A Civil Contract (11 page)

‘You’re worn to a bone: I know that. You’ve had far more to do than I have – besides other things. I only hope you may not be sea-sick in this carriage!’

He laughed. ‘I hope not indeed! Do you think you will?’

‘Well, I think I might. It sways about so much. I daresay I shall grow used to it, but if I don’t you mustn’t tell Papa, if you please! He would be so disappointed, for he had it specially built.’

‘It won’t be as bad once we’re off the stones. Lean back and shut your eyes! Did you bring your smelling-salts with you?’

‘I haven’t any. Oh, yes, I have! A horrid vinaigrette, which was Mrs Quarley-Bix’s wedding-gift to me. I expect she had it by her, for she couldn’t have supposed it would be of the least use to me.’

‘Ungrateful girl! Don’t tell me you left it behind!’

‘Yes, but never mind! I shall soon grow accustomed.’

This seemed to be true, for after remaining for some time with her eyes closed she presently opened them, and turned her head a little to study Adam’s profile. He was not at first aware of her scrutiny, his thoughts being remote from her, and his inattentive gaze fixed on the changing landscape; but after some minutes, as though suddenly conscious that he was being watched, he glanced at her.

His vision of ethereal loveliness vanished. Beside him, plump and a little homely, sat reality, in a stylish pelisse, and a hat whose poke-front and curled ostrich feathers made an incongruous frame for a round, rosy face remarkable only for its determination. Revulsion held him speechless for a moment, but as his eyes met Jenny’s he saw the anxiety in hers, and his mood changed to one of compassion. Whatever had been her motive for consenting to the bargain struck by her father, she did not look happy. He thought her case to be worse than his own. The benefits accruing to him through marriage were solid; if she sought social advancement, he, born into the ton, and taking for granted the advantages of birth and rank, believed that she would discover her elevation to the peerage to be a worthless thing. If she had been forced into a loveless match by her father’s ambition, she was the more to be pitied. He did pity her, and forgot his own aching heart in the need to reassure her. How to do it he did not know; he could only smile at her, and take her gloved hand in his, saying cheerfully: ‘That’s better! Have you been asleep?’

Her hand trembled momentarily, but she replied in a steady voice: ‘No, but I am better now, thank you. I should like to talk to you, if I may.’

Having possessed himself of her hand he could not think what to do with it, or how to be rid of it. She solved the problem for him by quietly withdrawing it. He said quizzically: ‘If you
may
? Now, what can you be going to say that needs my permission, goose?’

She smiled perfunctorily. ‘Oh, no! Only that you might not wish – I can’t tell, but I think we should discuss our – our situation. I have frequently wanted to, but we have so seldom been granted the opportunity. And perhaps you would have thought it improper in me. I can’t tell that either, for I am not thoroughly acquainted with you yet, and, though I do try to set a guard on it, I know I have a blunt tongue – I was for ever being scolded for it, at Miss Satterleigh’s!’

‘You need never guard it when you talk to me: indeed, I hope you won’t! But first let me tell you that I’m not blind to the evils of
your
situation. We are barely acquainted, as you have said yourself: it must be uncomfortable for you indeed!’ He smiled at her, not lovingly, but very kindly. ‘
That
evil will soon be remedied. In the meantime, don’t be afraid! I won’t do anything you don’t like.’

She took a moment or two to answer this, her countenance inscrutable. ‘You’re very obliging,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not afraid. That wasn’t it! I daresay there are many husbands and wives who were no better acquainted at the outset than we are. It wouldn’t do for people who have a great deal of sensibility, but I don’t think I have much. I mean, there’s no need for you to be in a worry over me: I hate fusses and twitters! In general, persons in my walk of life don’t deal much in marriages of convenience, but in yours they are pretty common, aren’t they?’

‘Yes – that is, I believe they do still occur, but I really don’t know much about it,’ he said, hardly knowing how to reply to so forthright a speech.

‘I don’t mean to embarrass you,’ she said, perceiving that she had done so, ‘but there’s no sense in shamming it: we both know that I’m not quality-born. The thing is, you might suppose that I don’t understand marriages of convenience. Well, I do, so you needn’t fear I shall expect you to sit in my pocket. Nor that you’ll find me hanging on you, like a bur, wanting to know what you’re doing every minute of the day, and why you didn’t come home to dinner.’ She raised her eyes, giving him a resolute look. ‘I shan’t interfere with you, my lord, or ask you any questions. You’ll not live under the cat’s foot, I promise you.’

‘Are you giving me permission to embark on a career of profligacy?’ he demanded, trying to turn it off lightly. ‘Ought I to bestow a similar carte blanche on you? You’ll think me very unhandsome, I’m afraid, for I’ve no such intention! I’m even shabby enough to reserve to myself the right to ask you any number of questions!’

She shook her head, smiling, but lowering her eyes. ‘That’s a different matter. Not that it’s likely you’ll have cause to be uneasy: I’m not pretty enough!’ She paused, and drew a difficult breath, her colour mounting. ‘I’m not the wife you wished for, but I’ll do my possible to behave as I should. You’ll be wanting an heir, and I hope I shall give you one. I should like to have children, and the sooner the better. But that’s for you to decide.’ She stopped, tightly folding her lips, and turned away her face, to look out of the window; but after a few moments, during which he tried to think of something, anything, to say to her, she spoke again, saying in a conversational tone: ‘This is a new thing for me, you know: to be going to stay in the country. My mother was a countrywoman, but Papa is town-bred, and hasn’t any liking for the country, so whenever we have been out of London it has been to Brighton, or to Ramsgate or some such place. Have we far to go before we reach your aunt’s house?’

They stayed for less than a fortnight in Hampshire, the honeymoon being shortened by Lady Lynton’s determination to join her sister in Bath immediately, and Lambert Ryde’s equal determination to marry Charlotte before this date. Family affairs called him north again; and he proposed in earnest what he had originally suggested in jest: that he should carry Charlotte to Scotland for their honeymoon. Charlotte could not deny that the prospect filled her with delight, but wrote diffidently to Adam. On the one hand, she dreaded an indefinite postponement of her wedding; on the other, she could not bear the thought of being led to the altar by anyone but her brother.

‘Well, I should think not indeed!’ exclaimed Jenny, when Charlotte’s letter was shown to her. ‘Do write to her directly, and tell her that you’ll be there! You can see she’s quite in a worry, and what difference does it make if we go to Fontley a few days earlier than we intended?’

‘As long as you don’t dislike it – ?’

She replied, with the commonsense which made her at once an easy and an unexciting companion: ‘What are a few days more or less to us? To be sure, I like it here, but now I know that Lady Nassington means to present me at the May Drawing-room we must have gone back to town at the end of a fortnight, because of my Court dress. I ordered one to be made for me, and chose the materials for it, but I must try it on, you know.’ Her eyes narrowed to slits as a rueful chuckle overcame her. ‘I shall look
dreadfully
in it!’ she disclosed. ‘Me, in hooped petticoats! Why, I’ll be as broad as I’m high! Let alone not knowing how to manage, which Lady Oversley warned me I must practise before appearing in public in it. Well, I only hope I don’t disgrace you!’

‘You won’t do that. Then I am to tell Charlotte she may settle for Monday, 9th May, as she wishes?’

‘Yes, pray do so! We may go to Fontley on the Friday before, so, if we leave here on the Tuesday, that will give me two days in Grosven – in London, to have the Court dress fitted on me, and to buy the feathers, and the rest.’

She ended on a note of constraint, but he gave no sign of noticing either this, or the stumble in her speech, saying merely, in a pleasant tone: ‘Very well: I’ll write to Charlotte.’

The honeymoon had contained awkward moments that were inevitable in the circumstances, but these had been overcome, thanks largely (Adam acknowledged) to the prosaic attitude adopted by his bride. If their union was devoid of romance, less embarrassment attached to it than he had foreseen. Jenny was sometimes shy, but never shrinking. The trend of her mind was practical; she entered into married life in a business-like way; and almost immediately presented the appearance of a wife of several years’ standing. She quickly discovered, and never forgot, his particular fads; she neither demanded nor seemed to desire his constant attendance on herself, but sent him forth to fish the trout stream, greeting him on his return with an enquiry after the sport he had enjoyed, and a placid account of her own activities. Since these included, besides practising on the pianoforte and sketching in the park, hemming, with exquisitely small stitches, a set of handkerchiefs for himself, he was uncomfortably remorseful, feeling that she must have been driven to such a dull task by boredom. She assured him, however, that she enjoyed what she called white needlework; and she certainly seemed content with the quiet life she was leading. Rushleigh Manor might have afforded two persons lost in love an ideal honeymoon-resort; but there was nothing very much for the Lyntons to do there. Adam fished, rode or drove with Jenny; and, in the evenings, they played chess, Jenny played the pianoforte, or sat stitching while Adam read aloud to her. He was much inclined to blame himself for having brought her to Rushleigh, when one of the livelier watering-places would probably have been more to her taste; but when he said so she shook her head, in her decided way, and replied that she would not have liked it half as well. ‘I know all about watering-places, but I have never before stayed in a country house,’ she said. ‘It’s quite new to me, and very agreeable. I am learning a great deal besides, which makes me particularly glad we came here. I shan’t be quite so ignorant when we go to Fontley. I didn’t know how different it would all be from a town house.’

‘Now you are exposing
my
ignorance! Is it so different?’

‘Oh, yes! In London, you know, one buys, but in the country one makes – or things grow, like cabbages and apples and eggs – Now, don’t laugh at me! you know very well what I mean! Pigs, too: fancy curing one’s own hams! You’d hardly credit it, but until I came here I had never seen cows milked, or had the least notion how butter was made. I like watching what they do on the farm as well as anything. Have you a farm at Fontley?’

‘A home farm? Yes – though not, I’m ashamed to say, such a neat one as this!’

She accepted this without comment, but asked, after a moment, if Fontley were as large as Rushleigh Manor.

Rushleigh was not Lord Nassington’s principal seat; and if Adam had been asked to describe it he would have called it a pretty little place in Hampshire. In fact, it was a charming Queen Anne house of mellow red brick, set in a small park; but it bore so little resemblance to Fontley that he was startled into exclaiming: ‘
Fontley?
But, my dear Jenny – ! There can be no comparison!’

‘Do you mean that Fontley is larger?’ she said, not, perhaps, dismayed, but certainly awed.

‘Yes, of course it is!’ He checked himself, and added, with a laugh and a faint flush: ‘I can never think any house superior to Fontley, you know. Now you will be expecting a Chatsworth, or a Holkham!’

‘No, I shan’t. I’ve never seen either, so how could I? I collect that Fontley is very big?’

‘It is bigger than this house, of course, but – well, it is so different! None of the rooms in it is precisely
handsome
, except for the Great Hall, but there are many more of them than there are here. Perhaps you will be disappointed, or say, as my mother does, that it is shockingly inconvenient, with far too many passages, and staircases, and rooms leading one out of the other. You see, it wasn’t built to a plan, as this one was. A part of it – all that remains of the original Priory – is very old indeed, but my predecessors added to it, and altered it, each according to his fancy, until it grew to be – I suppose one might say a perfect hotch-potch! Most of it is Elizabethan – but don’t be afraid that you’ll find yourself in a bedroom with an uneven floor and a ceiling so low that you can touch it! The principal bedrooms are in the wing my grandfather built. I hope you’ll like it – and can set your mind at rest on one point at least! – We have no ghost to trouble you, though we
have
got a ruined chapel!’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts. Is it a real ruin?’

‘Very completely. Indeed, hardly anything of it remains standing.’

‘I mean, you didn’t make it?’

‘Make it?’ he repeated.

‘Build it? One of Papa’s acquaintances did that, when everything Gothic was fashionable, and I believe it was much admired.’

‘Oh!’ he said, rather blankly. ‘No, we didn’t make ours: that was done for us, by zealots, during the Civil War.’

‘Yes, of course: I should have known that was how it must have been,’ she said apologetically. ‘You wouldn’t have any need to build a ruin.’

Such interchanges as this might disconcert him, but they amused him as well. It was not until she broke the news to him that it was her father who had bought the house in Grosvenor Street that any serious rift occurred between them.

He was reading a letter from Wimmering when she came into the room, holding in her hand a single sheet covered over with Mr Chawleigh’s undistinguished scrawl, and exclaiming: ‘Oh, Adam, the post brought me a letter from Papa!’

He looked up. ‘Did it? I hope he is well?’

‘Oh, yes! That is, he doesn’t say, but he never ails! The thing is that he has contrived to do what even I thought was impossible, in such a short space of time. I should have known him better! Particularly when he promised me he would, if he had to hire a whole army of workmen, which I should think he must have done. Papa never promises what he can’t perform!’

‘No, I’m sure he doesn’t. What is it that he has done? Some-thing that pleases you very much, I collect!’

‘Yes – if
you
are pleased. Your house, Adam! You thought you had sold it to Mr Stickney, but he was only acting for Papa!’

He stared at her. ‘
Your
father bought
my
house?’ he said.

‘Yes, and he would have liked to have given you the title-deeds on our wedding-day, only they were not quite prepared, so then he thought he wouldn’t tell you till all the painting and papering was done, and the house ready for us to step into. I never thought it would be in so short a time, but he writes to me that –’

‘Was this your notion?’ he interrupted.

‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t think of it,’ she replied. ‘Though it was through my telling Papa that you meant to sell the house that it came about. He said immediately that he would buy it, and give it back to you, if I thought you would like it, so –’

‘And you did think so?’

She perceived suddenly that he was very white. Her own colour receded; she faltered: ‘Why, yes! I thought –’

‘I put the house up for sale as a means of providing for my sisters!’

‘Yes, yes, I know! You told me!’

‘And you thought I should
like
him to buy it? At a price I always considered to be extortionate, too!’

Her brow cleared; she said, smiling: ‘Oh, but you need not think of that! It was nothing to Papa: I promise you he didn’t grudge it! Indeed, he laughed about it, and said that you had a sure card in Wimmering! Papa never dislikes a man for being what he calls a
deep old file
! And in this case I believe that he didn’t wish to haggle – oh, I
know
he did not!’ She hesitated, and then said: ‘You see, when he asked me why you meant to sell the town house, and I told him, he – he was very much struck. He said that he honoured you for it, though it was – he thought – nonsensical. He is very shrewd, you know: he understood immediately that it would not do for him to tell you – offer to –’ Her voice failed; she lifted a hand to her burning cheek. ‘Oh, was I wrong to permit it? Papa was so pleased to think he might furnish you with – with what you needed, without hurting your pride –’

‘Without – Oh, my God!’ he ejaculated. ‘So this was to be an agreeable surprise, was it? You must excuse me: it is intolerable to me! Don’t you understand – No: you don’t, and I can’t explain it to you. I can only trust that your father won’t suffer too great a loss over it. I daresay he won’t, if he has furbished the house up smartly. Recommend him to place it on the market again at once! I shall be happy to learn that he has disposed of it at a profit!’

He went out of the room as he spoke, with a hasty, limping step. Her hand flew out involuntarily, but he was not looking at her. Her hand dropped; she did not speak; and the next instant the door had shut with a snap behind him.

She did not see him again for several hours. He had a horse saddled, and rode for miles, at first a prey to fury, but presently, as rage abated, falling into a despairing mood. He had been made to feel his golden shackles; he looked into the future, seeing himself the slave of Mr Chawleigh’s benevolence, and wished, for a dreadful few minutes, that the shot that had lamed him had found a more vital target.

When he returned to Rushleigh Manor it was already past the dinner-hour, but the butler told him that my lady had not yet come downstairs. He found her at her dressing-table, with her maid clasping her pearls round her neck. Her eyes turned quickly towards the door. He saw how anxiously she looked at him; and he smiled at her, saying: ‘I’m afraid I’m late! Don’t scold me! I went farther than I knew, but I shan’t keep you waiting above a few minutes.’

‘Well, as though it mattered a straw!’ she replied. ‘I thought very likely you might be late, and told them to keep dinner back. Did you have an agreeable ride?’

He waited until Martha had left the room, and said, as the door was closed: ‘Not very. I beg your pardon, Jenny! I was uncivil to you, and unkind: forgive me!’

‘There’s no need for you to beg my pardon,’ she replied. ‘It was my fault. I should have asked you – not have allowed Papa to buy the house without telling you.’

A gulf yawned between them; as though she saw it, she said, before he could answer her: ‘You’ll be thinking I ought to have known better without your telling me. Well, I didn’t: no use pretending I did! I see now, though not quite the way you do, I daresay. That’s because Papa has always been so rich that I don’t regard money much – don’t think it signifies, in the way you do.’

‘You might well wonder why, having accepted so much from your father, I should ride rusty over this. I can’t tell you. Don’t let us talk about it any more!’ He bent over her, and kissed her cheek. ‘You are much kinder to me than I deserve,’ he told her. ‘I must go and change my rig before our dinner is quite spoilt.’

‘Never mind that!’ she said. ‘Tell me what you wish me to do! You said, recommend Papa to put the house up for sale again: if you meant it, I’ll try to make him understand, but I shan’t be able – I know I shan’t!’

‘There seems to be no end to my incivilities,’ he said ruefully. ‘I wish he hadn’t done it, but since he has I can’t mend it.’

‘I need not tell him? Thank you! – he would be so disappointed! He has taken such pains over it! You see, there’s nothing he enjoys more than planning delightful surprises, or giving one costly presents, and – and if one doesn’t like them – well, he pretends not to care, but one can’t but see how cast-down he is! Which is why –’

‘My dear, indeed you need say no more! We won’t disappoint him.’

He gave her shoulder a pat, and turned away. As he reached the door, she blurted out: ‘You won’t like it – and I never knew that he meant to – Adam, he writes to me that he has furnished it for us!’

He paused, his hand on the door-knob. ‘Has he? Generous of him! I am much obliged to him! I am sure it was all sadly shabby. And my mother took so much from it, didn’t she? I expect I shall hardly recognize the house when I see it again.’