by Hill, Fiona
His manner to her on these occasions was civil and friendly, no more, no less. Anne imagined the visits were, for him, a natural extension of those he had made to the house in Herbert Guilfoyle’s time. The only change was she could not, as a single lady, return them. So he came twice as often. In no other respect, however, did he seem to notice the difference in their sexes. Certainly he never flattered her. In his sleepy gaze she discerned no interest at all in how she looked, or moved, or gazed back at him. Except to ask how she did, he confined his remarks to estate matters. (He was a little wider in his topics, though not much, when they dined in company.) Occasionally he made a joke, always very broad, which he then enjoyed with much knee-slapping and head-tossing. Anne, a wooden half-smile on her lips, would wait quietly for him to subside. But he did not laugh at her. Indeed, he seemed increasingly to accord her the respect he would give to any conscientious, thoughtful fellow landlord.
Treated in such a steady, friendly, undramatic manner, Anne could not help but begin to relax with him, and respond in kind. She ceased to compare him to town beaux and town wits, to statesmen and Corinthians, and started to look for in him what he had in abundance: experience in farming, knowledge of the land, a shrewd sense of his neighbours. Gradually her tendency to blush in his presence abated. She might feel it rising once in a while, as on the occasion when Mr. Highet caught up her hand and thrust it with his own into the thick fleece on the back of a ewe, that she might feel how it differed from another bred not for wool but mutton. But such episodes were brief. In the main she spoke to Mr. Highet with neither more nor less interest than she felt when conferring with Mr. Rand (whom she had succeeded, by dint of hard study and management, in subduing if not winning over). So mild, indeed, did her feelings towards Henry Highet become, that he quite ceased to appear among Lord Quaffbottle’s adventures—where he had initially cut a very noticeable, clumsy, and rather ridiculous figure. Mrs. Highet, it might be noted, remained.
Meanwhile summer drew on towards its close. In the fields the corn ripened and turned gold. The harvest at Linfield (which its mistress could never have accomplished properly without the advice of her neighbour at Fevermere) was a good one—not excellent, by any means, but not at all the disastrous failure so widespread in England that year. The days became slowly shorter; the air turned and crisped. Miss Guilfoyle rode into the park less for exercise now than for pleasure in its beauty. Often she dismounted and walked for the mere enjoyment of feeling the brown earth beneath her feet. There was a difference between wandering here and wandering through the parks of London, or even the parks of the numerous estates at which she had hitherto made one of the party. There was something invigorating in the solitude, in knowing the land was her own. After the harvest, she felt a certain pride, even a love, for the earth that had been worked under her direction, and that had brought forth fruit. She liked to watch the threshing and winnowing of the grain, to see it carted to the mill and brought back flour. When, one late August afternoon (after she had been visiting the threshing floor) she read in the Times that Parliament was again in session, the news had an alien and artificial look to her, and she wondered with a smile by what cycle of nature Parliament knew itself ready to recommence.
Mr. Highet advised her to marl certain fields of hers before the ploughing and cultivating began. Mr. Rand, in accordance with old Cheshire notions, advised against. Anne decided to trust Mr. Highet, so great was her faith in him now. She had long since concluded he could not possibly know the full terms of Herbert Guilfoyle’s will. If he had, he would not have befriended her so.
Into this tranquil, steady flow of days erupted an evening of event. It was the second Wednesday in September. The men had just begun to harrow. Anne had passed a lengthier afternoon than usual with Mr. Rand, for the time to sell the wether lambs had come and a number of decisions were necessary. She emerged from her office just before six to learn from Dolphim that a letter from London had arrived, and that Mr. Mallinger and Mrs. Insel were waiting for her in the Green Parlour.
“Who is the letter from, can you tell?”
“I believe Lord Ensley, ma’am,” said he, in a tone whose practised indifference expertly concealed a hearty mistrust of this particular correspondent.
“Oh, then I must look at it before I join the others. Where is it?”
Dolphim fetched it while his mistress retired again into her now empty office. She had just had a letter from Ensley the day before, so this one was an agreeable surprise. The butler returned with it at last and Anne broke the seal as he discreetly bowed himself out the door.
But her eagerness soon turned to disappointment. The words were few and to the point. Anne would remember the legislation Ensley had spoke of in his to her dated August 30? Well then, Liverpool being determined to press on with it before…Her eyes skipped to the bottom of the page. It was as she feared: Ensley was obliged to cancel his visit to Linfield. He was chagrined, he deplored it—et cetera, et cetera—but it could not be helped.
Anne knew when Ensley wrote cancel rather than postpone he meant he would not come till after she had seen him in London. Dully she returned her gaze to the top of the page and read the full text. She did not doubt but that it was true. If Lady Juliana or her family had been what kept him in town, he would have said it bluntly.
With a deep sigh, she rose from her desk, folding the letter into a drawer. She would write a reply later; for the moment she wanted only to lie down. Passing Dolphim in the front hall,
“Would you tell Mr. Mallinger and Mrs. Insel I am not feeling quite the thing?” she asked him. “I shall take my dinner in my room.” And she ascended the staircase leaning heavily on the bannister.
Dolphim, though far too well-trained to show it, observed his mistress’ manner closely before going to carry out his errand. Unseen, he shook his head disapprovingly. He could not like Lord Ensley, for all his valet reported he was a good, kind man. It wasn’t natural, the way he kept after Miss Anne. In fact, none of Miss Guilfoyle’s household favoured Lord Ensley’s suit, or friendship, or whatever it was.
“Miss Guilfoyle regrets to say she is slightly ill and will not come in,” he announced, putting his head into the Green Parlour. He wondered briefly whether Mrs. Insel ought properly to stay alone with her guest, and not even a pretext of a chaperon on the way; but it was not for him to judge. He returned to the hall. Miss Charlotte Veal, no doubt, would be happy to plant her dry stick of a self in the Parlour and so lend the meeting respectability; but Mr. Dolphim was not about to contribute new fuel to Miss Veal’s already inflamed idea of her own consequence, and that was that.
The correct, conscientious Mr. Dolphim might have changed his mind if he could have heard what was said in the Parlour after he vanished. But he could not hear, which was just the point. Mr. Mallinger, seeing his moment at last, could no longer restrain himself. Interrupting what had been a rather arid but certainly correct discourse on the subject of higher mathematics, he stood, walked up the room and down it, then begged Mrs. Insel’s leave to address her on a matter of some importance to him.
Startled, Maria nevertheless told him, “If it is important, I am honoured you should wish to consult me on it. Pray, go on.”
Mr. Mallinger thanked her, walked up and down the room again, turned resolutely to face her, turned away, walked again into the long stretch of late sunlight by the fireplace, and back to the sofa on which Mrs. Insel sat, where he burst out, “Dear ma’am! You charged me soon after we met to make no remark touching your personal—er, that is,” he amended, “to restrict my remarks to you to such as might be made by any civil gentleman to any lady. I am sure you recall that request?”
Maria, whose dark complexion at once went whiter, nodded.
Mr. Mallinger paced restlessly again while he continued, “I hope you agree I have carried out that charge about as thoroughly as a man could?” He stopped pacing to turn and look down upon her again.
Mrs. Insel, whiter still, nodded once more.
“I have said nothing to vex you? I have neither in my words, nor in the tone in which they were uttered, nor even in my look, betrayed any particular admiration for you? I have not?”
Maria, hands trembling, small head a little bowed as if under the heavy burden of her massive knot of chestnut hair, managed to peep, “No. Nothing.”
The schoolmaster stopped his perambulations and stood facing her from some ten feet away. He ran his fingers through his untidy blond hair, tugged the knot of his neck cloth away from his long throat, and said, “I am gratified to know I achieved my goal. But Mrs. Insel, to-day I must beg permission to throw off these restraints and speak to you from my heart. To-day I must tell you how I cherish your shy confidence, your womanly timidity, your quiet beauty. I must tell you how I long to protect you. I must plead with you to allow me to soothe—”
“Mr. Mallinger.” Maria’s voice wavered and was pitched so low even she could scarcely hear it.
“Mrs. Insel, if you would do me the honour to be my wife; if you would even think of me, promise to think of me in that way, accept me as your suitor; if you would consent to share my humble—”
“Mr. Mallinger!” Shaking, Maria stood and made an awkward, violent gesture to him to stop. Her admirer did so, though with some amazement at the state of excited emotion in which he seemed to see her. For a moment neither of them felt able to speak. Then, recovering herself after several deliberate, deep breaths, “Pray be seated,” Maria said, indicating a chair. She sat herself in an opposite chair several feet distant and gestured again, this time to let her think before she talked. Finally, speaking with great effort,
“Dear sir,” she said, “I blame myself for failing to make my full meaning clear to you. That day in the park…I intended to say you must never think of me other than as an agreeable friend. That you do find me agreeable—” Again she held up a hand to silence him, for he was about to break in, “I must own, flatters and pleases me. It is rare for me to find a friend I esteem, and who esteems me. Miss Guilfoyle—” She looked down at the tips of her shoes, which peeked from under her hem. “You must not misunderstand me, for Miss Guilfoyle is every thing that is kind and generous to me; but though she does not realize it, she is…” Mrs. Insel thought a while, then smiled wistfully. “She is a rather brighter bird than I, if you understand me. The people we meet are chiefly attracted to her. But you— Pray be silent,” she forestalled him. “You seek me out, which gratifies me extremely. In every way you are gentle towards me, and respectful, and perfectly kind.” Her thin hands clutched together in her lap, she raised her dark eyes again to Mr. Mallinger and went on, “I must be very spoiled, or very stupid, not to be pleased by that.” She smiled and her voice lost some of its edge as she said, “I consider you an industrious, intelligent, admirable gentleman. Indeed I do, Mr. Mallinger. Please believe that. But—” And here her voice again grew strained; she stood abruptly but would not allow him to stand. “But you must never, never, address me in this way again. Pray do not ask me to explain.” Her cheeks suddenly ashen, “I cannot explain,” she continued. “It is nothing to do with you. Never think of me in this way. Only misery can come of it. You know I am no coquette. You think me—I hope—no fool. So you must trust what I say—”
“Is it my age?” Mr. Mallinger finally burst out in a wail, unable to keep quiet any longer. He reached his hands out to her in an involuntary gesture of supplication, and she seized them in hers before she replied,
“Dear God, no! Nothing so simple as that. For the love of kindness, desist in this. Forgive me for letting you come here at all. Do not—” She shut her eyes as if summoning all her inner strength before tearing her hands from his and concluding, “Do not come again. Goodbye.” And with this she ran from the room before her would-be lover could catch her.
The news that neither of the ladies of the house would come down to dinner that evening provoked a good deal of consternation in the kitchen, and not a little conjecture. “Grippe,” Miss Veal diagnosed with a firm, satisfied snap of her old jaws. “It is hardly to be wondered at, the way Miss Guilfoyle will gallivant about.”
“If it were grippe she would not eat dinner at all,” Mrs. Dolphim countered, determined to refute any calumny Miss Veal might invent, while Mr. Dolphim merely stared, as if struck dumb by her impertinence.
“Female troubles,” pronounced Susannah, who was standing at a sideboard polishing a pair of brass candle snuffers.
“Female troubles!” echoed Sally Clemp, scathing fire in her tone. She’d found herself a bit queasy suddenly, and had come down to the kitchen for a rusk and a cup of tea. “As if they could catch such a complaint from each other! You’re a sharp one, Miss Susannah. And how do you dare to be talking of the mistress so any how, I’d like to know? Or even thinking of her so! For shame!”
Susannah, utterly cowed, begged pardon, but muttered sulkily (and scarcely audibly), “A person still has the right to think, I hope,” into the bell end of a snuffer.
Lizzie entering at this time, all conversation ceased; for no one—not even Miss Veal—dared discuss Miss Guilfoyle when her loyal abigail was there to hear it.
Some while later, when Mr. and Mrs. Dolphim were in their room for the night, the former described to the latter the effect of the letter from Lord Ensley, Mrs. Insel’s headlong flight up the stairs, and Mr. Mallinger’s defeated departure.
“Never saw the like,” he told her. “Walked in a confident, spry young fellow; walked out an old man. It was like she took the heart out of him. Pitiful, he looked.”
Mrs. Dolphim clucked her tongue. “Poor thing,” said she, sympathy inflaming her imagination. “In love with her, I don’t doubt, and she holding herself too high for him. But fancy that Susannah setting the trouble down to female complaints! I never heard such a thing!”
“Our Sally put her in her place, though,” answered her husband. “Who would have guessed she could talk so fierce?”
“Oh, she’s a good girl enough.” In London Mrs. Dolphim had called Sally flighty, and even advised John Coachman against marrying her; but since the move to Cheshire the London people had closed ranks against the common enemy. “I think”—she set her brush down and turned to wink at her husband—“I think she may be in the family way.”
The conversation thereupon turning to babies, confinements, and other matters of no immediate concern to us, we may perhaps leave these two to their privacy and walk down one pair of stairs to the first floor of the house. Here, at this moment, Mrs. Insel was tapping at the door to Miss Guilfoyle’s bed-chamber. Anne, who had finally opened her ebony desk and settled down to write a tempered reply to Ensley, looked up and called to her to enter.
“But my poor dear, whatever is the matter?” she demanded the moment Maria came in. She jumped from her desk and hastened to put an arm round her friend, whose red eyes and pink nose told volumes already. “Come and sit down,” she said, bringing her to the bed and fixing her among the cushions. “I shall fetch you a cool cloth. Poor dove! What happened? You have not had a letter from Halfwistle House, have you? Those beasts! How dare they reproach—”
But Maria interrupted her, saying, “Nothing like that. I wish it were!” And she began to cry again, hiding her face in her hands.
Tenderly, Anne raised her head and obliged her to lie back among the pillows. She went for a moment to the white pitcher on the vanity, then returned to press a dampened cloth against Maria’s brow. Stroking her hair she murmured gently, “Now, whatever it is, we shall see to it. Are you unhappy here? Do you miss London?”
Making an effort to regain her self-command, “Mr. Mallinger,” Maria answered at last. “He— This evening he asked me to marry him.”
Hearing this Anne ceased her clucking and soothing and sat, rather abruptly, on the foot of the bed. Her face lost its look of motherly solicitude and took on a darker expression. She was silent a moment, then asked, “What did you answer?”
“Only that he must never think of me in su
ch a way.”
“I thought you had told him that long ago? Did you not say—? That day, after we had been lost in the woods…”
“Indeed. But he either did not believe me, or did not understand me, for he has been thinking of me so all the time. What an idiot I have been not to guess! But I so enjoyed his friendship.” She seemed about to cry again but controlled herself and resumed, “I told him not to call any more, but I am bound to see him. Only yesterday we met by accident, at the dairy. And remember? You and I came across him in the village last week. Besides which, there is church every Sunday. Oh Anne, what must I do?”
After some hesitation Anne replied slowly, “If you genuinely feel him to be your friend, my dear, perhaps you ought to tell him the truth?”
Maria’s tearful eyes widened. She sat up a little. “Tell him I am married already?” she demanded. “When I have deliberately allowed him, and every one, to believe me a widow?” Her cheeks flushed with anger and shame. “I could not. Anne, what would he think of me?”
“I am sure he would be astonished at first. But if you explained to him the reason of the deception…”
“Explain to him! How, for example? ‘Dear Mr. Mallinger! You see, my husband drank and beat me. More tea, Mr. Mallinger? A biscuit? But as I was saying, sir, Captain Insel also consorted with other—’” Mrs. Insel could not bring herself to finish her sentence, but fell silent, a storm of humiliated fury on her face.
“My dear Maria, there is no shame to you in the monstrous behaviour of your husband!” Anne protested, as she had more than once before. “The shame is all his—”