Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Barque of Frailty

Monday, 29 April 1811, cont.

SHE LAY IN A CRUMPLED HEAP OF FEATHERS AND silk on the flagway, but a yard from the door.

“Eliza!” I cried in horror. “Manon — Manon, come quickly! Your mistress has swooned!”

I hastened back across the threshold and knelt over the limp form. Eliza’s arms were flung above her head, and her reticule had slipped from her hand; in the glow of the streetlamp her pallor was dreadful.

“Good God, what can have happened?” I placed my arm behind her shoulders to support her, and raised her from the stones. She groaned pitiably.

“Sacre dieu!” Manon muttered beside me. She wore her nightdress and cap; the faint scent of lavender rose from the fresh linen on the chill night air. The maid’s fingers, where they touched my arm, were icy; and I saw that she had not stayed even to don a dressing gown. “Let us take her inside.”

I grasped Eliza’s torso, and Manon supported her knees; and so we half-carried, half-dragged my sister’s lifeless form inside the house. Madame Bigeon was standing in the front passage, her candle raised, her aged face piteously crumpled.

“Pauvre madame! She fainted?”

“I must suppose it to be so — and then struck her head, perhaps, on the flagway. She is certainly insensible.”

“With that little indisposition, and her delicate constitution — she ought not to have gone out. I told Monsieur Henri how it should be, if he left her — how she would be gay to the point of dissipation, at the very risk of her life—”

“Lay her on the sopha, Manon, and Madame Bigeon — some hartshorn, please, or feathers we might burn beneath her nose—”

“Brandy is what she requires,” Madame Bigeon said bluntly, and turned towards the kitchen.

We settled Eliza on the sopha, and I bent to untie her bonnet strings. Manon threw a log on the drawing-room fire, which had been allowed to go out, and began to work the bellows.

“Never mind that! Chafe her wrists,” I commanded, and removed the bonnet.

Eliza groaned more violently than before, and her eyelids fluttered open. Then, with an expression of acute agony, she murmured, “Oh, Lord! My head,” and fell back once more into a swoon.

“I shall step next door to Mr. Haden’s,” I said hurriedly, and ran for the surgeon.

“SHE WAS STRUCK A FEARSOME BLOW FROM BEHIND,” I told Mr. Chizzlewit when he called in Sloane Street this morning, in answer to the summons I had penned in the wee hours and despatched at first light in the hands of Henry’s manservant. “The instrument was a cobblestone, Mr. Haden believes — and but for the cushioning effect of her bonnet, the force might well have cracked her skull. We may thank God that my sister lives; and other than a tenderness in the region, a lump the size of a potato, and a good deal of indignation at the way in which she has been served, she suffers no severe effects. Indeed, she will not even allow me to inform my brother of the event — which shows her to remain unaffectedly silly, despite her sufferings.”

“I am shocked,” he said with unwonted gravity— “indeed, I am grieved. That so lovely a creature as Mrs. Henry should be assaulted with such violence— But is there no one who can describe her assailant?”

“Sloane Street — all of Hans Town — is a rural vicinity,” I reminded him, “and its denizens are not much in the habit of such dissipation as dining out late on a Sunday night. It must have been all of eleven o’clock when our hackney arrived at the door; and by then, nearly every candle was extinguished. We have not your expensive gas-lighting in these parts; the oil lamps are dim at best; and even I, who was but three yards from her position, heard and saw nothing— until it was too late. Can you have an idea how I blame myself?”

I broke off, and shielded my eyes with my hand. “Forgive me. I passed an uneasy night.”

“Not at all,” he murmured. “And the surgeon — Haden? Has he given you cause for concern?”

“He believes she will recover fully — and when I hear how she orders all of us about, and how thoroughly she enjoys the attention, as she reigns like a queen among her bedclothes, supplied with draughts, and panadas, and surrounded by the latest numbers of the Ladies Monthly Museum and La Belle Assemblée, I should laugh to think she gives me the smallest moment of anxiety! [24] A panada was a dish made of bread or crackers, boiled to a pulp and flavored, and generally served to invalids. — Editor’s note. If it were not that my brother charged me expressly with taking the utmost care of her in his absence—”

“She saw nothing, heard nothing, of her attacker?”

I shook my head. “The wheels of the departing hackney obscured every sound; and in the darkness—”

“Of course.” Mr. Chizzlewit turned the brim of his curly beaver between his hands; it was a handsome article, as was everything about his neat and elegant form. “But what I must demand is why? Why should anyone chuse to strike down Mrs. Austen? Her reticule was not stolen, I collect?”

“Nor anything else she carried on her person. The sole object of violence was Eliza herself. And so we must conclude that the attack found its motivation in this dreadful business of the Princess’s murder.” I held the solicitor’s gaze. “For my part, I can think of only one person who has reason to fear my sister — and that is the Comtesse d’Entraigues, who may now believe she divulged too much of a private nature, in her various interviews. Perhaps she has learned somehow of the jewels’ discovery, and restoration to Prince Pirov — perhaps her entire story was a fabrication, intended to obscure a far more malevolent history — I do not know. I may only say that the Comtesse was promised to dine with us last evening, then sent her son as proxy, complaining of a sick headache.”

“—So that she might lurk in wait for your carriage in Sloane Street, and murder her friend?” Sylvester Chizzlewit’s brows soared. “I should call the idea fantastic — were the whole business not already so!”

I raised my hands in supplication. “One has only to consider of her story as a farrago of lies from beginning to end, to admit that she is ideally positioned to have murdered the Princess — and thus to fear my sister’s knowledge of her affairs. A woman who has killed once, should not hesitate to kill again.”

“But happily, she failed to do so. I think perhaps I should consult my grandfather — and enquire whether he knows of a likely personage in Barnes, Surrey, who might be set upon the d’Entraigues household. We ought to be informed of their movements — provided the informer acts with discretion.”

A bell sounded somewhere above — from Eliza’s room, no doubt — and Mr. Chizzlewit said, “I have trespassed too long. I stay only to enquire if there is any way I may serve you, Miss Austen? — Any want of Mrs. Henry’s I might supply?”

“You are very good! For of course you must apprehend that I called you hither only to presume upon your generosity. I should like the hackney driver questioned, if possible. He may, indeed, have seen something as he drove off that he failed to put to the proper account.”

“Of course! The jarvey! You engaged him in Portman Square?”

“There is a stand of such men, waiting on the custom of the inhabitants. It is possible that our driver makes a habit of loitering there—”

“—and thus might be readily found. I am happy to oblige you — and shall search for him instantly.”

“Not so swiftly, I hope.” I raised a hand as tho’ to hold him back. “There is one other who might well have observed Eliza’s attacker — tho’ if he should have done so, I am all amazement that he did not come forward.”