Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

And who was the third, garbed in black?

“Your water, miss.”

Mouse-brown hair under a white cap; gentian-blue eyes. I accepted the glass. Flora was lacking in both age and experience, and might be encouraged to share her confidences. “Your mistress has gone out?”

“She will have her exercise,” the maid said.

“And may command Mr. Ord to bear her company. Is he often useful in that way?”

Flora smiled. “The young gentleman haunts the house, miss. He is but two days arrived in town, and has spent the whole of it with my mistress! Do you think that he is in love with her?”

“Does he behave as though he were?”

“I cannot rightly say,” Flora replied doubtfully,

“him being an American, and one of the Quality. He keeps a room in Southampton, as is proper, but appears after breakfast and does not quit my mistress’s side until past supper!”

“They must be very old acquaintances.”

She shook her head. “He brought a letter of introduction, on his great black horse. It’s my belief they’d never laid eyes on one another before yesterday. And yet he behaves as though he were her cousin.”

“That is indeed strange,” I said thoughtfully. “But perhaps, after all — he is . One might possess any number of colonial relations one has never met.”

The maid curtseyed and left. I stood a while longer by the leaded windows, the glass of water in my hand, but the walkers did not reappear. It was vital that I gather my strength, for I had no intention of dining on a tray in my room this evening. If Mr. Ord hoped to stay for dinner, then I should break bread with him. Lord Harold would desire no less.

Friday, 28 October 1808

“And so we may have an end to all schemes of watercolour painting, I devoutly hope!” my mother cried when I appeared like a prodigal in the breakfast parlour this morning. “Pray impress upon her, Mrs. Challoner, how very improper it must be for a young woman to wander about the countryside entirely alone! And on horseback, too — when you have never acquitted yourself well in the saddle, Jane.”

“I am afraid her mishap must be laid to my

charge, Mrs. Austen,” Sophia Challoner said evenly.

“Had I not breasted Netley hill in my phaeton when I did, the mare should not have started, and Miss Austen must have been spared an ugly ordeal.”

“Every sentiment revolts! When I consider my daughter, rambling among the hedgerows like a gipsy, and falling off of horses she has no business riding — when I consider of you lying insensible, Jane, in the road — I am thankful you were not murdered before Mrs. Challoner discovered you!”

“You exaggerate, Mamma. What has murder to do with it?”

“Everything, miss! You cannot be aware of the horrors we have endured in your absence; but it is in my power to inform you that the shipwright of Itchen, one Mr. Dixon, was done away with two nights ago — his throat cut, if you will credit it — and the magistrates none the wiser!”

“The shipwright?” Mrs. Challoner enquired. “Why should anyone serve such a fellow with violence?”

“In order to reach his seventy-four,” I replied. “A handsome ship, and nearly complete when it was destroyed by fire Wednesday evening.”

“But I saw the flames! I could not help but observe them, from the Lodge — the blaze illumined the entire waterfront! How very extraordinary! Is it the work of vandals? Or a rival shipyard?”

“Very likely both,” my mother asserted, “for every sort of miscreant will wash ashore in Southampton. It is always so with your port towns.”

“I wish I had known as much when I determined to remove here.” Mrs. Challoner preserved an admirable command of countenance for one whom, I must suspect, knew more than was healthy of the Itchen fire.

“We are vastly obliged to you for doing so. Only think what might have befallen Jane else! Her head should never have been put to rights.” My mother threw me a quelling look. “Pray sit down, Mrs. Challoner, and let us supply you with coffee and muffin — for you cannot have breakfasted properly, in quitting the house so early.”

The lady inclined her head, but professed herself bound for her dressmaker on an errand that could not wait; and with many wishes for my continued good health, and promises of future visits, she gracefully mounted the steps of her perch phaeton and took up the reins.

“What a very daring young woman,” my mother observed from the parlour window, a note of awe in her voice. “Driving herself, with only a manservant behind! That is what comes of living in foreign parts!”

The manservant was the very José Luis — or, as Mrs. Challoner preferred to call him, Zé—and he had proved a taciturn, powerfully built Portuguese fellow. He was as careful of Sophia Challoner as a hawk should be of its young, but he had spared me hardly a glance as we rolled briskly down the road from Netley this morning.

“Her Hindu coat, I vow and declare, is beyond anything I have seen this twelvemonth,” my parent continued. She was correct in this; for the dove-grey sarcenet was trimmed with tassels and silver fox.

“What can she find to discuss with a milliner? She must hardly want for a pin.”

“Except, perhaps, gowns of a suitable weight for the English winter. She has surely never required them before, being almost a native of the Peninsula — and will dress in silk, though complaining all the while of the cold. I supplied her with Madame Clarisse’s direction.”

Madame Clarisse, though born Louisa Gibbon, maintained a modiste ’s establishment of the first stare in Bugle Street. All the ladies of fashion waited upon her there, in the pretty pink and white dressing room, and were supplied with finery at breathless expence.

“Very proper, I am sure. Mrs. Challoner looks the great lady.”

By this imprecation, my mother meant to imply that her new acquaintance appeared to be in easy circumstances — far easier than our own.

“She is a widow, and her fortune acquired by the Port wine trade,” I said distantly.

“Trade! I should not have detected it in her vowels, Jane. But then I recollect — the Challoners of Hampshire have long been Recusants, and one is never certain what Papists will get up to. [10] Recusant was the label applied to those British subjects who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to the Church of England, and thus to its secular head, the Crown. Included in this group were a variety of sects, but the term was generally taken to denote Roman Catholics, whose allegiance was accorded to the pope. As a result of refusing to swear the oath, English Catholics of Austen’s era were barred from taking degrees at either Oxford or Cambridge, holding cabinet positions or seats in Parliament, serving as commissioned officers in either the army or the navy, or entering the professions as physicians, lawyers, or clergy. They were thus consigned to the roles of leisured gentry or merchants in trade. They were forbidden, moreover, to educate their children in their chosen faith — and thus frequently sent school-age progeny to France for instruction. — Editor’s note. They must earn their living as best they can, poor things.”

“The Challoners, disciples of Rome?” I could not imagine the mistress of Netley Lodge educated by nuns in a French cloister. “But Mrs. Challoner merely took that name at her marriage. It is possible that her husband alone was a Recusant — and that she does not adhere to the faith.”

“Possible,” my mother admitted doubtfully, “but I cannot think it at all probable, Jane. The Papists are very careful whom they marry — and recollect: Mrs. Challoner has spent nearly the whole of her life in Portugal. With such a husband, and priests and churches at every side, who should blame her if she fell into disreputable habits? Indeed, I must say that she acquits herself very well, considering. I should not object to your knowing more of her.”