Stephanie Barron - Jane and The Wandering Eye

But the little Comtesse’s company, in general so welcome, should quite incommode me in the present instance; for Lord Harold’s making of the party a third, should confirm her worst invention. I started up and laid a hand to hers.

“That is impossible, Eliza — I mean to say — I am engaged to — to—”

“—Walk out with an unnamed gentleman in some secluded grove of Sydney Gardens? La, Jane, you are a secretive soul! I shall not presume to o’erlisten your conference with Mr. Cosway for a thousand pounds. But I expect a glimpse of your token in private, once he has seized the likeness. Your eyes are so similar to my dearest Henry’s, that I doubt not I shall find the portrait ravishing.”

She rose, and crossed to a travelling desk propped up on a table, and drew forth some paper and a pen. A few lines sufficed to commend her respects to Mr. Cosway, and beg of him the indulgence of a few moments on behalf of her sister, Miss Austen, whose acquaintance he might remember having made in the Pump Room yesterday. It closed with some very pretty, though insincere, compliments upon his taste and person, and begged that the sender should be remembered to his wife when next he corresponded with dear Maria.

“There! If that does not melt the miscreant’s heart, and win you a triumphant place in his studio and salon, I have grossly misjudged my powers.” Eliza folded the note and sealed it with a wafer. “Go with grace and fortune, my dear — and trust me to speak not a word!”

CAMDEN PLACE HOLDS A LOFTY, DIGNIFIED POSITION ON the south-east slope of Beacon Hill, such as becomes a man of consequence. It was built some fifteen years ago or more, and the building abruptly halted by the inconvenience of a series of landslips in the area. That part of the Crescent sited upon solid rock is at present habitable, but presents a ludicrous facade to the world’s view, in having fourteen houses erected to the left of the central pediment, and only four to the right. The north-east pavilion remains, a picturesque ruin perched atop a crag of rock, in mute testament to the triumph of nature over the ingenuity of man. [39] This ruin has been demolished since Austen’s time. — Editor’s note.

The fractured Crescent takes its name from the Marquis of Camden, whose elephant crest surmounts the keystone of nearly every residence’s door, as though an entire herd had condescended to winter in Bath. As I laboured up the long approach by Lord Harold’s side, glorying in the exercise, I contemplated the nature of lodgers and lodgings. The precarious ground of Camden Place might readily serve as metaphor, for all in mankind that prefer false grandeur to a more stable propriety. [40] Austen may have recalled this metaphoric quality of Camden Place when she made it the temporary home of Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion —a man whose emphasis on personal elevation ignored the fact that his fortune had a somewhat shaky foundation. — Editor’s note.

“An excellent morning for exercise, Miss Austen.”

“Indeed it is, my lord.”

“I had considered employing my curricle, or perhaps a brace of chairs — but reflected that neither man nor beast, when burdened with ourselves, should be expected to labour the length of such a hill. I felt certain you would feel the same.”

“Are you possessed, then, of prescience as regards my thoughts and feelings?”

Lord Harold cast me a knowing look. “I flatter myself otherwise. You remain one of the few ladies whose thoughts I cannot read. But perhaps, having found a virtue in this once before, I prolong the effect for the sake of my enjoyment, when, in fact, it is no more than illusion.”

“Then pray tell me of what I am considering now”

“You are abusing me for a very unhandsome escort, in having failed to procure either a carriage or a chair, for the salvation of your half-boots,” he rejoined.

“Your illusion may be sustained yet a little while,” I replied with satisfaction. “I was considering, rather, the Earl of Swithin’s intended removal to a residence opposite your own.”

“That minor intelligence is circulating about all of Bath, I fancy,” Lord Harold observed, “even as the Earl’s carters were circulating about Laura Place this morning. Lord Swithin’s descent has not escaped my notice — nor, I might add, the fact that any wheeled traffic must immediately come to a halt, when Laura Place is choked with even the slightest conveyance. For though the streets in the newer part of town may command a wider breadth than those within the old walls, they remain sadly narrow; and any might come to blows over the rights of passage. The night of Her Grace’s rout, the assemblage of chairs must have considerably clogged the square.”

“I believe they did.”

“And thus inspired by the Earl’s display, I embarked upon my enquiries among the chairmen not long after breakfast.”

“Excellent despatch, my lord. You adventured Stall Street?” [41] Chairmen waited for patrons in Stall Street in much the fashion that taxis presently do — in “stands,” or queues. The last Bath chairman did not retire until 1949. — Editor’s note.

“Both the stand near the Pump Room and the one closer to the Abbey. I questioned every chairman present, to no avail; of those who had indeed been in Laura Place two nights ago, none could recall an altercation with a waggon or carriage; and so I turned my steps to the Gravel Walk.”

“The better to contemplate the problem?”

“The better to examine the chairmen in their resting huts along Queen Place Parade, my dear. [42] The Gravel Walk bisected the Royal Crescent Grounds, a common parading lawn for the fashionable of Bath; in Persuasion , Austen sends Anne Elliot and her beloved Captain Frederick Wentworth to the Gravel Walk to converse privately. The resting booths Lord Harold describes may still be seen on Queen Place Parade — two small huts with fireplaces that served as shelter for the chairmen. — Editor’s note. There were ten fellows at least, quite splendid in their blue greatcoats and peaked caps, divided between the two fires and blowing upon their chapped fingers.”

I stopped a moment, from as strong a desire to draw breath in the midst of my exertions, as to pay heed to Lord Harold’s words. “And what did they tell you, my lord?”

“Amidst much contradiction, abuse, and bestowing of oaths — and a remarkable expense of coin, I might add — something of no little worth. One of the chairmen — a broad Irishman who stood well back in the crowd attending the end of my mother’s rout — claims to have seen something to our advantage. He will have it that an open carriage attempted to pass through Laura Place in the wee hours of Wednesday morning; and after hesitating some moments, the driver was forced to descend to the horses’ heads, and back his pair the length of the street. The chairmen closest to Her Grace’s door were unlikely to have observed the debacle — which accounts for the ignorance of the men I questioned in Stall Street.”

“An open carriage? But it snowed!”

“And so the chairmen observed. It must have been, they affirmed, a party caught out late by the weather — a party that had not considered of snow, when they undertook to drive about the countryside in a curricle. But as they were happily in possession of a wealth of blankets, in which one passenger at least, was effectively cocooned, we may congratulate them on having sustained no very great evil.”

“Our murderer!” I exclaimed. “He had only to drop from the Dowager’s window to the open carriage, while the driver was abusing the chairmen — and conceal himself among the lap robes within. Did the chairmen remark the driver’s face?”