Jane and the Man of the Cloth jam-2 Page 7

  “Mr. Sidmouth,” Captain Fielding said with a bow, and handed me a glass of negus.

  The master of High Down nodded almost imperceptibly, turned on his heel without another word or look for me, and thrust his way back towards the opposite side of the ballroom.

  “Well, my dear,” EUza said wryly, “he saved himself the misery of your refusal.” She glanced at Captain Fielding, as if in hopes of an explanation; but she was to receive none. He bowed, and smiled, as though unaffected by the recent scene, and looked to me for introduction.

  Recovering myself, I made the fair Eliza known to the Captain, and the two were soon engrossed in conversation. But I found I was little suited to following its conduct; my eyes would too often search the room, and find him first in close confidence with Mr. Dagliesh, and then upon the arm of one of the Miss Schuylers; and so, vexed with too contrary a nature, and torn between wishing for, and fearing, a renewal of his address, I went in search of my father; and departed the Assembly not long thereafter.

  “WELL, MY DEAR JANE, I AM QUITE INDEBTED TO YOU,” SAID THAT good gentleman, as we walked the length of starlit Broad Street behind our man James and his Ian thorn. “Crawford is a most excellent fellow! Such industry, in the pursuit of science! Only think — he has engaged a team of men, for the express purpose of digging for fossils! We are to visit the site on the morrow. You must certainly accompany me, and your sister, too, if she is able.”

  “Fossils, Father? I cannot profess an interest in bits of old stone.”

  “Now, now. Did they have the lettering of ancient Rome upon them, you should moon about their ranks in reflection of fallen glory, and think yourself a lady of Caesar's time, and indulge in every romantic fantasy open to a girlish heart. I know you, Jane. You merely want persuasion. Consider the smallest invertebrate, impaled for eternity upon the rock, as a minor centurion, and you shall suffer the visit in good grace.” We walked on some moments in silence, while I considered my plans for the morrow — which had encompassed nothing of a fossilised nature — until my father overthrew all my complacency.

  “Yes, fossils are quite the rage in Lyme, I understand,” he said. “Even Mr. Sidmouth intends to be of the party.”

  “Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, faltering.

  “But of course,” my father replied. “He is a man of great sense and intelligence, so Mr. Crawford says.”

  “Mr. Crawford!” What could the retiring widower, of kindly if balding aspect, have to say to Mr. Sidmouth?

  “I hope you do not intend to repeat everything I say, Jane. I may have attained a venerable age, but my memory is equal to the length of a conversation. I wish that I could say the same of your dear mother's.” My father halted at the gate of Wings cottage, peering absent-mindedly at our stoop. “Have we come home so soon, James? Have you found the number directly?”

  “That I have, sir — number ten, as you'll see.” The manservant raised the lanthorn in a swinging arc that sent light and shadows at a run across the cottage's facade.

  “And so Mr. Crawford and Mr. Sidmouth are on such excellent terms that Mr. Crawford may praise his understanding,” I mused, as I preceded my father up the path. “I should not have considered them the most likely of friends.”

  “Indeed. I am assured by Mr. Crawford that we could not have chosen a better place to overturn and that there is nothing like Mr. Sidmouth for decency and good sense. Quite the prop of Lyme, from what I understand.” My father pushed open the gate and motioned for me to precede him. “I quite look forward to knowing him the better — for I confess I did not think much of your Mrs. Barnewall, Jane, nor all her pretty little friends. More form than substance, hey? And so pronounced a taste for rubies as she displays must always be suspect.”

  Chapter 5

  The Surgeon, the Captain, the Rogue, and His Carriage

  7 September 1804, cont.

  I AROSE RATHER LATE THIS MORNING, DUE TO THE FATIGUES OF THE previous evening, but still well before my fellows in Wings cottage; and so I availed myself of the interval until breakfast to take a solitary ramble along the Cobb. I found it cleansed by the tides of its sinister associations; the scaffolding had disappeared, and with it, all hint of intentional evil. The stones at my feet were awash in early sunlight and cold spray; and I walked briskly, glad of the calls of seabirds, and suffused with pleasure at the turning season. September is a month of paradoxes — part decaying summer, part incipient autumn; and the complexity of its character decidedly suits my own. Not that I believe the deeper nature to be more worthy of study than the simple — but complexity is assuredly more compelling to the student than transparency. Captain Fielding, for instance, could be likened to June — forthright, warm, and easy. Mr. Sidmouth, however, is neither summer nor its frigid counterpart, deepest January; he is a November of a month, or perhaps a March — that mix of sudden sunlight and chill wind that keeps one always alert for change.

  So I mused, as I walked; and did not neglect to ask whether one should be better suited to a lifetime of June, than an eternity of November — a question I deferred answering until another day.

  At the Cobb's end, I halted, and eyed uneasily the marks of recent building; did I close my eyes, the shape of the gibbet should be revealed as etched upon my veiled sight, and the spray-drenched form of Bill Tibbit depending from its ominous bar. Such a fearsome structure could not have been carried to this place — even at night, its progress from town should be remarked — and so, at a thought, I gathered up my skirts, removed my right glove, and crouched down to search the rocks at waterline. A few moments’ groping sufficed; an iron ring was revealed to my hand, and the manner of Tibbit's dispatching confirmed. Flakes of rust were smeared across my palm — I blessed the foresight that had removed Mr. Milsop's perfection of a glove — and that the flakes were but lately displaced, I quickly discerned. A boat's painter had disturbed the iron ring, in being recently tied up at the Cobb's end, and the vessel's burden then shifted to the stones, no doubt in the very dead of night. A little time indeed might prove sufficient for such a hanging, and poor Tibbit's cries had surely gone all unheeded at this distance from the town.

  I paused a moment, to ease my aching muscles — such bending and reaching, while wearing tight-laced stays, can only be called exertion — and glanced back at Lyme. An increase in activity along Broad Street heralded the advancing morning; I had better make my way back to Wings cottage. And so I bent to the stones once more, and leaned quite far over to gaze at the ring in the rocks, and saw then the marks of paint.

  But of course! When a simple wooden boat is moored near the jetty, the tide must drive it against the stones, particularly if its crew is bent upon the destruction of one in their midst, rather than the preservation of their vessel. And so the dinghy's prow had scraped against the Cobb, and left its telltale mark. A dark green, a very bottle green, and common enough in its way among the fishing boats of Lyme. I should be unlikely to discover the Reverend's vessel — if the murderer was the Reverend — from such a signature. But the smear of green remained a grim reminder of the night's vile work, all the same; and one I should hold close in memory.

  THE IMAGE OF THE BOBBING GREEN BOAT, rrs MUFFLED OARS AND menacing figures outlined against the darker night sky, persisted in my waking thoughts the remainder of the morning. As I sat at the little Pembroke table in the Wings cottage sitting-room, attempting to write, I was so often forced to draw a line through my words, that I became quite vexed and threw down my pen.

  “The story does not come to your liking, Jane?” Cassandra enquired gently. She was reclining upon the settee, with a view of the street beyond our gate, and the two of us quite filled the tiny room. My father and mother had gone to stroll up the hill, in search of Henry, whom we hoped should accompany us to Mr. Crawford's fossil site. I had taken out my small sheets of writing paper, folded in half in preparation for composing[28], and begun to work at Emma Watson, while Cassandra trimmed her hat.

  “I am not in congenial company, Ca
ssandra — and so the conversation comes with difficulty. I have just got Emma home to her father's house, and into a pony cart on the way to a ball; and as she is quite low in spirits, I find myself in a similar state. It is not a condition conducive to composition, I fear.”

  ‘On her way to a ball — and in low spirits?” my sister rejoined with some amusement. “Then she cannot have sprung from your pen. An impostor has had the writing of it, Jane, while you danced the night away in the Lyme Assembly. For I know your portraits of young ladies are always drawn from life. Elizabeth Bennet should never be so low, when faced with the prospect of a ball.”

  “But then Lizzy is blessed with resources not commonly granted to frivolous beauties,” I rejoined. “She is almost as clever as myself. Emma Watson's portion must and shall be different. She cannot be Elizabeth Bennet; it is impossible that two such should fall from my pen — but neither is she an empty-headed girl, unformed and filled with nonsense. She is a sober young woman, tried by the perversities of those she holds most dear, and faced with the prospect of a future all unprovided-ior.”

  “She does not sound very droll,” Cassandra observed. “She sounds unfortunately like ourselves. I fear she shall disappoint.”

  “Then disappoint she must!” I cried. “For I cannot always be writing of Fortune's darlings — those dowerless chits whose beauty and understanding conquer the most mercenary of fellows. No, Cassandra, in Emma Watson I will have the truth of a penniless woman's prospects.”

  “Then she is not to marry? I thought her destined for Lord Osborne.”

  “Lord Osborne!”

  “But I forget. Even you, dedicated to truth, would not have a woman marry a man she did not love, merely to ensure her future.” My sister's gaze was too indulgent; and I knew her to be laughing at me.

  “Very well — Emma will marry — but do not laugh, Cassandra, I beg of you!” I protested, as she threw back her head in delight. “One cannot end a novel without marriages all around. Emma shall marry, though never Lord Osborne. For, you know, we must marry.”

  “Do you speak of ourselves, Jane,” Cassandra enquired, sobered at once, “or merely of the plight of women in general? I do agree that it appears the only role of dignity accorded to us — the sole method of securing fortune, position, and respectability in society — but I cannot say that merely this is enough to recommend the state.”

  “For you, dear Cassandra — never.” That I thought of poor Tom Fowle, dead these seven years, and with him all my sister's affections and hopes, I need not underline.[29] From her expression, I knew her overcome by a similar sensibility. “And for myself — I could do very well single. A little company, and a pleasant ball now and then, would be enough for me.”

  “If one could be young forever,” Cassandra said quietly. “I might have married, had I never lost Tom Fowle — but then, very few people marry their first attachments.”

  “Better to stay unmarried than to marry for anything but attachment, Cassandra. You cannot believe otherwise; I am sure you cannot.”

  “But you know, Jane — you know better than anyone— that it is very bad to grow old, and be poor, and laughed at. And my father will hardly support us forever.”[30]

  “Well!” I cried, “let us make the most of our time, while he still does! We are in Lyme, Cassandra; we are young; we might yet simper at Mr. Milsop as he measures out some lace, or glance sidelong under our parasols at an idle fool of a fellow on every street corner. There remain to us yet your blushing surgeon, Mr. Dagliesh, and the lame Captain Fielding. Let us exert ourselves, though summer wanes, and try what Fortune offers!”

  I had no sooner voiced this battle cry, than the very gendemen mentioned were shown in by the housemaid Jenny, her heart-shaped face and glad blue eyes all wonderment at the surprise of it. A morning visit — and the very morning after the ball![31] This was singular behaviour indeed. But perhaps, I thought, as I thrust my writing paper under a book, kept upon the Pembroke table for just such a purpose, not so very singular for Lyme. The common ways of society are not to be expected in a town whose general air is so easy.

  “Mr. Dagliesh,” I said, rising in greeting, “Captain Fielding. I have the honour to present my sister to you, Captain. Miss Cassandra Austen.”

  Fielding bowed his fair head, and smiled his warm smile, and was so exacdy as my description had led Cassandra to expect, that she met him with tolerable composure. Mr. Dagliesh, however, was in a pitiable state — now waxing red, now waning white, as his eyes sought any resting place but my sister's face. His discomposure, and some hint of its cause, reduced Cassandra to a confused silence; and that he might mistake her air for one of disdain, was all the more probable.

  “You are abroad very early, sirs,” I said, offering them each a chair. “Late hours must agree with you.”

  “For my part,” Captain Fielding protested, “I should not have come near Wings cottage for anything — but I encountered Mr. Dagliesh on my way, and he declared himself bound to come, for a report on his fair patient; and I was then very ready to accompany him.”

  “And we are the happier, in knowing ourselves able to greet you,” I replied, with a look for Cassandra, “for in another hour, we should have been gone. We are to visit Mr. Crawford's fossil site with my father.”

  “Capital!” Captain Fielding cried. “Old Crawford can be tiresome regarding his particular passions, but never in such a landscape. You shall enjoy it exceedingly. Did business in town not claim my attention this morning, I should be spelling for an invitation myself.”

  “I thought to find Sidmouth with you, Miss Austen,” Mr. Dagliesh broke in, with a quick look for Cassandra. “I met him not an hour ago, on his way to this very house.”

  At the mention of the name, my unruly pulse would quicken; and being unable to meet Captain Fielding's eyes, and incapable of speech, I sought comfort in silence.

  “I assure you, Mr. Dagliesh,” my sister replied after an instant, “we have seen nothing of Mr. Sidmouth. Though I should dearly relish the opportunity; I had not the strength to thank him as I ought, the day we parted from High Down Grange.”

  A short silence fell at this; and I seized the moment to observe Captain Fielding, the better to know his thoughts. That Mr. Sidmouth was an intimate at Wings cottage must make him wonder; and yet his face bore no outward sign of concern. He seemed not quite at ease, however; he was not glad in Dagliesh's company. Though it may have been my imagination supplied what Nature failed to do.

  “I might yet have the pleasure of joining you, all the same,” the Captain said then, as though continuing a previous thought; I might persuade you both to drive out in my barouche[32] when you tire of your visit to the cliffs. Crawford's pits are not far off my road home. When my business is concluded, I shall venture your way, and enquire if a drive is pleasing.”

  “You are all consideration, Captain,” I told him. “I am sure a gentle turn in the sea air should do Cassandra a world of good.”

  “And what is your opinion, Dagliesh?”

  “I do not think her quite recovered. Indeed, had I been asked, I should have advised against even the trip to Crawford's,” the surgeon replied. He folded his arms across his chest, and studied the worn drugget, his countenance gaining a most mulish aspect. “The jolting of a carriage can only revive her injuries. It is not to be thought of.”

  “Oh, come, man!” Fielding cried with impatience. “She is in the bloom of health. She is quite obviously well. Are not you well, Miss Austen?”

  “Indeed, I feel myself to be not indisposed,” Cassandra said, faltering, with an eye for Mr. Dagliesh. “I grow quite weary of sitting always within doors.”

  “And how do the roads, Captain Fielding, that you intend traversing? Are they rutted and poor, such as should incommode my sister?” I enquired.

  “The roads are capital,”[33] he said with a dismissive wave, “and my barouche even better. You shall not suffer the slightest jolt, Miss Austen, I assure you. Dagliesh cannot know
anything of the matter; he is hardly accustomed to the sort of conveyance I own, and mistakes its effects for his own poor trap.”

  The intended rudeness of the remark struck home; Mr. Dagliesh coloured, bit his lip, and as abruptly rose.

  “I see that I have offered an opinion where none is wanted,” he burst out. “I shall take care before offering the same again. My compliments, Miss Austen, Miss Jane Austen.”[34] And with the briefest of nods to the Captain, he quitted the room, to our surprise and dismay.

  “A touchy fellow!” Fielding said, with a hollow laugh; but his words were drowned in some commotion from the hallway, and the sound of men's voices too indistinct for comprehension. Another moment of suspense, and the door was thrown wide to admit a caller, and a gen-tleman — none other than Mr. Sidmouth!

  Captain Fielding turned — saw him — and turned away. He had declined to offer any greeting, and the insult must be felt Mr. Sidmouth, however, appeared insensible of Fielding's very presence, and maintained his careful expression of good breeding. That he maintained it with difficulty, I guessed from the rapid flexing of his fingers, and clutched my own hands involuntarily.

  “Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried, in some anxiety of spirit. “You honour us indeed, with so early a visit!”

  “I must apologise if my presence has in any way disturbed the course of your morning,” he replied, with a glance for Fielding. I am come to enquire of Miss Austen's health, and should have setded the point with the housemaid at the very door, did not I encounter Dag-liesh, and learn that you were even now entertaining a visitor. It is a pleasure indeed, Miss Austen, to find you in such good looks. I trust you shall be journeying to Mr. Crawford's today.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sidmouth. That I am present at all, I am sure is due to your good offices.” Cassandra spoke all the warmth of her gratitude; and I saw Fielding's surprise. That she bore no reservations towards Geoffrey Sidmouth was evident in her attitude of eager attention; that I had imparted nothing of all he had told me, to my dearest sister, was clear in her unguarded thanks.