Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House Page 5

  I resolve to do better. I resolve to leave off depression, and embrace what I may of good in my lot. I possess, after all, life and health—or should, but for this abominable cold—and am not so far reduced in circumstances as to admit of shame. There might yet be cause for rejoicing in the years ahead; much of worthy and fruitful endeavour, that might contribute to the happiness of my family and increase my own respectability. It cannot be so seductive a prospect as the life of a woman of fortune—one, for instance, allied to all the resources of a duke’s second son, a confidant of the Crown—

  But I must banish the thought It is as illogical, as unlikely, as improbable as one of my own creations—a Lizzy Bennet, perhaps, in conquest of a Mr. Darcy, or a Marianne triumphant over a Willoughby reformed. Such things may only be permitted in novels.1 They wither in the harsh light of truth as a bloom in exile from the hothouse.

  Better to exchange the contemplation of my own troubles for those of my brother Frank. It is impossible not to consider, upon waking, of the thoughts that so engrossed my attention as I fell off to sleep; impossible not to rise, and throw aside the bedclothes, and recollect that Frank had intended an early breakfast before setting off in search of Tom Seagrave’s first lieutenant. It was this man—an officer by the name of chessyre, who had sailed with Seagrave against the Manon as well as two previous commands—who had laid the charge of murder against him. Frank, having gained some understanding of the matter from his conversation with his old friend, thought to comprehend it still better by a close interrogation of Seagrave’s accuser.

  “I cannot fathom a man who would so betray his captain,” Frank had said, as we beat up towards Southampton last night in the rain-lashed spray, “and

  a man, too, who was loyal to Seagrave beyond any other—a man Tom counted as friend! It does not bear consideration, Jane. There are niceties—there are forms—to the conduct of naval life; and I should sooner hang myself at the yardarm m, than behave as Chessyre has done! He has displayed himself as the very worst sort of scrub, and deserves to be run out of the Navy on the strength of it!”

  “Are you at all acquainted with the Lieutenant?” I enquired.

  “Not in the least. He’s a fellow well past the next step—shall probably die in his present rank—a competent first lieutenant, mind you, but nothing brilliant in his action or understanding. Seagrave might have had a host of ambitious young fellows at his call, all eager for the chance to take a prize, and show their mettle before the Admiralty; but Tom chose to offer a hand to his old shipmate, and ensure that Chessyre earned a comfortable berth at a time when he most required it. Not that Tom said so much in his own behalf, mind you—but I am well enough acquainted with the service to understand the case.”

  “And you regard Chessyre’s laying of information as the basest ingratitude?—Regardless of whether there is truth in his accusation, or not?”

  “I think I may be allowed to recognise truth when I meet it, Jane,” Frank replied with an air of impatience. “Tom Seagrave is as frank a soul as ever breathed. He described the Stella’s engagement with the Manon in every particular—and for my part, I credit his claim that it was entirely above-board. The court-martial cannot help but do the same! Are they likely to believe the word of an aging lieutenant, over the best fighting captain the Navy has seen since Nelson?”

  Frank did not appear to require an answer, and I offered him none. I knew too little of courts-martial, or Admiralty boards, or anything so subject to Influence as this body of men who promoted or scuttled one another’s careers with seemingly equal caprice. Frank may possess the best will in the world, and the most open of characters—but he has been formed by the naval conceptions of rank and seniority. The presumptions of a junior must appear akin to mutiny; they threaten the Divine Order of Naval Things. I could not look for a dispassionate account from such a quarter.

  My brother had related some part of his conversation with Seagrave; but having heard it, I could not declare with Frank that only one judgement was open to the court-martial. There were gaps and inconsistencies in the tale that must trouble an impartial listener, and a clear requirement for further intelligence, if Seagrave’s innocence was to be established.

  Just after Christmas, Tom Seagrave sailed out of his anchorage at Spithead under sealed orders. He was instructed to open his packet only upon achieving a certain position near Lisbon; but having progressed so far as Corunna, some leagues north of the Portuguese port, he fell in with the Manon. The French frigate possessed only thirty-two guns to Seagrave’s forty; and moreover, her gunnery was not equal to our Captain’s, who soon had the satisfaction of seeing four gaping holes below the Manon’s waterline. With the French ship taking water fast, and her mainmast carried away, Seagrave brought the Stella Maris across the Manon’s bows, and prepared to board her.

  Seagrave led his men, including Chessyre, into the French frigate, and fought his way to the quarterdeck at great risk to himself. There he discovered the French captain lying as though dead, and approximately one hour and forty-three minutes after the commencement of action, the French colours were struck. But prior to the moment of this glorious capitulation, an event occurred which greatly disturbed the crew of the British frigate: a small boy perched high in the shrouds— where no Young Gentleman should be during the heat of batde—plummeted with the Stella Maris’s roll to the deck below. Upon examination, the child was found to have been shot through the heart by a French marksman mounted in the Manon’s tops; and the rage this deliberate injury caused among the seamen was impossible to describe.

  The savagery of the boarding party, and its success in carrying all before it, may thus be credited to a desire for revenge; but revenge may be carried beyond reason. Certainly Lieutenant Chessyre would have that this was so. When the Captain of Marines undertook to secure the survivors of the French ship’s crew, for conveyance as prisoners of war back to Portsmouth, it was discovered that Porthiault, the French captain, had been stabbed through the heart by a British dirk—and the blade was certainly Tom Seagrave’s own. Seagrave expressed astonishment at the fact; owned that he had missed his dirk from its scabbard in all the confusion of the boarding party, but could not say how it came to be found in the corpse of the French captain.

  It is customary, after the taking of a prize, to send the enemy ship home to port under the command of a junior officer. Seagrave appointed Lieutenant Chessyre commander of the Manon, and ordered him to return to Portsmouth with the French prisoners, while Seagrave pursued his appointed course south towards Lisbon; and so the two officers, and the two frigates, parted company. Seagrave despatched with Chessyre a letter to Admiral Hastings, his commanding officer, describing the action and detailing the British casualties; he also enclosed a letter intended for the mother of the dead boy, which Chessyre swore solemnly to deliver.

  It was only upon Seagrave’s return to Portsmouth some weeks later, that he learned he had been charged with a violation of Article Nine of the Articles of War, for the murder of the surrendered French captain, Victor Porthiault. Chessyre had laid charges with Admiral Hastings within moments of achieving Portsmouth; and he claimed, moreover, to have witnessed the murder himself.

  “And what motive does he ascribe to Captain Seagrave, worthy of so brutal an action?” I had enquired of Frank.

  “Chessyre would have it that Tom blamed the French captain for the death of the Young Gentleman. The lad was a great favourite, it seems, and no more than seven. Chessyre claims that Tom Seagrave forgot himself in a rage at the Young Gentleman’s murder; and that he stabbed the unfortunate Porthiault at the very moment when the Frenchman gave up his sword.”

  “But how dreadful! And Seagrave?”

  “—Denies it. He is convinced that Porthiault was already dead when he and Chessyre discovered him on the Manon’s quarterdeck.”

  “But the dirk, Frank!”

  “The dirk is a problem,” my brother agreed. “Seagrave, in boarding an enemy ship, should have brandished
his sword. He claims that the dirk—a smaller blade altogether—was pulled from its scabbard in a moment of confusion during the fight with the French; and that he neither knew the person who seized his dagger, nor how it came to end in Porthiault’s chest.”

  “And how does Captain Seagrave account for the Lieutenant’s charge?”

  “He is charity itself in speaking of Eustace Chessyre. Tom will have it the fellow mistook him for another, in all the smoke and madness of the boarding. Chessyre was mistaken in his account, Tom believes, and will own as much during the course of the proceedings.”

  “Is a recantation likely, Fly?”

  My brother sighed heavily and dashed a spate of rain from his cockade. “Certainly Seagrave’s superiors do not live in expectation of it. There was that in Admiral Bertie’s looks, when he spoke of posting me into the Stella, that cannot urge me to be sanguine. The Admiral should never have imparted so much of a confidential nature did he not find the case against Seagrave compelling in the extreme.”

  “But surely there must be someone besides the Lieutenant who might testify as to what occurred!” I cried. “I cannot believe the two men to have stood alone on the French quarterdeck!”

  “The rest of the boarding party being engaged in hand-to-hand combat, Jane—or in striking the colours— there was naught but confusion. You cannot have a proper idea of such an action, my dear—the great clouds of black smoke from the guns, carrying across the decks and obscuring sight; the cries of the wounded underfoot; the shouting of men made savage by death, and spurred into ferocity. When all is conducted on a platform that is constantly pitching, from the wash of the sea and a lower deck fast taking on water, you may understand that no one among the boarding party can swear to what might have happened. They were taken up with the business at hand—averting a pike in die gullet or an axe in the skull.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. “And so it is Seagrave’s word against his lieutenant’s.”

  “So it would seem,” Frank replied grimly. “But I mean to learn from Chessyre what cause he finds, to fire such a shot across Seagrave’s bow! His commanding officer, and an old friend, too! He should be stripped of his rank and his uniform!”

  I HAD NO DOUBT THAT FRANK SHOULD SWIFTLY SECURE the Lieutenant’s direction, from among his naval acquaintance in Southampton, and that the morning might find him in full possession of Chessyre’s history before it had grown very much in the telling. But I hoped, as I drained my tea, that Frank had not gone in search of the man alone. The Lieutenant’s actions argued for a desperation of character—and if Tom Seagrave had not murdered the Frenchman, it seemed entirely possible that Chessyre had.

  1Jane refers here to characters in Elinor and Marianne and First Impressions, which had not yet achieved their final manuscript forms as Sense and Sensibility (published 1811) and Pride and Prejudice (published 1813).—Editors note.

  Chapter 4

  A Morning Call

  24 February 1807,

  cont.

  ~

  I COULD NOT LONG ENJOY THE LUXURY OF LYING AMIDST the bedclothes, however much I might sneeze or Jenny scold: for I had recollected that it was Tuesday—and that we expected our dear friend and future companion in Castle Square, Martha Lloyd, before the morning should be out.

  Martha is the eldest sister of my brother James’s wife, Mary, but as unlike that shrewish article as the human frame is to a butter churn” She has formed the dearest part of my acquaintance for most of my life, having spent her youth in close concert with the Austens in Hampshire. Martha is the daughter of a clergyman, and is cousin to the Fowles of Kintbury—the very Fowles I might once have called family, had my sister Cassandra’s betrothed survived his voyage to the West Indies so many years ago.1

  Martha’s younger sister, Eliza, being the wife of the Reverend Fulwar-Craven Fowle, Martha might consider the vicarage at Kintbury as very nearly a second home; and thither she had repaired for the Christmas season. Her mother having passed away not long after my father’s death, Martha may claim no other home, and has consented to form a part of our Southampton household.

  Cassandra and I will thus know the pleasure of regarding Martha as very nearly a sister, a position we have long desired her to claim. There was a time when we believed it likely she should marry our Frank—but, however, the attraction between them, if indeed it existed, came to nothing. Martha is now in her early forties, some eight years Frank’s senior; and with middle age, has acquired the dignity of a lady who dresses in lace caps and black satin. The difference between herself and Frank’s rosy-cheeked bride is material, I assure you.

  Among her many admirable qualities, Martha brings to our household the accomplishments of a cook, and a compilation of receipts, written out in her own hand, of such comestibles as she has learned to value through the years. In our present dismal weather, Martha should find the journey south from Berkshire cold and tiring; she would wish for a good dinner. As my mother was unlikely to quit her sickbed to procure a joint for Mrs. Davies’s cook, I had better look to the business myself.

  I rose and dressed for breakfast, sedulously avoiding my reflection in the glass that hangs over my dressing table. The pain of a chapped nose is more than enough to endure, without the added injury of ill looks. But I found that the tea had partially restored me; I felt a greater vigour, from my interval of writing amidst the bedclothes. I could not regard my diminished appearance as reason enough to remain within doors: not one woman in eighty may stand the test of a frosty morning, after all, and my watering eyes and reddened nose should occasion no very great comment on the streets of Southampton.

  “Jane!” Frank’s Mary exclaimed, as I entered upon the breakfast room, “I did not think to look for you this morning! And you are dressed!”

  “I am quite well, Mary, thank you.”

  “You are hardly in looks, my dear,” she declared, with utter disregard for my pride. “I am sure that you have a fever. Pray—come and sit beside the fire.”

  My brother’s bride is a well-grown young woman of one-and-twenty, with a fresh complexion and vivid blue eyes; her hair is glossy, neither brown nor gold, but curling delightfully over her untroubled brow. Mary possesses good health, considerable good humour, and just enough of understanding to please her Frank without attempting to master him. She is not so high-born as to regard a seafaring life with contempt, nor yet so vulgar as to cause the Austens a blush; fond of dress without turning spendthrift; willing to listen to whatever novel I might chuse for our evening’s entertainment; and desirous of her husband’s credit before and beyond everything. Mary Gibson of Ramsgate, without the warm affections of a brother to praise her, might never have secured my interest; we are too unlike to pass as friends, without the intimacy of blood to unite us. But when I consider the flush of ladies Frank might have pursued—the grasping, prattling, heedless crowd that populates every sailors’ ball in every port, and that is mad for officers of any stamp—I consider him as having chosen very well indeed. He certainly could have chosen far worse.

  The weight of Mary’s child is now impossible to conceal, however much she might let out the seams of her serviceable blue muslin; but she has gained in prettiness what she sacrifices in elegance. A perpetual air of happiness follows her; it is only when talk of her confinement arises that her visage is clouded, and exuberance fled. I am sure that she fears all manner of ills—pain, of course, and the death of her child or herself. Worse than all these, however, is the terror of Frank’s possible absence at sea, during the interval of her childbed. She never speaks of it before him, but the women of her household are privileged to know everything. She chatters to us without check or caution, as she might confide in a pack of hounds snoring before the hearth, and never considers of the fact that our loyalties—like our confidences—might be divided between husband and wife.

  “Frank has been out early, and brought back kippers!” Mary exclaimed with delight. “And a quantity of fuel for the fire. He purchased nearly a co
rd of wood from a carter and had it sent round to our lodgings. But now he is gone out again. Should you like some fish?”

  “Perhaps not just yet.”

  I adopted the chair near the fire and reached for the plate of toast our landlady had provided. Frank had certainly discovered Chessyre’s lodgings, then, and might even now be closeted with the Lieutenant.

  “I intend to walk out in order to procure a suitable dinner for Martha,” I observed. “And you, Mary? Have you any plans for the morning? A visit, perhaps, among your acquaintance?”

  “I shall accompany you to the market, if you have no objection. Mrs. Davies is quite insistent as to the efficacy of boiled eggs, for one in my condition. She assures me that there is nothing like a boiled egg for throwing off a fainting fit, in the evening; but she urges me to choose them myself, so that I might be certain they are wholesome.”

  I raised my brows with feigned interest I thought it probable that a surfeit of dinner occasioned Mary’s swoons, and might argue for a stricter diet; but lacking personal experience of the lady’s state, I could not presume to offer an opinion. The addition of an egg or two, to the quantity of food she consumed, was unlikely to make much difference.

  “Lord, how it does rain!” she cried. “I do not envy Martha Lloyd her journey on such a day. I own that I had thought the South would be pleasanter. Did not you, Jane?”

  “Having spent most of my life in Hampshire, I may profess to be acquainted with its habits. I expect a severe March, a wet April, and a sharp May,” I returned. “But we may hold out hope for June, Mary. What would England be, after all, without her June?”