed bachelor, you know,” she finished with a sudden access of something like vehemence, “and”—more quietly—“I do not expect Miss Guilfoyle considers Mr. Mallinger a suitable parti.”
Miss Guilfoyle, who had been wondering strongly where all this gloomy foreboding was tending, understood at last. Mrs. Highet was afraid lest Anne steal her son away. Anne had already perceived the wilfulness of the old lady, and her fierce attachment to “her Henry”; she could easily imagine how little Mrs. Highet would like to be supplanted in his affections, or at their board. But good God! Apart from the fact that Anne had long since ceased to regard herself as “a young lady,” or to look for a husband (an odd flutter in her breast as her thoughts reached this point made her unconsciously lay a hand on her bleu celeste bodice, and hurry on in her meditations), Henry Highet must certainly be the last man on earth she would have been drawn to. Moreover, his shrewd mother must already have remarked there was not the least hint of gallantry or admiration in his manner to Anne. Ridicule her he had; pity her he might; but love her—? If Miss Guilfoyle had not been drinking soup she would have laughed aloud.