A Civil Contract

  ‘Do but try it!’ coaxed Lydia. ‘You know you mean to have it washed and curled again for the party: well, when Martha has washed it, let me dress it for you! I have often done so for Charlotte, and even Mama owns that I do it better than Miss Poolstock. And if you don’t care for it, Martha can curl it for you after all.’

  Jenny allowed herself to be persuaded, not without misgiving. But when Lydia’s clever fingers had done their work, and she studied her reflection in the mirror she was not displeased. After a prolonged scrutiny, she said: ‘It seems queer not to have curls over my ears, but there’s no denying my face doesn’t look so broad – does it?’

  ‘Exactly so!’ said Lydia. ‘You must never have those bunches of curls again, but always dress your hair close at the sides, and braid it into a coronet on the top of your head. And I wish you will stop sniffing, Martha! Don’t you see how well her ladyship looks?’

  ‘It’s not a proper mode, miss,’ said Miss Pinhoe obstinately. ‘Curls are smart, and nothing will make me say different! And what his lordship will say, when he sees what you’ve done, I’m sure I don’t know!’

  ‘Oh, I do hope he won’t think I’ve made a figure of myself!’ Jenny said apprehensively. ‘Well, if he don’t like it, you must curl it for me again, Martha, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘I’ll have the tongs hot inside of ten minutes, my lady,’ promised Martha grimly.

  But they were not needed, since Adam, after a quick look of surprise, was pleased to approve of the transformation. ‘Turning out in new trim, Jenny?’ he asked. ‘You’ll be setting a fashion!’

  ‘Lydia dressed it for me. Do you like it? Pray tell me truthfully!’

  ‘Yes, I do. Quakerish, but elegant. You look charmingly,’ he said.

  She did not suppose him to be sincere, but the compliment pleased her, nevertheless, and made the ordeal of receiving some sixty or seventy guests of ton seem less daunting. Any lingering doubts were presently banished by Lady Nassington, who ran a critical eye over her, and said: ‘Very good! you begin to look like a woman of quality.’

  While it did not rank amongst the Season’s most fashionable squeezes the Lyntons’ first assembly passed off very creditably. Mr Chawleigh would have voted it a shabby affair; but Jenny, warned by Lady Nassington, offered her guests no extraordinary entertainment, or any excuse for the ill-disposed to stigmatize her party as pretentious. She relied for success on the excellence of the refreshments; for, as she sagely observed to Lydia, guests who had been uncommonly well-fed rarely complained of having endured an insipid evening.

  Another circumstance helped to make the party agreeable: there was no lack of conversation, for the Princess Charlotte had once more furnished material for gossip by escaping from Warwick House to her mother’s residence in Connaught Place. Everyone was agreed that the flight was attributable to the Regent. There seemed to be no doubt that he blamed the Princess’s ladies for the rupture of her engagement, and so he had exercised a father’s right to dismiss her household and to install a new staff of ladies. No one could censure him for that; but it was generally thought that to descend upon Warwick House at six o’clock in the evening and there and then to effect this sweeping change was conduct calculated to drive a high-spirited girl into revolt. It had apparently done so, and however deplorable the affair might be it came as a blessing to a hostess fearful of seeing her guests smothering yawns before flitting away to other and more amusing parties. Lady Lynton had scored a hit, for she had sent a card of invitation to Miss Mercer Elphinstone, and Miss Mercer Elphinstone was not only the Princess’s close friend: she had actually been at Warwick House when these exciting events took place, and had been one of the several persons dispatched by the Regent during the course of the evening to persuade his daughter to return to her home. The engagement of the great Catalini to sing at it could not have conferred more distinction on the party than Miss Mercer Elphinstone’s presence. Everyone wanted to know whether the Princess and her mother had refused admittance to Chancellor Eldon; whether the Duke of York and the Bishop of Salisbury had been made to kick their heels in the dining-room at Connaught House while the Princess deliberated in the drawing-room with her mother’s advisers; whether she had been taken back to her father by force; or whether she had yielded on the advice of Brougham and her Uncle Sussex. And what was to be the outcome?

  Miss Mercer Elphinstone was unable to satisfy curiosity on this point, but it was learned within a few days that the Princess had been packed off to Cranborne Lodge, a small house in Windsor Park, where she was residing under much the same conditions as might have been thought suitable for a State prisoner.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry it all happened before the Carlton House fête,’ said Jenny, ‘for it means I shan’t see her, and I did hope I might.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ demanded Lydia.

  ‘Well, she’s going to be Queen one day, isn’t she? Stands to reason anyone would want to see her!’

  As she had expected, she was denied this treat, but so splendid was the fête that instead of regretting the Princess’s absence she forgot all about it.

  The fête was held in honour of the Duke of Wellington, whose bust, executed in marble, was placed in a temple erected at the end of a covered walk leading from a huge, polygon room, especially built by Nash in the garden for the occasion. Jenny was a little disappointed at seeing no more of Carlton House than the Great Hall, with its coved ceiling and yellow porphyry pillars, but this disappointment too was forgotten when she had passed through this vestibule to the polygon room, which was hung with white muslin, with mirrors past counting flinging back the lights of hundreds of candles. She gave a gasp, and told Adam that she had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.

  At half-past ten the Royal party entered the room, the Regent leading the procession with the aged Queen on his arm; and after a lavish supper the Princess Mary opened the ball with the Duke of Devonshire for her partner. Since she was nearing her fortieth year and he was no more than four-and-twenty they might have been considered an ill-assorted couple, but only the irreverent indulged this reflection. The Princess Mary was the Beauty of the Family, and the custom of describing her as a remarkably handsome girl was of too long-standing to be readily altered.

  It was past four o’clock when the Queen took her departure. Adam bore Jenny away after this, saying, as their carriage moved forward under the colonnade: ‘My poor dear, you must be dead from fatigue!’

  ‘I fancy you are more fatigued than I am. Is your leg paining you?’

  ‘Lord, yes! It has been aching like the devil these two hours past. That’s nothing: standing for too long is always a penance to me. I was afraid you might faint at any moment. Insufferably hot, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Lord Rockhill says the Regent is terrified of draughts. I thought at first that perhaps I should faint, but I soon grew accustomed. Oh, Adam, I can’t tell how many people spoke to me, and as for the number who bowed and smiled – well, there was never anything like it! I couldn’t believe it was me, Jenny Chawleigh, saying how-do-you-do to all those grand people!’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ was all he could think of to say.

  Her enjoyment, as might have been expected, was as nothing to Mr Chawleigh’s. He listened with rapt interest to her account of the festivity, drew deep breaths when she enumerated all the guests of high rank with whom she had exchanged civilities; and sat rubbing his knees, and ejaculating such phrases as: ‘Bang-up to the knocker!’ and: ‘To think I should have lived to see this day!’

  A very little of Mr Chawleigh in this mood was enough to drive Adam from the room. His more robust sister might derive affectionate amusement from this display of unabashed vulgarity; Brough, who was present, might regard Mr Chawleigh with a tolerant twinkle, but he could not. Yet less than a week later he suffered a revulsion of feeling when he walked into the drawing-room to find Mr Chawleigh displaying to Jenny a superb sang de boeuf bowl he had that very day acquired.

/>   ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ Adam exclaimed involuntarily.

  Mr Chawleigh turned a beaming countenance towards him. ‘Ain’t it just? Ain’t it?’

  ‘It’s K’ang-hsi, Adam,’ Jenny informed him. ‘The T’sing Dynasty, you know, when the art of Chinese porcelain was at its height.’

  ‘I don’t – but I can well believe it! I never saw anything more exquisite!’

  ‘You like it, my lord?’

  ‘I should rather think so, sir!’

  Mr Chawleigh gazed lovingly at it for an instant, and then held it out to Adam. ‘Take it, then! It’s yours!’

  ‘Good God, sir, no!’

  ‘Nay, I mean it! You’ll be doing me a favour!’

  ‘Doing you a favour to take such a treasure from you? My dear Mr Chawleigh, I could not!’

  ‘Now don’t say that!’ begged Mr Chawleigh. ‘You take it, and I’ll know I’ve hit on something which you do like, and that’ll give me more pleasure than what putting it into one of my cabinets would, for it’s something I was thinking I never would do. You don’t drive the curricle I had built for you, nor –’

  His cheeks burning, Adam interrupted: ‘I – I found my father’s curricle, almost new – ! It seemed a pity – and I had a fancy to –’

  ‘Ay, well, no need to colour up! Your taste don’t in general jump with mine. Lord, did you think I hadn’t twigged that? No, no, a Jack Pudding I may be, but no one’s ever called Jonathan Chawleigh a bleater!’

  ‘Certainly I have not!’ Adam said, trying to hide his discomfiture. ‘As for my not liking what you’ve given me, sir, ask Jenny if I wasn’t delighted with the shaving-stand you placed in my room!’

  ‘That’s nothing! You take this bowl, my lord, and it will be something.’

  ‘Thank you. I can’t resist – though I know I ought!’ Adam said, receiving the bowl from him, and holding it between his hands. ‘You are a great deal too good to me, but you need never think I don’t value this treasure as I should. You have given my house an heirloom!’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Chawleigh, much gratified, ‘I’m sure I didn’t look for you to say that, but I don’t deny it’s as good a piece as you’ll find anywhere – and not bought for a song either!’

  Jenny said, in a practical tone that betrayed none of the relief she felt: ‘Now, where will you have it put, Adam? It ought to be under lock and key, but it won’t look well all amongst the Bow China, and I don’t care to turn that out of the cabinet, for it belongs to your family, besides being very pretty.’

  ‘Don’t trouble your head over it, my dear! I know just where I mean to put it,’ Adam said, turning the bowl carefully between his thin fingers. ‘What a lustre, sir! How can you bear to part with it? No, Jenny, it would not look well amongst the Bow China! It is going to stand alone in the library at Fontley, in the embrasure at present occupied by that very ugly bust of one of my forebears.’ He set the bowl down on the table, saying as he did so: ‘When you come to visit us, sir, you shall tell me if you approve of my taste!’

  ‘Nay, I wouldn’t want you to put it in your ancestor’s place!’ said Mr Chawleigh. ‘It wouldn’t be seemly!’

  ‘My ancestor can remove himself to the gallery. I don’t want to look at him, and this I do want to look at. There are wall-sconces on either side of the embrasure, sir, and – But you will see for yourself!’

  ‘Now, don’t you run on so fast, my lord!’ Mr Chawleigh admonished him. ‘It’s not by any means a settled thing that I’ll be visiting you in the country.’

  ‘You’re mistaken, sir. I know you don’t care for the country, but you must resign yourself.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Chawleigh, intensely pleased, ‘I don’t deny I’d like to see this Fontley of yours, but I told you at the outset you wouldn’t find me foisting myself on to you, and no more you will.’

  ‘I hope you’ll think better of that decision, sir. I shall be obliged to kidnap you, if you don’t. That’s a fair warning!’

  Mr Chawleigh’s formidable bulk was shaken by chuckles. ‘Eh, it would puzzle you to do that, lad – my lord, I should say!’

  ‘You should not – as I have frequently told you! It wouldn’t puzzle me in the least: I should hire a gang of masked bravoes to do the thing. So let us have no more of your flummery, sir!’

  Mr Chawleigh thought this an excellent joke, but it was not until he had been assured that he would not arrive at Fontley to find the house full of his son-in-law’s grand friends that he could be brought to consent to the scheme.

  ‘A nice thing when I have to beg and pray my father to pay me a visit!’ Jenny said severely. ‘And well do I know you wouldn’t have hesitated, not for a moment, if Lydia had been going with us!’

  This sally made Mr Chawleigh laugh heartily. He denied the accusation, but admitted that it seemed to him a great pity Lydia was not to remain in her brother’s charge.

  In this opinion he met with agreement, but neither Adam nor Jenny could feel that it would be proper to keep her away from the Dowager, whose letters were becoming ever more querulous, and who described herself as counting the moments until her youngest loved one should be restored to her.

  So, when the fête in the parks was over, Lydia went regretfully back to Bath, bearing with her a store of rich memories, and renewed theatrical longings. One visit to Drury Lane had been enough to set her on fire. She had sat spellbound throughout a performance of Hamlet, her lips eagerly parted, and her wide gaze fixed on the new star that had appeared in the theatrical firmament. So entranced had she been that she had barely uttered a syllable from start to finish; and when she had emerged from this cataleptic state she had begged to be taken home before the farce, since she could not endure to listen to any other actors in the world after having been so ravished by Kean. Subsequent visits (two of which she had coaxed out of Mr Chawleigh) to see Kean play in Othello, and Riches, had confirmed her in her first opinion of his genius, and had provided her with her only disappointment: that she had come to London too late to see him as Shylock, in which rôle he had taken the town by storm in this, his opening London season. In the first heat of her enthusiasm she could imagine no greater felicity than to play opposite him, and startled Jenny by evolving various schemes for the attainment of this object. These quite scandalized Mr Chawleigh, who begged her not to talk so silly, and nearly promoted a quarrel by saying that he couldn’t see what there was in such a miserable little snirp as Kean to send the town mad.

  Adam entered gravely into all his sister’s plans, and was far more successful than Jenny or Mr Chawleigh in convincing her that they would not answer. He wasted no breath on foolish arguments, but he did suggest that perhaps Kean might not think a lady half a head taller than himself quite the ideal stage partner. These casual words sank in; Lydia became thoughtful; and when it next occurred to her sympathetic elder brother that an actress who excelled in comedy would find too little scope for her genius in the company of one acclaimed for his portrayals of the great tragic rôles, she was most forcibly struck by the truth of this observation. So, although it would have been too much to have said that she no longer cherished hankerings, Adam was reasonably confident, when he put her on the Bath Mail with her maid, that she would not prostrate their fond parent by divulging them to her.

  Sixteen

  Two days later the Lyntons left London, driving to Fontley by easy stages and in the greatest comfort. Much to Jenny’s relief Adam showed no disposition to practise any of his economies, but carried her to Lincolnshire in all the luxury to which she was accustomed.

  For her, the journey, in spite of some queasiness, was the most agreeable she had as yet experienced in Adam’s company. Their previous expeditions had taken place when they were so barely acquainted that being shut up together for several hours at a stretch had imposed a strain on them, neither knowing whether the other would like to talk, or to remain silent; and each being anxious not to bore or to appear bored. This awkwardness no longer lay between them; and although t
hey spoke of nothing that went far below the surface they talked with the ease of intimacy, and were able to lapse into companionable silences without feeling any compulsion to seek a new topic for conversation.

  At Fontley Jenny was glad to be idle for some days. She even admitted that she was a little tired, but she assured Adam that the quiet of the country was all that was needed to restore her to high health. He thought, but privately, that it would not be long before she was wishing herself back in London, for however much he might have to occupy him at Fontley he could not imagine what she would find to do.

  But Jenny, wandering about the rambling house, peeping into dust-sheeted rooms, discovering treasures in forgotten corners, knew that there was plenty to do. It was work after her own heart, but so morbidly afraid of offending was she that she hardly dared even to alter the position of a chair. When they had entered the Priory Adam had said: ‘I daresay you will wish to make changes. My mother, you know, doesn’t take much interest in household matters – no such capital housewife as you are, Jenny! Dawes will show you all about, and you must do as you think proper, if you please.’

  She did not say: I am only a guest in your house, but it was what she thought, for he uttered the speech just stiltedly enough to betray that it had been rehearsed. It was prompted by his courtesy: she appreciated its generosity, but if he had told her not to meddle she would have been less daunted.

  Charlotte, driving over from Membury Place, did not help to put her at her ease. She came full of kind intentions; but when she entered the Priory she could not help casting an anxious glance round the Great Hall, which was not lost on Jenny. Charlotte had not seen Lynton House since Mr Chawleigh’s hand had fallen heavily upon it, but she knew all about the green stripes, the sphinxes, and the crocodile-legs, and she had dreaded to discover that Fontley had been transformed already into something more nearly resembling Bullock’s Museum than a gentleman’s country seat. Relieved to detect no change in the Hall, she accompanied Jenny upstairs to the Little Drawing-room, saying as she tucked a hand in her arm: ‘Dear Jenny, you must let me thank you for being so kind to Lydia! She wrote to me, you know: one of her pelting letters, crammed with the tale of her doings! Four pages! Lambert said, in his droll way, that he was thankful she was able to get a frank from Adam, for it would otherwise have ruined us to receive it!’