The Country Gentleman (27 page)

But Mr. Highet seemed to be taking care of himself very nicely. He had found Charles and Celia Grypphon among the crowd, and Anne noticed the three of them talking animatedly during some quarter of an hour. Celia must have introduced him to some people afterwards, for each time Anne looked conscientiously round for him, ready to rescue him from a lonely corner, she found him in colloquy with some one else: Sir John Firebrace, or
Warrington Weld, or (for quite ten minutes, too!) the rather needlessly pretty Arabella Lemon. He was looking quite amazingly handsome to-night, in daring Wellington trousers she was sure he could not have had made in Cheshire, and a black stock tied carefully round his throat. That black brought out the black of his hair, and the darkness of his sleepy eyes, and set off the ruddy bloom in his cheeks. When she considered this was the same man she had often seen in a none too tidy labourer’s smock-frock and boots thick with mud she could scarcely credit it.

Ensley arrived rather late. The terrified look in his wife’s eyes, the pinkness of her nose, and the hastiness of her usually meticulous toilette suggested to Anne that they had quarrelled about her coming. Perhaps that was the cause of their lateness. Whatever the case, Anne had perforce to postpone her private interview with his lordship, for dinner was nearly due to be served. She could only greet them (Ensley levelled his quizzing glass at her, unwittingly strengthening her resolve) and draw them into the buzzing room. She took Juliana’s damp right hand firmly in her left, took Ensley’s left arm with her right, and was guiding them towards Charles Grypphon when, most unluckily, Mr. Highet bumbled directly into them.

Anne could see at once this was a meeting he desired no more than she. His heavy brows drew together and he looked down from his six inches’ advantage on Ensley with no very friendly eye. What had they argued about at Linfield, the Corn Law? Dear, dear! Events (at least in Anne’s opinion) seemed to be proving Ensley wrong since then. He would not like that. Nervously, she watched him pull his lips back into the semblance of a smile and extend a hand to Highet.

“What are you doing in town?” he demanded, before remembering to add, “Understand congratulations are in order,” in a voice more suspicious than celebratory.

For his part, Mr. Highet did not even pretend a smile. Putting his hand out slowly, “A little personal business. And the same to you,” he said, at his most sober. “I wish you extremely happy.” He looked gravely at Juliana, whom Anne introduced, murmured politely his pleasure at knowing her, then fixed his attention chiefly on Anne.

“We went to see
Lodoiska
last night,” chirped that lady brightly, and immediately wished she had not. She’d selected it for a neutral topic, but saw at once from the spark in Ensley’s eyes that he did not consider an excursion to the theatre with Mr. Highet in that light. He had already been unpleasantly surprised to find Mr. Highet here at all (for of course Anne had done nothing to warn him); in addition, Highet’s explanation of “personal business” for his presence had scarcely calmed him. Anne noticed the wording too, and thought it unnecessarily provocative (would not “business” have done as well?) but could spare little thought for that with Ensley glowering so, and Mr. Highet stern as a vicar on Sunday. She obliged herself to prattle on bravely, “Have you seen it? Mr. Kemble wrote it, you know, as well as appearing. It’s quite good, really. Plenty of horses. Though they have no lines, of course, save ‘Nay, nay.’”

Lady Ensley was the only one to laugh at this feeble sally, and that clearly from excess of nerves.

“What a shame to come up to town just at this season,” Ensley remarked, trying for a smooth recover. He had reminded himself he must deal comfortably with Highet or risk proving to Anne the truth of her own objections. “So little to see, I mean. There was a marvelous
King Henry IV
at the Drury Lane just last month. Mr. Bengough played Henry. Excellent.”

Mr. Highet (who after all had no corresponding motive to propitiate Ensley) said nothing.

“Of course, you may not care for Shakespeare. Lady George does not—do you, my dear?”

As Ensley had put this in only to demonstrate to both Mr. and Mrs. Highet the cordiality of relations between himself and his wife, and as Anne guessed this immediately, she did not come to his rescue when her ladyship merely answered, “No,” and fell mute again.

A fine dew sprung up on Ensley’s high forehead. For all his sang-froid, he unconsciously joined his hands behind his back and began to wring them energetically. This was going very badly indeed. He could see in Anne’s eyes that she had had no good news in store for him in the first place (though he did not divine the finality of her actual decision) and a certain pique on that account, perhaps, made him venture a remark he might better have left unsaid: “Well, Mr. Highet! Still letting your schoolmaster teach Spence, are you, now that you’ve seen the Spencean Philanthropists at work at Spa Fields? Ha! That was an education for Parliament, I can tell you.”

“Mr. Mallinger does not teach Spence. He has read him, as have I. Like Milton, I ‘cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue.’ I dislike censorship,” Mr. Highet returned, miraculously (Anne considered) declining to rise to Ensley’s bait either in word or tone. Still, she silently cursed Dolphim for a doddering snail. Where was he? Where was dinner? Would he never announce it?

“How is Mr. Mallinger?” she now asked, assuming an air of gay interest. She hoped at least to steer the topic
from politics. She explained to Juliana, “Mr. Mallinger teaches the children at Fevermere and Linfield.”

“Children?” Juliana echoed, puzzled. Looking blankly from Anne to Mr. Highet, “But I thought— Have you children?” she asked bluntly.

“The children of the tenant farmers,” Mr. Highet explained at once, while Anne blushed and Lord Ensley glanced furiously at his wife. Kindly, Mr. Highet hurried the talk away from the
faux pas
: “I fear he is still in indifferent spirits. My mother and I have often had him to dine in recent weeks, but we can’t seem to cheer him up.”

“What a pity,” Ensley said vaguely.

“And yet, you know,” Mr. Highet added, glancing curiously at Anne, “quite lately I fancy I know how to do so. I must see if I can contrive it.”

Anne, endeavouring to steal a look at a clock on the mantel beyond him, hardly heard this, and said nothing.

“And how does your mother?” Lord Ensley, regretting his lapse of policy and determined to be pleasant again, inquired. “An estimable woman.”

Mr. Highet contrived to look both sceptical and dour at once, and was about to answer when Dolphim (“At last!” thought Anne thankfully) appeared, throwing open the drawing-room doors. The intricacies of proceeding to the dining-room in the proper order of precedence spared the unwilling quartet from continuing their conversation; and the table (“Thank God,” breathed Anne) separated the key participants. Anne herself had a very interesting assistant to the Foreign Secretary on her left, and a Major recently home from France on her right. Her only regret (a quite absurd one, really) was that Mr.
Highet had somehow ended up next to Arabella Lemon, and across from the perenially fetching Baroness Courtham.

Dinner itself passed cheerfully enough. The hostess regretted the fricaseed Windsor beans, for Cook invariably made the white sauce too watery and quite spoiled them; but the parslied tench and the veal olives were excellent, and the wine roll delicious. Of course, Anne did not taste one quarter of the dishes served: She was too much occupied by quizzing Major Lewis as to the state of affairs in Paris, and by teasing out of the interesting assistant Castlereagh’s next projects. She had had no opportunity to appoint an assignation with Ensley before dinner, nor could she approach him now. On the contrary, she was soon obliged to lead the withdrawal of the ladies to the drawing-room and to leave Ensley and Mr. Highet to one another’s dubious mercies.

This hour alone with the ladies was one Anne had always particularly enjoyed, for she was far from the only witty female in her set, and tongues seemed often set at happy liberty by the absence of gentlemen. Tonight was no exception. A circle of the duller, and generally younger, spirits sat apart, talking among themselves; while Anne and Celia and Amy Firebrace and some dozen others heatedly argued and chaffed one another on a wide variety of topics. Yet even here, among her own sex and in her own drawing-room, Anne was aware of a degree of artificiality in the proceedings which she had never, before her sojourn in Cheshire, noticed. There was almost a ritual aspect to the debate, as topics they had discussed an hundred times before (the role of women in Politics, the progress of the Arts…) were gone over yet again, with all the same complaints brought out, and all the same
retorts answered to them. She was not sorry when, at length, Celia drew her aside and whispered,

“So, Mrs. Sly-boots Highet! Telling us what a tedious sow’s ear your Mr. Highet was, when all the time you knew perfectly well you meant to make a silk purse of him.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say, your husband. Who would ever have guessed he would dress up so nicely, eh? Who but you,” Celia laughed.

Anne asked, rather seriously, “Do you think him well-looking?”

“Well-looking? Spectacular! Now don’t tell me you don’t see it yourself!” Celia rallied her. “Nor that you aren’t aware how
he
looks at
you
!”

“How he— What do you mean, exactly?”

“Good heavens, Anne, you know me a sight too well, I hope, to play coy with me. Aren’t you really aware your husband is in love with you?”

Anne felt suddenly dizzy. “Celia, no, I am sure you are mistaken. Why, he has never said a word of such a thing! Quite the opposite, he has been very explicit…” Her words faded briefly, then recommenced, “Our marriage—why, I’ve told you all this. Our marriage was purely for business purposes,” Anne whispered rapidly.

“Yes, perhaps, but— If he is not in love with you, he is mightily infatuated. Not that I wonder at it,” she added, fondly brushing a hand across Anne’s delicate cheek. “Only— Surely I saw Ensley fuming at him, and vice versa? You don’t deny that?”

Anne thought. She recalled Mr. Highet’s “condition,” the single visitor he had warned her he would not make welcome at Fevermere. But that was a question of simple
dignity, she was certain. Celia must be wrong. Perhaps Mr. Highet found her pretty—in fact, she knew he had last night—but that was all.

“Ah, you don’t,” Celia took up again, before Anne could speak. “You don’t deny either, I hope, that he is not one quarter so dull as you have made him out to be? He gave Charles and me a very good account of the exhibition at Somerset Place just now, besides apprising us of some new techniques in midwifery that quite—well, quite took my breath away. I don’t say, mind you, that he will ever be Lord High Fol-de-rol; but neither, if you come to it, will Charles. And I for one should not care to live with Lord High Fol-de-rol any how.”

At this juncture Amy Firebrace pounced on them, demanding to know what Celia thought of the Elgin Marbles; and as the gentlemen joined them while this discussion was still going forward, the subject of Henry Highet was let drop. Anne had no time to think of Mr. Highet anyway, for she was acutely aware that the evening was slipping by without her having spoke alone to Ensley. The prospect weighed upon her more and more uncomfortably, yet it was devilishly trickly to arrange an assignation in a house Ensley scarcely knew, and under the very nose (a nose she particularly wished not to distress with any whiff of a rendez-vous) of her husband. She had forgot the former and, naturally, failed to anticipate the latter complication when she promised the tryst to Ensley. Now how to contrive it?

Ensley himself solved the difficulty, coming up beside her as she bent to move a firescreen and murmuring, “How much longer must I wait for you? Follow me to the dining-room in five minutes!”

“No,” she whispered, setting the screen down where it
would more effectively protect the elderly Lady Sandys from the heat of the fire. She smiled at the old marchioness, then mumbled into her fan, “The servants will be there. Any how, I cannot follow you out. Mr. Highet will notice.”

“And is it any business of his?” Ensley queried angrily, though still keeping his voice low, and erasing any emotion from his countenance. He began to stroll slowly towards a corner in which a small marble statue of Demeter perched on a pedestal. Anne strolled with him, fanning herself.

“I think it is his business, yes,” she answered in a low voice. “I do not care to hurt him, you see, and I know such behaviour must.”

“You seem to oppose your nicety of conduct to mine,” Ensley returned. They had now arrived at the statue and he gestured at it as he spoke.

Anne nodded, unaware that Mr. Highet had observed her situation and was now keeping a discreet eye on her unnaturally rigid back and Ensley’s studied gestures. “Perhaps,” she said. “Would we not do better to renew this subject later, when he is gone back to Cheshire? I expect him to leave in a day or two.”

“I do not care to wait a day or two,” Ensley muttered, though still nodding genially. For a change, Anne was grateful for his practised gestures, his ability to control his expression. “You have something to say to me. I see it in your eyes. If you will not quit the room with me, say it here and now.”

“I cannot—” she faltered; but,

“Say it!” he hissed so harshly that, without further reflection, she burst into speech.

“I will not receive you alone any longer. I will not write
to you nor receive letters of you. I regret it; but our lives have changed and our relations must change too. Pray forgive me. Pray—” She felt tears coming to her eyes and urgently blinked them away, “Pray believe I shall always remember our friendship with the greatest affection, and think of you with tenderness,” she went on, in a softened voice. Almost pleadingly she added, “As I hope you will me!” before turning away abruptly, and plunging with such energy into conversation with Arabella Lemon (who happened to be the closest person to her) that Ensley had no hope of recapturing her attention.