She did not quite believe him, but she was a little cheered, and was able to smile, and to say: “I’m glad!”
“Wretch! What I endure at my mother’s hands — ! Yes, I know I shouldn’t say that, but if you dare to tell me so I shall walk out of the room in a miff! By the bye, have you read the news? It was in the Morning Post, which I told Dunster to send up to you: old Douro has arrived in Brussels!”
“Wellington! Yes, indeed! I knew you would be cast into transports by that!”
He laughed. “I shall at all events sleep sounder o’ nights! The thought of Slender Billy in command of the Army was enough to give anyone nightmares. We shall do now!”
“Oh, dear, I do hope we may! Papa doesn’t think so. He says — ”
“I know exactly what he says, my love, and all I have to say is that your Papa doesn’t know Douro!”
He spoke confidently, but it was not surprising that Mr Chawleigh, and many others, should be pessimistic. The outlook was not promising. Reports reached London that the Emperor was not the man he had been: he grew easily tired; he fell into sudden rages, or into moods of dejection, he had lost his confidence: but the unpalatable fact remained that France had accepted his reinstatement, if not with universal joy, certainly with complaisance. The Midi might be royalist in sentiment, but hopes that were kindled by the raising of a mixed force at Nîmes by the Duc d’Angoulême were soon quenched by the arrival from Paris of Marshal Grouchy, with orders to crush the insurrection. By the middle of April it was known in London that Angoulême had capitulated, and had set sail for Spain. His wife, the daughter of the martyred King Louis XVIth, and a lady of spirit, had been at Bordeaux when the Emperor had entered Paris, and had done her utmost to rally the diminishing loyalty of the troops there, but her efforts had met with no success, and she had been obliged to allow herself to be borne off to safety in an English sloop.
Meanwhile, a new constitution had been drawn up in Paris, which was to be sworn to in the Champ de Mars, at a grand ceremony to be held on the 1st May. The Emperor hoped to crown his Austrian wife and his infant son on this occasion, but his letters to Marie Louise went unanswered. He postponed the Champ de Mai for a month, still hoping to have his wife restored to him, and to detach his Imperial father-in-law from the coalition formed at Vienna. Failing, he switched his diplomatic attempts to England. These too were unsuccessful, but his machinations made those who believed that his power could and must be broken suffer considerable uneasiness, since among the Opposition were many vociferous members, loud in their condemnation of a renewal of hostilities.
“These damned Whigs!” Adam said savagely. “Do they imagine that Boney wouldn’t overrun Europe the instant he saw his way clear?”
“Lambert says,” observed Jenny dispassionately.
He looked up from the newspaper, his anger yielding to amusement. “Jenny, if you don’t take care, we shall find ourselves in the suds! It was almost bellows to mend with me yesterday, when Charlotte uttered those fatal words!”
Between them, Lambert and Charlotte had unwittingly shown Adam that his wife had a certain dry sense of humour. Lambert, whose understanding was no more than moderate, had always been inclined to dogmatize on any and every subject, and this tendency had not been lessened by his marriage. Charlotte had no opinions of her own: she had only an unshakable belief in Lambert’s superiority, and had quickly acquired the habit of prefixing her contribution to whatever subject was under discussion with the words Lambert says, uttered with a finality which made them doubly exasperating. Adam was never more surprised than when Jenny, after several hours spent in Charlotte’s company, interrupted him one evening, exclaiming: “Oh, but Adam, Lambert says — !”
She retorted now: “Yes, and you’d think I’d be ashamed to poke fun at poor Lambert, who is always so civil and kind to me, wouldn’t you? Well, so I am, but if I didn’t do that I should very likely be downright rude to him, and to Charlotte! For when it comes to Lambert setting you right on military tactics — Well, there! it’s better to laugh than to get into a tweak!”
He had retired into the newspaper again, and did not answer; but after a few moments he said: “I shall have to go up to London. How confoundedly inopportune! They’ll be draining the Great Dyke, and I wanted to see whether — However, there’s no remedy!”
“A debate?” Jenny asked.
He nodded. “War or Peace. From what Brough writes, it might be a close-run thing. His father thinks Grenville’s wavering, bamboozled by Grey, who is for peace at any cost!”
“You don’t think the Jacobins would be able to set up a republic?”
“Lambert says? No, I don’t. I think it’s moonshine to suppose that Boney would ever consent to it, and they wouldn’t dare to try to force it on him. The civil population might turn against him, but the Army won’t — and, make no mistake, the Johnny Crapauds understand their trade much too well to be pooh-poohed! I know: I’ve fought against ’em!”
“Well, then, of course you must cast your vote,” she said. “I wish I could come to town with you.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Now, Adam — ! When you know the baby’s not weaned — !”
“You could bring him with you.”
She considered this, but finally shook her head. “No, because I shouldn’t want to open up the house only for a few days, and I don’t fancy taking him to a hotel, for you may depend upon it people would complain!”
“He is noisy,” agreed Adam.
“Only when he’s hungry, or has the wind!” she said. “But I won’t come.”
“Jenny, have you been hoaxing me?” he demanded. “Did you persuade me to believe that you didn’t wish to go to town at all this season because you thought I preferred to remain here?”
She shook her head. “No, upon my honour! The only time I hoaxed you was when I pretended to enjoy all those dreadful squeezes we went to last year, and I only did so because I thought it was my duty. I was never more thankful than when I discovered you were just as bored as I was! Not but what it will be pleasant to go up now and then, I daresay. Not this time: it was merely that I thought suddenly that I’d like to see Lydia, and Papa — but Lydia’s coming to us at the end of the season for a nice, long visit, and I don’t doubt Papa will spend a day or two with us as well. No, I won’t come: only think what a fuss and botheration it would mean!”
“I do think it would be very fatiguing for you,” he admitted. “I don’t mean to be gone more than a few days, you know.”
“You’ll stay as long as you feel inclined. I shan’t look for you under a sennight, for you’ll want to see Lydia, let alone all your friends.”
When she saw him off to board the mail-coach at Market Deeping it was with the private conviction that it would be at least ten days before he returned, but he took her by surprise only five days later, walking into the nursery, where she sat suckling her baby. Thinking that it was the nurse who had entered the room she did not immediately look up. She was fondly watching the child, and it struck Adam that he had never seen her appear to better advantage. Then she glanced up, and gave a gasp. “Adam!”
He went forward, saying mischievously: “Own that I’ve astonished you — and retrieved my reputation!”
Her eyes narrowed in one of her sudden smiles. “Well, it’s certainly the first time I’ve ever known you return when you’d said you would!”
“Before I said I would!” he reminded her reproachfully, bending over her to loss her, and then tickling the infant’s cheek with one finger. “Well, sir? It would be civil in you just to acknowledge me, you know!”