A Country Wooing

by Joan Smith

  “Because I hate appearing in public in antiquated outfits even more. This dear antique!” She held it up for their inspection. “You will recognize it, Robin, and possibly even you, Alex, have seen it before, for it’s more than three years old.” Robin came and took up the chair closest to her.

  “You wore it to the last assembly before I left,” Alex said promptly. “I didn’t think it did you justice.”

  “You are kind. Charles was more outspoken. He told me it made me look bran-faced, and my complexion, you know, was always considered my redeeming feature.” She noticed the little shadow of annoyance pass over Alex’s face and regretted that unnecessary reference to Charles. “We have aged and mellowed together, this gown and I. We are now both approaching a sere and yellow condition that makes it suit me much better.’’

  “Don’t you think it time to retire the gown?” Alex asked. He looked rather pointedly at Robin, who ignored him. Rather than taking a chair farther away, Alex moved the gown and sat on the sofa by Anne.

  She was perfectly aware of the small incident and felt a sense of gratification. “It has seen good and faithful service, but like Mrs. Dobbin, till a gift replaces it, it must go on doing duty. And that is not a hint for a new gown, Lord Penholme!”

  “I didn’t mistake it for one. Even if it were, it would be a hint that must go unheeded. Rob and I are just back from Sawburne and have decided to declare ourselves bankrupt.”

  This startling intelligence was accompanied by a rueful smile that bespoke hyperbole. “You, too?” Anne asked, shaking her head in commiseration. “What we all ought to do is set up a shop of some sort. Mama claims it is the avaricious merchants who are making all the money these days. I believe she’s right. The gown I covet would require a fortune. Three guineas a yard, they are charging for crepe nowadays. One would think it were gold or silver. Well, how bad is it at Sawburne?”

  “Very bad,” Alex answered soberly. “In much the same state as Penholme. Mortgaged to the hilt, and the farms badly run-down. At least the merchants aren’t getting up a rebellion against us.”

  “Charles never lived there, so no bills have been run up,” Robin explained. “A few thousand should put me on my feet.”

  “Is that all? Shake the pennies out of your piggy bank,” Anne suggested.

  “I did that a year ago to buy Babe a birthday present. There ain’t any pennies in it, nor anywhere else either. We must be the poorest rich people in Hampshire.”

  “You may well be,” Anne sympathized, “but Mama and I claim the title of the poorest poor people.”

  “At least you have a trade. You can set up a cobbler’s shop,” Robin said.

  “I’m too inept. My toe is pierced like a pincushion from the shoddy job I did on my own slippers. I’m after Mama to marry the butcher, but she favors the draper, I believe. There, my thread is gone, and where will I ever find three pennies to buy a new spool?” She set aside the gown with a sigh of relief and asked Cook to bring tea and call her mother down from the cheese room.

  “Water will do, if you’re short of tea,” Alex suggested. Though he made a joke of it, there was an underlying sadness as he looked around the saloon. It wore the tired appearance not of neglect but of lack of money.

  “No, no. We disregard our sad state and go on living like queens,” Anne assured him. “Bread and tea every morning, a soup bone for lunch. And if there is no moon at night, we send the backhouse boy up to Penholme in the dark to steal eggs for next day’s tea. You poor rich never miss them, I daresay.”

  “How did everybody get so poor all of a sudden?” Robin asked. He set his chin in his hands and frowned.

  “You haven’t been listening to me,” Anne chided. “It is the merchants’ fault. Old Anglin is rich as Croesus. He has two daughters, Robin. If you had your wits about you, you’d go into town and roll your eyes at one of them.”

  “The younger ain’t half bad,” Robin said with a quizzing smile.

  “What’s her dot?” Alex asked.

  “Why, for a minor lord who will one day possibly own a heavily mortgaged and dilapidated farm, I expect he’d hand over a million or so,” Anne said.

  “No, for that price he’d expect me to take the elder antidote off his hands,” Robin said, laughing.

  Alex looked from one to the other as they joked. “It’s gratifying to see such high spirits in these troubled times.”

  “It’s breeding that accounts for it,” Robin said.

  “We laugh in the face of adversity and pretend to enjoy wearing threadbare clothes,” Anne told him. “Anyone with a new bonnet each season is considered a parvenu. Mind you, there aren’t many such low types hereabouts. There’s scarcely a jacket in the village with any nap left on it.”

  “Barring the merchants,” Alex added.

  “Well, I don’t enjoy wearing boots three years old, and I’m sorry to hear you’ve given up cobbling, Annie,” Robin said. “I was hoping you’d tack a new half sole on my top boots. The soles are so thin I can tell when I step on a coin whether it’s heads or tails.”

  “Never mind whether it’s heads or tails. Just bend over and put it in your pocket,” Alex urged.

  Anne turned to Alex. “You were going to alleviate some of the problems by selling your brother’s jewelry. Have you done it?”

  “No, Rob and I have sorted through it and have a load ready to take to Winchester. I ought to go to London, but we’ll get a fair price in Winchester. We’ll take it over tomorrow. Till I have some gold to disburse, I daren’t show my face in Eastleigh.”

  “You never saw such gimcrack stuff, Annie,” Robin said. “A gold toothpick, for instance. Now, why the deuce would anyone want a gold toothpick?”

  “Just what I always wanted!” she exclaimed, laughing. Despite the nature of their conversation, she suddenly felt happy. It was having friends to share troubles that made them tolerable. “You must own that it would be the height of elegance to pull out a gold toothpick after our dinner of purloined eggs.”

  “And he had forty-five snuffboxes,” Robin continued, eager to relate the list.

  “That sounds a trifle excessive. I should think thirty would be enough. One for every day of the month. Especially when one considers that Charles hardly ever took snuff.”

  “Eleven watches—one of them a dandy Breguet. Sixteen fobs, some of them quite valuable. Gold and jeweled, and the tiepins!”

  “Forty-five?” Anne asked. “To match the snuffboxes, I mean.”

  “Not quite. Thirty, we counted.”

  “He was trying to economize, poor fellow.”

  “Oh, as to that, they are the most valuable pieces in the bunch. If they’re genuine, that is. I cannot think the emerald is real, but two of the diamonds certainly are. One of them must be five or six carats, and there’s a black pearl.”

  “You’ll have to clean it up before you sell it,” Anne advised.

  “No, it’s supposed to be black.”

  Alex listened to their nonsense and finally spoke. “She’s pulling your leg, greenhorn.”

  “I never pull a gentleman’s leg,” Anne retaliated. “It sounds excessively vulgar. Have I not just been telling you what a pattern-card of breeding I am?”

  “Sorry to hear it.” Robin sighed. “I was counting on you to fix up these boots of mine.”

  “If you have no objection to tacks sticking in your toes, leave them with me. The charge will be nominal, for a friend.”

  “I’ll tell you what I will do, if you don’t mind, Alex,” Robin said, “is get into Charlie’s closets and dig myself out a new pair. He has dozens of them, and we are about the same size.”

  “We shall be paying for them, no doubt,” Alex replied. “You must certainly feel free to wear them or anything else that fits you.”

  “I thought maybe you’d want them yourself,” Robin said. “They’d be about your size, too.”

  “No, take anything you want,” Alex repeated rather curtly.

  “Anything?” Robin�
�s eyes glowed with delight.

  “Why not?”

  “By Jove, I’ll be the best-dressed pauper in the countryside. He has dozens of dandy jackets, and the waistcoats! A superb black evening outfit, too, and a sable-lined cape.”

  “There is your problem taken care of,” Anne said. “I don’t suppose he has a white crepe anything. I have been coveting a white crepe gown the past months.”

  “No, but he has half a dozen dressing gowns, all silk with fringed belts, and one with a bird of paradise on the back.”

  “Just a trifle gaudy for my taste,” she said consideringly.

  Mrs. Wickfield came in, bearing the tea tray, and the conversation came down to earth. She shook her head to hear of conditions at Sawburne and repeated that it was the merchants who were at fault. “The Anglins ...” she said, preparing her tirade.

  “Watch your words, Mama,” Anne cautioned. “Robin is considering offering for the younger—or is it the elder, Robin? You might as well go for a million.”

  “I wouldn’t be too civil to them, Robin,” Mrs. Wickfield warned. “People like that—why, they might take it seriously.”

  “The girls are actually well-behaved,” Robin objected. “Maggie and Marilla went to a ladies’ seminary and might pass for ladies anywhere.”

  “Ah, but ladies in a new bonnet every season—parvenus,” Anne chided. “Would they have the fortitude to be ladies in three-year-old silks?”

  “Indeed they would not!” Mrs. Wickfield said sharply.

  “I had tea with Mrs. Anglin at a church do, and she dunked her biscuit.”

  “Maggie don’t dunk her biscuits,” Robin defended.

  “Robin, I hope you’re not setting up a flirtation with Maggie Anglin,” Anne exclaimed. “If it’s only a fortune to bring Sawburne around that worries you, marry me. I have five thousand. That should do it, should it not, Alex?” Though the offer was not serious, she was displeased to hear Robin speak so hotly about Miss Maggie.

  “More than do it,” Alex agreed.

  “Well, there you are, then,” Anne said. “It isn’t necessary to marry new money. Take me, and you’ll get old, well-bred money. Tell him, Alex. You like giving orders.”

  “Not that order,” he said, and slanted a smile at her. “Fine as well-bred money is, I cannot think five thousand old is finer than a million new.”

  “No, no, the elder daughter is going for a million. He cannot expect a sou over five hundred thousand for Maggie.”

  “Twenty-five thousand is what you would get. Something in that order,” Mrs. Wickfield said.

  “I ain’t planning to marry her,” Robin said, becoming angry. “But it’s an idea, now that you mention it. He’d come down heavy for a title for her—sort of a title. Lady Robin. Of course, he’d come down a deal heavier to make her Lady Penholme.”

  Anne turned a sapient eye on Alex. “I trust you know your duty, Penholme.”

  “I begin to think it would take Anglin’s fortune to keep me afloat. I notice you don’t offer me your well-aged dowry, Annie.”

  “A paltry five thousand! It would be but a drop in the bucket to a man of your debts.”

  Mrs. Wickfield disliked to hear Alex’s debts and Anglin’s fortune discussed in the same conversation. She cleared her throat and said, “You could always sell the London mansion, Alex.”

  “Not if I can help it. It took my family six generations to build up their assets. I don’t plan to preside at their disbursement.’’

  “There’s the Leicester hunting box—that is hardly ever used.”

  “It’s gone,” he said curtly.

  “Gone where?” she asked, startled.

  “Charles sold it before I left.”

  “Sold the Leicester place! I never heard about that.” She exchanged a shocked, angry glance with her daughter.

  “He needed the money,” Alex said.

  “What for?”

  “To pay some debts.”

  “Deuce take it, I don’t see that we must keep it a secret from Aunt Alice,” Robin said to his brother. “He gambled it away. Owed three thousand to the moneylenders, and sold it three days before Alex left. That’s why—”

  “Never mind, Robin,” Alex said sharply. “It’s gone, but it will be the last property to leave this family if I can help it.” He rose with a commanding glare at his brother. “Ladies, we’ll leave you to your mending and cobbling and hope to see you tomorrow at Penholme. Come to tea. The moon is full tonight, so your backhouse boy will have poor foraging in the henhouse.”

  It was agreed, a time set, and an order given by Mrs. Wickfield that they would take their own gig, as day travel in it was pleasant.

  While the gentlemen drove home, the elder burning Robin’s ears for revealing Charlie’s iniquity in selling the hunting box, Mrs. Wickfield turned a knowing eye on her daughter. “That’s why Alex left!”

  “It seems like it.”

  “They had a fight, I wager. There was Alex looking after Penholme, trying to keep the place intact, while that bounder of a Charles was out squandering the family fortune. Selling the Leicester place! I can’t believe it. And mortgaging everything else he could get his hands on. If the main estate weren’t entailed, he’d have sold it up, too.”

  “He put another twenty thousand mortgage on it. What did he do with so much money?”

  “Bought anything he took a fancy to. Gambled, showered it on his women friends, the gudgeon. What was your point in as well as refusing Alex, my lady?”

  “Refusing him? Mama, we were joking. You might as well say I offered for Robin.”

  “Folks have a way of saying what they mean in the form of a joke, to see how it goes down. If he makes that joke again, I suggest you tell him he’s welcome to your five thousand.”

  Anne smiled but was soon frowning again. “I wonder if Robin’s joke about Maggie Anglin’s fortune was said for the same reason.”

  “My dear, he’d never marry that vulgar merchant’s daughter.’’

  “Better he than Alex.”

  “Now, that is what you should have said! Though as I consider it, Anglin would not settle for such a little title as Robin’s. He always buys the best. He’d be angling for the title of countess for his chit, if he should take into his head to look toward the Hall.”

  Anne’s head turned slowly to her mother. She opened her lips, then closed them again. Alex had really not said a word against the Anglins. What he had said was that he could overlook their vulgarity, if the price was right. Did he mean he could overlook it in a sister-in-law? Surely that was his meaning. Of course it was. It was pleasant to see Alex and Robin on such good terms, after a rough settling-in period. With two good men concentrating on the job of bringing order to Penholme, the future looked bright.

  Chapter Eight

  Anne knew as soon as she set foot in the door of Penholme the next afternoon that there was some excitement in the air. She saw it in Mrs. Tannie’s smile as she greeted them at the door of the gold saloon, she heard it in the excited chatter of the rest of the family as they sat in groups talking, and most of all she felt it in the one long, meaningful look Alex cast on her when she entered. He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was a happy excitement in his eyes. He looked as if—she hardly knew what. As if he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her. He had never done anything of the sort, so how did she know? She just knew, that’s all.

  When she spoke to him, however, she gave no intimation of her powers of telepathy. “Why are you looking like the cat that swallowed the canary?” she asked. “Have you won a fortune at faro, I hope?”

  “No, but I made a small fortune at Winchester.”

  “They liked the snuffboxes!”

  “They were mad for them. Charlie did have good taste, to give him his due.”

  “I trust you mean to disburse your windfall profits with discretion,” she said.

  “They are disbursed.’’

  “All of them! I begin to think we have another spendthrift on t
he loose. Would it be encroaching to ask what sum you fell heir to?”

  “Twenty-five hundred guineas.”

  “Oh, Alex! You’re rich again.” She beamed. It felt as though a heavy rock had fallen off her heart.

  “I’m less steeped in debt. I paid Tannie her back wages and took care of the more pressing debts in the village. Oh, and paid the rector for his tedious sermons. I saved enough to buy a couple of yards of that inordinately expensive material your heart desires, if you’re interested.”

  “Get thou behind me, Satan! I am only flesh and blood. Don’t tempt me into such impropriety, Alex. I shall go through my own treasure box and see what I might pawn. I have a pretty good string of glass beads that I hardly ever wear, and a little cameo pin that is not so very chipped, only, of course, the clasp is broken.”

  “They ought to be worth a few hundred,” he said.

  “Is there such a demand for snuffboxes, then?”

  “It was the tiepins that proved a boon. The large green stone was an emerald. There were a couple of diamonds in the lot and, of course, the black pearl.”

  “And the gold toothpick. What sum did it bring?”

  “You didn’t really think I’d sell it, when you always wanted one?” He removed the gold stick from his pocket and presented it to her with a ceremonious bow.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, and stood looking at it uncertainly. “My, it’s big, isn’t it? It cannot be a lady’s toothpick.”

  “I don’t believe it’s a toothpick at all, but for want of any rational conjecture, Robin has decided it must be one.”

  “Perhaps it’s a spear for pickles,” she suggested, hefting the spear, which was three inches in length and pointed at both ends. “But really, you know, just in case—I dislike to use another person’s toothpick. I shall leave it in your safekeeping.” She gave it back to Alex, who put it into his pocket with such a satisfied smile that she had to wonder why he’d offered it to her in the first place.