The Country Gentleman

by Hill, Fiona

  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.

  That Tuesday night, therefore, though hanging a little behind her friends, Anne Highet, dressed in a gown of French grey satin richly trimmed with blond lace, tripped up the steps of the house in Cavendish Square. Her golden hair, banded and wound round her head, was fastened with an ivory bodkin; and she surrendered to a liveried footman a plush swansdown tippet.

  “Courage, courage,” she rallied herself as they mounted the stairs to Lady Ensley’s music room, inadvertently muttering aloud.

  Charles Grypphon turned on the steps and inquired politely, “What was that, my dear?”

  “Oh dear, I didn’t mean— Porridge, I said, porridge. I rather like porridge,” she added, hoping Maria (who was just behind her) was not listening. “I got in the habit of eating it in Cheshire.”

  “Did you?” answered his lordship mildly. He gave her arm a kind, bracing squeeze before continuing, “Never fancied it myself, I must say. We’ll have Cook send some up to you to-morrow.”

  Very likely it was the happy prospect of this treat that made Mrs. Highet smile so especially radiantly when, a minute later, she bowed to her hostess and exchanged with her congratulations on their respective recent marriages. Ensley was at the other end of the room, worse luck, the occasion being quite informal. His wife wore a dress of white satin with a vandyked slip of rose mull muslin over it. Her auburn hair, dressed à l’antique, fell in ringlets upon her temples, and was ornamented with a tiara of pearl. Tiny rose satin slippers peeped from under her flounced hem. Altogether, her toilette did much (Anne could not help but notice) to mitigate the effect of her thick nose, and that unfortunate mole. In fact she was looking charmingly.

  “Delightful of you to invite us,” Anne murmured, searching the other’s eyes. She saw in them youth and shyness, chiefly, but also—or did she imagine it?—something of constraint.

  “So kind of you to come,” Lady Ensley replied, and Anne knew from her tone she was correct. She began to fancy Ensley had commanded his wife to welcome Anne particularly, and made up her mind to question him when she might. For now she could only bow again and move off into the room, greeting friends she had not seen since June, and rather avoiding her host.

  Her pleasure in the evening was moderate at best. Miss Merry, who had made her debut while Anne was in the country, sang well, in a voice that combined science with much feeling. She performed first two arias from Dr. Arne’s Artaxerxes, then a light piece from Is He Jealous? which was (Celia informed Anne) what its authors called an “operetta.” It was a pleasure to Anne, after her months in Cheshire, to hear such artistry. But the room, crowded as it was, seemed to her monstrously hot and stuffy. She was aware of a degree of formality, or archness, in the company which she rather suspected had always been present in such assemblies, only without her noticing it. Moreover, she observed a species of almost forced gaiety in her own manner. In vain did she endeavour to shake this off; and when Ensley or his lady wife came near her, her uncomfortable, double consciousness only increased.

  But the worst moment of the evening came when (though both ladies would have done much to avoid it) she and Lady Ensley found themselves suddenly tête-à-tête. Only a moment before each had been sitting—albeit in the same corner of the drawing-room—engaged in an animated conversation with another person, Anne with Lord Bambrick, Juliana with Amabel Frane. Then all at once Lord Bambrick dashed off to the supper-room, insisting on fetching a glass of lemonade to Mrs. Highet (who had confessed herself hot); while Miss Frane, abruptly noticing the very late arrival of her older sister Dorothea, jumped up quite rudely to run to her. Dismayed, Anne nevertheless steeled herself, turned politely to the younger woman, and complimented her on the modish elegance of her new home.

  Juliana thanked her. “I understand you also have a new home, in Mount Street?” she said shyly.

  “Indeed. I only hope to be settled in before Christmas! How difficult it is, is not it, to arrange every thing as one wishes! But you have managed excellently.”

  Juliana asked, “Do you think so? I do so wish Ensley to be proud of me!” But as she said these last words she blushed and looked away from Anne. Confusedly she stammered, “That is, I wish— I mean, one likes to please one’s…Is your husband coming to London?” she finally brought out, blushing deeper than ever.

  Anne, watching this performance in growing distress, answered, “No, I fear not,” continuing softly, “But I am sure Ensley is proud of you, very proud indeed. I know he is.”

  Juliana, crimson to the roots of her hair, stared at her shoes. “Do you? Did he—has he told you so?”

  Anne made an impulsive decision. “My dear Lady George,” she said, speaking swiftly and praying Lord Bambrick would not return before this colloquy could be finished, “I wonder if I may be frank with you?” Overcoming a mild reluctance, she took the girl’s hand as she spoke on (Lady Ensley all the while scrutinizing her satin slippers), saying, “You know of course that your husband and I have been friends since—well, almost since before you were in the schoolroom. I hope—I do hope that you and I may be friends as well!”

  There was a silence. Then, “Oh, yes,” mumbled Juliana, her cheeks still ablaze. As she did not raise her eyes, Anne resumed, “I am sorry, but I cannot believe you mean that, since you will not even lo
ok at me. Pray be candid; I beg you will.”

  But when the girl had raised her eyes, Anne could only wish she had not. They were heavy with tears, and her thick nose had gone pink. “Indeed, ma’am, I am sure we will be friends,” she said, and was very obviously on the verge of a whole-hearted fit of crying when her husband (who had observed the two ladies in talk some minutes before, but—being the host—had been unable to work his way across the room without saying hello to half a dozen inconvenient guests) at last came up by her side and took her arm, exclaiming smilingly,

  “Dear me, what have you ladies been at? How alarming you look, Juliana!” He bent briefly to her ear, murmured something which made her resolutely straighten and compose her features, then went on brightly, “Shall we ask Miss Merry to sing again from her comic opera? I do think people enjoyed it. Did you, Mrs. Highet?”

  Anne was not slow to follow his lead, of course, the less so as Lord Bambrick returned directly with the hard-won lemonade. But she found herself distinctly vexed with Ensley. Perversely, it was his very cool-headedness, his discretion and diplomacy, that piqued her. It might be admirable, but was it quite right that a man so deeply involved in an awkward situation could yet lightly resolve it—could, with a few words, conjure it away? She thought she would have preferred him to be tongue-tied himself. And what, she wondered, could he have said to that poor silly girl to make her straighten so? That was a question she fully intended to ask him.

  She had her opportunity the following day. Ensley came very early to call at Portman Square and apologize, the moment they were alone, for his young wife’s “appalling misconduct” on the previous evening.

  Anne, her nerves frayed after a restless night, hesitated only the briefest moment before firing her opening salvo: “Appalling? Does it appal you that a chit barely out of the schoolroom should wish to please her handsome, powerful, grown-up, newly acquired husband? Perhaps it does! Yes, having seen your cow-handed, high-handed, brutish behaviour towards her last night, I suppose it would!”

  “Madam?” was all Lord Ensley replied, but in a freezing voice.

  “Nor am I surprised to hear her perfectly natural actions branded by you ‘misconduct,’” Anne went on, having stopped only to draw breath. “I suppose to a tyrannical, astonishingly unobservant boor like yourself, it would seem ‘misconduct.’”

  “Anne, Juliana repeated to me every word she said to you,” Ensley broke in here, speaking more guardedly but no less intensely than his interlocutor. “And informed me of her every sniff and blush. I demanded she should do so. If, as you say, it was her intention to please me, I can tell you she is very far from doing so—”

  But Anne jumped up from the settee on which she had been seated and gave an inarticulate groan of frustration and anger. “Dear God, when I think how I let you flimflam me into believing every thing would be the same between us, Ensley, I could scream!”

  His lordship received this in silence, then echoed very drily, “Flim-flam?”

  She sat again. “Oh dear, I am sorry. That was wrong. We both flim-flammed ourselves—or one another, I don’t know.” Her lips twisted and compressed, and she clenched her hands. “At all events, we were both perfectly mistaken. Far from being exactly the same, relations between us are inexorably, irrevocably different since your marriage. And mine,” she appended in an afterthought.

  “I feel no difference,” Ensley replied, rather stiffly.

  “You ought,” she shot back.

  Now it was Ensley’s turn to rise to his feet in agitation. “But why? I do not understand you.” He walked up and down the room, his hands writhing behind his back. “I am still as much your friend as ever. I can never feel differently towards you. Do you imagine Juliana can take your place in my heart? Why, she is nothing, a little girl, with no more understanding of—”

  “Pray do not disparage your wife to me,” Anne interrupted.

  “I do not—”

  “However you may feel towards her, any fool can read her devotion to you in her face,” she continued determinedly. “You deceived yourself in her character from the start. I always knew it. You take her for a cool hand, but she is not. Tell me she doesn’t worship you and I shall not believe you. You instructed her to be civil to me last night, did not you? I could see it in her eyes.”

  Still pacing, “Naturally I encouraged her to show you the respect I would ask her to show any friend of mine,” he answered. “The way you say it, one would imagine I took a whip to her. I must insist,” he went on, coming to her again, “that you do not understand Juliana. You fancy you do, but you ascribe to her not her own feelings, but the ones you would have in her place. You suppose—”

  Wearily, Anne put a hand on his sleeve and broke in, “Forgive me, but I will not discuss this any further now. We must both reflect a while—you as well as myself,” she put in pointedly, “and then consider how we are to go on. I hope to be quite installed in Mount Street by the middle of next week. Suppose you come to dine there on Monday? I mean to make up a largish party, but we can find a moment alone.”

  “But I do not wish to see you in company! Anyhow, why must I wait till—”

  “Please.” She put up a warning hand, then passed it so exhaustedly over her pale brow and cheek that he was persuaded to desist. Even so, after she had stood and put out her hand to him,

  “Anne,” he said, taking the little hand and enfolding it between both of his, “can it be that your altered sentiments have more to do with your marriage than with mine?” He earnestly scanned her face while he continued, “Has your Mr. Highet changed more about you than your name?”

  She looked into his pleading, well-remembered blue eyes and found it impossible not to smile and ask gently, “Now, how could he have done that? You are a silly man!” And as he still gazed anxiously at her, “How much longer must I look at these preposterous favoris?” she demanded, giving his hands a playful squeeze before extracting hers. “A fine thing, when you trust the opinion of your valet over mine!” And with a few other such rallying remarks, to which he tenderly responded, she soothed the anxious look from his eyes, and dismissed him in tolerable spirits.

  Eleven

  Anne was not sorry to find herself, during this first week in London, very much occupied with settling in at Mount Street. Difficulties seemed to spring up like mushrooms, and confusion to flourish like the vine. A whole chest full of china and crystal was overturned by a clumsy carter; little Sally Clemp was sent off to her mother’s in Dorset for her accouchement the day before it was remembered she was the only one who knew which icicles went to which chandelier; Mrs. Dolphim got the plans mixed up and had Maria’s sitting-room suite installed in the breakfast parlour. Maria did what she could to be helpful; but the delegation of authority had never been one of Anne’s strong points, and most of the burden either fell upon her shoulders, or was impatiently required (by her) to be placed there.

  Still, she enjoyed building a new nest in London. It was a pleasure to see once again the heavily framed portraits, delicate furniture, and beloved books which had been stored away in a disused cartlodge at Linfield. Maria (though she was looking distinctly more nervous and frail than ever—Anne almost asked half a dozen times whether she was pining for Mr. Mallinger, but disliked even to bring it up) declared herself enchanted by her bed- and sitting-room. On Wednesday night, Anne had the gratification of sleeping once more within the familiar blue damask curtains of her old bed.

  From this pleasant, housewifely hum (during which she often contrived if not to forget, at least to set aside, her troubled relations with Ensley) she was rudely roused on the Thursday by a visit from an unexpected caller. She was walking from chair to chair in her sitting-room, trying to decide whether a certain oval mirror which had been her mother’s ought to be hung above the mahogany secretaire (where it would look well but reflect a very indifferent view onto the alley) or over the mantelpiece (where it had been hung in Holies Street) when Dolphim knocked and presented her with the
card of Lady Ensley.

  She must have shown her surprise, for Dolphim said blandly, “Shall I tell her ladyship that madam is not at home?”

  Shaking herself a little, “No. Say I shall be with her directly,” answered Anne. She lingered a moment after Dolphim went away, trying to imagine what errand could possibly have brought Juliana to her, but soon gave it up and went down to learn the answer from the lady herself.

  Juliana was robed in a morning dress of the finest mulberry lustre, finished at the cuffs and hem with worked muslin, and complemented by a white velvet spencer ornamented with silk trimming. Anne did not remember her to have dressed so elegantly before her marriage, and had little doubt her new costumes were part of a campaign to appeal to Ensley. She, in a plain round gown with her hair barely coiffed, felt herself at a considerable disadvantage, but strove instinctively to overcome this by adopting an especially assured manner. Smiling cordially, gesturing smoothly, she begged her visitor (who had risen when she entered the drawing-room) to be comfortable. A closer look at Juliana persuaded her that, coiffed or not, she had the advantage over the younger woman in composure, and perhaps even in happiness. The girl’s knuckles were white, her thick nose was pink, and her eyes darted furtively over the room. When she spoke—to say good morning and to refuse a glass of negus—her voice was strained. Anne, who had lately been thinking of her ladyship chiefly as a vexatious impediment, experienced a swell of almost maternal solicitude for her. Dropping her cool, assured manner,

  “How amiable of you to wait upon me,” she said kindly. “But I think you have a special purpose in coming? You are troubled, my dear?”