A Civil Contract Read online

  This did not promise well for the success of the visit; it was not, in fact, at all successful, but neither Mr Chawleigh’s strictures on the house, nor his suggestions for its improvement was to blame for this. To Jenny’s relief, Adam took these in good part. Mr Chawleigh was powerless to put any of his schemes into execution, so Adam was able to listen to them with amusement. They included the throwing out of several bows and bays, the employment of a landscape gardener to lay out the gardens to better advantage, and the introduction of a herd of deer to the park. Mr Chawleigh argued that deer would make Fontley more the thing, but Adam said: ‘If you wish to bestow a herd on me, sir, let it be a herd of short-horns!’

  But Mr Chawleigh would have nothing to do with cattle. He told Adam that he had a bee in his head, which made Jenny exclaim: ‘Now, that’s something I want! I’ve been talking to Wicken – he’s our head gardener, Papa! – and we are agreed that a few hives are exactly what we need here. And I for one don’t want a grand landscape gardener coming to upset us all! Just as I’ve started to bring the knot-garden back into order, and have ordered more rose-trees for planting later! No, I thank you!’

  ‘Ay!’ said Mr Chawleigh. ‘Pottering about a garden is new to you, my girl, but I’ll warrant you’ll soon tire of it! And as for cows, my lord, you’ve no call to meddle with such, and you’ll get none from me! You leave farming to those as was bred to it, and that’s my advice to you!’

  His disapproval of Adam’s agricultural activities was profound, but this was not what made his visit disastrous. It did not take him more than a day to realize that Jenny was not looking well; and he was so much inclined to set this to the account of Fontley’s situation that she told him the truth.

  The result was unhappy. His first delight was swiftly followed by wrath; for when he asked when the infant would be born, and learned that it would be in March, he did a rapid sum in his head, and demanded incredulously: ‘You’ve been in a promising way these three months, and never a word to me?’

  Neither she nor Martha Pinhoe succeeded in mollifying him; it was Adam who soothed his rage and his hurt. He said: ‘Yes, you have every right to be vexed, sir. I should have insisted on your being told – and also my mother.’

  ‘Oh!’ growled Mr Chawleigh. ‘So she don’t know either?’

  ‘No one knows, except Martha and our doctor here. I don’t think I should have known if I hadn’t seen that she was unwell, and pretty well forced her to tell me.’

  ‘You don’t say!’ gasped Mr Chawleigh. ‘What the devil’s got into her? It ain’t coming by way of the back door! Well, if ever I knew my Jenny to behave so missish!’

  Adam smiled at that, but replied: ‘I think her reluctance to tell either you or me was partly due to her dislike of what she calls fuss. And partly to spare you the anxiety she guessed you would feel. She’s very much attached to you, you know, sir.’

  This diplomacy was not without its effect. Mr Chawleigh pondered for a few moments, champing his powerful jaws. ‘A fine way to show she’s attached to me!’ he said at last, determined not to be won over too easily. ‘Her own father, and the last to hear of it!’ He went on fulminating for a minute or two, but suddenly said: ‘Thought I’d be anxious, did she? Well, she didn’t miss her tip! You may lay your life I’m anxious, my lord!’

  ‘I hope you need not be, sir. Our doctor here assures me I need feel no apprehension.’

  ‘And who’s he, pray?’ said Mr Chawleigh scathingly. ‘I’ll have no country sawbones attending my Jenny! Croft’s the man for her, and Croft she shall have, say what you will!’

  ‘It is you who now have the advantage of me,’ said Adam, a little coldly. ‘Who, if you please, is Croft?’

  ‘He’s an accoucheur – top-of-the-trees! If I could have brought him in to Mrs Chawleigh, him being then what he is now, she might be with me this day – ay, and I might have had a son to my name too!’

  ‘But that’s precisely what Jenny has set her face against – to have such a person called in, driving her crazy! If I knew of any cause for alarm the case would be different, and I shouldn’t hesitate –’

  ‘It ain’t what you know, but what I know!’ interrupted Mr Chawleigh. ‘And if you think you can come the lord over me when it’s my Jenny that’s in question –’ He stopped, controlling himself with a strong effort.

  There was just a moment’s pause before Adam, recognizing that this outburst sprang from concern, said quietly: ‘No, I don’t think that. I must have expressed myself very badly if you could suppose –’

  ‘Nay, I didn’t mean it!’ said Mr Chawleigh roughly. ‘You couldn’t have treated me more civil if I’d been a Duke, and well I know it! The thing is that it’s got me regularly nattered – me knowing what I do know! Now, lookee here, lad! She’s the very make of her ma, my Jenny! Three times did Mrs C. miscarry – and the lord only knows how Jenny came to be born hale and hearty! – A son was what Mrs C. wanted – well, so I did too, though I’ve lived to regret it! She went her full time at the end, and a son it was, but he was stillborn, and Mrs C. was taken from me, like I told you. She wouldn’t have a fuss made, and that’s what came of it! I won’t have it happen to my Jenny, no matter what you say, nor she says either!’

  ‘Very well,’ Adam said. ‘What do you wish me to do? To take her back to London? I will, of course – but she has been in better health since we came to Fontley, and her wish is to remain here.’

  ‘Ay!’ said Mr Chawleigh, with a bark of laughter. ‘Because she knows that’s your wish, my lord! But she don’t bamboozle me! My Jenny wish to be stuck down in the country for months on end? That’s a loud one! Moped to death, that’s what she’d be!’

  ‘Would she?’ Adam said slowly. ‘I own, I thought so too, but she isn’t moped, you know.’

  ‘She hasn’t been here much above a month!’ retorted Mr Chawleigh grimly. ‘What’s more she don’t know what it will be like in the winter! I’m no countryman, but don’t you tell me that you ain’t surrounded by water here, because I wouldn’t believe you!’

  ‘You may at least believe me when I tell you that Fontley has never yet been affected by floods!’ said Adam, nettled.

  ‘Ay, so I may, but you won’t tell me you’ve never had the water come up over the road, and found yourself on an island!’

  ‘If there were any likelihood of that I would bring Jenny to town long before it happened, I promise you. We should have plenty of warning.’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll have plenty of warning that there’s going to be a heavy fall of snow, such as will block all the roads for a sennight?’ said Mr Chawleigh, with heavy sarcasm. ‘What if we get a winter like we had last year, with even the Thames so hard-frozen that there was a fair held on it, and the whole country snowbound? A nice thing it would be if Jenny was to be took ill of a sudden! Why, you’d never get the rabbit-catcher here, let alone –’ He broke off in confusion, and corrected himself. ‘The month-nurse, I should say! Yes, you may laugh, my lord, but it wouldn’t be a laughing matter!’

  ‘No, of course it wouldn’t. But these apprehensions never troubled my mother, sir! Of her five children, four of us were born at Fontley – one of my sisters in November, myself in January.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to say to anything. Without meaning any disrespect to her la’ship, she’s one of the lean ’uns, and it’s my belief they brush through the business a deal more easily than roundabouts like my Jenny.’

  Adam was silent for a moment; then he said: ‘Very well, sir. It shall be as you think best. But I’m afraid she won’t like it.’

  This was soon found to be an understatement. When the news was broken to Jenny that she was to return to London, there to await the birth of her child, under the aegis of a fashionable accoucheur, she flew into a towering rage which considerably startled Adam, and reminded him forcibly of her father. That worthy was also surprised. He said that he had never known her to put herself into such a passion, and recommended her not to cut up so stiff. She r