“A claim of a false illness is a wonderful secret!” I exclaim, hugely impressed by the quality of information to which she has been exposed. “You could set yourself up as a Bedfordshire Mr. Twaddle-Thum, publish the reports, and then gasp with polite surprise as people marvel over the inexplicable things the gossip knows.”
Miss Burgess, receiving the suggestion in the spirit in which it was offered, clarifies that it is the settling of the debt that is astonishing, not the fiction of Mr. Jenner’s sobriety, as the gentleman is notorious for his intemperance and for routinely embarrassing his sibling, who is the local constable. “He has driven his carriage into any number of things around the neighborhood and always refuses to compensate his victims.The fact that he did this time makes me wonder what Mr. Smitherton knows about him that I do not.”
Our pleasant tête-à-tête is interrupted by Mrs. Dowell, who is keen to know my opinion of the red-flanked bluetail, which has lately been spotted in the nearby forest.
Obviously, I do not have one.
As a gently bred young lady from Sussex, I would never presume to form an opinion about an avian species from another shire. Indeed, I have barely formed an opinion about the avian species in my own shire, and if I have any notions at all, they are based on how lovely a particular bird would be to paint using watercolors. (In descending order of prettiness, then: the blue tit, the great tit, the long-tailed tit.)
Sensing my hesitation, Eleanor presses for a response, as though the answer is of great import to her. “Yes, Miss Hyde-Clare, what do you think of the red-flanked bluetail?”
I want to reply snappishly that nobody wants to know whatIthink.
And it is true: The occupants of the table could not care less about my view of the red-flanked bluetail. But that is not why the sisters posed the query. They want to expose me to ridicule, and the best way to do that is to reveal the depth of my ignorance. If I admit to knowing nothing about the bird, they will titter at the inferior quality of my education, and if I feign familiarity, they will contradict my observation.
It is a trap.
Yet another trap.
The visit is rife with them.
It is exhausting.
As I contemplate how to extricate myself from another snare, my gaze settles on the Incomparables across from me.
Yes, of course.
The Incomparables!
No flustered country house guest has ever gone astray offering extravagant praise to a pair of beautiful young misses. “You are too kind to even notice me when the exquisite Misses Braithwaite and Nutting are present. I am sure we are all more interested in hearing what they have to say than listening to my banal comments.”
Then I simper.
If there is one ineffable skill I learned from my mother, it is how to simper with insipid blandness: the fatuous smile, the fluttery gaze.
I am inoffensiveness personified.
Miss Nutting, who has said little during the meal, presumably as her knowledge of the prevailing topic is as limited as my own, gratefully seizes the opportunity to reflect on the birds she has seen this season. The red-flanked bluetail does not count among the assortment, but she spotted a bluethroat just the day before and that is similar enough. “And of course the stonechat, the mistle thrush, the tree sparrow, the dunnock, the meadow pipit, the green sandpiper.”
Not to be outdone, Miss Braithwaite also offers a catalogue of birds she has seen in recent weeks, and even though her entries are not as specific—plover to Miss Nutting’s little ringed plover—her list is just as long.
“They will do this all night if left to themselves,” Miss Burgess notes softly. “Theirs is the district’s great rivalry. They have been neck and neck since leading strings, although there were a few months when Miss Nutting was fourteen and had terrible spots. It seemed as though she would concede the field to Miss Braithwaite, but then her skin improved and she came roaring back.”
The girls, however, are not left to themselves.
Mrs. Dowell, annoyed that her attempt to embarrass me has been thwarted by vanity, coolly thanks them for theirstimulating contributions before asking Mr. Nutting a pointed question about grazing rights. He offers an enthusiastic reply as the girls fall silent, and although Mrs. Dowell’s disinterest is conveyed by the yawn she barely manages to suppress, she would rather listen to male pontification than a litany of birds.
Eventually, the ordeal ends.
We are served flummery for dessert, nicely topped with honey and cream, and then the ladies retire to the drawing room, leaving behind the men to enjoy their port and masculine conversation. (How their conversation can be any more masculine confounds me. What will they discuss next: War? Famine? The Roman Empire?)
I am not so misguided as to expect the change to be an improvement, but neither do I conceive that the situation could get appreciably worse.
Alas, I forgot how easily my mother is unmoored by her nerves.
Having uttered one sentence notable for its semicoherence, she will then spend a dozen more in a struggle to clarify her meaning, a process that somehow always ends with her gravely insulting her listener.
It happens like clockwork.
