Jane and the Man of the Cloth Page 14

  I looked over my shoulder, and espied a curricle,1 with Mr. Sidmouth at the reins; a moment, and they were upon us. Mr. Crawford hastened to the curricle’s side, the better to assist Seraphine from the conveyance, his aspect all admiration.

  “Mademoiselle LeFevre! Darby is honoured indeed!”

  “It is I who must profess myself to be so,” the lady replied, with a quiet smile and downcast eyes. And such a voice! Like the sound of cool water slipping over stones, with a depth of peace in its faintiy foreign accent The drab garb of a common field labourer she had cast off, and the red cloak was left at High Down; tonight she stood arrayed in a sprigged white lawn with a modest train, as befit her age and station, her fair hair swept up and becomingly ringed about the brow. A circlet of pearls was twined in her hair, and a bright pink sash caught at her waist. I gazed, and admired, and strained despite myself for a glimpse of ethereal wings.

  “Miss Austen, you will wish to be presented to Mademoiselle,” Mr. Crawford cried, quite ignorant of our previous meeting; I extended my hand, a tentative smile upon my lips, uncertain how I should be received. But my hesitancy was all unwarranted; the girl took my hand in her own, her face transformed by the gladdest of looks; and bobbed a curtsey.

  “Miss Austen, Reverend Austen, Mrs. Austen—I am happy to see you once more,” she said simply; but I wondered at the change in her. Where once there had been coldness and indifference, a patent dislike of unwanted strangers, there was now an evident desire to please, and to be pleased in return. To what did we owe the warmth of such a reception?—the good offices of her cousin, perhaps?

  But it required only the removal of our party from the stoop to the drawing-room, for a yet more astounding meeting to ensue. Our host led the way, and behind him ourselves, so that it was some few moments before Mr. Sidmouth and Seraphine observed the presence of Cap tain Fielding before Darby’s ornate marble mantel—a delay that only sharpened the effect of surprise. I turned, in the act of taking a chair, and observed Mademoiselle LeFevre start and draw back, her cheeks overcome with blushes and her eyes at a loss for an object; Mr. Sidmouth’s countenance whitened, and he stopped short in the very doorway, a wave of rage transforming his steady gaze.

  “What is the meaning of this, Crawford?” he burst out, as Captain Fielding turned from the fire with a low bow— and at his poor host’s bewilderment, and Miss Crawford’s stiffened form, betrayed all his consternation.

  There was a moment’s shocked silence, with the party utterly at a loss for words. I observed Mr. Sidmouth narrowly, and knew that he struggled for self-mastery. Above the sharp hook of his nose, his eyes had gone cold with indignation, and the dark brow was decidedly furrowed. Whatever could it mean?

  “Forgive me,” he finally said, in a tone that was anything but penitent; “but I fear my cousin is indisposed. It will not be in our power to remain in your company this evening.”

  And indeed, Seraphine’s complexion had lost all brilliancy, and her golden head drooped like a swan’s. One hand clung to the door frame for support, and the other found strength on the arm of her cousin. At this last, however, she raised her head and gazed clear-eyed across the room at Captain Fielding.

  “Whatever do you mean, Geoffrey?” she said, in a low but steady tone. “I am quite well, and only just arrived, and have no intention of departing so soon. It would be the grossest insult to the dear Crawfords’ kindness.”

  “Are you certain, Seraphine?” Mr. Sidmouth enquired, in a voice I could barely discern.

  The briefest of nods, and Mademoiselle LeFevre glided across the room to a chair near my own, at a safe distance from Captain Fielding’s position by the hearth; and at the sudden appearance in the drawing-room of Miss Armstrong and her dreadful parents, just descended from their apartments upstairs, and the subsequent arrival of the Honourable Barnewalls, the attention of the company was thankfully diverted.

  “My dearest Lucy!” Mrs. Barnewall cried, sweeping into the room before a gentleman I had never seen, and immediately concluded to be the elusive Mathew, heir to the viscountcy of Kingsland. “It cannot be true that you are leaving us! Sir—” she said, turning to a bewildered Mr. Armstrong with a pretty air of desperation undoubtedly assumed for the moment—“you could not be so cruel as to deny us your daughter’s society! I declare, Miss Austen, is not he the cruellest of men?”

  I was spared the dubious choice of an answer by Miss Armstrong’s coming forward herself, to offer her thanks for such effusion in as collected a fashion as she was capable of. Mrs. Barnewall was clothed this evening in something resembling a Roman costume, which left one shoulder entirely bare and the other encased in masses of primrose-coloured silk; about her head she bore a circlet of silver leaves, the very likeness of Caesar. I had but a moment to take in the effect of this apparition; and then it was my occasion to be presented to the Honourable Mathew.

  He is a curious fellow, ham-fisted and tongue-tied, with a decidedly red face and a figure made soft through dissipation. Just what I should wish for an Irish nobleman— part yokel, part dandy, in his fine wool breeches and gold-buckled shoes, the highest of white collars tucked up to his ears, and his hair worn raffishly short and curly about his broad, sweating brow. He drooped abrupdy over my hand with an indistinct mutter, his eyes shifting round the room, and as swifdy retreated to the company of Captain Fielding as decency would allow. I observed the two men in close confidence, tho’ the conversation appeared to be all on the Honourable Mathew’s side.2

  “Well, Sidmouth,” Mrs. Barnewall cried with some asperity, as that gentieman stood protectively by his beautiful cousin, “and so you have brought the ravishing Mademoiselle into society again, and only a few weeks after her mysterious trouble! And how well she looks, too!

  I wonder what le Chevalier must feel on the occasion?” And with that she cast a knowing glance towards Captain Fielding, and awaited the effect of her words. But whatever their import, Seraphine proved equal to the talI Irishwoman.

  “I feel very well, madame, I assure you,” she replied, and with a slight nod in Mrs. Barnewall’s direction, moved delicately to the French windows that let out onto the garden, as though absorbed in the decline of the season. I looked to Mr. Sidmouth, and found his gaze already upon me, with an expression so torn between tenderness and pain as to arouse the deepest suspicion of his thoughts. I wondered that Mrs. Barnewall did not observe it; but the lady had turned already to Lucy’s mother, the redoubtable Mrs. Armstrong, and was engaged in offering false compliments on the woman’s shocking red gown.

  But my own curiosity could not be gainsaid, and speculation hounded me like a nipping dog the remainder of the evening. Though Mademoiselle LeFevre sustained an admirable composure, and Mr. Sidmouth retreated into a mute gravity, all enjoyment of the party for themselves was at an end. It could not be merely that Captain Fielding’s disapprobation of their domestic circumstance had inspired such strong dislike, such discomposure of manner; and that some other episode lay among the three, I was firmly convinced.

  But all my idle thoughts must be deferred for social necessity, though Mr. Sidmouth would place himself at my right hand once we had followed the Honourable Barnewalls to the dinner table, utterly confounding the slower Captain Fielding, whose game leg in this instance proved a decided encumbrance. Mademoiselle LeFevre, I observed, was safely seated between my father and Mr. Armstrong (whom I suspected to be quite deaf); and so the gallant Captain had no choice but to place himself between Miss Lucy Armstrong and my mother, at the far end of the table where Miss Crawford held sway. I found myself breathing a sigh of relief.

  “And so, Mrs. Austen, I find that your dear child has been torn from the maternal bosom,” Miss Crawford declared, in a very loud voice indeed, so that her words travelled the length of the table. “I do hope that you shall be blest with another sight of her. How you can find any enjoyment in Lyme, with the constant concern for Miss Austen’s health that must daily plague you, I cannot think.” The officious woman a
ppeared insensible of the start her words gave my poor mother, and swept on in an ill-considered tide.

  “How melancholy one’s thoughts, in parting from a child in decline! What terrors, what palpitations! I am sure that if I had been blest with a daughter of my own— had Fortune proved kinder—I could never have suffered her to be taken from me in such a parlous state. I should sooner have thrown myself beneath the carriage wheels, than submitted to a like parting!”

  My mother’s looks were very nearly apoplectic, as though she waited now only for poor Cassandra to be brought into the room, a cold and lifeless form, in retribution for her parents’ heedlessness; and so I hastened to interject some reason to the scene.

  “We were so fortunate as to have very good news of my sister only a few days ago, Miss Crawford, and from Mr. Crawford himself,” I said, leaning towards the nether end of the table. “I wonder he did not tell you of it? He met with my brother, Mr. Austen, and his party in the very midst of Weymouth, just after the embarkation of the Royal Family, which I understand my sister failed to witness, being preoccupied with the finery in a neighbouring shop window.”

  “Aye, so he told me,” Miss Crawford said, nodding sagely. “It is ever such absence of mind, such regard for the smallest detail, that will herald a rapid decline. My own Mr. Filch was prone to spending hours in his hothouse, his poor gaze fixed upon the first tender sprouting of a prize tulip, in his final days. It is as though the soul would cling to the insignificant in life, at the very moment of parting with it. I would adjudge your sister’s preoccupation with the shop window a very malignant sign, Miss Austen. Very malignant.”

  Poor Lucy Armstrong was sunk in a misery of mortification, her cheeks flushed and her eyes upon her soup; her mother, happily, was engrossed in discussing horse-racing with Mrs. Barnewall, and those two ladies appeared to have heard nothing of what Miss Crawford had said. My mother, on the other hand, was completely devoid of animation; and I knew her to be suffering from terrors of the acutest kind.

  “And what of my absorption in fossils, Augusta?” Mr. Crawford interjected impatiendy. “Do you but wait for me to fall dead in the pit, the very victim of your worst predictions? It is utter nonsense!”

  “So you may say, Cholmondeley, but time shall prove the right of it.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Mr. Sidmouth drily replied, “for in the long run, we shall all of us be dead.”

  “Hear, hear,” my father said quietly from his place by Seraphine, and devoted himself to the soup, which was admirably made.

  “Miss Jane Austen,” Miss Crawford continued, in an imperious tone, “may I be so bold as to enquire whether you are a needle woman?”

  The question was so very unexpected, coming as it did on the heels of an altogether different topic, that I may perhaps be forgiven for starting, and letting fall my soup spoon.

  “There, I have put the girl out of countenance. I suppose she never learnt.” The old termagant could barely suppress a smile of triumph.

  “Indeed, Miss Crawford/’ my mother broke in, with a look of mortification down the length of the table, “I think I may assure you that Jane is as pretty a hand with the needle as may be. She has the fashioning of all her sister’s clothes.”

  ‘Then it should be as nothing to construct a few items for the St. Michael’s Ladies Auxiliary,” Miss Crawford replied, without hesitation. “We are collecting a contribution from all of Lyme’s ladies, and should count ourselves honoured to include yours, Miss Austen.”

  “Now, Augusta—” Mr. Crawford interjected, with something less than his usual good humour.

  “I am sure Miss Austen cannot mind it. It is a trifling enough affair, for a girl of her age, and as yet unburdened with the dudes of a married woman.”

  It was the Honourable Mathew who served as my deliverer. Having heard nothing of what had passed, he emerged of a sudden from a brown study, and leaned across the napery to prod Mr. Sidmouth with a blunt forefinger.

  “I say, Sidmouth, that was a demmed fine horse you rode the other day. Confounded the demmed dragoons in the handiest fashion. How much would you take for ‘im?”

  A sudden silence gripped the table, marked only by the slightest cough from Captain Fielding. If a cough could be declared ironic, then his was the very soul of irony. I could not lift my eyes to observe his countenance, nor yet Mr. Sidmouth’s; but the air between us seemed to crackle with contained emotion. Did I imagine it, or had the master of High Down been paralysed at a word?

  Then Mr. Sidmouth raised his serviette delicately to his lips, and the tension seemed to ease. “I should not have believed you abroad at such an hour, Barnewall. I trust you were merely returning home from the previous evening’s entertainments, rather than already about your business for the day.”

  Mathew Barnewall threw back his head in raucous laughter, to the evident disgust of Miss Crawford. “Capital!” he cried, slapping his thigh with the greatest enjoyment. “You have the right of it, sir. But it makes no odds. What about the horse, man?”

  “I should not part with him for a kingdom.”

  “You drive a hard bargain. I like that in a fellow.” Barnewall glanced roguishly down the table to his wife, who regarded Mr. Sidmouth with an indulgent smile, as though he were a very small boy. “Perhaps I shall have Evie work upon you, eh? The woman can charm a cock out of a henhouse.”

  “I fear even such a talent would prove of little use in the present case, Barnewall,” Captain Fielding interposed drily. “Sidmouth holds tenaciously to his dearest possessions. There is no wrath more powerful a man may excite, than to wrest from him that which he prizes.” The two men exchanged a long look, and that the Captain spoke of far more than Sidmouth’s horse, I felt convinced.

  But it was Mr. Sidmouth who dropt his eyes first, seeming absorbed in the fork he turned in his hand. “Though Mrs. Barnewall may claim a stupendous advantage over poultry, and I am given to crowing on occasion, I beg to consider myself as anything but fowl,” he said with a slight smile. “The horse is not for sale.” With that, he turned away from the Honourable Mathew, as though the conversation were at an end, and bent his dark glance upon my countenance; but Barnewall was not so easily put aside.

  “Come, come, Sidmouth! Having bested the dragoons at their own game, you cannot wish to engage them further! One would think you intended a swift escape from the country, and would keep the stallion at the ready!”

  “And what do you intend for Satan?” Mr. Sidmouth enquired levelly—halting the table at the very mention of the horse’s evil name.

  Mr. Barnewall hesitated, and looked about the dining-room, some of the wind drooping from his sails. “By Jove,” he muttered, “I hadn’t thought to buy a horse with such an ill-made handle. Might bring all the wrath of God upon the house.”

  “He intends to race him,” Mrs. Barnewall said briskly in the continued quiet. “You know, Sidmouth, that Mathew is a formidable owner of a string of nags. He is quite the prop of the Jockey Club at home—to the detriment of our funds. He has excessive plans for Kingsland, does he ever come into his inheritance—and does he fail to squander it before he may truly lay his claim.”

  “I gather from your lady’s words, Barnewall, that she fears your liberality, and should rather I kept my horse in Lyme, than sold him to you; and so much for her celebrated charm. We may consider the matter as setded.”

  “Now, now,” Mathew Barnewall exclaimed, his scowl for his wife giving way to a fatuous smile, “don’t force me to rob your stables!”

  “If you did, my dear sir, it should avail you nothing,” Mr. Crawford broke in, “for Sidmouth so prizes his horseflesh, he has undertaken to mark them in a singular manner. You should not get far without discovery.”

  “Do you brand them, then?” Mrs. Barnewall enquired, her nose wrinkling with repugnance.

  “Never,” Sidmouth replied.

  “He has his initials cut into their shoes!” Mr. Crawford declared, with a delighted slap upon his mahogany table. “No thie
f could fail to leave a telling trail behind him.”

  “Shoes?” my mother enquired, only now, it seemed, emerging from the fog of suspense into which Miss Crawford’s words regarding my sister’s fate had thrown her. “But cannot one merely exchange one shoe for another?”

  I knew her immediately to have mistaken the master’s shoe for his horse’s, and to have stumbled upon a point all unawares; for Mr. Crawford seized at her apparent perspicacity with the greatest delight. Assuredly, madam, and a clever ruse it would be—but even did the thief know beforehand of the shoes’ mark, he could do nothing without a blacksmith; and horse and thief should undoubtedly be apprehended while still bent upon the forge. I consider it a capital idea.”

  This response so confounded my mother’s understanding, as to silence her for the moment; and the conversation turned to other things.

  MY MASTERY OF CURIOSITY WAS REWARDED AS SUCH MASTERY ONLY rarely is—with Mr. Sidmouth’s broaching the subject of his cousin in a very little while. The ladies had retired to the drawing-room, and at the gentlemen’s following soon thereafter, bearing the scents of tobacco and excellent port about their persons, Mr. Sidmouth joined me before Captain Fielding should have the chance. Miss Armstrong had seated herself at the pianoforte, and Mademoiselle LeFevre stood at her side, her voice swelling with Italian airs; so captivatingly beautiful, and so clearly freed of all the evening’s anxiety, as to make the heart sing with her.

  “Your cousin is very lovely, Mr. Sidmouth,” I ventured, with a glance at his brooding face.

  He was engaged in studying Seraphine intently, and seemed almost not to have heard me. After an instant, his dark eyes turned back to mine, and he said abrupdy, “I would ask of you a favour, Miss Austen. My cousin is too much alone. You will have guessed that she labours under the effect of some sad business; discretion, and a care for her delicacy, forbid me from saying more. I would ask only that you consider her gende nature, her evident goodness—the fragility of her understanding—” At this he halted, for the first time in our acquaintance, completely tongue-tied.