Read Jane and the Wandering Eye Online
Authors: Stephanie Barron
Jane and the Wandering Eye (38 page)
The image of a burly, bearded figure of motley in converse with a scarlet Medusa rose before my eyes.
“Easton!” Lady Desdemona cried. “It
was
you!”
Throughout this explanation, Colonel Easton had stood mute and white-faced in the magistrate’s grip; but now he burst out with venom, “You shall never prove it, Trowbridge!”
“I do not have to,” Lord Harold replied easily. “For that is Mr. Elliot’s task.”
A
ND SO OUR MISBEGOTTEN PARLOUR GAME WAS AT LAST
come to an end.
“Despicable man,” Maria Conyngham whispered, as she passed before Lord Harold’s gaze. “I shall damn you from my grave.”
He inclined his head with exquisite grace; and at Mr. Elliot’s behest, the lady quitted the room. But I observed Lord Harold’s eyelids to flicker as he watched her go,
and his countenance become even more inscrutable; and read in these the extent of his self-loathing.
His mother observed as well, and understood; but the Duchess said nothing—merely reached for his hand.
“Well, my dear Jane—here’s a to-do,” my Uncle Perrot mused in a whisper. “It will be all over Bath on the morrow; and what I shall say to your aunt, I cannot think!”
“Lay the whole at my feet, my dear,” I advised him, “for she has quite despaired of my character these three years at least.”
Monday,
24 December 1804
Christmas Eve
~
T
IME PASSED;
L
ORD
K
INSFELL WAS RELEASED, AND RETURNED
to the bosom of his family. The spectacular fall of the interesting Conynghams was a three-days’ wonder, and Eliza’s account of it much solicited in the Pump Room. My mother soon forgot her younger daughter’s scandalous taste for blood in a more consuming anxiety for her son’s financial well-being—and grew seriously vexed when no commissions for Henry materialised from my intimacy with the Wilborough family. I cast about for solace—and found it in the unlikely form of the Leigh-Perrots. For, as I told my mother, the very evening of the infamous Rauzzini concert my uncle had excessively valued Henry’s sage advice regarding the ‘Change.
“Then it is fortunate, indeed, Jane, that you took him up on the concert scheme, for I am sure he should not have thought of Henry and Eliza otherwise—and I know it was a sacrifice for yourself, disliking music of that kind. You were always a good sort of open-hearted girl. Cassandra is nothing to you.” She busied herself about her
work a moment, humming fitfully in snatches of disconnected song, and presently warmed once more to her subject.
“Perhaps now your uncle may place some funds at Henry’s disposal—for Lord knows he has enough lying about at Scarlets, and even here at Paragon, to keep your brother in commissions a twelvemonth. I cannot think what he contrives to do with it all—for my sister Perrot hardly spends a farthing. She is of a saving nature, is sister Perrot—very saving indeed, and the housekeeping is the worse for it. The soused pig tasted decidedly ill the evening of her card party, and I could not find that she had even so trifling a confection as a seed-cake about her. The claret was tolerable, however—but I suppose that Mr. Perrot is vigilant about the laying-down of his cellar. No, Jane, you did not suffer at all in your sacrifice of the card party—and your willingness to oblige your uncle did you credit in his eyes, I am sure. Perhaps there may be a legacy in it, by and by.”
I left her happy in scheming how the various Austens might best contrive to exploit their more comfortably situated relations, and trusted that the patronage of the ducal family might never be mentioned again.
O
NE SENSATION WAS SWIFTLY SUCCEEDED BY ANOTHER, AND
the murder of Richard Portal gave way to news of far happier moment, with the announcement of Lady Desdemona Trowbridge’s betrothal to the Earl of Swithin. The gossips of the Pump Room would have it the redoubtable Earl had once fought a murderer at pistol-point in defense of the lady’s honour—but in support of so broad a claim, even Eliza very wisely said nothing.
“Jane,” my sister Cassandra said, as I lingered over the notice in the Bath
Chronicle
, “the post is come. You have a great letter from James. Is it not singular, indeed?
For he never writes to
you
, if he can help it. I cannot think what he has found to say—and at considerable length, too.”
I jumped up from the sitting-room table and turned eagerly to the packet she held in her hands. “This is despatch, indeed! I must admire my brother the more, when that spirit of industry and rectitude—so generally tedious in his person—may contribute at last to satisfying my concerns. I expect this to contain news of Ashe.”
Cassandra stood very still, and a change came over her countenance. “Jane, there is a something you have not disclosed, that is troubling you deeply. I am certain of it. You have been comporting yourself in the strangest manner—most unlike yourself, indeed—from the moment we learned of Madam Lefroy’s death.”
I settled myself once more at the table, James’s letter slack in my hands. “And should you expect me to behave as myself, in the midst of so dreadful a grief?”
“As yourself in mourning, perhaps. But instead you go about like a lady of the
ton
, embarked upon her first Season! Madam Lefroy is all but forgot—and then,
this?”
“Poor brother James! He would be no end offended to hear you speak so of his letters!”
“Do not sport with me, Jane.” Dear Cassandra’s voice held an unaccustomed ferocity. “I have always been privileged to share your smallest cares, as you have shared mine; but of late I must feel that you are entirely closed to me.” She sat down beside me and reached for my hand. “Your behaviour pains me, I will not deny. I esteemed Madam Lefroy as much as did you, and her death has quite destroyed my peace. You are not alone in your melancholy. Or perhaps you have not observed the torment of our dearest father? It galled him so to be unfitted by poor health for the journey to Ashe. But he was told that all travel must be impossible, with the delicate state of the lungs—Mr. Bowen feared an imflammation,
it seems—and so Father was frustrated in his desire to show some small respect of friends cherished the better part of a lifetime. It is not fair in you, Jane—it is most unkind—to exclude your family from your counsels, and turn instead to strangers.”
“And is James, then, become a stranger?”
Cassandra sighed. “You know that I do not speak of James.”
I took up the letter and broke open the seal. There were two full sheets, quite written through and crossed.
22 December
1804
Steventon RectoryMy dear Jane—
I was gratified to receive your letter of Wednesday last, and found it most proper in every expression of condolence and respect for the Deceased, though perhaps a trifle wanting in the form of its composition. You shall never be a truly accomplished writer, dear Sister, until you have studied the art of orthography and attempted consistency in its employ. In point of length your missive was not deficient, but in the organisation of your ideas—! The postscript alone was a mere jot, and entirely unconnected to the previous subject of your thesis. A sad muddle altogether. But of this, it is perhaps wiser not to speak. I may credit the fullness of your heart—that becoming depth of feeling so natural in the Female—for the unfortunate flow of your words, and the lack of stops to your sentences. I recollect that our excellent Father did not see fit to have you tutored in either Latin or Greek—quite rightly, too, for it should have burdened a mind remarkable for the weaknesses of its Sex!—and that you must be regarded, accordingly, as only half-educated.
I was so fortunate as to accompany my esteemed colleague, the Reverend Isaac Peter George Lefroy, to the carpenter’s last week, about the ordering of the coffin. I had offered this
little service, of attending him in the arrangements for the burial of the Deceased, and I may assure you that he was excessively quick in his acceptance. The Reverend Lefroy was gratified, I daresay, by my expression of respect and willingness to act in the guise of Son, to one who has always behaved with Paternal Affection. His own boys, I may report, behave abominably; young Ben has not left off crying since the Unhappy Event; and even Mr. Rice, whose assumption of Orders should have taught him delicacy and advised him to stand in a Son’s place, to the father of his Chosen Companion, has failed utterly to lend support. He has taken, in fact, to Spirits, and spends the better part of every evening in throwing dice among the stable-boys
.
1
But I was enabled by your letter, my dear Jane, to convey the Austen family’s warmest sentiments of regard and feeling to the Reverend Lefroy, and can extend to you in turn the melancholy gratitude of a Man reduced to nothing by Grief.The carpenter resided in Broad Street, in the neighbouring village of Overton; and as we progressed thither, our hearts could not fail to be oppressed by the dreadful memory of the Unhappy Event, in being forced to review again the site of the tragedy itself. You will recall that Madam Lefroy was in the act of quitting Overton, and had attained the top of Overton Hill, when her horse bolted and precipitated her injury. As we drew near the Fatal spot, Reverend Lefroy would not be gainsaid by the most earnest entreaty—he drew up his horse at the hedgerow itself—and holding aloft his whip, he pronounced the awful words.
“Here, my dear Austen, is the very ground of her unmaking. Here did the poacher sit, under cover of winter’s early dusk; here, he aimed his gun, and fired upon the
partridge, that should have gone to Sir Walter’s bag”—for you know, fane, that Sir Walter Martin has always held that hedgerow in fief, and is sadly plagued by poachers—“and here the horse took fright, and ran away with my Beloved, to her tragic ruin.” At this juncture he dismounted, and tore at the hedgerow’s branches, and commenced a fearful weeping; and I must believe that had he proceeded alone, the carpenter should never have received him at all.In consideration of Reverend Lefroy’s behaviour, indeed, I begin to comprehend the excesses of his offspring—but will allow no hint of remonstration to fall from my lips.
I apprehend, from the tenor of your missive, Jane, that you wish a full recital of Madam Lefroy’s misfortune, and some account of her final hours. I might caution you, perhaps, against the over-indulgence of a morbid sentiment, and the feverish immersion in all that pertains to the Passing of the Flesh; but I believe you to be a lady of some sense, Jane, and will trust in Providence and the excellent example of our beloved father, to preserve you from excesses of Emotion and Thought.
I encountered Madam Lefroy myself on that fateful day, as our father has no doubt informed you from the intelligence of my late express. She remarked at the time that her mount was so stupid and lazy she could hardly make him go, and so we parted—I to return home, and she to conduct her business among the tradesmen of the town. At about the hour of four o’clock, however, Madam Lefroy was in the act of quitting Overton with her groom—when at the summit of Overton Hill, her horse was frighted by the report of a gun fired from the hedgerow not ten paces distant from the animal’s withers. The horse bolted, and the groom failed in his attempt to seize its head. From fright or unsteadiness, Madam Lefroy then threw herself off; and sustained the
gravest concussion. After some little delay about the conveyance, she was carried home to Ashe, and there lingered some twelve hours. Mr. Charles Lyford of Basingstoke—you will remember him, I am sure—attended her; but she slipped away quietly in the early hours of Sunday morning. I do not know whether she stirred or spoke before the End.The shot that startled the horse has been imputed to the carelessness of a poacher—a poacher who remains at large, and will probably be far from his native turf at present, for the preservation of his neck. A just horror at the ruin his shot had caused, should undoubtedly have urged the rogue to flee under cover of the falling dark. His apprehension must go unaided by any report from Madam’s groom, who was necessarily engrossed in the pursuit and recovery of his mistress’s mount, now sadly destroyed—and so we must impute the Disaster to Him whose ways are hidden, and accept it with the propriety and grace becoming a Christian.
Propriety and grace, however, are sadly lacking among the Lefroys at present, and I may congratulate myself at having borne my own Dear Departed’s passing with a more commendable fortitude, as my present Wife is quick to recollect. The Lefroys are a family destined to be plagued with misfortune, as Mary has also condescended to point out; the heedlessness and injury to young Anthony’s back, and his subsequent death, were almost a presaging of this fresh tragedy
.
2
They had much better avoid the horses altogether in future. But, however—I could not find it remarkable in any of them to behave most lamentably throughout the service, and was duly resigned to demonstrations of grief on every side.You enquired, at the last, whether I have remarked the appearance of any strangers recently in the neighbourhood. There were a great many come for Madam Lefroy’s service—and I congratulate myself that I did not disappoint their expectations!—but I take it you would refer particularly to your acquaintance from Bath. How you come to know such disreputable persons as the man Smythe, I cannot begin to think, my dear sister; and when I mentioned the matter to my beloved Mary, she joined most vigorously in my opinion. For the full extent of his history, I was forced to enquire of the housemaid, Daisy, who was so unfortunate as to encourage the man’s lingering in the vicinity of the parsonage, through the offering of table scraps; and I have learned to my horror that he is a most dissolute person. If Daisy is to be credited, Smythe caroused in the Overton inn, meddled with the tradesmen’s daughters, and performed certain high jinks in the public lanes—tumbling and jumping for such pennies as the curious might afford him. We were only too glad to learn that he had quitted the vicinity as suddenly as he came; and must wonder at your having noticed him at all. Where he is gone, I cannot tell you.
Daisy I have dismissed for her impertinence and want of proper discretion, with full pay and her character, of course.
I remain, your most respectful Brother,
Reva. Ja. Austen