The Country Gentleman (23 page)

Gravely, immediately, “I have no regret,” he said.

She waited but (as he said nothing more) finally smiled, stood, and remarked, “I shall write to you, if I may, to tell you how I go on in London.”

“I hope you will. I shall answer.” Following her lead, he rose, smiled, and was about to leave when he turned of a sudden to ask lightly, “You have no cause, I hope, to complain of my manner towards you since we are married? I am as you like me to be? Not too familiar? Not too formal? You see I still avail myself of the candour with which you charged me to speak.”

Unaccountably, Anne’s cheeks crimsoned and burned while she answered, looking down, “Quite, quite. No cause, as Cordelia said. Pray be easy on that head.” She
wished, but could not bring herself, to reverse this question too. Instead, still looking down, she thanked him for his concern and hurried him out of the room.

Dolphim and the waggons set off on the first of December. The ladies followed a few days later, venturing forth under a leaden, overcast sky early on the morning of the fourth. Mrs. Highet the elder had arranged a small party for the previous night, at which the Crombies, the Wares, and so on, were meant to bid good-bye to Mrs. Highet the younger. But clouds and a cold, spitting rain had prevented it.

Mother and son turned out, naturally, to wish the travellers a safe journey. Mrs. Archibald Highet bade them God-speed (“and good riddance,” speculated Anne silently) with admirable fortitude, then watched as her son handed first Maria, then Anne, into the carriage. No opportunity for tenderness, had they wished to display any, was granted to husband and wife. But Anne (who for her part felt an heavy, strange reluctance to go away—which she set down to mere timidity and force of habit) believed she detected a particular fervour in the press of his hand on hers, and heard a huskiness (or so it seemed) in his last words, “Come back as soon as you like.”

She thought, “I shall regret him!” but at once heard another part of her mind answer, as if a spring had released it, “Anne, you
are
a gudgeon!”

Then Mr. Highet shut the door and the ladies were on their way. No torrential rain or other freak disturbing them, they made a quiet journey enough and were in Portman Square in time for dinner Friday night. The Grypphons were gone down to Surrey till Sunday, but the house expected them and they were soon comfortably installed.

On Saturday, not without some trepidation, Anne sent a note to Ensley. Since his marriage she had always directed her letters to the desk he occupied as Undersecretary in Lord Liverpool’s office. But he had repeatedly assured her this discretion, as he called it, was unnecessary, that Lady Ensley perfectly understood he was in private communication with her, and would in no way be disturbed by evidence of it. Eager to see him, she made bold to give the Grypphons’ man his house number in Cavendish Square, and hoped for the best. In an hour he had answered her; in two he had come.

She received him, on a perverse whim, in that same library which had been the scene of their last interview in London. Again the soft carpet, the well-oiled hinges of the door, allowed her to enter before he perceived her, and to observe him briefly. This time he sat in a chair by the window, frowning at a copy of the
Gazette
. He wore a dark frac, a shirt with a very high collar, and white pantaloons which must, she thought mechanically, show disastrously even the smallest spot of mud. Since she had seen him he had grown
favoris
: Blond and slightly curly, they made his long face look even longer. He seemed pale to her, and thin. When at last she said his name, he looked up, jumped to his feet, and raised his quizzing glass to his eye with a heavily be-ringed hand.

“Let me look at you,” he breathed, not coming towards her but standing, the
Gazette
fallen to his feet, and from this vantage scrutinizing her. “Athena,” he finally pronounced, “as always. Strong, beautiful, wise.” He dropped the quizzing glass and advanced with hands outstretched.

She met them with her own. What a fop he looked! How unwholesome, how…meagre. “Athena,” indeed!

And sure enough, his next words were from Homer: “All men have need of the gods,” he murmured. “Or goddesses, in my case. You are mine.”

She smiled; but good heavens, had Ensley always spouted Greek? Used a quizzing glass? Tied his cravat with such precious care? Had he changed, or did she only see him differently?

“You look pale, my dear,” she said at last, uncertainly. “Are you well?”

Surprised, “Quite well,” he assured her. “But you! Cheshire has done something for you after all. You look blooming, vigorous, charming! Mine eyes drink you with the thirst of a man dying in a desert. How I have waited for this hour, Anne. Come sit by me.”

He dropped her hands and drew her to that same settee covered in Morocco on which they had sat one night five months before. But even as she sat by him, “Dying in a desert?” Anne was thinking. “He means it half in jest no doubt—yet is this the man for whose sake I bound myself to a loveless marriage? He lisps his R’s, forsooth! ‘Mine eyes dwink you…’ Saints defend us!”

“How was your journey?” the gentleman who, all unawares, inspired these thoughts asked comfortably. “Not difficult, I hope? Tell me all. Do you trust Mr. Highet? Does he conduct himself as he should? If he has taken advantage of you, by God I’ll— But tell me.”

Anne answered him naturally enough, assuring him Mr. Highet had been perfectly pretty-behaved, that the journey was easily accomplished, and asking him how he did in turn; but all the while she spoke her brain was busily arguing, “Make no hasty judgement. You have grown accustomed to Mr. Highet’s blunt country ways, that is all. Ensley is not thin; Mr. Highet is broad. Nor pale; Mr.
Highet is ruddy. In an hour all this will have passed. You will remember yourself
and
Ensley. Patience, my girl!”

“I have seen the house Celia selected for you,” his lordship was saying now. “Quite the thing, in my opinion. Mount Street,
tout près du Parc
. You will like that. Rather empty at the moment, naturally, but I believe your furnishings will suit it to perfection.”

“And your own new house? Do you like it?”

“Oh yes,” he said carelessly, “quite pleasant.”

“And Lady George?” Mrs. Highet inquired. “How does she?”

Lady George’s husband smiled. “Very well, by the look of her,” he answered. “Trots up and downstairs all day long, happily ordering the servants about and playing hostess to callers. I never saw a girl so taken with the business of commanding her own establishment. Her father’s given us Wiltwood, you know—little place of his in Kent—and now Juliana’s wild to assemble a party there for February. You will be one of our guests, naturally.”

“Will I? Does Lady George invite me herself?”

“Does she—? Oh, I see. Anne dear, do please try not to fret on her account. I tell you over and over she regards our friendship with the utmost indifference. She’s a spirited girl, with plenty of interests. She doesn’t feel what you would. I’m more than twice her age, for heaven’s sake. She isn’t attached to me!”

Anne said nothing, but her scepticism was written on her face.

“Very well, when you come to Cavendish Square you’ll see for yourself. In fact we are giving a party Tuesday night, a musical evening. Juliana’s idea, of course. You will come, won’t you?”

Lord Ensley turned to her on the settee and took her
hand in his, patting it gently. Whether he guessed Anne was of a strong mind to take it away she did not know. She only left it with him by dint of considerable effort. It seemed to her extremely wrong to let him hold it now. The rings on both their fingers glinted fiercely in the morning sunshine. “If you like, certainly I shall come,” she obliged herself to respond. Rallying still more, “Now Ensley, a serious matter, if you don’t mind. It is—your whiskers!” she finished, laughing up at him. “Really!
Favoris?
Whatever possessed you?”

“Don’t you like them?” He raised his hand to pat his cheeks with a good-humoured air of hurt. “My valet suggested them. I thought they suited me.”

“They do. They make you look exactly like a middle-aged sheep. Now pray, in the name of all that’s sensible, shave them off to-night, or I shan’t be able to look at you without smiling.”

“I like you to smile,” he pointed out. But the effect of this mild gallantry was so evident that he went on at once, “For God’s sake, don’t withdraw from me, Anne. I see you cringe at every advance, and it tears my heart. Juliana is nothing to me, nor I to her. Believe that!”

It was the directness she had always liked in him, his habit of naming a trouble the moment he saw it, and meeting it head on. “Give me time,” she muttered in a low voice, suppressing an objection that his feelings and Juliana’s were not the only ones pertinent here. In a moment she turned the conversation to Lord Liverpool and the new legislation, eagerly pumped him for
on-dits
, and reviewed with him the state of his own career.

She came away from her hour with him confused and troubled. True, even in that short span his mannerisms had ceased to strike and grate on her so. He seemed less
…well, ridiculous. Nevertheless, why did he need a valet at all, let alone one with such poor judgement? Mr. Highet had no valet, and he seemed to manage. And why did Ensley fuss at his cuffs so much? She had twice caught him rearranging them, as if such a detail possibly mattered. And when they had spoke of politics, he very distinctly struck a pose—back straight, eyes fixed on the middle distance, chin lifted, chest swelled—intended to impress her as statesmanlike and forceful. Studying his attitudes! Indeed!

Besides all that, some of the things he said— When she asked him about the bread riots, he answered he did not think they would “come to much,” that a little firmness would put them down. But what of the people actually starving? she asked. Piffle! No one need starve. They had poor relief; anyhow, there was always work if one looked for it. What concerned him was Spa Fields, or the riot they had had this past Monday in London.

Anne having left Cheshire before news of that event could reach her, and since then being on the road, had heard nothing of it. Ensley assured her it had been frightful, quite threatening, quite intolerable. A mob in the Royal Exchange! The Government would be better prepared next time, he assured her, his brow stern. They would make an example of one or two of these radicals, who put ideas into the heads of simple people. Habeas corpus was to be suspended, he confided to her, sedition quenched at all costs. That was what came of the abuse of liberty.

Anne had shivered. Not that she approved of riots, or sedition, of course; but because Ensley had seemed so ferociously resolved. Surely the riots could not all be the result of the treacherous thunderings of a few? Surely
happy people, no matter how simple, did not riot? She had read some of the books and pamphlets by the rabble-rousers Ensley deplored (the better to fence with Mr. Mallinger during his Wednesday visits of old) and had found in them, among much to scoff at, a number of worthwhile points. And she had seen more of humble folk in Cheshire than ever before in her life. Ensley must either be ignorant or hard-hearted. Yet he was so emphatical.

Well, she would talk to him. She, after all, had been equally ignorant before her sojourn at Linfield. They had always dealt wonderfully well together. In a se’ennight or so, when she had grown accustomed to London again, and seen Celia, and established herself a little in Mount Street, all would come right. So she informed herself. And with this comforting certitude to sustain her, she went upstairs to change into a new, dark violet walking-dress, then out with Mrs. Insel to call upon some friends.

By the time they returned, late in the afternoon, they had been invited to join a theatre party that evening, to attend a ridotto, and to sup at the board of a Prussian crowned head. All this at a time when even the Little Season had distinctly closed. “Ah, Maria, London!” Anne exclaimed as she flung off her
gros de Berlin
cloak and velvet bonnet. Mrs. Insel followed her into a parlour where both ladies rather wearily collapsed into a pair of low chairs covered in Chinese silk. A fire blazed pleasantly in the grate; a maidservant arrived with tea. “There is nowhere like it. Don’t you feel twice as alive as you did five days ago?”

Maria, pouring tea and handing her a cup, answered doubtfully, “I suppose so. Only…I expect one must get accustomed all over again to the noise and the dirt. I
thought we should be killed a dozen times today in the crush of carriages on the streets; and I hardly slept an hour last night!”

Anne, who had fared little better in these respects, laughed and gaily remonstrated, “You sound like Mr. Highet. Never mind. We shall get in the way of it again.” And she turned the topic to Mount Street, which they had visited and strongly approved.

Lady Grypphon, when she and her lord returned in due course to the metropolis, was gratified to learn her selection of a house had met with approbation. “I made sure you would like it, my dear,” she told Anne, pouring into her ears a profusion of ideas about curtains, hangings, carpets, and the best use for each room. “But tell me how you enjoy being married!” she interrupted herself at length. The ladies had settled themselves in a small sitting-room adjacent to Celia’s bed-chamber. “Did you feel very queer taking your vows? Has Mr. Highet behaved himself? You have seen Ensley by now, I trust? What very odd lives you lead!” And she settled in for a comfortable chat, her bright eyes fixed on Anne.

The new Mrs. Highet had been looking forward to this meeting with her old friend as part of the programme that was to make all “come right” again. But she found herself rather squirming under her ladyship’s bold, inquisitive gaze. Her life
was
odd; even Celia had said it. She gave a remarkably disjointed account of the past few weeks of it, and turned the conversation back to Celia again as soon as she could, begging to know how the weather was in Surrey, and if Grypphon had enjoyed the shooting there.

The unease Anne felt as she pondered her situation during that interview with Celia was to increase tenfold
before the week was out. A card inviting both Mrs. Highet and Mrs. Insel, as well as the Grypphons, to a musical evening at the home of Lord and Lady Ensley had duly arrived in Portman Square, and had been seconded in person by the prospective host. Overcoming a vivid sensation of awkwardness, Anne determined to attend. Perhaps Ensley was right and Juliana did not mind her. She ought at least to find out.