A Civil Contract (5 page)

‘My
name
?’

‘Properly speaking,’ amended Mr Chawleigh, ‘your title. Though an Earl was what I had in mind, supposing I couldn’t get a Marquis. A Duke I don’t hope for, and never did: you won’t find Jonathan Chawleigh casting beyond the moon! Dukes are above my touch, and no need to tell me so!’

‘My dear sir, what
are
you talking about?’ demanded Adam, in the liveliest astonishment. ‘I can’t give you my title!’

‘Damme, I’m not such a nodcock that I don’t know that!’ said Mr Chawleigh, with asperity. ‘It ain’t for myself I want it! It’s for my daughter!’

‘Your daughter!’

Mr Chawleigh raised an enormous hand in a quelling gesture. ‘Easy, now! Don’t you go stiffening up till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say!’

‘Are you acquainted with Wimmering – with my man of business?’ demanded Adam.

‘I’m not, but I’ll be happy to meet him – supposing we should come to an understanding. Not that I wouldn’t act as fair by you without any lawyer to oversee the bargain, but I don’t think the worse of you for wanting to make sure you ain’t being burnt. What’s more, I’d as lief settle it with a man of affairs. That way, we’ll have it all shipshape and Bristol-fashion.’

‘I beg your pardon! I fear I misled you. I asked the question – oh, for quite another reason!’

‘Ay, did you? Well, maybe I can guess what that was,’ said Mr Chawleigh with his rather grim smile. ‘Don’t you get to thinking that because I’m a Jack Straw I’m a clodpole besides! I’m as nacky a man as any in the City: I wouldn’t else have made my fortune! And if, as I’ll be bound he did, your man of business told you that the only way to bring yourself about was to get riveted to an heiress he told you no more than’s true, for all you may not like it, which I can see you don’t.’

Feeling more than a little battered, as much by his visitor’s discursiveness as by his forceful personality, Adam attempted to stem the flood. ‘Mr Chawleigh, pray do not –’

‘Now, wait a bit!’ interrupted Mr Chawleigh, again raising his ham-like hand. ‘If you don’t care for the scheme you can say so, and no harm done, but I came here to make you an offer – provided I made up my mind that you’d suit, which I have done – and I’ll go through stitch with it, for that’s my way. I don’t think the worse of you for not leaping at it like a cock at a blackberry – in fact, I’d have bid you good-day, if you had – but it won’t hurt you to hear what I’ve got to say. And the first thing I’ve got to say, so as there’ll be no misunderstanding betwixt us, is that I’ve a pretty fair notion how badly you’re dipped. That don’t matter to me, because it wasn’t you that played wily-beguiled with your fortune, which would have been quite another pair of shoes: I’ll frank no gamester, not if he was a dozen Marquises rolled into one! His lordship assures me you don’t bet nor play more than is genteel, and that I don’t object to, though I’m not a betting-man myself.’ He paused, but Adam, realizing that nothing short of a brigade of nine-pounders would halt him, had resigned himself to the inevitable, and offered no comment. This seemed to please Mr Chawleigh, for he nodded, and smiled affably. ‘Well, now!’ he said, settling himself in his chair with all the air of a man about to hold forth at length. ‘You’ll be wondering what made me take such a notion into my head, and I’ll tell you, my lord. I’ve no other chick nor child, nor never looked to have when Mrs Chawleigh was carried off. There were plenty that set their caps at me, mark you, for I was a pretty warm man then, but I never could fancy putting anyone in her place. She was a grand lass, my Mary! Sound as a roast, and came of good stock, too: yeoman-stock, and proud of it! She was thought to have married below her station when we got ourselves leg-shackled, but I swore I’d set her up in style before she was much older, and, by God, I did it! She died when Jenny was no more than three years old: died in childbed, and the brat with her – not that I cared for that, though it was a boy, like we’d hoped for. I’ll say no more about that, or I’ll be falling into the dismals. The thing is, when Jenny was born, Mrs Chawleigh said to me – thinking I’d be disappointed she wasn’t a son – “Jonathan,” she said, “mark me if we don’t live to see her married to a lord! For the way you’re rising in the world,” she said, “I don’t see what’s to stop her!” Funning, she was, but the notion took both our fancies, and the long and the short of it is that when she died I made up my mind I’d marry Jenny according to her wish. And when Jonathan Chawleigh makes up his mind, my lord, he’s a hard man to baulk!’

Adam found no difficulty in believing this, but he said gently: ‘Don’t you think, perhaps, that Mrs Chawleigh would have wished to see her daughter married to a man of superior rank, and greater substance than mine?’

‘Ay, I don’t doubt she would,’ replied Mr Chawleigh frankly. ‘But she didn’t want for sense, and she’d have seen as fast as I did that it was no manner of use thinking of Marquises and Earls for a girl like Jenny. Mind, no expense was spared on her rearing! I’m no muckworm, and I never grudged a groat of the fortune I spent on educating her! And this I will say, I got her turned out in prime style! Every inch a lady she is! She had all the extras: pianoforte, singing, dancing, French and Italian, watercolour painting, use of the backboard – everything! And as for book-learning, why, I often say she’s as good as an almanack! I sent her to school in Kensington, you know. She didn’t like it above half: wanted to stay at home with me, but I knew better than to let her do that. I could have got governesses for her, and dancing-masters, and the rest, but that wouldn’t have helped her to rub shoulders with the nobs, would it? Which is what she has done, make no mistake about it! Ay, I sent her to Miss Satterleigh’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen.’ A rumbling laugh shook him. ‘If I was to tell you what it cost me, first and last, my lord, you wouldn’t credit it! A Bluestocking, that’s what that tabby is supposed to be, but what I say is that she should have set up a two-to-one shop instead of a school, for a bigger lickpenny I wish I may never meet! Held up her long nose at my Jenny she did, until I let her know how full of juice I was. After that –’ He paused, caressing his chin, and grinning reflectively. ‘Well, I’ve got to own she was a damned knowing one! There’s not many can boast of having put the change on Jonathan Chawleigh, but she did it, just as soon as she saw I was ready to pay through the nose for what I wanted. Which I did, I promise you. However, I don’t grudge it to her, because, though it didn’t answer as well as I’d hoped for, that wasn’t her fault.’ He sat in ruminative silence for a moment or two, before disclosing, in a burst of confidence: ‘You won’t find me puffing off my goods above their value, so I don’t mean to tell you my Jenny’s a beauty, because she ain’t. Mind you, she’s by no means an antidote: not squinney, nor buttertoothed, nor anything of that kind! I’m bound to own, though, that she don’t take. She’s quiet, you see, and as shy as be-damned. That’s what floored me, and I don’t deny there’s been times when I was downright vexed with her, for she hasn’t lacked for chances to get arm-in-armly with the nobs, if she’d only made a push to do it, instead of shrinking into a corner, and staying dumb as a mouse, so that no one so much as noticed her. Now, if she’d been of Miss Julia’s cut – ! There’s a beauty for you!
She
don’t lack for suitors, I’ll warrant you an egg at Easter! Ay, that was the one friendship Jenny struck up at school that
did
make me feel hopeful. The lord knows what made ’em take a fancy to each other, for they ain’t a bit alike, setting aside that my Jenny’s two years older than Miss Julia. That was how I came to be acquainted with my Lord Oversley. Well, I was able to do him a good turn at a time when he was in bad loaf, which put him, as you might say, under a bit of an obligation. Now, him and me’s as different as chalk from cheese, but we got to be pretty friendly. He’s a man I like, and one as I can talk to without roundaboutation, which I did, telling him straight what I wanted for my girl. Of course, I wasn’t looking to him to find a lord for Jenny, but what I did want, and what I got, was for my Lady Oversley to put her in the way of meeting a lord or two. There’s no one could have been kinder: that I
will
say! She had my Jenny to all manner of grand parties, besides inviting her just to spend the day with Miss Julia, the way she’d get acquainted with all the swells that came there paying morning visits, and the like. It ain’t her blame that nothing came of it.’ He sighed, and shook his head. ‘Well, it’s not often I’ve been taken at fault, but I own I was beginning to think myself at a stand when his lordship came to me, to propose I should consider whether a Viscount wouldn’t answer the purpose, because if so he rather fancied he might be able to put me in the way of getting next and nigh the very man for my money. Very frank and open he was with me, and a rare good character he gave you, my lord, if you won’t take snuff at my saying so. Nor at my telling you that I wasn’t by any means mad after the scheme. Letting alone a Viscount’s not an Earl, whichever way you look at it, I wouldn’t want to rivet my Jenny to anyone that was ready to marry a midden for muck, as the saying is. Nay, you’ve no need to take an affront into your head, my lord! The first thing my Lord Oversley told me was that the chances were you wouldn’t like the notion – which I took leave to doubt, begging your pardon, until he told me who you was. Lord Lynton was what he called you, and, barring that I knew your pa was a member of what they call the Carlton House Set, and a buck of the first cut, by all accounts, I was none the wiser. But, of course, as soon as he disclosed to me that you were Captain Deveril – well, that put a different complexion on the matter!’

‘Did it?’ said Adam, regarding him with a fascinated eye. ‘I can’t think why it should, but – but pray continue, sir!’

‘Ay, it did,’ nodded Mr Chawleigh. ‘Not that I’d ever clapped eyes on you myself, but I’ve always had a strong notion that my Jenny liked you better than any of the sprigs of fashion she was acquainted with.’

Startled, Adam said: ‘But have I ever met – ?’ He stopped, realizing, too late, the infelicity of this involuntary exclamation.

Mr Chawleigh, to his considerable relief, was unoffended. ‘Ay, you’ve met her,’ he replied indulgently. ‘Often, you’ve met her, but it don’t surprise me that you shouldn’t call her to mind, for that’s how it always is: she lets the other girls shine her down. She’s no gabster, but when you were in town last year, worn to a bone with what was being done to you by a pack of surgeons, as they call themselves, though to my way of thinking butchers would be nearer the mark, and not one of ’em will I have lay a finger on me, for I’d as lief be put to bed with a shovel and be done with it – well, when you were hobbling about, as blue as megrim,’ said Mr Chawleigh, unexpectedly picking up the main thread of his argument, ‘she used to speak of you now and now: nothing much, you know, but enough to make me prick up my ears. Seems you weren’t so taken up with Miss Julia but what you could find the time to behave civil to Jenny.’

A vague memory of having on several occasions found a strange female visiting Julia flickered in Adam’s mind, but as he was quite unable to remember what she had looked like, or what he could conceivably have done to earn her approval, he prudently refrained from any pretended recognition. Mr Chawleigh might be discursive, but no one encountering his shrewd eyes could suppose him to be one whom it would be easy to deceive.

‘Well, there it is!’ said Mr Chawleigh. ‘I don’t know that there’s much more I’ve got to say at this present, except that I’m not looking for an answer until you’ve had time to turn it over in your mind, my lord.’

Adam got up. ‘You are very obliging, sir, but –’

‘Nay, think it over before you commit yourself!’ interrupted Mr Chawleigh. ‘Acting hasty is bad business, take my word for it! There’s no saying, after all, that my Jenny would be any more willing than you are. You sleep on it! Ay, and have a talk with his lordship, or your man of business. You want to be sure you’re not being bobbed, and you’ve only got my word for it that I’m a man of substance.’

‘I am quite sure you are all you say you are, sir, but, indeed –’

‘Well, so you may be, but it’s only reasonable you should want to make a few enquiries. You won’t catch Jonathan Chawleigh buying a pig in a poke, and do as you’d be done by is my motto. If you’re satisfied, which you will be, my idea is you should do us the honour of taking your pot-luck with us in Russell Square one evening, and get acquainted with Jenny. There’ll be no company: just me, and Jenny, and Mrs Quarley-Bix. She’s the good lady I hired to bear Jenny company, and take her into society. And why I call her a good lady I
don’t
know, for to my mind she’s no great thing. In fact, there are times when I think that I was regularly taken in over her,’ said Mr Chawleigh darkly. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if I was to discover that she was no more related to these Quarleys of hers than what I am. Or if she is, she’s one of the dirty dishes you get in the best of families, according to what his lordship tells me, and which they don’t own by more than a common bow in passing. I don’t say she hasn’t got an air of fashion, but what I
do
say is that you’ve only to set her up beside my Lady Oversley to see she ain’t up to the rig. What’s more, the only time I went out driving in the Park with her and Jenny, there was a lot of bowing, and simpering, and waggling of hands, but nobody came up to speak to her. Though that,’ he added fairly, ‘might have been because I was in the barouche, and no one would take me for a man of mode, not if I was to dress myself up to the nines they wouldn’t! Well, well, I’ll be mighty interested to know what
you
think, my lord, for you’re one as
is
up to the rig – bang-up to it, as I saw at a glance! Mind, that’s assuming Jenny’s agreeable! I haven’t spoken to her yet, but I will.’

Adam, feeling much like a man caught in a tidal wave, made a desperate attempt to battle against an irresistible force. ‘Mr Chawleigh, I beg you most earnestly to do no such thing! I am fully sensible – I assure you I appreciate –’

He was once more checked by that large, upflung hand. ‘You think it over!’ recommended Mr Chawleigh kindly. ‘If you don’t like the notion, when you’ve slept on it, I’ll have no more to say, and so I promise you! But think it over carefully! I know you’re all to pieces, and trying to bring yourself off honourably, and I think the better of you for it. But if you was to make my Jenny a ladyship –
and
treat her right into the bargain, which I’m pretty sure you would do, and you’d have me to reckon with if you didn’t – there’d be no more worriting about debts or mortgages:
that
you can depend on! You could hang it up to any tune you please – and there’s my hand on it!’