Jane and the Man of the Cloth jam-2 Page 3

  Cassandra is stirring now, and calls my name; I set aside my pen and journal and reach for her hand. A touch alone suffices; we two are so familiar to each other, from the happy intimacy of our minds and hearts, that at the pressure of my fingertips upon her brow, her troubled mind relaxes. A moment more, and she slumbers deep, the pain of injury forgotten. I regain my seat, and take up my pen and modest book — formed, according to my habit, from a sheaf of paper sewn quite through and trimmed to manageable size. A stout book, for the stoutest of thoughts; and of considerable comfort, in serving as confidante when no living mind may answer.

  All around us the eaves of the old farmhouse creak with the violence of the wind, but the intimates of High Down Grange are lost in storm-filled slumber — no sound emanates from the shuttered rooms, so that I might be the last soul alive, left here at the edge of the world. Beyond is darkness, and cliffs, and the depthless sea; England is to my back as 1 sit by Cassandra's bed. And so I cross the room to peer out at the unknown, stretching before me like all the days I have yet to live; and can discern nothing beyond my own wavering reflection in the window's glass. A shiver — of foreboding, perhaps — at the hidden landscape, and I would turn away to find comfort in candlelight. But a sudden flare in the darkness below seizes my gaze; I peer more closely, my eyes narrowing, and discern the bob of a lanthorn. A lanthorn just come up over the cliffs edge in the distance, and toiling even now towards the Grange itself. A curiously-shaped lanthorn, perhaps, with a protuberant spout, of a utility unknown to me? Clutched in an angel's ethereal hand, while the other flutters at the nape of a flowing red cloak?

  Chapter 2

  The Understanding of Eliza

  5 September 1804

  Lyme

  AND SO WE ARE AT LAST COME TO LYME, AND TO OUR VERY OWN Wings cottage — a smallish affair of a house tucked into a hillside, with two ground floors-one in its proper place, and the other at the top of the house containing the bedrooms and a back door opening onto a greensward behind. The house fronts upon a busy block of Broad Street, a location not entirely as our imaginings had made it; for where we had looked to gaze upon the sea, and throw open our casements to its gentle roar, we are instead meant to be happy with a partial view of the Cobb, and that only from the garden at the house's top. But the sitting-room is pretty; and the bustle of traffic at the foot of town, and the eternal cries of muffin men and milk carters climbing its precipitously steep main road, little more than we should have heard at home. More to the point, we are free at last of High Down Grange.

  We were obliged to presume upon Geoffrey Sidmouth's taciturn hospitality for the sum of two nights and a day — my dear sister Cassandra's condition permitting of no removal to Lyme so early as yesterday morning. We saw little enough of the gentleman himself during our tedious sojourn, however — he being occupied with the concerns of his estate, and much out of doors in their pursuit. It was to Mary I applied for the necessities of the sickroom; and she provided them with alacrity and good sense. Of Seraphine I neither saw nor heard a word — in any language — though I found myself listening betimes for the whirling passage of a long, full cloak.

  It was not until yesterday's dinner hour, in fact, that my own care for Cassandra allowed me to descend the stairs; and I was then to discover that the Austens partook of the meal alone, the master of High Down being yet abroad, and no one able to say when he should return. In a similar state of independence we claimed the drawing-room that evening, and finally retired; and it was well after midnight that a busde about the gates, and all the noise of a courtyard arrival, bespoke the end of Sidmouth's day.

  We could not but be grateful this morning, however, in learning from the postboy Hibbs that some part of the master's activity was motivated by a concern for our affairs. A team and dray he had rousted, in the early hours, for the removal of the tree from the Lyme road; and our coach ordered repaired by a blacksmith fetched from town for that purpose. All this, before departing on some business of his own, of which we learned nothing.

  We were to see him once more, however, as we assisted Cassandra somewhat shakily into the coach, and settled ourselves with bated breath in a conveyance we had little reason to trust. My mother was clutching at a handkerchief, in readiness for tears should the carriage disintegrate before her very eyes; and my father, who had seated himself beside Cassandra, was engaged in patting her hand in a comforting, if absent-minded, fashion; when I was startled by a voice at my elbow.

  “Farewell, Miss Jane Austen of Bath, though 1 believe we shall meet again,” Mr. Sidmouth said. “Indeed, I shall be sustained by the hope of such a meeting's being not too long delayed. Your health, Miss Austen,” he continued, peering in the carriage window at my sister, who nodded faintly; “and to you both, sir and madam. Godspeed to Lyme.”

  “Less of speed, and more of care, I truly hope,” my mother replied tardy, with an eye towards the carriage front and the unseen Hibbs.

  The master of High Down smiled faintly. “The fellow knows it is as much as his life is worth, to come to ruin again. I have told him so — and what I say, he believes.”

  With a nod, and a slap to the coach's side, we were sent off; and more than one of us breathed a sigh of relief, I am sure. There is something hard and sharp about Geoffrey Sidmouth, that commands attention, and quickens the pulse, however much he would soften it with the air of a gentleman. He is a man much accustomed to being obeyed, I suspect; and to enjoying the power of making those around him do as he likes. A difficult manner to endure for too many days together, however bewitching in moments.

  THE ROOMS WE NOW POSSESS ARE SUCH AS ONE TAKES WITH GOOD grace for the space of a few weeks, though they should never do for a twelvemonth. Dressed in foxed paper peeling as a consequence of salt air, the house is meant to be enjoyed as briefly as possible — the majority of one's day in a seaside town being spent out of doors, in pursuit of schemes of pleasure. Cassandra's delicate state, however, will confine her yet a few days to her room; or so we are assured by the surgeon's assistant, one William Dagliesh. He is but lately in the employ of Lyme's venerable surgeon and coroner, Mr. Carpenter, and sees to many of that gentleman's patients — Mr. Carpenter having little time to spare, we are told, from his chief passion — the excavation of fossils.

  He appeared on our doorstep not an hour after our arrival — sent, so he informed us, at the direction of Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth, who appears to be one of his particular friends. Mr. Dagliesh is a young man of perhaps thirty, well-made and possessed of a cheerful countenance easily read — too easily, perhaps; for at the sight of Cassandra, reclining in all the interesting attitude of one lately blessed with suffering, her pallor heightening the beauty of her features and her languorous spirits suggesting a certain mystery about her person, the surgeon's professional solicitude became marked by something verging on the mortifying. He flushed scarlet, and lost his tongue; and could so imperfectly meet Cassandra's gaze, as he held her wrist to feel her pulse, or touched her forehead to judge of her fever, that his performance was painful to contemplate. On several instances of his speaking low, we were forced to request that he repeat his words; and this further embarrassment of circumstance completely unmanned him. Though I had seen him to possess a voluble and easy manner at his arrival, it was entirely unequal to the proximity of so much loveliness and distress, and I doubted that we should make any sense of the good surgeon's diagnosis, when once it did come. To aid him in regaining his composure, therefore, I determined to distract his sensibilities; and so embarked upon a topic of some idle interest to myself.

  “We sorely missed your command of things medical, Mr. Dagliesh, on the evening of my sister's accident,” I began. “I understood from Mr. Sidmouth, however, that we should not have found you at home on Monday, could we have sent to Lyme for your services. / was willing to attempt any distance or trouble for my sister's good, but that Mr. Sidmouth assured me you should already be called out.”

  The poor man turned an even deeper hue o
f scarlet, and muttered something unintelligible into his collar.

  “But perhaps he meant only that your Mr. Carpenter was engaged and we should have found you at liberty.”

  “I fear not,” Mr. Dagliesh replied.

  “You have, perhaps, a standing engagement on Monday nights?” I persisted.

  He turned to me then, a slight frown of consternation creasing his brow, and his eyes roving the room as if in search of an answer. “I was detained by a confinement,” he replied at last; “one that encompassed some thirty hours. Mr. Sidmouth knew me to be so involved, as a consequence of my having broken an engagement we had formed the day before, to dine together that afternoon at the Three Cups. I fear I did not send to him in time, and he rode into Lyme to no purpose. He must have been returned to the Grange only a little while, when you appeared on his doorstep.”

  “He has told you, then, of our unfortunate evening?”

  “Indeed. He related the particulars only yesterday, when he engaged my services for—” At this, he glanced at Cassandra and was ruined again.

  “Mr. Dagliesh,” my sister said faintly, “is there aught you might recommend for the relief of pain? For I confess that my head aches quite dreadfully; the slightest sound or movement deranges it; and the throbbing has quite robbed me of sleep.”

  The surgeon jumped up, aflame with the delight of his purpose; declared that he should go himself to the apothecary, Mr. Green; and urged Cassandra to remain quite chary of visitors, whose noise and attention should undoubtedly do her more harm than good. Then, bowing his way towards the door in all the confusion of newfound ardour, he would have struck the far wall had I not gently seized his arm, and guided him to the hall; whereupon he turned and bowed in my direction, assuring me all the while that Cassandra should enjoy a complete recovery.

  It is impossible for me not to value anyone who sees the excellence of my sister; and so I pitied and liked him, and showed him to the street with thanks as heartfelt as they were desirous of cloaking my inner mirth.

  “You have made a conquest, my dear,” I announced as I regained Cassandra's room. “You must endeavour to find your feet in time for tomorrow's Assembly, since poor Mr. Dagliesh will be quite undone if you fail to appear/ ‘

  “It must be impossible,” she replied, her eyes turned upon some inner pain; “the thought of ail motion and music is repugnant to me.”

  “And if you truly wish to secure Mr. Dagliesh,” I added reasonably, “by all means, remain elusive. Disappoint his every hope. Make yourself so scarce that he shall come to believe you a lady encountered in a dream, forever out of reach, and thus, forever to be desired.”

  “But you shall have the Assembly,” Cassandra observed, ignoring my raillery from long familiarity with its nature. “Pleasure at least shall not be denied to you, dear Jane. And since I cannot go myself, you might have the wearing of my pink gown. I should be the happier to know it is of use.”

  “Pink is a color decidedly unsuited to the redness of my complexion, as you very well know,” I replied, as I drew wide the window curtains, so that my sister might gaze upon the waves beyond the Cobb. “I suspect that you make a present of the gown, Cassandra, in order to scare away my suitors, and win them all for yourself.”

  “I had entirely forgot your blushes.” Her voice faltered. “I fear I have been forgetting altogether too much. A consequence of the knock, perhaps. Do you think it a permanent one, Jane? Am I to be made quite an idiot by the heedless driving of an heedless postboy?”

  “You are not,” I said, perching at the bed's foot. “And would you have me attend a ball while my dearest sister lies confined by such cruel woes, as the forgetting of my blushes? You are too good, Cassandra, to think so ill of me.”

  “Indeed I am not, Jane!” she cried, sitting up against the pillows perhaps too rapidly, and wincing. “I have caused difficulty and trial enough. You must go, and carry my father with you. James shall light your way with his Ian thorn, there being so little moon.”[9]

  James is our new manservant, acquired, like the portraits of ships that adorn our walls, with the house.

  “Very well,” I said, shifting myself from her bedside at the sound of voices below. “I shall attend the Lyme Assembly tomorrow e'en, and wear your pink gown, if only to encourage your envy. I intend you to be quite wildly green, Cassandra, at all my good times; and so encourage you to quit this room as soon as ever you may. For if I am not very much mistaken, my dear, Henry and Eliza are even now at the door; and no one can be abed while Eliza is underfoot. The noise of her chatter alone should banish sleep for a fortnight.”

  THERE WAS NO WONDER IN THE APPEARANCE OF MY BROTHER HENRY and his wife, Eliza — who, as well as being my sister[10] these six years at least, has ever been my cousin, and as fond of calling Henry's family her own, before she could claim the rights of a daughter, as she has been ever since. Indeed, we had parted from the Henry Austens not many weeks before, during their annual visit to Bath, and the scheme of joining us in our travels was undertaken one morning in the very Pump Room.[11] Both declared themselves wild to see Lyme; and very little more was necessary for the achievement of it. Eliza's craving for diversion is so constant, and her enjoyment of pleasure so honest and thorough, that my brother finds it necessary to avoid present tedium, by engaging in relentless plans for future delight; and so, in constant expectation of improvement to her spirits, Eliza makes a tolerable business of living from day to day.

  “My dearest Jane!” she now cried, as she threw open the bedroom door. A swift embrace, as from a small whirlwind, and she had moved to my sister's bedside. “And poor, dear Cassandra. Does your head ache very much? Am I disturbing you dreadfully? No matter. We shall have you to rights in little time, I am sure of it You cannot do better than sea air, you know, for all manner of illness; and if that does not cure you, we shall whisk you away to Farquhar. He is quite the rage in London, I assure you, and has done wonders for my complaints — though I did commit the betise of addressing him as Doctor, ‘on our first meeting, when it should have been ‘Sir Walter.’”

  “You have cut your hair, Eliza,” I said faintly, in some wonderment; and, indeed, her lovely dark head was quite shorn all around, and worn in a mass of curls. A peach silk turban, with a jet-black feather, topped the whole.

  “Quite a la mode, is it not?” she rejoined delightedly, twirling her sheer muslin gown upon the drugget for our edification. ‘Or should I say—? la guillotine, for that is what they call it in London. Having cheated the infernal machine once already[12], I thought nothing now of parading my lovely neck. I quite recommend it to you both. The sensation of lightness, in ridding oneself of masses of hair, is indescribable.”

  “For my part, I thank you, but no,” I rejoined gently, with a scandalised glance at Cassandra. We both of us have dark brown tresses that reach well past our knees; in truth, I can almost stand upon my hair, and my sister's is little shorter. I should feel worse than naked, did I part with it; I should suffer almost as from the loss of a limb. But Eliza met with, and let slip, most things in life with equal carelessness; and I could say in all honesty that the coiffure's gruesome style became her. I had never known her to adopt anything that did not.

  “Eliza, my dear, you see how we are fixed,” said my mother as she walked briskly into the room. “You see how unbearably cramped we are. We cannot hope to keep you, nor Henry. You are intending the Golden Lion, I suppose?”

  “Naturally, madam,” Eliza replied, and pecked my mother upon the cheek. “I have only just setded it that dear Jane shall walk with me there, that we might spare Cassandra our chatter. Her head aches fearfully, you know, though she never says a word.”

  “There, my love,” my mother said with a start and a look for Cassandra, “I was almost forgetting. The young man who attended you earlier — Dervish, was it?—”

  “Dagliesh,” Cassandra supplied.

  “—begged that I should give you draughts of this green-bottled stuff whenever the pains t
ake you.” My mother adjusted her spectacles to peer at a slip of paper she held in her hand. “Two spoonfuls in warm water,’ so Mr. Dawdle said, and seemed quite anxious I should get it right. He repeated it above three times, as though I were a woman of little memory and less sense. The meadow flowers were not to be steeped, as I had at first thought, but are to brighten your room.”

  “Flowers, Mother?” I enquired, looking behind the door.

  “Oh, Lord,” she breathed, “here I've left them below, when I thought to come up expressly for the purpose of setting them at your bedside. A lovely posy they are, and picked by Mr. Dawes himself. I believe you have made a conquest, my dear.”

  “Though she cannot recollect of whom,” Eliza whispered, her eyes sparkling with fun.

  “Madam,” I called after my mother's swiftly retreating back, “do not neglect to bring hot water and a spoon, for the administering of Cassandra's medicine!”

  FROM OUR COTTAGE TO THE GOLDEN LION WAS A PALTRY DISTANCE, and at my expressing a desire to stretch my legs a little— for, in truth, I had been so much taken up with my sister's care, that I had not spared a moment for the town — Eliza declared herself ready to try the Cobb, and accordingly, we joined arms and set off down the length of stone Walk, heads into the sea wind.

  The Cobb is a massive rampart that effects to create a harbour, where none should otherwise exist, the seas surrounding this stretch of the Dorset coast being quite prone to sudden storms that eat away at the land. There are some who profess to remember land-falls about the town — sudden shiftings in the cliff, that cause earth and houses and all to slide into the sea, a most fearsome manifestation of Providence. But whatever its purpose, the Cobb is chiefly of use in being walked upon — by all manner of people, at all times of day. There are stairs ascending to the breakwater's upper edge, that only a foolish child or a brave fisherman should attempt[13]; but the lower, broader way is recently improved, and a walk along its stones is ideally suited to the exercise of a lady. Here Eliza and I braced ourselves against the blow, which tugged and swept at her feathered turban, and brought an exhilaration to both our strides. What glory, in facing once more the sea! What life, in its billowing waves — ever-changing, ever-roving, to lands and climes of which I know nothing! When I gaze out at the endless horizon, I know a little of my brother Frank's days, in the blockade off the coast of France, or Charles's as he dreams of the East Indies[14]; what freedom such men possess, who call the world their home!