A Civil Contract (13 page)

Travelling in a light chaise, behind four horses, the Lyntons reached Fontley just before six o’clock. The Priory was screened from the road by the trees in its park, but there was one place from which a long view of the house could be obtained. Adam directed the postilions to pull up there. He said: ‘There it is, Jenny!’

She could tell from his voice how much he loved it, and she wanted to say something that would please him. Leaning forward, she was disappointed to find that it lay at too great a distance from the road for her to be able to distinguish any particular features. She could see only an irregular mass of buildings, not lofty, but covering a large expanse of ground; and the only thing that occurred to her to say was: ‘It is quite different from Rushleigh! – just as you told me.’

He signed to the postilions to go on. ‘Yes, quite different. How does this country strike you?’

She had been thinking how inferior it was to the undulating Hampshire scene; she answered haltingly: ‘Well, it is new to me, and not just what I expected, but I am sure I shall grow to like it.’

‘I hope you may, but I suspect one has to be born in the fens to love them. We are crossing Deeping Fen now.’ He added, as the chaise bumped and lurched: ‘I’m sorry: the surface is shocking, isn’t it? We call these roads driftways. That was a grip we passed over – a trench cut crossways for drainage.’

It sounded rather primitive. She scanned the expanse of level fields on either side of the unguarded road, and asked with some misgiving if they were often flooded.

‘In winter, yes,’ he acknowledged. ‘Drainage is our chief problem, and the most costly, alas! We get soak, too: that’s sea-water coming up through the silt when the drains are full.’

‘I thought it must be pretty damp as soon as I saw those great ditches.’

‘Droves. Are you afraid of being flooded out at Fontley? You need not be! I hope to be able to improve matters elsewhere too: I think we must be fifty years behind the times here.’

‘I don’t know anything about country things: I must learn them.’

‘I’m ashamed to say that I know very little myself – only what any boy reared on an agricultural estate would be bound to pick up. Here we are: this is the gatehouse – part of the old Priory – and here’s Mrs Ridgehill coming out to give you your first welcome! Say something kind to her: she is one of my oldest friends!’

He had noticed at Rushleigh that she was shy of the servants, and too much inclined to hide this under a brusque manner, but she acquitted herself quite creditably on this occasion, responding to the lodgekeeper’s salutations and compliments with no more awkwardness than Mrs Ridgehill thought proper in a bride. The chaise moved forward again; and presently, round a bend in the avenue, the one remaining arch and the several crumbling walls and pillars of the ruined chapel came into view; and, beyond, the heterogeneous mass of the Priory itself. Staring at the long, broken frontage of mingled stone and brick Jenny gave utterance to the first thought that came into her head: ‘Good gracious! However many servants do you employ to keep it in order?’

He was not obliged to reply to this, for at that moment he caught sight of Charlotte, hurrying across the lawn with an armful of flowers. He directed Jenny’s attention to her; and at once she was assailed by a horrid doubt. She exclaimed, her eyes on Charlotte’s plain round dress of white cambric: ‘Oh, I am dressed too fine! I didn’t know – and there was no one to tell me!’

‘Nonsense! you look very becoming!’ he replied, jumping down from the chaise as his sister came running across the drive. ‘
Proserpin gathering flowers!
But I trust
gloomy
Dis
won’t forestall Lambert, Charlotte!’

Charlotte, who was not bookish, paid no heed to this, but exclaimed breathlessly: ‘Oh, my dear Adam, we thought you could not be here for another hour, and had put dinner back accordingly! And here I am, only this instant finished cutting a few flowers for Jenny’s room, and in this old gown too! You must excuse me, Jenny!’

This speech might have been designed to put Jenny at her ease, but she still felt, as she descended from the chaise, that perhaps a puce silk dress, a velvet pelisse, and a feathered bonnet were a little out of place at Fontley. Charlotte, however, seemed to see nothing amiss, but kissed her, and led her into the house.

Jenny was relieved, and a good deal surprised, to find that there was far less ceremony attached to this homecoming than would have attended their arrival in Russell Square. The only footmen she saw were two young men, who wore dark livery and their own unpowdered hair; and the butler, who was elderly, and a little bent, would have looked insignificant beside Mr Chawleigh’s majestic Butterbank.

‘I must take you to Mama directly,’ Charlotte said. ‘She was sitting with my aunt in the Little Drawing-room – oh, Adam, I should have written to warn you that my Aunt Nassington is here, with my uncle, and Osbert too, but there was no time, for they took us quite by surprise! Not that I mean – that is to say, I am very much obliged to her for coming on this occasion, only we never supposed that she would, though Mama invited her, of course.’

‘Oh, lord!’ said Adam, pulling a grimace. ‘Don’t let her bully you, Jenny – or look to me for protection! She frightens me to death!’

‘For shame, Adam!’ Charlotte reproved him, leading Jenny towards the broad oaken stairway. ‘You mustn’t heed him, Jenny! My aunt is very outspoken, but she is perfectly good-natured, I promise you!’

Following his wife and sister up the stairs, across an ante-room to the Long Drawing-room, and down this to the Little Drawing-room beyond it, Adam wondered how Jenny would support her introduction to Lady Nassington, and hoped that she would not become tongue-tied. He was afraid that her ladyship’s overbearing ways and caustic speech would paralyse her, and was consequently as much surprised as relieved to discover that Jenny, rendered monosyllabic by Lady Lynton, responded to Lady Nassington without embarrassment.

Physically her ladyship resembled her brother. She was a large woman, with aquiline features, and a gaze of lofty unconcern. Like his, her voice was loud and authoritative; and to some extent she shared his disregard for convention. There the resemblance ended. Lord Lynton’s free and easy ways had sprung from a jovial nature; his sister’s had their roots in a sublime conviction of superiority, and were so incalculable as to have earned for her the reputation of being eccentric. She said and did what she chose on every occasion, and granted a like indulgence to those who had been fortunate enough to win her favour; but she had reared her daughters to a rigid pattern, and would condemn any breach of etiquette committed by persons she disliked.

She had brought with her to Fontley, besides her husband, a spare man of few words and a harassed mien, her third son, the robust sportsman whom she had offered to Adam as his best man. ‘Quite right not to have had him!’ she told Adam. ‘He’s such a dolt I dare swear he’d have made a mull of it, or gone to Church stinking of the stables.’

Adam wondered what entertainment could be offered to Osbert during a week at Fontley at this season; but Lady Nassington besought him not to trouble himself, since it was impossible to interest Osbert during the dead months.

‘But the poor fellow will be bored to tears!’ he protested.

‘He can as well be bored here as anywhere else,’ replied her ladyship. ‘Never mind him! I must tell you, Adam, that I am agreeably surprised by this wife of yours. No countenance, of course, and dresses badly, but she seems a sensible girl, and she don’t play off any airs of sham gentility. You might have done a great deal worse for yourself. I don’t object to presenting her, and you may bring her to my rout-party on the 20th: that should launch her pretty well. It’s a pity your mother has chosen to be thrown into gloom, but just what I expected! She don’t like Charlotte’s match either: not a great one, I grant, but if a girl flouts the chances she’s offered she must be content with a respectable marriage in the end. I fancied myself in love with his father once,’ she added reminiscently. ‘It wouldn’t have answered, but what I didn’t consider beneath my touch I’m sure your mother need not! But she always was a wet-goose. Upon my word, I wonder that you should have turned out so well – I do indeed, my dear nephew!’

A laugh escaped him, but he shook his head at her. ‘You know it’s most improper to say such things to me, ma’am!’

‘Oh, I say nothing behind Blanche’s back I don’t say to her head!’ she replied.

When Charlotte brought Jenny into the Little Drawing-room, Lady Nassington had scanned her appraisingly, and commanded, as soon as she had greeted the Dowager: ‘Come here, child, and let me take a look at you! H’m! Yes, it’s a pity you’re not taller, but I’m glad to see you hold yourself up. How did you like Rushleigh? I hope my people made you comfortable?’

‘Yes, that they did, ma’am. I liked it excessively, and have been wanting to thank you for lending it to us. It was all so beautiful, and interesting! I had never stayed in the country before.’

‘Town-bred, are you?’

‘Yes, though my mother was a farmer’s daughter, and came from Shropshire, ma’am.’

‘Good yeoman stock, I daresay: you have the look of it yourself. Take my advice, and study to dress plainly! Frills don’t become you. Are those real pearls you have in your ears? Yes, they would be, of course, and a thousand pities your neck’s too short for them. Lynton! Buy a neat little pair of ear-rings for your wife! She can’t wear these.’

‘Well, I know my neck’s too short,’ said Jenny, ‘but I shall wear them, ma’am, because Papa gave them to me, and I won’t hurt his feelings, no matter what!’

‘Very proper!’ approved her ladyship. ‘I’ll speak to your father myself.’

Lady Lynton here intervened, and bore Jenny off to her bed-chamber, saying as she led the way through a bewildering series of rooms, galleries, and corridors: ‘You must excuse my sister-in-law: her blunt manners are beyond the line of being pleasing.’

‘Oh, no!’ Jenny said. ‘I mean, I didn’t dislike anything she said, for it was all in kindness, and – and I like blunt people, ma’am!’

‘I have often wished that my own sensibility were less acute,’ said her ladyship.

Daunted, Jenny relapsed into silence. Passing through a doorway into a broad corridor Lady Lynton informed her that they were now in the modern wing of the Priory.

‘It seems to stretch for miles!’ said Jenny.

‘Yes, it is most inconvenient,’ sighed the Dowager. ‘No doubt you will make a great many alterations. Adam’s room is here, and that door leads into a dressing-room. The next is yours, quite at the end of the passage, which I hope you won’t dislike.’

‘Oh, no! How should I? Oh – how pretty it is!’

‘I am afraid it is sadly shabby. It should have been done-up before your arrival, but, not knowing your tastes, I thought it best to leave it to you to choose what you like.’

‘Thank you – but I shan’t! I like it as it is. I don’t wish to change anything, ma’am!’

‘Don’t you, my dear? No doubt it is foolish of me, but I cannot help hoping that you may not. It is so full of memories! Alas, so many years since I too entered it as a bride!’

Dismayed, Jenny stammered: ‘Is it your room? Oh, I would never –
Pray
let me have some other!’

But the Dowager, smiling at her with gentle resignation, merely completed her discomfiture by saying that this was the room always occupied by the mistress of the house. She said that Jenny must not be in a worry, since she herself cared nothing either for her comfort or her consequence. As she managed to convey the impression that she was now housed in one of the garrets it was not surprising that when Adam presently came into the room he found Jenny looking rather troubled.

She was standing beside a table in one of the windows, dip-ping her hand into a bowl filled with pot-pourri, and allowing the dried petals to sift through her fingers. She looked up when Adam came in, and smiled, saying: ‘I couldn’t think what makes the house smell so sweet, but now I see it must be this.’

‘Pot-pourri? Yes, my mother makes it. I believe she had the recipe from some Frenchwoman – one of the emigrées. You must ask her for it, if you like it.’

‘I wonder if she will tell me? Adam, you shouldn’t have permitted her to make her own room ready for me!’

‘I didn’t know she meant to. I’m glad she did, however: it was very proper in her.’

‘Well, it makes me ready to sink!’ she said. ‘She told me that it had always belonged to the mistress of Fontley, as though she had been deposed, which I hope you know I’d never do!’

‘My dear Jenny, if you are going to take all my mother says to heart – ! My grandfather built this wing, so you are only the third mistress of Fontley to occupy the room!’

She was obliged to laugh at this, but she said: ‘Well, I’m sure it must be disagreeable for her to see me in it, at all events. Thank goodness I told her I didn’t wish to alter anything in it! She had been dreading that, you know, which I can well understand.’

He looked a little quizzical, but said nothing. Lydia, coming to pay her respects to Jenny a few minutes later, was much less reticent. ‘What a bouncer!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, it was only last year that Mama had the curtains made, and she had meant to have had new ones this year, because these faded so badly, as you may see! She only said that to make you feel horrid!’

‘Lydia!’

‘Well, it’s true, Adam. For my part, I think
someone
ought to explain Mama to Jenny! The thing is, you see, that she positively delights in being ill-used, Jenny, and making us all feel guilty for no reason at all. Don’t heed her! I
never
do!’

This frank exposition of her mother-in-law’s character startled Jenny, but by the time she had spent two days at Fontley she had begun to see that there was a good deal of truth in it, and began to feel much more at ease.

She had looked forward with shrinking to her introduction to Fontley, and had concealed under a wooden front her dread of offending unknown shibboleths. She had listened to stories of the formal pomp that reigned in several great houses, had been too shy to ask Adam for information, and had thus entered the house feeling sick with apprehension. But although she frequently lost her way in it she was almost immediately conscious of its home-quality; and since the Dowager disliked pomp she found no rigid etiquette to make her nervous. Even the ordeal of the first dinner-party was less severe than she had expected, for no ceremonial attached to it, and all the family talked so much and so naturally that she was able to sit listening and watching, which exactly suited her disposition. Lord Nassington was found to be quite unalarming; and his son, although, at first glance, overpoweringly large and bluff, was a simple creature, who laughed a great deal, and bore with unruffled good-humour all the shafts aimed at him. He sat beside Jenny at the table, and told her that he was the bobbing-block of the family. He seemed to take as much pride in this as in his mother’s ruthless tongue. ‘Wonderful woman, Mama!’ he said. ‘Abuses us all like pickpockets! Do you hunt?’