Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor Page 4

“I confess, I should not have missed such an occasion for the world,” Lord Harold continued. “To see a lady so happily and advantageously married must be a joy to those who rank her security among their dearest concerns.” His voice, though low and refined, bore a note of mockery that was lost neither on Isobel nor myself.

  “I rejoice to hear it,” Isobel told him, rising as if to depart, “for it is some time since I believed my security to be the very last of your concerns.” The words were abrupt and forced, a shock to my ears; but Trowbridge appeared unmoved. His tall form, fixed before us as steadily as a tree, prevented Isobel from passing in a most ungentlemanly manner.

  “Countess,” he said, his voice as tight and cutting as a bowstring, “I would speak with you in private.”

  Isobel’s mouth had hardened, and her words, when they came, fell with the heaviness of stone. “You can have nothing to say to me tonight, Lord Harold, that cannot better wait until morning. A ball is hardly the hour for business.”

  “And tomorrow, no doubt, will be no better once it dawns,” he replied evenly, and smiled. “I will not wait forever, my lady.“

  “You will wait as long as I please.” Isobel’s eyes never left his face. “Remember, my lord, that you wait upon my pleasure.” Two bright spots burned in her cheeks, but her pallor was extreme, and I feared she might faint in another moment.

  It was Lord Payne, the Earl’s nephew, who put a stop to the high pitch of nerves, by appearing like a shadow at Trowbridge’s shoulder. The two are equal in height, though Lord Payne has the better of Trowbridge in gravity; his courtesy was perhaps the more offensive for being exquisite.

  “Lord Harold,” Lord Payne said, bowing low, “we are fortunate indeed in your company this evening. But I fear I must tear you from the gentler influence of the ladies at the behest of my uncle. He requests that you join him in his study; and in this, as in all things, I do his bidding.”

  A few sentences only, but conveyed in such a tone that it served the moment. Lord Harold gave Lord Payne a single look, bowed low to Isobel and me, and was gone as silently as he had appeared.

  “Impertinent devil!” Isobel cried, clutching at Lord Payne’s hand, “he will hound me to the ends of the earth!”

  “I would that I could rid you of his presence entirely,” said Lord Payne, “rather than for so brief a space as he is likely to grant us.” He retained the Countess’s hand an instant, gazing at her with an expression of care and worry, and then recovered himself. “I fear you are unwell, Isobel. I shall inform my uncle that you are briefly indisposed, and have sought your rooms.”

  More than the surprising adoption of her Christian name, his tender look, when it rested upon his uncle’s wife, brought me to my senses. That he was mastered by a feeling unwonted even in so near a relation, I could not doubt; and I recollected Tom Hearst’s banter earlier that evening. He had declared Isobel to be chief among Fitzroy Payne’s acquaintance; and what the Lieutenant would intimate I now understood all too well—the Earl’s silent nephew, so inscrutable in his reserve, was better revealed by strong feeling; Lord Payne knew what it was to love.

  “Pray speak to Frederick on my behalf, Fitzroy,” Isobel said faintly, turning away from us both, “but say that I retire only for a little. I would not have Trowbridge believe he has me in his grasp.” As if remembering my presence for the first time since Lord Harold had withdrawn, she looked at me then, and managed a smile; and so she left us.

  I must set down something of my sense of Fitzroy, Viscount Payne, for I find him the very type to serve as a character in one of my novels.1 He is a tall, well-made fellow, strikingly handsome, with slate-coloured eyes set above sharply-moulded cheekbones. It is his hair that astonishes in one but twenty-six, for it is gone completely grey in a fashion not unbecoming to his grave countenance. All the charm of his person must be weighed, however, against his manner—for Fitzroy Payne is possessed of that reserve that some might mistake for aloofness and pride. That he has a right to be proud, possessed as he is of his father’s considerable estates, and being as well the man likely to succeed the Earl in his title and riches, was everywhere acknowledged among the intimates of the Scargrave ballroom; but Lord Payne’s haughty silences were no more admired for having a just complacency as their cause. Though many wished to win him, I found myself hard-pressed to find any among the assemblage who truly liked him; and so enjoyed my time in his company all the more. To be marked out by the singular is a caprice of mine; I would rather spend an hour among the notorious than two minutes with the dull.

  “I must thank you, sir,” I said, “for relieving me in a desperate moment. I confess I was unequal to Lord Harold in Isobel’s defence, lacking full knowledge of the particulars at issue.”

  “You suffer no dishonour by being unequal to Lord Harold,” Fitzroy Payne said. His eyes swept over my head, searching, I fancied, for dark red hair above a daring green gown; but Isobel had quitted the ballroom.

  After a pause, and some observation of the dance, which had just then commenced, I assayed another attempt.

  “I suppose Lord Scargrave wished Lord Harold present, the better to converse with him in his library—for certainly Isobel was much surprised at the gentleman’s arrival.”

  “Did she have full knowledge of Trowbridge’s descent upon this house hours before he effected it, she should still be made as ill,” Lord Payne said, with some bitterness.

  “You share the Countess’s dislike,” I observed.

  To this sally I received no answer but a knitting of the brows and a heightened gravity.

  “Perhaps we shall summon Lieutenant Hearst and have him challenge Lord Harold to a duel,” I suggested, in an effort at lightness. “The Lieutenant shall exercise his honour, and be of service to a lady—two pursuits in which I understand he excels.”

  A chill smile, but again no word.

  “I detect a similarity in the turn of our minds, Viscount Payne,” I persisted, in some exasperation. “We are both of a taciturn, ungenerous nature, and would rather be silent until we may say what is certain to astonish all the world.”

  For this I won the barest moment of liveliness in his grey eyes, and the gift of an answer.

  “From a better acquaintance with my own foolishness, Miss Austen, I must be silent; but of you I can readily believe a delight in astonishing.”

  “There!” I cried. “My opinion is proved. You cannot even insult without phrasing it well.”

  “I meant rather to praise than insult, and so my words could hardly fall ill.” He turned his dark eyes upon me with a penetrating look. “The desire to astonish may be considered a vice only when it lacks the wit to achieve its aim—but with wit, Miss Austen, you are clearly most blessed. And now, I fear, I must desert you for the office with which I am charged—that of informing my uncle of my aunt’s indisposition.”

  He bowed; I nodded; and a gentleman assailing me for a dance at that moment, I left Fitzroy Payne to find his way amidst the boisterous throng. But during the course of the evening I was made more sensible of Lord Payne’s attractions. My subsequent partners were to prove less able in conversation, and less provocative even in their silences, than the Viscount had proved with a single sentence.

  IT WAS AFTER A PARTICULARLY TEDIOUS EXCHANGE WITH such an one, that I bethought me of refreshment, and parting with my dubious suitor in some relief, betook myself along the gallery that led from the ballroom to the smallish parlour, where the supper was arrayed. The last of the dances being just then struck up, I found myself blessedly alone in my progress towards the wine punch. I had barely passed the first of the closed doorways lining the hall, when I was halted in my steps by the fierce eruption of argument near at hand. I turned and espied the entrance to the Earl’s library, whence Lord Harold had disappeared but an hour before. From behind its closed door emanated the voices of two men, raised in strenuous argument. Lord Scargrave and Trowbridge? It could not be otherwise. I may perhaps be forgiven a woman’s curiosity when I admit t
hat, finding myself quite alone for the moment, I lingered along my way.

  The words soon became intelligible.

  “You are not to mention the name of Rosie Ketch,” one gentleman cried. “You have debauched her in speech often enough.”

  “That is laughable, sir; coming from you.”

  “You shall not support me in this?”

  “Never; sir.”

  “Then, my lord, I cannot be responsible for the consequences. You have driven me to my utmost extremity, and God forgive me! I know how it is that I must act.”

  The voices were grown louder, as though one or both of the parties had approached the door; I looked about me for a place of safety, and could find none but the heavy draperies cloaking the tall windows. I had only tucked myself behind them, doing violence to my hair and gown, when the door was thrust open and a gentleman burst from the room, the fury of his words propelling him with like energy from the Earl’s presence.

  I stole a look around the curtain edge, certain to see Lord Harold—and found myself confronted, to my astonishment, with George Hearst, the Lieutenant’s older brother. What could it mean? The gloomy ecclesiastic, revealed as a man of hot temper?

  Mr. Hearst was not a moment gone when the Earl himself appeared in the hall, his face reddened as with apoplexy. I remembered then Isobel’s care for her husband’s health, and smiled. It was not an excess of claret that plagued the Earl, but a surfeit of family; and of this, no one was likely to cure him.

  The Earl made for the ballroom, and after an instant’s pause to right my feather and settle the clumps of curls about my cheeks, I followed my host. I was in time to see him raise a glass before the assembly to his newly-won bride, drink it to the dregs, and double over in a fit of acute dyspepsia. Protesting and declaring himself to be very well, our host was borne from the room on the broad backs of two footmen, an anxious Isobel in his wake; and so the revels ended.

  I WAS JUST NOW RETURNED TO THE PRESENT BY ISOBEL’S appearance at my door.

  “Jane,” she said, with great steadiness, “the crisis is passed.”

  “God be thanked!” I cried, and threw down my pen.

  “Is He, indeed?” She gave me a strange look. “You mistake my meaning. The crisis is passed, my dear friend, and the Earl is dead.”

  I went to her in an instant, my countenance conveying all my sorrow, and bent her head upon my breast. But Isobel had no tears; her beautiful sherry-coloured eyes were blank and unseeing, her form as rigid as the Earl lying cold within her marriage bed. I released her without a word, feeling as though my heart should break, and watched her tortured progress down the corridor.

  At my window now, I pull back the heavy draperies smelling of must, and gaze out upon a desolate dawn. No sun shall rise today for human eyes to see; the world entire is wrapped round in whirling white, an impenetrable cloud of cold and ice that chills the heart as it freezes the ground. Scargrave’s vast parkland is adrift, its black trees etched like wraiths against the grey sky of morning. I think of Frederick, Earl of Scargrave—of his soul gone forth too soon from earthly happiness, and on such a frigid day—and I am consumed with sorrow for all of mortal men. What are last night’s revels, its frivolities and petty triumphs, against the magnitude of the grave? I let fall the draperies, blocking out the snow, and shiver in my nightdress.

  I came into Hertfordshire seeking diversion; and what I have found is Death, in more vivid and horrible a form than I had yet been taught to expect. I may take it as my reward for cowardice—for so such a flight from one’s worst nature is always revealed—to witness the agonising end of the Earl of Scargrave, and be utterly powerless to reverse it.

  1. It is possible that Austen eventually turned Fitzroy, Viscount Payne into her most famous male character, Fitzwilliam Darcy, although strong evidence is lacking. First Impressions, in which Darcy is the main male character, was written in 1796, and rejected for publication in 1797. Later retitled Pride and Prejudice, it was revised substantially in late 1802 or early 1803, following Austen’s visit to Scargrave, and again before publication in 1812.—Editor’s note.

  14 December 1802

  ˜

  THE LIVING EVER FEEL UNEASE, WHEN THE DEAD ARE IN residence.

  I had determined to leave for Bath the morning after the Earl’s death, believing such a passing to be a family burden; but Isobel would have me stay, and so here at Scargrave I remain, tip-toeing along its labyrinth of corridors and hoping to draw as little notice as possible. Upon further acquaintance, the Manor is revealed as an incongenial house, its furnishings of a vanished generation and its air one of quiet decrepitude. I have trod the floors of endless rooms, unmarked by their master’s happy spirits or decided taste; it is an abode in which Lord Scargrave can have spent but little time, and now departs forever.

  The Earl is to be buried tomorrow. These two days past, he has lain in state in the hall, a vast and draughty place peopled by his ancestors, as though all the dead of Scargrave have assembled for this dreary wake. Dark faces in oil look down upon Frederick’s bier with the smiles of Charles’s time, or the dour scowls of Cromwell’s; while suits of armour from an epoch still more distant huddle in the corners, awaiting their moment to joust with Death. The hall lies in the very centre of the great house, and all the principal corridors debouch or spring from it, making any attempt to navigate the lower floor a necessarily melancholy event. Masses of wax candles in branching silver holders surround the Earl’s still form, and gold sovereigns are laid upon his eyes; no tallow tapers or pennies for a peer.

  In the flickering glow, Lord Scargrave’s face appears as ravaged as it did in the dim light of his death chamber; not the manner in which such a man would wish to be remembered. Were it not for the superstitions of the local folk, who come to pay their respects in a silent, shuffling file, Isobel should have ordered the casket closed; but the Earl of Scargrave must be seen to be truly dead by all the surrounding country before his heir may take up his title. And so convention is served, and delicacy sacrificed upon its altar.

  I confess to a shiver or two myself in passing through the hall; I would forget this anguished look, still stamped in death upon the tortured face, as soon as ever I may. Perhaps then the thoughts that spring to my mind too vividly will be banished as well. The assurances of Dr. Philip Pettigrew, the London physician, have done little to quiet them. The good doctor claims to have seen a like disturbance in the bowels before, and found in its violence no sign of a malevolent hand; he imputes it to the quantity of wine the Earl had consumed that evening, along with a quantity of beef, a recipe I should rather think conducive to apoplexy than dyspepsia.1

  I cannot forget that Lord Scargrave’s fatal sickness, as I have written before, bore the signs of an extreme purgative, as though the vomiting were induced by some force stronger than claret. But Isobel appears satisfied, if such a word may describe her quiet dejection; and the men of the Scargrave household are united without question in their mourning. And so my country knowledge must give way to London’s greater experience.

  Isobel keeps to her room, as is natural; Fitzroy Payne to the library, where he is engaged with his London solicitors in reviewing a quantity of papers pertaining to the late Earl’s estate. Lord Harold Trowbridge, whom propriety should have instructed to depart, divides his time between Lord Scargrave2 and the billiard room. The Hearst brothers, though dining at the Manor each afternoon, have chosen to mourn in private at their cottage in the Park; I observed George Hearst pacing a snowy lane, hands behind his back and features lost in contemplation of his personal abyss, while the Lieutenant appears to devote his hours to schooling a particularly troublesome hunter over the same series of hedges.

  And so Isobel’s aunt, Madame Delahoussaye, and her daughter Fanny, prove my sole society. I doubt that such a felicitous term, so laden with the promise of good conversation, mutual warmth, and general elegance, has ever been so wantonly applied. Three women confined by weather, over needlework and books in which th
ey can have little interest, with a dead earl lying in state beyond the sitting-room door! It is not to be borne for many hours together.

  Madame Hortense Delahoussaye is the sister of Isobel’s mother, these many years deceased, and a native like her of the Indies. Madame has made her life business the social launching of her two girls, as she calls them—meaning her daughter Fanny and her orphaned niece Isobel. She talks enough for a household; we may perhaps impute her husband’s demise these two years past to a surfeit of his lady’s conversation. I should listen to it with better grace if her manners were equal to her niece’s; but Madame Delahoussaye’s pride in her station has been too strongly felt. When I appeared at Isobel’s side at the commencement of the ball, the aunt swiftly took the measure of my gown; learned that my father is a clergyman; and thereafter reserved her brilliance for others more obviously favoured by fortune.

  Far from feeling too great an oppression at her niece’s tragic loss, Madame Delahoussaye has busied herself since the Earl’s death in sending orders to her favourite London warehouses, in preparation for the household’s adoption of mourning; she is wearing even now the gown that graced her late husband’s twelvemonth,3 but is rather put out at its decided lack of fashion. She frequently delivers her opinions—that the Earl should have kept to the lemon-water she prescribed for his health; that the fees to the London physician had better have been saved; and that Isobel should quit Scargrave for Town as soon as the funeral is done—the better to bring Fanny her Season of enjoyment, for the poor child is not growing any younger.

  From Fanny’s marriage prospects, Madame inevitably turns to the latest style of mourning in France—a nation which, I feel compelled to point out, has had ample scope for study in the art under Buonaparte. Any observation of an historic or political nature must be lost on Madame Delahoussaye and her daughter, however; their heads are formed neither for penetrating discourse nor serious debate. Miss Fanny attends to her mother’s recommendations with the greatest care, and is forever engaged in the drawing up of lists, which must be designed to keep a multitude of milliners in goose-and-pudding for the coming year. Lacking their funds and their instinct for elegance in the midst of sorrow, I must content myself for the nonce with whatever grey muslin be in my possession; and for my part, there all attempt at mourning shall end.