A Civil Contract Read online

  It was still daylight, but although the curtains had not been drawn across the windows the candles had been lit in the magnificent crystal chandelier that hung from the ceiling, and in all the wall-lustres. A myriad points of light momentarily dazzled Adam. He had a confused impression of glitter, mingled with yellow satin, gilded mirrors, chairs, and picture-frames before his attention was claimed by his host, who surged forward to meet him, his hand out-thrust, and a loquacious welcome on his lips.

  ‘Come in, my lord, come in!’ he said hospitably. ‘I’m heartily glad to have the honour of receiving you, and on the stroke of the hour, too, which I didn’t look for, not after the scold I got from my ladies here for having invited you to dine so early! Well, well, I know it ain’t fashionable to dine before eight, but I hope you’ll pardon it, for the fact is I get so sharp-set if I’m kept waiting for my dinner that there’s no bearing it. But I don’t know when I’ve been so put out! If your lordship didn’t drive up in a common hack! Now, if you’d only told me you hadn’t brought your carriage up to town I’d have sent my own to fetch you! Well, you’ll not go back to Fenton’s in a hack, that I promise you! Here, Butterbank! send round to the stables to tell ’em the carriage will be wanted later on!’

  ‘My dear sir, you are very good, but I assure you it is unnecessary!’ Adam said. ‘Don’t turn your coachman out on my account, I beg!’

  His protest was swept aside, Mr Chawleigh observing that his servants all seemed to live at rack and manger, and would be the better for some work to do.

  Up till this moment, his formidable bulk had obscured the other two occupants of the room from Adam’s view, but he now bethought him of his duties as host, and turned to perform the necessary introductions. This he did in a fashion of his own, saying: ‘Well, now, here we have Mrs Quarley-Bix, my lord, and that’s my daughter!’

  An angular female came forward, extending her hand, and uttering, in a voice expressive of disproportionate delight: ‘Lord Lynton! How do you do? I believe I have not previously had the pleasure of meeting you, but I must have recognized you, I believe, from your resemblance to your amiable mother.’

  Adam shook hands, responding with some mechanical civility. He realized, thankfully, that his instinct had not betrayed him when it prompted him to present himself in a swallowtailed coat. Mrs Quarley-Bix was wearing a low-bosomed gown of lilac sarsnet, with a train, and a quantity of ribbon-trimming. A turban was set on her head, kid gloves covered her arms, and as well as her reticule she carried a fan.

  Even more richly attired was the young lady who blushed vividly, and dropped a slight curtsy, as Adam’s eyes turned towards her, for although a dress of figured French muslin was perfectly proper to her years it was so loaded with lace and silk floss that very little of it could be seen. A row of remarkably fine pearls was clasped round her throat; pearl drops, rather too large for her short neck, hung from her ears; several flashing bracelets adorned each arm; and a brooch composed of rubies and diamonds was stuck into the lace at her bosom. A tinsel shawl, and spangled slippers completed an ensemble which only so fond a critic as her father could have thought becoming.

  Miss Chawleigh had not inherited her sire’s inches. Uncharitable persons had been known to describe hers as a little squab figure. Adam was not a tall man, but her head only just topped his shoulder. There was a suggestion of squareness about her; she was already plump, and would probably become stout in later life. She was certainly not a beauty, but there was nothing in the least objectionable in her countenance. Her eyes were not large, but they were of a clear gray, well-opened (except when she was amused, when they narrowed to twinkling slits), and holding a look of grave reflection; her hair, elaborately crimped and curled, was mouse-coloured; she had a small, determined mouth, a button of a nose, and a complexion which would have been good could she but have overcome an unhappy tendency to blush fierily whenever she was embarrassed.

  She was as unlike Miss Oversley as she could be. There was no brilliance in her eyes, no allure in her smile, no music in her flat-toned voice, and not the smallest suggestion of the ethereal either in her person or in her bearing. Where Julia seemed to float, she trod with a firm, brisk step; where Julia could be enchantingly arch she was invariably matter-of-fact. She enjoyed a joke, but did not always perceive that one had been made; and she looked as though she had more sense than sensibility.

  No blinding flash of recognition struck Adam, but he was able to identify her with the commonplace girl whom he had too often found in Mount Street a year earlier. He went up to her, saying, with his endearing smile, and easy civility: ‘I need no introduction to Miss Chawleigh, sir, for we are old acquaintances. How do you do? What a long time it seems since we last met!’

  She gave him her hand, but replied only with a quick, spasmodic smile, and a very fleeting glance up at him. The carnation deepened in her cheeks; he felt sincerely sorry for her embarrassment, and tried to help her over the awkward moment by making some remark about the size of Russell Square: surely the largest in London?

  Fortunately, since she remained tongue-tied, he was answered by Mr Chawleigh, who was delighted to tell him the history of the square, the circumstances which had led him to remove to it from Southampton Row, and the price he had paid for his house in it.

  ‘It wouldn’t suit me to be peacocking about among the nobs in Mayfair – not but what we see plenty of ’em driving up to No. 65, now that this painting-fellow’s come to live there, I can tell you! They come to have their portraits taken, and very fine they are, by all accounts. So they should be, is what I say! You’d hardly credit it, my lord, but he’ll chouse you out of eighty or a hundred guineas for a small picture I wouldn’t give a hundred shillings for!’

  ‘Oh, you are too satirical, Mr Chawleigh!’ protested Mrs Quarley-Bix. ‘You must know, Lord Lynton, that we speak of Mr Lawrence. Such genius! I positively dote on his pictures, and – dare I say it, dear Mr Chawleigh? – have often indulged the wish that you would commission him to take our sweet Miss Chawleigh’s likeness.’

  ‘Ay, well, I did have a notion of it, but when he got to talking of four hundred guineas for a full-length, which is what I wanted, because if I have the thing done at all I’ll have it done handsomely – well, I was off! Having a touch at me, is what I thought! However, there’s no saying but what I may come to it yet – that’s to say, if things go the way I want ’em to,’ he added significantly.

  ‘You, I daresay, Lord Lynton, have been familiar with this quarter of the town when Bedford House was still standing? One can’t but deplore its passing! So noble a mansion! so many associations! What a pang it must cause you to see the estate built over!’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Adam replied. ‘I don’t think I ever visited Bedford House above once in my life, and I was so young then that I have only the dimmest recollections of the event.’

  ‘But you are acquainted with the Duke, I need hardly ask? He reminds one so much of his brother, the late Duke, whom, of course, you must often have seen. One of your father’s friends, was he not? Ardent agriculturists, both of them, you know. You observed the Fifth Duke’s statue in the square? One of Westmacott’s, and quite in his best manner – if I am any judge of the matter!’

  ‘Well, it’s a fine, big statue,’ conceded Mr Chawleigh, ‘but what a Duke wants with a plough I don’t see, nor yet with agriculture, which is work for farmers, not for Dukes. Each man to his own last is my motto.’

  ‘Oh, but I assure you, dear sir, agriculture has become quite the thing!’ cried Mrs Quarley-Bix. ‘I believe it was Mr Coke of Norfolk who made it fashionable, and he, you know –’

  ‘Lord, ma’am, how you do run on!’ exclaimed Mr Chawleigh impatiently. ‘Ah, there’s the dinner-bell at last! Jenny, my dear, you’ll lead the way downstairs, and we’ll hope you’ve ordered a neat dinner to set before his lordship, even if there wasn’t a turtle to be had, not for love or money. But I warned you it would be pot-luck, my lord!’ He added, in case Adam should take him