The Country Gentleman (34 page)

But Maria looked up with a little smile and said, shaking her head, “It is of no significance now, dear. Mr. Highet might as well know every thing—and Mr. Mallinger ought to know.” Looking at Highet, “You are quite right, sir. Thank you for making me see it. Only…”

“If you are frightened, pray let me be with you when you tell him,” Highet offered. “Invite him here to-morrow and we shall all three sit together and have it out. I warrant you he’ll make nothing of it, but— Will that relieve you?”

“Oh, yes!” Eyes brimming, Maria looked thankfully at him, then turned to Anne. “Only I wonder if…Would you, Anne, also…Since you know me so long, and understand how it was, and why…”

“But gladly! Nothing can be easier,” Anne agreed.
“You’ll see. We’ll all be laughing before it’s over, I promise you!”

In the event, this did not turn out to be quite true, though indeed Lawrence Mallinger readily understood how and why Mrs. Insel’s innocent deception had been practised upon him, and how it had tripped him up. Far from blaming his bride-to-be, he was deeply moved, and dismayed, to learn of her former sufferings. With all the facts in the open it was easy, at the end of the interview, to settle on a wedding date. The ninth of November was chosen, but the banns (in deference to Mr. Mallinger’s eager feelings) were to be read within the month.

With all this decided, and duly announced, Anne found herself curiously at loose ends at Fevermere. Now even Maria did not need her. She must, some time, begin a life without either her or Ensley. Yet she found herself strongly disinclined to make a move.

Mrs. Archibald Highet, however, put an end to that. “Well, Fevermere must be dreadful dull to you now!” remarked that lady one evening, only a day or two after Maria’s confession to Mallinger. The newly betrothed couple had gone out for a moonlit walk in the snow while the other members of the house party sat quietly by the fire. “No, nothing to stay for now!” the amiable lady went on, energetically plunging her needle into the pillow-cover she was embroidering. “Lady Crombie’s footman Starkey told our Claypoole all their Christmas guests went home more than a week ago, and Stade Park, I know, is quite empty but for the Wares. Yes, the happy season has come and gone! Nothing left here but winter. The farm as quiet as a church at midnight—not even the sheep to think about at this time of year, God bless them—and the earth as cold and hard as a stone. There’s the rub in farm
life, after all,” she cheerfully continued, snapping her embroidery out of its hoop, then spreading it over her considerable knees to line it up in a new place. “I’ve heard of whole families run mad in February. Nothing to do, nowhere to go…But that’s not true for you, my dear!” she pointed out merrily. “You’ve all of London, and I can’t guess how many private parties to join at the great houses besides. We’ll be losing you soon, I reckon—more’s the pity!” she added conscientiously, catching a warning glance from her son. She snapped the frame neatly together again, looking serenely down.

But though Mr. Highet’s glance had quelled his loquacious mother, he himself said nothing. Since his awkward presentation to Anne of the ear-drops, he had been more than ordinarily formal with her. She felt his silence was, perhaps, an endorsement of at least the idea that she would soon feel dull here, and ought to make plans to depart. Consequently, she hurriedly replied (speaking almost at random),

“It is true that, now Maria is settled, I shall be on my way again. My friends Lord and Lady Grypphon are going to Paris in February. I have agreed to go with them.” (Though Celia and Charles were indeed going to Paris, Anne had not in fact consented to join them. In fact, they had not invited her. Still, she knew they would welcome her company.) Smiling, “I hope you will not mind my desertion,” she added.

“Lord bless you, no!” Mrs. Archibald promptly assured her.

She received another quelling glance from her son; but since he still held his tongue, Anne was the more persuaded that he too—in spite of his protestations of affectionate friendship—felt she ought not to stay on
indefinitely. She therefore made sure, the next day, to write to Celia and ask to accompany her friends to France. Celia’s answer that it would please them of all things arrived a week later.

Anne’s chief diversion until her departure (set for the twentieth of January, the Monday after the engaged couple’s first banns were to be read) was assisting Maria in starting to sew a modest trousseau, and helping her plan how to eke out the sparse furnishings of the bachelor’s rooms Mr. Mallinger kept. Her relations with Mr. Highet consisted mainly in civilities. Mrs. Archibald Highet’s opinion of the tedium of winter farm life notwithstanding, Mr. Highet seemed to find plenty to do. He spent long hours closeted with Mr. Rand and his own estate steward, or sat alone studying numerous books and monographs on agriculture. Occasionally Anne volunteered to read one of these last, so that they might discuss it together. Mr. Highet always welcomed these offers, listening closely to her opinions; but Anne could not make him understand, somehow, that she quite enjoyed exercising her mind in this way. He imagined she did it only to oblige him and persisted in thanking her elaborately, and rather formally—“As if,” Anne sometimes muttered to herself, climbing the stairs after one of these demonstrations, “he were nothing to me, nor Fevermere any affair of mine—as if we were strangers!”

But though his manner towards her seemed unduly strained and courtesy-laden, she could not think how to bring it up without perhaps offending him, or risking embarrassment to herself. After all, it was no part of their marriage bargain to become intimates. Mr. Highet owed her no affection; so, if he seemed constrained, she must bear it quietly and consider that perhaps he believed this
the best way to go on. Business-like relations were more stable, she could not deny, than tender ones.

Still, it made her unhappy, particularly after he had spoke so warmly on New Year’s Eve. She felt superfluous at Fevermere, and lonely. Maria and Mr. Mallinger had one another, and Mr. Highet had (lowering reflection!) his mother. Altogether she was not sorry to find Sunday the nineteenth soon at hand.

It was a happy day, and the sight of Maria’s radiant face across from her in the carriage on the way to church did much to buoy Anne’s heart. But when she sat in the pew next to Mr. Highet and heard the banns read out by Mr. Samuels—just as she had heard her own—she could not help feeling pain as well as joy. Had it not been for Ensley, would she ever have agreed to a marriage so solitary and strange? Even to escape from Linfield? But it was done. She stole a glance up at her husband. He seemed absorbed by the service. With a small sigh, Anne likewise returned her attention there.

Leaving the church, she kissed Maria soundly, and Mr. Mallinger almost tearfully (for really, how she would regret Maria!) and swore by every thing that was holy to be in Cheshire for the wedding. The lovers strolled away together on another of their endless walks, while the party that had come from Fevermere four in the carriage drove home only three. Anne kept unusually quiet and, as soon as they were home, threw herself furiously into her packing. It was a relief to think she would be off to London the next afternoon.

That night, at her last supper at Fevermere, her mother-in-law (in spirits, of course, thought Anne) teased her about eating frogs, and catching the shocking morals and manners of the French. “How the champagne will
flow!” the old lady chaffed her amiably. “And how elegant the ladies will dress! ‘Another glass of burgundy, ma’am?’ Lord Wellington will ask you—for I don’t doubt you’ll dine with the commander-in-chief himself. ‘Oh, yes, if you please,’ you’ll say, ‘and another frog leg, if you don’t mind.’ Oh, my dear!” And she went off into a wild gush of laughter in which Anne had no trouble recognising the ancestor of Henry Highet’s explosions.

Since she fully expected, in fact, to meet Lord Wellington often in Paris, Anne did not know how to answer this sally and so sat uncomfortably silent. After a minute,

“Perhaps while you are there you can persuade the French to raise their limits on imported British goods,” Mr. Highet said, so soberly that for the first time Anne wondered if he disapproved of her going to Paris. But it was not as if she meant to emigrate, as so many wealthy Britons had since the end of the war opened the city to them and left England in a growing shambles. She intended to stay only a month or two, till the start of the Season.

She answered, smiling, “I doubt whether my influence extends to any circle in control of such a thing, but I shall certainly remember the point if I meet the appropriate Minister.”

Mr. Highet did not return her smile but sat in dour silence. Then, “I hear of nothing but plots against the government there,” he said. “Be careful.”

This time there was no mistaking the disapprobation in his tone. Was it a question of money? But he had said himself the estate was flourishing. No; she thought he disapproved of France. Nettled—for surely part of their arrangement was complete freedom to do as they liked?—she rather coolly replied, “Pray have no fears for me, Mr.
Highet. I have a head on my shoulders—and mean to keep it there.”

Though she did not depart till the next afternoon, he took his leave of her the following morning, before he rode out to a farm some miles distant. The awkwardness of the previous evening hung over their adieux, even as Anne (at least) wished it violently away. They were alone, but Mr. Highet was at his most reserved, as if all the warmth of the holydays, the games, the skating, New Year’s, had never happened. Anne was confused, but she governed herself, bade him good-bye with as much heat as the chilly spell that had come over him, or them, would allow (which was not much), received his wishes for a pleasant journey, and watched him go. A few hours later, Maria stood by her carriage to see her off. Their parting, at least, was more natural. They embraced, they wept, Maria begged Anne to stay, or if not, to come back as soon as she might; Anne wept harder, would not give a date to her return, shook Mrs. Archibald Highet’s hand, and climbed into the carriage.

She had a week in London to pack and prepare. Brief as the time was, she passed it anxiously, fearful lest she blunder into Ensley some where. She had substantially recovered, she felt, from the pain of parting with him; indeed, the month in Cheshire had had the welcome effect of making him seem a part of a much more distant past than was really the case. Still, she did not care to see him yet if she could help it. Fate, and extreme preoccupation, combined to grant her wish: London was behind her in a whirl, then she was rattling in a coach towards Dover, then crossing the water, then in France.

She had never been to the Continent before. Every thing interested her—the hard eyes of the
concierges
, the
fantastically rapid French of even the smallest children, the food (so different from England’s), the endless flow of wine. They were through the wintry country between Calais and Paris in a day and a half. Then came the heady excitements of the city itself. Lord Quaffbottle sprang to life again: Each afternoon, Anne scribbled furiously his adventures on a jaunt in Paris. She sent the results back to London weekly in the diplomatic pouch (a favour easily won from officials at the Embassy). She accompanied Celia to dressmakers and milliners, glove-makers and mantua-makers, and suddenly, fashionable Mesdames began to cross Lord Quaffbottle’s path. With nearly thirty thousand Englishmen in Paris, it was not long before Sir John Pudding, the English emigré, was born (at age forty-six, and weighing nearly sixteen stone). Soon the world of “A.”’s letters was teeming with Sir John Pudding’s wife, their numerous offspring, the great commander Lord Illington, Mademoiselle Pelisse, le Comte de De, and a host of other characters who made those English people still in England to read of their exploits in the
Times
laugh very heartily indeed.

Anne laughed also, and felt more like herself than she had in some while. Though she missed Maria, she could not imagine a better antidote for the losses she had sustained this winter than the company of Charles and Celia Grypphon. She and Celia often came in from the Opera or a ball and sat up till five in the morning gaily annihilating the reputations of the people they had met that night, or avidly speculating on the safety of the current government (it was true, as Mr. Highet had said, that rumours of a new revolution were heard everywhere), or planning a ball or supper of their own. When Anne came down in the morning Charles was always there, affable, kindly, ready to
escort her to a shop or on a brief excursion into the country. She had made a clean breast of things to them—how and why she had broke off with Ensley—and it helped her that they seemed to understand, even to approve, her actions.

As for Mr. Highet, now that she was so far from him, the letters he sent her were (perversely) open and easy. Not tender, or intimate, but quite free of that removed formality she had seen in him those last weeks in Cheshire. It was a relief. Gladly, Anne replied as openly and easily. But she seldom spoke of him.

Celia, though she liked Mr. Highet, took Anne at her word when she maintained their marriage had never stepped outside the bounds agreed on when they contracted it. She introduced Anne as Mme. Highet, but gave a tiny shrug of pure dismissal when asked where M. Highet was. French gentlemen taking an absent husband very lightly, Anne soon had her admirers in Paris, was sent flowers and invited to dance quite as if she had been single. Celia, moreover, appeared to expect her to behave so—to flirt, to pay attention to her toilette (now much refined by Parisian purchases), to encourage this gentleman and deftly fend off this other. But Anne did not feel like flirting. Cheerful as she was, buoyed and exuberant as were her spirits since reaching Paris, she found no gentleman whom she cared to know more than another. When, after some weeks, Celia asked her about it, she replied that perhaps it was too soon after Ensley. Her feelings were not yet her own.

But then a letter came from Lady Bambrick, mentioning that Lady Ensley was expecting a happy event. Save a mild satisfaction that Ensley and Juliana should succeed in this desired object, Anne felt nothing. Not resentment,
nor the painful throbs of a crushed (or even a mending) heart. They had their lives, she hers.