Jane and the Barque of Frailty Page 6

  He lifted a ruby necklace in his fingers, and studied it intently with his glass. “I believe as tho’ I’ve seen this before,” he mused. “For cleaning, maybe— or to have reset. Dook o’ Chandos, ye say?”

  He reached for his ledger and my heart sank— for if he determined to place the jewels, we were entirely undone—but Eliza interposed hurriedly, “If my sister wished to sell, Mr. Rundell, what price should these stones fetch?”

  “Sell?” he repeated, as tho’ bemused. “Well, now, Countess—that would depend upon the interest of the buyer.”

  “And what is your interest, sir?” I demanded boldly—for I felt it incumbent upon me to act as principal in the transaction. “I am, as the Comtesse says, in London but a short while—and should be glad to despatch this commission. I confess I am hardly easy in having such a treasure by me, in Sloane Street.”

  “What lady would be?” Mr. Rundell agreed. The ledger was allowed to languish in its place; his entire attention was fixed upon me. “The premises of this shop are very secure, ma’am—very secure, indeed. I might venture to hold these stones on your behalf, until such time as a price is agreed upon between us, if indeed you are determined to part with your … heirlooms.”

  “I have no occasion to wear such precious stuff.” I dropped my eyes demurely, the picture of spinsterly deprecation. “My dear father is dead, Mr. Rundell, and my brothers much preoccupied with their hopeful families—I am quite alone in the world—in short, I find that this princely bequest would serve me far better if transmuted to a different form. I hope I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, ma’am. But I cannot hope to offer you a reasonable price without an interval of reflection. I should be cheating you else.”

  “Could you put a round figure to the whole, Mr. Rundell?” Eliza asked.

  He pursed his lips. “The settings are decidedly out of mode, Countess—none but a dowd would be seen to wear them now without they was reset—and the price of gold has sadly fallen in recent weeks—”

  “Tush.” I made as if to rise from my chair. “You were mistaken, Eliza, in your opinion of Mr. Rundell. I think perhaps I should have followed my own inclination, and consulted Mr. Phillips in Bond Street.”

  “Not so hasty, if you please,” he said, lifting one hand. “The settings are old and the price of gold is fallen sadly—”

  “—At the height of war, Mr. Rundell? That is not what we hear from my brother the banker. The price of gold has, if anything, risen—”

  “But it is undoubtedly true,” he continued as tho’ I had not spoken, “that the gems themselves are of the finest, and should fetch a pretty penny. If you will trust me with the lot for a matter of two days, I will undertake to state my very best price. You won’t get as good from Phillips in Bond Street nor Gray in Sackville Street neither. They’re warm men, but they haven’t Rundell’s means.” 2

  “Very well,” I answered, with just the faintest suggestion of unwillingness. “Write out a receipt for these items, if you please, and I shall return in two days’ time.”

  “Done.” Mr. Rundell scrawled his name on a square of hot-pressed paper and handed it to me with a flourish.

  Eliza was so relieved to have the business concluded, that it was quite an hour before I could tear her from the contemplation of the amethyst bracelets strewn about the shop’s casements.

  1 Jane’s elder brother, Edward, was adopted by his distant cousin, Thomas Knight, who bequeathed extensive estates in Kent and Hampshire to Edward.—Editor’s note.

  2 To be “warm” in Jane’s day was to be wealthy. According to Charles Greville, a contemporary of Austen’s, Rundell was so rich he was able to lend money to his bankers during the financial panic that followed Waterloo. When he died at the age of eighty, Greville notes, Rundell left the largest fortune then registered under a will at Doctors Commons—some million and a half pounds.—Editor’s note.

  Chapter 6

  The Cyprian on Parade

  Wednesday, 24 April 1811, cont.

  ∼

  OUR ERRAND HAPPILY CONCLUDED AND THE weather holding fine, we ordered our hackney carriage to Gunter’s establishment, and regaled ourselves with pastries and tea, followed by a thorough debauch among the volumes of Lackington’s book shop—a vast room lined with shelves and clerks poised on the steps of ladders necessary to reach them, a vision so replete with the printed word that I stood as one stunned, incapable of voicing a request for full seven minutes. Mary Brunton’s Self-Controul then offered as the ardent object of my writer’s soul—it being the only novel talked of in London this April—but in vain; among all that wealth of books, not a copy of Brunton was to be had. Eliza quitted Lackington’s with a volume in the French, and I with some poems of Cowper and a dissatisfied heart. Of what use is it to reside for a time in the very centre of the world, surrounded by every possible whim or comfort, if one cannot obtain Self-Controul?

  Having spent all our money, we made a virtue of necessity, and extolled the benefits of exercise in walking the remainder of the way to Hans Town.

  “Only think, Jane,” Eliza observed as we bent our steps towards Hyde Park, “what it shall be to find your book in Lackington’s window! I am sure I shall faint!”

  “It could never be deemed worthy of such prominence,” I said despairingly. “It shall be thrust with the other lamentable publications beneath the counter, there to languish unread—or abused by every rational critic as the most vulgar and silly effusion yet offered by an ill-educated ape-leader. What can I have been thinking, Eliza, to throw Henry’s money after such folly? —When there are already so many books in the world!”

  “But none can boast a creature half so entertaining as Willoughby, I assure you, nor half so … so improving … as Elinor. Jane—” She stopped short, shading her eyes with one hand. “Is not that the old Count I espy before us? In animated conversation with the ladies in that very dashing perch-phaeton? I wonder if he is forever speaking to them in French!”

  I should judge it to be nearly three o’clock in the afternoon—a fashionable hour to promenade in the Park, whether by foot, horse, or carriage; and the parade was thronged with parties of young ladies in open carriages, Corinthians astride their showy hacks, and sedately strolling misses in the company of chaperones. There was also, I may add, a quantity of those persons commonly known as the Muslin Company: showy hacks of a different kind of animal, also intended for a gentleman’s pleasure. My mother should have called them Bold Pieces, and abhorred their display of charms; but the present age held such women in something like admiration, as might be divined from the euphemisms commonly applied to them: High Flyers, Fair Cyprians, Birds of Paradise, Snug Armfuls, Barques of Frailty, Demireps. These were not the common women of the streets, but mistresses of the highest order, who lived under the protection of a variety of swains to whom they offered a fidelity commensurate with the quantity of gold laid out to secure it. The dashing perch-phaeton Eliza had espied was certainly commanded by one of these: a golden-haired, ringleted creature of perhaps seventeen, who tooled the ribbons of a very fine pair of matched greys. The phaeton was of a sort usually driven by a gentleman rather than a lady; and this daring, coupled with the extraordinary cut of the girl’s habit, must draw the attention of every male eye.

  “It does not do to stare, of course,” Eliza observed reprovingly, “when a gentleman of one’s acquaintance is in conversation with such a person; one ought to affect an interest in the opposite side of the parade. But do you think it possible, Jane, that we see before us poor Anne’s rival? The agent of all her fears? The girl is very lovely, I daresay—but barely out of the schoolroom!”

  I did not immediately discern Comte Emmanuel-Louis d’Entraigues, who was supported by an ebony walking cane, his grey hair surmounted by a showy beaver. But an instant’s study revealed the elegant scholar of Barnes, Surrey: a man in his middle fifties, well-dressed but with something foreign in the cut of his coat; a figure once elegant and strong but now tendi
ng to corpulence; a Gallic beak of a nose and a pair of lips that might be judged either sensual or cruel. The hands alone were still very fine: untouched by labour or traffick with the world, accustomed to the handling of leather-bound volumes and objets d’art—such as the girl who now dimpled down at him, a confection of innocent beauty and knowing vice.

  I studied the creature’s complexion of rose and cream, straight line of a nose, and wide sapphire eyes; there was breeding as well as beauty there, if one chose to find it, yet the girl would never be taken for other than an adventuress. Her carriage dress was too formed to her body, and the décolleté plunged as deep as a ball gown’s. A dark blue hussar’s cap was set at a raking angle over her brow, and guinea-gold curls clustered at the nape of her white neck. There was something familiar in her looks, tho’ she was entirely a stranger to me … and then I had it: in figure and countenance, she might have been Anne de St.-Huberti’s younger self.

  “I cannot put a name to that little Bird of

  Paradise,” Eliza whispered, “but her companion is none other than Harriette Wilson, the most accomplished Cyprian in London. You will recollect the box at the Opera House—the Ponsonbys and Mr. Canning … ”

  At that moment the Comte laughed in appreciation of some saucy remark; the girl in the phaeton lifted her whip carelessly over her horses’ backs; and the equipage surged forward. I am no judge of horsemanship, having never mastered the art—but the girl handled the ribbons well. Certainly Miss Wilson was in easy looks as the pair flashed by, upright and animated with two burning spots of colour in her cheeks; but it is not in the nature of a Cyprian to betray fear or doubt. Her style is bound up in confidence, she does not lay herself open to criticism or rebuke.

  “I used to dash about myself in that way,” Eliza said wistfully. “I kept a neat little gig—a two-seater, Jane—and put Pug on the seat beside me. I daresay the equipage should be accounted unbearably dowdy now, but it was all the crack when I was a young widow, and had the leisure to consider of such things. I was used to take up a gentleman of my acquaintance for a delightful coze, and then set him down when another presented himself; one might spend an hour very agreeably in flirting about the Park. But Henry is so tiresome—he actually refuses to keep a carriage in London. To be setting up one’s stable is so very dear!”

  It was a fair description of Harriette Wilson’s way of life, I thought—the taking up and setting down of gentlemen—but one cannot tool round the Park forever and ever. Age advances. Younger women appear to attract the gentlemen’s eye. One finds oneself no longer the driver, but the companion—grateful to be offered a place even in a rival’s perch-phaeton. I supposed this was, in a sense, Anne de St.-Huberti’s fate— she who had been both performer and mistress in her salad days; but having achieved a measure of respectability, was it remarkable that she remained at her husband’s side?

  “Would not it be preferable for the d’Entraigueses to part,” I suggested doubtfully, “than for your friend to endure the Comte’s vicious propensities?”

  “Lord, no,” Eliza countered. “You must know, Jane, that gentlemen will have their amusements. You are not a married lady, and indeed it is highly improper in me to be telling you this—but in the general way men are not formed for the marriage vow. I do not speak of your brother, mind. Henry is a jewel past price, for all he is so pinch-penny as regards horses. But my mother was wont to observe: Eliza, so long as your husband treats you with tenderness, you have no business nosing into his affairs. The Muslin Company are of a piece, you know, with their gambling debts—their clubs—their cockfighting and sport— We cannot be expected to understand it.”

  Advice in this vein from Eliza’s mamma—the late Philadelphia Hancock—was not to be lightly put aside; she was commonly believed to have formed a liaison while in India with so exalted a personage as Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal, who had settled a fortune on Eliza. Indeed, my cousin was generally assumed to be Hastings’s natural daughter. Such easy habits of intimacy among the Great went unmentioned in the Steventon parsonage of my childhood; unquestionably, Eliza was more conversant with the habits of the ton than I should ever be.

  “If the Comte has actually demanded a divorce, however … ?”

  “—Then he has flouted every rule of a gentleman’s conduct,” she replied indignantly, “and that will be the Frenchman in him, I daresay. One may offer a woman carte blanche, Jane—one may indulge in every kind of ruinous expence … bestow high-bred cattle and equipages of the first stare … the lease of a quiet little house in a good part of Town … but one does not marry a Cyprian. If d’Entraigues cannot be brought to understand this, then we must assist poor Anne, as we did this morning, to provide against the dreaded future. Lord!—He is upon us, Jane—school your countenance to welcome!”

  “La petite Elis-a!” cried the Comte d’Entraigues, his arms opened wide and the ebony stick dangling; “comme c’est beau d’encontre mes amies!”

  I curtseyed at his bow; allowed him to kiss my gloved hand; and resigned myself to an interval of conversation entirely in the French. But my thoughts were running along different lines. If the Comte could violate every rule, why could not Jane? The old roué had done nothing to attach my loyalty.

  “What a very charming young woman you were speaking with just now, Comte,” I said with an air of benign vacancy. “An accomplished one too! Such an air of dash! And such command of the reins! I was quite overpowered. Pray tell me her name—I long to know it.”

  Eliza gave a tiny squeak, and for an instant I thought the old Frenchman would pretend not to understand me.

  “You have not been very long in London, I think,” he observed in heavily-accented English. “It is most improper in you to enquire, Miss Austen. But me—I have never been one to observe the proprieties. Her name is Julia Radcliffe—and if she were not the Devil’s own child, I should call her une ange! Now forget the name, if you please—or your so-good brother Henri will accuse me of corruption!”

  I affected a look of bewilderment, and Eliza turned the conversation; until at reaching the tollgate at the western edge of the Park, the Comte bowed, and went his own jaunty way.

  “Julia Radcliffe!” Eliza burst out once the Frenchman was beyond hearing. “No wonder he insists upon divorce! Marriage is the only card he holds!”

  “What do you mean, Eliza?”

  “I have it on certain authority, Jane, that Julia Radcliffe—for all she is the merest child—is the Highest Flyer in the present firmament, the most sought-after Demirep in the Beau Monde—and that she should even look at d’Entraigues is beyond wonderful! Our Comte has never been very plump in the pocket, you know, since the Revolution—and it is certainly not he who pays for those matched greys. Marriage is all such a man may offer—and indeed, all Julia Radcliffe might value! Money she has; the hearts of a legion of Bond Street beaux are already in her keeping; but respectability, my dear—the certainty of a name and protection to the end of her days—is a prize no Demirep may command. Harriette Wilson once thought to be the Duchess of Argyll, I believe— but in the event, Argyll considered of what was due to his station, and dropped his handkerchief elsewhere.”

  “Men are such fools, Eliza,” I said, gazing after the old Count.

  “To be sure, my dear. Else they would never be so amusing. Only consider of your Willoughby! He should be enslaved to a Julia Radcliffe—she was a girl of very good family, you know, until just such a young gentleman gave her a slip on the shoulder. There is a child, I believe, somewhere in Sussex— However, none of the Radcliffes will notice her now.”

  “She does not seem to pine for the lack,” I observed, and stepped through Hyde Park gate.

  Chapter 7

  The Man Who Did Not Love Women

  Thursday, 25 April 1811

  ∼

  THE SPRING RAINS DESCENDED UPON LONDON AN hour before dawn, sluicing across the roof tiles and gurgling in the gutters, so that I dreamed I lay at the edge of a coun
try brook in the wilds of Derbyshire. As is common with such dreams, I lived and breathed the air of the place while yet cognizant I was but a visitor—that my time and purpose were not of that world. I knew full well that I dreamed. When the elegant figure of Lord Harold revealed itself, therefore, under the shade of a great oak—silent yet welcoming, completely at its ease—I perceived with anguish that this was a memory: for we two had walked once through the woods and fields near Chatsworth. He fell into step beside me, companionable as ever; restful in all he did not need to say. When I told him impulsively that I loved him still, he kept his eyes trained on the middle distance, a derisive smile on his lips.

  I awoke with a start, seared with thwarted yearning, and the dissatisfied knowledge that I should have preferred to walk forever in that enigmatic presence. He had offered no word; the beloved voice was silenced. I stared out despondently through the bed-curtains at the windowpanes streaming with rain. There would be no walks in the Park this morning, no rejoicing in the fresh sprays of lilac; this was a day for the nursing of colds, for books by the fire and the industry of the needle—for bemused scavenging in the lumber-rooms of memory.

  The clatter of carriage wheels in Sloane Street below—unusual for the early hour—then drew my attention: a train of vehicles, of the most sombre black, was wending its way east. The second equipage bore a device on its door that was tantalisingly familiar—a gryphon’s head chained to an eagle’s, in red and gold. I knit my brows, endeavouring to recall where I had seen it before; and at that moment the carriages came to a halt. The lead horses stamped fretfully, coats steaming in the rain; a sleek black head was thrust out of the magnificent travelling coach, and a question barked in a foreign tongue. Something guttural and exotic in the consonants—it must, it could only be, Russian. Princess Tscholikova’s family had descended upon London at last.