A Civil Contract (21 page)

She subsided, and took the vinaigrette from him, sniffing, and saying crossly: ‘Such stuff!
Me
to be languishing over a bottle of smelling-salts! Now, don’t go opening that champagne, for I don’t want it! I’m better, and there’s no need for any commotion on my account!’

He thought she looked far from well, but he merely said, as he eased the cork out of the bottle and poured the frothing wine into a glass: ‘Try if my cordial doesn’t make you feel a degree stouter! Come, Jenny! – to please me!’

The coaxing note brought a tinge of colour back into her cheeks; she received the glass from him in a hand that shook slightly, and said in her gruffest voice: ‘Thank you! You’re very good!’

He waited until she had drunk some of the wine, and had begun to recover her complexion, and then said: ‘Now tell me, Jenny, what’s the matter? You’ve been out of sorts lately, haven’t you? Have you been trotting too hard?’

‘No, of course I haven’t!’

‘Then what is it?’

She cast him a goaded look. ‘If you
must
know, I’m increasing!’ she said baldly.

It had not occurred to him that she might be pregnant, and surprise held him silent, just staring at her. She said defensively: ‘Well, it was only what was to be expected, after all! I mean I’m breeding, you know.’

His lips quivered. ‘Yes, I understand that, but – I beg your pardon, but
really
, Jenny – !’

‘I don’t see what there is to laugh at,’ she said, eyeing him in resentful bewilderment. ‘I thought you would be glad!’

‘Yes, yes, of course I am! But to fling it at me like that, and at such a moment – !’ His voice shook, but he controlled it, saying contritely: ‘I’m sorry – don’t look so affronted! I won’t laugh at you any more! But what’s to be done? You goose, to have come on such an expedition as this! How the devil am I to get you home?’

She sat up, replying with something like her usual briskness: ‘You’ll get me home when the show’s over, and not before, thank you! I’m better now. I told you there was no need for you to be in a worry, and nor there is. It’s no more than natural I should have sick turns – though I must own it quite takes the edge off one’s pleasure!’

He gave a tiny gasp. ‘I imagine it must!’ he said unsteadily. ‘Poor – poor Jenny!’

‘Yes, I can see you think it’s highly diverting!’ she retorted.

‘No, I don’t – it’s
you
I think highly diverting, not your sickness, I promise you! Are you sure you are well enough to remain here? I wish you had told me before ever we arranged this party!’

‘Fiddle!’ she said, getting up, and straightening her shoulders. ‘I’m in a capital way now. For goodness’ sake, don’t get into a taking, Adam, for there’s nothing wrong with me, and if there’s one thing I can’t bear it’s setting people in a bustle, and having them fidgeting round me, as if I was going into a decline! And mind, now! not a word to Papa!’

‘But, my dear – !’ he exclaimed, considerably startled. ‘Surely you don’t mean to keep it secret from him?’

‘That’s just what I do mean to do, while I’m able. I wouldn’t have told you either, if I hadn’t been obliged to, because it’s early days yet, and no sense in boasting of what might not come to pass after all. Now, Adam, you don’t know Papa as I do, so you’ll be pleased to do as I bid you! The instant he knows I’m in the family way he’ll fly into one of his grand fusses, wanting to keep me in cotton, let alone bringing in half the doctors in London to drive me crazy! You may ask Martha, if you don’t believe me! She’ll tell you the same, and that I’ll do better without being cosseted, what’s more!’

‘Oh, does Martha know?’ he asked, rather relieved.

‘Well, of course she does! Now, if you’ll pour me out a drop more of your cordial, I shall be as right as a trivet again, and we’ll go back to watch the rest of the show. And don’t think I shall go off in a swoon, or anything of that kind, for I shan’t, and so I promise you!’

He was obliged to fall in with these plans, though with considerable misgiving. They rejoined the rest of the party just in time to see the Tsar’s procession pass, and to learn that not even the presence in his carriage of the King of Prussia had deterred certain persons in the crowd from hissing the Prince Regent. If their absence had been noticed, no one commented on it. The show being at an end, thoughts turned towards nuncheon. Adam kept a watchful eye on Jenny, but although she ate nothing but a morsel of capon, and two spoonfuls of jelly, she showed no signs of succumbing again to nausea. The fear, however, that the festivities might prove too much for her remained with him, and although he continued to talk to his guests his brain was occupied in trying to decide what to do if she should be taken ill. It was not until he handed her out of the carriage, in Grosvenor Street, that his mind returned to his conversation with Julia, and even then it did not engross his thoughts. It was no more forgotten than a bruise which gave pain whenever it was touched, but Jenny’s pregnancy was a matter of greater importance, because she was his wife, and he was responsible for her well-being.

He was uneasily aware of having failed to respond to her announcement with the delight she had expected him to feel. Though she had immediately concealed it under a more than ordinarily matter-of-fact manner, he thought he had seen a look of chagrin in her face. He was sorry for it, but try as he would he was unable to conjure up any more fervent emotion than a detached feeling that an heir to his name would be desirable. He was more concerned for Jenny, who was obviously enduring a good deal of discomfort. She never mentioned the matter, except to reply to enquiry that she was very well; and to one accustomed to the Dowager’s demands for sympathy over the most trifling disorders this stoicism appeared to him far more admirable and unusual than, in fact, it was. He wanted her to consult a doctor, but she would not. ‘If you mean I should send for Dr Wrangle, who is the only doctor I’m acquainted with, I won’t do it! For one thing, he’s an old woman, and for another, he’d tell Papa within the hour, because he’d be afraid for his life not to. And if you mean I should see an accoucheur, there’s time and to spare for that, for he couldn’t advise me better than Martha, and very likely not as well. So just you forget all about it, my dear, or you’ll make me sorry I ever told you!’

‘That’s asking too much of me. Have I no part in this?’

She gave a sudden chuckle. ‘To be sure you have, but you’ve played it, and the rest’s my business!’

‘Jenny, this want of delicacy in you puts me to the blush!’

‘Well, but – Oh, you’re laughing at me! Now, Adam, do but leave me to manage for myself! I promise you I’ll do just as I ought.’

‘But are you doing just as you ought? All this junketing about the town with Lydia – ! Tell me the truth: wouldn’t it be best to send her back to Bath? She has seen all the lions, after all!’

‘Yes, I can see what
you’d
have me do!’ she retorted. ‘Lie on a sofa all day, with that nasty vinaigrette which Mrs Quarley-Bix gave me, in my hand!’

‘No, indeed! but I do wonder if I ought not to take you out of town while you are feeling so poorly. Cheltenham, perhaps, or Worthing, or –’

‘Oh, do you?’ she interrupted. ‘Well, I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you, my lord, but I’ve no fancy for any such place! What a notion to take into your head, with the cards sent out already for our own assembly, and the party at Carlton House, not to mention the Thanksgiving at St Paul’s –’

‘Good God, we’re not going to that, are we?’ he exclaimed.

‘Well, we are if Brough can procure tickets for us, which he says he can easily do, through my Lord Adversane, I collect. Now, don’t put on that Friday-face, Adam! I’m as eager as Lydia is to go! As for sending her back to Bath before the Grand Spectacle in the parks, I won’t hear of it! What with a balloon ascent in the Green Park, and the battle of Trafalgar to be fought on the Serpentine in the evening, let alone the Temple of Concord to see, and the Chinese Pagoda, and goodness only knows what more besides, it would pretty well break her heart to be obliged to miss it!’

‘Jenny, if you imagine that I am so complaisant as to permit you to kill yourself, trudging all over the parks to inspect a collection of gimcrackery –’

‘No, it’s you that will do that, my lord!’ she said, with another of her sudden chuckles. ‘Or Brough, more likely. I shall see all I want to from the carriage, and so I promise you!’ She hesitated, and then said: ‘Lydia is to go back to Bath as soon as that’s over, and I should like it if you would take me down to Fontley. To – to stay, I mean.’

‘Of course I’ll take you there,’ he replied. ‘To Holkham too, if you should feel able for it. I don’t think you’d care for Lincolnshire during the winter months, so –’

‘If I gave you my word not to meddle – change anything – any more than if I was a visitor – ?’

He stared at her, so much shocked by these halting words that for a moment he could think of nothing to say. He had been glad to escape to Fontley from the stifling luxury of Lynton House, but he had never acknowledged to himself that he did not want to see Jenny installed there. It was true, however, and she knew it; and the humble note in her voice when she uttered her request, the look that told him she was afraid of a rebuff, shamed him more than any spoken reproach. He thought, in horror:
I take everything, and give nothing.

‘I know you don’t wish me to be there, but I shouldn’t tease you,’ she said simply.

He pulled himself together, forcing into his voice a lightness he was far from feeling. ‘Are you trying to give me my own again, for having laughed at you? What if I tell you that of course I don’t wish for you, and think myself much more comfortable without you?
That
would make you look no-how, wouldn’t it?’

She smiled, but doubtfully. ‘I do make you comfortable, don’t I?’

‘No, not a bit! Now, be serious, Jenny! Is that really what you would like to do? You don’t say it because you think it’s what
I
wish?’

‘Oh,
no
!’ she exclaimed, her brow clearing. ‘I should like it of all things! Why, you know how much I enjoyed being at Rushleigh!’

‘That was in the spring – and in Hampshire. Whether you will like the fens in winter-time is another matter. Well, if you don’t, you must tell me so – or if you are bored to tears, which I’m afraid you may be. When is this absurd Grand Spectacle to take place?’

‘On August 1st.’

‘
August?
My dear girl, we shall find ourselves in a hurly-burly of –’

‘Cits?’ she suggested, as he broke off abruptly.

A slight flush betrayed him, but he made a quick recover. ‘Nothing so respectable! Jackstraws and counter-coxcombs! Does your father know of this project?’

Her eyes narrowed in a sudden smile. ‘That was a master-stroke!’ she said disconcertingly. ‘Lord, do you think I don’t know
Cits
was on the tip of your tongue? Yes, Papa knows, and sees no objection. But if you don’t care for Lydia to go –’

‘What I don’t care for is that you should be knocked-up merely to give Lydia pleasure,’ he retorted.

‘Well, I shan’t be.’

‘I’ll see what Martha has to say on that head.’

Miss Pinhoe, however, when he consulted her, snubbed him severely, giving him to understand that his solicitude was misplaced, and that any attempt to cosset Jenny was to be strongly deprecated. ‘We shall have enough of that when the Master gets to hear of it,’ she said grimly. ‘You leave Miss Jenny to me, my lord!’

He was glad to be able to do so, but he thought that the secret would not be kept for long from Mr Chawleigh. Very little escaped Mr Chawleigh’s penetrating eyes, and once he had perceived that Jenny was looking sickly he would certainly demand to know the cause.

But Mr Chawleigh’s eyes were dazzled by a vision of vicarious grandeur, and although he did notice that Jenny was not in her best looks he merely recommended her not to wear herself to a bone with gadding about. ‘A nice thing it would be, my girl, if you was to knock yourself up before the party at Carlton House!’ he said.

Mr Chawleigh could not think of this function without rubbing his hands together gleefully; nor, whenever he visited his daughter, could he resist the temptation to pick up the card of invitation, and to gloat over it, very often reading it aloud.

‘To think how close I came to telling my Lord Oversley you’d be no manner of use to me!’ he told Adam, in a burst of confidence. ‘Why, a Marquis couldn’t have done better for my Jenny! Well, it was a great day for me when I saw her go off to Court to be presented, but no more than what I bargained for, after all. But
this
– ! The Lord Chamberlain being commanded by his Royal Highness to invite you and Jenny to a Dress Party, to have the honour of meeting her Majesty the Queen! I don’t scruple to own that I never looked for anything as bang-up as that, my lord!’

Adam, who was becoming inured to his father-in-law’s frank utterances, laughed, but disclaimed responsibility. ‘No bread-and-butter of mine, sir! We owe the invitation to my father, who was one of the Prince’s friends, you know. I hope Jenny will enjoy it.’

‘Enjoy it! You may lay your life she will! Ay, and I’ll enjoy hearing all about it, I can tell you, and thinking how proud Mrs C. would have been, if she’d been spared to see her wish come true.’

‘Perhaps she can see it,’ suggested Adam.

‘Well, I like to think she can,’ confessed Mr Chawleigh, ‘but there’s no saying – and no sense in getting into the dismals either, you’ll be telling me.’

‘I shan’t, but you put me in mind of a crow I have to pull with you, sir: Jenny tells me that you don’t mean to come to our rout-party.’

‘No, that I don’t, and a fine trimming I gave her for sending me a card – not but what I take it very kind in you to invite me! A pretty figure I’d cut, rubbing shoulders with the nobs! Nor I’m not going along with you to St Paul’s neither, so let’s hear no more of that!’ He gave a deep chuckle. ‘Eh, the way my Jenny told me she was getting tickets from my Lord Adversane! “Brough’s father,” was what she called him, to the manner born!’

Adam was slightly mystified by this, so he left it unanswered, reverting instead to the subject of the approaching rout-party. But to all his persuasions Mr Chawleigh remained adamant, saying, with embarrassing candour, that if my lord started to dish him up at his parties he would soon find that his acquaintance had dropped off.

It was soon made apparent that although he would not attend the party he had every intention of making his presence felt at it, so keen an interest did he take in the arrangements for it, and so determined was he that it should excel in magnificence every other party held during the Season. ‘Order everything of the best!’ he adjured his daughter. ‘I’ll stand the nonsense, never you fear! You’ll be wanting half-a-dozen footmen: I’ll send those fellows of mine along. And no need to trouble yourself about the champagne, because I’ll attend to that, and I warrant you’ll hear no complaints from your guests!’

‘Thank you – we are much obliged to you, but I’ve already attended to that matter, sir,’ said Adam, trying to speak cordially, and not quite succeeding.

‘Then I’ll be bound you’ve wasted your blunt, my lord!’ responded Mr Chawleigh tartly. ‘Beef-witted, that’s what I call it – meaning no offence! – for you might ha’ known I could buy it cheaper,
and
better, than what you could!’