A Civil Contract

Chapter XVI

Two days later the Lyntons left London, driving to Fontley by easy stages and in the greatest comfort. Much to Jenny’s relief Adam showed no disposition to practise any of his economies, but carried her to Lincolnshire in all the luxury to which she was accustomed.

For her, the journey, in spite of some queasiness, was the most agreeable she had as yet experienced in Adam’s company. Their previous expeditions had taken place when they were so barely acquainted that being shut up together for several hours at a stretch had imposed a strain on them, neither knowing whether the other would like to talk, or to remain silent; and each being anxious not to bore or to appear bored. This awkwardness no longer lay between them; and although they spoke of nothing that went far below the surface they talked with the ease of intimacy, and were able to lapse into companionable silences without feeling any compulsion to seek a new topic for conversation.

At Fontley Jenny was glad tobe idle for some days. She even admitted that she was a little tired, but she assured Adam that the quiet of the country was all that was needed to restore her to high health. He thought, but privately, that it would not be long before she was wishing herself back in London, for however much he might have to occupy him at Fontley he could not imagine what she would find to do.

But Jenny, wandering about the rambling house, peeping into dust-sheeted rooms, discovering treasures in forgotten corners, knew that there was plenty to do. It was work after her own heart, but so morbidly afraid of offending was she that she hardly dared even to alter the position of a chair. When they had entered the Priory Adam had said: “I dare say you will wish to make changes. My mother, you know, doesn’t take much interest in household matters — no such capital housewife as you are, Jenny! Dawes will show you all about, and you must do as you think proper, if you please.”

She did not say: I am only a guest in your house, but it was what she thought, for he uttered the speech just stiltedly enough to betray that it had been rehearsed. It was prompted by his courtesy: she appreciated its generosity, but if he had told her not to meddle she would have been less daunted.

Charlotte driving over from Membury Place, did not help to put her at ease. She came full of kind intentions, but when she entered the Priory she could not help casting an anxious glance round the Great Hall, which was not lost on Jenny. Charlotte had not seen Lynton House since Mr Chawleigh’s hand had fallen heavily upon it, but she knew all about the green stripes, the sphinxes, and the crocodile-legs, and she had dreaded to discover that Fontley had been transformed already into something more nearly resembling Bullock’s Museum than a gentleman’s country seat. Relieved to detect no change in the Hall, she accompanied Jenny upstairs to the Little Drawing-room, saying as she tucked a hand in her arm: “Dear Jenny, you must let me thank you for being so kind to Lydia! She wrote to me, you know: one of her pelting letters, crammed with the tale of her doings! Four pages! Lambert said, in his droll way, that he was thankful she was able to get a frank from Adam, for it would otherwise have ruined us to receive it!”

“Well, there’s no need to thank me, for I never enjoyed anything half as much as having her with me,” replied Jenny. “I miss her sadly, I can tell you.”

“Oh, I’m glad! To be sure, I think everyone must like her, for she is the dearest girl, besides being what Lambert calls full of fun and gig!” They had by this time reached the Little Drawing-room, where Charlotte instantly perceived an alteration. She exclaimed: “Oh, you have taken away the marquetry sewing-table!”

It was mere comment, but it threw Jenny on to the defensive. “I have only moved it into the library,” she said stiffly. “Adam told me I might do so;”

“Yes, of course! I didn’t mean — It just seemed strange not to see it where it always used to be! But I know many people dislike marquetry: my cousin Augusta can’t bear it!”

“I like it very much,” replied Jenny. “It is exactly what I need for my silks and threads, so it was wasted in this room. Adam likes to sit in the library in the evening, you know. We have taken up our readings again — he was used to read to me when we were at Rushleigh — and that’s why I moved the table, so that I’d have my embroidery ready to my hand.”

“Oh, yes! How cosy! I remember thinking how exquisitely you stitched when Mama and I visited you in Russell Square and so much admired the work you were engaged on. It quite put me to shame — and Mama, of course, was never a needle-woman.”

Jenny could not help wondering how the Dowager had occupied herself at Fontley. Her inspection of the house had given her the poorest opinion of her mother-in-law: besides being no needlewoman she was no housewife either. She had told Jenny that she had been obliged to let the house fall into disrepair, but in her place Jenny would have set stitches to the first split in a brocade curtain; and if her domestic staff had been so much reduced as to have made it impossible for them to keep the furniture polished she would have set about the task herself rather than have allowed wood to grow dull and handles tarnished. She thought that Fontley had suffered as much from a negligent mistress as from an improvident master. The Dowager would have renovated it in excellent taste, but she lacked Jenny’s eye for an undusted table, or a corner left unswept, and, in consequence, her servants had grown careless, even Mrs Dawes, the housekeeper, finding it easier to join her mistress in bemoaning the want of extra footmen and chambermaids than to keep the remaining servants up to their work. Jenny held Mrs Dawes in contempt and showed it. She did not mean to do so, but she knew nothing of dissimulation, and her blunt tongue betrayed her. When every evidence of neglect was attributed to the want of an adequate staff she grew more and more curt, finally losing her temper when Mrs Dawes said: “In the old days, my lady, we always had a steward, and a groom of the chambers, and things were different.”

“Well, I should hope they were!” said Jenny. “Though what a steward has to do with keeping linen in good order I’m sure I don’t know!” She saw the housekeeper stiffen, and added, in an attempt at conciliation: “I can see that more servants are needed, and I’ll speak to his lordship about it.”

But the mischief was done. Mrs Dawes was icily civil thereafter, and showed her hostility when Jenny discovered a dinner-service in one of the cupboards, and exclaimed as she inspected it: “Good gracious, why is this never used, but only that Bristol set, with every plate chipped? Have it all taken out and washed, if you please! It is most elegant!”

“That, my lady, is the Crown Derby china,” responded Mrs Dawes loftily.

“To be sure it is, and with the Chantilly pattern too. Is it quite complete? We will use it instead of the other.”

“Certainly, my lady,” said Mrs Dawes, her eyes downcast, and her hands primly folded. “If it is his lordship’s wish to have the best china used every day I will have it taken out immediately.”

Jenny bit back a tart rejoinder. “I daresay his lordship won’t know one set. from t’other, but we’ll see!”

She put the question to him as they sat at dinner, saying: “I find you have the prettiest Crown Derby china stowed away in a cupboard — the French sprig pattern. Mrs Dawes seems to think it must not be used, but should you object to it if we did use it, my lord?”

“I,” he said, putting up his brows. “Of course I should not!”

“No, I thought you would not — or even notice it!” Jenny said, with one of her sudden smiles.

He perfectly understood why the question had been put to him; he said, knowing that his words would spread through the house: “I daresay I might not. In any event, my dear, I have nothing to say in such matters, and wish you will do as you think best. You are the mistress of Fontley: I shan’t dispute with you over any changes you may like to make.”

Later, he asked her if she would prefer another housekeeper in Mrs Dawes’s place. She said at once: “Oh, no! Pray don’t think — I know she has been here for ever, and didn’t mean — ”

“Try not to rub against the servants!” he said. “I should be very reluctant to turn any of the older ones off: Dawes knew Fontley before I did, you know!”

“Oh, no, no! I never meant — Only they despise me so!” she blurted out.

“They won’t do so when they know you better.” He hesitated, and then said gently: “Don’t speak to them quite so roughly, Jenny! Most of them are such very old friends of mine!”

“I don’t know how to talk to servants,” she confessed. “You do — but it wouldn’t do for me to copy you. I’ll try to go on better, but it does vex me so when — Well, never mind! Is the cook an old friend of yours?”

This sudden question made him laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever laid eyes on the cook!”

“No, very likely not, for he’s only been here a twelvemonth. Now, I told you I wouldn’t meddle, but there’s no teaching that man his trade, Adam, and to see you pecking at your food as you do is more than I can bear — though I’m sure I don’t blame you! So, if you’re agreeable, we’ll send for Scholes, and then maybe you’ll fancy your dinner again.”

“I own it would be pleasant, but how will a French-trained cook relish our old-fashioned kitchens here? I doubt if he’ll come into the country, Jenny.”

“He’ll come fast enough when he knows it will mean another twenty pounds added to his wages,” said Jenny caustically. “As for the kitchens, if you don’t wish them to be altered, Scholes must make the best of them; but if you would but put in a good closed stove, like the Bodley we have at Lynton House, you’d find it an economy. The fuel this great open range burns — !”

“Does it? I expect we should have had a different stove years ago. Send for what you like! Anything else?”

“No, thank you. I shall be hiring a few more servants, but that needn’t concern you, for with Lynton House shut up I’m wonderfully beforehand with the world.”

Mrs Dawes received the news of these forthcoming changes with mixed feelings. Asked to say which of the closed stoves now on the market she considered the best, she preferred to advance no opinion, being, she said, unacquainted with any of them. But this was not true. At Membury Place her dear Miss Charlotte had a closed stove; she had seen and coveted it, and even indulged the hope that his lordship’s rich wife would instal one at Fontley. She viewed with less favour the importation of a top-lofty town cook, but was considerably softened by Jenny’s saying: “If something’s not done we shall have his lordship dwindling to a thread-paper! Well, I don’t doubt you know as well as I do that for all he never complains or seems to notice what’s set before him he’s very nice in his tastes — not to say capricious! — and if the meat’s not dressed as he likes it he doesn’t eat more of it than would keep a kitten alive.”

The suggestion that his lordship might waste away from lack of sustenance made an instant appeal. Mrs Dawes relented enough to say that he had always been one who had to be tempted to his dinner. Jenny next asked her if she could recall which warehouse had supplied the brocade that covered certain of the chairs. “For if only I could procure it I’d like to have them re-covered,” she said. “Not changing them, but making them the same as they were before. His lordship wouldn’t wish anything to be different, and I wouldn’t for the world — Well; I don’t mean to turn the house out of doors, but what’s worn to shreds must be made new again!”

Mrs Dawes said that she didn’t know but what she might be able to recall the name of the warehouse; and, to discourage any idea that she had been won over, brought the interview to an end by saying that she was sorry the second housemaid had given Miss Pinhoe cause for complaint, and also that Miss Pinhoe had not seen fit to mention the matter to her — “when I should have dealt with it immediately, my lady.”

The haughty Miss Poolstock had been disliked by every member of the household, but her odious air of consequence had marked her as a dresser of the first respectability. Ten minutes spent in Miss Pinhoe’s company were enough to inform her fellows that she was not at all the sort of superior female a lady of real quality would employ as her personal maid. A rough tongue had brought her into instant collision with Mrs Dawes, and a feud of promising longevity seemed to be inevitable when a chance word revealed to Mrs Dawes that Miss Pinhoe came from her own county. Frigid enquiry elicited the information that Miss Pinhoe had first seen the light at Church Stretton, not seven miles from Mrs Dawes’s birthplace. From that moment the thaw set in, Miss Pinhoe recognizing in the daughter of a well-to-do farmer her social superior, and Mrs Dawes (once this point had been established) admitting Miss Pinhoe into the ranks of her intimates. Neither lady regarded the other with unqualified approval, but to the world they soon presented a solid Salopian front, and bored Dunster and Kinver at every meal in the Room by recalling ancient parochial scandals, and exhaustively pursuing obscure genealogies. Nor was it long before MissPinhoe had disclosed an interesting piece of information, which caused Mrs Dawes to regard her mistress with a more tolerant eye. Much would be forgiven to Jenny if she provided Fontley with an heir, but Mrs Dawes suspended final judgment, by no means confident of the issue. In her view, a sickly pregnancy heralded the birth of a daughter: an arrival which would show how unworthy of her position was my lord’s vulgar bride.

In fact, Jenny was beginning to overcome her sickness, but although she went briskly about her affairs she felt so far from well that she cried off from the Holkham week. Adam did not press the matter, but went alone, to mingle with the farmers of every degree who flocked to Holkham at this season, and to learn as much as he could from their discussions.

During his absence the new stove was installed; the reliable upholsterers summoned from Lincoln were set to work on the chair-covers; and the entire household was driven into strenuous activity: mending, making, cleaning, and polishing.

Charlotte, visiting her sister-in-law in case she should be lonely while Adam was away from home, exclaimed astonishment: “Jenny! Good gracious, how different everything looks! I declare, I hardly recognize dear old Fontley!”

“Oh, no!” Jenny uttered imploringly. “Don’t say that! Not different, Charlotte! I have been at such pains — ! You are looking at those curtains, but indeed they are exactly the same colour as the old ones that were so tattered! The same as they were used to be, before they became faded, I mean. I daresay you have forgotten, but when I unpicked the hems I saw what the colour had been, and was able to match the velvet.”

“To be sure!” Charlotte said hastily. “My dear sister, I didn’t mean the least disparagement! It is all beautiful! How clever you have been! All the furniture positively glowing, too, and the handles on that chest quite dazzling! I thought it had been a new one!”

In her anxiety to convince Jenny that she felt only admiration she praised every improvement rather too enthusiastically, until Jenny said, in a flattened voice: “You don’t like it, do you?”

“Yes, yes, I do! We have all of us so much regretted that poor Papa was unable to keep the house as it should be. I know it was sadly shabby. It is only that at first it seems, a little strange — How nonsensical I am! you will laugh at me for missing the dimness, and the faded curtains, but one grows so accustomed — ! We love it so much, you see, that even its shabbiness is dear to us.”

“I don’t understand that,” Jenny said. “Don’t you want to see it kept up to the knocker? To my way of thinking, that’s no way of loving it.” She added quickly: “I beg pardon! I shouldn’t have spoken so freely.”

“Oh, no! Of course, you are perfectly right! How pleased dear Adam will be, when he sees all that you have done!”

Jenny thought that he would not be pleased; and, remembering that Lydia had once expressed the hope that Fontley would not be changed, wondered if she would ever understand the Deverils.

But Adam neither exclaimed in admiration nor recoiled in dismay when he came home. He reached Fontley some hours later than had been expected, after a tiresome journey. It was past ten o’clock, and the candles had been lit, and the curtains drawn across the tall, Gothic windows. He was tired, and exasperated by a series of mishaps; it did not occur to him that the candle-smoke stains had vanished from the moulded ceiling, or that the furniture shone with beeswax: he only thought that never had his home appeared more mellow or more lovely.

His plump, commonplace little wife came down the stairs to meet him, treading across the hall with her firm step. She was neither beautiful nor graceful; she was even a little incongruous in so gracious a setting; but she was infinitely comfortable. She smiled at him, saying placidly: “That’s nice! Here you are, just in time for supper! We’ll have it in the Blue Parlour, to be cosy.”

He had told her that he would return in time for dinner, which was served at six, after the country habit. It occurred to him that no matter how long he kept her waiting she never said: “How late you are!” or: “What can have detained you?” He put his arm round her, kissing her cheek. “My dear, I’m so repentant! But you’re quite right not to comb my hair: it has not been my fault! First a broken linchpin, and next one of the wheelers going dead lame! An abominable journey!”

“Oh, how vexatious! And me thinking no more than that you’d put off your start because there was something pleasant offered you to do at Holkham! Well, that’s a great deal too bad, but never mind! Supper will be ready as soon as you are.”

“That will be in five minutes.” He gave her a hug, and kissed her again, this time on her firm little mouth. “You’re so kind to me, Jenny! I wish you may not indulge me so much that I become quite detestable!”

Her colour flamed into her cheeks; she said gruffly: “You’ll never be that to me. Now, you let Kinver pull off your boots, and give you a pair of slippers, but never mind rigging yourself out in style! That’s the best of living in the country: there’s no fear of being surprised by visitors at this hour of night!”

He took her at her word, reappearing presently in a frogged dressing-gown, and regarding her with a provocative twinkle. She chuckled, but said: “Well, now you can be comfortable, at least! How did you fare at Holkham? Was it an agreeable party?”

“Very — but you were right to cry off, I think. A vast crush, and the talk all of agriculture. I hope I may have profited by the discussions, but I felt as ignorant as when I first went to school! Tell me about yourself! How have you been keeping?”

“Oh, I am perfectly stout!” she asserted. “Charlotte was so kind as to pay me a visit — and Dr Tilford, too, which, I collect, he did at your command, my lord! He’s a sensible man, and tells me not to coddle myself.”

“He could have spared his breath! What do you call this excellent chicken-dish? Italian salad, is it? It informs me that Scholes has been restored to us, and thank God for it! Has your new stove arrived? Was it very troublesome to make the change?”

“No worse than what was to be expected,” she replied. “We had the chimney swept, and the walls and ceiling new white-washed into the bargain, so you’d hardly know it for the same dingy old kitchen.”

She then wished that she had not said this, but Adam merely said: “I can’t conceive how you can have contrived to get dinner cooked while all this was going forward!”

“‘Oh, quite easily!” she said, not disclosing to his male ignorance that the household had subsisted on picnic meals for three hideous days. She asked him instead to describe the clippings to her.

In general, he took care not to bore her with agricultural talk, but his head was so full of it that he was led on, from the clippings, to tell her about Mr Coke’s experimental farm. She listened, watching him, and thinking that he was talking more to himself than to her. When he spoke of stall-feeding, of hurdling sheep over turnips, of trebling livestock for manure, of shorthorns, and of North Devons, she knew that he had his own acres in mind, not Mr Coke’s. He sat with the fingers of one hand crooked round the stem of his wineglass, his eyes fixed on the dregs in it; and he answered the few questions she put to him rather abstractedly, until she asked if Mr Coke used the Tullian drill, when he looked up quickly, between surprise and amusement, and replied: “He has done so for years — but what do you know about the Tullian drill?”

“Only what I’ve read. It dibbles the soil, and sows the seed — oh, and covers it, too, doesn’t it? Is it used here?”

“Not yet. Where did you read about it, Jenny?”

“In one of your books. I have been looking into them, and trying to learn a little from them.”

“My poor girl! Were you reduced so low? I had thought you brought a boxful of books down from London!”

“Oh, I did! But Mansfield Park is the only one I’ve read yet. I kept it by me, and took it up whenever Artificial Manures, and the Four-Course System began to pall. And I must own, Adam, they do pall! But that drill seems to me to be an excellent machine, and I think you should adopt it.”

“I mean to, and to induce my tenants to follow my example — I hope! As for manure, we use sticklebacks.”

“Sticklebacks?”

“Also pigeon-dung.”

“Oh, you’re roasting me!” she exclaimed.

“I’m not. Sticklebacks make the best of all manures. We get them from Boston Haven, at a halfpenny the bushel. Gorse is good for turnips; and in the wolds they spread straw, and burn it.”

“Good gracious! And here have I been trying to learn about lime, and marl, and rape-cake!”

“Poor Jenny! Does it comfort you to know that we use those too? Why should you tease yourself over such dull matters?”

“I like to understand the things that interest you. The Home farm isn’t large enough to be made experimental, is it? Do you mean to take over one of the others, as Mr Coke did? I know there are some let on short-term leases.”

Too many,” he said. “Yes, perhaps I shall do that, one day, but there’s so much else to be done first that I’m afraid it won’t be for some time to come.”

“Is it very costly, to bring an estate like this into good order?” she ventured to ask.

“Very. I can only do so gradually.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t — ” She stopped, and then, when he raised his brows enquiringly, blurted out: “Why don’t you sell Lynton House?”

The words had no sooner passed her lips than she wished them unspoken. He answered perfectly pleasantly; he even smiled; but she knew that he had retreated behind his disconcerting barriers. “Well, you know why I don’t,” he said. “Don’t let us fall into a wrangle over that, Jenny!”

“No,” she muttered, her eyes lowered, and her cheeks flaming. “Only, when I think how much it costs to keep that great house — and how much you need the money here — I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to vex you.”

He stretched out his hand to her, and when she laid her own in it, clasped it warmly. “You haven’t vexed me. I think there can be no more generous persons alive than you and your father. Try to understand me! I’m not ungrateful, but there must be a limit set to my indebtedness. I’ve accepted Lynton House from your father; he holds all the mortgages on my lands, and demands nothing from me in return. To restore those lands to prosperity must be my business — and if I can’t contrive to do it, the sooner Fontley passes into more worthy hands than mine the better! Can you understand?”

“Yes,” she answered, nothing in her tone betraying the desolation in her heart. “Fontley is yours, and you will accept no help from Papa in anything that concerns it. Orfrom me.”

She tried to draw her hand away as she spoke, but his fingers closed round it strongly.

“But for your father I must have sold Fontley,” he said. “As for — ”

“You mean to pay him back, don’t you?” she interrupted.

He was startled, but replied almost immediately: “Yes, I do mean to do that, but your services to my house are another matter, If you choose to spend your blunt on new curtains for Fontley — yes, I have observed them, and I like them very much! — instead of on all the things I’mpersuaded you must have wished to purchase, I’m grateful, but I don’t mean to repay you, any more than I mean to thank you for having the furniture polished — which, also, I have observed! The best thing I’ve yet done for Fontley is to have bestowed on it such a notable housewife: the house begins to look as it should again. You must have been busier than a colony of ants while I was in Norfolk!”

She blushed again, but this time with pleasure. “Oh, I am so glad you don’t dislike the things I’ve done! I told you I wouldn’t meddle, but I thought you might not object to it if I set some things to rights — not changing them, but making them the same again! Only Charlotte said that she scarcely recognized the house, and, although she assured me she liked it, I could see she did not, and that put me in a regular quake!”

“Charlotte’s a goose!” he said, forgetting that he had dreaded to see even a torn rug replaced. He gave her hand a squeeze, before releasing it, and getting up from the table. “Let us go to the library! Have you given that smart new curtains as well?”

“No, no, I haven’t touched it!” she said quickly. “I thought, perhaps, that, if you don’t dislike it, we might have new curtains made, but none of the colours on the pattern-cards I’ve yet had sent me are at all like what I think these old ones must have been.”

“I fancy they were a sort of mustard,” he said, frowning in an effort of memory. “Pray don’t inflict that on me again! I know I thought them very ugly when my mother first had them hung.”

This cool repudiation of his mother’s taste, which she had striven so zealously to copy, almost made her gasp. She suspected him of having said it merely to reassure her; but when they reached the library he looked at the curtains, and pulled a grimace. “Very dingy! Odd that I shouldn’t have noticed it. I suppose one grows accustomed. What shall we hang in their stead?”

Much heartened, she produced her pattern-cards. None of the materials she had thought the most suitable met with more than qualified approval, but when he saw a scrap of red brocade he instantly said: “That’s the one!”

She had expected him to choose a more sober colour, but when he took the brocade over to the corner where the K’ang-hsi bowl had been placed she understood, and applauded his choice. Then she said, knowing that it would please him: “I give you due warning, though, my lord! — you won’t relish the bill! You’ve chosen the most expensive pattern that’s been sent me.”

“Oh, dear, have I? But it’s the only one I like! What’s the figure?”

“About fifty pounds: I can’t tell precisely until I know the measurements.”

“How shocking! But more shocking, don’t you think, to dishonour my bowl with anything shoddy? We’ll have it.” He gave the pattern back to her, and sank into his favourite chair, stretching out his legs with a sigh of content, and saying: “How comfortable to be at home again! And not to be obliged to play whist, or take part in a charade. Tell me what has been happening while I was away!”