“No, very likely not, for he’s only been here a twelvemonth. Now, I told you I wouldn’t meddle, but there’s no teaching that man his trade, Adam, and to see you pecking at your food as you do is more than I can bear — though I’m sure I don’t blame you! So, if you’re agreeable, we’ll send for Scholes, and then maybe you’ll fancy your dinner again.”
“I own it would be pleasant, but how will a French-trained cook relish our old-fashioned kitchens here? I doubt if he’ll come into the country, Jenny.”
“He’ll come fast enough when he knows it will mean another twenty pounds added to his wages,” said Jenny caustically. “As for the kitchens, if you don’t wish them to be altered, Scholes must make the best of them; but if you would but put in a good closed stove, like the Bodley we have at Lynton House, you’d find it an economy. The fuel this great open range burns — !”
“Does it? I expect we should have had a different stove years ago. Send for what you like! Anything else?”
“No, thank you. I shall be hiring a few more servants, but that needn’t concern you, for with Lynton House shut up I’m wonderfully beforehand with the world.”
Mrs Dawes received the news of these forthcoming changes with mixed feelings. Asked to say which of the closed stoves now on the market she considered the best, she preferred to advance no opinion, being, she said, unacquainted with any of them. But this was not true. At Membury Place her dear Miss Charlotte had a closed stove; she had seen and coveted it, and even indulged the hope that his lordship’s rich wife would instal one at Fontley. She viewed with less favour the importation of a top-lofty town cook, but was considerably softened by Jenny’s saying: “If something’s not done we shall have his lordship dwindling to a thread-paper! Well, I don’t doubt you know as well as I do that for all he never complains or seems to notice what’s set before him he’s very nice in his tastes — not to say capricious! — and if the meat’s not dressed as he likes it he doesn’t eat more of it than would keep a kitten alive.”
The suggestion that his lordship might waste away from lack of sustenance made an instant appeal. Mrs Dawes relented enough to say that he had always been one who had to be tempted to his dinner. Jenny next asked her if she could recall which warehouse had supplied the brocade that covered certain of the chairs. “For if only I could procure it I’d like to have them re-covered,” she said. “Not changing them, but making them the same as they were before. His lordship wouldn’t wish anything to be different, and I wouldn’t for the world — Well; I don’t mean to turn the house out of doors, but what’s worn to shreds must be made new again!”
Mrs Dawes said that she didn’t know but what she might be able to recall the name of the warehouse; and, to discourage any idea that she had been won over, brought the interview to an end by saying that she was sorry the second housemaid had given Miss Pinhoe cause for complaint, and also that Miss Pinhoe had not seen fit to mention the matter to her — “when I should have dealt with it immediately, my lady.”
The haughty Miss Poolstock had been disliked by every member of the household, but her odious air of consequence had marked her as a dresser of the first respectability. Ten minutes spent in Miss Pinhoe’s company were enough to inform her fellows that she was not at all the sort of superior female a lady of real quality would employ as her personal maid. A rough tongue had brought her into instant collision with Mrs Dawes, and a feud of promising longevity seemed to be inevitable when a chance word revealed to Mrs Dawes that Miss Pinhoe came from her own county. Frigid enquiry elicited the information that Miss Pinhoe had first seen the light at Church Stretton, not seven miles from Mrs Dawes’s birthplace. From that moment the thaw set in, Miss Pinhoe recognizing in the daughter of a well-to-do farmer her social superior, and Mrs Dawes (once this point had been established) admitting Miss Pinhoe into the ranks of her intimates. Neither lady regarded the other with unqualified approval, but to the world they soon presented a solid Salopian front, and bored Dunster and Kinver at every meal in the Room by recalling ancient parochial scandals, and exhaustively pursuing obscure genealogies. Nor was it long before MissPinhoe had disclosed an interesting piece of information, which caused Mrs Dawes to regard her mistress with a more tolerant eye. Much would be forgiven to Jenny if she provided Fontley with an heir, but Mrs Dawes suspended final judgment, by no means confident of the issue. In her view, a sickly pregnancy heralded the birth of a daughter: an arrival which would show how unworthy of her position was my lord’s vulgar bride.
In fact, Jenny was beginning to overcome her sickness, but although she went briskly about her affairs she felt so far from well that she cried off from the Holkham week. Adam did not press the matter, but went alone, to mingle with the farmers of every degree who flocked to Holkham at this season, and to learn as much as he could from their discussions.
During his absence the new stove was installed; the reliable upholsterers summoned from Lincoln were set to work on the chair-covers; and the entire household was driven into strenuous activity: mending, making, cleaning, and polishing.
Charlotte, visiting her sister-in-law in case she should be lonely while Adam was away from home, exclaimed astonishment: “Jenny! Good gracious, how different everything looks! I declare, I hardly recognize dear old Fontley!”
“Oh, no!” Jenny uttered imploringly. “Don’t say that! Not different, Charlotte! I have been at such pains — ! You are looking at those curtains, but indeed they are exactly the same colour as the old ones that were so tattered! The same as they were used to be, before they became faded, I mean. I daresay you have forgotten, but when I unpicked the hems I saw what the colour had been, and was able to match the velvet.”
“To be sure!” Charlotte said hastily. “My dear sister, I didn’t mean the least disparagement! It is all beautiful! How clever you have been! All the furniture positively glowing, too, and the handles on that chest quite dazzling! I thought it had been a new one!”
In her anxiety to convince Jenny that she felt only admiration she praised every improvement rather too enthusiastically, until Jenny said, in a flattened voice: “You don’t like it, do you?”
“Yes, yes, I do! We have all of us so much regretted that poor Papa was unable to keep the house as it should be. I know it was sadly shabby. It is only that at first it seems, a little strange — How nonsensical I am! you will laugh at me for missing the dimness, and the faded curtains, but one grows so accustomed — ! We love it so much, you see, that even its shabbiness is dear to us.”
“I don’t understand that,” Jenny said. “Don’t you want to see it kept up to the knocker? To my way of thinking, that’s no way of loving it.” She added quickly: “I beg pardon! I shouldn’t have spoken so freely.”
“Oh, no! Of course, you are perfectly right! How pleased dear Adam will be, when he sees all that you have done!”
Jenny thought that he would not be pleased; and, remembering that Lydia had once expressed the hope that Fontley would not be changed, wondered if she would ever understand the Deverils.
But Adam neither exclaimed in admiration nor recoiled in dismay when he came home. He reached Fontley some hours later than had been expected, after a tiresome journey. It was past ten o’clock, and the candles had been lit, and the curtains drawn across the tall, Gothic windows. He was tired, and exasperated by a series of mishaps; it did not occur to him that the candle-smoke stains had vanished from the moulded ceiling, or that the furniture shone with beeswax: he only thought that never had his home appeared more mellow or more lovely.
His plump, commonplace little wife came down the stairs to meet him, treading across the hall with her firm step. She was neither beautiful nor graceful; she was even a little incongruous in so gracious a setting; but she was infinitely comfortable. She smiled at him, saying placidly: “That’s nice! Here you are, just in time for supper! We’ll have it in the Blue Parlour, to be cosy.”