The Country Gentleman

by Hill, Fiona

  This mistletoe perhaps reminds some readers that we left Mr. Mallinger, some hours ago, in a state of ecstasy. But other readers, I think, will readily agree that no smile, no dove-like sweetness displayed by Mrs. Insel to the schoolmaster, could sufficiently embolden him—I might say madden him—to make him attempt to kiss her. No, the most that can be said of Mr. Mallinger and the mistletoe, is that he gave Mrs. Insel (who unluckily had been seated—by Mrs. Archibald Highet—at the other end of the table from him) a hasty, embarrassed glance when its presence was first pointed out, and intercepted just such a hasty glance from Mrs. Insel.

  But in view of the history of these two, such a glance is perhaps a great deal!

  Maria and Mr. Mallinger aside, however, the mistletoe caused plenty of havoc. Mr. Rand seized and roughly kissed Anne’s abigail, Lizzie; Mr. Thaddeus Highet jocosely bussed a stunned Miss Veal; Masters Arthur and George Highet kissed Evaline Framouth, and tickled but refused to kiss their sister Augusta; after which Anne found herself being dragged by these same hooligans to the magic spot, her husband at the same time under forcible conveyance there by Masters Tad, William, and Charles.

  “A kiss, a kiss!” the cry went up, as the new-married couple found themselves under the cursed sprig. Anne went crimson. Her husband, clumsy with embarrassment, stood foolishly still for a moment, as if dazed, then bent and chastely saluted her on the cheek.

  “A proper kiss, a proper kiss!” the audience (nephews chief among them) roared, quite unsatisfied by this feeble performance. Masters Arthur and George made a human ring around Anne, preventing her from running away, while Master William positively shoved his uncle at her. The ring broke away, Henry received a second, mighty push, and amid general pandemonium his arms went round her and his mouth (somehow, for Anne doubted very much he intended it, or could have steered himself right even if he had) met hers. A dizzy moment and it was over. Exploding with laughter, the boys went back to the table to fetch their parents and repeat the performance.

  Three shades of scarlet, Anne stumbled back to her place and hid her face in a napkin. But when some minutes later a boar’s head duly decked with bays and rosemary was brought in, and a new bowl of wassail, and a huge shoulder of venison, Anne looked up and caught her husband’s eye with a smile in her own, and only a little embarrassment.

  They sat till midnight, when the bells of the church, clear over the snowy fields, tolled to tell them it was Christmas Day. Then each man kissed his neighbour, or shook his hand, and a vast tray of plum-pudding was brought out. The thimble was found first, appearing (appropriately and, we hope, painlessly) in the portion given to Miss Veal, then the button in the pudding of Master Arthur (who loudly celebrated this omen that he need never marry) and finally the wedding ring by Mrs. Insel. (The reader will perhaps accuse the author of planting it there, a clumsy and worn device; in which case the author begs the reader please to direct his attention to the curiously smug look on the face of Mr. Henry Highet, who served the pudding out. The defence rests.) If Mr. Mallinger lacked the courage, or vulgarity, to attempt to kiss Mrs. Insel under the mistletoe, Mrs. Insel was equally bereft of the fortitude, or coarseness, a look at Mr. Mallinger upon finding the ring would have required. She merely noted its discovery very quietly to her neighbour—who happened to be Augusta Highet—and gave it to her to wear. It was Miss Augusta, of course, who made its appearance generally known. Hearing of it, Mr. Mallinger felt the lure of superstition for perhaps the first time in his life.

  He quitted Fevermere just before one and made the long walk across the quiet fields to his rooms behind the schoolhouse with a lighter heart than had been in his breast in many days. Whether Mrs. Insel’s smiling face had been only an island of Christmas amnesty in a cold sea of exile; or whether her smile invited him back to friendship, but still denied him love; nevertheless she had smiled—and, moreover, would see him again in church on the morrow, and perhaps smile again. For the moment, he was content with this. Content? Euphoric.

  The party at Fevermere marked Christmas Day with a very large breakfast (from which Mrs. Henry Highet, predictably and wisely, absented herself), a visit to church (where the Reverend Septimus Samuels preached his annual sermon on “The M in Miracle”—Mary, Mercy, Motherhood and so on), and a long afternoon of skating on a small pond near the old border between Fevermere and Linfield. The children skated vigorously, Selina and Mrs. Framouth decorously, the gentlemen with that undertone of competition that so often plagues the masculine component of even a small assembly. Maria cried off, but Anne (who could not remember to have stood on skates since before her father died) gamely allowed herself to be persuaded—mostly by George Highet—to try them again. Leaning heavily on her husband’s willing arm, she first tottered, then crept, then glided across the ice. At last, proud veteran of two or three successful circuits, she declared herself ready to skate alone.

  “You are certain?”

  Cheeks flushed with cold and exertion, eyes bright and a little watery in the December wind, “Indeed,” she impatiently replied.

  Still Mr. Highet lingered, holding his wife’s gloved hand against his steadying arm, and regarding her booted ankles dubiously. “Perhaps one more turn—?”

  At the same moment, “Mr. Highet, I am perfectly capable—” she began, wrenching her hand out from under his with a twitch of irritation. She turned smartly, set off gliding away from him on her right foot, tried to bring the left foot up for its turn, but instead caught her toe in the ice and promptly tumbled down, landing with a thud.

  “Dear ma’am!” Mr. Highet was beside her in an instant, hovering over her, offering his hand. But she had buried her head in her arms. Her back shook under her fur-trimmed mantle, and a series of little choking sounds came from her. “Mrs. Highet?” he nervously inquired, while one by one the other skaters observed her situation and turned to look. Mr. Highet leaned down farther and gently touched her trembling back. “My dear?”

  At last she looked up. One glance at his solemn, anxious face and she exploded into whoops. “I am not crying, sir!” she laughed up at him. She sat on the ice and laughed till she did cry, till Mr. Highet laughed with her, then Masters Arthur and George, then everyone. She never stopped till, a small, sharp noise causing her abruptly to look down, “Oh, dear heavens!” she shrieked, and attempted to scramble to her feet. “Mr. Highet!” She stretched an arm out to him, suddenly urgent—for the ice beneath her had begun to crack and a tiny rivulet of frigid water had seeped to the surface and soaked through her glove. For the next minute she seemed all knees and elbows, flashing blades, flying ermine, and awkwardly flailing limbs. Mr. Highet endeavoured to pull her up, but she could not keep her balance. She fell once more, causing another ominous crack. Then,

  “Stay still!” Mr. Highet commanded her, for fear her flapping and scrambling would sink her altogether. “Remove your skates,” he bade her, while he lay down full length upon the ice and stretched an arm to her. By dint of these simple shifts, he soon succeeded in removing her to safety—where, if he had hoped to receive her heartfelt gratitude for having rescued her, he must have been deeply disappointed; for she only broke (once she had recovered her breath) into howls of laughter again, not merely at the thought of his solemn countenance when she fell, but also, helplessly, at the idea of her own ridiculous performance.

  Boxing Day came and went, and with it the Framouths. The holly hung so gaily on Christmas Eve soon began to dry and turn brown, and had to be taken down. But for the nightly appearance of a plum-pudding at the table (one of these was traditionally eaten at Fevermere each night between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, for luck in the next twelve months) the festiveness of the season might almost have been forgot. On the third day after Christmas the Staffordshire Highets left for home. Anne saw them go with some regret, for besides having got to like the children, their departure reminded her she and Maria ought perhaps to be leaving also.

  Only…So little had passed, as yet, between Maria and Mr. Mallinger.
Distracted as she was by her own concerns, Anne had not failed to observe the former’s smiling behaviour towards the latter on Christmas Eve. Indeed, if Maria had been too refined to glance at the schoolmaster when she found the ring in the pudding, Anne had not. She had been gratified to see in his face a start of suppressed excitement. But at church the next day, he and Mrs. Insel had both seemed conscious and awkward. After the service, when all around them were shaking hands or kissing, Anne had watched the two merely bow to each other. She saw from their faces that neither (silly babies!) had the courage to do anything else. Still, short of going to Mr. Mallinger and telling him to be bold, Anne could not think how to help the two of them out of their mutual embarrassment. She tried inviting Mr. Mallinger to tea one day shortly after Christmas, and the effort was mildly successful—he came, he drank tea in the same room as Maria, he was civil to every one—but they parted as distantly as ever, so that Anne thought at this rate they would need till Midsummer Day to clear up matters between them. And she could not stay in Cheshire until Midsummer Day. Aside from everything else, how would it look to Mr. Highet?

  She was rather surprised, late on the evening of the twenty-ninth, when Maria peeped into her sitting-room and announced her intention of travelling to Northwich alone on the following day. “I shan’t be long,” she went on. “The coach passes through Faulding Chase early in the morning and returns me there before five. Well, good night, dear. I only wished to let you know.”

  “But why are you going?” asked Anne, sitting up. She had been stretched out rather luxuriously on a chaise-longue reading Pope.

  Airily, “Oh, merely a little business,” Maria told her, and again started to close the door.

  “Come in here properly,” Anne instructed, straightening fully and setting her book down on a small cherrywood table. “What business have you, little sparrow?” she demanded suspiciously.

  Maria darkened and waved a vague hand. “Some affairs to do with the Army,” she feebly murmured. Reluctantly, she edged in from the doorway, still leaving the door ajar behind her.

  “Indeed? I shall go with you,” Anne declared.

  “No, no! That is— You would not like it. I shall need to wake up at seven to be ready. That would not suit you.”

  “Hm. That’s true enough. But what is this talk of ‘business’? You are not looking at lodgings to let, I hope? Northwich would be much too far away.”

  Maria raised her right hand. “I swear I will never take lodgings in Northwich,” she said.

  “Solemnly?”

  “Very solemnly.”

  Anne considered. “Well then,” she replied, relenting, “if you really feel you must go…”

  “I do.”

  “Then be off with you. But mind you be careful. And—what do you mean by travelling alone? Take Lizzie with you, at least.”

  Mrs. Insel laughed. “I am hardly ‘travelling’!” she exclaimed, smiling. “Only to Northwich and home.” She backed out of the door, still smiling. “Next you will send a footman with me when I drive over to see Mrs. Ross. Good night.” Gently and firmly she shut the door.

  Early the next morning—not quite so early as she had led Anne to believe, but still early—Mr. Highet drove Mrs. Insel to Faulding Chase and handed her into a coach standing before the Red Lion.

  “You are quite sure you don’t mind going?” he asked her scrupulously, for perhaps the fourth time.

  “Not at all,” said Mrs. Insel, who would have been very happy (in view of his kindness to her) to undertake any thing Mr. Highet wanted, but was particularly so since he had asked her to carry out such a cheerful mission as this.

  “Never mind about the cost,” he told her.

  “I understand.”

  “Anything you think— Well, you know,” he finished; and this was certainly true, since he had given her his instructions some half-dozen times already.

  Maria smiled and suggested he go home, since the coach would not leave for some twenty minutes and he could be of no use to her here.

  “If you don’t mind,” he answered with unexpected alacrity, “I believe I will. One of my cows…”

  He did not complete the sentence but rather, apologetically but hastily, backed away and climbed up into his curricle, thanking her all the while and wishing her luck. His uncharacteristic abruptness startled Maria. It made her wonder whether the drive into Faulding Chase had inconvenienced him after all, though he had sworn it would not. She speculated idly upon this mildly interesting idea, and others, for some minutes, while she was joined in the coach by a man she believed to be Lord Crombie’s estate steward, and while the wife of one of Mr. Highet’s farmers climbed up to ride on the roof. But she quite forgot the matter a few moments later, for a blond head and a pair of thin shoulders thrust themselves into the coach. The last passenger had appeared to claim his seat.

  That passenger was Mr. Mallinger.

  Like a trapped hare, Maria shrank back as far as the worn squabs of the carriage would allow. What must be Mr. Mallinger’s opinion of a woman who first forbade him to come near her, then showered smiles upon him? This was the question that made her long to disappear, to bolt from the carriage through the opposite door, or sink through the floorboards. The schoolmaster too checked the instant he caught sight of her, and was (she thought) on the point of withdrawing when the stout coachman came suddenly up behind him to collect his shillings and sent Mr. Mallinger tumbling to the seat opposite her own. The coins produced, the man noisily shut the doors. An instant later the carriage swayed as the man sprang to his box; a moment more and they were on their way.

  The late arrival nodded tremblingly to the gentleman seated next him, wished him a good morning, and asked how my Lord Crombie did. He was wished a civil good morning in his turn and informed that his lordship did pretty well before he had the courage to look again at Mrs. Insel. When he did, it would be hard to imagine a more nerve-ridden good morning than the one he received for his pains. Chagrined even in his extremity at the thought that he—he!—should cause her uneasinesss, he returned an equally shaken salutation and waited many minutes before he dared ask what her destination was today.

  “Northwich,” she replied, greatly relieved to be asked, for it meant she could inquire in her turn, “And you, sir?”

  “Northwich also,” said he, and went a little pale.

  This paltry interchange—barely a conversation at all, by most standards—was all these two well-educated people could manage before the coach stopped in Tedding Minor. Here, to their several horrors, Lord Crombie’s steward Mr. Booth made his adieux and descended. This unlucky turn of events was followed by one even more appalling: No one else got in. Maria, realizing this, was on the point of suggesting they invite the farmer’s wife on the roof to join them inside when the coach again lurched forward and it was too late.

  Alone in a coach with Mr. Mallinger! What must she do? Northwich was two hours off if not more, and there were no other stops before it. Finally,

  “Would you like me to rap for the driver, Mrs. Insel?” Mr. Mallinger offered. “I can travel outside, or perhaps even upon the box.”

  “No, no!” What an idea—Mr. Mallinger out in the cold for her sake!

  “It is nothing to me,” he pursued. “Indeed, I generally do travel outside. It is only because I am on an errand for Mr. Highet that I have a seat within.”

  To his surprise, “On an errand for Mr. Highet?” she echoed. “How curious. I also am on such a commission.”

  “For Mr. Highet, do you mean?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Goodness me!”

  Much struck, both parties sat back in the jolting carriage and contemplated this coincidence in silence some while. Then,

  “May I ask—” Mrs. Insel commenced, and stopped. She resumed presently, “Has your errand any thing to do with jewellery, I wonder?”

  “Not at all. I am to inspect the books in a certain shop there, with an eye to getting hold of several new ones Mr. Highet
hopes to buy.”

  “Indeed? I wonder— That is, it does seem odd he did not buy them himself, since he was so lately in London. Does not it?”

  “Rather odd. And also that he did not mention…” Mr. Mallinger paused musingly before going on, “But I dareswear he did not know exactly which day you would be going?”

  “To Northwich, do you mean? On the contrary, he bought my ticket.”

  “He bought mine!” Mr. Mallinger exclaimed.

  “Then it does seem very curious indeed—”

  “One would certainly imagine he would have mentioned—”

  Neither found it necessary to complete these sentences. Mr. Highet was not a garrulous man, but the circumstance of his having asked two different people to perform two different errands for him on the same day in Northwich, and bought their tickets for the purpose—yet never mentioned to either that the other would be on the coach—certainly had a highly suspicious appearance. Presently,

  “I gather from your question that your business does have to do with jewellery?” Mr. Mallinger suggested, then hastened to add, “Of course, if it is confidential—”

  “No, not at all. I am sure you can keep a secret from Mrs. Highet. I am to buy her a pair of ear-drops, the nicest pair I see. It is a New Year’s gift.”

  “Indeed? When you say Mrs. Highet, you mean Mrs. Highet—”

  “The younger. Anne Highet.”

  Mr. Mallinger nodded. His intelligent blue eyes, at first barely flickering over her, dared to rest on his beloved longer and longer as this discussion progressed. Now he looked at her quite steadily and asked, “I wonder, then, when he formed this intention? For unless it is of a very recent date, one would have thought that purchase, too, could have been better made in London.”

  “Yes.” Slowly, “To be frank,” Maria said, “I thought about that when he asked me. Only—he has been so extremely kind to me, in—in many ways.” She hurried on, for though it was easy—so easy—to confide in Mr. Mallinger, he must never know of Mr. Highet’s principal act of kindness to her. And yet, what a pleasure it was, how natural, to share with him even these few words. “Had he asked me a much more peculiar favour, I would still not have questioned him,” she finished.