A Civil Contract Read online

  ‘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 was 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 needlewoman.’

  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 chamber-maids 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 there-after, 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 install 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 recovered,�€