The Country Gentleman

by Hill, Fiona

  “So, Mrs. Sly-boots Highet! Telling us what a tedious sow’s ear your Mr. Highet was, when all the time you knew perfectly well you meant to make a silk purse of him.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I say, your husband. Who would ever have guessed he would dress up so nicely, eh? Who but you,” Celia laughed.

  Anne asked, rather seriously, “Do you think him well-looking?”

  “Well-looking? Spectacular! Now don’t tell me you don’t see it yourself!” Celia rallied her. “Nor that you aren’t aware how he looks at you!”

  “How he— What do you mean, exactly?”

  “Good heavens, Anne, you know me a sight too well, I hope, to play coy with me. Aren’t you really aware your husband is in love with you?”

  Anne felt suddenly dizzy. “Celia, no, I am sure you are mistaken. Why, he has never said a word of such a thing! Quite the opposite, he has been very explicit…” Her words faded briefly, then recommenced, “Our marriage—why, I’ve told you all this. Our marriage was purely for business purposes,” Anne whispered rapidly.

  “Yes, perhaps, but— If he is not in love with you, he is mightily infatuated. Not that I wonder at it,” she added, fondly brushing a hand across Anne’s delicate cheek. “Only— Surely I saw Ensley fuming at him, and vice versa? You don’t deny that?”

  Anne thought. She recalled Mr. Highet’s “condition,” the single visitor he had warned her he would not make welcome at Fevermere. But that was a question of simple dignity, she was certain. Celia must be wrong. Perhaps Mr. Highet found her pretty—in fact, she knew he had last night—but that was all.

  “Ah, you don’t,” Celia took up again, before Anne could speak. “You don’t deny either, I hope, that he is not one quarter so dull as you have made him out to be? He gave Charles and me a very good account of the exhibition at Somerset Place just now, besides apprising us of some new techniques in midwifery that quite—well, quite took my breath away. I don’t say, mind you, that he will ever be Lord High Fol-de-rol; but neither, if you come to it, will Charles. And I for one should not care to live with Lord High Fol-de-rol any how.”

  At this juncture Amy Firebrace pounced on them, demanding to know what Celia thought of the Elgin Marbles; and as the gentlemen joined them while this discussion was still going forward, the subject of Henry Highet was let drop. Anne had no time to think of Mr. Highet anyway, for she was acutely aware that the evening was slipping by without her having spoke alone to Ensley. The prospect weighed upon her more and more uncomfortably, yet it was devilishly trickly to arrange an assignation in a house Ensley scarcely knew, and under the very nose (a nose she particularly wished not to distress with any whiff of a rendez-vous) of her husband. She had forgot the former and, naturally, failed to anticipate the latter complication when she promised the tryst to Ensley. Now how to contrive it?

  Ensley himself solved the difficulty, coming up beside her as she bent to move a firescreen and murmuring, “How much longer must I wait for you? Follow me to the dining-room in five minutes!”

  “No,” she whispered, setting the screen down where it would more effectively protect the elderly Lady Sandys from the heat of the fire. She smiled at the old marchioness, then mumbled into her fan, “The servants will be there. Any how, I cannot follow you out. Mr. Highet will notice.”

  “And is it any business of his?” Ensley queried angrily, though still keeping his voice low, and erasing any emotion from his countenance. He began to stroll slowly towards a corner in which a small marble statue of Demeter perched on a pedestal. Anne strolled with him, fanning herself.

  “I think it is his business, yes,” she answered in a low voice. “I do not care to hurt him, you see, and I know such behaviour must.”

  “You seem to oppose your nicety of conduct to mine,” Ensley returned. They had now arrived at the statue and he gestured at it as he spoke.

  Anne nodded, unaware that Mr. Highet had observed her situation and was now keeping a discreet eye on her unnaturally rigid back and Ensley’s studied gestures. “Perhaps,” she said. “Would we not do better to renew this subject later, when he is gone back to Cheshire? I expect him to leave in a day or two.”

  “I do not care to wait a day or two,” Ensley muttered, though still nodding genially. For a change, Anne was grateful for his practised gestures, his ability to control his expression. “You have something to say to me. I see it in your eyes. If you will not quit the room with me, say it here and now.”

  “I cannot—” she faltered; but,

  “Say it!” he hissed so harshly that, without further reflection, she burst into speech.

  “I will not receive you alone any longer. I will not write to you nor receive letters of you. I regret it; but our lives have changed and our relations must change too. Pray forgive me. Pray—” She felt tears coming to her eyes and urgently blinked them away, “Pray believe I shall always remember our friendship with the greatest affection, and think of you with tenderness,” she went on, in a softened voice. Almost pleadingly she added, “As I hope you will me!” before turning away abruptly, and plunging with such energy into conversation with Arabella Lemon (who happened to be the closest person to her) that Ensley had no hope of recapturing her attention.

  Out of the corner of her eye Anne saw, as she chattered to Miss Lemon of her enchanting tiara, Henry Highet watching her. The thought that it might be Miss Lemon and not herself he was observing passed through her mind; but a few minutes later, when Arabella had moved off to sit with her mother, she caught his eyes on herself again and knew she had not been wrong. She could not read his expression. Had he seen her speaking with Ensley? Seen him turn away from her? What did her own countenance show? If she had been pressed to read the look on Mr. Highet’s, she would have called it kindness, or sympathy. But perhaps she merely fancied that.

  Not many minutes afterwards, Ensley came to bid her good night. Juliana was on his arm, her expression as timid and tentative as ever. Ensley was unmistakably stricken. Stiffly, and in such evident pain that Anne could scarcely regard him without bursting into tears, he thanked her for the evening, made his bow, and departed. She watched him go, torn between relief and a miserable feeling that half her life was walking out the door with him. When Mr. Highet appeared at her side a moment later, and took her arm, and bracingly asked her what on earth had gone into those delicious veal olives, she knew for certain it had been kindness in his face after all, and that he was aware—at least in part—of what had passed.

  “Oh, eye of newt and toe of frog,” she replied, gratefully slipping a hand into the arm he offered. Though her voice had a tell-tale quaver in it, his very presence—warm and solid—reassured her and helped her to find this light answer.

  “Wool of bat and tongue of inquisitive gentleman?” he suggested.

  “Dear me, no. At least, I do not think so. You had best ask Cook. It is her secret.”

  “I dare not go near her until I know for certain,” he replied, laughing a little. They began to stroll towards an open window at one end of the room. “I mean to return to Somerset Place,” he went on presently. “There is a painting there I wish to buy for Fevermere. If it is not too much trouble, I should very much like your opinion first. Will you go with me to look at it to-morrow?”

  Surprised, “Certainly, since you ask me. Only I had best warn you, I am no judge of art. You ought really to take Celia,” she said.

  “With all deference to her ladyship,” he answered in a low tone, “I prefer your company. Any how, you are more likely to see it again than she, so your self-interest is involved. I know you have a high opinion of self-interest,” he added, smiling.

  Anne caught the reference to the astonishment she had voiced, the day he offered for her, at his neighbourly assistance when she first went into Cheshire. She coloured a little, thinking of herself and Lady Juliana. “My opinion of self-interest has come down a little since those days,” she murmured.

  “Has it!” he exclaimed. He
laid his hand over the little one tucked into his arm, then patted it awkwardly. “Well, well! And here I had been thinking town wits did not change their own opinions, but only those of other people.”

  “On the contrary, they change them more often than anyone else—as town tulips do their linen. Come help me talk to Lady Sandys, won’t you? No one has in quite half an hour, I fear, and if she falls asleep—as I see she is about to—she is the very devil to wake up!”

  In the event, Mr. Highet not only helped his wife talk to the old marchioness, he kept by Anne’s side through the end of the party, though it went on past two and she knew he must be dropping with sleep. She accepted this support with silent gratitude and felt a deep twinge of guilt on learning, when she stumbled downstairs the next morning at half past eleven, that he had been unable to sleep later than six, the hour at which he habitually rose. Still, he seemed cheerful and rested enough. Meeting her in the front hall, he informed her he had already gone for a gallop through Hyde Park, stopped in at Clarendon’s to talk to a German baron he had met (in England to buy sheep and interested in Mr. Highet’s) and made a hearty breakfast with him.

  “I suppose you wish to rush off to Somerset Place at once, lest someone else snatch away your painting?” Anne hazarded, suppressing a yawn and wearily rubbing at her forehead. The memory that she had broke with Ensley definitively last night lay in her heart like a lump of ice; but, as was usual with her, the pain only sharpened her humour. She dropped into an elbow chair whose gilded arms were carved into serpents, ran her fingers idly over the hooded eyes and hissing tongue of one of these, then bent to it and asked solicitously, “You are sleepy too, aren’t you, poor thing? Yes, we all are.”

  “Dear ma’am, if you are so tired as that—” Mr. Highet began; but Anne interrupted, staggering to her feet,

  “No, no! Never let it be said I was afraid to martyr myself for Art. Go we must and go we shall. What is that bright light?” she demanded, affrightedly clapping an arm over her eyes after glancing out the long window beside the front door. Face buried, she muttered into the crook of her arm, “Dolphim, would you ask Lizzie to fetch down my green velvet pelisse? The one with the satin epaulets—she will know. And my black chip bonnet.”

  “We call that light the sun,” Mr. Highet informed her while the butler went on his errand. Gently he took her arm and coaxed it from her face. “It will not harm you, if you let it alone.”

  “Like a bee,” she mused, blinking at the window. “But what is it doing up at this hour? And what of ourselves? I do not wish to offend you, sir,” she continued, changing her tack slightly and collapsing again into the chair, “but your extreme cheerfulness at such a moment is not at all the thing. In fact, it shows an appalling lack of taste.” She nipped what would have been a vast yawn in the bud, then continued, “Here in town a man of breeding leaves the hours between six and ten A.M. to his servants. I can’t explain it. He just does. It’s something he knows to do. Perhaps he’s born with the instinct— Oh, thank you, Dolphim,” she interrupted herself, languidly standing, raising her arms, and shrugging herself into the pelisse the butler held for her. “It is true, what I’ve been saying to Mr. Highet, is not it? You are not acquainted with any respectable butlers who buttle before, say, nine-thirty or so, are you?”

  With admirable aplomb, Mr. Dolphim replied smoothly, “It is certainly true that madam never rises before that hour without ill result.” He proferred her her bonnet.

  “There, you see?” Placing the bonnet on her head and fumbling at the ribands she went on, “Of course, you are not to blame for being ignorant of these things. On the contrary, since you have scarcely lived in town—”

  “Don’t you want some breakfast before we leave?” Mr. Highet broke in as Dolphim moved to open the door to them. She thought, as she looked sidewards at him, that she saw on his countenance an expression more explicitly amused than the bland, friendly one with which he usually met her pleasantries.

  “Breakfast?” she echoed hollowly. “Do you mean that sitting-down thing at the table? With eggs in it and things?” She watched him carefully. His smile broadened. She had finally succeeded in amusing him, after all this time! “No, actually. I seem to recall having tried that once. It ended badly, I think. Any how, I am sure a few mouthfuls of brisk morning air will suffice to sustain me. Thank you, Dolphim,” she murmured, as that gentleman opened the door and bowed her through it. She gave a little shriek as she gained the front steps, averted her eyes, and shrinkingly descended to the waiting carriage. Mr. Highet handed her in. “Oh, yes,” she said weakly. She took a deep breath and gagged. “I feel much better already.”

  Mr. Highet closed the door, shutting her in. Actually, it was a rather pleasant day, cold but dry, and with a blue, open sky. It was almost a shame to be inside a closed carriage. Mr. Highet gave his orders to the groom, then climbed in next to Anne. As they crossed Mayfair he told her where he meant to hang the picture they were going to see, and explained what had drawn him to it. “It shows a harbour. At, if you will excuse my mentioning it, dawn. An artist named Turner.”

  “Yes, I remember a picture of his from last year, of a brook I think. Aqueous sort of fellow.”

  “Did you like it? You must be frank,” he warned. “If you do not care for this one, say so. Don’t spare my feelings.”

  “I shall be brutal,” she promised. “I shall make you wish you never confessed to admiring it at all. You will squirm under the crushing heel of my—”

  “Yes, thank you. Simple candour will answer nicely,” he cut her off. But he smiled at the same time, in that lively way she had not seen before, and she smiled back.

  Inside the gallery, whose high walls were covered nearly from floor to ceiling with paintings, he offered her his arm and began to lead her through the thin crowd of viewers to the picture that interested him. But they had gone no more than a few steps before a small, very portly, extremely well-dressed young gentleman spotted them and strolled over.

  “Bless me if it isn’t the brown top-boots!” he exclaimed, holding a hand out to shake Mr. Highet’s. “Cut very high, if I recall, and particularly thick in the sole? And with Miss Guilfoyle, too,” he went on, turning to Anne and bowing. “How d’ye do? Your friend and I last met among the lasts at Hoby’s—and now we brush together midst the brushstrokes!”

  “Lord Alvanley,” Anne bowed, smiling, even as she wondered frantically how on earth it had happened that Henry Highet struck up an acquaintance with the sharpest and most celebrated wit in London. And at Hoby’s! What freak had tempted the plain-living master of Fevermere into that Temple of Dandyism? “But I am no longer Miss Guilfoyle,” she told him. “You must call me Mrs. Highet. And this gentleman is my husband, as well as my friend.”

  “Indeed?” Alvanley passed his keen glance over them both, nodded incisively, and said, “Smart fellow. Interesting match. Seen these?” He waved a plump hand vaguely at the scores of pictures round them. “One or two good things. The rest—” He shook his head in a melancholy fashion. “Pity to think of all the useful gaiters and sails and breeches that could have been made from the canvas.”

  “You are too severe,” Mr. Highet reproved him.

  “Ah! Now I see your game. Last time we met, you told me my cuffs were too long.” (Here Anne stole a look at his cuffs, which indeed reached nearly past his knuckles.) “Now you say I am too severe. You are the sort of person who goes about town telling people how they are excessive. Ha! If you want to see real excess, stop by my house about nine to-night. A whole expendable crowd of us will gather to eat a superfluous dinner, after which we shall have some nice, immoderate play.” He winked, then apologized to Anne for being unable to invite her too. “Not that sort of evening. Well, don’t want to stay talking too long! Perish the thought! Twelve Bruton Street,” he called over his shoulder and walked off without waiting for an answer.

  He left in his wake a woman who merely gaped, for some moments, at her husband.

  “Friendly
fellow,” that gentleman observed pleasantly, when the friendly fellow had gone out of earshot.

  “Friendly?” Anne gasped. “Lord Alvanley is at the centre of one of the most exclusive sets in London! He’s cut more people than the guillotine. What did you say to him at Hoby’s?” she demanded. “And what made you go into Hoby’s any how?”

  “I wanted boots,” he said simply.

  “But Hoby’s?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps my visit to town is turning my head. I am sure they will be good boots, at all events, as well as stylish. You don’t object?” he asked as an afterthought.

  “Certainly not! It is none of my affair any how. Order some coats at Weston’s, why don’t you? I am sure Lord Alvanley will be happy to put you up for membership at Brook’s or Crockford’s. Gamble Fevermere away! It is nothing to me.”

  Seriously, “You are not anxious about money, I hope?” he asked, pitching his voice low. “The estate is doing extremely well.”

  “Of course I am not,” Anne broke in impatiently. “Only if I have to watch you turned into a—a fashionable fribble by those—those fops—!” She sputtered to a halt. The truth was, the mere idea of Mr. Highet becoming a coxcomb, concerned with the height of his boots and the folds of his cravat and the stripes on his waistcoat, made her half ill. But,