Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read online

  “I believe he is debating theology there, with Mr. Moore,” Fanny supplied, with admirable command of countenance.

  “Of course he is. I shall spare you the interview, my dear—but pray inform Cook we will have another to dinner. Bredloe has had the sense to decline the honour; he wished to make arrangements in Canterbury regarding the unfortunate Mr. Fiske. But we must feed Plumptre, I suppose.”

  As it was probable no dinner would be served without the speedy removal of the corpse from the scullery, I silently blessed Dr. Bredloe, and carried Fanny upstairs to change her dress for the evening—her boudoir having the advantage of being as far from the intellects in the library, and the wits in the saloon, as Godmersham could offer.

  “AND WHO, PRAY, HAS BEEN SO UNWISE TODAY AS TO BE insufferably prosy within range of your hearing?” I demanded.

  “I am sure that John Plumptre is an excellent young man,” Fanny began as I stirred up the fire. She was curled on the sopha before the blaze, her slippers discarded and her feet tucked under her. It is so much the fashion for young ladies to go about half-naked, that she is in a perpetual state of gooseflesh; and as I glanced at her, she shivered. If the idea occurred that a corpse in the house was the source of her discomfort, rather than the chill weather, I did not voice it, but threw another log upon the fire and drew the curtains against the swift autumn dark.

  “An excellent young man,” I echoed, “and not unattractive, with his expressive dark eyes and sober look. However—”

  “However, when a gentleman of one’s acquaintance will read one a lecture on the impropriety of the waltz, despite having solicited one’s hand for the very same dance in the course of the evening—”

  “Oh, dear. You refused him, I collect?”

  “I was already engaged to waltz with Mr. Thane.” Fanny’s chin rose. “Had Mr. Plumptre been rather more beforehand with the world—”

  “Or simply with you—”

  “Exactly. But to suggest that I disgraced myself, Aunt—merely because I showed a relative stranger the same sort of disinterested favour I might have bestowed upon John Plumptre, had he solicited my hand prior to Mr. Thane, instead of standing about in that stupid way, conversing with his companions, as tho’ all one intended at a ball was to talk—”

  “Mr. Thane, I suspect, is the real difficulty, and not merely for John Plumptre.”

  Fanny threw me a look brimful of laughter. “It is excessively diverting, is it not, how Mr. Thane has ruffled all the male plumage? Even Jupiter, I swear, was thrown off his stride by the Corinthian’s air and address.”

  “Jupiter does not stride,” I scolded. “He swings into orbit, far above the scene, and suspends all animation until required to answer for himself.”

  “ ‘Pon my soul,’ ” Fanny growled in a creditable imitation of Mr. Finch-Hatton’s utterance. “ ‘Ought to be horsewhipped. My opinion, course.’ ”

  “Confess, Fanny—you should be bored to tears with an excess of Finch-Hatton’s society!”

  “Naturally”—she sighed—“but I shall never say nay to standing up with him in a ballroom. There is every possibility he will be an earl one day, you know. Besides, he holds so much weight with the other gentlemen that any lady Jupiter deigns to solicit for a dance is in request the entire evening thereafter.”

  “Whereas Mr. Plumptre—”

  “—Achieves the reverse. He is excessively worthy, I am sure,” Fanny persisted in a voice of loathing, “and no doubt brilliant in his understanding—but so tedious in his opinions, Aunt! He is like an old woman, tho’ he cannot be more than one-and-twenty! To condescend to scold me on my conduct at the Chilham ball—and to say that the waltz is an activity unbecoming in a lady, one no true Christian should countenance, when I am perfectly aware he was longing to dance with me all the while—”

  “And so, being denied that pleasure, he must regard you as a Work of Satan—set down to tempt him from the path of virtue. It is his youth, I think, that betrays him,” I said thoughtfully.

  Tho’ I would not declare as much to Fanny in her present attitude, I do admire John Plumptre, as one whose mind and character are unimpeachably elevated—and I have guessed a little at the ardent nature of his feelings for my niece. Poor man! That a quiet, unassuming fellow with a strong intellect and noble feelings, who possesses neither moist palms, a gangling frame, nor an unfortunate wetness about the mouth, as so many youths appear to do, should nonetheless be supplanted by his more dashing acquaintance—is the way of the world, I am afraid. Plumptre has every advantage behind him, and if his chief fault is to utter platitudes in moments of pique, a few Seasons should cure him of the evil. “Both Wildman and Finch-Hatton are several years Mr. Plumptre’s senior, are they not?”

  “They must be full five-and-twenty, I believe, and the closer friends of the trio,” Fanny replied. “Plumptre is rather like our George, you know—always desperate to be included among the older boys, and affecting a greater maturity so as not to be caught out.”

  Our George was but seventeen years of age; he is a stripling beside the Wildmans and Plumptres of the world. “George must have been awed, indeed, to be among this morning’s shooting-party—and shall probably suffer nightmares on the strength of it. I cannot think a corpse has come in his way before this.”

  Careless words—and it did not require Fanny’s stricken look, or choked silence, to remind me that all my brother’s children had been forced to endure the sight of their mother, turned to lifeless clay at the tragic age of five-and-thirty, not many years since. Before I could beg forgiveness, however, Fanny rushed into speech.

  “If the fact of Mr. Fiske’s death disturbed Mr. Plumptre, he hardly betrayed it. If I must charge him with a fault, Aunt, it is that he lacks all sensibility. When confronted with murder, does he blench, and fall back? No! He must draw himself up, and assume the airs of a magistrate—and pronounce the decided opinion that one Julian Thane shall be found guilty of violence.”

  I stared at Fanny, aghast. “Plumptre never said such damning words in the presence of James Wildman! Mr. Thane is Wildman’s cousin, after all.”

  “Ye-es,” Fanny agreed doubtfully, “but I do not believe James likes Thane very well, for all that. He said that Julian was a smoky fellow, for all he had excellent ton, and that he wouldn’t answer for his temper when the claret was in him.”

  I sank down on the sopha beside her. “Do not regard it, Fanny. Those young gentlemen will say a good deal they ought not, when thrown together with little to do, and a fresh corpse laid out in the scullery. Only conceive how unsettling for all of them, believing that one of their guns had despatched Curzon Fiske.”

  “Yes, but the knowledge—which I fear my brother Edward conveyed to them—that Mr. Fiske was in fact killed by a single lead ball, has relieved their minds so much, that they are ready to indict the first stranger who comes to hand.” There was a fretful edge to Fanny’s tone. I must credit her delicate sense of Justice—or Julian Thane’s dexterity in the waltz.

  “It seems,” she continued with a diffidence not wholly natural, “that Mr. Thane has been out some once or twice.”

  A lady who has been out is considered on the Marriage Mart, and a virginal member of Society intent upon changing her status as swiftly as may be. A gentleman who has been out, however, is quite otherwise: for he is one who has met a rival at twenty paces on a duelling ground, with seconds to the rear and a swift carriage standing ready to convey him to the Continent, should he prove so unlucky as to kill his opponent.

  “How very dashing, to be sure,” I murmured. “And does Mr. Thane keep his duelling pistols by him, when he comes into Kent?”

  “He certainly did not display them in the ballroom!” Fanny flashed with asperity.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Dish Best Served Cold

  “Watch your tongue, when a king is across the table.”

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER, “THE SUMMONER’S TALE”

  FRIDAY, 22 OCTOBER 1813

  IT
WAS A SUBDUED PARTY THAT SAT DOWN TO DINNER LAST evening; and I might have passed over the interlude without comment, and proceeded directly to my account of today’s events, had not Mr. Stephen Lushington, MP, obtruded himself on my notice.

  I have said before that I am half in love with Mr. Lushington. He reminds me a little of my brother Henry, with his persistent good humour and air of Fashion. It cannot be an accident that both men are fourth sons—your fourth sons being left so entirely without expectation, that they must push for themselves from the moment they leave the cradle, and are, as a result, creatures of charm and insinuation their whole lives long. In this, Stephen Lushington is all that a Member of Parliament ought to be—so smiling, so replete with energy and fervour, and so condescending in his notice of the generality of mankind, even females who may be judged essentially worthless for their lack of vote. Mr. Lushington, one instantly perceives, is possessed of the sort of fine understanding that acknowledges the unofficial power of Woman in the Home—the sort of influence a Sister, or Aunt, or Daughter, or Wife, may exert upon the opinions and strength of the Voting Member. A subtlety of mind and a delicacy of expression, in the condescension of such politicians, as they cultivate the vanity and good opinion of ladies like myself, who have only to see the London papers brought round to the door, to have them read; ladies who consider themselves to be thoroughly informed on all matters of Governance and Policy, and may be trusted to voice those opinions in the firmest language imaginable—is the kind of perfection I cannot fail to enjoy. Mr. Lushington offers exactly that complex of High Art and Absurdity I find most diverting in Modern Life.

  Our MP was determined to be gay this evening; and as gaiety was so decidedly out of place, given the fact that Dr. Bredloe had not succeeded in removing the remains of Curzon Fiske from the servants’ wing, Mr. Lushington’s only appreciative auditors must be Miss Clewes and Harriot Moore. Edward, to whom most of his sallies were directed, preserved a quelling silence, his fingers idling on the stem of a wineglass and his looks devoid of all but polite disinterest. Young Edward, Mr. Lushington’s principal acquaintance in our household, was hardly more communicative. The two had formed an easy alliance over a pack of hounds, Young Edward’s chief interests lying in the realm of Sport; but hunting could hardly be deemed an appropriate topic of conversation, given the unfortunate circumstances of Curzon Fiske’s discovery—which left the Sporting Fellows casting unsuccessfully for a topic.

  Fanny, who held the honour of hostess at the lower end of the table, was in excellent looks this evening. She had determined to meet the lowering event of murder by donning one of her most cunning gowns, a very daring confection of burnt-orange silk with mammeluke sleeves—introduced last Season but still novel in Kent—which were draped and fitted at three-inch intervals from shoulder to wrist with bands of bronze spangles. The neckline of this interesting mode was cut in a diamond shape, ornamented with a garnet cross; and the whole apparition suggested a Fanny cast back to the days of Juliet and her Romeo—to which she had added the fillip of short curls held by a riband about her forehead. She required only a balcony and a swain beneath it, and looked both romantickal and ravishing. I little doubted she was the object of every male eye in the room. Fanny appeared determined to ignore Mr. John Plumptre, however. He, tho’ seated at her right hand, was in no state to appreciate either her dashing appearance or her degree of pique, being as yet engrossed in a convoluted discussion of Ecclesiastical Privilege with George Moore, seated opposite. Mr. Lushington and I faced one another in the middle of the table. He was resplendent in a bottle-green coat and dove-grey satin breeches. I was flanked by my nephews, and he by Harriot Moore and Miss Clewes, who had been added merely to round out the numbers; ordinarily the governess would have been dining on bread-and-milk in the nursery.

  “And how have your young charges amused themselves today, Miss Clewes?” Mr. Lushington cried. He is a married man, after all, with children of his own, and may be allowed to shew an honest concern for the Infantry. “Sewing their samplers and toasting crumpets by the fire, while young George Moore torments them with charges of toy cavalry?”

  “Oh, sir, I should hope that Master Moore may never teaze his cousins in the brutal way most boys find commonplace—he holds the little girls in such esteem, you know, as being able to speak a little Italian, and find such places as Ceylon on the globes.”

  “Ceylon!” The MP was amused. “Are Lizzy and Marianne intent upon joining the Honourable East India Company? Or have they a taste for tigers?”

  “I believe the matter of Ceylon arose,” Miss Clewes said in a lowered tone, “because of poor Mr. Curzon Fiske. It was in Ceylon, I believe, that he died. Or rather—where he was thought to have died. Oh, dear, it is all so very confusing!”

  “Do you mean to say,” Lushington demanded with a penetrating look, “that you spoke of the … accident … in the nursery?”

  Miss Clewes looked conscious. She darted a nervous glance first at Edward, and then at Harriot Moore, who appeared impervious to Mr. Lushington’s words, being engrossed in a halting tale my nephew George had commenced. We cannot curb George of his graceless habit of speaking across the table, tho’ it is frowned upon in polite society; in a family party such as this, however, much may be ignored.

  “I ought to have shielded the children from all knowledge—and well I know it!” Miss Clewes threw an appealing glance at me, as if I might defend her against the Member’s attack; but I make it a rule never to speak across the table—when I am disinclined for a particular party’s conversation.

  “I fear the intelligence so cut up my peace that I was on the point of swooning, Mr. Lushington,” Miss Clewes continued, “and once Lizzy had secured my vinaigrette, and Marianne had burnt the ostrich feathers intended for Miss Knight’s new hat—”

  “What?” Fanny exclaimed, from the lower end of the table. “Miss Clewes, you didn’t!”

  “I commend Marianne,” John Plumptre interjected gravely. “It is something to find, in so young a child, a disregard for mere objects of vanity—and a truly Christian sense of duty towards a fellow creature in distress.”

  “Fiddle,” Fanny retorted. “It was all play-acting and heroics, I am sure. The vinaigrette must have revived Miss Clewes, without the sacrifice of my feathers. They were only recently procured in London, at considerable expence!”

  Plumptre’s expression hardened. “I wonder very much, Miss Knight, if there is any pleasure you would be willing to forgo, out of consideration for another’s welfare?”

  Fanny flushed, torn between mortification and outrage.

  “You go too far, sir,” Edward said quietly from his position at the head of the table. “All of us who have reason to honour and cherish Fanny know the sacrifices she has long made, on behalf of her little brothers and sisters, since the hour of my dear wife’s death; no one could so ably have filled Elizabeth’s place. Fanny rates her own concerns so far beneath everyone else’s; it is what one must particularly admire in her. But being a stranger to this household, no doubt you have failed to apprehend what all of us know too well to mention.”

  Fanny’s eyes welled with tears at her father’s words; and in part from a desire to turn the conversation, I said rather loudly to Miss Clewes, “You are quite recovered from your indisposition, ma’am, I hope?”

  “I am a little better, thank you, Miss Austen,” the governess said as she pressed one trembling hand to her heart. “I am sure that you, who went immediately to the dreadful scene, must particularly feel how violent death cuts up one’s peace! I wonder you were not prostrate upon a sopha the remainder of the day! To consider of the unfortunate man lying on the Pilgrim’s Way—such a sacred place, too—and quite dead, with none of us the wiser, but going about our business as tho’ we had hearts of stone!”

  “Your sentiments do you credit, Miss Clewes,” George Moore said with a satiric edge to his voice, “but in the present case you may rest easy. Dying on the Pilgrim’s Way is perhaps the only sacre
d note Curzon Fiske struck in his varied career. For my part, I shall not mourn him.”

  “George!” his wife cried reprovingly. My nephew’s tale, it seemed, had failed to entirely drown out the interesting conversation.

  “Forgive me for speaking plainly, Harriot,” Mr. Moore returned, “but I never loved the fellow, tho’ we were raised as boon companions; and if his death inspires any regret, it is that it did not come sooner—in Ceylon, as was reported! At least one person might then have been spared further humiliation,” he added, in an undertone.

  “One person,” Mr. Lushington declared, “appears to have been so entirely in accord with your sentiments, Moore, that he made certain Fiske proved as dead in fact, as he was reckoned in rumour!”

  The clergyman met his gaze coldly. “You go a little fast for me, Lushington. I will not yet admit another party to have been involved. Is it inconceivable that Fiske should have done away with himself?”

  “Completely and utterly!” The MP pounded his fist on the table, and my wineglass teetered. “Do you honestly believe the man journeyed long months by sea, risking all to return to England, merely to despatch himself in the middle of a common footpath? Nonsense! Where is the motive? And, more to the point—where is the weapon?”

  “I never understood Fiske’s reasons for living as he did,” Mr. Moore asserted. “I cannot be expected, therefore, to apprehend why he should chuse to end that life. As for the weapon—no doubt it shall be found, in time. And then we may thankfully put a period to a scoundrel’s existence.”

  “Oh, George,” Harriot mourned.

  But Mr. Lushington would not be silenced. He shifted his chair a little so as to face Mr. Moore, and leaned towards him with a fixed smile. “I rather wonder at your confessing so violent an antipathy before the Magistrate—and at his own table, too!—while Fiske’s manner of death remains uncertain. But perhaps you have sources of intelligence others do not. Perhaps you are privy to the judgement of the coroner, before even a panel has been named. As you are comfortably united by marriage to the Law, in this instance, I suppose you may believe yourself safe from suspicion!”