A Civil Contract Read online

  ‘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. Or from 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’m persuaded 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!’

  Seventeen

  Three days later Julia came to Fontley. Lord Oversley’s seat was situated north of Peterborough, and so within easy distance of Fontley. Julia rode over, accompanied by Rockhill and two of her friends: Miss Kilverley and her brother, an inarticulate and sporting young gentleman who reminded Jenny of Adam’s cousin Osbert. Julia explained that the visit was unpremeditated. ‘We set out to visit Croyland Abbey,’ she said, ‘but when Mary – you do remember Mary, don’t you? – learned how near we were to Fontley nothing would do for her but to ride on to pay you a visit!’

  Jenny, who remembered Miss Kilverley as one of Julia’s satellites, somewhat grimly observed this retiring damsel’s blush, and look of startled enquiry, but said, as she shook hands: ‘Yes, I remember you very well. How do you do?’

  ‘Abominable to have taken you by surprise!’ Julia said gaily. ‘But I couldn’t resist!’

  ‘Why should you?’ Jenny returned. ‘I’ll have a message sent down to Lynton directly: we are getting in the last of the harvest, you know, and he’s helping on one of the farms.’

  ‘Helping?’ Julia echoed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny, with her small, tight smile. ‘Dressed up in a smock too, which I can’t say becomes him. But that’s his notion of enjoyment! I’ve this instant come back from taking him a nuncheon. Plum cake and beer is what the reapers get at this hour, but beer he can’t stomach: it makes him bilious. Now, do you all step this way, and partake of a nuncheon too!’

  When Adam came in he found the visitors in the Prior’s Parlour, still sitting over the remains of a light repast. He greeted Julia with the ease of long friendship, but he could not keep the warmth from his eyes when they rested on her. She gave him her hand, a smile that was wistful in her own eyes, but a quizzing speech on her lips. ‘Your smock, Farmer Giles! Where is it? I am disappointed!’

  ‘Ah, the farmer always puts off his smock when he has company