Jane and His Lordship's Legacy Page 25

  Of your son I have better intelligence—he is placed with a cottager near Versailles and knows nothing of his unfortunate mother’s fate. I have seen him, and when all is concluded—for good or ill—I shall get him to you in Marseille, or die in the attempt.

  You may expect us within a fortnight.

  You would find your poor lady much changed. She remains, despite the grossest of indignities and a cause for despair beyond imagining, the sweetest-tempered female I have ever met with. She begs to be remembered to you and her father, and asks on her dying eve that you guard well the life of your son. Some token he bears with him which you will recognise; I know not what. Pray God that we arrive safe.

  Yours ever,

  Harry

  Chapter 25

  The Earl’s Story

  10 July 1809, cont.

  ~

  IT WAS EDWARD WHO RODE OUT TO FETCH THE SURGEON, Mr. Althorp, from Sherborne St. John, in order that he might pronounce another sudden death to have been achieved at the great estate of Stonings. I remained with the Earl of Holbrook while Charles Spence’s valet took his master’s body in charge, and saw it washed and laid out for burial with his own hands. I had not encountered the Major’s manservant before, but was much struck by the expression of suffering that was writ on his countenance; clearly Charles Spence had been beloved of somebody.

  The Earl escorted me from the scene of gore and misery that had become the library, and deposited me with a decanter of sherry and Lord Harold’s precious missive in the white and gold saloon. He disappeared for an interval, in which I assume he paid his respects to his daughter’s bier, and issued orders regarding the Major’s remains. I walked about the room in some disorder of mind, debating every moment of the past week and my own tragic miscalculations regarding the persons I had lately met. The Earl returned after twenty minutes, in apparel freshly exchanged for his garments of the morning, and looking the better for his respite.

  “My dear Miss Austen,” he cried, “I could wish us to have met under more cheerful circumstances. It is shocking indeed to consider the scenes to which you have been subjected. But I am grateful to you for the perspicacity you have brought to Stonings; I should not have suspected Charles Spence in an hundred years. Altho’—given his ruthless determination to acquire my property—I doubt my life would have lasted so long.”

  “I must agree with you, my lord.”

  He threw himself onto the settee at my side and patted my hand encouragingly. “I apprehend, now, why Harry left you his papers, m’dear. You’re as shrewd as you can hold together, aren’t you? I wish Immy had possessed a little of your understanding; the gel might yet be spending my money hand over fist.”

  He looked so troubled that I felt an unwarranted desire to protect and support him; the sort of desire that must often have attended Freddy Vansittart’s adventures, and ensured him the love and good will of those around him.

  I offered the Earl Lord Harold’s letter. “I collect from this communication that the boy his lordship speaks of was Julian Thrace?”

  “Indeed. Delivered like a package to my inn at Marseille not ten days after the date of that note. There was never anything like Harry for dependability; when Trowbridge gave his word, he backed it.”

  “Had you known the boy before?”

  “But naturally! I fell head over ears in love with Julian’s mother when I was a young man out in India, and by the hour of her death was almost Hélène’s sole support. I should have gone to her myself, at the last, but for the price the Committee had placed upon my head.”

  I had an idea of the story, but forbore to interrupt him.

  “She was the daughter of a French count, and the daintiest piece of work you should ever have seen, m’dear.” He sighed reminiscently. “No sapskull, neither. When we met Hélène was betrothed to another—a peer of the British realm—and her sense of what was due to her father, who had arranged the match, dictated the most scrupulous fidelity to his wishes. Her heart, however, was another affair altogether. Wonderful how these French women can reconcile the very Devil!”

  I murmured assent.

  “I cannot recall a happier time than those few short weeks aboard the Punjab, Miss Austen. When we achieved Plymouth, however, I gave her up for lost. No sooner did I find myself back in London, than I was riveted meself—it was only expected, as I had come into my brother’s title, and must stand the business. Amelia was well-born, well-looking, and without a penny to her name; that meant little to me, as I had made my fortune already in the East. I fear, however, that I was unable to accord my wife the sort of affection and fidelity a young woman might expect from her husband. My heart was already commanded by another, you see. Amelia left me when our child was but three years old, and I was forced to raise Immy myself. Not that I minded; it was preferable to living with my lady wife’s highjinks. All the same—I never undertook to marry again. Hadn’t the desire for it, if you see what I mean.”

  “I do understand. But the French lady … ?”

  “Couldn’t stick the Viscount,” he answered bluntly, “and naturally, she must have appeared in his lordship’s eyes as rather tainted goods. I will not deny that Hélène achieved her wedding day already two months gone with my child. I suppose she thought to brave it out—to deceive the gentleman if necessary, and endure a loveless marriage, provided he could be kind to her—but the truth is, St. Eustace was the Devil’s own cub, and there was no living with him for any woman. Hélène sought my protection within six months of her marriage, and I saw the poor gel safely home to Paris with all possible speed. Set her up in a lovely little house in the Rue de Sèvres, and prepared for both of us to be happy. That would have been 1786, I suppose—the year of Julian’s birth. But what with one thing and another, I only saw my French family perhaps four times in a twelvemonth. And then the Revolution began, and it was hard to know where an Englishman’s duty lay.”

  “Particularly an Englishman of the Whiggish persuasion,” I observed.

  “That’s the rub,” he agreed. “We were all for liberty, at first—for the reign of Reason, and the power of a Constitution, and the curbing of royal prerogatives; it was like mother’s milk to us, don’t y’know. Even Harry was wild for French republicanism. But then he saw at first hand the excesses of the populists bent on murdering all those they could not persuade. He wrote back to his friends at home that measures would have to be contrived, once the blood began to flow. And so we all agreed to serve as the rescue party for our French brothers. Charles Grey conceived of the details, and Harry and I volunteered to carry them out.”

  “With Lord Holland as your second,” I mused.

  “Exactly so! Are you acquainted with Henry?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Must introduce you. Old friend of Harry’s from schoolboy days.”

  “And so the boy—Julian Thrace—was rescued and given over to you in Marseille,” I persisted, “in the winter of 1792.”

  “He was then but six years of age. I could not leave the lad in France, of course, but I did not think it right to bring him home to the Holbrook nursery—there were Immy’s feelings to consider, and the awkwardness of questions. Henry—Lord Holland—suggested that Julian might be sent to school with the Swiss, where Holland might observe him from time to time, and send reports as to his progress. It served very well. Holland and his lady had made a habit of living abroad—first in France and then in Spain—and it was as nothing to them to pay a flying visit to Julian several times a year. They have even had the boy to stay in their household. Yes, it answered very well.”

  So well that the boy’s father had never been put to the slightest trouble beyond paying his son’s bills. That should answer a man of Freddy Vansittart’s indolence very well indeed.

  “What were your feelings, sir, upon hearing that Julian Thrace was believed responsible for your daughter’s murder?”

  “I thought it the grossest misunderstanding, and could only lament that Julian had bolted
—not from want of courage, to be sure, but a lamentable ignorance of the British system of justice. I never believed him capable of killing Imogen. Why should he, after all? There was no claim he was required to prove in order to inherit the title. I should always have known him for my son; his nose is my father’s, after all, and his eyes are entirely Hélène’s. Besides, there were the rubies to think of. The little chap arrived in Marseille with them tied in a leather pouch under his shirt, like one of Ali Baba’s thieves.”

  “The rubies?” I repeated blankly. “Not the Rubies of Chandernagar?”

  “He has told you of them, then!” Holbrook exclaimed with delight. “An heirloom of Hélène’s house, and owned at one time by Madame de Pompadour, if the old stories may be believed. I think Hélène expected me to sell the stones, in order to support our son’s education; but that is nonsense, of course. The stones are his inheritance from his mother, and must remain in his possession until he determines to place them about the neck of another.”

  Poor Mamma, I thought ruefully, and her blistered palms.

  The Earl rose from the settee and wandered restlessly towards the window, where the prospect of lake and parapet could dimly be seen through the rain. “A black coach, and an outrider; that will be your excellent brother, Miss Austen. I do so dread a publick recital of Charles Spence’s affairs. He is, after all, family. Cannot we agree to bury the truth with the poor fellow’s body? Publicity cannot return Imogen to life, after all.”

  “That is true,” I assented, “but the truth could do much to clear your son’s name. That must seem essential, as Mr. Thrace is all that remains to you.”

  “Julian?” The Earl glanced at me ruefully. “He shall be well on his way to Switzerland by now, and such friends as he still possesses. I suspect it will be months before I am able to locate him; and many months more before he will consent to receive me.”

  “I do not think he is fled to the Continent,” I replied, with a swift recollection of Catherine Prowting’s nocturnal wanderings, “and you will be happy to learn, sir, that not all your son’s friends are so far from home. An application in the right place should secure his return before nightfall, if you will consent to place the matter in my hands.”

  “I cannot conceive of a better course,” Holbrook said simply. “Pray tell me in what manner I may serve you in return, Miss Austen.”

  “You might order Major Spence’s valet to search his effects,” I suggested, “for a Bengal chest that was once in Lord Harold’s possession. It contains all that remains of the gentleman—and I have sorely missed the whole since Charles Spence made off with it.”

  “It shall be done,” the Earl replied, and bowed low over my hand. “Now tell me, Miss Austen—how came we never to meet when Harry was alive? Do you never get up to Town for the Season?”

  He is a stout fellow, and clearly given over entirely to dissipation—but Freddy Vansittart does possess an infinite abundance of charm, as Lord Harold once noted. In this quality alone, we may certainly recognise Julian Thrace’s father.

  Chapter 26

  New Beginnings

  Wednesday, 26 July 1809

  ~

  My dearest Frank, I wish you Joy

  Of Mary’s safety with a boy,

  Whose birth has given little pain,

  Compared with that of Mary Jane.—

  SO FAR I HAD MANAGED TO COMPOSE, IN MY LETTER TO MY brother Captain Frank Austen, when the Muse failed me. Lord Harold might love to instruct that writing is all we have—but in my experience, on too many occasions we may not command even so much as a word. I sighed, and set aside my pen, and determined to take a turn in the garden to refresh my jaded senses.

  Cassandra and my mother were gone out to Alton, and the cottage was mine to possess alone. In the past few weeks since our descent upon Chawton, turmoil had given way to peace, and the rightful enjoyment of the summer months in all their lazy plentitude. We had the imminent arrival of Martha Lloyd from Kintbury to look forward to; and increasing intimacy with the Great House family to leaven the simple bread of our usual days; restorative walks through the surrounding country; and the promise of an occasional visit from some one of our brothers. Not to mention the delights of the hopeful family in Lenton Street, and the babe so newly born.

  For my part, the past few weeks had been one of discovery and acceptance. The salvation of Julian Thrace from a murderer’s gibbet, and the determination of his father to present the young man as his son and heir without further delay, had sent the most interesting part of our local acquaintance flying from the country. The Heir to the House of Holbrook had been discovered sheltering in a shepherd’s cot long since abandoned on Robin Hood Butts. By Julian’s side, in terror of his life, was Old Philmore—who had been brutally served with a club by Charles Spence after delivering the Bengal chest into the Major’s hands. This cowardly act had been achieved in darkness, on the very night of the cottage burglary; and it having been a night of waning moon, Old Philmore succeeded at escaping from Stonings with his life, and a great wound to the head. Knowledge of his own guilt in the matter of the chest, and a terror of what the steward might further do, had convinced the old man to lie low until such time as Justice had been served. A chance meeting with Julian Thrace, who had his own story of persecution to tell, had sealed the matter, and made of the two fugitives friends in need.

  My application to Catherine Prowting—without the necessity of informing her father or betraying the folly into which his daughter had plunged—had wrested the young man’s location from her terrified lips. The Earl himself rode out to find Julian, and no one else was privileged to witness their reconciliation, or to know what was then said. My brother Edward, however, was able to satisfy Mr. Prowting that Charles Spence was entirely responsible for the murders of Shafto French and Lady Imogen; and in the conversation of the two magistrates, Justice was allowed to have been served.

  Catherine Prowting received a very pretty round of thanks from Mr. Thrace for her care of him in distress, but no offer of marriage; and as that gentleman is now gone a fortnight from Hampshire, and no one knows whether he is ever likely to return, the unfortunate Catherine appears certain to fall into a decline.

  To supplement the loss of such compelling society, however, I have had my Bengal chest: returned with a forced lock and a splintered face, but with the contents mostly intact. Great disorder reigned among Lord Harold’s papers, as Charles Spence had obviously gone through them in immense haste, and failed to discover the proofs he so desperately sought; but there is a satisfaction in bringing order from chaos, against which even I am no proof. I have spent many consuming mornings closeted in my bedchamber, with packets of letters and journals spread out all around me, and am in a mood to welcome any shower of rain, as discouraging all other activity but that of reading.

  Cassandra, observing me, sniffed with disdain that I was as much Lord Harold’s inamorata in death as in life—and I did not trouble to argue the point. Entire worlds of experience have been opened to me through his lordship’s letters; and I feel now as tho’ I hardly knew him, when he stood in my parlour with one booted foot on the fender, and his hooded grey eyes fixed on my countenance. There is much to trouble, and much to shock, among these papers; much also to admire and love. But what a burden he has placed in my safekeeping! I no longer trust to the security of a cottage.

  I have written to Mr. Bartholomew Chizzlewit of Lincoln’s Inn, and desired him to despatch a special courier to Chawton, so that Lord Harold’s bequest might be returned to the solicitor’s offices. There, from time to time, I might visit his lordship’s ghost—and determine how best to fulfill the heavy charge he has placed upon me. The writing up and publication of the Rogue’s memoirs will prove no easy task—but if it is to be a lifework, it is one I feel myself equal to undertake. The effect of the Memoirs of a Gentleman Rogue should be as a bombshell bursting upon the Polite World; and nothing would deprive me of the privilege of unleashing so cataclysmic a force.
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  I have not yet learned to ignore Lord Harold’s loss. Here, in the simple beauty of this country garden, with the prospect of my family’s society always around me, I must know myself even still for a woman set apart. Great love denied has been my burden; and its bastards are silence and loneliness. It is my very singularity I must struggle with now—as perhaps I have always done. It was Lord Harold alone who understood this; and honoured me with his esteem despite the ways in which I shall never be quite like other women.

  Or perhaps—as he told me once—because of them.

  Letter from Lord Harold Trowbridge to Miss Jane Austen, dated 3 November 1808; one leaf quarto, laid; watermark Fitzhugh and Gilroy; sealed with black wax over signature.

  (British Museum, Wilborough Papers, Austen bequest)

  My dearest Jane——

  If I survive the morning’s work—as no doubt I shall—this letter will never reach you; but if I am fated by some mischance to fall under Ord’s hand, I cannot go in silence upon one subject, at least.

  I am no sentimentalist. I will tell you that you are hardly the most beautiful woman I have ever known, Jane, nor the most enchanting. Your witchery is of a different order than others’—and springs, I believe, from the extraordinary self-possession you command. It is unique in my experience of women. You have my unqualified esteem and respect; you have my trust and my heart; and if I love you, my dear, it is as one loves the familiar room to which one returns after desperate wandering. In this room I might draw the shades upon the world and live in comfort forever.

  Do not cry for me, Jane—but carry me always in your heart, as one who loved you for that courage to be yourself, and not what convention would have you be.

  Your Rogue

  Editor’s Afterword

  THERE ARE MANY WHO MAKE IT THEIR LIFEWORK TO STUDY Jane Austen and her novels, and to them I owe a considerable debt. There are others, however, who are content to simply enjoy her words and live for a while in the world she created; and to many of these devoted readers, the town of Chawton—and the cottage in which Austen lived the final eight years of her life—have become a shrine to a lost time and place. They will probably object to my portrait of the village as hostile to the Austens’ arrival in 1809, but there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that the four women who took up residence in Widow Seward’s cottage were not immediately beloved. The claims of the Hinton family, and their relations the Baverstocks and Dusautoys, against Edward Austen are well documented, and resulted in a lawsuit in 1814 demanding the reversion of the Chawton estates to the direct heirs of the Knights of Chawton. Edward was forced to settle the claim with a payment of fifteen thousand pounds to Jack Hinton, which he raised by the sale of timber from the Chawton woods. In that same year, Edward also prosecuted one of the Baigent boys for assault; but history does not tell us whether it was Toby or in what manner he attacked the Squire.