The Country Gentleman Read online

  The Country Gentleman

  Fiona Hill

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  More from Fiona Hill

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1987 by Ellen Pall

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition November 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-488-2

  More from Fiona Hill

  The Autumn Rose

  The Stanbroke Girls

  The Trellised Lane

  Sweet’s Folly

  The Practical Heart

  The Wedding Portrait

  The Love Child

  Love in a Major Key

  To Richard

  This book is specially inscribed

  with all her love

  by the author

  One

  Miss Anne Guilfoyle yawned magnificently, stretched, stirred her chocolate with a silver spoon, examined the back of the spoon as if she had never seen one before, licked it, tapped it thoughtfully against her nose, stretched again, dropped the spoon into a China saucer, rubbed her cheeks, squinted at the morning sun streaming into the breakfast-room, and demanded of her companion what in the world had possessed them last night to engage to breakfast together this morning.

  Maria Insel confessed that she did not know.

  “Not to breakfast merely, but to breakfast at eleven o’clock,” Miss Guilfoyle continued, holding the cream pitcher in the air and dreamily inspecting the glaze on its undersurface. “To meet here over food sufficient to keep us till Friday, when the truth is I cannot eat before two, and you never eat at all. We must have been mad.” She traced with a long, delicate finger a small figure-eight in the condensation on the pitcher’s side, then replaced it with a brief clatter on a China tray. “We must have been wildly mad; simply, frothingly, absolutely mad.”

  So saying, she pushed aside the empty plate before her, frankly folded her arms on the table, and dropped her head into them. She appeared to have subsided; but after a moment, “It frets the servants dreadfully,” she went on from this posture, her voice slightly muffled by her jaconet muslin sleeve, “to be obliged to cook and serve at this hour—this frightful hour, when all good Christian souls lie snug in their beds. Let us pledge, Maria”—she set her chin upon the place where her arms crossed and looked over the table at Mrs. Insel—“never, ever, to meet for breakfast again.”

  Mrs. Insel, who did look rather as if eating was an occasion with her, smiled and gave her word. She was a narrow woman of some thirty years, dressed in a lavender which lightly suggested mourning, rather dark complected than otherwise, with a massive knot of chestnut hair weighing upon her neck and a short, modish frizzle spread across her bony forehead.

  “Do not you think kippering a monstrous unkind fate for a salmon?” asked Anne, her eye happening to fall upon a plate of fish whose lot this had been. “To be plucked from the water, then kippered! Insult on the very heels of injury! I should not care even to be salted, while the mere notion of being smoked makes me positively shiver.”

  Maria laughed, then endeavoured to suppress a yawn.

  “I saw that.” Anne sat up again. “How polite you are. I think you are even tireder than I. Did not you sleep well at Lady Seepes’ last night? I had a wondrous easy chair, just behind one of the larger potted palms in the Egyptian Saloon. I dozed off about nine, I should guess, and did not stir till eleven. Most refreshing. Colonel Whiddon was telling me the story of his India days. Eat some toast, my dear.” She slouched forward once more to collapse in a heap upon the table; her slurred murmur continued, “It will make Cook feel she has been useful.”

  Maria obligingly picked up a piece of toast, but she did not eat it. Instead she gazed, with a sisterly, almost a maternal affection, at the golden crown of her friend’s cradled head. At the same time her fingers absently tore the toast to bits. It required no very shrewd observer to see in that unconscious action, or for that matter in Mrs. Insel’s whole person and demeanour, a certain tendency to nerves, even some particular strain, the reason of which was not immediately apparent.

  As for the other lady, nerves (she had occasionally remarked) somehow failed to interest her. Whatever pleasures spasms, swoons, and sensibility might hold for some females, they could not tempt Anne Guilfoyle. At the vigorous age of eight-and-twenty she slept soundly, ate well (though admittedly, not earlier than two o’clock), regularly took such modest exercise as could be had in the Park, and altogether enjoyed her life thoroughly. She had an open and inquisitive nature; everything—Colonel Whiddon’s India days excepted—interested her; she read widely, considered closely, and was well known among the London ton as that rare thing, a woman of wit. Indeed, a few whispered that she was the “A.” whose satiric letters to the Times—letters describing the fashionable exploits of the writer’s friend Lord Quaffbottle—had last year obliged so many gentlemen to hide the numbers of 12 and 15 June, not to mention 2 July, from their wives. Whether these rumours sprang from truth, Miss Guilfoyle declined to say; in either case, her intelligence had won her a place in society not the less remarkable for being substantially above that to which mere birth or fortune would have entitled her.

  This achievement had had its cost, however. Perhaps, more than one matchmaking mamma said with unmistakable smugness, perhaps if Miss Guilfoyle had kept a little more to her own sphere, she would no longer be Miss Guilfoyle, but Mrs. Someone, or even Lady Who. Anne, only daughter of Sir James Guilfoyle, Bart., and the well-dowried Miss Bowman that was, should have had fair prospects of finding a suitable husband. She had not been an unattractive girl; some ladies who had witnessed the event even admitted (now) that at her come-out she had been quite lovely. But that was eleven years ago, and she was a girl no more. Graceful, yes. Manners such as must please, yes. A spirit most lively, most winning, granted without argument. One might even say that—if one liked the sort of thing—her trim, rather athletic figure, her blond curls and fair complexion, her China-doll nose and jade eyes were still rather pretty. But the first bloom of youth had gone from her, the doyennes agreed with satisfaction, never to come again. Miss Guilfoyle she was and Miss Guilfoyle would remain, and much happiness might her celebrated wit bring her.

  The object of these hearty good wishes now raised her head (a movement which appeared to require a Herculean effort), observed the pile of crumbs to which Maria had reduced her toast, blinked at it, blinked at her, and declared, “My dear, I move this breakfast be pronounced an abysmal failure and adjourned immediately. All in favour, Aye. All opposed? Motion carries.” She stood. “Reconvene in the Garden Saloon in forty-five minutes.” She lightly blew a kiss to her companion and staggered away.

  So did the two ladies part and remove themselves to their several chambers, leaving the breakfast-room empty. It is no very common thing to find a domestic
establishment composed solely of two young females (females, that is to say, who are visibly no sort of kin to one another) and the reader may wonder without impertinence how it came to be. As it happens, Anne and Maria had known each other since, indeed before, they could remember. Miss Guilfoyle, as has already been noted, was the daughter of a baronet. Sir James and Lady Guilfoyle had had two children, but the son dying of the smallpox at age three, Anne was raised very nearly as an only child. The family resided at Overton, not far from the village of Eling-on-Duckford, Northants., where Guilfoyles had lived since the reign of Henry VIII. Sir James being the local magistrate, and Overton by a good measure the finest property in the county, the importance of the family was universally acknowledged. It need hardly be added that Anne, the only surviving child and a precocious one at that, was petted, admired, and indulged with a similar universality.

  Her bosom friend was Maria Pilkinton, of Halfwistle House, some eight miles distant. Maria’s father was a gentleman, but idle and of small means. Only his family was large; indeed, Halfwistle House would have needed to be Twicewistle House to accommodate them all comfortably. Mrs. Pilkinton’s tongue, sharp to begin with, grew sharper, for economy makes a fine whetstone. Altogether, Maria’s happiest days were passed outside her own family, with that of Sir James. The girls were almost of an age, and Lady Guilfoyle being of a generous and motherly disposition, Maria became almost as familiar to her as her own daughter.

  When Anne was twelve, however, and Maria thirteen, Sir James died of a sudden fever. Overton passing to his brother Frederick, who with his young family promptly came to claim it (“Showing all the politeness and restraint of a pack of ravening hyenas,” Lady Guilfoyle quietly remarked to Anne), its erstwhile mistress at once determined to remove with her daughter to London. She had never cared for Frederick, still less for his pickthank wife and spoiled children, and their conduct on the occasion of Sir James’ death resulted in more or less of a clean break, and a settled animosity. Happily for her, her ladyship had money on her Bowman side, and with this she engaged the house at number 3, Holies Street whose breakfast-room has just been abandoned.

  Naturally the girls parted. Letters and visits prevented their total estrangement, but the differences in their backgrounds began inevitably to tell, Maria showing more and more the sobering effects of a straitened and unhappy country household, Anne the stamp of freedom and town life. For in London Anne’s education decidedly broadened. She had always shown an extraordinary, a voracious intelligence. (Her governess, Miss Gully, had already confessed herself sadly outstripped by her student, and went to London more as companion to her ladyship than as any sort of teacher.) Now all manner of tutors and scholars were made available to her. When her mother—a woman of no mean understanding herself, and of a sociable temperament—came out of mourning and began to entertain, the girl was permitted, though only thirteen, to join the company, matching wits with fully developed minds. Maria learned to expect letters from her whose rich abstruseness she could never aspire to equal; in her periodic visits to Holies Street she got in the habit of saying little when Anne was by. The conversation at Lady Guilfoyle’s dinner table, though perhaps not quite brilliant, gave the girl plenty to sharpen her mind upon; and she profited by this opportunity with as much enthusiasm and pleasure as by her riding and dancing lessons.

  When the girls were seven- and eighteen Lady Guilfoyle offered to bring Maria Pilkinton out along with Anne. Mrs. Pilkinton being only too glad to relieve the household of a mouth, Maria was duly sent. She arrived in London to find her girlhood friend following politics with a keen interest, talking military strategy with men who commanded regiments, playing the pianoforte to perfection, speaking French and reading German, composing yards of rhymed couplets extemporaneously—arrived to find her, in short, rather more clever (much more, some said) than a young lady strictly needed to be.

  So it was not surprising that, though her first season brought Anne plenty of admirers, admire them she could not.

  “Jests on the topic of drinking!” she exclaimed to Maria as they prepared for bed one April night following a dinner in particularly select company in Berkeley Square. They had been presented at St. James’ only the week before; Maria was quite entranced with the glitter and activity of the Season already, but “Did I say jests?” Anne went on. “Essays, novels rather! Sagas of bagged pheasant! Epics of pugilism! Whist, and wagers,” she spluttered, seizing the brush from her abigail and savagely dragging it through her own curls, “and—and waistcoats! Are these the gentlemen whose good opinion we are expected to cultivate? Are these the celebrated wits of our time, of our nation?” And Maria was startled to see her burst into tears. “I am disappointed,” she cried, violently wiping the tears away. “Forgive me, my dear, but I am so very disappointed.”

  Maria comforted her, though she could not join very deeply in her sentiments. Her own understanding was good, but not much above the common. She had found the conversation that evening perfectly acceptable, even bracing. As for Sir James’ relict, too late did she perceive the miscalculation she had made in their daughter’s education. “Bluestocking!” went the stern, whispered verdict round among the oracles of fashion; while meanwhile the young bluestocking sank deeper into dejection.

  But then, mirabile dictu, one night changed all this. It was at Almack’s late in May, as the Season reached its height. A tall, fair gentleman with an open, handsome countenance asked Lady Jersey to introduce him to Lady Guilfoyle. This favour granted, it soon became clear he had wished to know the mother solely in order to know the daughter, whom he had seen and (like many other gentlemen, for she was excessively pretty) hoped to ask to dance. And when his hopes had been answered and the dance accomplished, and a glass of lemonade brought to Anne by her partner, Maria and Lady Guilfoyle observed from across the room the two of them begin an extremely animated discussion—and not merely begin, but prolong and pursue it so heedlessly of their surroundings that her ladyship finally felt it best to dispatch Maria to interrupt the colloquy.

  This tall, fair gentleman was soon to become familiar to the ladies as George, Lord Ensley, second son of the Marquess of Denbury. In the carriage on their way home to Holles Street that night Anne sang his praises: Lord Ensley was so agreeable; he was amazingly intelligent; fancy his being secretary to a secretary of Henry Addington at twenty-three! They had not agreed on every thing—Anne had thought they might come to cuffs on the subject of taxation—but how well informed he was! How interested to hear her own views! Lady Guilfoyle and Maria exchanged glances and smiles while Anne chattered on: finally, a break in the gloom, a gentleman Anne could like.

  In the morning Lady Guilfoyle set about her researches. A series of discreet questions dropped in the course of three or four well-chosen calls and she had her answer. It was not the one she had hoped for: every one agreed Ensley would never offer for Anne. Denbury was in no immediate need, but the estate was failing, the family fortune much reduced. The oldest son having run off to Scotland last year to wed the dowryless, rather vulgar Miss Burnham, it was clear that Ensley must marry to bolster up both the finances and the consequence of his family. Miss Guilfoyle was all very well, but Ensley needed a brilliant connexion. Thus the oracles.

  Disappointed yet resigned to her duty, Lady Guilfoyle went home and told her daughter what she had learnt.

  But, “Good heavens, ma’am!” answered that lady. “May not a girl enjoy a civilized conversation with a gentleman without marrying him?”

  Lady Guilfoyle was tempted to reply that no, a shrewd girl might not; but she held her tongue, and so began the pattern of Anne’s life. To oblige her mother, she danced with other admirers, accepted their offers to ride out in the park or to take her in to supper; but all her affection was reserved for Ensley. Now they seemed to meet him every where; and each occasion, Lady Guilfoyle knew, only strengthened the regard between him and her daughter. For (“More’s the pity,” her ladyship tartly observed to Maria) it was soon clear t
hat Ensley returned Anne’s partiality with equal fervour. Indeed, if the spiteful matchmaking mammas had a legitimate complaint to lay at Anne’s door, it was that (without in the least benefiting by it herself!) she utterly absorbed the so eligible Lord Ensley, and prevented him from looking elsewhere.

  The girls’ first Season closed upon this situation. Lord Ensley went home to Denbury; the Guilfoyle ladies, with Maria, embarked upon a long chain of visits to friends in various counties. Perhaps, during this interlude, Ensley endeavoured not to think of Anne; perhaps Anne likewise set herself to forget Ensley. If so, their efforts went for nought. Maria believed that her friend had not at first credited the justice of Lady Guilfoyle’s prediction. By the time she did it was too late: Anne was in love. Whatever the case, when, quite without expecting it, the Guilfoyle party discovered themselves engaged to stop through the whole of January at a house where Lord Ensley also was a guest, the two young people renewed their acquaintance with a delight and a naturalness that made Lady Guilfoyle’s heart sink.

  At about this time, Lady Guilfoyle began to be ill. Mother and daughter returned to London in the middle of February; Maria went back at last to Halfwistle House. The irony of her passing nearly a year in London yet remaining unattached, only to encounter her future husband the very week she went home (her older brother Frank brought him there, a very dashing Captain Insel, of Frank’s own regiment), was widely, and humorously, remarked upon for many months in the neighbourhood of Eling-on-Duckford. The wedding came in April, but Anne Guilfoyle was conspicuously absent: her mother had succumbed to a wasting fever and died in March.

  The bereaved Miss Guilfoyle remained in London, spurning a half-hearted invitation from Overton to make her home there once more. With Miss Gully to chaperon her, her mother’s fortune to support her, and the sedatest entertainments of the Season for diversion, she set about, deeply grieving, to make number 3, Holies Street her own establishment. How welcome, then, was the warm friendship of Lord Ensley! How comforting his attentions! Maria being gone with her new husband to Canada (her brother’s battalion, unhappily, was posted elsewhere) Ensley became the solace of Anne’s mourning. This new Season, and every Season after that for ten years, she owned openly to a particular friendship with him. And when her mourning was over, she went out into society not to find a husband, but to talk, and argue, and laugh. Which, as the reader has heard, she succeeded in doing extremely well, ever more gaily, and within increasingly rarefied circles.