The Country Gentleman

by Hill, Fiona

  “I shall look forward to it as an honour—prickles and all.”

  “There’s a brave man!” cried Anne, before Mrs. Highet, breaking free after many attempts from Mrs. Samuels’ inexhaustible Smalltalk, stood up and shouted to her son that they must be going, for the sky appeared to be clouding over again.

  Mrs. Samuels rose to look out the French doors, saw nothing alarming in the face of the heavens, and said so; but the party began to break up anyhow. Mr. Mallinger, determined to display his polite indifference to the question of spending ten minutes more or less in Mrs. Insel’s vicinity, stood also and announced his intention to depart. The Wares were too well-bred not to follow, and since the Samuelses could hardly linger by themselves, every one drifted to the door. Ensley, out of a very proper regard for Anne’s comfort in the neighbourhood, left with Mr. Mallinger, though he did not like to. He whispered in her ear that he would visit her again in the morning. If he expected her to beg him not to leave he was disappointed, for she nodded equably and bade him an almost cool good night. Her farewell to Mr. Mallinger was more cordial; and when the Highets’ carriage came at last round the sweep, her parting from Mr. Highet might have been observed—was observed, by that gentleman’s mother—to be nearly affectionate. Fearful of a renewal of her bizarre palpitations, Anne deliberately did not offer him her hand; but she thanked him with warm sincerity for coming, and for bearing patiently with her neophyte’s questions. Hearing this, Mrs. Highet broke in with,

  “Oh, my dear! Henry don’t expect you to know farming! Not the thing for a lady at all. You can never be comfortable here: You belong in town. Why, we know you will only stay with us a short time, don’t we, Henry? Not but what we’re sorry! Thank you for the evening. Most enjoyable!”

  And though Anne could not know this, Mrs. Highet continued talking of her half the way home, pointing out to her son all the various signs she had observed of a quiet understanding subsisting between Miss Guilfoyle and “that Ensley fellow.”

  “They’ll tie the knot before Easter, mark my words—though the dear only knows what he sees in her! Sharp, ain’t she? Mighty sharp. Ah but we’re comfortable at Fevermere, aren’t we, love?” And she gave her younger son’s strong whip arm a playful squeeze.

  Since his mother habitually defamed the character of every spinster in the parish between the ages of fifteen and forty, and since, for good measure, she invented from thin air matches every one of them was sure to make before six months had passed, Henry Highet did not trouble himself to listen too closely to his respected relative as they rolled along. Yet the subject of her discourse was not so far removed as it ordinarily was from the matter of his private thoughts. Actually, he was thinking of Anne Guilfoyle, and to a lesser extent of Ensley. Indeed, he sat up unusually late that night, with a glass of brandy, mulling and musing precisely about them.

  Some six or seven days later, “Oh, my darlings!” Anne crowed involuntarily, unable to keep from running out the door of Linfield to fling her arms round Lord and Lady Grypphon the moment they emerged from their carriage. “Thank heaven you have come! Only look where you find me—did you ever think to see such a sight?” And she ruefully waved at the house behind her, whose plain oaken door still stood open.

  “Don’t be a goose, dear. It is charming, in a—er, rustic way,” protested Celia absently. She turned to give orders to a footman (the Grypphons had arrived with two carriages in train), then turned back to Anne. “We shall put the horses up at that little how-do-you-call-it in Faulding Chase—”

  “It’s an inn, dear. The Red Lion,” said Charles mildly.

  “Yes, of course, if you like to call it that,” said Celia, who would rather have termed it a hovel. “Any how, do not trouble your stable about them—”

  “We have plenty of room—”

  “Do not be absurd, pray. No one has room for three carriages, or grooms to fuss with them. Anyway—” And she turned back again to charge her own groom with some further orders.

  Anne gave over arguing and profited by Celia’s distraction to give her husband a hearty embrace. “You cannot imagine what it means to be here,” she informed him, clinging to his arm. “One goes to bed and wakes up and goes to bed and wakes up and unless one is a seed or a ripening cheese it is all absolutely the same. It rained every afternoon but one this past week, till Maria and I thought we should scream. The last paper we saw—we do have the Times sent from Middlewich every afternoon, thank God, though naturally it’s days old—any how, the last one we saw—because of the rain—was dated 17 July. So you must tell us every thing! What a place! When we are at absolute point non plus from boredom, we drive into Faulding Chase and buy ribbon in the shop there—I say shop, not shops, for a reason. But I am frightening you, poor dear, when you were so noble as to come all this way. Walk in!”

  Lady Grypphon finally joined them. Anne put her other arm through hers. “Walk in, my angels. Fill my aching ears with on-dits. Are you tired? Let me call Maria down.” So chattering, Anne brought her guests inside and made them comfortable.

  She found herself even gladder to see them than she had expected. The mere sight of them awakened keen longings in her which the last three weeks had, without her quite realizing it, dulled. Like a girl in the schoolroom whose mother has been to a ball, she was full of envious queries—only Anne, of course, sought to learn the latest intrigues from Melbourne House, not the depths of flounces and the lengths of sleeves.

  “Perfectly dead,” Celia assured her, coming into the Green Parlour with a quick look about her, and sitting down. “Half the monde is gone out of town, and the other is too stupid with heat to do more than nibble and drowse. Anne, you must not live in this cottage much longer. You will go mad. Who bought the furnishings, Little Bo-Peep? Come home with us. What’s happened to you?”

  All of this having been spoke with Lady Grypphon’s habitual mixture of harsh candour and warm affection, Anne took no offence but only seated herself (begging Charles to follow suit) and once more explained Herbert Guilfoyle’s will and the loss of the Maidstone. In the midst of the account Mrs. Insel entered. Maria had never fully shared Anne’s partiality to Lady Grypphon, but she had a real affection for his lordship. Anyhow, both their familiar faces were most welcome after so many weeks among strangers. She greeted them warmly and sat down, urging Anne to resume the narrative her entrance had interrupted.

  Anne did so. When she finished,

  “But how absolutely ghastly!” Celia exclaimed. “You poor little fish. Why did you not tell us before leaving London? But you were too proud, I suppose. We guessed something was up when we heard of your quitting Holies Street, but we never imagined anything like this. It’s too awful, is it not, Grypphon? What must we do?”

  Charles added his bluff, sympathetic tsking and clucking to his wife’s, then said, “Of course you will come back with us. Come to Highglade,” he went on, naming his family’s county seat in Surrey. “Such a damned big place, we’ll never notice you.” He stood. “That’s settled. Where’s the bell-pull? I’ll have the carriages brought round again.”

  Anne laughed and told him to sit. “We cannot simply leave, you good, silly man,” she continued. “I have a whole houseful of servants—two houses full, more accurately—and any how, we could not possibly accept such a daft—”

  “Don’t go on, pray,” Celia broke in. “You’ll offend Charles. But I quite see it is no solution for you to stay with us indefinitely. Strictly entre nous, I sometimes think of running away myself. Still, you must not remain here for ever either. What does Ensley say to all this—or mustn’t I mention his name?”

  “Oh, you may mention him,” Miss Guilfoyle obliged herself to respond promptly, with no sign of disconcertment. “He was here just a se’ennight ago—as I guess you know. We parted best of friends.” (If this was not true, at least Anne had done her utmost to make Ensley believe it was. When he had returned the morning after the dinner party, it was to stop an hour, then say good-bye. Anne pressed him
to return as soon as he might—and when he answered that, because of his wedding, he probably could not before September, she exerted all her powers of dissembling to appear to receive this with mild regret only, and to remain affectionate.) “He would do anything he could, of course—but what can he?”

  Lady Grypphon thought a moment, then said, “Yes, I see.” Maria Insel might be so soft-headed as to imagine Ensley could marry Anne, but Celia Grypphon was not. Moreover, she knew without asking (and quite proper of her too) that Anne would never take money from him. “I don’t suppose Overton would suit you?” she presently inquired.

  Anne shook her head. “Not but what I have thought of it—more and more, as the dreary round here plods ahead—but even if I could keep Dolphim and the others with me—which I could not—the truth is, we should be nearly as much in exile there as here. For though Overton is closer to town, we should have no money at all to go there. And if there is any less attractive prospect than being buried alive in Cheshire, I think Maria will agree with me it is the prospect of being buried alive in Northamptonshire with our families to bear us company!”

  Maria, reluctant to endorse Anne’s vivid way of putting this, nevertheless murmured, “I do think we are better here. I am, at all events.”

  “What, are you out of charity with your family too?” asked Celia, always interested in gossip and never shy of seeking it out.

  “Rather the reverse,” Anne replied, a note of grimness in her voice.

  “Not out of charity?” suggested Celia.

  “They are out of charity with her,” Anne corrected, and this time there was no mistaking the disapprobation in her tone; but she hurried on, “But that is neither here nor there. The fact is, Linfield is the best we can do for ourselves just now. Let me have Miss Veal show you your rooms,” she went on, rising to go to the bell-pull. “You will see most of the house on your way there, I am afraid.”

  “Miss Veal is—”

  “The housekeeper.”

  “And Mrs. Dolphim?” asked Celia, sounding shocked.

  “Also the housekeeper. Do not seek to understand this arrangement, I warn you: The distinctions and divisions between the two of them will make your head ache. They do mine; and I am afraid they are turning poor Mrs. Dolphim’s hair grey. But I cannot turn my great uncle’s people out—particularly not with what the end of the war economy has done to the gentry hereabouts. They could never find situations. Even staying on, Miss Veal suffers. I suspect my great uncle included her in all his little parties, for on the few occasions when we have given modest entertainments here, she has gone about looking quite martyred. God knows what his death meant to her—but here she comes,” Anne interrupted herself. “Go upstairs and rest. We dine early, naturally—at seven, if you can bear it.” And she kissed them both impulsively and gave Miss Veal orders to make them comfortable.

  The plain fact was, though, that no orders, however faithfully executed, could have made Lord and Lady Grypphon comfortable at Linfield. Their rooms, though the best in the house, were cramped and bare compared to what they were used to. The servants were too many, and too familiar; the rain stoutly refused, the next day, to vanish, but was with them constantly; the house was so small that, even with only a party of four in it, there was no getting away by oneself—except to the abovementioned cramped and underfurnished rooms. Had she been mad for pigs and hay (which she emphatically was not) the rain must anyway have kept Lady Grypphon indoors; and though he had been a fanatical angler (a proposition equally far from the truth) her husband could not have been fanatical enough to stand in a stream in this weather. Their hostess endeavoured to get up a dinner party (which would have been dull enough, heaven knows, but at least must have made a change) by inviting Lord and Lady Crombie and some few others—not the inmates of Fevermere, though, lest Henry Highet renew his remarks on irrigation and drive the Grypphons screaming from the house; but the messenger could scarcely deliver the invitations, so bad had the roads become, and the idea of driving a carriage on them that night kept every one away.

  So the four unwilling inmates of Linfield resigned themselves to their own company. They played whist and Emulation, told one another’s fortunes with cards, ate rather more than they were wont to do, remarked on the storm (which now became noisily electrical), and generally had an excellent opportunity of showing off the good manners which were all that kept them civil. By ten Lady Grypphon was yawning. Two minutes later her husband had caught the hint and was seconding her. At five past the hour Maria Insel involuntarily joined them; and the whole party must have broke up before ten-fifteen if Dolphim had not entered rather abruptly to announce that a gentleman was in the hall who begged Miss Guilfoyle to spare him a minute there.

  The lady so applied to started up in surprise. The first thought in her head (for she was, despite herself, as prone as anyone to the eternal springing of hope) was that it might be Ensley, changing his mind at last and returning to offer for her. But how would Ensley have come here, if no carriage could travel safely? When Celia asked, “Who can it be?” Anne said,

  “I have not the least notion. Dolphim, do you know him?”

  “I do, only”—the good man paused, and his grey brows drew together in a look half quizzical, half perturbed—“only not liking to disrupt your evening, the gentleman asked me particularly not to announce him.” An especially ear-splitting thunderclap coming almost simultaneously with a bolt of lightning appeared to punctuate this sentence.

  “How mysterious. If you will excuse me…” Anne hurried from the parlour, Dolphim behind her, leaving the others to listen to the storm’s roar, watch the flicker of lightning over the walls, and wonder among themselves.

  Anne met her visitor, for once, with neither flush nor quickening of the pulse. She was, instead, all surprise; and Mr. Henry Highet was all apology. Soaked through, in a blue coat and buckskin breeches which clung to him like a second, wrinkled skin, his top-boots thick with mud, rain dripping from his dark curls, he beseeched Miss Guilfoyle to forgive his uninvited presence.

  “Gracious heavens,” Anne interrupted him. She remembered with quick embarrassment her scant hospitality to him the first night she had come into Cheshire and wondered whether he really thought she would begrudge him shelter. “You are drenched. Come in to the parlour. I shall have Sally lay a fire. What happened to you? Have you been out all the day? But don’t answer, only come with me—”

  But though she had taken his wet arm and was tugging at it, he did not budge. “I asked Dolphim not to give my name because I know you have London visitors. Your Susannah told my Joan, you see, who told our Trigg, who told his wife, who told my mother. Who told me.”

  Anne blushed, wondering if he knew he had been specifically excluded from to-night’s failed party. If so, he would not mention it. He went on,

  “I detest an unbidden guest. I should never have stopped except for—” A roll of thunder interrupted him, and he had only to wave his hand. “At all events,” he went on, at his most earnest despite the loss of dignity a good soaking will bring to any one, “pray do not visit me upon them. I am sure—”

  “Oh, in the name of all that is sensible,” Anne finally burst out impatiently, “will you stop? Believe me, if we had gone on our knees, my friends and myself could not have been more fervently praying for some one, some thing, to come and save us from each other. Besides, you will not deny me the opportunity to do for you what you did for me. This storm is bound to keep up for hours, if not all night.” She summoned Dolphim, who had only gone discreetly round a corner. “Dolphim, Mr. Highet will stop the night with us. Please show him to a room where he can dry off. Have Susannah fetch him some hot water, and tell Sally she must lay a fire there. And Cook must send up a tray of dinner. I shall ask Lord Grypphon to have his valet send in clothes for Mr. Highet. They are much of a size, I think. And you—” She put out a cautionary hand to the master of Fevermere. “You be quiet. I find I quite like fussing over you. You must not deny me my pleasu
res.”

  So saying, she bustled off to the parlour, to acquaint the others with this turn of events, and to exact her favour from Charles.

  When Lady Grypphon heard the identity of the mysterious caller, “Good God,” she cried, “the tedious gentleman who must inherit Linfield if you quit it! How interesting! How providential! What would happen to the estate—heavens, I feel just like Lady Macbeth—if the inconvenient Mr. Highet were accidentally somehow to die in the night? Could you keep it without living here?”

  Anne had fresh misgivings about introducing Mr. Highet to her old friend. True, she had warned him Celia was prickly—but she had said nothing of her being lethal. How would the stolid, slow Mr. Highet fend her off? She had never succeeded, in the past, in persuading Celia to hold her wit in check. Still, she must try.

  “I fear I might have his mother to deal with, and that would be much the worse,” she began carefully. “They are both complete country sorts, you know—and that reminds me, none of your swift arrows at Mr. Highet, Celia. He is a barn door to your wit: too wide a mark by half to make fair sport.”

  “Is he indeed? Do you mean he is dull, or thick-witted, or both?”

  “Dull, mostly. Or—well, perhaps a little of both,” she amended.

  “Anne!” Maria objected, “I do not find Mr. Highet either of those things. He is a very gentlemanly, amiable man, and though his interests are different than ours, perhaps, he seems perfectly well-informed about them.”

  “Controversy!” cried Lady Grypphon, delighted. “More, more! Anne, refute her.”

  But Anne, desperate as she was for entertainment, found she could no more put her heart into this game than she had been able to draw a wicked sketch of Highet for Ensley. “There is wit and wit,” was all she would say. “Mother-wit and rapier-wit, for example; and the one against the other may be a stick against a sword. So do, please, Celia, sharpen your weapon on someone else—me, if necessary—but spare him.” And feeling that the object of her dubious solicitude might soon be dressed and with them, she turned the topic to the recently uncovered scandal among the London patrole.