Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“And there he comes,” I replied, as the gallant but limping form of the Captain appeared through the throng, “bearing a cup by way of peace-offering. Will you dance, Eliza, or have you the time to be acquainted with Captain Percival Fielding?”

But she was denied the opportunity to answer.

“Miss Austen of Bath,” Mr. Sidmouth said at my shoulder. “You look very well this evening.”

I turned, intending to cut him with a glance — but that glance, in revealing all the power of his manner and appearance, instantly overwhelmed me. I settled for a wordless nod, and took refuge in averted eyes.

“Do I presume too much — or may I have the honour of this next dance?”

I opened my mouth to declare myself already engaged, when the change in Mr. Sidmouth's complexion stopped the words in my mouth. His gaze was fixed by something beyond my head, and as I watched, his countenance was suffused with colour, then paled to a deathly white.

“Mr. Sidmouth,” Captain Fielding said with a bow, and handed me a glass of negus.

The master of High Down nodded almost imperceptibly, turned on his heel without another word or look for me, and thrust his way back towards the opposite side of the ballroom.

“Well, my dear,” EUza said wryly, “he saved himself the misery of your refusal.” She glanced at Captain Fielding, as if in hopes of an explanation; but she was to receive none. He bowed, and smiled, as though unaffected by the recent scene, and looked to me for introduction.

Recovering myself, I made the fair Eliza known to the Captain, and the two were soon engrossed in conversation. But I found I was little suited to following its conduct; my eyes would too often search the room, and find him first in close confidence with Mr. Dagliesh, and then upon the arm of one of the Miss Schuylers; and so, vexed with too contrary a nature, and torn between wishing for, and fearing, a renewal of his address, I went in search of my father; and departed the Assembly not long thereafter.

“WELL, MY DEAR JANE, I AM QUITE INDEBTED TO YOU,” SAID THAT good gentleman, as we walked the length of starlit Broad Street behind our man James and his Ian thorn. “Crawford is a most excellent fellow! Such industry, in the pursuit of science! Only think — he has engaged a team of men, for the express purpose of digging for fossils! We are to visit the site on the morrow. You must certainly accompany me, and your sister, too, if she is able.”

“Fossils, Father? I cannot profess an interest in bits of old stone.”

“Now, now. Did they have the lettering of ancient Rome upon them, you should moon about their ranks in reflection of fallen glory, and think yourself a lady of Caesar's time, and indulge in every romantic fantasy open to a girlish heart. I know you, Jane. You merely want persuasion. Consider the smallest invertebrate, impaled for eternity upon the rock, as a minor centurion, and you shall suffer the visit in good grace.” We walked on some moments in silence, while I considered my plans for the morrow — which had encompassed nothing of a fossilised nature — until my father overthrew all my complacency.

“Yes, fossils are quite the rage in Lyme, I understand,” he said. “Even Mr. Sidmouth intends to be of the party.”

“Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, faltering.

“But of course,” my father replied. “He is a man of great sense and intelligence, so Mr. Crawford says.”

“Mr. Crawford!” What could the retiring widower, of kindly if balding aspect, have to say to Mr. Sidmouth?

“I hope you do not intend to repeat everything I say, Jane. I may have attained a venerable age, but my memory is equal to the length of a conversation. I wish that I could say the same of your dear mother's.” My father halted at the gate of Wings cottage, peering absent-mindedly at our stoop. “Have we come home so soon, James? Have you found the number directly?”

“That I have, sir — number ten, as you'll see.” The manservant raised the lanthorn in a swinging arc that sent light and shadows at a run across the cottage's facade.

“And so Mr. Crawford and Mr. Sidmouth are on such excellent terms that Mr. Crawford may praise his understanding,” I mused, as I preceded my father up the path. “I should not have considered them the most likely of friends.”

“Indeed. I am assured by Mr. Crawford that we could not have chosen a better place to overturn and that there is nothing like Mr. Sidmouth for decency and good sense. Quite the prop of Lyme, from what I understand.” My father pushed open the gate and motioned for me to precede him. “I quite look forward to knowing him the better — for I confess I did not think much of your Mrs. Barnewall, Jane, nor all her pretty little friends. More form than substance, hey? And so pronounced a taste for rubies as she displays must always be suspect.”

7 September 1804, cont.

I AROSE RATHER LATE THIS MORNING, DUE TO THE FATIGUES OF THE previous evening, but still well before my fellows in Wings cottage; and so I availed myself of the interval until breakfast to take a solitary ramble along the Cobb. I found it cleansed by the tides of its sinister associations; the scaffolding had disappeared, and with it, all hint of intentional evil. The stones at my feet were awash in early sunlight and cold spray; and I walked briskly, glad of the calls of seabirds, and suffused with pleasure at the turning season. September is a month of paradoxes — part decaying summer, part incipient autumn; and the complexity of its character decidedly suits my own. Not that I believe the deeper nature to be more worthy of study than the simple — but complexity is assuredly more compelling to the student than transparency. Captain Fielding, for instance, could be likened to June — forthright, warm, and easy. Mr. Sidmouth, however, is neither summer nor its frigid counterpart, deepest January; he is a November of a month, or perhaps a March — that mix of sudden sunlight and chill wind that keeps one always alert for change.

So I mused, as I walked; and did not neglect to ask whether one should be better suited to a lifetime of June, than an eternity of November — a question I deferred answering until another day.

At the Cobb's end, I halted, and eyed uneasily the marks of recent building; did I close my eyes, the shape of the gibbet should be revealed as etched upon my veiled sight, and the spray-drenched form of Bill Tibbit depending from its ominous bar. Such a fearsome structure could not have been carried to this place — even at night, its progress from town should be remarked — and so, at a thought, I gathered up my skirts, removed my right glove, and crouched down to search the rocks at waterline. A few moments’ groping sufficed; an iron ring was revealed to my hand, and the manner of Tibbit's dispatching confirmed. Flakes of rust were smeared across my palm — I blessed the foresight that had removed Mr. Milsop's perfection of a glove — and that the flakes were but lately displaced, I quickly discerned. A boat's painter had disturbed the iron ring, in being recently tied up at the Cobb's end, and the vessel's burden then shifted to the stones, no doubt in the very dead of night. A little time indeed might prove sufficient for such a hanging, and poor Tibbit's cries had surely gone all unheeded at this distance from the town.

I paused a moment, to ease my aching muscles — such bending and reaching, while wearing tight-laced stays, can only be called exertion — and glanced back at Lyme. An increase in activity along Broad Street heralded the advancing morning; I had better make my way back to Wings cottage. And so I bent to the stones once more, and leaned quite far over to gaze at the ring in the rocks, and saw then the marks of paint.