A Civil Contract Read online

  Jenny’s bathroom was not Mr Chawleigh’s only clever notion. Having cast a critical eye over the sanitary arrangements in Grosvenor Street, he drove his army of plumbers to create, out of the antiquated apartment discreetly tucked under the staircase, a water-closet which, in his own phrase, was Something Like. When he dined with the young couple on the following evening, he insisted on demonstrating and explaining to Adam the several features which made the new Bramah model superior to the old; and discoursed with so much assurance on valves, sliders, overhead cisterns, and stink-traps that Adam presently said curiously: ‘You know a great deal about these things, sir!’

  ‘Ay, you may lay your life I do. You won’t find Jonathan Chawleigh investing his blunt in something he don’t under-stand, my lord!’ replied Mr Chawleigh.

  He enjoyed himself very much that evening, but he warned his daughter not to make a habit of inviting him to her house. ‘For I don’t expect it, and, what’s more, I told his lordship at the outset that there’d be no need for him to fear he’d have me hanging on him like a barnacle. Now, don’t look glum, love! I’ll visit you now and now, when you’re not expecting company, but don’t you dish me up to your grand friends, because it wouldn’t do – not if you’re to cut a figure in society, which I’ve set my heart on.’

  ‘I know you have, Papa, but if you’re thinking I coaxed Adam into letting me invite you tonight you’re out! He said I was to do so, and that’s how it will always be, I think, because he is – he is most truly the gentleman!’

  ‘Ay, so he is,’ agreed Mr Chawleigh. ‘Well, I’ll have to tell him to his head I don’t look to be invited to your parties, and that’s all there is to it!’

  He did this, adding that Adam must dissuade Jenny from visiting Russell Square too frequently. ‘I’ve told her there’s no call for her to do so, my lord, but it’ll be just as well if you add your word to mine. Coming to see that Mrs Finchley is doing what she ought! Yes, it’s likely she wouldn’t be, after being my housekeeper these fifteen years! So you tell Jenny to leave me be, and not think I’ll be offended, because I won’t. She’ll heed what you say.’

  ‘I hope she would tell me to go to the devil,’ answered Adam. He saw that Mr Chawleigh was looking, for once in his life, confounded, and laughed. ‘What a very odd notion you have of me, sir!’

  ‘The notion I have, my lord, is that you’re a gentleman, and I’m a Cit, and no getting away from it! What’s more, I mean my Jenny to be a lady!’

  ‘Then I wonder you should make it hard for her to support that character!’ Adam retorted.

  ‘Damme if I know what you mean by that!’ confessed Mr Chawleigh, rubbing his nose.

  ‘Women of consideration don’t despise their parents, sir.’

  ‘No, but they don’t have to fob ’em off on the ton!’ said Mr Chawleigh, making a swift recover. ‘I take it very kind of you, my lord, but to my way of thinking mushrooms like me aping the Quality don’t take: I’d as lief be a Cit as a counter-coxcomb! So don’t you go inviting me to your parties, because I won’t come!’

  Nor would he allow Adam to thank him for having bought his town house. ‘Don’t give it a thought!’ he begged. ‘I was glad to do it, for you’ve behaved mighty handsomely to me, my lord, and that was something I could do for you, over and above what was agreed on. And if there’s anything you don’t like, you throw it away, and buy what you do fancy to take its place, and chalk it up to me! Though I must say,’ he added, looking complacently about him, ‘that Campbell has made it look slap up to the mark! I chose him because he makes furniture for the Prince Regent, and the Duke of York, so it stands to reason he must know what’s up to the knocker. No expense to be spared, I told him, but no trumpery! It’s pitch and pay with me, I said, but don’t you run off with the notion that I’m easily bobbed, for you’ll catch cold at that, and so I warn you! Well, I don’t say he didn’t try for a touch at me over that set of chairs in your boudoir, Jenny-love – nothing but bamboo they are, japanned! – but he took his oath they were all the kick, so I had ’em – after he’d knocked a bit off the price.’ He beamed benevolently upon his hosts. ‘You wouldn’t credit what it cost, first and last!’ he said simply. ‘But I don’t grudge a penny of it, as long as you’re satisfied!’

  Nine

  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 br