Jane and the Stillroom Maid jam-5 Page 23

  He sat down beside me, and eased his lame foot straight out before him. “It does not sit well with a man of my temperament to skulk here, under the Duke’s protection, as though I were afraid to enter my own house. Had I not been pressed to remain for Hary-O’s native day, I should have ridden out long ago.”

  It was hardly a reply to my question. I let his words fall without remark, and took a sip of tea.

  “Miss Austen — have you spoken with George — Mr. Hemming?”

  “I have. I was present at his confession, if one may thus describe an admission so thoroughly disguised in drink. I told him then that I believed him to be shielding another — to have claimed the murder of the maid in the belief that Sir James Villiers would be satisfied. But Sir James is not. Too many aspects of Tess Arnold’s death do not accord with Mr. Hemming’s story.”

  “Aspects?” he enquired, with a penetrating look. “And may I ask—? But no. You shall not be pressed to an indiscretion.”

  “Sir James is of my opinion, Mr. Danforth, that Mr. Hemming would act in the guise of scapegoat. But for whom? Have you any idea?”

  I observed the gentleman so coolly, and yet so narrowly, that I could not mistake the turn of his countenance. Charles Danforth was consumed with anxiety; and his fears were inspired by whatever George Hemming might know.

  “I can well believe that he would place a noose around his own neck, if it might save another whom he loved,” the gentleman said in a voice hollow and low. “Hemming is the best-hearted and best-intentioned fellow in the world. I can conceive of no reason on earth why he should have harmed Tess Arnold — but neither have I ever known George Hemming to lie.”

  “And so you turn on the horns of paradox,” I murmured.

  “One of his actions must be false,” Danforth exclaimed. “But which? Having admitted falseness to be impossible, I cannot rightly say.”

  “Perhaps, if Mr. Hemming could explain his actions — either his purpose in lying, or his purpose in killing the maid — we might comprehend his behaviour.”

  “Naturally,” Charles Danforth agreed, “but it is just that sort of explanation we cannot expect. I understand from Sir James — who rode out here yesterday to impart the news of Hemming’s confession — that he will offer no reason for his violence or its result.”

  “I suppose,” I said tentatively, “that if the person truly responsible were forced to acknowledge his guilt, Mr. Hemming would regard himself as released from silence; but any declaration then on his part should no longer seem useful.”

  Charles Danforth clasped his hands uneasily on his knee. “My father and his second wife died in a carriage accident, Miss Austen, when I was but eighteen years of age, and intending Cambridge. It was Hemming who travelled to London to inform me of the tragedy himself, Hemming who comforted me in my first paroxysm of grief. For months thereafter, when I was a lost and frightened boy, it was Hemming who served as guide through a world of care I had not hoped to assume for decades together. I should be a very different man but for his influence; I have reason to regard him with affection all my life. If I can in any measure serve as friend in his present turmoil, then I shall. I owe him that much.”

  “Charles!” cried the Countess of Bessborough, approaching with a glow of animation, “you must save us all from the most dreadful ennui, and partner me at the whist table! I cannot drag Granville away from the charms of Lord Harold’s conversation.”

  Mr. Danforth rose with good grace, nodded unsmilingly to me, and went immediately to Lady Bessborough’s side; and I did not speak to him for the remainder of the evening. But his words — the force of his expressions, and the manner in which he uttered them — lay powerfully in my mind. He had formed a desperate resolution, I should judge, and required only the opportunity to act.

  His Grace preferred, when sitting down to cards, to play at faro — a game whose sole purpose may be described as the loss of as much of one’s purse as one is willing to wager. It is a game played by two people alone, one of them serving as dealer and bank; Lady Elizabeth Foster served in this capacity for the Duke, sitting opposite him at the green baize table and turning over cards very prettily with her thin white hands. The Morpeths sat down to whist, and claimed Lady Bessborough for a third; her partner was the dutiful Charles Danforth. Lord Harold was engrossed in conversation with Granville Leveson-Gower; and that left Lady Harriot, the Countess of Swithin, Andrew Danforth, and myself at leisure.

  “Well, Hary-O, and how shall we mark so signal an occasion? Should you like to play at vingt-et-un, macao, or loo?” Danforth enquired in a cavalier tone. “Though my brother has callously revealed that my pockets are entirely to let, I shall wager my pitiful pence in honour of your native day.”

  “Do not beggar yourself on my account, I beg. I am sure that I am sick of cards. Losses at the tapis-vert reduced my mother to a walking shadow. I should much rather amuse myself with music than anything.”

  “Then pray let us open the instrument!” Danforth cried. “I do not think, Miss Austen, that you have seen the music room as yet, but it may justly be described as one of Chatsworth’s glories; though nothing in the room is so much an ornament as she who is accustomed to play there.”

  Lady Harriot looked archly, and slipped her arm through Desdemona’s. “My father cannot bear the sound of the pianoforte when he is at cards, Miss Austen, so I am afraid we must hurry ourselves away. Do you play?”

  “A little.” I had not touched an instrument in months, however; though I had hired one for my use in Bath, it was an indifferent article. “I should dearly love to hear a true proficient.”

  “I cannot claim to be so much — and dear Mona is always flying about, she cannot sit still for the length of a concerto! But Mr. Danforth sings. Perhaps we may attempt a duet.”

  The gentleman bowed; and without further ado we followed Lady Harriot from the grand salon into the music room at Chatsworth.

  It was an excessively elegant chamber — the sort of place that should be reserved for public concerts, with its draperies of gold, its little French chairs, its massive harp and violins in cases. The pianoforte to which Hary-O turned was of rosewood, beautifully inlaid — and but one of the instruments displayed in the room.

  “A present from my father,” she observed, “sent down from London only three days ago. Though he can be said to possess not the slightest interest in music, he is still capable of spending ridiculous sums. I have not yet grown accustomed to the keys.”

  She sat down at the instrument and trilled her fingers over the ivories. It was the first occasion on which I had chanced to remark her hands: long, thin, speaking fingers, expressive of all the fire and passion in her soul. These should never be tanned from neglect of a glove, nor coarsened by exposure to a scullery; they were hands designed for the fluttering of a fan or a pen, for the wearing of precious jewels, for the offering of a caress. Hands that might hold in a phaeton’s team or curb a wild horse as well — for there was strength unsuspected in their lines.

  “I await your command,” she said with an eye for Andrew Danforth.

  “Would that those words were true,” he murmured caressingly.

  “That depends upon the construction one chooses,” Desdemona said briskly. “I would wish you to sing airs in the Italian; if you must descend into sentiment before us all, Mr. Danforth, you had much better do so unintelligibly.”

  It occurred to me that the Countess — though preserving her manners with the grace that was second nature — did not approve of her friend’s suitor.

  Mr. Danforth did not choose to remark her dislike; he obligingly turned over some sheets of music, and settled them before the fair performer; she commenced to play, with an infinitely superior taste than I should ever manage. Her voice was a little less equal to her fingering; but Mr. Danforth’s being strong and rich, the effect was charming. I resolved at once to cede all display to Lady Harriot, and heard her with pleasure.

  Two songs were thus suffered to fall away
, in rapt attention from myself and Desdemona, when an interval occurred in which Mr. Danforth must find a particular song — one he had attempted before in Lady Harriot’s hearing — one he would not be satisfied without attempting again — and the lady’s fingers fell silent.

  “He will be searching out a tender embarrassment,” Desdemona confided in a lowered tone, “and I declare I shall be sick. A diversion, I think, is necessary.” And raising her voice slightly she said, “I make it the third night this week, Hary-O, that Hart has disappeared without a word. Perhaps he is gone a-trysting, and is ashamed to acknowledge it! We may declare that the result of Mr. Danforth’s example.”

  “I suspect that young Hart is poaching,” Danforth declared from his place among the sheet-music; “it is the preferred entanglement of every country youth. He will be presently crouching in the underbrush of the Vernon grounds, in the company of a most disgraceful companion, intent upon the snaring of a brace of rabbits.”

  “Is it quite safe for such a young fellow to be abroad, when murder has been done?” I enquired, with an air of idle curiosity. “But perhaps he confines himself to the park, and writes poetry in the Grotto.”

  “Poetry! Hart?” Lady Harriot managed an expression of unaffected amusement; it softened the unyielding structure of her face, and made her appear suddenly more amiable. “It is meaning no disrespect to say that poor Hart is possessed of a tin ear. It is much to elicit two words from him, indeed; but on paper, he is an utter blank!”

  “How very sad!” Desdemona cried. “It has been my experience that those young men who cannot pronounce a word, are the most eloquent hands at a love letter! Your easy and arrogant fellows, who may spout off an entire volume, have no time to waste in putting words to paper. I do not think I possess a single billet-doux in Swithin’s fist, however ardent his vows by moonlight.”

  “Whoever murdered poor Tess is unlikely to concern himself with the heir to a dukedom,” Danforth added, for my ears. “The Marquess must enjoy such protection, by virtue of his birth and his manhood, as a stillroom maid could never know.”

  “I will confess that I worry about Hart,” Lady Harriot murmured. Her long fingers spasmed slightly where they sat idle in her lap; she clutched them together, ever the mistress of control. “When I learned that murder had been done so recently as Monday night, my thoughts flew immediately to my brother. He was abroad until dawn.”

  I stared at Lady Harriot, my breath suspended. Surely she must apprehend the cruel force of such a speech?

  “He should not be allowed to wander alone,” she went on, in a fretful tone. “It would never have been permitted in my mother’s time. He should be forced to keep a groom at his heels—”

  “I cannot think that Hart would thank you for your concern,” Danforth told her lightly. “No lad of fifteen wishes to be followed by a nursemaid.”

  “If Lord Hartington was abroad on Monday night, how thankful you must have been to discover him safe — when first you learned of Tess Arnold’s death,” I added. “In so vast a house as this, I imagine it must be possible for a legion to come and go unnoticed.”

  “I should never know if Hart had found his bed or slept in the stables,” Lady Harriot confirmed. “Fifteen is such a trying age! I will not scruple to admit that the boy has run completely wild this summer, Miss Austen.”

  “Perhaps when he has got over the worst of his grief,” I suggested delicately, “you may observe a change. Perhaps if he were sent away to school—”

  “Now that is a remedy I cannot hear of, without the most strenuous objection in the world,” Andrew Danforth declared with heat. “Whoever first conceived of an exile among schoolboys, far from the comforts of all that is familiar, as a remedy for grief, can never have known what beasts young boys may be.”

  “You speak with all the force of experience, Mr. Danforth.”

  “I do. My brother, Charles, saw fit to send me to Winchester, when my parents died; and it was many years before I could forgive his interference.”

  “And yet,” I persisted, “a man must receive an education.”

  “But why he must be educated at so great a distance from his home — alien to everything that must have a claim on his heart — is something I will never understand,” he replied, with less of anger than he had previously shown. “When I reflect that a woman may be schooled in her own attics, by the comfort of a fire, at the hands of domestics she has known all her life — I might almost exchange my Hessians for stays, Miss Austen!”

  We all laughed; but Mona could not allow the argument to rest in Danforth’s hands. “It will not do, Mr. Danforth — you know that it will not do. The chief purpose in attending a school such as you describe, is not to be found in the Latin or Greek that is beaten into your head; but in the acquaintance one forms and the relations of friendship or reliance that may extend a lifetime. Hart must certainly benefit from these.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Danforth,” I enquired, “did you regret your exile to Winchester so deeply, once you had been there the length of a term?”

  “I hated it without qualification or exception for the whole three months I endured,” he retorted. “Had poor old Hemming not appeared as my saviour, I should hate it still.”

  “Hemming? — Not Mr. George Hemming?”

  “Naturally. Whom else should I mean? It was always Hemming Charles employed whenever anything distasteful had to be faced; and rather than come in search of me himself, and answer to the Headmaster, he sent his solicitor in his stead.”

  “I see.” His solicitor, it would seem, was yet serving in that capacity; and having faced a Headmaster of Winchester, and stood his ground, perhaps George Hemming could find nothing very awful in the gallows after all.

  “But I was forgetting,” Danforth continued. “You are a little acquainted with Mr. Hemming, I think, Miss Austen.”

  “I was in his company on the day I found Tess Arnold,” I told him starkly, “and still cannot credit that Mr. Hemming is languishing in Bakewell gaol, on a charge of murder.”

  “Not because of the maid?” Lady Harriot cried. Her isolation within the grounds of Chatsworth, it seemed, had extended so far as a complete ignorance of events that had animated all Derbyshire. “But why should he have done her any harm?”

  “Even now, I cannot support the idea,” Danforth said. “It is in every respect impossible.”

  “Because Mr. Hemming has been your saviour?” enquired Desdemona with interest, “or because you regard his character as incapable of violence? I merely ask as a student of human nature, and one who has witnessed murder done before. In this, you may observe the foundation of my friendship for Miss Austen.”

  “When the maid’s body was first discovered, and believed to be that of a young gentleman,” I said, “George Hemming was astonished to find a corpse above Miller’s Dale. On this basis alone I do not believe him when he claims to have shot Tess Arnold; and I shall never be convinced of his having mutilated her body.”

  “My father has invited Mr. Hemming to dine in our company some once or twice,” Lady Harriot said. “He seemed an amiable and decent fellow. But I cannot profess to know him well; and how may any of us claim to know of what another is capable? I should not admit such knowledge of my dearest relations. Indeed, if my family is to serve as example — then we may safely state that each of us is capable of the greatest good, and the deepest harm, in the world.”

  “Hemming sustained me through a most difficult period,” Danforth said with diffidence. “He has been a steady friend to all my family. But I cannot profess to know his conscience. I cannot profess to know my own, if it comes to that.”

  “This is serious speaking, indeed!” Lady Swithin cried, with a satiric look for Lady Harriot; “if you may command half so much eloquence on behalf of slavery or taxation, Mr. Danforth, your success in Parliament is assured! But perhaps we cannot hope for so much. It is rare for our English gentleman to summon much love for matters of finance.”

  “What r
eason do you find for Mr. Hemming to have murdered the maid?” I asked.

  He shook his head with a fine expression of distaste. “I wonder that they were even acquainted! I am as amazed as all of Bakewell, Miss Austen.”

  “And this is how steadiness is repaid!” observed Lady Swithin tartly. “If ever I stand in need of stout defence, Mr. Danforth, pray remind me not to look for it from your quarter.”

  “I shall be only too happy to speak to Hemming’s excellent character at the Derby Assizes,” Danforth returned. “Unless it be that he enters a plea of guilt. That is certainly the course that Sir James believes he will adopt, for I have spoken with the Justice regarding the case. He has never seen a man so determined, he says, to assume responsibility for his crime. Hemming appears to having nothing further in view, than a swift judgement.”

  Lady Harriot heaved a troubled sigh. “How dreadful, to have your good opinion of the man entirely overthrown! It is wretched, indeed, to feel that all one’s ideas of childhood — the happy innocence of one’s earliest associations — must be destroyed with age! The more I know of the world, the less I am pleased with it. There are few people I really love; and even fewer of whom I think well.”

  “That is because you are formed for discernment,” Andrew Danforth told her gently. “You are made of such unblemished gold yourself, that all the rest of the world must appear as base, and tarnished.”

  Lady Harriot closed her instrument with a gesture of impatience. “Pray do not toad-eat me this evening, Andrew! I have not the temper for it.”

  “He is merely practising, Hary-O, for his career in politics.” Lady Swithin made this observation with amusement. “You must know, Mr. Danforth, that the road to greatness is paved with seduction. You must endeavour to be the toast of all the great ladies in the Whig establishment, for it is they who wield the true power! Their husbands merely effect it.”

  The Countess’s tone was lighthearted; but I detected something of her uncle’s irony in its depths. The easy expression on Desdemona’s face must belie the cutting edge to her words. She was a subtle creature — a playful and charming girl, whose manners had always been captivating. But she was nonetheless a Trowbridge. And I saw, with an inner exulting, that she did not intend her friend Lady Harriot to throw herself away. However desperate the case of the Duke’s daughter — however miserable she might find herself in the prison of her home — Lady Swithin should ensure that she made a brilliant match. And Andrew Danforth was too ambitious — too insinuating in his ways — and too duplicitous for Mona’s taste.