He had told her that he would return in time for dinner, which was served at six, after the country habit. It occurred to him that no matter how long he kept her waiting she never said: “How late you are!” or: “What can have detained you?” He put his arm round her, kissing her cheek. “My dear, I’m so repentant! But you’re quite right not to comb my hair: it has not been my fault! First a broken linchpin, and next one of the wheelers going dead lame! An abominable journey!”
“Oh, how vexatious! And me thinking no more than that you’d put off your start because there was something pleasant offered you to do at Holkham! Well, that’s a great deal too bad, but never mind! Supper will be ready as soon as you are.”
“That will be in five minutes.” He gave her a hug, and kissed her again, this time on her firm little mouth. “You’re so kind to me, Jenny! I wish you may not indulge me so much that I become quite detestable!”
Her colour flamed into her cheeks; she said gruffly: “You’ll never be that to me. Now, you let Kinver pull off your boots, and give you a pair of slippers, but never mind rigging yourself out in style! That’s the best of living in the country: there’s no fear of being surprised by visitors at this hour of night!”
He took her at her word, reappearing presently in a frogged dressing-gown, and regarding her with a provocative twinkle. She chuckled, but said: “Well, now you can be comfortable, at least! How did you fare at Holkham? Was it an agreeable party?”
“Very — but you were right to cry off, I think. A vast crush, and the talk all of agriculture. I hope I may have profited by the discussions, but I felt as ignorant as when I first went to school! Tell me about yourself! How have you been keeping?”
“Oh, I am perfectly stout!” she asserted. “Charlotte was so kind as to pay me a visit — and Dr Tilford, too, which, I collect, he did at your command, my lord! He’s a sensible man, and tells me not to coddle myself.”
“He could have spared his breath! What do you call this excellent chicken-dish? Italian salad, is it? It informs me that Scholes has been restored to us, and thank God for it! Has your new stove arrived? Was it very troublesome to make the change?”
“No worse than what was to be expected,” she replied. “We had the chimney swept, and the walls and ceiling new white-washed into the bargain, so you’d hardly know it for the same dingy old kitchen.”
She then wished that she had not said this, but Adam merely said: “I can’t conceive how you can have contrived to get dinner cooked while all this was going forward!”
“‘Oh, quite easily!” she said, not disclosing to his male ignorance that the household had subsisted on picnic meals for three hideous days. She asked him instead to describe the clippings to her.
In general, he took care not to bore her with agricultural talk, but his head was so full of it that he was led on, from the clippings, to tell her about Mr Coke’s experimental farm. She listened, watching him, and thinking that he was talking more to himself than to her. When he spoke of stall-feeding, of hurdling sheep over turnips, of trebling livestock for manure, of shorthorns, and of North Devons, she knew that he had his own acres in mind, not Mr Coke’s. He sat with the fingers of one hand crooked round the stem of his wineglass, his eyes fixed on the dregs in it; and he answered the few questions she put to him rather abstractedly, until she asked if Mr Coke used the Tullian drill, when he looked up quickly, between surprise and amusement, and replied: “He has done so for years — but what do you know about the Tullian drill?”
“Only what I’ve read. It dibbles the soil, and sows the seed — oh, and covers it, too, doesn’t it? Is it used here?”
“Not yet. Where did you read about it, Jenny?”
“In one of your books. I have been looking into them, and trying to learn a little from them.”
“My poor girl! Were you reduced so low? I had thought you brought a boxful of books down from London!”
“Oh, I did! But Mansfield Park is the only one I’ve read yet. I kept it by me, and took it up whenever Artificial Manures, and the Four-Course System began to pall. And I must own, Adam, they do pall! But that drill seems to me to be an excellent machine, and I think you should adopt it.”
“I mean to, and to induce my tenants to follow my example — I hope! As for manure, we use sticklebacks.”
“Sticklebacks?”
“Also pigeon-dung.”
“Oh, you’re roasting me!” she exclaimed.
“I’m not. Sticklebacks make the best of all manures. We get them from Boston Haven, at a halfpenny the bushel. Gorse is good for turnips; and in the wolds they spread straw, and burn it.”
“Good gracious! And here have I been trying to learn about lime, and marl, and rape-cake!”
“Poor Jenny! Does it comfort you to know that we use those too? Why should you tease yourself over such dull matters?”
“I like to understand the things that interest you. The Home farm isn’t large enough to be made experimental, is it? Do you mean to take over one of the others, as Mr Coke did? I know there are some let on short-term leases.”
Too many,” he said. “Yes, perhaps I shall do that, one day, but there’s so much else to be done first that I’m afraid it won’t be for some time to come.”
“Is it very costly, to bring an estate like this into good order?” she ventured to ask.
“Very. I can only do so gradually.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t — ” She stopped, and then, when he raised his brows enquiringly, blurted out: “Why don’t you sell Lynton House?”
The words had no sooner passed her lips than she wished them unspoken. He answered perfectly pleasantly; he even smiled; but she knew that he had retreated behind his disconcerting barriers. “Well, you know why I don’t,” he said. “Don’t let us fall into a wrangle over that, Jenny!”
“No,” she muttered, her eyes lowered, and her cheeks flaming. “Only, when I think how much it costs to keep that great house — and how much you need the money here — I beg your pardon! I didn’t mean to vex you.”
He stretched out his hand to her, and when she laid her own in it, clasped it warmly. “You haven’t vexed me. I think there can be no more generous persons alive than you and your father. Try to understand me! I’m not ungrateful, but there must be a limit set to my indebtedness. I’ve accepted Lynton House from your father; he holds all the mortgages on my lands, and demands nothing from me in return. To restore those lands to prosperity must be my business — and if I can’t contrive to do it, the sooner Fontley passes into more worthy hands than mine the better! Can you understand?”
“Yes,” she answered, nothing in her tone betraying the desolation in her heart. “Fontley is yours, and you will accept no help from Papa in anything that concerns it. Orfrom me.”
She tried to draw her hand away as she spoke, but his fingers closed round it strongly.
“But for your father I must have sold Fontley,” he said. “As for — ”
“You mean to pay him back, don’t you?” she interrupted.
He was startled, but replied almost immediately: “Yes, I do mean to do that, but your services to my house are another matter, If you choose to spend your blunt on new curtains for Fontley — yes, I have observed them, and I like them very much! — instead of on all the things I’mpersuaded you must have wished to purchase, I’m grateful, but I don’t mean to repay you, any more than I mean to thank you for having the furniture polished — which, also, I have observed! The best thing I’ve yet done for Fontley is to have bestowed on it such a notable housewife: the house begins to look as it should again. You must have been busier than a colony of ants while I was in Norfolk!”