Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Read online

  As I watched with Isobel by his bedside, awaiting the doctor summoned in haste from London, the Earl gave forth a great moan, rose up shuddering from his sheets, and clutched his wife’s hand. “Blackguards!” his shattered voice cried. “They would take me from within!” Then he fell back insensible upon his bed, and spoke no more.

  Isobel was all efficiency; a compress she had in a moment, and ministered to her troubled lord, and the violence of feeling that had animated his poor body but an instant before, troubled him not again.

  I am no stranger to death—I have sat watch over too many unlovely ends by the side of my clergyman father, who believes the company of a woman necessary to sustain him in the most mortal hours of his ministry—but this was a sort of dying I had never witnessed.

  A chill draught wafted through the chamber door from the great hall below. I turned my head swiftly, in hope of the doctor, and saw only Marguerite, Isobel’s maid.

  “Milady,” the Creole girl whispered, her eyes stealing from her mistress’s face to the more dreadful one of the Earl, “the doctor is come.” Her countenance was pale and frightened, and as I watched, she made the Papist sign of the cross hurriedly at her brow, and ducked back through the doorway.

  I cannot find it in me to scold the maid for such foolishness. She is a simple girl from Isobel’s native Barbadoes, who accompanied her mistress upon Isobel’s removal to England two years ago. Marguerite has sorely missed her sleep tonight—it was she who fetched me hastily before dawn to the Countess’s side. But even I, a child of coldblooded England less susceptible to horrified fancy, must confess to sleeplessness these several hours past. For the Earl has uttered such moans and cries that none may shut out his agony, and all within Scargrave’s walls are robbed of peace this night.

  “Lady Scargrave,” the physician said, breaking into my thoughts. He clicked his heels together and bowed in Isobel’s direction. A young man, with all his urgency upon his face.

  “Dr. Pettigrew,” the Countess replied faintly, her hand going to her throat, “thank God you are come.”

  How Isobel could bear it! Married but three months, and to lose a husband one has but lately acquired would seem the cruellest blow of Fate. Yet still she stood, composed and upright, and waited with the terrible fortitude of women for the result of so much misery.

  Dr. Pettigrew glanced at me and nodded, brushing the snow from his greatcoat and handing it to Marguerite, who bobbed a frightened curtsey and ducked out of the chamber. As the physician hastened to the Earl’s bedside, I strove to read his thoughts; but his eyes were hidden behind spectacles, and his mouth held firmly in a line, and I could divine nothing from his youthful countenance. He reached for the Earl’s wrist, and poor Lord Scargrave moaned and tossed upon his pillow.

  “Leave us now, my dear Jane,” Isobel said, her hand cool upon my cheek; “I will come to you when I may.”

  AND SO I MUST WAIT AS WELL, SHUT UP IN MY HIGH-ceilinged chamber with the massive mahogany bed, the walls hung with tapestries in the fashion of the last century. I draw my knees to my chest and pull my dressing gown tight to my toes, staring for the thousandth time at the face of some Scargrave ancestress, forever young and coquettish and consumptively pale, who peers at me from her place above the mantel. It is a solemn room, a room to terrify a child and sober a maid; a room well-suited to my present mood. The fire is burned low and glowing red; my candle casts but a dim light, flickering in the still air as though swept by sightless wings—the Angel of Death, perhaps, hovering over the great house. At my arrival, Isobel told me of the Scargrave legend: When any of the family is doomed to die, the shade of the First Earl walks the gallery beyond my door in evening dress and sombre carriage. The family spectre might well be pacing the boards tonight, however little I would believe in him.

  And through the snowy dawn, a faint echo of pealing bells; they toll nine times as I listen, straining for the count—the passing bell from the church in Scargrave Close, calling out that the Earl is in his final hours. Nine peals for the dying of a man, and then a pause; the toll resumes, a total of forty-eight times, for every year of the Earl’s life. I shiver of a sudden and reach for my paper and pen, the pot of ink I carry always among my things. Much has happened in the two days since my arrival here at Scargrave; much is surely to come. It may help to pass the small hours of morning if I record some memory of them here.

  I AM COME TO SCARGRAVE MANOR IN THE LAST MONTH of the dying year at the invitation of its mistress, Isobel Payne, Countess of Scargrave, with whom I have been intimate these eighteen months. When I recall our first meeting—an introduction between ladies still unwed, in the Bath Pump Room—I cannot help but wonder at the present reversal of events. Isobel, with her gay humour and careless aspect, so early blessed by fortune in the form of the Earl, now to be made a creature of misery and loss! She, who is all goodness, all generosity! It is not to be borne. Though I have known her but a little while, I would do all in my power tonight to succour her in despair—so lovely, and so wounded, is she. I owe the Countess my gratitude as well as esteem. I know too well how little attention she need pay me in her present high estate. A watering place such as Bath encourages ready acquaintance—acquaintance as readily dropt, once the sojourn is done. But Isobel would have it that I am a singular personality, and that once understood, I am not easily put aside. However that may be, she has spurned the ready affections of her husband’s fashionable friends, and proved faithful to her own, more modest ones; many a letter have I written and received, and confidences shared, in the short time we two have called each other by our Christian names.2

  The Countess is returned from her wedding trip but a fortnight, having married Frederick, Lord Scargrave, three months past and departed immediately for the Continent. Her husband, the Earl, being determined to give a ball in her honour, Isobel begged me to make another of the party—and that I had powerful reasons for finding comfort in her goodness I will not deny. A visit to Scargrave promised some welcome diversions—an agreeable partner or two, and in the frivolity of the dance, some measure of forgetfulness for the appalling social errors I had knowingly committed among friends not a fortnight before. Never mind that the Earl’s Manor would be the third home I had visited in as many weeks; there are times when to be in the bosom of one’s family is a burden too great to bear, and relative strangers may prove as balm.

  Thus I went into Hertfordshire fleeing, in short, a broken engagement and the awkward pity of those dearest to me in the world. I hoped only to find a woman’s light dissipation: to talk of millinery and the neighbours with equal parts savagery and indifference, to take my full measure of wintry walks, to see in the New Year in the company of a dear friend lately married. I had no hopes of brilliant conversation, or of being surrounded by those who might challenge my wits; I looked, in fact, for the reverse of what has always been strongest in my nature.

  My journey from Bath in the Scargrave carriage was marked by no intimation of pending tragedy; no dark shadows menaced as the horses laboured through the snowy Park, pulling up with steaming breath before the Manor’s massive oak doors. Only warmth and welcome shone from the many windows set in the house’s broad stone facade—a cheerful aspect on a winter’s twilight, offering rest and sustenance to all who came within its walls. I may fairly say that I descended from the carriage without the slightest flutter of misgiving.

  Nor did I feel a presentiment of doom this evening as I readied myself for the Earl’s celebratory ball. I had from Isobel the loan of her maid, Marguerite, who having seen to her mistress’s toilette, would now attempt to do some good to mine. The disparity in form and finery between Isobel and myself is material, I assure you; and so, while Marguerite fussed and lamented over the creases in my gown, an inevitable result of travel, I took up my pen and wrote to my dear sister Cassandra. It is a letter I fear that I must discard without posting—for soon I shall be required to convey other news, against which last evening’s note may only be declared frivolous.
/>
  My dear Cassandra—

  I am safely arrived in Hertfordshire and more than ready to enjoy the ball the Earl of Scargrave gives in his lady’s honour. I must regard it as fortuitous that Isobel’s invitation arrived so soon upon the heels of my own trouble. Pray forgive me my sudden flight; I could not stay with brother James—you know how little I enjoy the tedium of a tête-à-tête with Mary—in my present confused and downcast state. I will not say that our brother reproached me for refusing Mr. Bigg-Wither; but I did endure a grim half-hour on the fate of impoverished spinsters. I was made to understand that I owe my continued sustenance and respectability (on twenty pounds per annum!) to the good health of our father, and that without a husband, I shall be cast upon my brothers’ slim resources once that worthy is dead. Having heard James out, I am more than ever determined to pursue the publication of my little book, for I must earn some independence; better to commerce in literature than in matrimony, for to marry from mercenary motives is to me of all things the most despicable.3

  But let us leave brother James where he belongs, in the company of his unfortunate wife—I find I must break off, as the maid is come to dress my hair for the ball; though what can be done to improve it at nearly seven-and-twenty, that was not attempted at eighteen, I cannot think. You will be shocked to learn that I have traded my comfortable cap for the allurements of a feather, to be tucked into a beaded band drawn across the forehead; two bunches of curls hang like grapes before my ears, à la the huntress Diana. I appear quite ridiculous, I dare say, but the change is a welcome one for all that. And now, my dearest sister, I must bid you good-night and adieu. I remain,

  Yours very affectionately,

  J.A.

  I wore my yellow patterned silk, the finest thing I own, though admittedly of a vanished season, and kept my head high as I entered the ballroom in Isobel’s wake. The great room was ablaze with candles, grouped in their gilt holders against the pier glasses that line the walls, so that we seemed to move among tall trees and branches of leafy flame; and it was peopled with a glittering assemblage of gentlemen and ladies, some hundred at least, come from surrounding Hertfordshire and as far distant as London. It must be impossible for one of my means to rival the grandeur of Scargrave, much less of the Earl’s circle of acquaintance; but I fortified myself with the knowledge of Isobel’s kindness and thus braved the stares of my companions.

  The Countess of Scargrave was magnificent in deep green silk, a gown she had recently acquired in Paris. That she has always possessed a certain style is indisputable; but now she also may claim the means to obtain it—and the Earl’s great fortune could hardly be better spent. Isobel is a tall, well-formed woman, with a figure light and pleasing; it is generally agreed that her hair is her most extraordinary feature, it being thick and of a deep, lustrous red that cannot fail to command attention. For my own part, I must declare it is her eyes that appear to greatest advantage—being of the colour of sherry, and heavily fringed. The charms of her person would be as nothing, however, did she lack the sweet grace that customarily animates her countenance. Tonight, in the midst of her bridal ball, she was truly lovely, her head thrown back in laughter as she turned about the room.

  That others were equally admiring of Isobel’s beauty and great charm, I readily discerned, and briefly felt myself a pale shadow in her train. To lose one’s cares in the gaiety of a ball, one must, perforce, be able to dance; and this requires a partner. At the advanced age of nearly seven-and-twenty, I had begun to know the fear of younger women. I had been suffered to sit during several dances at the last Bath assembly, while chits of fifteen turned and twirled their hearts upon the floor; and an unaccustomed envy had poisoned my happiness. I quailed to think that my fate tonight at Scargrave might be the same; but Isobel was as good as I had come to expect, and made me immediately acquainted with several gentlemen in her circle.

  First among them was Fitzroy, Viscount Payne, her husband’s nephew. Lord Payne is the only son of the Earl’s younger brother these many years deceased; and if the Earl and Isobel are unblessed by sons of their own, Lord Payne will succeed to the title at the Earl’s death. As a single man in possession of a good fortune, he must be in want of a wife; and so the eyes of many within Scargrave that night were turned to him in hope and calculation.

  From what little I have seen of Fitzroy Payne thus far, however, I should judge him as likely to honour me with his attentions and his hand as any lady in the room. Indeed, his heart is not likely to be easily touched—and I suspect it already is given to another. Lord Payne is a grave gentleman of six-and-twenty, and though decidedly handsome, is possessed of such reserve that his notice was hardly calculated to improve my spirits. As Isobel pronounced my name, he kept his eyes a clear six inches above my head, clicked his heels smartly, and made a deep bow—offering not a word of salutation the while.

  Next I was suffered to meet the eldest son of the Earl’s deceased sister. Mr. George Hearst is a quiet gentleman of seven-and-twenty, charged with all the management of the home farm, which I understand from Isobel is not at all to that gentleman’s liking. He wishes rather to take Holy Orders, with the view to obtaining one of the three livings4 at the Earl’s disposal when it should next come vacant. Pale and gaunt, his eyes shadowed with a care that must be ecclesiastical, he bears the stamp of a man long in converse with his God. His melancholy aspect and glowering looks, in the midst of so much rejoicing, cast a pall over the immediate party that even I, a relative stranger to them all, must feel acutely. Mr. George Hearst gave me an indifferent nod, and then returned to his contemplation of the grave—or so I assumed, from his stony aspect.

  Isobel hastened then to make me known to Lieutenant Thomas Hearst, the ecclesiastic’s younger brother; and as different from him as two men formed of the same union maybe.

  Tom Hearst possesses a life commission in an excellent cavalry regiment, a face creased from laughing, unruly curls that bob when he bows low over a hand, and a charm that has undoubtedly reduced many a fashionable miss to tears and sighing. That the Lieutenant cuts a dashing figure in his dark blue uniform, and dances with more enthusiasm than skill, I may readily attest. When Isobel presented him, he bobbed in the aforesaid manner and immediately asked for my next dance; and so I instantly recovered from my fit of nerves and set out to determine something of the Lieutenant’s character.

  I did not have far to seek. At the glimpse of a blond head hovering over my shoulder and the scent of violets assailing my nose, I turned and surveyed Miss Fanny Delahoussaye, resplendent in a peacock-blue gown that displayed to excellent effect her ample bosom. Miss Delahoussaye laughed a little breathlessly—the result, no doubt, of too much activity and too little corset string—and reached a plump hand to her coiffure.

  “And so you have met that rascal Tom Hearst,” she said, and actually winked in my direction. Miss Fanny is Isobel’s cousin from the Barbadoes, a well-grown girl of youthful and boisterous appearance, but sadly lacking in sense. “He has snatched you up for a dance or two, I warrant, and now I shall have to go begging for a partner. I am sure Tom should have monopolised my card,” she added, displaying that elegant slip attached to her fan, already overwritten with eager suitors, “but for his delicacy in appearing too forward.”

  “Is Lieutenant Hearst a man of delicacy, then?” I enquired, with more interest in Miss Delahoussaye than I had heretofore felt.

  “Oh, Lord, no!” she cried. “As rash a scapegrace as ever lived! But Tom is that afraid of Mamma”—at this, she tossed her blond curls in Madame Delahoussaye’s general direction—”as to be overcareful. I am sure that J should not fear her half so much. It is not as though I have a brother, you know, to fight with him and send him off.”

  “Why should any fight with the Lieutenant?” I said, somewhat bewildered.

  “Why, because he is in love with me, of course,” Fanny declared, rapping my shoulder with her fan; “and his fortune is hardly equal to my own. And if I did have a brother to fight h
im, it should be the worse for us; for you know Tom is come to Scargrave having killed a man in an affair of honour.”5

  My distress at this intelligence being written upon my countenance, Miss Delahoussaye laughed aloud. “I wonder you had not heard of it. Lord, it is the talk of the entire room! He has left his regiment at St. James for a little until the scandal dies down; though I am sure he should not have engaged in such an affair had he not been cruelly insulted.” With this, Miss Delahoussaye attempted to look grave, but her blue eyes danced with approbation for the terrible Lieutenant.

  “Undoubtedly,” I replied, “though we cannot know what it is about.”

  “I mean to find out,” Miss Fanny said stoutly, “for the affairs of officers are to me the most romantic in the world! Do not you agree, Miss Austen? Is not an officer to be preferred above any man?”

  “I had not thought them blessed with any particular merit—” I began, but was cutoff in mid-sentence.

  “Then you cannot appreciate Tom as I do, and I shall not fear your charms any longer. He is wild about me, Miss Austen; do you remember it when you are dancing with him.” And with a flounce of her peacock-hued gown, Fanny Delahoussaye left me to await the return of her heart’s delight.

  It was but nine o’clock, and light refreshment was laid in a parlour at some remove from the great room; a crush of gentlemen and ladies circulated about the long table, seeking ices and champagne, cold goose and sweetmeats, sent forth from Scargrave’s kitchens with a breathtaking disregard for expense. I considered the swarm of the unknown, some of whom were very fine, indeed, and for an instant wished myself returned to the hearth in my room, with a good book for company; but Isobel had taken my arm, and I was not to be so easily released.

  “This is what it means to be a married woman, Jane,” my friend said, with an arch smile; “one is forever expected to forego refreshment so that others may dance. You may eat to your heart’s content, but / must allow my husband to lead me to the floor, or suffer the contempt of my guests.” Isobel then swept off on the arm of the Earl, and proceeded to the head of the room; others equally eager to join in the revels formed up in pairs alongside them, as the musicians laid bow to string.