Jane and the Barque of Frailty (27 page)

She was studiously free of artifice or reserve; and for so much I ought to be thankful. No time would be wasted in meaningless pleasantries.

“I believe it was his colleague, Mr. Black, who shadowed my movements this morning,” I answered calmly, “but I did not come to speak to you of that.

Miss Radcliffe, am I correct in believing that Princess Tscholikova called at this house a few days before her death?”

“She did.” The girl’s countenance did not change. “Were you at all acquainted with her?”

“I was not—but Bill Skroggs chuses to believe I am responsible for her death. A great quantity of precious stones belonging to the Princess were placed in my keeping; and by a series of circumstances, were revealed to the Magistracy in Bow Street as having been stolen. I am now suspected of their theft—and worse.”

Miss Radcliffe rose abruptly from the settee and moved to the hearth. Her composure was absolute, but for this sudden shift; she stood immobile, as tho’ desirous only of warming herself at the flame.

“Does my communication surprise you at all?”

She smiled faintly. “No, indeed. I have been waiting for some further intelligence of what I may only describe as a mystery, Miss Austen—but hardly looked for enlightenment from this quarter. How did the jewels come into your keeping?”

I was sensible that the girl was entirely mistress of herself, and governed by a profound caution. She intended to learn more than she revealed; and for all her frankness of manner, it must be my lot to fence with her, as two potentates might navigate a treaty.

“Before I tell you—may I know the substance of the Princess’s errand in this household?”

“She wished to pay a call.” Julia Radcliffe sank back onto the settee, her posture upright and watchful. “I must observe that you have done the same, and on as slight an acquaintance.”

“You were known to one another, however?”

“By name only. I had never spoken to Tscholikova before in my life, tho’ I had often noticed her at the opera, and similar places. Tell me, Miss Austen—why are you come?”

“Because the threat of the gallows hangs over me.”

“And what have I to do with that?”

The coldness of the remark gave me pause. “Much, I must imagine. I have been told the jewels were in your keeping, before they passed into … mine.”

“Have you, indeed?” A look of incredulity lit her perfect features. “Then I have been betrayed by one whose discretion I believed to be infallible.”

“The Comtesse d’Entraigues?”

The expression of shock drained from her countenance; composure was once more regained. “Ah. The Comtesse … and what did she tell you?”

“Surely you may surmise!”

“I hardly know of what that creature is capable. I should like to have the recital whole, from your lips.”

I shrugged, aware that in giving way to her request, I accorded her the ascendancy in our battle. “You must forgive me if I offend your sensibilities— if I tread too closely on matters of an intensely private nature—but the pressure of events, and Mr.

Skroggs’s attention, are very great, and must urge me to be explicit.”

“I prefer plain dealing.”

“Very well. Anne de St.-Huberti informed me that she had come to Russell Square to beg you to renounce her husband; that she feared the loss of her household and security, under the threat of divorce; and that by way of recompense for your conquest of the Comte, you pressed upon her Tscholikova’s jewels.”

“ I pressed them upon her?” Julia Radcliffe’s delicate brows rose. “I see. Then there is very little point in my denying it.”

The swiftness of the admission convinced me, as outcry or argument would not have done, that she lied. Julia Radcliffe had accepted the Comtesse’s claims as a matter of policy—a tactical choice, rather than an admission of guilt.

“Miss Radcliffe,” I demanded, “did Princess Tscholikova place her jewels in your keeping when she called here, several days before her death?”

“She must have done so. The Comtesse d’Entraigues would have it I gave the jewels to her— and for that to be true, I must have received them from the Princess … ”

Her tone was almost one of amusement. I studied her visage searchingly.

“If I am to escape the threat of hanging,” I said slowly, “it will be chiefly through the implication of guilt in others—Bill Skroggs will have his prey. I should not like to think it is you, Miss Radcliffe, I am coursing into his jaws.”

A silence fell between us.

“I must consider all you have said.” She rose gracefully, her countenance betraying nothing. “I cannot possibly know what may be told—what I may… in short, I must consult with another. If you would be so good as to give me your direction—”

“I am staying with my brother, Mr. Henry Austen, of No. 64 Sloane Street, Hans Town.”

“Very well. I shall call upon you at the earliest possible moment, Miss Austen. At present, however, I am sadly neglecting my guests.”

She bobbed a curtsey; I returned it; and then Julia Radcliffe was gone.

I
HAD THE LENGTH OF MY JOURNEY HOME TO REFLECT
upon all that had passed. I was not, in the event, entirely downcast: I had learned that Miss Radcliffe had indeed seen the Princess before her death; that she was aware of the existence of the jewels—for she had betrayed no surprise or curiosity when they were mentioned—and that there was some other she would shield, consult, and protect. For all that she had revealed so little, I felt I must be nearer my object. I had played my trump card: the threat of pursuit from Bill Skroggs—a man whom at Grafton House she had owned she hated. I had merely to wait for Miss Radcliffe to return my call—and such a well-behaved, gently-reared girl was unlikely to neglect the exertion.

¹
Cit
was an abbreviation of citizen and designated a person engaged in trade in the City, or square mile of merchant London east of the genteel neighborhoods bordering Hyde Park.
Mushroom
designated a cit who aspired to the upper classes, either through conspicuous consumption or marriage with the gentry; like mushrooms, such people were viewed as unattractive social growths who sprang up overnight.—
Editor’s note
.

Chapter 26
Tales to Frighten Children

Tuesday, 30 April 1811

∼

S
HE CAME TO ME TODAY, FAR SOONER THAN
I
HAD
expected, and such a show of breeding must be imputed to her Radcliffe rearing.

I woke early to the muffled hallooing that invariably connotes a London fog, and the magnified clatter of horses’ hooves, carriage wheels, carters’ drays and peddlers’ screeching; the chill of yesterday had brought with it rain, which gurgled in the gutters. So dim was the light—or so great my exhaustion from the previous night’s broken rest—that I had overslept myself, and discovered by the bells that it was full nine o’clock. Manon had crept in on cat’s paws and made up the fire; but I should have to ring for my morning tea. I rose, and reached for my dressing gown—when the sound of a horse’s terrified neigh brought me to the window.

In the swirling wisps of fog and rain below, a black carriage had misjudged its pace and run full-tilt into a cart; the team of horses—also black as pitch— had broken the traces, and the leader was plunging wildly in the shafts; the driver was struggling to rein in the beast, while a groom reached for its tossing head; and the carter abused all within hearing for the quantity of sacks that had spilled into the carriageway, several of which had split open, and strewn grain onto the rain-wet paving.

This might have been enough to engage my interest and arrest my sight, had such incidents not proved wearisomely familiar after six weeks’ habitation in the Metropolis; but my quickened senses detected another reason to linger by the casement: the jet-black coach and its midnight horses were clearly agents of mourning. I glanced the length of Sloane Street, and understood from the procession of sombre carriages and dusky teams that what I witnessed, on this day of fog and rain, was a funeral procession. It must—it could only be—Princess Evgenia Tscholikova’s.

The weather alone—the sulphurous glow of side-lamps—the plunging leader snorting with terror—rendered the aspect positively spectral, as tho’ the equipages and all their occupants should be swallowed up in a cloud of hellish vapour. I shuddered, and drew the drapes against the scene—and wondered into what ground the poor creature’s body should be laid. The wretched woman had been adjudged a suicide, and might rightly have been refused consecrated ground—buried instead at a crossroads without even a marker, so that her blasted soul might wander the earth in endless lamentation—but I hoped that Prince Pirov had found the proper palms to cross with silver. I did not like to think of a woman I believed to have been cruelly murdered, left in a pauper’s grave. To be scorned even in death—!

I dressed hurriedly and went in search of Manon.

“Druschka tells me the Duke of Norfolk—who is a Papist, vous savez—has offered to take the Princess’s remains in his family’s burial ground.” The maid glanced over her shoulder, and despite years of habitation in England, crossed herself hurriedly against the Evil Eye. “Not the ancestral vault, of course, but a plot near the home chapel. Prince Pirov was most grateful.”

“The Prince is capable of amiable feelings, then?”

“Towards men of standing, who show him favour—but of course! To Druschka he is a monster. He has ordered her to be ready to quit London on the morrow; they are all to be off for Paris, and then by degrees to Moscow, and I think she will break her heart with crying, me. She does not believe she will survive the journey.”

“Could she not secure a suitable position here, in London?” I enquired.

Manon shook her head. “The Prince will not allow it. That woman is almost a slave, mademoiselle— it is the nature of things in Russia. She does not command her own life, she has no power to determine her future; she must wait upon the will of her master. The Prince finds it imperative that Druschka leave the country.”

“I wonder,” I mused as Manon set a tea cup by my place, “what exactly is he afraid of?”

“The Tsar, no doubt.”

“Manon—I wish you will put a question to Druschka before she is whisked away.”

“Certainly. I shall walk in Cadogan Place at three o’clock. What would you know?”

“—Which gentleman Princess Tscholikova was in the habit of visiting, at the Albany,” I said.

I
FILLED THE NEXT HOUR IN ANSWERING A LETTER
from Cassandra I had received that morning—two pages of sun and spring air and Kentish nonsense, for she is in the midst of a visit to my brother Edward at Godmersham. She is full of enthusiasm for our musical evening, and requires further particulars of my dress: How had I done my hair? Did I mean to trim my old pelisse fresh? 'The cleric, Mr. Wyndham Knatchbull, had sent a report of the evening round his Kentish relations, and thus by degrees his judgement arrived at Godmersham: Miss Jane Austen is “a pleasing looking young woman.” I must be satisfied with such tepid praise—at five-and-thirty, one cannot pretend to anything better. I have not yet sunk, it seems, to looking ill; and in truth, the notice of a man who may talk only theosophy at one of Eliza’s evenings should never be necessary to my happiness.

“There is a lady who wishes to see you, mademoiselle,” Manon said from the book room doorway.

I set aside my correspondence—it was rather tedious in any case, as so many topics of interest are embargoed, being too perilous to communicate. “It will be Mrs. Tilson, I suppose. We are to dine with her this evening.”

“No, mademoiselle—a Miss Radcliffe. She has sent in her card.”

I rose hastily from the writing table and smoothed my gown. “Pray, Manon—show her directly into this room. We may be assured of privacy here.”

The careful control of expression Miss Radcliffe had maintained, while I fenced with her in the anteroom in Russell Square, was less perfect this morning. Her face, framed by a dashing bonnet with a short and upswept poke, was paler than ever; the delicate bloom of peach and rose had fled her cheek. I imputed the cause to an unhappy night, and guessed that a period of uneasiness had been capped with a failure to eat during the interval. “Miss Austen,” she said as she curtseyed, “I am thankful to find you at home.”

“The pleasure must be entirely mine. Won’t you sit down? Manon—be so good as to bring some refreshment for Miss Radcliffe.”

The Barque of Frailty glided towards one of Eliza’s French chairs, and sank onto it—ramrod straight, as I remembered. Did the child never allow herself to unbend? The picture of perfection she presented was surely purchased at the cost of rigid self-control—and I found a phrase of my acquaintance, Miss East’s, lingering in the mind. Not self-control, she had said, but self-reliance ought to be the theme of Mrs. Brunton’s novel. Self-reliance. Julia Radcliffe could presume upon no one’s disinterested support—and thus had made of her slender frame a column of steel.

Manon appeared with wine and cakes upon a silver tray. Miss Radcliffe refused a macaroon, but accepted a glass of ratafia, and sipped a little before she spoke.

“I have been thinking almost continuously of what you said,” she began after an interval, “and I believe I ought to help you ward off that terrible man, Bill Skroggs, to the utmost extent of my power. As you so rightly observed, Skroggs will be satisfied only with a victim—and if you are determined it shall not be yourself I am equally determined he shall not settle upon me.”

“So far, our interests are allied.”

“I cannot answer all the questions you might pose—indeed, for many of them I have no answer— and in some cases, I freely state that I will not supply the solution to your puzzle, for not only I am encompassed in it. Others there may be whose well-being must be injured by any communication of mine. But one matter at least I might illuminate—Princess Tscholikova’s visit to me, on the Sunday morning prior to her unfortunate death.” Miss Radcliffe’s blue eyes rose to meet mine. “I am right, I think, in apprehending that she did not die by her own hand—as has been reported in the newspapers?”