The Country Gentleman (5 page)

He interrupted her thoughts to ask what she was shaking her head at. With this he smiled hesitantly at her. He had often teased her about the way her emotions showed in her face and gestures. His smile reminded her how well they knew one another.

“Nothing that signifies,” she lied briskly, and took his hand in both hers. She squeezed it, mustered a little smile in return, and told him almost laughingly, “We ought to go back to the others now, my dear. What will people think?”

She had already turned to go when he objected, “But your business? You said you had something to discuss with me.”

She stopped. “Did I?” She stood looking blank with a hand to her forehead. “Did I indeed?” She frowned.

Anne Guilfoyle had not had a pleasant day. She had received two bits of unexpected news, neither even remotely welcome. She felt exhausted, bruised, and had a shattering head-ache; but she was not so far gone that she would blurt out, to a man who had just told her he was marrying someone else, the fact that she was destitute. If
anything was important to her at the close of this interview with Ensley, it was to give him no reason to think of her with pity. If he must marry, let him marry. If he must play the bridegroom, let him play it. Only for God’s sake keep him from thinking that she was the loser by it. Her dignity, her poor dignity—it was all that kept her sane.

“Upon my word, I do not remember. Very likely I merely wished to give you this.” And she stood on her toes and pecked at his long cheek. “And now I have given it, and now good night.” She smiled and, with a great effort, laughed up at him, then turned and fled the room.

When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies some half hour later they found Miss Guilfoyle exceptionally gay. Her wit was madder, her satire keener than anyone could recall. To approach her with a joke was to touch a knife to a grindstone: She sharpened it, she threw off sparks. Nothing escaped her. She carved the assembly—Lady Juliana Canesford included—as neatly as a butcher does a side of beef, and with as little trouble from them. On the contrary, they were delighted: Tales of her heights of raillery and the
bon mots
she had coined circulated from mouth to ear among the London Quality for quite a week and a half afterwards.

Number 3, Holies Street was in an uproar.

“Every dish in the house to wrap, every rug to roll, every every thing, and two days to do it!” Mrs. Dolphim exclaimed (for perhaps the fifth time) to little Sally Clemp, the coachman’s wife. Not twelve hours had gone by since Anne’s scene with Ensley, not twenty-four since Mr. Dent’s evil visit, but already she had given her orders: Number 3 must be packed up.

“Does she think we’re witches, you and I?” the
housekeeper went on. “Does she think we’re conjurers, that we can wave our hands and say Puff! ’Tis all done? And Dolphim sent all over town, as if he was nothing but the boots or a backstairs page or I don’t know what…Told to fetch this, leave that, see to t’other! Thirty years in service I’ve been, thirty years, and never heard such a freakish whim. Cheshire! I’ve known Miss Anne Guilfoyle since before there was a Miss Anne Guilfoyle
to
know. I come up from Overton with her ladyship, ask Dolphim if I didn’t—”

Sally, who was tediously wrapping icicle number seventy-six or so of a crystal chandelier that seemed to have several thousand pieces to it, neither doubted Mrs. Dolphim’s assertion nor would have cared one whit had it turned out to be the grossest fabrication. She had been with the household a mere three months, and was only glad to be told she and John would remove along with it, since it was removing. Besides, any fool could guess it was no “freakish whim” of Miss Guilfoyle’s to leave for Cheshire: Something was wrong. Could not Mrs. Dolphim see red eyes when they looked at her? Had not Mrs. Insel, the soul of gentleness on every other occasion, spoke sharp to Minna twice in two hours? And the fact that they were all under strictest orders to say nothing to anyone with regard to how they were going—not to mention to a soul that the house was being packed up, not to say they were taking every stick of furniture, but only to pretend it was a country visit, like as usual? Didn’t that tell Mrs. Thirty Years Dolphim trouble was at the root of it? Besides which, every one in the household knew that Lizzie, Miss Guilfoyle’s abigail, had actually heard Miss Guilfoyle absolutely sobbing! Not that Lizzie told every one herself, of course: She was much too loyal to Miss Guilfoyle to do
that. She only whispered the story to Cook, who mentioned it to Minna, who never was very close with a secret. But, “No use talking to the deaf,” remarked Sally to herself, detaching icicle number seventy-seven, and aloud said only, “Indeed Mrs. Dolphim, yes Mrs. Dolphim, Gracious Goodness!”

Early on the third day after Mr. Dent’s announcement, Miss Guilfoyle dropped her head back against the red plush squabs of her travelling carriage and gave a long sigh of something like relief. It had been sad—very sad—to quit London; but now that the deed was done and the coach well into Buckinghamshire, a glad sense of having taken some action against her sea of troubles swept through her, lifting her spirits.

“Off to adventure,” she remarked to Maria, who sat opposite to her in the comfortable carriage. Mrs. Dolphim, Lizzie, and Minna were in the curricle following close behind; Dolphim and the others would come at a slower pace, in a hack-chaise with a train of waggons to carry the furniture. How Anne knew not, but Mr. Dent had contrived not only to free her of what remained on her lease of Number 3, but even to recover the money she had laid out for August and September. This windfall paid the hire of the waggons and the hack-chaise; the four hundred pounds still left of her fortune, meanwhile, was being transmuted into food and other necessaries at an alarming rate. “How long do you suppose one can live on Cheshire cheese?” Anne asked, her thoughts having drifted (as they invariably did of late) to finances.

“Will not the income of the farm begin at once?” Mrs. Insel inquired, looking out the window at the soft, misty
landscape slipping away (she had insisted on taking the backward seat) into the past.

“I hope so. Soon enough, Mr. Dent assured me—but from now on, I will believe I have money when I see it in my hand, and not before.” This was said rather grimly. They drove on in silence for some while; then, her tone lightened, “Only fancy what marvellous letter-writers we shall become in our exile,” Anne suggested. “Perhaps we shall learn to talk to rats, as other prisoners are said to do.”

“In our case, I should think cows would be our chief interlocutors,” replied the other, pleased to encourage even this mild levity.

“Indeed. And we shall scrawl our names across the walls not in blood, but milk.”

A fat raindrop streaked over the glass of the window, then another.

“Rain,” observed Maria, as more drops came faster and faster. Then, gloomily, “Mud,” she added.

“Quite,” agreed Miss Guilfoyle.

A new silence fell as each entertained the thought of poor weather and two hundred miles to cover. Drenched coachmen. Stuck wheels. Short evenings. Moonless nights. Still, there was no turning back.

“‘See how the rain doth wash the flowers,’” Anne began to sing a catch she and Maria had known in childhood.

After a moment Mrs. Insel joined in, her clear soprano adding a high descant.

Not until they had arrived at the Lion in Coventry, where they were to pass the night (Mrs. Insel had suggested they stop at Overton instead, which was nearly as convenient and a good deal cheaper, but even in her extremity Miss
Guilfoyle did not care to ask her uncle for favours), could Anne find the heart to tell Maria what she nevertheless knew she must tell sooner or later. She gathered her courage up through the early removes of the very indifferent supper—mutton sausage and carrot pudding—provided to them by the inn, often looking out the small window at the dreary night, as if courage might be found there. Finally, just after the arrival of a dish of stewed pears, she forced the words to her lips. “Oh, my dear,” she said, with a brave attempt at nonchalance, “did I tell you Ensley is to marry the little Canesford girl?”

Mrs. Insel, choking on a mouthful of pear, answered, “No indeed. Is he?” She thought it as well not to mention she had been hearing rumours to that effect this past month. Her dark cheeks flamed with sympathy and a kind of embarrassment for her friend, who felt herself obliged to announce news of such significance with an air of insouciance.

“Yes, in October.” Miss Guilfoyle suppressed an impulse to weep—she could see the pity in Maria’s countenance—and went on, “I fancy she is a good choice. The Canesfords are great breeders” (Lady Juliana was the eldest child of seven) “and Ensley tells me she’s a biddable little thing. He is quite pleased about it.”

“And how are you pleased?” Maria asked, at the same time advancing her thin hand across the table in case Anne should want it.

“I? Oh, la, what should it matter to me?” Her cheeks had gone very white, but otherwise she presented a tolerable façade. “So long as she knows what the marriage is for—and she does—Ensley and I shall go on as we always have. Indeed, I think it high time he took a wife.
Evidently Denbury has been pressing him, too. He told me so that night at Celia Grypphon’s.”

Maria surveyed her friend’s pale face. “Indeed? And what did he have to say to your news—the loss of your fortune, I mean?” She had been longing to ask this question, but had not dared till now. Anne could be very bristly indeed when it came to Ensley.

“Nothing,” said Anne, and took a great spoonful of pear into her mouth. She chewed slowly and swallowed, seeming to enjoy Maria’s stare. Then she added, “For I never told him.”

“Not tell him? But—where does he suppose you have gone, then?”

“Oh, I sent round word of our new direction,” the other responded airily.

“And no explanation?”

“Not particularly. Why should I? It will do him good to wonder a bit about me,” Anne declared. “He takes me rather for granted, I should say. Should not you?”

“Yes,” said Maria resoundingly, delighted to have an opportunity at last of criticizing Ensley to his (she thought) too devoted admirer. “But I am surprised,” she went on cautiously, “that he did not come to call on you between that night and our departure.”

Anne said nothing. She too had been surprised—bitterly so. Not until that very morning had she received a note from him saying he’d been suddenly obliged to go into Suffolk and pay a visit to Balwarth. Her return note (waiting for him in London; she would
not
write to him in care of his prospective father-in-law) had been as brightly elusive as she could make it. Finally she shrugged at Maria, smiled, and turned the subject. They went to bed
without any further mention of Ensley passing between them.

The truth was, Anne had been extremely displeased with her own response to the news of the marriage. It should not have shocked her as it did. She thought she had been much better prepared. She blamed herself harshly for what she termed, though only privately, her babyishness. Ensley’s conduct had been perfectly correct, entirely appropriate. She had been telling him he must marry for years, had not she? So he had arranged it. It would change nothing between them. He would continue himself, she (she hoped) herself. As for the tears she had shed before him, she would have lost her fortune three times over to have them back.

When she opened her eyes in the morning, the sky was so black and dismal that Anne thought at first Lizzie had been confused and waked her in the night. But a moment’s observation told her this was not so: It was storming.

“Raining straight through since yesterday, ma’am,” Lizzie informed her, with the satisfaction of those who bring bad news for which they cannot be held accountable. She was a tall, handsome woman a year or two younger than her mistress, with a wide, humorous mouth and clever hands. Except that Miss Anne tended to find a coiffure that suited her, then stick to it for months or even years (which deprived Lizzie of much opportunity to show what she could do), she could not have wished for a better employer. Miss Anne was a trifle high-handed at times, perhaps, but never otherwise than fair. And anyhow, it suited a lady to keep a bit high in the instep. It redounded to the credit of her servants; and indeed, many were the
households where Miss Guilfoyle’s employees could count on being given precedence over those even of lords and ladies.

“The roads are a perfect pig-bath, so we’re told,” she now went on, as she hunted in a portmanteau for Miss Anne’s silver peignoir. “Two coaches what ought to have come last night drug up to the inn an hour ago, and the coachmen say they’ve never seen worse weather. Shall we be leaving just as planned?” she then inquired, plumping a pillow for her mistress to lean back against. A bright flash of lightning followed almost instantly by a tremendous crash of thunder punctuated her question. Anne sat up.

“Very witty,” she muttered at the heavens, then raised her voice and said more clearly to Lizzie, “Yes, I am afraid we must.”

“What, in the rain?” was startled out of the poor girl, who had counted on a negative. The curricle, in which she was travelling, was a ridiculous conveyance for such heavy going, and must surely give trouble before the day was out. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Mrs. Dolphim and Minna and I—”

“I am perfectly aware of your situation,” Anne was obliged to interrupt. The fact was they simply could not afford to stop another night at the Lion. She had budgeted out the dwindling £400 very strictly, and what remained in the purse for removal had already got perilously low. A healthy sum had gone with Dolphim, to cover his travelling expenses; the rest gave no margin for such a luxury as waiting for fine weather. “If it becomes necessary, Mrs. Insel and I shall change carriages with you.”

“Oh, but ma’am—”

Over the girl’s heartfelt protestations she continued,
“Thank you, Lizzie. Pray go down and ask them to bring my chocolate now.”

Lizzie hurried from the room convinced a bolt of lightning would fry them all before evening.

In the event, the rain was a far greater hindrance than Anne could have imagined. Curricle or carriage made little difference: One of the pair attached to the former stumbled and injured a foreleg, one of the wheels of the latter hit a rock in the deep mud and needed mending on the road. Time and again the ladies were obliged to get out and stand at the wooded roadside—under torrents of rain and once within yards of lightning striking the ground—while the men hoisted one vehicle or the other out of two feet of mud. In no time the seats and floors of the coaches were awash in squelching rainwater. The only thing that could be said in defence of the day was that it was not cold—and that was little enough, since it was so unpleasantly hot one felt one had stumbled into a Turkish bath.