Jane and His Lordship's Legacy Page 14

  Trowbridge

  Chapter 13

  That Perfect Understanding Between Sisters

  Friday, 7 July 1809

  ~

  “I MUST SAY, JANE, THAT YOU HAVE ENDEAVOURED TO distinguish yourself and the name of Austen as much as possible, in as little time as possible—an exertion I should have expected to be beyond even your spirit and understanding,” my sister Cassandra observed.

  She was sitting in the single hard-backed chair I had placed near the window of the bedroom we were to share, her bonnet lying on the little dressing table and her hair still disordered from the effects of too many days’ travel in an open carriage. Her face was somewhat tanned, but shadows lingered in the hollows of her eyes and her hair has turned quite grey; at six-and-thirty, she begins to look the middle-aged woman. A young dog was asprawl in her lap—a gift from Neddie towards the formation of our new household. I was pleased to note that it was neither a bird-dog nor a hound, but a useful little terrier of cunning aspect. The rats, I felt sure, were already disposed of.

  “I have determined to call him Link,” Cassandra confided, “after the link-boys of Bath; for he is always dashing ahead, to lead the way!”

  I smiled at her as she crooned over the pup like a new mother with a long-awaited child; but the vision was not one of unalloyed happiness. I see in my sister the mirror of myself—a lady with hardened hands and correct posture, a gown done up to her neck, and a suggestion of strain about the mouth; and I remember her fleetingly as she was at nineteen, in all the flush of youth and a strong first attachment, when she accepted Tom Fowle’s proposals. We both meant to marry Toms, Cassandra and I—and all our happy plans went awry, the men we had chosen being disposed of, in their fates, by other persons more powerful than ourselves: Tom Fowle despatched to the Indies and his death at the whim of Lord Craven; and Tom Lefroy packed off to the law courts of Ireland, and the safety of the heiress he eventually married. I never think of him now, except when my mind reverts to those silly, happy days my sister and I passed so unconsciously at Steventon Parsonage; he is no doubt a father these many years, and balding in his pate, and gouty in his foot, while I have long since given my heart and soul to another.

  “I am sorry, Cass, if my publick exposure has occasioned any difficulties for you or Neddie,” I returned, with what I considered admirable control of my temper; “but I could not consider your descent upon Chawton, in all the style of a Kentish lady, when I confronted a corpse in our cellar.”

  “It is not of that I would speak. It is a most disturbing affair, to be sure, and not at all what one would like in the Squire’s circle—but as the poor wretch came there well before you and my mother appeared in the village, the business cannot be helped. No, Jane—it is your continued association with his lordship that I must deplore. I need not elaborate.”

  She proceeded to do so.

  “When I learned, from the safety of Godmersham, that you had continued to court Lord Harold’s notice—that you had so far forgot what was due to your family, as to involve my dear brother Francis in the unseemly circumstances of his lordship’s murder!—when I understood, from a chance remark in one of Martha Lloyd’s letters, that your intimacy had given rise to the general expectation of an union between yourself and the gentleman—for so I am forced to call him—I confess I believed you had taken leave of your senses.”

  “No doubt I had.”

  “And now I am not a quarter-hour arrived in Hampshire,” my sister added, drawing off her gloves with a complacency that must cause me to grit my teeth, “before I learn that Lord Harold had the presumption to notice you in his Will. It is as Mamma observes: even from the grave the Rogue would destroy your reputation.”

  “I must beg you, Cass, not to speak of what you cannot understand,” I said stiffly.

  “Jane, your intimacy is everywhere talked of. I heard it mentioned on a stranger’s lips while Edward halted at the George, and must have blushed for the exposure of a most beloved sister. And our house broken into!” She lifted up her hands in amazement. “Would that the chest is never found! Then perhaps we may be rid of the odour of scandal his lordship has brought upon us.”

  At the thought of the stolen chest, I felt a tide of misery rise up within me. We had hastened from the Great House last evening, Henry and Mamma and I, in the company of Mr. Prowting and Mr. Middleton both. We had not tarried to take proper leave of the Stonings party, nor yet of Mr. Prowting’s family, who remained in the drawing-room with the delightful prospect of canvassing our private affairs behind our backs. I read triumph in Jack Hinton’s looks as I bade him farewell, and knew that he regarded me with derision and contempt. But it made no matter: my thoughts were all for Lord Harold’s legacy. Wretched, wretched woman that I am, not to have detected in our convenient absence from the cottage, while dining at the Great House, an opportunity for plunder!

  We found the new bow window torn from its frame, glass panes smashed, with a small knot of folk collected in the garden. I recognised the baker woman, and Toby Baigent standing by the side of a burly man who must be his father; the others I could not name. And there was Bertie Philmore, his back thrust up against a tree that shaded the Street, his arms securely gripped by a pair of strangers and a surly expression upon his face.

  “Well, then, Morris,” Mr. Prowting called out to one of Bertie’s captors as we approached, “what have you found?”

  “This lad a-climbing out of the cottage’s bow window, Mr. Prowting, sir,” Morris replied.

  “That is my groom,” the magistrate told Henry, “and a likely fellow if ever I knew one. I thought it probable that Philmore would return to the cottage once your mother deserted it, and so I set Morris to watch upon the place, and inform me when the ruffian appeared.”

  I had wondered if Mr. Prowting’s powers of intellect were stouter than they had at first seemed, and was amply satisfied with this answer. “But why should Philmore return, sir—if indeed he was ever within the cottage before?” I enquired reasonably.

  Mr. Prowting wheeled upon me with a look like thunder. “Is it not obvious, Miss Austen? Because he is drawn to the place where he murdered his friend, Shafto French—because his guilty conscience compels him to return to the gruesome pit in which he left the body!”

  Henry’s eyebrows rose. “I agree that the cellar is malodorous and damp, but to call it a—”

  “I never killed Shafto!” Philmore burst out. “I were at home in bed when he died, same as my Rosie’ll tell you!”

  “Was anything found on this man’s person?” I demanded.

  Mr. Prowting glared at Morris. “Well, sirrah? Did the ruffian make off with the Austens’ property?”

  “No, sir. It were just him, sir, jumping down from the windowsill.”

  “You see, Miss Austen? A guilty conscience will prove the answer!”

  I studied Philmore’s countenance as he strained against Morris’s grip. Far from appearing terrified at the tendency of the magistrate’s accusations, there was a suspicion of smugness in his looks, an air of having bested all comers. My heart desponding, I took the key to the door from my mother’s hand and made my way past the knot of gawkers. Henry followed.

  My brother emitted a low whistle as he stepped over the threshold.

  The contents of the trunks and wooden boxes we had meant to unpack during the course of the week were everywhere scattered about the room: a few earthenware plates smashed and ground to dust, linens strewn in disorder, books tumbled from the shelves. A quantity of paper had been trampled underfoot, and a bottle of ink spilled over all. A trail of ruin led from kitchen to dining parlour and up the main stairs, and I knew before I reached my bedroom what I should find.

  The drawers of my dressing table were emptied, the mattress torn from the bedstead, and my clothes thrown in a heap on the floor.

  I dashed to the empty bed frame and felt beneath the tumbled coverlet.

  The Bengal chest was gone.

  “BUT WHO CAN HAVE TAKEN
IT, HENRY?” I DEMANDED FOR the tenth time as we endeavoured, late that night, to restore order from chaos. “Philmore is mute on the subject and Morris is adamant that Philmore had nothing in his hands when he stepped through the window. We have searched house and garden alike.”

  “Then we must assume Morris was too late, Jane,” my brother patiently replied, “and that Philmore gave the chest to a confederate before quitting the house himself.”

  “One man alone cannot have accomplished all this,” my mother agreed, from her position of collapse on the sittingroom sopha. She was lying at her ease with a vinaigrette and hartshorn, the better to observe our labours. “I should think a party of ten much more likely.”

  “One such another as Philmore is sufficient,” I retorted, “to make off with my chest and destroy it forever. I could throttle the man from sheer vexation!”

  “Tho’ strangulation is unlikely to encourage him to speak,” Henry supplied.

  Philmore’s story was that he happened to be passing the cottage when he noticed a light and observed the shattered window. Approaching with the intention of offering his services to Mrs. Austen, as he said, he swiftly ascertained that none of the family was within—and plunged with no other weapon than his fists into a battle of the most fearsome kind. Philmore had fought a man—a man he could not describe—and tho’ he emerged without a scratch upon his person, had been so soundly beaten as to lose his senses, and awoke some time later to find the miscreant gone. He had met with Mr. Prowting’s man Morris upon exiting the window, and had been most cruelly set upon, tho’ he endeavoured to explain the virtuousness of his actions.

  Mr. Prowting declared this a Banbury tale, and insisted that Philmore’s soul was black with guilt.

  When taxed with the disappearance of the chest, the joiner had preserved an awful silence. Neither threat of hanging nor the prospect of a protracted lodging in the Alton gaol could move Philmore to a confession, save to utter the obvious: he had no trunk in his possession at present, and could not be proved to have made off with it. This was a sticking point in Mr. Prowting’s deliberations—and Philmore clearly believed it should secure him from guilt in the eyes of the Law.

  The magistrate muttered darkly about charges and the Assizes, but Philmore only stared at his boots with that expression of satisfaction I had previously observed so strongly writ on his countenance.

  “He is hardly the disinterested hero,” I mused, “and believes himself in possession of a fortune, Henry. He will not split on his confederate, however, for fear of losing the same. He intends to profit from his appearance of innocence—and guard the truth of the chest’s whereabouts like a bulldog. We shall have to use other means to discover the name of his accomplice. I mean to have my papers returned.”

  My brother paused in collecting the scraps of fabric my mother intended for a pieced quilt. Any number were ruined with ink.

  “What exactly does the joiner believe he has stolen, Jane? A King’s Ransom in jewels, as is popularly believed—or an unknown object of great worth to another party?”

  I stared at him. “You would suggest that Bertie Philmore took the chest without knowing what it contained?—That he was set to steal it, by his confederate or … or another person?”

  “Perhaps he was offered a considerable reward,” Henry said mildly. “By someone who had reason to know that our entire party would be from home this evening.”

  “One of Mr. Middleton’s guests?”

  “Any number of our fellow diners would give a good deal to know what Lord Harold has written about them, by your account.”

  “That is true,” I said blankly, a scrap of fabric in my hands. A parade of faces revolved in my mind: Jack Hinton, whom I had observed in urgent converse with Philmore only the previous day—and might easily secure a key to the cottage from his nephew, James Baverstock; Julian Thrace, who might find in Lord Harold’s papers an end to all his ambitions; and Lady Imogen, who should regard the chest as her chief weapon in a ruthless struggle to preserve her inheritance.

  “So you see—it is possible the chest has not been destroyed after all,” Henry concluded. “Nor may it be so very far away. It is something, is it not, to consider our genteel neighbours in the light of thieves?”

  I confess I did not sleep at all well last night.

  I LEFT CASSANDRA TO UNPACK HER THINGS IN PEACE THIS morning, and descended to the sitting room, where my brother Edward was arranged in a chair with his elegant hat balanced upon one beautifully-tailored knee. He looked every inch the Squire of Chawton, and an established man of property—save for the expression of deadness in his eyes I understood too well.

  “My dear Neddie,” I said as he rose to greet me, “how very good of you to bring my sister all this way from Kent!”

  “I could wish that I had come sooner,” he observed, “when I hear what has been happening in my absence. The corpse in the cellar and the invasion of the cottage are bad enough—but Mamma would have me to understand that you have been greeted with a degree of coldness from the local people that I must find offensive, Jane!”

  “Mamma refines too much upon a trifle,” I replied easily. “The Prowtings and the Middletons have been kindness itself.”

  “Jack and Jane Hinton are hardly trifles,” my brother retorted. “They are mushrooms of the very worst order, for all that their father was a clergyman. Shall I remove your party to the George until these distressing matters are settled?”

  “And what then? Are we to live in an inn all our lives? Or quit Hampshire in defeat, and know ourselves to be the laughingstock of the entire county? No, no, Neddie—allow us to fight our battles on our own ground, if you please. You must consider your dignity as Squire. Your claim to Chawton and all its goods is under the most subtle of attack in the court of publick opinion. It will not do for your tenants to believe you shaken.”

  He studied my countenance an instant before his own gaze dropped to the floor. “I have been idle too long. My cares and my grief—my privileged misery—have occasioned neglect.”

  “I fear that is true—however much my knowledge of your excellent propensities would excuse it. Your tenants, Neddie, hesitate to give you a good name. There is much resentment among the common folk: over the eviction of Mrs. Seward, who must leave her home of many years and give way to us; and a dozen other paltry matters that loom unfortunately large in Chawton minds. You would do well not to leave the neighbourhood without a thorough audience with all the outraged parties. You could do much to win back good will, Neddie, did you only exert yourself.”

  His eyes came up to my own. “And the happiness of those I leave behind me, you would suggest, depends upon that exertion?”

  “It does. We can endure all manner of slight and injury at present, provided we have reason to believe in future good. We have this consolation at least: our standing in the village can only rise.”

  “I believe,” Edward said with careful consideration, “that I shall make it known among the tenants that I will hold Quarter Day at the George tomorrow. And I shall make every effort, Jane, to hear their grievances to the last detail. Even if I must remain a fortnight to do it.”

  “That is excellent news. We should dearly love to keep you in Hampshire so long.”

  “But first, I must pay my respects to Mr. Middleton. Do I ask too much—or will you walk with me to the Great House?”

  WE ENCOUNTERED ALL THE STONINGS PARTY AS WE ACHIEVED the entrance to the sweep: Julian Thrace and Charles Spence astride a pair of high-blooded horses, walking mettlesomely at either side of Lady Imogen’s carriage. The gentlemen reined in, while the lady put down her window and extended her gloved hand to me and my brother. He stared at her an instant too long, as tho’ entranced and horrified at one and the same moment—and too late, I saw the danger. Lady Imogen, in all the freshness of two-and-twenty, could boast a dark beauty reminiscent of his dead Lizzy’s own.

  “I trust your cottage was not too much disturbed by that miscreant last evening,�
�� she said with solicitude as Edward released her hand. “My poor Miss Austen! What shocking ill-treatment you have received, I declare, since your arrival in Hampshire! You must believe us a pack of brigands!”

  I should have liked to order her out of the carriage and search the baggage strapped within and behind, but such a course must be impossible; and so I murmured a polite nothing, and allowed the gentlemen to bid me adieux.

  “It is a pleasure to meet at last the owner of the Great House,” Major Spence said in his quiet, well-bred way. “We have heard much of you, Mr. Austen—and all of it praise.”

  “I thank you, sir. It is good news indeed to learn that Stonings is under repair. We have need of steady families in the neighbourhood—tho’ I say it as should not, who persist in living such a great way off.”

  “You must all come to Stonings tomorrow,” Mr. Thrace remarked gaily, “for we mean to have a sort of picnic on the grounds, and show our Chawton friends over the house. The weather could not be finer for such a scheme; and tho’ the strawberries are done, the peaches are sure to be ripe. Middleton is charged with seconding my invitation—he intends to bring all the children, and Miss Beckford, and Miss Benn as well, in every open conveyance he can borrow or steal; and shall call upon you at the cottage directly to explain the whole!”

  Major Spence looked as tho’ he should have liked to curb his friend’s speech, of the word steal at the very least; but he added his pressing assurance of our welcome to Mr. Thrace’s, and closed with the words, “Pray bring all your family, Miss Austen—your other brother not excepted. I should like his advice on the best way to go about the Vyne hunt, well before next season.”

  And so we parted with satisfaction, and some little interest, on all sides.

  Excerpt from the diary of Lord Harold Trowbridge, dated Paris, 3 January 1792.

  … My memory of these past few weeks is of one long and barely endurable privation, first on the passage between Marseille and the Spanish coast, where the jagged reefs and the monumental seas at our point of landing would have driven us on the rocks, and we were forced to wear and wear back out to sea, almost to the point of achieving the Dorset coast, and might have put in there but for the Comte’s protests. The women, all sick belowdecks and too weak even to tend to their children, one of whom was nearly lost overboard when the ship was swamped under a wall of water; and all the while, Geoffrey Sidmouth shouting like a madman, half in French, half in English. I like Sidmouth’s looks, and love his courage; I shall want a good deal of both if Grey’s plans for the French are to achieve fruition.