“You need never guard it when you talk to me: indeed, I hope you won’t! But first let me tell you that I’m not blind to the evils of
She took a moment or two to answer this, her countenance inscrutable. “You’re very obliging,” she said at last. “I’m not afraid. That wasn’t it! I daresay there are many husbands and wives who were no better acquainted at the outset than we are. It wouldn’t do for people who have a great deal of sensibility, but I don’t think I have much. I mean, there’s no need for you to be in a worry over me: I hate fusses and twitters! In general persons in my walk of life don’t deal much in marriages of convenience, but in yours they are pretty common, aren’t they?”
“Yes — that is, I believe they do still occur, but I really don’t know much about it,” he said, hardly knowing how to reply to so forthright a speech.
“I don’t mean to embarrass you,” she said, perceiving that she had done so, “but there’s no sense in shamming it: we both know that I’m not quality-born. The thing is, you might suppose that I don’t understand marriages of convenience. Well, I do, so you needn’t fear I shall expect you to sit in my pocket. Nor that you’ll find me hanging on you, like a burr, wanting to know what you’re doing every minute of the day, and why you didn’t come home to dinner.” She raised her eyes, giving him a resolute look. “I shan’t interfere with, you, my lord, or ask you any questions. You’ll not live under the cat’s foot, I promise you.”
“Are you giving me permission to embark on a career of profligacy?” he demanded, trying to turn it off lightly. “Ought I to bestow a similar carte blanche on you? You’ll think me very unhandsome, I’m afraid, for I’ve no such intention! I’m even shabby enough to reserve to myself the right to ask you any number of questions!”
She shook her head, smiling, but lowering her eyes. “That’s a different matter. Not that it’s likely you’ll have cause to be uneasy: I’m not pretty enough!” She paused, and drew a difficult breath, her colour mounting. “I’m not the wife you wished for, but I’ll do my possible to behave as I should. You’ll be wanting an heir, and I hope I shall give you one. I should like to have children, and the sooner the better. But that’s for you to decide.” She stopped, tightly folding her lips, and turned away her face, to look out the window; but after a few moments, during which he tried to think of something, anything, to say to her, she spoke again, saying in a conversational tone: “This is a new thing for me, you know: to be going to stay in the country. My mother was a countrywoman, but Papa is townbred, and hasn’t any liking for the country, so whenever we have been out of London it has been to Brighton, or to Ramsgate or some such place. Have we far to go before we reach your aunt’s house?”
Chapter VIII
They stayed for less than a fortnight in Hampshire, the honeymoon being shortened by Lady Lynton’s determination to join her sister in Bath immediately, and Lambert Ryde’s equal determination to marry Charlotte before this date. Family affairs called him north again; and he proposed in earnest what he had originally suggested in jest: that he should carry Charlotte to Scotland for their honeymoon. Charlotte could not deny that the prospect filled her with delight, but wrote diffidently to Adam. On the one hand, she dreaded an indefinite postponement of her wedding; on the other, she could not bear the thought of being led to the altar by anyone but her brother.
“Well, I should think not indeed!” exclaimed Jenny, when Charlotte’s letter was shown to her. “Do write to her directly, and tell her that you’ll be there! You can see she’s quite in a worry, and what difference does it make if we go to Fontley a few days earlier than we intended?”
“As long as you don’t dislike it — ?”
She replied, with the common sense which made her at once an easy and an unexciting companion: “What are a few days more or less to us? To be sure, I like it here, but now I know that Lady Nassington means to present me at the May Drawing-Room we must have gone back to town at the end of a fortnight, because of my Court dress. I ordered one to be made for me, and chose the materials for it, but I must try it on, you know.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as a rueful chuckle overcame her. “I shall look
“You won’t do that. Then I am to tell Charlotte she may settle for Monday, 9th May, as she wishes?”
“Yes, pray do so! We may go to Fontley on the Friday before, so, if we leave here on the Tuesday, that will give me two days in Grosven — in London, to have the Court dress fitted on me, and to buy the feathers, and the rest”
She ended on a note of constraint, but he gave no sign of noticing either this, or the stumble in her speech, saying merely, in a pleasant tone: “Very well: I’ll write to Charlotte.”
The honeymoon had contained awkward moments that were inevitable in the circumstances, but these had been overcome, thanks largely (Adam acknowledged) to the prosaic attitude adopted by his bride. If their union was devoid of romance, less embarrassment attached to it than he had foreseen. Jenny was sometimes shy, but never shrinking. The trend of her mind was practical; she entered into married life in a business-like way; and almost immediately presented the appearance of a wife of several years’ standing. She quickly discovered, and never forgot, his particular fads; she neither demanded nor seemed to desire his constant attendance on herself, but sent him forth to fish the trout stream, greeting him on his return with an enquiry after the sport he had enjoyed, and a placid account of her own activities. Since these included, besides practising on the pianoforte and sketching in the park, hemming, with exquisitely small stitches, a set of handkerchiefs for him, he was uncomfortably remorseful, feeling that she must have been driven to such a dull task by boredom. She assured him, however, that she enjoyed what she called white needlework; and she certainly seemed content with the quiet life she was leading. Rushleigh Manor might have afforded two persons lost in love an ideal honeymoon-resort, but there was nothing very much for the Lyntons to do there. Adam fished, rode or drove with Jenny, and, in the evenings, they played chess, Jenny played the pianoforte, or sat stitching while Adam read aloud to her. He was much inclined to blame himself for having brought her to Rushleigh, when one of the livelier watering-places would probably have been more to her taste; but when he said so she shook her head, in her decided way, and replied that she would not have liked it half as well. “I know all about watering-places, but I have never before stayed in a country house,” she said. “It’s quite new to me, and very agreeable. I am learning a great deal besides, which makes me particularly glad we came here. I shan’t be quite so ignorant when we go to Fontley. I didn’t know how different it would all be from a town house.”
“Now you are exposing
“Oh, yes! In London, you know, one buys, but in the country one makes — or things grow, like cabbages and apples and eggs — Now, don’t laugh at me! you know very well what I mean! Pigs, too: fancy curing one’s own hams! You’d hardly credit it, but until I came here I had never seen cows milked, or had the least notion how butter was made. I like watching what they do on the farm as well as anything. Have you a farm at Fontley?”
“A home farm? Yes — though not, I’m ashamed to say, such a neat one as this!”
She accepted this without comment, but asked, after a moment, if Fontley were as large as Rushleigh Manor.
Rushleigh was not Lord Nassington’s principal seat; and if Adam had been asked to describe it he would have called it a pretty little place in Hampshire. In fact, it was a charming Queen Anne house of mellow red brick, set in a small park; but it bore so little resemblance to Fontley that he was startled into exclaiming: “
“Do you mean that Fontley is larger?” she said, not, perhaps, dismayed, but certainly awed.
“Yes, of course it is!” He checked himself, and added, with a laugh and a faint flush: “I can never think any house superior to Fontley, you know. Now you will be expecting a Chatsworth, or a Holkham!”
“No, I shan’t. I’ve never seen either, so how could I? I collect that Fontley is very big?”
“It is bigger than this house, of course, but — well, it is so different! None of the rooms in it is precisely
