“But not at his expense, if you please, Jenny.”
“Oh, no! That is — ”
“I should have said, at his added expense. He has made a very handsome settlement, you know, besides all else, and I had rather by far endure these stripes than that you should ask him to change them.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “I only meant that he won’t wonder at my covering the chairs again when he sees the ones I shall embroider. Pray tell me what you wish, Adam! Must I not accept gifts from Papa?”
“What he chooses to give you for yourself is no concern of mine. But we’ll settle our household accounts ourselves.”
“Yes, Adam.” She added, after a thoughtful moment: “Though it may be a little difficult now and then. You see, whenever he sees some new thing which takes his fancy, like a Patent Lamp, or a washing-machine, I am afraid he will buy it for us, because that’s his way. Particularly anything which he thinks ingenious, like the Rumford Roaster, which he would have for our kitchen in Russell Square, I didn’t have to ask you if it was he who set up all those lamps: I knew it was, the instant I clapped eyes on them: lighting is one of the things he is particularly interested in. He was one of the biggest subscribers to Mr Winsor’s Light and Heat Company, and now, of course, he has a finger in the Gas Light and Coke Company.”
“Good God, will he try to bring gas-lamps into the house?”
She laughed. “No, no, he hasn’t run as mad as that! Though I’ve heard him say that the day will come when we shall have gas in houses!”
“Not in my house!” said Adam firmly.
“No, indeed!” she agreed.
She scanned the room again, but beyond remarking that it was a droll notion to set sofas on crocodile-legs made no further criticisms. However, when she reached her bedchamber she gave a gasp, and exclaimed: “Good gracious, does Papa think I’m Cleopatra? Oh, I never saw such a bed in my life! Whatever does he suppose I shall look like in it?”
It was certainly a startling piece of furniture, of mahogany inlaid with silver, the head decorated with carved Isis. Adam was amused, but Martha Pinhoe was unequivocally disapproving. “Well, may you ask, Miss Jenny — my lady, I should say! Heathenish, that’s what I call it, and I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over the Master! For there’s worse to come!”
“Good God, what?” demanded Jenny.
“You’ll see, my lady!” said Miss Pinhoe darkly. “But not before his lordship! Indecent, that’s what it is! You wait, that’s all!”
“If it’s indecent I think I ought to see it, not her ladyship!” interposed Adam. “Go away, Jenny! Martha is going to disclose the horrid secret to me, so that I may decide whether it’s fit for you to see.”
“For shame, my lord!” said Miss Pinhoe, whose first deferential manner towards him had lasted for rather less than a week. Her defences breached by the smile which had won for him so many well-wishers, it had not been many days before she was treating him as though he as well as Jenny had been her nurseling. She now told him, with a severity which only the initiated would have recognized as a sign of doting fondness, that it was no laughing matter. He cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her, but she was adamant, so he went away, to discover what fell changes the hand of Mr Chawleigh had wrought in the bedchamber which had been his father’s. He was relieved to find that the only innovation was a shaving-stand of really excellent design. He was exchanging a few words with his valet when the most spontaneous peal of laughter he had yet heard from Jenny gave the lie to Miss Pinhoe’s words, and drew him back to his bride’s room.
“Oh, my lord, only look!” Jenny besought him, mopping her eyes with one hand, and indicating with the other the door leading into the dressing-room. “Oh, I shall die! Where did Papa come by such a notion?”
Mr Chawleigh, transforming the dressing-room into a bathroom, lined with mirrors and draped with silk curtains, had provided his daughter with a bath in the shape of a shelclass="underline" a circumstance which prompted Adam to say, after a stunned moment: “Clearly, from Botticelli — the Birth of Venus!”
“Oh!” wailed Jenny, cast into fresh agonies. “And I’m not even pretty!”
“No, and nor you’re not an abandoned hussy neither, my lady!” interpolated her outraged handmaiden. “Now, give over this instant! I’m sure I don’t know what his lordship must be thinking of you, laughing yourself into stitches over what a modest young lady would blush to mention!”
“Yes, but it’s a most ingenious affair, you know!” said Adam, who was inspecting it in mingled interest and amusement. “Look, Jenny! The water comes into it through this pipe, from that cylinder — I wonder what fuel is used for heating it?”
“It’s no matter what’s used, my lord!” said Miss Pinhoe, her eyes snapping. “While I have charge of her ladyship, she’ll have hot water brought up to her bedroom, and take her bath before the fire, like a Christian! As for kindling a fire under that nasty contraption, why, I’d be afraid for my life! The next thing we’d know would be that it had exploded, like the new boiler, which was another of the Master’s clever notions, and if you don’t remember what a mess that made of everything, Miss Jenny, I do!”
Jenny’s bathroom was not Mr Chawleigh’s only clever notion. Having cast a critical eye over the sanitary arrangements in Grosvenor Street, he drove his army of plumbers to create, out of the antiquated apartment discreetly tucked under the staircase, a water-closet which, in his own phrase, was Something Like. When he dined with the young couple on the following evening, he insisted on demonstrating and explaining to Adam the several features which made the new Bramah model superior to the old; and discoursed with so much assurance on valves, sliders, overhead cisterns, and stink-traps that Adam presently said curiously: “You know a great deal about these things, sir!”
“Ay, you may lay your life I do. You won’t find Jonathan Chawleigh investing his blunt in something he don’t understand, my lord!” replied Mr Chawleigh.
He enjoyed himself very much that evening, but he warned his daughter not to make a habit of inviting him to her house. “For I don’t expect it, and, what’s more, I told his lordship at the outset that there’d be no need for him to fear he’d have me hanging on him like a barnacle. Now, don’t look glum, love! I’ll visit you now and now, when you’re not expecting company, but don’t you dish me up to your grand friends, because it wouldn’t do — not if you’re to cut a figure in society, which I’ve set my heart on.”
“I know you have, Papa, but if you’re thinking I coaxed Adam into letting me invite you tonight you’re out! He said I was to do so, and that’s how it will always be, I think, because he is — he is most truly the gentleman!”
“Ay, so he is,” agreed Mr Chawleigh. “Well, I’ll have to tell him to his head I don’t look to be invited to your parties, and that’s all there is to it!”
He did this, adding that Adam must dissuade Jenny from visiting Russell Square too frequently. “I’ve told her there’s no call for her to do so, my lord, but it’ll be just as well if you add your word to mine. Coming to see that Mrs Finchley is doing what she ought! Yes, it’s likely she wouldn’t be, after being my housekeeper these fifteen years! So you tell Jenny to leave me be, and not think I’ll be offended, because I won’t. She’ll heed what you say.”
“I hope she would tell me to go to the devil,” answered Adam. He saw that Mr Chawleigh was looking, for once in his life, confounded, and laughed. “What a very odd notion you have of me, sir!”