Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Genius of the Place

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa urged again.

“To devote six months,” Neddie observed, “to a single estate! Mr. Sothey must have found a great deal to employ his time.”

“Mr. Grey, I believe, has a passion for improvement,” Mr. Finch-Hatton interjected approvingly.

“And as Grey was called so often to Town, Mr. Sothey must frequently have acted in his stead,” Neddie mused.

The implication — that the landscape designer had found more than mere parkland to occupy his attention — was entirely lost on Lady Elizabeth.

“Julian is a very responsible, steady sort of young man,” Lady Elizabeth cried, “and if he possessed the fortune he ought, I should never say nay to him! Our Louisa and Julian have known one another since childhood, you understand — I make nothing of any trifling attachment, of course — but, then, one does not often meet with a girl as good-looking; and now that Julian is grown into such a sprig of fashion, all the young ladies are quite wild about him.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa wailed in exasperation.

“My dear — the time!” Mr. Finch-Hatton exclaimed.

“And how long will Mr. Sothey be with you, ma'am?” I enquired hurriedly.

“We are so fortunate as to have his undivided attention for several weeks,” Lady Elizabeth replied. “We met with him quite by chance at that unfortunate race-meeting, you know, and he told us it would at last be in his power to pay us a visit. I was overjoyed! I declare I could not stop talking of it, until that lamentable woman put flight to every other consideration.” This was the nearest approach she would allow herself to strangulation. “But, however, it is immaterial now. We expect Julian for dinner this evening.”

“Then you had certainly better be on your way,” Lizzy supplied, with her usual good breeding, as though she had never been jilted of a dinner partner herself, nor vexed beyond imagining by the quantity of effort undergone only this morning in the Godmersham kitchens. “I suppose we cannot hope to see you for several weeks, if Mr. Sothey intends to engross all your time.”

“As to that — I cannot say, to be sure — but we are to have quite a little dinner gathering at Eastwell on the morrow — should be charmed, if you are not engaged? You might meet Mr. Sothey, go over his plans for the grounds, and judge of his talents yourselves!”

“You are all kindness, Lady Elizabeth,” said my brother swiftly. A quelling look to his wife, who might have refused the invitation, went unnoticed by the Finch-Hattons.

“You are too good, ma'am,” said Lizzy distantly.

Lady Elizabeth smiled at her with infinite condescension. “Tho' Julian shall be much taken up with our little place, Mrs. Austen, I am sure that Mr. Finch-Hatton would be delighted to spare him, should you require a consultation about your grounds. I am strongly of the opinion that you should have that Bentley down — and I do not think I flatter myself when I say, that my opinions on matters of Taste are everywhere celebrated.”

And so the Finch-Hattons were shown to their barouche-landau, without having taken so much as a glass of Madeira — in a fever, one supposes, to welcome the genius of Eastwell Park.

We watched them the length of the sweep, and when they had crossed the little stone bridge and were labouring up the hill to the Ashford road, Lizzy muttered, “Insufferable woman! I quite detest her. Must we indeed go to Eastwell on the morrow? Could not we decline a full hour after we are expected, and afford them all the misery they have served to us?”

Neddie laughed and carried his wife's hand to his lips. “We cannot. You know it is impossible. Such a display of carelessness would expose you to Lady Elizabeth's scorn; and you could never bear to appear as vulgar as she. I fear that you have been bested by a Gendeman Improver, my dear — and there is nothing for it but to submit.”

“It is of no consequence, Neddie.” She let fall the drape across the window, and turned away. “They had not been alighted from their carriage five minutes, before I considered the exchange an admirable one. Mr. Sothey must be formed of sterner stuff than we, to contemplate a visit of some weeks to Eastwell!”

“Perhaps you underrate Miss Louisa's charms,” I suggested.

“The Finch-Hattons generally rate them so high themselves, that one must forever fall short,” she replied. “But I stand by my original claim. Mr. Sothey is a martyr to a peculiar cause, known only to himself — and is much to be pitied.”

Neddie raised his brows expressively in my direction. He was considering, no doubt, the curious fact of Mr. Sothey's departure for Eastwell Park on the very day of Mrs. Grey's murder. We had heard nothing before this of Sothey's presence in the Grey household; and yet so protracted a visit — even under the guise of an estate's improvement — must be remarkable. Valentine Grey had told us nothing of it, nor of his designer's abrupt departure. Was this the matter he would keep dark — the element of the story that required a desperate diversion?

“I quite long to meet Mr. Sothey,” I observed, “being but too susceptible myself to every Sprig of Fashion. And the delight of uniting the honour with another tour of Eastwell Park, is almost too much to be borne! — Tho' I doubt I am improved enough myself, since last summer, to stand comparison with that noble place.”

“Have a care, Jane,” my brother advised, as the dinner bell rang. “Lady Elizabeth may appear foolish at times, and suffer from a lamentable taste; but she is not a stupid woman. Even an irony so disguised as yours, cannot entirely escape her notice.”

Friday,

23 August 1805

IF THERE IS ANY SORT OF UNPLEASANTNESS TO BE FACED in the coming day — depend upon it, it will rain.

The heat broke with a vengeance above our heads about an hour before dawn, lashing the early morning darkness with a petulant violence. I drowsed under the persistent patter of raindrops, content to drift in the twilight between dream and waking. I expected the storm to pass on directly, and leave the world new-washed under an August sun. By nine o'clock, however — when all but our indolent Lizzy had assembled in the breakfast parlour — a steady deluge veiled the meadows from our sight. The dun-coloured grasses were flattened with the pelting drops, and the willows at the riverbank were streaming like a mermaid's tresses.

“The Wingham road will be a morass of mud,” Neddie pronounced with decided gloom. “Such a day for a funeral!”

“—And such a funeral for the day!” Henry added. “It is well you go in black, brother — for the wet cannot mar such a shade.”

Neddie returned no answer; Henry's caprice can prove a sore trial, at times.

“I believe I shall bear you company, Ned,” he added, after an interval. “It would never do to send forth the Justice without a proper escort. I might be your outrider, and lend a certain style.”

The Justice in question surveyed his brother's fawn-coloured riding breeches and elegant salmon-and-green waistcoat with a critical air. “I declare you look almost Roman, Henry. The very thing for a Papist rite. Do not alter the slightest particular, I beg — excepting, perhaps, the addition of a black armband.”

Mrs. Grey was to be interred in the family vault at The Larches itself, with an elderly Catholic priest pressed into service. Where such a man had been found in the cathedral town of Canterbury, was a question best left to Mr. Valentine Grey; that gentleman must have resources of which we knew nothing.

“I understand,” Henry confided to the table in general, “that there was some talk of shipping the body back to France. The French Comte is said to have been most insistent. Grey, however, would have none of it — and so in English earth she will lie. The fellows at the Hound and Tooth could talk of little else.”