The Country Gentleman (18 page)

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 such 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—”

“And would you have me tell Mr. Mallinger my own family will not receive me, but insist my place is with my husband?” Maria broke in. “That they are so unnatural as to turn away their flesh and blood? Put yourself in my place, Anne, and say whether you would tell a gentleman whose esteem you valued such horrors? But perhaps you cannot imagine it. Nothing but honour attaches to your history—no straitened means, no sordid connexion—” Again Maria could not finish; indeed, she already regretted having expressed resentment to Anne. Remorsefully, “I am sorry,” she said, imagining she saw surprise and hurt in her friend’s eyes. “Pray forgive me. It is not true. You are the most sympathetic and generous of friends. If you had not taken me in after I ran away from John, I do not know how I should have gone on. I suppose I must have returned to Canada—”

“Please, no more!” Anne had never quite realized before what it meant to the other to live dependent of her, what humiliation it must necessarily entail, what daily trials, what small, painful inequities. Naturally Maria must compare their lots, and feel the injustice of her own the more keenly. Anne’s heart ached for her friend. She could not bear to hear another word of gratitude, and put a hand up to silence her. “I told you then and I tell you now: It is you who did me a kindness. Miss Gully’s retirement could not have been delayed another twelvemonth. After that I should have been obliged— Indeed, I do not know what I should have done. Gone back to Overton”—she shuddered—“or hired a companion. Anyhow, I like to have you with me. If Miss Gully had been twenty, I should still
have wished you to stay. What would my life be without you?” She moved to put her arm round Maria’s shoulders again and laughed to cheer her up. “A sad charade, a lonely comedy. Especially”—she looked round the sparsely furnished room (now brightened a little by some few of her belongings)—“here!”

Maria seemed comforted, if not persuaded, by this reasoning. She smiled and was quiet a while, then sat up. “But help me think what I can do for Mr. Mallinger,” she entreated. “I feel so guilty for having encouraged him; and I fear—well, without being vain, I do fear he will not give me up so easily as that.”

Anne thought for a moment, then said slowly, “If he does not forget you, and will not forget you, I think we must take you out of his way for a while; for we cannot expect Mr. Mallinger to give up his post.”

Maria objected immediately, “But you cannot stay here without me; and you must not take any of your precious time away when London is de—”

“What a drama! Before we trouble ourselves about such eventualities, let us see whether they arise. In all earnestness, Mr. Mallinger seems a very sensible man to me. He will make an effort to govern his feelings and in time he will succeed. Oh, for a week or two no doubt he will pine and mope. After all, he has been obliged to give up my Miss Dove…But he is no tragic hero. I am sure a month will see him right as a trivet again. Now you must have some sleep, poor thing.” Fondly, she brushed a hand along Mrs. Insel’s thin cheek, then helped her to rise and escorted her, arm round her waist, to the door. “Good night.”

Maria smiled, thanked her for her good sense, and turned to leave.

“Oh, one moment,” Anne called out brightly, as Maria was almost gone. “I nearly forgot to tell you. I had a little letter from Ensley to-day. Nothing of note, only he will be unable to come…”

Whether Miss Guilfoyle herself believed the comforting prognostications she made to Maria regarding Mr. Mallinger’s return to spirits was not clear. What became all too clear, as the weeks wore on, was that she had been wrong. Adjured to stay away, the schoolmaster did. But as Mrs. Insel had foreseen, nothing short of complete sequestration—his or hers—could have prevented their running into one another. Not two days after the dreadful evening when Maria had banished him from her sight, Mr. Mallinger was spied by the ladies from their carriage, walking away from Faulding Chase as they drove towards it. Another two days and they saw him in church. Sickened at heart by his wretched look, his extreme pallor and haggardness, Maria resolved after this to keep indoors all
week, and immured herself in Linfield. But the following Saturday, unable to bear it any longer, she wrapped herself in a cloak and crept into the park for a walk—and walked directly into Mr. Mallinger. On this occasion, as on the others, they nodded and made a show of civility. Maria could see her admirer did all his possible to conceal his misery—only it went too deep for a bow and a determined display of manners to cover it up. What she could not know was how perfectly her own wan face mirrored the unhappiness in his. But Mr. Mallinger saw it, and was less inclined than ever to forget her.