The Country Gentleman (16 page)

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.

Mr. Highet joined them while this discussion was still underway. When he had been introduced and (looking a trifle conscious about it, on account of Grypphon’s breeches being rather smaller than his own) seated well away from the windows, Miss Guilfoyle reverted to the topic of the scandal by saying, “I dareswear you have read of these scoundrels in the
Times
? But you must find it all very much of a piece with your idea of town life. Mr. Highet has no opinion of London,” she explained, with a smile, to the Grypphons.

“Perfectly right,” Celia pronounced swiftly, while Anne breathed a sigh of relief. Lady Grypphon was looking at Mr. Highet with a great deal of curiosity, or speculation, as one might look at a Persian bear or an Indian elephant; but at least there was nothing cutting in her tone. “Filthy place; shocking morals. And how do you like it in the country, sir? Can you appprove it better?”

“Much better,” he smiled. “For at least the muck here serves a purpose.”

Anne cringed, but Lady Grypphon only laughed appreciatively. “And the morals?” she asked.

Mr. Highet took on the sober, earnest look Miss Guilfoyle knew so well. “Dear God, do not let him provoke Celia,” she prayed inwardly. “Do not let him prose at her; she will never stand it.” But when Mr. Highet spoke, it was to say:

“To be frank, Lady Grypphon, I have grave fears for the morals of country folk. Since the Speenhamland System has put every man on the dole whether he works or no, drunkenness and ignorance have become the rule more than the exception in some of our parishes. The people have no land to farm. They eat nothing but bread and cheese six days in the week. Poverty is rampant, and
whatever the Bible may say about the blessedness of the poor in spirit, I can assure you that the poor in Cheshire are half sunk into infirmity, sloth, and viciousness.” He shook his head. “I am no enemy to inclosure, ma’am, for good farming could not go forward without it; but what Parliament thinks of when it grants the right to enclose a district without allotting so much as an acre to each working man—that, I confess, baffles me. You may be sure no one at Fevermere goes without his little plot—nor Linfield either.”

Lady Grypphon’s eyebrows had been climbing higher and higher during this speech, and when it ended she cast a speaking glance at Anne in which amusement, puzzlement, and surprise mingled equally. Miss Guilfoyle read it pretty accurately, though she hoped no one else—Mr. Highet particularly—could decipher it. It said, “Why did you tell me this man was dull? He is perfectly intelligent—and extremely pleasant to look at besides.” Aloud she said, “Mr. Highet, you ought to come to Parliament yourself and say as much. I am sure your eloquence would persuade them. Do not you think so, Grypphon?”

His lordship affably concurred, adding, “But then Mr. Highet would be obliged to come to town, which we know he detests.”

“If I thought anyone would listen to me, I would come,” Highet answered. “But I am no one particular there—only a farmer, with no knowledge except of my own little spot.”

Celia looked meaningfully to her husband. “I daresay we could arrange…” she began.

But Henry Highet cut her off. “I should feel a perfect imbecile,” he affirmed. “I keep after the parish officials to
urge them to do their duty; and I speak to the Lord-Lieutenant when I can. But here my crusading ends.” He laughed, and flashed a queer glance at his hostess. “I know my limits,” he said. “The rest I leave to William Cobbett.”

At the mention of this dangerous radical’s name a silence fell on the Green Parlour which even Celia Grypphon was too shocked to break. Finally,

“Tell us about your misadventure to-night,” Maria Insel invited Mr. Highet. “Poor man—how did you happen to find yourself out in the storm so late?”

And on this safe subject (which had to do with the difficult birthing of a calf from a prized cow Mr. Highet had bought from Colling of Ketton himself) the conversation turned for some while. Except for the fact that Mr. Highet pronounced the name of the great breeder Colling with as much reverence as if he had been an archbishop—whereupon Celia naturally cried out, “Who?”—the tale was told without untoward incident, and the talk wandered naturally on, first to horseflesh, then to cookery, last to the lateness of the hour and bed. The party thus broke up before Henry Highet had much opportunity either to scandalize or (as Anne feared much more) to bore the company.

Miss Guilfoyle woke late and did not see her unexpected guest before he departed. But Lord Grypphon, who was an early riser, had encountered him at the breakfast table, and later conveyed a message of thanks from him to Anne.

“I daresay you know more than I do about it,” his lordship went on, “for of course I don’t pretend to have half the wits of any of you females”—this was spoke in the dining-room at about noon, when the remainder of the
party had assembled for a nuncheon—“but he seemed a quite sensible fellow to me, your Mr. Highet, and most amiable. Not a sound thinker, mind you, or he couldn’t be taken in by that fool Cobbett—but intelligent enough. Didn’t you think, my dear?” he appealed to his wife.

Lady Grypphon thoughtfully chewed and swallowed a bite of cold capon. “Actually, I have been asking myself that question half the morning. I find myself rather inclined to agree with Maria than Anne about him. A bit prosy, but no dullard. Misguided, as you say. Still, quite amiable, and perfectly satisfactory as to manners. Anne, I wonder you were so afraid I’d sink my claws into him. He certainly showed no signs of wishing to bore us to death, as you hinted.”

Miss Guilfoyle, finding herself in the uncomfortable position of having made apologies for a person everyone else enjoyed, bristled and countered rather lamely, “Well, you were not obliged to listen to him on the subject of ditches. I promise you, if you had been, you would feel very differently. He bored the life out of me the first time we spoke at any length; and any how, he can be extremely rude. On the night I made his acquaintance, he absolutely laughed at me—”

“Oh, dear!” Celia interrupted, knowing her friend could never tolerate this. “I am surprised you have him in the house. Surely you will never forgive him.”

“Now you are laughing at me too,” Anne charged, “though you are sly about it. It is very bad of you. And as for Mr. Highet—” But she found she did not know how to end her sentence; for her feelings about that gentleman were in a state of confusion quite unlike any she was accustomed to maintain in her forceful, orderly mind. In the
beginning, of course, she had positively disliked him. He made her feel foolish, and pitiable, and nearly drove her wild with his turnips and sows—which was boorish in him at the least. His ideas, such as they were, were frightful, the worst sort of radical drivel. And yet, in the last weeks…She could no longer ignore his many kindnesses, nor the fact that his presence sometimes called forth such curious symptoms in her. Was it a crime to be tedious?

“Oh, hang Mr. Highet!” she finally exclaimed, seizing a pitcher of almond sauce and violently upending it over her dish of pudding. “Whatever he is, I am sure
he
is not sitting at a nuncheon table meditating upon
us
! Now, where do you go from here, my lucky Grypphons? Tell me your winter plans.”

Lord and Lady Grypphon stopped a bare four days before, as Lady Grypphon frankly owned, they could “stick it no longer,” and departed bag and baggage. It was nothing to do with Anne, of course: She and Maria were always welcome at Highglade, or in Portman Square when they were in town, for as long as they liked. It was only—well, after all, Anne herself confessed she could scarcely keep her wits in Cheshire. That was the whole problem, was not it? Then she would certainly understand…

She did understand; though she also, curiously, felt a faint resentment against the friends who had come so far to see her. Like it or not, Linfield was her home—for the moment, at least. It was as if Celia had criticized her gown, when that was the only gown she had. Moreover,
the Grypphons’ departure made her feel abandoned, more so than if they had not come. Though she secretly acknowledged both these unpleasant emotions, she branded them irrational (how could the Grypphons like Linfield better than she did? Ought they to stop there for ever because she was obliged to?) and vigorously suppressed them while her friends were still there. But she cried as she watched their carriages drive away, and was obliged to lie in bed all that day with a sick head-ache.

Their visit extinguished such faint ideas as Anne had had of inviting other friends to Cheshire. Lady Grypphon might be more candid than the rest of their circle, but she was no more accustomed to comfort and good society than they. “The fact is,” as Anne put it to Maria a few days later at dinner, “the people I like in London know how to think, and read, and write, and talk—and that is all they know. Oh, they may ride an hour a day. If you set a pheasant before Lord Bambrick, he may shoot it. And naturally we can all sit up in an Opera box with our eyes open—for an act or two, any how. But we are lost without one another to talk to. In a way it is rather monstrous. Surely God did not give us arms only to hold books to our noses, nor legs only to stroll from drawing- to dining-room!”

Mrs. Insel (who, though her daily occupations were quite as sedate as those Anne mentioned, was nevertheless innocent of living only to talk) agreed that this was not likely to have been the Divine Intention. Though she did not regret London to anything like the degree Anne did—their life in society there was for her largely a matter of following Miss Guilfoyle where she liked to go, and keeping quiet—she knew its loss must chafe her friend sorely, and added from sympathy, “It is dreadful to be
sentenced to exile from all one cares about! To have one’s news arrive cold and stale, when one has been in the habit of making it oneself; to be unable to judge the pulse of thought in the metropolis, when one has been accustomed to set it; dreadful!”

Miss Guilfoyle, glancing up in some surprise, said, “I never guessed it fretted you so badly. Poor dear!”

About to say, “No, not me—I only worry for you,” Maria thought again and checked herself. Far better to let Anne believe she had company in her misery than to seem to pity her. Since the day of their talk in the park about Ensley she thought Anne had held a little aloof from her. Maria would do nothing to drive her farther away. Instead, “I daresay I shall go on better when we have been here longer,” she suggested mildly. “When once one has lived in Canada, you know, one learns to take root any where.” She then turned the topic (since Dolphim had left them alone at table) to the simmering rivalry between that gentleman’s wife and Miss Charlotte Veal.

In time, the lives of the inmates of Linfield began, as lives are wont to do, to settle into a pattern. Most afternoons between two and four Miss Guilfoyle made it her habit either to walk or to ride (according to the weather and her fancy) into the park. Each Monday she visited the farms of some of her tenants. Each Tuesday, accompanied by Mr. Rand, she rode over part of the home farm. Wednesday mornings between ten and eleven she naturally went over Miss Veal’s housekeeping books with her; Wednesday afternoons she continued the momentum by sitting with Mr. Rand over his. On Fridays she and Maria drove to Faulding Chase, where they patronized such commercial establishments as were to be
found there, and paid a call on the rector and his wife. Sunday morning found them at church, Sunday afternoon (a signal honour, here) at dinner with Lord and Lady Crombie.

Thursdays Anne devoted to a very particular correspondence with London: With the utmost discretion, she had resumed her letters to the
Times
. Under the name of “A.” she faithfully reported the further adventures of Lord Quaffbottle as, driven out of town by duns, he rusticated in an unnamed corner of the country. It was a matter of some satisfaction to her to be able to turn Stade Park, Fevermere, and Faulding Chase into grist for her small but elegant mill. She said nothing of it to anyone and trusted to human vanity to prevent those of her neighbours who read the pieces from recognising themselves, even if, improbably, they guessed Lord Quaffbottle was in their midst.