Adam found no difficulty in believing this, but he said gently: “Don’t you think, perhaps, that Mrs Chawleigh would have wished to see her daughter married to a man of superior rank, and greater substance than mine?”
“Ay, I don’t doubt she would,” replied Mr Chawleigh frankly. “But she didn’t want for sense, and she’d have seen as fast as I did that it was no manner of use thinking of Marquises and Earls for a girl like Jenny. Mind, no expense was spared on her rearing! I’m no muckworm, and I never grudged a groat of the fortune I spent on educating her! And this I will say, I got her turned out in prime style! Every inch a lady she is! She had all the extras: pianoforte, singing, dancing, French and Italian, water-colour painting, use of the backboard — everything! And as for book-learning, why, I often say she’s as good as an almanack! I sent her to school in Kensington, you know. She didn’t like it above half: wanted to stay at home with me, but I knew better than to let her do that I could have got governesses for her, and dancing-masters, and the rest, but that wouldn’t have helped her to rub shoulders with the nobs, would it? Which is what she has done, make no mistake about it! Ay, I sent her to Miss Satterleigh’s Seminary for the Daughters of Gentlemen.” A rumbling laugh shook him. “If I was to tell you what it cost me, first and last, my lord, you wouldn’t credit it! A Bluestocking, that’s what that tabby is supposed to be, but what I say is that she should have set up a two-to-one shop instead of a school, for a bigger lickpenny I wish I may never meet! Held up her long nose at my Jenny she did, until I let her know how full of juice I was. After that — ” He paused, caressing his chin, and grinning reflectively. “Well, I’ve got to own she was a damned knowing one! There’s not many can boast of having put the change on Jonathan Chawleigh, but she did it, just as soon as she saw I was ready to pay through the nose for what I wanted. Which I did, I promise you. However, I don’t grudge it to her, because, though it didn’t answer as well as I’d hoped for, that wasn’t her fault.” He sat in ruminative silence for a moment or two, before disclosing, in a burst of confidence: “You won’t find me puffing off my goods above their value, so I don’t mean to tell you my Jenny’s a beauty, because she ain’t. Mind you, she’s by no means an antidote: not squinney, nor buttertoothed, nor anything of that land! I’m bound to own, though, that she don’t take. She’s quiet, you see, and as shy as be-damned. That’s what floored me, and I don’t deny there’s been times when I was downright vexed with her, for she hasn’t lacked for chances to get arm-in-armly with the nobs, if she’d only made a push to do it, instead of shrinking into a corner, and staying dumb as a mouse, so that no one so much as noticed her. Now, if she’d been of Miss Julia’s cut — ! There’s a beauty for you! She don’t lack for suitors, I’ll warrant you an egg at Easter! Ay, that was the one friendship Jenny struck up at school that did make me fed hopeful. The lord knows what made ’em take a fancy to each other, for they ain’t a bit alike, setting aside that my Jenny’s two years older than Miss Julia. That was how I came to be acquainted with my Lord Oversley. Well, I was able to do him a good turn at a time when he was in bad loaf, which put him, as you might say, under a bit of an obligation. Now, him and me’s as different as chalk from cheese, but we got to be pretty friendly. He’s a man I like, and one as I can talk to without roundaboutation, which I did, telling him straight what I wanted for my girl. Of course, I wasn’t looking to him to find a lord for Jenny, but what I did want, and what I got, was for my Lady Oversley to put her in the way of meeting a lord or two. There’s no one could have been kinder: that I will say! She had my Jenny to all manner of grand, parties, besides inviting her just to spend the day with Miss Julia, the way she’d get acquainted with all the swells that came there paying morning visits, and the like. It ain’t her blame that nothing came of it.” He sighed, and shook his head. “Well, it’s not often I’ve been taken at fault, but I own I was beginning to think myself at a stand when his lordship came to me, to propose I should consider whether a Viscount wouldn’t answer the purpose, because if so he rather fancied he might be able to put me in the way of getting next and nigh the very man for my money. Very frank and open he was with me, and a rare good character he gave you, my lord, if you won’t take snuff at my saying so. Nor at my telling you that I wasn’t by any means mad after the scheme. Letting alone a Viscount’s not an Earl, whichever way you look at it, I wouldn’t want to rivet my Jenny to anyone that was ready to marry a midden for muck, as the saying is. Nay, you’ve no need to take an affront into your head, my lord! The first thing my Lord Oversley told me was that the chances were you wouldn’t like the notion — which I took leave to doubt, begging your pardon, until he told me who you was. Lord Lynton was what he called you, and, barring that I knew your pa was a member of what they call the Carlton House Set, and a buck of the first cut, by all accounts, I was none the wiser. But, of course, as soon as he disclosed to me that you were Captain Deveril — well, that put a different complexion on the matter!”
“Did it?” said Adam, regarding him with a fascinated eye. “I can’t think why it should, but — but pray continue, sir!”
“Ay, it did,” nodded Mr Chawleigh. “Not that I’d ever clapped eyes on you myself, but I’ve always had a strong notion that my Jenny liked you better than any of the sprigs of fashion she was acquainted with.”
Startled, Adam said: “But have I ever met — ?” He stopped, realizing, too late, the infelicity of this involuntary exclamation.
Mr Chawleigh, to his considerable relief, was unoffended. “Ay, you’ve met her,” he replied indulgently. “Often you’ve met her, but it don’t surprise me that you shouldn’t call her to mind, for that’s how it always is: she lets the other girls shine her down. She’s no gabster, but when you were in town last year, worn to a bone with what was being done to you by a pack of surgeons, as they call themselves, though to my way of thinking butchers would be nearer the mark, and not one of ’em will I have lay a finger on me, for I’d as lief be put to bed with a shovel and be done with it — well, when you were hobbling about, as blue as megrim,” said Mr Chawleigh, unexpectedly picking up the main thread of his argument, “she used to speak of you now and now: nothing much, you know, but enough to make me prick up my ears. Seems you weren’t so taken up with Miss Julia but what you could find the time to behave civil to Jenny.”
A vague memory of having on several occasions found a strange female visiting Julia flickered in Adam’s mind, but as he was quite unable to remember what she had looked like, or what he could conceivably have done to earn her approval, he prudently refrained from any pretended recognition. Mr Chawleigh might be discursive, but no one encountering his shrewd eyes could suppose him to be one whom it would be easy to deceive.