‘My love,’ he said, smiling, ‘if ever I enter upon an engagement with your father I’ll take care to choose my ground! I don’t like this position at all – and I don’t like Pyrrhic victories either! I should win nothing but your father’s resentment, and an inferior doctor to attend you. I think we’ll admit Croft.’
‘Oh, very well!’ she said crossly. ‘But I’m persuaded I shall dislike him excessively!’
In the event, neither of them was drawn to Dr Croft. He was so pompous as to appear opinionated; and he managed to convey the impression that any lady acquiring his services might think herself fortunate. However, his practice was known to be large; and if his manners were too assertive to be generally pleasing he spoke with an authority which engendered confidence in his patients. He was not surprised to learn that Jenny was in poor health, and he did not hesitate to tell her the cause. She was too full-blooded, and too high in flesh: he would prescribe a reducing diet for her, and bleed her once or twice. He explained just how this would benefit her constitution, recounted a few quelling anecdotes relating to ladies of Jenny’s habit to whom he had been summoned too late to remedy the harm done by over-eating, and took his leave, promising to visit Jenny again a week later.
She accepted his pronouncement more readily than Adam, saying in a resigned voice that she knew she was too fat. He was doubtful, knowing that she had a hearty appetite; and when he found her lunching on tea and bread-and-butter he protested. ‘Jenny, this can’t be right! You are always as hungry as a hawk by noon!’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not now. I’ve felt queasy from the start, not fancying my food, and sometimes downright nauseated by the very sight of it, but I’m bound to own I’m better in that respect since I adopted this diet. Now, my dear, just you let the doctor know best, and forget about it!’
He said no more, conscious of his own ignorance; and she, fearful that she might resemble her mother too closely, adhered to her depressing regimen, and tried not to let Adam see that she was in low spirits.
For these, London was more to blame than Dr Croft. The weather was dull, with a good many rainy days, and some foggy ones. Jenny began to hate the gray streets, and could not look out of her windows without wishing herself back at Fontley; or put on her hat, her furred pelisse, and her kid gloves without longing to be able to step out of the house into her own gardens, with none of these elaborate preparations for taking the air. She tried to confide these yearnings to Mr Chawleigh, when he rallied her on being what he called mumpish, but as he could not understand how anyone could hanker after the country he thought she was being fanciful, and ascribed it to her condition. Nor could he understand that the chief cause of her drooping spirits was boredom. Had she complained that she was bored at Fontley it would have been another matter, for as far as he could see there was nothing for her to do there. In London there were endless amusements, such as shops, and theatres, and concerts. He said kindly: ‘You don’t want to give way to crotchets, love. Not but what it’s natural you should get all manner of odd notions into your head just now. Well do I remember your poor ma before you were born! Nothing would do for her but to eat dressed crabs, which wasn’t a dish she was at all partial to, not in the ordinary way. Well, if I hadn’t put my foot down it’s my belief you’d have been born with claws, and that’s a fact!’ He laughed at this recollection, but finding that his joke drew only a slight smile from Jenny said persuasively: ‘Now, you know it’s all fudge, love! You wasn’t bored when you had only me to keep house for, so why should you be bored now, when you’ve got a husband, and a baby coming and a fine house of your own, and everything you could wish for?’
The thought flashed into her mind that before her marriage she had accepted boredom as the inescapable lot of women, but she said nothing, because she loved him too well to hurt him.
But Jenny owed more to her mother’s ancestry than Mr Chawleigh knew, or than she herself had known until Adam had taken her to Rushleigh. She had thought then how much she would enjoy living in a country house of her own, and she had enjoyed it. She took a keen interest in all Adam’s schemes for the improvement of his estate; and she had formed a number of schemes of her own for restoring the Priory to its former state. She was practical; and she was a born housewife. Fontley offered her endless scope for her talents; she had looked forward to a winter crammed with employment. The Dowager had left all household matters in the hands of her servants; but Jenny had found a manuscript book in the library which Adam said had been his grandmother’s; and its pages revealed that that long-dead Lady Lynton had not disdained to interest herself in such homely matters as How to Make a Marmalade of Oranges, and A Better Way to Pickle Beef. She had known how to make a Gargle for a Sore Throat; and she had stated (in an underlined bracket) that her Own Mixture of Quicksilver, Venice Turpentine, and Hog’s Lard was the best she had discovered for Destroying Bugs.
The winter months would have been all too short for Jenny at Fontley; in London each day was interminable. As her depression grew her placidity diminished. She began to be vexed by trifles, and to fall into a fret of apprehension if Adam came home later than she had expected. She sent him off to Leicestershire for a day’s hunting; but when he had gone she spent the time until his return either picturing him lying (like his father) with a broken neck, or indulging an orgy of self-pity, when she first imagined herself to be neglected, and then decided that no one could blame Adam for escaping from so cross a wife as she had become.
From such thoughts as these it was a short step to speculation on the chances of her own death. One gloomy day of fog she occupied herself in drawing up her Will. It seemed a sensible thing to do, even if it did lead her to imagine Adam married to a handsome but heartless female, who would give him muffins for breakfast, and hideously ill-treat her stepson. But when Adam surprised her at this dismal task he was quite unimpressed by her forethought. He put the Will on the fire, and told her she was a goose; and when she said that she would like Lydia to take care of her child he replied that as it was more than likely that Lydia would hold the infant upside-down he thought she had better take care of it herself. That made her laugh, because when he was with her her gloomy imaginings vanished. She was ashamed of yielding to them, afraid that Adam would grow disgusted with an ailing wife; and yet, while she tried to conceal her wretchedness from him, she felt ill-used when he did not appear to notice it. She drove him from her side; but when he had gone away to spend a convivial evening with some of his friends she thought how strange it was that men never saw when one was out of sorts, or said the right thing at the right moment, or understood how miserable it made one to feel always invalidish.
But Adam, who had endured months of real suffering, did understand, and he was deeply troubled for her. He asked her once if she had no relation she would like to have with her to bear her company, but it seemed that she did not know any of her relations. She retained a dim memory of Aunt Eliza Chawleigh, who had died when she was a little girl; but she had no acquaintance with any of her mother’s family. They had not liked Mama’s marriage to Papa, and there had been a coolness… ‘And I don’t want anyone to bear me company!’ she said. ‘Why you should have taken such a notion into your head I’m sure I don’t know!’
He said no more; but when he met Lord Oversley in Brooks’s, and learned that he had brought his family to London for a few weeks, he called in Mount Street at the first opportunity, and sought counsel of Lady Oversley.
‘Oh, poor Jenny!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know exactly how she feels, for I was never well in the same situation! I have been meaning to pay her a visit, but there has been so much to do – But you may depend upon it that I shall go to her immediately! My dear Adam, I am persuaded you need not be anxious! If Dr Croft has her in charge you may be sure all will be well!’
‘So he tells me,’ replied Adam. ‘But Jenny is very unlike herself: not as stout, I suspect, as when I brought her to London. Croft takes me out of my depth with his medical talk, but –
Ma’am, can it be right to keep her on such a low diet, and to bleed her into the bargain?’
He won no support. Lady Oversley begged him not to meddle in matters of which he must be ignorant. The reducing treatment for pregnant ladies was one of the latest discoveries of science: she was only sorry that it had not been in fashion in her day, for she had no doubt she would have derived great benefit from it. ‘You know, dear Adam,’ she said, ‘it is a mistake for husbands to concern themselves too closely in these affairs. Oversley never did so, except over my first – that was dear Charlie! – when he made me so nervous that I should have become perfectly distracted, had not my dear mother intervened.’
She went on to tell him of the very sensible things her dear mother had said, but he listened only with half an ear. Her comfortable talk about her mother, her sisters, and her innumerable aunts and cousins, served to point the difference between her situation and Jenny’s: she had a host of affectionate relations at her back; Jenny had no one but her father and himself.
He was thinking how impossible it was to shirk that heavy responsibility when Julia came into the room. She came quickly forward, holding out her hand, and exclaiming, with a note of joyful surprise in her voice: ‘Why – Adam!’
He rose at once, and took her hand; but although he smiled and responded to her greeting there was a preoccupied frown in his eyes, and he turned back almost immediately to Lady Oversley, saying: ‘I hope you may be right. I don’t know – but I’m perfectly ignorant, as you have said.’ He held out his hand. ‘I must not stay: perhaps, when you have seen Jenny – In any event, your visit will do her good, I know. And you’ll tell me then what your opinion is?’
She assented to this, warmly clasping his hand, and patting it. ‘To be sure I will! But I’m persuaded there can be no reason for you to be on the fidgets.’
‘What is it?’ Julia demanded, her eyes searching Adam’s face. ‘You are in trouble!’
‘Indeed I’m not!’ he answered, smiling at her. ‘Just a little anxious about Jenny, so I came to ask your mama’s advice.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘I must be off! No, don’t trouble to pull the bell, ma’am! I’ll let myself out. Goodbye, Julia: I’m glad to have had a glimpse of you – and don’t ask you how you do, for I can see that you’re in great beauty – not in the least dimmed by these abominable fogs!’
A brief handshake, and he was gone, leaving Julia to turn bewildered eyes towards Lady Oversley. ‘How strangely he spoke! Anxious about Jenny? Why, Mama? Is she ill?’
‘Oh, no, dearest! It’s merely that she’s in a promising way, and feels a trifle sickly. I daresay it’s nothing. I often felt dreadfully low myself.’
‘In a promising way!’ Julia repeated blankly. ‘You can’t mean – Oh, Mama, no!’
Lady Oversley eyed her uneasily. ‘Now, my pet, don’t, I implore you, fly into a taking! It was only to be expected, you know, and a very good thing for them both!’
A convulsive shudder shook Julia; she walked over to the window, and stood staring blindly out. She said, in a queer voice: ‘Only to be expected. How – how stupid of me!’
Lady Oversley could think of nothing to say to this; and after a moment or two Julia said, with an effort: ‘Is Jenny feeling out of sorts? And Adam is anxious. His mind was full of Jenny.’
‘Well, naturally, my love –’
‘Naturally, Mama? Naturally? When so short a time ago –’ Her voice broke; she went swiftly out of the room, leaving her mother in a state of the liveliest apprehension.
Much to Lady Oversley’s relief, however, she seemed perfectly calm when she came down to dinner. She even offered to go with her mother to visit Jenny on the following day; but this her ladyship declined, on the excuse of wishing to talk privately to Jenny about her condition.
Jenny was glad to see her, but not communicative. She said that she was very well, and seemed, indeed, to be so much her usual self that Lady Oversley was able to tell Adam that she could find no cause for anxiety. ‘To be sure, she looks a little pulled, but you need not refine too much upon that,’ she said. ‘I daresay she gets moped – and no wonder, in this horrid weather! It is a pity she hasn’t a sister to bear her company. Depend upon it, that’s all that’s amiss: she is too much alone, and so falls into reflection, which is fatal, even when one is perfectly stout, because it lowers one’s spirits so odiously!’
With this he had to be satisfied; but when Jenny gave him an angry scold for having discussed her situation with Lady Oversley he thought that however cheerful a front she might have presented to that lady she was very far from being her usual self. It was so unlike her to fly into odd rages that he was more perturbed than he allowed her to see. He charmed her out of her tantrum, but while he was promising to refrain in future from troubling himself about her he was turning over in his mind various plans for her well-being.
Three days later he told her that he was going out of town on business, and would be absent for two days. She asked him, rather wistfully, if he was going to Fontley, but he only shook his head, saying: ‘No, not to Fontley. I don’t expect to be more than one night from home, but I might be a little late – so will you have one of your admirable suppers ready for me on Thursday, kind Jenny?’
She could not help smiling, but it was reluctantly, and her voice was decidedly pettish when she said: ‘You need not hurry home on my account! Pray don’t come on Thursday if it shouldn’t be convenient to you!’
‘I won’t,’ he promised, adding, in a soft, provocative voice: ‘Crosspatch!’
‘I’m not cross! And if you don’t choose to tell me where you’re going I’m sure I don’t care!’
‘Now that,’ he said gravely, ‘I am excessively relieved to know, because I don’t choose to tell you – unless my errand prospers, when I’ll make a clean breast of it.’
Her face puckered; she turned it away, saying in a thickened voice: ‘I’m sorry! Don’t heed me! You must think yourself married to a positive vixen!’
‘No, just a hedgehog!’ he assured her consolingly.
She was appeased, she could even laugh; but when ten o’clock had struck on Thursday evening she abandoned hope, realized that he had callously availed himself of her permission to remain away from home, and sank into gloom. The reflection that she had only her own ill-humour to thank for this miserable state of affairs did nothing to alleviate her woe; but before she had succeeded in convincing herself that he was seeking consolation in the arms of some dazzling bird of paradise she heard a carriage draw up in the street. She listened eagerly, torn between hope and a ridiculous wish not to be deprived of her grievance. But it was Adam. She heard his voice, and hurried out of the drawing-room to look down the well of the staircase. She saw him, and exclaimed: ‘It is you!’
He looked up, laughing at her. ‘Yes, and I’ve no need at all to tell you what my errand was! You shall instead tell me if I have brought you an agreeable surprise, ma’am!’
The next instant he was thrust rudely aside, and Lydia came running up the stairs, calling out: ‘Jenny, isn’t this capital? Oh, how happy I am to be here again! Wasn’t it a splendid notion for Adam to take into his head? Are you glad to see me? Please say you are!’
‘Lydia!’ gasped Jenny, bursting into tears. ‘Oh, Lydia!’
She very soon recovered from this most unusual demonstration, emerging from Lydia’s embrace with a transformed countenance, and uttering disjointedly: ‘Oh, I was never more glad of anything! How kind of Lady Lynton – Oh, Adam, the idea of your doing such a thing, and never a word to me! I must have your room made ready immediately, love! If I had only known – ! Come into the warm directly: you must be frozen!’
There could be no doubt of her delight; Lydia’s arrival acted upon her like a tonic, and within a very few minutes she had lost her weary look, and was chuckling over Lydia’s account of her life in Bath, and her description of one Sir Torquil Tregony, whom she insisted on referring to as her Conquest. Jenny, round-eyed with astonishment, gathered,
from the graphic word-picture offered her, that this unknown baronet was so stricken in years as to be tottering to the grave; but Adam, more conversant with his sister’s notions, assumed (quite correctly) that the dotard was in the region of forty years of age, and slightly afflicted by rheumatism.
‘Fabulously wealthy!’ announced Lydia, helping herself to her third lobster patty. ‘Oh, Jenny, you can’t think how truly blissful it is to be here again, and to have such sumptuous things to eat! Aren’t you going to have one of these delicious patties? You aren’t eating anything!’
‘I should think not, indeed, when I dined only a couple of hours ago!’
‘On a morsel of chicken, and a baked apple?’ interpolated Adam.
‘Good gracious, are you obliged to starve if you have a baby?’ enquired Lydia. ‘I never knew that before! And I must say –’
‘Of course I don’t starve!’ said Jenny. ‘Never mind about me! Tell us about this Sir Torquil of yours!’
‘Oh, him! Well, Mama thinks him very eligible. In fact, she favours his Suit! Partly because he is very well connected, but mostly because of his wealth. Of course, I see that if I married him I should be able to eat lobster patties every day of my life, but lobster patties, after all, are not everything.’
‘Very true!’ agreed Adam. ‘There is also cold pheasant – though even Sir Torquil’s fortune won’t enable you to eat that every day of your life. Here you are, snatch-pastry! don’t hesitate to tell me if I haven’t carved enough for you! Let me tell you, by the way, that Mama says you are inclined to encourage Sir Torquil’s – er – Suit!’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Lydia. ‘But that was only because sitting at home every evening, listening to Mrs Papworth flattering Mama became so intolerable! Sir Torquil wanted to escort us to the Upper Rooms, you see, and I knew Mama would go if he invited us.’
‘Oh, Lydia, you naughty girl!’ Jenny exclaimed, much entertained. ‘Of all the wicked flirts – ! And did you enjoy the Bath balls?’
A Civil Contract Page 28