Jane and the Man of the Cloth jam-2 Page 9

  “I would.”

  “Though that places the animals on a par with mankind?”

  “I would say, sir, with Kant, that I cannot lay claim to the distinction of being Creation's final end.[38] These very fossils in Crawford's cliffs proclaim us but a stage upon Nature's great journey. We cannot but wonder if we shall be quarried ourselves, by some inhuman hand, millennia hence.”

  There was a loud Tsk! of disapproval from Miss Crawford.

  “You would not see them, then, as merely the confirmation of God's great design,” my father continued, “as a reflection of Man's infinitely greater powers?”

  “Forgive me, sir — but I cannot.”

  “Well, well! Very stimulating to be sure! We have been debating philosophy, my dears,” my father said, as the two men joined us. “I quite wish your brother James were here to make a third in the discussion. I rather fancy, being of the next generation of Austen clergymen, he might fall somewhere between the two poles of Mr. Sidmouth and myself.”

  “You are determined in disagreement, then?” Cassandra enquired.

  “As surely as Lucifer and St. Peter, my dear — though I meant no offence, Mr. Sidmouth, in the comparison.”

  “As I assumed you to be pleading the part of Lucifer, my dear sir, none was taken.” There was a slight ripple of laughter, and Mr. Sidmouth began again with better grace. “I quite applaud your liberality, Reverend Austen. It is rare, indeed, to find a man of the cloth so open in his acceptance of what science tells us. For these very fossils must put paid to the Bible's notion of the world being formed in only seven days; the age of these cliffs, and their silent inhabitants, speak of thousands upon thousands of years’ passage before creatures like ourselves walked this earth.”

  We were silent a moment, in gazing upon the chalk heights, and the excavations of Mr. Crawford's labourers; and it was then that Mr. Sidmouth turned to me, and took my hand. He turned over the palm, and pressed into it a fragment of rock, perhaps six inches across, with the barest impression of a life-form. A shell, it seemed to me; the remnant of a forgotten sea creature, curled like a ram's horn. The sensation of movement was palpable— whorling away within the rock for thousands of years, adrift in the seas of time.

  “What is it?” I enquired.

  “The rock is Blue Lias,” Mr. Sidmouth said. “Much of these Char mouth cliffs are formed of it.”

  “And the creature?”

  “An ammonite. Though a very small one. Crawford has others, full six feet across.”

  I looked, and marvelled. (And I am still gazing at it, as I write — having propped the bit on the bedroom dresser at Wings cottage.) “Thank you,” I said, looking into Mr. Sidmouth's grave dark eyes. Our discord of the drive appeared entirely forgotten. “It is very beautiful.”

  “There is something of eternity in it,” he said.[39]

  IT WAS SEVERAL HOURS LATER, AFTER THE CRAWFORDS’ EXCELLENT repast was consumed, and we had listened with as much sympathy as we could muster to Miss Crawford's sad history of her blighted romance with one Jonas Filch — who died of a fever, thus leaving his fiancee to wear black for the subsequent thirty years — that Cassandra and I persuaded Eliza to walk with us along the water. We had left poor Henry and Miss Armstrong in Miss Crawford's grip (while she recounted for their edification the good works she superintended as the head of St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary), and coursed along the beach. We discovered, to our delight, a small cavern not far from the fossil site, its entrance marked with a cairn of stones; but Cassandra lacked the courage to venture inwards, and I would not go alone. I could look for no aid from Eliza's quarter— she was delighted with the cave's discovery, but too concerned with the possible ruin of her apparel to try its interior. “A cavern, Jane, as foetid and dank as Mrs. Radcliffe[40] should make it! Shall we venture within, at the very peril of our lives?”

  “You know very well, Eliza, that a heroine must be alone to invite peril,” I said; “but let us venture all the same. We may fancy ourselves exposed to mortal danger, and so achieve a modest victory in braving the cavern's terrors together.”

  But Eliza's attention, as readily let slip as it was secured, had already wandered. She preferred gossip to trials of courage, and made a very poor adventuress indeed.

  “I am quite taken with your Mr. Sidmouth, Jane,” she declared, having traded the cavern for a seat on a weathered log. “Such tempests of emotion as are graven upon his countenance! First, the darkest of clouds; and then, as if under the influence of a warm breeze, the threat of rain is swept away, and sunlight breaks! Upon first espying his countenance before the Lyme Assembly, I thought it quite ugly; not a single feature may be called handsome. And yet the whole is not displeasing. I could watch the play of his emotions for hours.”

  “It would appear that you already have,” Cassandra observed.

  I feigned disinterest, and prodded at some seaweed with a piece of driftwood I had seized for a walking stick.

  The tide being quite low, all manner of sea-life was washed up upon the shore, and every step afforded new wonders.

  “And so much the man of the world,’” Eliza continued, as though Cassandra had never spoken. “I felt myself almost returned to Paris, in the course of our nuncheon!”[41]

  “You were singularly engrossed.” Cassandra straightened up from the sand with a bit of sea-glass in her hands. “This appears to be a fragment of a bottle, Jane — cast overboard from a passing ship. Only think, if it should have fallen from one of our brothers’ hands!”

  “Mr. Sidmouth is quite an habitue of that dear city,” Eliza resumed. “It seems he has occasion to travel to France fairly often — or did, before the peace ended.”

  “Indeed?” I was compelled to attend to her chatter despite myself. “And what could be his reason for such travel? I had understood that those French relations he once possessed were all murdered in the revolt.”

  “Oh! I daresay he is in some line of trade.” Eliza's tone was careless. “Though while the Monster yet holds the throne of France in thrall, all trade is at an end. Mr. Sidmouth and I are quite agreed that now Buonaparte has crowned himself Emperor, and has begun to murder his opponents[42], the condition of the country can only worsen. I was forced to turn the conversation, in fact, from fear that the gentleman's opinions should become too heated. He grew quite warm in his discussion of French policy, and that, with a lady.”

  “In trade?” I said, all wonderment. “He certainly gives no indication of it. I should have thought Mr. Sidmouth a gentleman of easy circumstances.”

  “Even a man with four thousand a year, my dear Jane, may use his property in a profitable fashion.” Eliza was all impatience. “I cannot name for you the legions of gentlemen in London alone who serve as Venturers[43] for all manner of commercial enterprise. Their money is their proxy — they may benefit from its utility in the hands of others, and keep their own fingers clean of such vulgar stuff as buying and selling.”

  “How very extraordinary,” Cassandra murmured.

  I turned to agree with her; and found she was absorbed in examining a fragment of shell. “The whorls and chambers of this bit of stuff — this sea-creature's home — are as fully a work of art as any Italian sculpture. How wonderful is Nature!”

  Put out of temper with both my companions, I left the water's edge and wandered aimlessly back towards the fossil site. I was required to stop, however, and glance about to find my way; Charmouth beach at such an hour was crowded with pleasure-seekers, attempting the waters in bathing machines, or walking with some difficulty through the heavy drift of sand. I raised a hand to my brow and narrowed my eyes, the better to find a familiar face — and stopped short in my survey, upon sighting what could only be an overturned skiff drawn up on the shingle, quite barnacled and scraped about its exterior, as from heavy use. What paint remained upon its wood, however, was a rich, deep green.

  I approached it slowly, my pulse at fever pitch, the thought of the ring at the end of the Cobb my only
consideration. Was this the very vessel that had borne the unfortunate Bill Tibbit and his gallows to the stone pier's end? At the skiff's side, I dropped to my knees in the sand, heedless of my muslin, and studied it soberly. Several long scratches were cut deeply into the wood — the result, perhaps, of bobbing against the Gobb in the dead of night, though they might have been acquired in any number of ways.

  “Miss Austen,” came a voice at my elbow; and I jumped.

  “Mr. Sidmouth!”

  “Should you like to take a turn upon the waves?”

  I attempted a smile. “I confess, it is not my favoured pursuit, though I am of a Naval family.”

  He bent and patted the boat's sturdy prow, from which an anchor, small but mortally sharp, protruded. “La Gascogne could never do you harm,” he said. “She is Lyme-built, and has performed many a useful service.”

  “You know the boat, then?” I enquired, its very name having the power to rob me of all complaisance.

  “These ten years, at least,” he replied with a smile. “When a local fishing family had no further use for her, I took her under the Grange's wing, and seaworthy she has proved. You are certain you do not wish to take a turn? A pair of stout fellows at the oars, and we should be beyond the surf in a thrice.”

  “My apologies, Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, rising with effort, the image of the gibbet before my eyes, “but I fear my stomach is not equal to a ride in such a vessel.”

  “AND DID YOU ENJOY YOUR FIRST DAY ABROAD, MISS AUSTEN?” Captain Fielding enquired, as his stout ponies jogged up the road from Charmouth. Given the lateness of the hour, we had determined to forgo a pleasure drive, and turn instead towards the Captain's house, there to take tea and a tour of his gardens, of which he was quite proud. “I trust you are not overly fatigued?”

  “I must confess to feeling a little,” exhausted Cassandra said faintly from her seat opposite. Captain Fielding had settled himself at my side in the open carriage, while Lucy Armstrong held the place next to my sister. Fielding's coachman, Jar vis, sat alone high upon the box; and I felt a twinge of consciousness at the thought of an earlier ride in a barouche-landau, and a more precarious seating. Mr. Sidmouth had parted from us some hours since — to avoid meeting Captain Fielding, I suspected, though the Gentleman Venturer of High Down claimed only pressing business about the farm.

  “So much sun, and good food, and cheerful company, will prove tiring, I own,” the Captain said, with a broad smile on his weathered face. “We are quite surfeited with schemes of pleasure, are we not? Your uncle, Miss Armstrong, is the chief culprit, I fear, in all our cases of exhaustion.’ ‘Miss Armstrong dimpled prettily at this, but Cassandra seemed to find even so little effort as a smile beyond her powers, as I observed in some dismay. The Captain studied my sister an instant, and must have surmised the same. “We shall not tax you much further, Miss Austen,” he told Cassandra, “merely to charge you to enjoy the splendour of the countryside hereabouts, and that, in silence.”

  And indeed, Captain Fielding could not have spoken with greater justice. The waving golden-green of the high downs in early September was a spectacle to behold; even so late in the day, with shafts of sunlight stretching warm and long towards the sea, haymakers were abroad in the fields, and the picturesque was completed by the introduction in the distance of the occasional hay-wain and stout horse, blowing at the chaff and the flies. To our left, as we progressed northwest, was the grey-blue edge of the cliffs, dropping precipitately to the sea; and then the sea itself, curling and re-forming ceaselessly against the rocks.

  “Look!” Miss Armstrong cried. “A cutter! And a fast one indeed! It might almost be racing the ship behind.”

  “I fear that it is.” Captain Fielding spoke grimly. “Jarvis! Pull up!”

  The barouche rolled to a gentle stop with the coachman's “Whoa, there, Jezebel. Whoa, Shadrach,” and we four turned, as if possessed of one head, to gaze at the horizon.

  The cutter was, as its name suggests, a fast little ship of light build and sleek lines; it clove through the waves like a knife through warm butter, making the most of a stiff breeze. Behind it came a heavier brig, flying the ensign of the Royal Navy — and that the one pursued the other, we little doubted.

  “They would apprehend it,” Lucy Armstrong said, with all the wonder of nineteen. “Whatever for?”

  “Wait but a moment,” Fielding replied, “and you shall see something curious.”

  The cutter was nearing the distant end of the Cobb, and the Navy brig was well back; it looked as though the lead vessel should triumph. And then it came round, and almost to a halt in the waters west of the Cobb, and a frenzy of activity on the main deck could be observed.[44]

  “They are jettisoning the cargo,” Cassandra said qui-edy. “It must be contraband.”

  “Exactly.” Captain Fielding's voice held only satisfaction.

  “Smugglers!” Miss Armstrong cried, her face alight. So even she was prey to the romance of the age. Her aunt could not approve it; but happily, we were spared Miss Crawford's strictures.

  “What a fearful loss this must be, for the captain of that cutter,” I observed.

  “Loss? That is very unlikely,” Captain Fielding replied. “They will have marked the place in Poker's Pool where the casks went down — indeed, they may even have buoyed them just below the surface — and will in due course retrieve them in the dead of night, in smaller boats. Provided, of course, the captain is not impressed.”[45]

  “Why even attempt a landing in broad daylight?” my sister enquired. “It seems the worst sort of folly.”

  “Lyme has been known as an hospitable port,” Captain Fielding said drily. “The local Revenue men and dragoons are so well-supplied with French brandy — of the sort that is very hard to come by — that more often than not, they are elsewhere engaged when the contraband arrives. Only one of your Revenue men is worth his salt— Mr. Roy Cavendish, the local Customs man — but his duties are too numerous, and his territory too broad, for the effective policing of Lyme. I cannot tell you how many afternoons I have watched waggons come in a long line to the shingle below the Cobb, their horses standing in surf up to their flanks, on purpose to fetch the smugglers’ shameful cargoes and bear them into the deep recesses of the Pinny[46], and thence to the Dorchester road, and Bath, and London beyond. But of late Cavendish has been quite pressing in his charge to apprehend such cheats of the Crown's revenues. What you see before you, ladies, is a miscalculation on the part of our Gentlemen of the Night. They did not hear of the Royal Navy's sudden interest in their trade. The brig looks to be the Renegade. I imagine she has been chasing that cutter all the way from Boulogne.”

  “Jane!” Cassandra cried. “Our brother is even now engaged in blockading that very port Is it credible a smuggling ship could penetrate where so much active vigilance holds sway?”

  “There are many methods for winning blindness from one's countrymen,” Captain Fielding broke in. “I regret to say it — my years of service in the Blue would urge me to prevaricate — but the truth of the matter is that many who were once in the service of the Crown form the chief part of the smugglers’ bands. Who better than a sailor, accustomed to privation and endurance in the worst of seas, to pilot a ship into enemy territory? Who better than a soldier, accustomed to long marches, to carry a barrel of brandy slung from each shoulder several miles through the Pinny to safety? And who better than either, to suborn old friends in strategic places, with the gift of a length of silk or a bottle of rarest cognac?”

  “I am all amazement,” Cassandra said, with averted eyes. “It is my custom to believe those who serve in the Royal Navy to be among the most honourable of men.”

  “And in the main, they are, I grant you,” Captain Fielding said gently. “Certainly I could not suggest that your own brothers would be so easily corrupted, Miss Austen. I speak but in the general way, and of the common lot— the ordinary man-at-arms, who cannot look to rise to an officer's rank, and achieve great fortun
e. One night's despicable work on behalf of such a one as the Reverend could suffice to feed a family for a week.”

  “The Reverend?” Cassandra looked her puzzlement.

  “I am forgetting,” Captain Fielding exclaimed. “We were deprived of your loveliness last evening, and you of our conversation.”

  “The Reverend is a smuggling chief,” Lucy Armstrong supplied. “His identity remains one of Lyme's greatest secrets. The very cutter below us may well be one of his boats.”

  We gazed once more at the sea, and observed the Navy vessel come alongside the cutter, which, having abandoned its cargo, now stood off Lyme some little distance with an affectation of innocence; in an instant, the little boat was boarded; and a search of her holds no doubt begun. To my surprise, I found myself wishing her good fortune and Godspeed, and that the officers of His Majesty's ship Renegade might find nothing to her detriment. Then abruptly I shook off such fancies, appalled at my want of moral sense. How should it be, that our hearts leap at the sight of anything graceful, fast, and daring, and turn away from the stolid predictability of the tried and narrow way? Only Eve, clutching at her apple, might have the answer.

  WE DROVE ON IN A MOMENT, THOUGH MORE THAN ONE OF US craned a neck backwards to observe the progress of events on the cutter's deck; but though we espied the boat itself, the actions of its men were veiled from our sight, and the conclusion of such a story must await another day. Cassandra's eyes were closed, and her pallor such as gave rise to concern in my breast; but believing her to be resting, I chose not to disturb her with unnecessary enquiries. Turning instead to Captain Fielding, I thought to pursue a nearer interest, by probing his dislike of Mr. Sidmouth.

  “I had understood you to tell me, Captain Fielding, that Mr. Sidmouth's relations in France were all deceased, and that Mademoiselle LeFevre represents the sole surviving leaf of the family's foreign branch.”

  “I believe that to be the case,” he replied.