A Civil Contract (29 page)

Adam closely gripped his lips together, his eyes narrowed, and very hard. It was a moment or two before he could command himself, but he managed to do it, and to say, quite pleasantly: ‘Very true. Did you imagine that you were paying this piper, sir? Let me disabuse your mind of that misapprehension! I have settled Croft’s account as I shall settle Knighton’s, and the account of any other practitioner who may attend Jenny.’

In a towering passion, Mr Chawleigh flung down his gauntlet. ‘Say you so? Well, it was me that engaged Croft, and it’s me that’ll dismiss him, if I see fit, and until I do see fit he’ll continue to attend Jenny, and so I shall tell him!’

‘I don’t think I should, if I were you, sir,’ replied Adam, looking rather amused. ‘You’d be making a great cake of yourself, you know. I may not like Croft, but I am quite sure he would not be guilty of the impropriety of attending my wife without my consent. Don’t let us dispute on that head! After all, you can’t seriously wish Jenny to continue with a doctor who is doing her no good, and whom she dislikes into the bargain! My aunt said that between us all she had become nervous and depressed. That is also Knighton’s opinion. He recommends me to take her back to Fontley, and that, sir, is what I am going to do.’

Mr Chawleigh’s colour had deepened to an alarming hue. So unaccustomed was he to meeting with opposition that he listened to this speech almost with incredulity. The last words, however, loosened his tongue, and the storm of his anger broke over Adam’s head with a violence which reached the ears of the clerks in the counting-house, and caused several of the more nervous individuals there to blench and tremble. No one could distinguish what the old Tartar was saying, but no one could doubt that he was giving my lord a rare trimming; and considerable sympathy was felt for the poor young gentleman.

Adam listened to the tirade with outward calm. When in the grip of passion, it was not Mr Chawleigh’s habit to mince his words, nor did he hesitate to utter any insult which occurred to him; but only by the crease between his brows did Adam betray the effort it cost him to keep his own anger under control. There were a number of things it would have given him much pleasure to have said to Mr Chawleigh, but he said none of them. It was wholly beneath him to brangle and brawl with the purple-faced vulgarian hurling abuse at him – and he had promised Jenny that he would not quarrel with her father. So he waited in rigid silence for the storm to blow itself out.

Mr Chawleigh did not expect to meet with retort. On the other hand, to be listened to in unmoved silence was a new and a disconcerting experience. By rights, this wispy son-in-law of his should be shaking in his shoes, possibly trying to stammer out excuses: certainly not sitting there, as cool as a cucumber, and looking for all the world as if he were watching a raree-show which didn’t amuse him above half. As his rage abated, something very like bewilderment entered into Mr Chawleigh. Ceasing to rail at Adam, he sat staring at him, breathing heavily, still scowling, but with so much surprise in his eyes that Adam very nearly burst out laughing.

With the tickling of his ready sense of humour, much of Adam’s own anger died away. He felt suddenly sorry for this absurd creature, who had clearly supposed that he could brow-beat him into submission. He picked up his hat and gloves, and rose, saying, with a lurking smile: ‘Will you dine with us tomorrow, sir? We leave town on the day after, but it would distress Jenny very much not to take leave of you.’

The veins swelled afresh in Mr Chawleigh’s face. ‘
Dine
with you?’ he uttered, in choked accents. ‘Why, you – you –’

‘Mr Chawleigh,’ interrupted Adam, ‘I owe you a great deal, I have a great respect for you – indeed, I have a great regard for you! – but I’ve not the remotest intention of allowing you to rule my household! If that was what you wanted to do you should have chosen another man to be Jenny’s husband. Goodbye: may I tell Jenny to expect you tomorrow?’

Mr Chawleigh strove with himself, finally enunciating ominously: ‘Ay! she may expect me all right and tight! But as for dining with you – I’ll be damned if I do!’

‘As you wish – but she’ll be disappointed.’ He went to the door, but looked back, with his hand on the knob, to say: ‘Don’t rip up at her, will you? She’s more easily upset just now than you may know. But I don’t think you’ll wish to when you see how much her spirits have plucked up since Knighton told her she might go back to Fontley.’

He did not wait for a response, but went away, leaving Mr Chawleigh more at a loss than he had been since the days of his boyhood. The clerks eyed Adam covertly as he passed through the counting-house, and were almost as much astonished as their employer. He bore none of the signs of one who had passed through the furnace of the Tartar’s fury: his step was firm, his brow serene, and the smile which he bestowed on the youth who leaped to hold open the door for him was perfectly untroubled. ‘
Well – !
’ breathed Mr Stickney. ‘I wouldn’t have credited it! Not in a hundred years I wouldn’t!’

The Lyntons left London two days later, if not with Mr Chawleigh’s blessing at least without any very serious manifestations of his disapproval. His fondness for Jenny restrained him from giving her anything but the mildest of scolds; and he found it impossible, in the face of her glowing looks, to cling to his belief that it was Adam and not she who wished to return to Fontley. What maggot had entered into her head he didn’t know; but it was plain that she was as eager to be off as ever she had been to escape from Miss Satterleigh’s seminary. He was inclined to take this in bad part, but Lydia was present to coax him out of his ill-humour, and although he was at first a trifle stiff with her it was not long before he was chuckling at her sallies, and telling her with obvious mendacity that she needn’t think to come over him with her bamboozling ways.

When Adam presently entered the room, the cloud returned to Mr Chawleigh’s brow. He still seethed with resentment, and responded to Adam’s greeting with only the curtest of nods, at the same time informing his daughter that he must be off. She begged him to stay, but he said that he had an engagement in the City. He embraced her with great heartiness, and Lydia too; but when he saw that Adam meant to conduct him to his carriage he told him roughly not to trouble himself. However, Adam paid no heed to this rebuff, but followed him downstairs, nodding dismissal to the footman who was waiting to help him to put on his greatcoat, and performing this office himself.

‘Much obliged to you, I’m sure!’ Mr Chawleigh growled. He hesitated, shooting one of his fiery glances at Adam. ‘If any ill comes of this, it’ll be on your head!’

‘Whatever had been decided must have been on my head, sir,’ Adam replied quietly. He held out his hand. ‘Forgive me! I know how you must feel, but at least believe that I’m not taking Jenny away to gratify any whim of my own! You may believe too that if it doesn’t answer – if there should be the smallest reason for anxiety – I’ll bring her back. But I hope there won’t be – and you’ll bear in mind that Knighton has furnished me with the name of an experienced accoucheur living no farther away from Fontley than Peterborough.’

‘Oh, yes, you’ve got your way, my lord, and so now you think you’ll turn me up sweet!’ said Mr Chawleigh rancorously. ‘I’m not going to do anything that might throw my girl into a taking, but I warn you, when I give my orders I’m used to having ’em obeyed!’

Adam could not help laughing at this. ‘Why, yes, so am I! Very promptly, too! But I’m not a clerk in your office, any more than you are a soldier in my company, you know.’

Baffled, Mr Chawleigh strode forth to his carriage.

He drove home in a state of angry frustration, and later conducted himself so morosely at a convivial supper-party at the Piazza that it was generally supposed that one of his many trading enterprises must have failed. It was not until he was about to climb into his bed that he startled his valet by suddenly exclaiming: ‘Well, there’s not many as ’ud outface Jonathan Chawleigh, that I
will
say! Damme if I don’t like him the better for it!’ He then recommended the dejected Badger to take himself off, and got into bed, resolved to pay another visit to Grosvenor Street in the morning, to see the party off, so that Adam should see that he bore him no malice.

He arrived to find two travelling chaises and my lord’s curricle drawn up outside Lynton House, and the second footman in the very act of placing two hot bricks in the foremost of the chaises. He brought with him a basket of pears, a bottle of his Fine Old Cognac (in case Jenny should feel faint), and a travelling-chessboard, to beguile the tedium of the journey for the ladies (neither of whom cared for the game); and he was very glad he had come, swallowing his pride, because Jenny’s face lit up when she saw him, and the hug she gave him did his heart good. He had thought that there might be a little awkwardness between himself and his son-in-law, but there was none at all. No sooner did Adam set eyes on the Fine Old Cognac than he exclaimed: ‘You don’t mean to shut that precious pair up in a chaise with a whole bottle of brandy, do you, sir? Good God, they’ll be as drunk as wheelbarrows before ever we reach Royston!’

This was a joke that kept Mr Chawleigh chuckling for quite some time. He made a joke himself presently, when Adam said: ‘By the time you come to visit us, sir, I hope you’ll find Jenny much stouter than she is now.’

‘Nay, she can’t help but be stouter!’ retorted Mr Chawleigh.

At the last, when the two chaises bearing the ladies and their maids had moved off, he turned to Adam, and took his out-stretched hand in an extremely painful grip. ‘Well – you’ll take good care of her, my lord!’

‘You may be very sure I will, sir.’

‘Ay, and you’ll let me know how she goes on?’

‘That, too. And
you
will come down to spend Christmas with us, remember!’

‘Oh, you’ll be having your grand friends to stay with you – though I take it very kind in you to invite me!’

‘I shan’t even be having any of my far from grand friends to stay – more’s the pity! There’s a pretty strong rumour that my Regiment is going to be ordered to America.’

‘Well, I’ll think about it,’ said Mr Chawleigh. He transferred his grip to Adam’s shoulder, slightly shaking him. ‘It’s time you was off. No hard feeling betwixt us, my lord?’

‘None on my side, sir.’

‘Well, there ain’t any on mine. What’s more,’ said Mr Chawleigh resolutely, ‘if I should have said anything uncivil when we had our turn-up, which maybe I might have done, I ask your pardon!’

Memories of the various offensive things which Mr Chawleigh had said on that occasion flitted through Adam’s mind, but he realized that this rough apology represented a heroic sacrifice of dignity, and he responded immediately: ‘Good God, sir, what’s the world coming to, if you can’t give a bear-garden jaw to your son-in-law?’

‘Well, well, you’re a good lad, lord or no lord!’ said Mr Chawleigh. ‘Off with you, now!’

He gave Adam a push towards his curricle, waited until he had driven out of sight, and then climbed back into his own carriage, which conveyed him to the head office of the New River Company, where, at a meeting of the principal directors, he more than atoned for any weakness he might have shown in his dealings with his son-in-law.

For Jenny, her mind relieved of its last care, this homecoming was one of almost unalloyed happiness. She reached Fontley in the gloom of a winter dusk; rain was falling, and there was a disagreeably dank chill in the air, but these ills in no way abated her delight. It was the third time Adam had handed her across his threshold, but on neither of the previous occasions had she felt, as she felt now:
This is my home!
Tears sprang to her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks; she saw Dunster and Mrs Dawes through a mist, and could only stammer: ‘I’m so happy to be here again!’ Then, ashamed of her emotion, she managed to smile, and to say: ‘And I’ve brought Miss Lydia with me – which I know you’ll be glad of!’

Little though she knew it, she could have done nothing to establish herself more securely in the regard of her household. Charlotte had told Mrs Dawes how very kind her ladyship had been to Miss Lydia; but it was not until Mrs Dawes had seen with her own eyes on what terms her ladyship stood with Miss Lydia that she realized that dear Miss Charlotte had not been trying, in her sweet way, to reconcile her to my lord’s regrettable marriage: like true sisters they were, and who would have credited it that had seen Miss Lydia cry her eyes out when his lordship’s engagement had been made known?

At the first opportunity, Lydia visited Charlotte; but although the sisters held one another in mutual affection they were not much akin, and the visit was not wholly successful. Lydia said afterwards that she hoped she valued Charlotte’s virtues as she should, but that she had forgotten how dull was her conversation; and Charlotte, while firm in her admiration of her young sister’s liveliness, was disturbed to find that instead of having learned a little more conduct Lydia seemed to have even less elegance of mind than when she had but just emerged from the schoolroom.

Unlike Jenny, Charlotte was in radiant health, and seldom had she been in better looks. She was happy in her marriage; she enjoyed being mistress of her own house; and she was looking serenely forward to the birth of the first of what she hoped would be many children. She suffered none of the ills which had attacked Jenny during the first months of her pregnancy; and contemplated without misgiving a long and tedious journey to Bath and back again. Jenny could only marvel at her, for although she was much improved in health by the time the Rydes departed on their visit to the Dowager the mere thought of being obliged to undertake such a journey made her shudder.

Parting from Lydia was a wrench, but it did not cast her into dejection. The lowness and oppression which had grown upon her in London had vanished within a week of her arrival at Fontley, and with the abandonment of her reducing diet her strength began to return, and, with it, her energy. She missed Lydia, but she had a thousand things to do, and took so keen an interest in everything that concerned the estate that her mind was too fully occupied to allow her to feel the want of that gay companionship. She was beginning to know the tenantry too. Knowing how shy she was, Adam had not urged her to perform all the duties which his mother and his grandmother had accepted as a matter of course; but Lydia, discovering her ignorance of her obligations, did not hesitate to instruct her: and so anxious was she to conform to the standard set by her predecessors that she overcame her shrinking, visited the sick, relieved the indigent, and tried her best to be affable. She had none of the Dowager’s graciousness; she could never bring her tongue to utter the easy expressions of sympathy which would have won for her an instant popularity; but it was not long before it began to be realized that her brusque tongue concealed a far greater interest in the affairs of her lord’s people than the Dowager had ever felt. The sturdy commonsense which made it easy for her to distinguish between the shiftless and the unfortunate might not win universal popularity for her, but it did win respect; she gave freely, but with discrimination; her advice was always practical; and if her blunt strictures were frequently unpalatable they left no one in any doubt that her ladyship was as shrewd as she could hold together.

When Mr Chawleigh arrived, laden with gifts ranging from a tie-pin blazing with diamonds set round a large emerald, which he bestowed upon his stunned son-in-law, to a pound of tea, he found Jenny immersed in preparations for the Christmas dinner it was the custom of the house to give to the farm workers and their families; and he was obliged to own (though grudgingly) that she seemed to be in tolerably good health. He was interested in this particular form of benevolence. He himself (in his own words) always did the handsome thing by his numerous dependants at Christmas; but the country habit of inviting all and sundry to a large party was unknown to him, his gifts taking a monetary form. He had never set eyes on the wives and children of the men he employed; but when he had accompanied Jenny on a visit to a sick woman in the village, he had good-naturedly entertained and astonished the invalid’s numerous progeny with conundrums and conjuring tricks, and conceived the notion of adding his mite to the festivities by providing all the children with presents suitable for their various ages and sexes. Armed with the necessary information, he went off to Peterborough, where he ransacked the toyshops to such purpose that Adam told him that his memory would remain green in the district for many years to come.

His visit passed off very well. He was quite unreconciled to country life; he thought the wintry landscape was enough to give one the hips, and could not understand how anyone should prefer to look out upon a vista of gray fields than upon cosy, lamp-lit streets. The night stillness kept him awake; and the sound of cocks crowing at first light inspired him with nothing more than a desire to ring the birds’ necks. But when he drove out with Jenny he derived immense gratification from seeing the forelocks which were pulled, and the curtsies that were bobbed whenever they met anyone on the way. That was something that did not happen in London, and it seemed to him to provide one good reason at least for her wish to live in the country. He liked it, too, when she leaned out to ask some woman how little Tom, who had the whooping-cough, did, or whether any tidings had come from Betsy, serving an apprenticeship to a milliner in Lincoln. He could scarcely believe it was his Jenny behaving like a great lady; and he told her, with deep pride, that she did it to the manner born.

She answered seriously: ‘No, Papa, that’s just what I don’t do, and what I never will do, try as I may, because I’m
not
born, and it doesn’t come easily to me.’

‘Well, no one would believe it, love, so don’t talk silly!’ he advised her consolingly. ‘Beautifully you do it!’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t. Not as Adam does, and Lydia too. I don’t seem to be able to be so easy and friendly, the way they are.’

‘To my way of thinking,’ said Mr Chawleigh, ‘it don’t do to be too friendly with servants, and workmen, and such: it leads to them taking liberties.’

‘That’s what I can’t help being afraid of,’ she said, in a burst of confidence. ‘But there’s no one who’d take liberties with Adam, nor with Lydia, because they know just how to talk to people of all sorts, without ever thinking about it, as I do, and – and without its ever entering either of their heads that anyone would be impertinent.’

‘Now, if anyone’s been giving you back answers, Jenny –’

‘Oh, no! No one would. But sometimes I wonder if they would, if I wasn’t Adam’s wife – when I forget to guard my tongue, and say something sharp.’

He did not quite understand this, but he detected a wistful note in her voice, and asked anxiously: ‘You’re not unhappy, love, are you?’

‘No, no!’ she assured him. ‘Why, however could you ask me such a question?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘There don’t seem to be any reason why you shouldn’t be happy, for I’ve never seen his lordship behave to you other than I’d wish – and you may depend upon it I’ve kept my eyes open, for there was no saying but what he mightn’t have treated you as civil as he does! But sometimes I fall to wondering if you’re quite comfortable, my dear.’