by Hill, Fiona
But Mr. Highet would hear none of this. He stood, said he still felt a little weary from his journey, and trusted the ladies would excuse him if he went up to his room. As the door closed behind his back,
“I must write to John’s parents,” Maria said, “in case Major Adams has not. They may wish his body to be sent home. I confess I do not. To think it should all come to this!”
Anne patted her arm. “Little sparrow, you must be very tired,” she said briskly. “Let us pack you off to bed for the afternoon. You need rest and sleep, and time to think—and then, it seems to me, you must write to Mr. Mallinger! He is one person, I trust, who will not be sorry to hear of the lieutenant’s timely demise.”
“Anne, if you ever breathe a word to Mr. Mallinger—!” Maria was too appalled to finish her sentence. “He does not even know I was not a widow! I told you what it would mean to me to let him hear my story. Oh, the shame! Swear you will never, ever say anything to him.”
“But you let Mr. Highet know,” Anne objected, sincerely confused. “What a curious sparrow it is! I thought you had decided to cast off secrecy.”
“Not at all,” the other replied firmly. “I trust Mr. Highet. I know he will never give me away—indeed, if you think he did not perfectly understand I spoke in confidence, I shall tell him so specifically. But I am persuaded he does understand. Only you could imagine rushing off to Mr. Mallinger and—” She seemed to shiver at the very notion. “What would you have said to him? That I am free now, and he ought to ask me to marry him again? Good heavens! The indelicacy of it! I must go into mourning, besides everything else—real mourning, deep mourning.”
“For that snake?” demanded Anne, outraged. “You mean to put on weeds—again, I might add—for that—” She broke off abruptly. “But never mind. We need not settle all this now. You are tired, and have had a shock.” She stood and shepherded Mrs. Insel out of the drawing-room and up two pairs of stairs to her bed-chamber. Here she tucked her in very tenderly, refusing to discuss any longer the question of Mr. Mallinger, but promising likewise to take no action Maria did not approve.
Mr. Highet, having made a long journey, declared it his intention (if it did not discommode the household at Mount Street) to stay on a few days in London. Anne pronounced herself prepared to make him comfortable for as long as he liked to remain; at the same time she wondered a little how to entertain him. But she soon found she needed to have no fears on that head. Mr. Highet was off the next morning before she came downstairs, and never returned till past five. She learned (to her amazement) over tea that he had been to view an exhibition of pictures at Somerset Place, then to Tattersall’s to look at some horses, after which he visited two inventors whose names he had read in various journals over the past year or two, one of whom was developing a new sort of engine bound to improve many lives very materially. He closed his round of calls with one to a dispensary at an hospital, where he had learned of several helpful medicaments to take home with him to the apothecary at Faulding Chase. He was considering, moreover, asking a London doctor to come to Fevermere for a month or two, that he might visit the farms of his tenants with an eye to inspecting sanitary conditions and so preventing disease. London itself he declared a deal less objectionable now—in winter, and out of any fashionable season—than he found it in spring or summer. The noise was less, the press of traffic somewhat lighter, and the cold weather prevented some of the fouler odours from flourishing. He was planning a visit to Covent Garden tonight, to see Mr. Kemble’s Lodoiska, and hoped Mrs. Highet at least would join him—since he quite understood Mrs. Insel might not feel it proper for her to do so.
Maria, robed in black, thanked him for his understanding and declined; but Anne, who had made no plans for the evening save a long consultation with Cook regarding the bill of fare for to-morrow night, readily accepted. “Now how shall we round out the party?” she asked, then caught herself, coloured prettily, and exclaimed, “Dear me, I quite forgot!”
At the same time Mr. Highet threw his head back, held the pose a moment, then exploded into the guffaw of laughter she detested so much. “Damme, I like that!” he brought out, between gasps of laughter. Anne was distressed to observe him slap his knee, lean forward as if helplessly doubled over with merriment, then plunge into another gale of hilarity. “Forgot! Forgot we were married! Wanted a cha—a cha—a chaperon!” he sputtered, till Anne could bear it no longer and icily remarked,
“Yes, we all know what I forgot. I admitted it myself. Now for heaven’s sake, pray get hold of yourself!”
Wiping tears from his eyes, Mr. Highet made an effort and contrived to quiet down. “Forgive me, please,” he asked. “I intended no offence, I assure you. Only when you said— It was so— Forgive me, but—” A sinister chuckle seemed to well up irrepressibly in him. “It was so— So— FUNNY!” And he roared again at such a volume that Anne simply got up and left the room.
They did, however, attend the theatre together that night. Spurred by mortification to appear to the best possible advantage, Anne came down the stairs at seven dressed in her newest and most elaborate full dress. It was sea green, carried out in a most beautiful English gauze. It suited her to perfection, as she knew; and the satin Austrian cap that went with it, trimmed with white fox-tail feathers, raised her height just the inch or two that her dignity required. A jade necklace she had had from her mother exactly matched the green of the dress, and brought out the blond of her hair, the colour and sparkle of her eyes. She had the satisfaction of glimpsing in Mr. Highet’s face, when she walked into the drawing-room so attired, the first admiring look she had ever seen there. He suppressed it at once, but she knew, almost exultantly, that her appearance had surprised it out of him. Why she should have wished to provoke such a look from a man she marrried quite as a matter of business she could not have said. Fortunately, no one asked her.
Certainly Mr. Highet (mildly resplendent himself in a close-fitting Polish coat liberally striped with cord and tassels) did not ask. On the contrary, he was if anything less easy and forthcoming with her than he had been in the country. Not that he was uncivil, or even formal. Only she was more aware than usual of a certain reserve in him. She guessed that he felt he was trespassing, as it were, on her life in London. He wore the mask of an interested observer, a spectator both of the play and of the audience. When various of Anne’s acquaintances visited their box, Mr. Highet played his role of new husband judiciously, neither too proprietary nor too remote; but when they were alone she felt him exerting himself to keep his distance. His discretion (if that was what it was) inspired mixed feelings in her. On the one hand, she was grateful he made no undue claim on her; on the other, perversely, she rather wished he would.
They both enjoyed Lodoiska (though Anne opined there were more horses on stage than the plot strictly demanded). They came and went from the theatre in a closed carriage. Anne had never sat in one alone with a gentleman before, and it gave her a sensation of intimacy that both disconcerted and pleased her. She wondered if Mr. Highet felt it. He showed no sign of doing so; but she was beginning to suspect he was not, as she had previously imagined, the sort of person whose thoughts appeared on his face. His conduct towards Maria, for example: He must have known the Army would communicate with her so only to announce the death of a husband. Yet he had come to London and handed her the letter with an expression of bland ignorance. And that flattering glance at herself she had caught to-night: A feminine instinct told her it wasn’t, after all, the first time he had admired her looks. Yet she had never seen any trace of admiration in him before. What manner of man was he, exactly? She had suddenly, for the first time, an uneasy suspicion that Mr. Highet knew more of her than she did of him.
At all events, his behaviour once they regained Mount Street was everything that was correct. He shook her hand, thanked her for the evening, and vanished into his room. It was left to Anne to feel rather flat and let down while her abigail undressed her. She slipped into bed more inclined, oddl
y, to speculate on the nature of Henry Highet than to anticipate, with the anxiety it merited, the supremely difficult interview with George, Lord Ensley, awaiting her the next day.
Twelve
The drawing-room at number 14, Mount Street was more, that Monday evening, than a large, well-proportioned saloon elaborately hung with rich silks and heavy brocades, and fitted with handsome furniture. To the properly adjusted ear, it presented a piquant symphony of voices. Conversation hummed like strings: The laughter of the ladies fluted above it, that of the gentlemen boomed, drumlike, below. Now and then a solo might be heard, as when Lady Bambrick contrived to secure half the company’s attention with the story of how the portrait artist she had hired to paint a likeness of her lord had managed to keep the business a secret by pretending (at her suggestion) to be an architect; and how her husband had consequently purchased several thousand bricks he would never need for an annex to their dairy. Colonel Whiddon brassily trumpeted his opinion of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, now under construction; Mr. Humphrey Bleyte, in rounded tones much like those of a French horn, countered with his opposing one. The strings (a chorus of feminine observations on the handsomeness of the newly decorated room) swelled generally to cover them; and so the music continued. Anne Highet, conductress for the evening, listened satisfied. This was her first soirée in Mount Street, and she wished it to be a success. Collecting so interesting and luminous a company in mid-December in London was no mean feat, but she had done it: a reflection that increased her tendency to congratulate herself.
Moreover, the evening was only just beginning. Conversation now politely confined to mild anecdotes and observations would, she trusted, grow more pointed as the night wore on. Some few of her guests—Lord and Lady Ensley, most notably—had not yet even arrived. Others were hardly acquainted with more than one or two people in the room. Mr. Highet fell into this category, of course. His hostess had been worried about him on this account, particularly because Maria—still insisting upon her mourning—had asked Anne to give out that she was ill, and had not come down.
But Mr. Highet seemed to be taking care of himself very nicely. He had found Charles and Celia Grypphon among the crowd, and Anne noticed the three of them talking animatedly during some quarter of an hour. Celia must have introduced him to some people afterwards, for each time Anne looked conscientiously round for him, ready to rescue him from a lonely corner, she found him in colloquy with some one else: Sir John Firebrace, or Warrington Weld, or (for quite ten minutes, too!) the rather needlessly pretty Arabella Lemon. He was looking quite amazingly handsome to-night, in daring Wellington trousers she was sure he could not have had made in Cheshire, and a black stock tied carefully round his throat. That black brought out the black of his hair, and the darkness of his sleepy eyes, and set off the ruddy bloom in his cheeks. When she considered this was the same man she had often seen in a none too tidy labourer’s smock-frock and boots thick with mud she could scarcely credit it.
Ensley arrived rather late. The terrified look in his wife’s eyes, the pinkness of her nose, and the hastiness of her usually meticulous toilette suggested to Anne that they had quarrelled about her coming. Perhaps that was the cause of their lateness. Whatever the case, Anne had perforce to postpone her private interview with his lordship, for dinner was nearly due to be served. She could only greet them (Ensley levelled his quizzing glass at her, unwittingly strengthening her resolve) and draw them into the buzzing room. She took Juliana’s damp right hand firmly in her left, took Ensley’s left arm with her right, and was guiding them towards Charles Grypphon when, most unluckily, Mr. Highet bumbled directly into them.
Anne could see at once this was a meeting he desired no more than she. His heavy brows drew together and he looked down from his six inches’ advantage on Ensley with no very friendly eye. What had they argued about at Linfield, the Corn Law? Dear, dear! Events (at least in Anne’s opinion) seemed to be proving Ensley wrong since then. He would not like that. Nervously, she watched him pull his lips back into the semblance of a smile and extend a hand to Highet.
“What are you doing in town?” he demanded, before remembering to add, “Understand congratulations are in order,” in a voice more suspicious than celebratory.
For his part, Mr. Highet did not even pretend a smile. Putting his hand out slowly, “A little personal business. And the same to you,” he said, at his most sober. “I wish you extremely happy.” He looked gravely at Juliana, whom Anne introduced, murmured politely his pleasure at knowing her, then fixed his attention chiefly on Anne.
“We went to see Lodoiska last night,” chirped that lady brightly, and immediately wished she had not. She’d selected it for a neutral topic, but saw at once from the spark in Ensley’s eyes that he did not consider an excursion to the theatre with Mr. Highet in that light. He had already been unpleasantly surprised to find Mr. Highet here at all (for of course Anne had done nothing to warn him); in addition, Highet’s explanation of “personal business” for his presence had scarcely calmed him. Anne noticed the wording too, and thought it unnecessarily provocative (would not “business” have done as well?) but could spare little thought for that with Ensley glowering so, and Mr. Highet stern as a vicar on Sunday. She obliged herself to prattle on bravely, “Have you seen it? Mr. Kemble wrote it, you know, as well as appearing. It’s quite good, really. Plenty of horses. Though they have no lines, of course, save ‘Nay, nay.’”
Lady Ensley was the only one to laugh at this feeble sally, and that clearly from excess of nerves.
“What a shame to come up to town just at this season,” Ensley remarked, trying for a smooth recover. He had reminded himself he must deal comfortably with Highet or risk proving to Anne the truth of her own objections. “So little to see, I mean. There was a marvelous King Henry IV at the Drury Lane just last month. Mr. Bengough played Henry. Excellent.”
Mr. Highet (who after all had no corresponding motive to propitiate Ensley) said nothing.
“Of course, you may not care for Shakespeare. Lady George does not—do you, my dear?”
As Ensley had put this in only to demonstrate to both Mr. and Mrs. Highet the cordiality of relations between himself and his wife, and as Anne guessed this immediately, she did not come to his rescue when her ladyship merely answered, “No,” and fell mute again.
A fine dew sprung up on Ensley’s high forehead. For all his sang-froid, he unconsciously joined his hands behind his back and began to wring them energetically. This was going very badly indeed. He could see in Anne’s eyes that she had had no good news in store for him in the first place (though he did not divine the finality of her actual decision) and a certain pique on that account, perhaps, made him venture a remark he might better have left unsaid: “Well, Mr. Highet! Still letting your schoolmaster teach Spence, are you, now that you’ve seen the Spencean Philanthropists at work at Spa Fields? Ha! That was an education for Parliament, I can tell you.”
“Mr. Mallinger does not teach Spence. He has read him, as have I. Like Milton, I ‘cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.’ I dislike censorship,” Mr. Highet returned, miraculously (Anne considered) declining to rise to Ensley’s bait either in word or tone. Still, she silently cursed Dolphim for a doddering snail. Where was he? Where was dinner? Would he never announce it?
“How is Mr. Mallinger?” she now asked, assuming an air of gay interest. She hoped at least to steer the topic from politics. She explained to Juliana, “Mr. Mallinger teaches the children at Fevermere and Linfield.”
“Children?” Juliana echoed, puzzled. Looking blankly from Anne to Mr. Highet, “But I thought— Have you children?” she asked bluntly.
“The children of the tenant farmers,” Mr. Highet explained at once, while Anne blushed and Lord Ensley glanced furiously at his wife. Kindly, Mr. Highet hurried the talk away from the faux pas: “I fear he is still in indifferent spirits. My mother and I have often had him to dine in recent weeks, but we can’t seem to cheer him up.”
/> “What a pity,” Ensley said vaguely.
“And yet, you know,” Mr. Highet added, glancing curiously at Anne, “quite lately I fancy I know how to do so. I must see if I can contrive it.”
Anne, endeavouring to steal a look at a clock on the mantel beyond him, hardly heard this, and said nothing.
“And how does your mother?” Lord Ensley, regretting his lapse of policy and determined to be pleasant again, inquired. “An estimable woman.”
Mr. Highet contrived to look both sceptical and dour at once, and was about to answer when Dolphim (“At last!” thought Anne thankfully) appeared, throwing open the drawing-room doors. The intricacies of proceeding to the dining-room in the proper order of precedence spared the unwilling quartet from continuing their conversation; and the table (“Thank God,” breathed Anne) separated the key participants. Anne herself had a very interesting assistant to the Foreign Secretary on her left, and a Major recently home from France on her right. Her only regret (a quite absurd one, really) was that Mr. Highet had somehow ended up next to Arabella Lemon, and across from the perenially fetching Baroness Courtham.
Dinner itself passed cheerfully enough. The hostess regretted the fricaseed Windsor beans, for Cook invariably made the white sauce too watery and quite spoiled them; but the parslied tench and the veal olives were excellent, and the wine roll delicious. Of course, Anne did not taste one quarter of the dishes served: She was too much occupied by quizzing Major Lewis as to the state of affairs in Paris, and by teasing out of the interesting assistant Castlereagh’s next projects. She had had no opportunity to appoint an assignation with Ensley before dinner, nor could she approach him now. On the contrary, she was soon obliged to lead the withdrawal of the ladies to the drawing-room and to leave Ensley and Mr. Highet to one another’s dubious mercies.
This hour alone with the ladies was one Anne had always particularly enjoyed, for she was far from the only witty female in her set, and tongues seemed often set at happy liberty by the absence of gentlemen. Tonight was no exception. A circle of the duller, and generally younger, spirits sat apart, talking among themselves; while Anne and Celia and Amy Firebrace and some dozen others heatedly argued and chaffed one another on a wide variety of topics. Yet even here, among her own sex and in her own drawing-room, Anne was aware of a degree of artificiality in the proceedings which she had never, before her sojourn in Cheshire, noticed. There was almost a ritual aspect to the debate, as topics they had discussed an hundred times before (the role of women in Politics, the progress of the Arts…) were gone over yet again, with all the same complaints brought out, and all the same retorts answered to them. She was not sorry when, at length, Celia drew her aside and whispered,