The Country Gentleman
Page 11
Miss Guilfoyle was at her merriest when she greeted her guests the following evening. She had added the rector, Mr. Samuels, and his stout, comfortable wife, to her invitation list, so that the party made an even ten. Ensley arrived, by special permission, a little ahead of the others; and Anne discovered herself (to her relief) fairly easy with him now.
She waved him into a plush arm-chair in the drawing-room, seating herself in its twin nearby. “I fear the company is not just what you have been used to see,” she warned him teasingly (her apology and his glad acceptance of it having been sent by messenger, both felt the subject of her behaviour to him on the previous afternoon to be closed). “But you will know how to enjoy yourself, I am sure.” And she went on to give him several deft, not entirely respectful portraits of the people he was about to meet. When she came to Mr. Mallinger’s reading Thomas Spence,
“Good God,” Ensley exclaimed, quizzing her, “and does he teach his students they have a right to own the land they farm? What a queer nabs your great uncle must have been to engage him!”
“Queer indeed! I assure you, I have fallen into a very hotbed of radical ideas. The library here fairly flames with nonsense of that sort—and I collect Mr. Henry Highet, whom you will soon know, has a mind very much of that stamp as well.”
“Ah, this is the neighbour you mentioned, I think? What manner of man is he?” And Ensley dropped his quizzing glass and settled back with a half smile on his lips, ready to be entertained by another of Anne’s pithy, acid sketches.
But Anne found herself unaccountably incapable of obliging him. “Oh, well, the first—” she began lightly, then stopped all at once. She had been going to describe her first meeting with Highet, when he received her in flannel and unbuckled boots. But even as she framed the quick sentences in her head, the thought came to her that this would be an ill-natured act indeed when, after all, it was she who had waked him, he who had been so kind as to come out into a beastly night to escort her home.
Her nimble mind, still searching for fun, leapt to look at Mr. Highet from another angle. She could say he was dull, could not she? The sort who considered the design of a plough good conversation, and irrigation scintillating…“He is—” she recommenced; but this too was rather unfair. After all, farming was his life’s work; and what did Ensley talk about (if one let him) except his work? True enough, Ensley’s career was far more interesting to Anne than Mr. Henry Highet’s. But that did not change the principle of the thing.
Anyhow, she discovered herself curiously reluctant to prejudice Ensley’s mind against Mr. Highet. She could not have explained why; but in the end all she said of the latter to the former was, “The truth is, I scarcely know him. He seems a good, plain gentleman, I guess—steady, careful with his tenants, happy experimenting with potatoes and the like. Rather tedious, of course, but affable. He is a bachelor—” To her horrified amazement, Miss Guilfoyle felt herself begin to colour with these words. She hastened on, “—and lives with his mother.” She plunged into an excoriating, and quite accurate, portrait of that lady, till her blush subsided. She was glad when Ensley laughed and seemed not to have remarked the brief flaming in her cheeks.
But half an hour later, when Mr. Highet and his formidable progenitrix actually arrived, Anne was sure not only Ensley but Maria and Mr. Mallinger and even the Hartley Wares could not have failed to notice the quickening of her breath and pulses, the blood again creeping heavenwards from her neck, the mist of perspiration on her brow at the sight of the master of Fevermere. Useless to will these manifestations away: While Mr. Highet bowed to her, and beamed down about her, and asked how she did, they intensified relentlessly. Not even the strident booming of Mrs. Highet’s voice while (apparently as surprised to see them as if their families had lived on separate stars) she greeted the Wares could break the spell, and give Anne surcease. She was finally obliged to pretend the sudden recollection of an overlooked detail, and to hurry abruptly from the drawing-room. Outside, encountering Dolphim, she turned her red face away from his solicitous gaze and pretended to be coughing. Then she scurried round a turning in the corridor, where he could not see her, and, holding her hand above her heart, commanded it to behave.
In a minute she could go in again, laughing at the absent-mindedness which had made her think she forgot to tell Dolphim Mr. Samuels and his wife were expected—when in fact she had told him that afternoon, as she now remembered perfectly to have done; but inside she was still baffled by her own response. She was like a girl who broke out in spots the moment she ate strawberries: Mr. Highet reacted upon her.
Once recovered from the initial encounter, though, she had no trouble meeting Mr. Highet’s glance. On the contrary, she found him if anything more sober-sided, sententious, and deadly dull than ever. He seemed to outdo himself in the bringing of sheep breeds and butter prices into the conversation; and when she overheard him explaining the action of a new sort of winnowing fan to Ensley, she almost suspected him of seeming thick-witted on purpose.
But that was ridiculous. Mr. Henry Highet had no need to dissemble to seem dull. It came to him as naturally as grapes to the vine, poor thing; and she was quite surprised when, towards the end of the evening, Ensley confided to her that he and Highet had had rather a dust-up over their Port, when the ladies were withdrawn from the table.
“For a moment I thought we should come to cuffs,” Ensley whispered. They had gone a few steps outside the open French doors to stand together on the terrace. The sweet-scented air of the open fields drifted to them through the warm night. “What an obstinate, opinionated clown the man is.” And he smiled down at Anne and laughed so as not to appear, even from behind, to be talking about what he was in fact talking about.
“You astonish me,” whispered Anne in her turn. “What on earth did you find to take issue about with him? You did not, I hope, deprecate the usefulness of marling Cheshire soil? That is one of Mr. Highet’s firmest convic—”
“Nothing so pleasant,” Ensley broke in almost grimly. “It was the Corn Law—which, I troubled to point out to him, was formulated exactly to benefit people like himself. But your Mr. Highet—”
“He is hardly my Mr. Highet—” Anne broke in, but Ensley kept on,
“Your Mr. Highet is not satisfied with that. He is worried about the poor. He maintains the Corn Law is pushing the common work man over the edge of starvation. I don’t know what the fellow would have! If there had been no Corn Law—and as you know, that was a very good piece of legislation I put no small amount of work into myself—he would I am sure have been complaining that farmers all over were going under. And so indeed they would have been. Why, it is preposterous! To be quite frank, I myself brought the topic up, for I thought it must be one thing, at least, we could discuss intelligently. If I had guessed—”
Anne at last succeeded in interrupting his indignant tirade at this point. It came as news indeed to her that Mr. Highet could discuss the Corn Law at all, let alone argumentatively. “And what did he suggest as a remedy?” she inquired, her sceptical tone masking (she hoped) a very lively curiosity.
“Oh, you know the sort of thing—a minimum wage tied to the price of a loaf. The usual starry-eyed claptrap.”
Anne recognised the very word she had used to characterise the ideas rife around Fevermere, and sighed. She had almost been hoping Mr. Highet would prove himself unexpectedly astute.
“I can’t explain it,” Ensley was going on, sounding a little calmer, “but I do not like that fellow. Not at all. Something about him…It is a shame you are neighbours. But that”— Ensley’s voice took on a different tone, and he drew Anne a little away from the pool of light that spilled out the French doors—“that I hope will not long be the case. You did not say as much in your note, exactly, but I hope you have changed your mind and mean to come home with me after all? It is unfortunate this Highet person should be the one to benefit by it, but this is a case of noses and faces—can’t spite the one without t’other.”
“You have not answered my question,” Ensley observed.
Suddenly serious, “But yes, I have,” Anne replied. “I told you yesterday, I cannot possibly accept your—” Recalling Maria’s use of the word “bargain,” her tone sharpened involuntarily as she amended, “—live on your bounty. That’s flat. I will not discuss it. However, you will always be welcome here, and I shall expect to see you often. As to my visiting London, I begin to think a month at the height of the Season and another during the Little Season will be best after all. For the rest we must trust to the post—and to chance. Who knows, perhaps the Maidstone will be recovered, her cargo of teas and exotic woods miraculously unspoiled—”
“Anne—”
“—or perhaps another great uncle I have forgot will die and leave me a more convenient farm, in Hampstead. Or—”
Ensley, however, was in no humour for joking. “This is your final answer?” he cut in.
“Yes.”
He was silent a moment; then, “In that case, I must trust to time as my ally. Please recall that my offer stands whenever you chuse to take it up.”
But Anne, misliking the word “offer,” said lightly, “I think we must go inside now, or my guests will imagine a dreadful fate has overtaken us.”
“And so it has,” Ensley gloomily replied; but he followed her obediently enough, and engaged Mrs. Hartley Ware in what soon became an animated discussion of Princess Mary’s impending marriage.
Six
Mr. Lawrence Mallinger, meanwhile, had been passing a rather uncomfortable evening at Linfield (which he would by no means, however, have exchanged for any other elsewhere, be it never so easy) endeavouring on the one hand to impress Mrs. Insel with his intelligence, his discretion, his trustworthiness, while on the other not discomfiting her with any special attention or distinction. This was a fine line to walk, and required a good deal of watching her from the corner of one eye (turning deliberately away if she happened to come near him) and directing loud remarks intended to interest her to other people. He had developed a theory (sitting up half of last night for the purpose) that what Mrs. Insel objected to in him was his age. Mr. Mallinger was seven-and-twenty, Mrs. Insel (he guessed) nearly thirty. It was no great gap, of course; but perhaps she reckoned him younger than his years. His first order of business, therefore, was to correct any such miscalculation. To which end he contrived to mention, in the course of the evening, his exact birthdate (to Mrs. Highet), the precise dates of his sojourn at Cambridge (to Mr. Ware), the number of years before he would reach the midpoint of man’s three score and ten (to Mr. Samuels), and the age of his sister Augusta (to Miss Guilfoyle) together with the information that she was four years his senior.
But he also feared that, even if Mrs. Insel knew his right age, she would still imagine him not sufficiently mature to make a match for her. In this case he must impress her with his maturity—a more difficult matter. Still, he set about it methodically. He brought into the general conversation (lest she consider him not well-travelled enough to know the world) the walking tour he had made in Scotland with his brother two summers ago—when, as he noted, he had been twenty-five. He gravely discussed with Mr. Samuels the moral welfare of a student of his, a boy of eleven years of age (sixteen younger than himself) whose mother regularly drank to excess. And in case Mrs. Insel should imagine he did not know his own mind, he described to Anne in stunning detail the manner in which he had insisted on becoming a schoolmaster, clinging to that purpose though his parents strongly urged him to apply as secretary to a great man.
How much of this effort was wasted and how much to the point not even Mrs. Insel (who did not know what she had missed) could have said. What is certain is that she heard him advert to Scotland; for she engaged him in a long conversation on that head, coming to him after dinner (he noted with delight) specially to do so. Mr. Mallinger obliged her with a very rich account of his travels, bringing in many quaint details and amusing anecdotes; but he took care not to smile too much at her while he did so. Nor did he allow the pleasure being with her gave him to show in his eyes. Without being formal, he was restrained; without being cold, civil. And he succeeded in his object to such a degree that he had the gratification of seeing Mrs. Insel behave, before the evening was out, perfectly warmly and amiably towards himself, quite as if all her early wariness had been forgot.
Across the room, during Mr. Mallinger’s Scottish monologue, Miss Guilfoyle and Mr. Highet might have been seen in close colloquy. Coming in from the terrace, Miss Guilfoyle had found her moment to pounce on her agricultural informant, and had skilfully removed him from the conversational grip of his mother and Mrs. Samuels to draw him aside to a sofa.
“Now I have you to myself,” she began, unconsciously dimpling at him in a smile that had pried any number of secrets from unsuspecting Members of Parliament, “I hope you will forgive my asking you a question?” Mr. Highet had somehow failed, so far at least, to make Anne feel pitiable this evening, though his manner towards her continued as sober and bare of compliment as before. She was willing to endure his solemnity, but determined to give him no opportunity for commiseration, and so added quickly, “Of course, if it bores you, I can ask Rand. He is quite obliging now,” she finished, lying.
She seemed to see a flicker of something—intelligence? interest? indigestion?—deep in Mr. Highet’s dark, sleepy gaze before he answered, “Ask any thing at all.”
“I fear it is not a very intriguing matter. Only—why does one clip some ewes in June, and others in July?”
For the first time, except when he had laughed at her, Mr. Highet smiled at her broadly. “But that is quite an intriguing question, Miss Guilfoyle; or rather, an intriguing tale hangs from it.” And he launched into a long explanation of the growth cycle of sheep, the times and ways they and their wool may be sold, and allied lore. Anne listened closely, for he gave a more complete and coherent account than any of her great uncle’s books—or at least, he phrased his in a way more understandable to her. To be sure, when he came to talk of tupping, her gaze dropped to the floor and stayed there; and when he spoke rather too vividly—perhaps it was only scientifically?—of gelding, she grew visibly pale, and hurried him on with a question on another topic. Still, it was a pleasure to be able to call upon his encyclopaedic knowledge at will; and so she told him.
“But I see you have been studying the matter yourself,” he answered approvingly. “Do you find it tedious?”
“On the contrary. There is a special challenge, isn’t there, in working with nature to make the best of things? To be frank, I had not expected to care for agriculture as a study. When you were last here and we spoke of it a little, I admit I could not follow your remarks, or understand the significance of new developments. But now I have done some reading, and explored Linfield a bit, I find farming very interesting indeed.”
Mr. Highet’s brow furrowed seriously, and he almost scrutinized her before saying, “Do you really?”
Disconcerted by his gravity, “Yes, I do,” she replied. Mr. Highet seemed to have gone into some sort of trance, he was staring at her and frowning so hard. Finally,
“You have a wide spirit, Miss Guilfoyle,” he said. “I like that.”
Anne felt herself draw back a little from his concentrated gaze; but on the whole she discovered (to her surprise, for how could she have imagined she would ever have cared for his opinion one way or the other?) she was rather gratified to have pleased Mr. Highet. A smile found its way to her lips quite without her directing it to go there, and she bowed very slightly, still looking into his eyes.
It was at this point that Ensley recalled he had a message for Anne, excused himself to Mrs. Ware, leapt to his feet, and materialised at Miss Guilfoyle�
�s elbow. “Celia Grypphon,” he announced. He smiled smoothly at Highet, said, “Pardon me, old man,” and repeated to Anne, “I have a message from Celia Grypphon. Forgive me, my dear; I don’t know how I contrived to forget it. She is coming up here next week. You can expect a letter from her with details soon.”
Though she had initially been more startled than delighted by Ensley’s sudden appearance beside her, this was enough to divert Anne from her musings about Henry Highet. “Ensley, you beast!” she cried while, had she but noticed, Mr. Highet went on looking very closely from her face to his lordship’s. “How can you have failed to tell me till now? But this is famous! This is heaven! To have Celia in this forsaken— Excuse me,” she glanced at Mr. Highet, “to have Celia here! How long will she stop? Is Grypphon to accompany her? Ensley, for goodness’ sake, tell me all.”
Lord Ensley did not know how long her ladyship meant to stop. He believed her husband would be with her.
“But can you stay till they arrive?” Anne asked, looking up appealingly from the sofa. It had not been discussed between them yet how long Ensley would remain in Cheshire.
“I am afraid—” Ensley did not finish, but shook his fair head regretfully. Anne thought immediately of Lady Juliana.
“I am sorry,” she said, in a tone suddenly icy and certainly very far from melancholy. She turned to Mr. Highet again and heard herself go on, “Lord Charles and Lady Celia Grypphon are two of my dearest friends in London. Oh, there is no one like Celia! I hope you will meet her when she comes? You are sure to enjoy her—though she is rather prickly at first.”