When the visit was paid Jenny was still confined to her room, but the Dowager was able to assure Lady Oversley that she was quite well enough to receive her, and dear Julia too. She conducted them upstairs, leaving the little girls seated primly side by side on a sofa in the Green Saloon, with a book of engravings to look at.
Jenny, who was permitted now to spend some hours on a day-bed, greeted her visitors with pleasure, but it was not long before Lady Oversley judged it to be time to withdraw. Julia, she thought, was talking too much and too animatedly to Jenny, who was obviously languid and invalidish. One might almost have said that Julia was rattlingon in a way that would probably leave Jenny with a headache. She had kissed her, and felicitated her, and admired the baby, which was perfectly proper, but it would have been better to have kept all her gay reminiscences of Paris for a future date. It could not interest Jenny to know what this person had said to Madame la Marquise, or what that person had said about her. Lady Oversley felt uneasily that had it been anyone but Julia she would have suspected her of flaunting her triumphs and her wedded felicity in front of poor little Jenny. So she got up to take her leave. Julia followed her example, saying: “But I must have one last peep at your baby, Jenny! Dear little man! He’s like you, I think.” She looked up from the cradle, laughing: “I’m a Mama too, you know! I’ve two daughters — such darlings! They ought to hate me, but they spoil me to death!”
When the ladies entered the Green Saloon again they found Adam there, trying to draw out the Ladies Sarah and Elizabeth. Julia gave him her hand, exclaiming: “Oh, you have made the acquaintance of my daughters already! That’s too bad! I’m quite as proud a mama as Jenny, I promise you, and had meant to have presented them to you in form.”
He had dreaded this meeting, but when he looked at Julia, and listened to her, she seemed to be almost a stranger. Even her appearance had altered. She had always been charmingly dressed, but in a style suited to her maiden status; he had never seen her attired in the silks, the velvets, and the jewels of matronhood. He thought she looked very rich and fashionable, with all the curled plumes clustering round the high crown of her hat, the sapphire-drops in her ears, the sable stole flung carelessly over the back of her chair, but she did not look like his Julia. It did not occur to him that she was somewhat overdressed for the occasion, but it had occurred forcibly to Lady Oversley, who had remonstrated, only to be told that she had nothing else to wear, and that Rockhill liked her to look elegant.
She was telling his mother how nervous she had been when Rockhill had taken her to meet his children, making a droll story of it. The little girls giggled, and uttered protestingly: “Oh, Mama!” She had been afraid that Rockhill’s servants would regard her as a usurper, and that his sisters would disapprove of her. Such an ordeal as it had been! But they were all such dear creatures that they positively killed her with kindness: she was becoming odiously spoilt, and would soon, if they persisted in cosseting her, be the most idle, exacting, and selfish toad imaginable.
“Oh, Mama!”
Listening to this, Adam remembered suddenly the words she had spoken to him once. “I must be loved! I can’t live if I’m not loved!” The thought flashed into his mind that she was basking in adulation; and he wondered for a shocked moment if the caresses and the treats she bestowed upon Rockhill’s daughters sprang from this craving rather than from a wish to make them happy. He was aghast, not at her but at himself; he recalled a thousand instances of her sweetness, her generosity, her quick sympathy, her tender heart; and thought: Who has a better right to be loved?
“Dear Julia!” sighed the Dowager, when the visitors had departed. “No one could marvel at the Edgcotts for liking her so well! Dorothea Oversley has been telling me what a conquest she has made over Rockhill’s sisters, but, as I said to Dorothea, I should have been astonished if they had not liked her, for she is always so prettily behaved, and so attentive — so exactly what one would wish one’s daughter-in-law to be!”
“Sister-in-law, surely, ma’am?” Adam said, in a dry tone.
“Yes, dear — alas!” she replied mournfully.
“I hope the visit may not have tired Jenny: I must go up to her.”
He escaped from her on this excuse, and did indeed go upstairs, to be greeted, as he entered Jenny’s room, by some lusty yells from his son, who appeared to have fallen into a paroxysm of fury. Adam was put unpleasantly in mind of Mr Chawleigh, but thrust the thought away. “It’s a constant source of astonishment to me that anything so small should possess such powerful lungs,” he remarked.
Jenny signed to the nurse to take the baby away. “Yes, and such a strong will!” she answered. “He’s determined not to be laid down in his cradle: that’s all that ails him. But he was very good while Lady Oversley and Julia were with me. It was kind of them to come, wasn’t it? Did you see them?”
“Yes, and also the two girls — oppressively well-behaved damsels! Was the post brought up to you? I saw you had a letter from Lydia.”
“Yes, bless her! She says she’s still as sulky asa bear because Lady Nassington won’t allow her to come to see her godson. I wish she might have come, but it is much too far — and I can’t say that he’s much to look at yet!” She hesitated, and then said haltingly: “I had a letter from Papa as well.”
“Did you? I hope he’s well?”
She nodded, but she did not speak for a moment or two. She had been unhappily conscious for several days that Adam had withdrawn a little from her, behind his intangible barrier. She had ventured to ask him if she had displeased him, but he had put up his brows, saying: “Displeased me? Why, what have I said to make you think so?” She could not answer him, because he had said nothing to make her think so, and she could not tell him that her love made her acutely sensitive to every change of mood in him. But she knew now what had caused that subtle withdrawal. Rather flushed, bracing herself, she said: “Papa tells me that he offered to — to make it possible for you to start the experimental farm you wish for — only that you refused it.”
“Of course I did!” he replied easily. “And very glad he was that I did! I’m much obliged to him, but I can’t imagine why he should offer to do what must go quite against the pluck with him.”
“You thought I had asked him to,” she said, resolutely lifting her eyes to his. “That’s why — ” She checked herself, and then went on: “I didn’t — but I did mention it to him, not thinking that you wouldn’t wish it, which — which you’ll say I should have known.”
“My dear Jenny, I assure you — ”
“No, let me explain to you how it came about!” she begged. “I never meant — You see, Papa doesn’t understand! He thinks it’s crackbrained nonsense, and not the thing for gentlemen to engage in! I only wished to make him understand, and I told him about Mr Coke’s farm, and how he had prospered, and how important agriculture is.... It was his saying that he supposed you would be the next to start such a farm that made me disclose to him that you had that intention, when you could afford to do so. I didn’t ask him, but I don’t run sly any more than he does, and I’ll tell you frankly I did hope that perhaps he might come round to the notion! I didn’t know you’d dislike it — you told him once that if he wished to make you a present he might give you a herd of short-horns!”
“Did I? I wasn’t in earnest. But there’s no need for you to fly into high fidgets, goose! I might wish that you hadn’t talked to him of that remote ambition of mine, but I never desired you not to, so how should I be vexed with you because you did?”
“You are vexed,” she muttered, her eyes downcast.
“Not so much vexed as blue-devilled!” he retorted. “Have I seemed to be out of reason cross? Well, I am — though I hoped I hadn’t let you perceive it! I dislike it excessively when there’s no Jenny to pander outrageously to all my fads and fancies, and that’s the truth!”