The Country Gentleman (12 page)

Encouraged by her tone (though still wondering what that was he had seen in her eyes), Ensley remonstrated, “But how can you characterise such a plan as ‘living on my bounty’? Is not everything I have yours? Would you not do the same for me if our situations were reversed?”

“If I did, would you accept it?” Anne inquired, with a touch of her former sharpness.

He ignored this and spoke on, “If you fear my doling money out to you, let me give it you all at once. A house, an easy competence, enough to keep Maria and all your servants—I shall give it you once for all, and you will administer it as you like.”

“You cannot afford such a thing,” was her first, smiling objection. Preposterous as it was, she admired the generosity of his idea.

“But indeed I can, that is just the beauty of it. Inside three months I shall be married, and whatever I had of straitened circumstances will be over,” Ensley declared warmly. “It will mean nothing to me to endow you so, the merest—” But he broke off as he saw storm clouds in her face again, and asked, “What is it?”

“Can you think,” Miss Guilfoyle snapped, backing away from him as if he had been Lucifer himself, “can you think I would consent to take that woman’s money? Live on her money? Can you think it?”

But Ensley only pointed out, mildly and simply, “Why not? I am.”

“You—” But, making an heroic push, she forced the angry words down and answered instead, “That is your choice, sir, but it will not do for me. I think, if you will excuse me, it will be better if we do not talk any more just now. Perhaps to-morrow. How long do you stop?”

“I had hoped to set out again tonight, taking you with me,” Ensley muttered ruefully.

“Can you spare a night or two?”

He looked uncertain. They both knew he was thinking of his duties to Lady Juliana. But he said,
“Mais oui, pour faire plaîsir à ma Minerve.”

“Good,” she said shortly. “Then I should like very much for you to go away now and come again in the morning. I had meant to put you up here, of course, but this is a small house as you see, and I need some time alone. Will you mind very much?”

“I am yours to command,” he bowed.

Even this empty formula grated on her; she murmured, violently subduing an impulse to scream, “Then please do go away. I am not myself now.” She put a hand to her temple. “My head aches, and I should be sorry…sorry to say good-bye to you in this state.” Then, more naturally, she added, “Pray forgive me.” She put her little hand into his and whispered, “I do not understand myself, to say truth.”

Ensley, though he did not like it, was obliged to accept this arrangement for the moment. He bowed again, kissed her gently on the forehead, and walked out of the house.

He left behind him a woman who had never known such confusion. Had she blamed Ensley for taking her for granted? Very well then, witness his headlong pursuit of her into Cheshire, testimony to the reverse. Had she other complaints to lay at his door? She searched their history
together. He had comforted her in her grief, rejoiced with her in her small triumphs, puzzled with her over her difficulties, petty or great, and helped her through. He had been unfailingly tender, affectionate, kind. In this business of his marriage, he had done only what they agreed he must do. And yet she was angry at him! That, at least, she could no longer deny. More than angry: She was furious, outraged, inflamed. How dare he suggest—? How dare he offer—?

But when her thoughts had reached this point she obliged herself to calm down. She climbed the stairs and shut herself into one of the small sitting-rooms there. A tolerably cosy room, she noticed. She made herself think of the furnishings in an effort to regain her tranquillity. She lifted the lid of a small mahogany box sitting on a Pembroke table and discovered a sticky cluster of long-forgotten comfits. The box made a pleasant, clopping sound as it dropped shut, and she opened and closed it a while, at the same time resisting a rising wave of frustrated tears.

“I will be calm,” she said aloud. “I will be calm.”

Then she recommenced her meditations, starting with What did she want from Ensley? His love? He did love her, or else why dash up here? Respect? He respected her most sincerely—or why ask her, as he often did, to write his speeches? Did she wish him to understand her? Who understood her better? Did she desire—

She desired him to marry her. That was it. Wriggle away from it as she might, this was what she came back to. She wished him to marry her. But he could not marry her. And anyhow, she had always said she did not particularly wish to be married. Wedlock seemed to her to carry very few privileges, and the loss of a great deal of liberty.
She did not want children: People under the age of sixteen could seldom hold her attention long, and it seemed rather clumsy to have a baby and wait sixteen years for it to become interesting when there were so many adults about ready-made. She would be able to live with Ensley, to be sure; but the truth was, she liked her solitary life, and viewed its theoretical disruption with dismay. Society would no longer look askance upon her connexion to his lordship—but the society she cared about already did not, and she didn’t (she told herself) give two pins for the rest.

Then what tormented her so?

It was a measure of the keenness of her distress that she actually went to Maria Insel to ask for help. In whatever concerned herself and Ensley, her policy in the past had always been quite the opposite: If some thing really puzzled her in his behaviour, if a decision regarding him teased her dreadfully, she might—might—set an oblique question to the discreet Celia; but she never unburdened her heart to her, nor even permitted anyone else to see that she was in doubt. This grew, not from a lack of faith in her friends, but from a proud desire to manage her own affairs. Anyway, she knew Maria thought on principle that every woman ought to marry, and therefore could not be impartial.

But Maria was here, and Celia (who had sent to say she had another obligation but would try to come soon) was not. Therefore…

After luncheon, she invited Mrs. Insel to walk in the considerable park that lay between Linfield and the road. The day was warm, the sky softly grey, and Maria, who had tactfully been busying herself with a variety of household tasks during the last week, was glad of an opportunity to explore the grounds. So the two ladies set off at a
brisk pace, following a small path into the woods and turning at random as it intersected with other paths, then carelessly following these.

With as little elaboration as possible, Anne told Maria she had something on her mind and set the trouble before her. She reminded her the issue of marriage had been discussed and decided between herself and Ensley many years before. “And yet”—she broke an unlucky leaf from an oak tree and tore it to bits—“I cannot stop being angry. I talk to myself and talk to myself, but…” Her voice trailed away and she flung the shredded leaf into the mild wind.

Maria Insel pressed her lips together. Anne might be baffled by her own response, but Maria was not. If she had been a man she might have called Ensley out for his conduct towards her friend. “Everything just as it was,” indeed! “Take a house for her in London—” The idea! But it would not do to express outrage. That would only incline Anne to defend him. Instead, “I wonder, my dear,” she said reasonably, “if you know your heart quite thoroughly when you say you do not wish, in general, to marry. Are you certain?”

“Of course,” Miss Guilfoyle promptly answered. “Why should I wish to marry?”

“Most women do.”

“And most are bitterly disappointed. Look at your own case,” Anne added, not roughly but deliberately.

“I am convinced my case was extreme,” Maria said in a quiet voice.

“Perhaps; but I should not like even a moderate dose of what you had, poor thing. I never can understand why you are such a champion of marriage.”

“Perhaps ‘extreme’ was a poor choice of words. I should have said extraordinary—exceptional.”

“Let us hope so,” said Anne sceptically.

“At all events,” Maria persisted, always happy to turn from the subject of her matrimonial history, “I still suspect you do not know your own feelings. One’s desires may change, you know. What one did not care about at twenty, one may want at twenty-five. It would be foolish to hold oneself bound to a declaration made ten years ago when the truth behind it has changed.”

“Foolish? Honourable, I think. Ensley has not changed in his feelings towards me.”

“You have not married another man!” Maria objected, before she could stop herself.

“I have no need to.”

“You could not! No one would dare to ask you, when your connexion to Ensley is so— Excuse me, my dear,” she interrupted herself, observing tears start to Anne’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to distress you.”

“It is only that it makes me so angry, the way you misunderstand him. Ensley loves me! If he could, he would marry me. He simply can’t. If I cease to love him now that he is betrothed to Lady Juliana,
I
shall have betrayed
him
! Don’t you understand? He trusted me to mean what I said. He believed me when I assured him I expected him, wanted him to marry properly. It is I who am breaking faith, I who am unable to stand by my word.”

Anne had grown so agitated that Maria did not chuse to contradict her again, though she longed to. She waited until the other had been silent some while, then gently suggested, “Well, my dear, since Ensley does love you so, I am sure he cannot wish you to be unhappy. Perhaps you
had best set the truth before him, and the two of you puzzle it out together.” Secretly she was convinced the result of such a confession would be to annoy Ensley without making him change his plans. The two would then quarrel and Anne might break free of him at last.

However, “I could never tell Ensley a word of this,” Anne protested. “I should die of shame. It is so weak of me. It is unforgivable.”

Maria hesitated. Then, “I do not like to argue with you, Anne, but I cannot say I see anything the least bit unforgivable in it. On the contrary, it seems to me perfectly natural. You are accustomed to have Ensley for yourself, you feel jealous of Lady Juliana—”

“I am not jealous of that little chit,” Anne broke in hotly. “What should I envy her for? Her thick nose? Her thin wit?”

“Her husband?” Maria suggested.

“Maria, you are not helping at all!” Anne declared passionately. “All you wish to do is prove Ensley unworthy of my regard, and that you cannot do, for it is not so.”

“It is,” the other declared, goaded into equal fervour. These thoughts had been weighing on her heart so many years that she could scarcely govern her tongue now that Anne had, at long last, turned to her for an opinion. “The bargain he struck with you is one no true gentleman could consider.”

“Bargain—”

“Yes: That he would gallant you about, and keep all his freedom, and prevent your marrying, yet marry himself—and further his career at the expense of your happiness, and with the aid of your intelligence—”

“Maria!”

“Yes! And at the same time, you are to like it, and to
imagine he is your true friend, and never to complain of the terms.”

“Maria, are you so much wounded by your marriage that you have no sympathy to spare for any man? You suppose it is only women who are tender, who need loyalty and affection. But I tell you Ensley loves me. He trusts—”

“No gentleman could use you so ill,” Maria insisted. The ladies had ceased walking now and turned to face each other in the narrow path. “No true gentleman. I cannot believe—” She cast about in her mind for examples. “I cannot believe Lord Grypphon would do such a thing, for instance. Or Charles Stickney. Or—or even Mr. Highet,” she added, though she must have known this particular example was calculated to inflame Anne the more.

“Mr. Highet?” Anne sputtered, too surprised at his name being brought up to explode straightaway. “But—Good God, Maria, if no gentleman would—strike such a bargain, as you call it, then what does that make me? Do you suggest I am no lady? I think you must. Henry Highet!” she went on immediately, the explosion coming before Mrs. Insel could answer. “You must be raving mad! Why do you mention him?”

“Because he has more feeling than Ensley. Because he has a more refined sensibility.” Maria heard herself almost shouting—both ladies had unconsciously raised their voices to a pitch more likely to impede than facilitate communication—and lowered her tone. “Because, though we have known him so briefly, my every instinct tells me what I have never believed of Lord Ensley—what in fact Ensley has disproved of himself—that he would rather choke back his own feelings—conquer them, hide them if
that were all he could do—than take advantage of yours. And as for what your being a party to all this makes you,” she added, her voice dropping again, “it makes you fallible. That is all.”

Anne, who had begun to walk once more, now stood still, as if something of what Mrs. Insel was saying had sunk into her. Then, slowly, she took Maria’s arm. The two went a few steps along the path before them in silence. At last, “Where are we, do you imagine?” Miss Guilfoyle asked in a tone almost of mere curiosity.

Maria, weary of vehemence, said, “Except for in the park, I do not know.”

“Nor I.” A note of laughter crept into Anne’s words as she went on, “I do believe we have lost our way.” She turned completely round, looking for any familiar thing, but saw only oaks and elms. She laughed outright. “We have, Maria. Ah, heaven, the perfect illustration of the state of my wits: We cannot see the forest for the trees. Quite, quite lost.” She began to laugh so hard she nearly sank to the ground with it. Maria, naturally, caught the contagion and laughed also. At last,

“The sun is—well, with the clouds it is hard to see, but I think it is over there, don’t you?” Anne asked, pointing.

“I should have said…” Maria uncertainly indicated a different direction. “But I cannot be sure. If it is there, then…”

“As it is nearly four o’clock, that must be west—if it is the sun, of course—and so we want to walk…hm…” After a little more looking and considering, Anne turned herself and her companion round on the path they were in and set off smartly in the other direction.