“The notion I have, my lord, is that you’re a gentleman, and I’m a Cit, and no getting away from it! What’s more, I mean my Jenny to be a lady!”
“Then I wonder you should make it hard for her to support that character!” Adam retorted.
“Damme if I know what you mean by that!” confessed Mr Chawleigh, rubbing his nose.
“Women of consideration don’t despise their parents, sir.”
“No, but they don’t have to fob ’em off on the ton!” said Mr Chawleigh, making a swift recover. “I take it very kind of you, my lord, but to my way of thinking mushrooms like me aping the Quality don’t take: I’d as lief be a Cit as a counter-coxcomb! So don’t you go inviting me to your parties, because I won’t come!”
Nor would he allow Adam to thank him for having bought his town-house. “Don’t give it a thought!” he begged. “I was glad to do it, for you’ve behaved mighty handsomely to me, my lord, and that was something I could do for you, over and above what was agreed on. And if there’s anything you don’t like, you throw it away, and buy what you do fancy to take its place, and chalk it up to me! Though I must say,” he added, looking complacently about him, “that Campbell has made it look slap up to the mark! I chose him because he makes furniture for the Prince Regent, and the Duke of York, so it stands to reason he must know what’s up to the knocker. No expense to be spared, I told him, but no trumpery! It’s pitch and pay with me, I said, but don’t you run off with the notion that I’m easily bobbed, for you’ll catch cold at that, and so I warn you! Well, I don’t say he didn’t try for a touch at me over that set of chairs in your boudoir, Jenny-love — nothing but bamboo they are, japanned! — but he took his oath they were all the kick, so I had ’em — after he’d knocked a bit off the price.” He beamed benevolently upon his hosts. “You. wouldn’t credit what it cost, first and last!” he said simply. “But I don’t grudge a penny of it, as long as you’re satisfied!”
Chapter IX
Travelling in a light chaise, behind four horses, the Lyntons reached Fontley just before six o’clock. The Priory was screened from the road by the trees in its park, but there was one place from which a long view of the house could be obtained. Adam directed the postilions to pull up there. He said: “There it is, Jenny!”
She could tell from his voice how much he loved it, and she wanted to say something that would please him. Leaning forward, she was disappointed to find that it lay at too great a distance from the road for her to be able to distinguish any particular features. She could see only an irregular mass of buildings, not lofty, but covering a large expanse of ground; and the only thing that occurred to her to say was: “It is quite different from Rushleigh! — just as you told me.”
He signed to the postilions to go on. “Yes, quite different. How does this country strike you?”
She had been thinking how inferior it was to the undulating Hampshire scene; she answered haltingly: “Well, it is new to me, and not just what I expected, but I am sure I shall grow to like it.”
“I hope you may, but I suspect one has to be born in the fens to love them. We are crossing Deeping Fen now.” He added, as the chaise bumped and lurched: “I’m sorry: the surface is shocking, isn’t it? We call these roads driftways. That was a grip we passed over — a trench cut cross-ways for drainage.”
It sounded rather primitive. She scanned the expanse of level fields on either side of the unguarded road, and asked with some misgiving if they were often flooded.
“In winter, yes,” he acknowledged. “Drainage is our chief problem, and the most costly, alas! We get soak, too: that’s sea-water coming up through the silt when the drains are full.”
“I thought it must be pretty damp as soon as I saw those great ditches.”
“Droves. Are you afraid of being flooded out at Fontley? You need not be! I hope to be able to improve matters elsewhere too: I think we must be fifty years behind the times here,”
“I don’t know anything about country things: I must learn them.”
“I’m ashamed to say that I know very little myself — only what any boy reared on an agricultural estate would be bound to pick up. Here we are: this is the gatehouse — part of the old Priory — and here’s Mrs Ridgehill coming out to give you your first welcome! Say something kind to her: she is one of my oldest friends!”
He had noticed at Rushleigh that she was shy of the servants, and too much inclined to hide this under a brusque manner, but she acquitted herself quite creditably on this occasion, responding to the lodgekeeper’s salutations and compliments with no more awkwardness than Mrs Ridgehill thought proper in a bride. The chaise moved forward again; and presently, round a bend in the avenue, the one remaining arch and the several crumbling walls and pillars of the ruined chapel came into view, and, beyond, the heterogeneous mass of the Priory itself. Staring at the long, broken frontage of mingled stone and brick Jenny gave utterance to the first thought that came into her head: “Good gracious! However many servants do you employ to keep it in order?”
He was not obliged to reply to this, for at that moment he caught sight of Charlotte, hurrying across the lawn with an armful of flowers. He directed Jenny’s attention to her; and at once she was assailed by a horrid doubt. She exclaimed, her eyes on Charlotte’s plain round dress of white cambric: “Oh, I am dressed too fine! I didn’t know — and there was no one to tell me!”
“Nonsense! you look very becoming!” he replied, jumping down from the chaise as his sister came running across the drive. “Proserpin gathering flowers! But I trust gloomy Dis won’t forestall Lambert, Charlotte!”
Charlotte, who was not bookish, paid no heed to this, but exclaimed breathlessly: “Oh, my dear Adam, we thought you could not be here for another hour, and had put dinner back accordingly! And here I am, only this instant finished cutting a few flowers for Jenny’s room, and in this old gown too! You must excuse me, Jenny!”
This speech might have been designed to put Jenny at her ease, but she still felt, as she descended from the chaise, that perhaps a puce silk dress, a velvet pelisse, and a feathered bonnet were a little out of place at Fontley. Charlotte, however, seemed to see nothing amiss, but kissed her, and led her into the house.
Jenny was relieved, and a good deal surprised, to find that there was far less ceremony attached to this homecoming than would have attended their arrival in Russell Square. The only footmen she saw were two young men, who wore dark livery and their own unpowdered hair; and the butler, who was elderly, and a little bent, would have looked insignificant beside Mr Chawleigh’s majestic Butterbank.
“I must take you to Mama directly,” Charlotte said. “She was sitting with my aunt in the Little Drawing-room — oh, Adam, I should have written to warn you that my Aunt Nassington is here, with my uncle, and Osbert too, but there was no time, for they took us quite by surprise! Not that I mean — that is to say, I am very much obliged to her for coming on this occasion, only we never supposed that she would, though Mama invited her, of course.”
“Oh, lord!” said Adam, pulling a grimace. “Don’t let her bully you, Jenny — or look to me for protection! She frightens me to death!”
“For shame, Adam!” Charlotte reproved him, leading Jenny towards the broad oaken stairway. “You mustn’t heed him, Jenny! My aunt is very outspoken, but she is perfectly good-natured, I promise you!”
Following his wife and sister up the stairs, across an ante-room to the Long Drawing-room, and down to the Little Drawing-room beyond it, Adam wondered how Jenny would support her introduction to Lady Nassington, and hoped that she would not become tongue-tied. He was afraid that her ladyship’s overbearing ways and caustic speech would paralyse her, and was consequently as much surprised as relieved to discover that Jenny, rendered monosyllabic by Lady Lynton, responded to Lady Nassington without embarrassment.