by Hill, Fiona
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.
But it was not so straightforward a task as that, for the park had been laid with a veritable maze of paths, set at any one of a score of angles, and they had made their way in (so engrossed in talk were they) without the least thought for how to come ou
t. “Blast those blasted romantic writers!” Anne was saying frankly by the time they had hurried a mile or more without coming any closer (so far as they could tell) to house or road. “Blast them for their blasted nuisances of romantic forests; and blast my great uncle for reading them!”
“Anne!”
“Well, as you like then. Do not blast him. But blast everyone else. Chateaubriand!” She began to stride ahead more quickly, spitting out the names as she went. “Rousseau! Byron! Rows of plane trees were not good enough for them, I suppose! Neat alleys and wide lanes made them sad, I expect. They needed nice dark vines and tangles to cheer them, doubtless,” she muttered, while Maria, straggling behind her, began to giggle at the ridiculousness of this diatribe. “Nothing like a clump of gloomy pines to brighten a person’s day! The taller the better—no sense letting the sun shine— Oh! Excuse me,” she suddenly broke off, for she had been talking so loudly and moving so fast that she actually collided with another walker before she saw him. They had both lost their balance a little. Dusting her skirts off, “Mr. Mallinger!” Anne exclaimed, while Maria came up even with them. “God sent you to us. Where are we?”
“Miss Guilfoyle. Mrs. Insel.” Lawrence Mallinger bowed his compliments while he absently brushed off his hat. “Have you lost your bearings?”
“Our bearings, our wits, our mittens,” Anne told him cheerfully, “all.”
“Then I am doubly glad to happen upon you, for I shall have the pleasure of escorting you home. You were going home?”
The ladies nodded.
Mr. Mallinger turned them round and offered an arm for each of them to lean on; but as the path was really not sufficiently wide too permit such an arrangement, and as Miss Guilfoyle particularly disliked leaning while she walked, “I shall go behind you, if you do not mind,” she said.
Maria glanced meaningly at her friend. Surely Anne recalled the schoolmaster’s marked behaviour to her when first they met? Did she not guess Maria would rather have remained lost than risk a reprise of his flattering attentions? But she saw in Anne’s green gaze a look which seemed to say, “Best confront him now, my dear; I cannot always be with you.” And since Maria was obliged to admit the truth of this, she made an inward resolution. Aloud, she merely murmured politely to Miss Guilfoyle,
“If you are certain you would not prefer…”
“Perfectly certain,” said that lady firmly, relinquishing with a gesture her claim upon the gentleman’s arm. “Walk ahead. I am quite content to splash in your wake.” And she kicked up a little cloud of brown pine needles demonstratively.
Maria laid a light hand on Mr. Mallinger’s sleeve and began to walk on. Perhaps he would not, after all, resume his earlier manner towards her. Perhaps she would be spared any confrontation. But in fact the schoolmaster very soon fell into the tone of his first remarks to her. He repeated, in an undervoice which, though it did not attempt to exclude Anne, did not strive to reach her either, that he was delighted by this chance meeting. He asked Mrs. Insel how she had been occupying herself, then how she liked the country. When she replied that she liked it very well, Mr. Mallinger assured her that it must like her in return, for she was looking blooming. Maria (who moreover doubted this was true) saw her opportunity and took it.
“Sir,” she began, “forgive me if I refine too much—too foolishly—in what I am about to say, but I must tell you your…your kind compliments to me, today and when we met, only make me uneasy. In short, I wish you will not— I must ask you not to—” She broke off in confusion, colouring deeply.
“I understand you,” Mr. Mallinger took up, directly he saw she had lost the struggle for words. With a sincerity so natural she knew it was neither forced nor assumed, “Pray allow me to apologize for causing you discomfort,” he went on. “It is the last thing I desire.” And as he contrived to speak even these last words in a tone so civil, so restrained, that no hint of flattery was in them, Maria believed him and began to relax.
“Tell me about your school,” she begged, hitting upon this topic to set him at his ease again. “How many students have you?”
Mr. Mallinger saw her stratagem and did not resist it. He supplied her with the number of his students and went on with a rough outline of the sort of lessons they learnt, the hopes he had for them, the pleasures and travails of teaching them. He informed her that he had come to Cheshire at the late Mr. Guilfoyle’s behest some three years earlier, when the school was just being established, that before that he had been at Jesus College, Cambridge, and before that at a Mr. Harkwood’s Academy (both places on a scholarship), and before that with his family in Suffolk, who were there still. He agreed that Cheshire must be quite different to Suffolk. He repeated his praise of Herbert Guilfoyle, regretting that Mrs. Insel could never know him, and confirmed her tentative opinion of Mr. Highet with his own—to wit, that he was as kind, as industrious, as thorough-going a gentleman as he ever hoped to meet. But as he spoke, an hundred questions occurred to him which he dared not set her, as for example: How long had her husband been dead? Had she loved him very much? Was it the freshness of her grief that made her dislike Mr. Mallinger’s erstwhile attentions? If so, why did she no longer wear black? If not, was it an objection to Mr. Mallinger himself? If that, was it something he could alter? Could she imagine how long it had been since a woman of her demeanour—simple, gentle, tactful, quiet (though nervous: he had noticed that, and longed to soothe it away)—had come into his neighbourhood? Had stood before him with her glossy masses of hair, her dark, downturned gaze, and made him feel he must seize and protect her or die? Under that gleaming, chestnut crown, between those narrow temples, hid the answers to all these questions, he knew—and the knowledge made him ache to stop her polite, chattering inquiries, turn and take her face in his hand, and demand she tell him.
But of course he did nothing remotely like this. With only the gentle (too gentle!) pressure of her arm on his to recompense him, he talked on about Linfield and Fevermere, sun and snow, asked her any number of civil questions whose answers did not interest him, and dutifully guided the party (though he would have preferred to lead them round and round just to be longer with Mrs. Insel) through the intricate twists and turns that would take them back to their abode.
He had almost forgot Miss Guilfoyle (who struck him as too ’cute by half, and somehow volatile) for she lagged quite ten feet behind them during the chief of this colloquy; but as they made a peculiarly sharp turn out of a clump of firs, “Huzzah!” she cried out, “I know where we are!”
She came up even with them and asked, “It is that way, is not it? And then through a stand of birches, then left, and left again, and home.” She fairly danced with exultation—an extravagant response, Mr. Mallinger thought, but the truth was, Anne really detested not knowing a thing she ought to know, whether the way home, or the former post of some minor statesman, or how to prove a geometrical theorem. But even the schoolmaster was shortly to bless her, for, “Maria dear, I think we must reward our Virgil,” she declared. “If he had not led us from the dark woods we might have been lost for ever, and would perhaps have had to live on nuts and berries the rest of our days, and combed our hair with pine cones. Do you think dinner a sufficient prize? I do not,” she faced him, “but I fear it is all we can offer. Will you do us the honour to come? Not tonight, for I fear we should make but dishevelled, exhausted company—but to-morrow?”
Mr. Mallinger was looking uncertainly towards Maria Insel. It was hard, but if she did not like him to come, he was resolved to decline.
But, “Pray do,” she endorsed, not fervently or with any tremor of enthusiasm (alas) but evidently without distaste either, and quite sincerely. “We shall like to have you.”
“Then I accept with thanks.”
“Good. It is decided.” Anne put out her hand to shake his. “We shall make a little party of it, perhaps—invite a friend of mine who is visiting Cheshire, and the Hartley Wares, and—” She remembered a question about the clipping of ewes whi
ch she did not like to put to Mr. Rand (who regarded all such questions as admissions of her unfitness to direct Linfield) and added, “—the Highets, mère et fils.” She thanked Mr. Mallinger for rescuing them. Maria followed suit, and in a moment they had parted.
“And how did you fare with Mr. Mallinger?” asked Anne rather gaily, as the two ladies crossed the wide lawn to the waiting house. In the grey, horizontal light of afternoon it beckoned pleasantly from atop its gentle hill. “Did he renew his compliments? Were you obliged to set him down?”
“I hope I did not do that,” said Maria. “But I did make it clear to him he must not think of me so.”
“And did he take it well?”
“Very well, it seemed to me. He strikes me as a very courteous gentleman, and most intelligent.”
“Good! Now you may enjoy his acquaintance in tranquillity. Merciful heavens, but my feet feel ready to fall off! Don’t yours?” She went on without giving Maria time to answer, “Though I must confess, once I felt sure of emerging from them alive, I rather liked the woods. They are pretty, and somehow soothing. Do you know, I realized as I went what had happened to me—about Ensley, I mean. It is merely that the news of his marriage startled me. He did not care to tell me of it before it was settled, lest it should come to nothing; and so when he did, announcing it as a fait accompli…Well, that would startle any one, I expect. But once I have had some time to think of it, to get accustomed to the reality, I am sure I shall approve it as heartily in its actual mode as I did in its theoretical. Lady Juliana is a pleasant-enough girl, I think. We shall all deal famously with one another, no doubt.” And before Maria could find a polite way to tell her friend this whole line of thought sounded like fustian to her, Anne had gone on, “Thank you, dear, for listening to me babble before. I was rather confused.” She laughed, but the purpose of her words was plain: She was withdrawing her earlier invitation to Maria to speak her mind about Ensley. “I must send a note to him at once,” she finished, shaking her head at her own brief folly. “The poor man no doubt suspects all this country air has quite unseated my reason!”
