Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“But you have not described it as you should,” he replied. “For I do not live alone. There is my cousin Seraphine.”

I must have flushed hotly at the name, for his eyes, when they glanced my way, narrowed shrewdly.

“You have heard something to her discredit. I am sure of it.”

“Of your cousin I have heard little — and that, only praise. But of yourself, Mr. Sidmouth—” I faltered, and searched for a means of carrying on. “I hear such conflicting reports of your character, that I confess I know not what to think.”

“If you would draw my likeness from the opinion of men such as Percival Fielding, you cannot hope to capture it truly.”

“Captain Fielding appears all that is honourable,” I replied, stiffening.

“Appears! Aye, he appears to be a great deal.” At this, Sidmouth laughed with contempt, but his countenance was decidedly angry. “He has sunk Mademoiselle LeFevre before the eyes of all Lyme. The sorrow Fielding has caused — the pain — I tremble to think of it, Miss Austen.”

“How can you speak so!” I said, my attitude all indignation. I clutched involuntarily at the seat's edge as the barouche began to descend towards the Charmouth shingle. A broad sea vista was spread before us — breathtaking in the extreme — but I was too intent upon my thoughts to give it proper notice. “ You, Mr. Sidmouth, who should have been your cousin's protector! You — who are responsible for reducing her to misery of the acutest kind! I wonder at your encompassing a man so honourable as the Captain — his motives all disinterested, his aims merely just — in the ruin of Mademoiselle LeFevre! Your own sense of decency, Mr. Sidmouth — of respect for the duties of a gentleman — must cry out against it!”

His countenance paled above his bitten lips, and his gaze, levelled as it was over the horses’ heads, became stony. “I would beg you to speak no more to me, madam, of Captain Fielding,” he said. “You cannot know what is toward between that gentleman and myself, and I shall not stoop to deriding him to others, as it has suited him to serve me.”

“I am glad to know you retain some claims to the honour of a gentleman,” I replied tartly; and so we pulled up before Mr. Crawford's fossil works, in silence and some confusion of emotions the one towards the other.

“MY DEAR MR. CRAWFORD,” MY FATHER EXCLAIMED, AS HE advanced upon that gentleman with hand extended, “I quite revel in this opportunity to view your pits! What industry, on behalf of science! What energy, towards the greater glorification of God!”

Mr. Crawford stood in his shirtsleeves (for the day was decidedly warm), his bald head shielded by a monstrous hat. The redness of his countenance testified to the energy with which he had been stooping and carrying the small articles of stone laid neatly to one side upon a blanket; and the weariness of the two men employed in his behalf, who worked deep in a quarry hewn from the cliff face with picks and trowels, spoke eloquently of the labour undergone. The heat was intensified by a smallish fire ignited near a bellows, where Mr. Crawford's men might repair such tools as required attention, on a crude sort of forge; and all about lay piles of rubble, the detritus of scientific endeavour.

Eliza and Henry were admiring the view from the shingle; Mr. Sidmouth was attending to the horses; and so Cassandra and I followed my father towards the day's burden of treasures. There we found the two ladies of the Crawford household ranged on either side of a blanket, in the process of unpacking a hamper.

“Miss Crawford! And Miss Armstrong!” Geoffrey Sidmouth declared, coming up behind. “How delightful to see you, indeed. I did not know that you were to be of the party. May I present to you the Miss Austens, of Bath.”

And so there were introductions all around — and several glances the length and breadth of our simple white gowns from Miss Crawford, who is fully as sharp and shrewish in aspect as I judged her to be the previous e'en. She is Mr. Crawford's sister, and his housekeeper since the death of his wife some years ago; and I judge her to labour under the burden of disappointment, for her pinched and suffering countenance bears the mark of regret. This, and her customary black, give her the general air of a raven, an impression that the harshness of her voice does nothing to dispel.

Miss Lucy Armstrong is their niece, down like ourselves from her home in Bath. [36] In her letter to Cassandra, written from Lyme Sept 14, 1804, Austen refers to Miss Armstrong without revealing her Christian name; in another letter dated April 21, 1805, she mentions renewing the acquaintance in Bath. We learn here for the first time that Miss Armstrong's name was Lucy. — Editor's note. She is not above nineteen, with the freshness of complexion and sweetness of temper common in those untried by life. She met Mr. Sidmouth's eyes only with difficulty, and seemed to prefer the study of an ant toiling across the blanket, so firmly did her gaze seek the ground. She was likewise impervious to the slings and arrows of her aunt's tongue — which suggests some greatness of mind, upon reflection, for one consigned to living with Miss Crawford so many months together. At Mr. Sidmouth's moving to join the gentlemen, young Miss Armstrong recovered her faculties enough to attend to our conversation — though not so well as to partake of it.

“Well! And so you are the famous Austens, of whom we have heard so much,” Miss Crawford began, as she set out forks with the efficiency of a Commander of Foot. Her malicious glance flicked up to meet mine, and as quickly dropped away. “Mr. Crawford is quite full of you, I declare, and Mr. Sid mouth. One is reminded of the smallness of Lyme, when the slightest addition to our society is regarded as such an event.”

“Mr. Crawford is too kind,” 1 replied. “1 am sure he makes all his acquaintance feel equally celebrated.”

“Oh! Cholmondeley has no discernment in his society, 1 assure you. He is forever acquiring strangers on the road, and compelling them to visit these dreadful pits. Such dirt! Such noise! And in pursuit of what? The tracings of a few vanished creatures, too poor to survive, too abject and miserable for consideration. It quite works upon my nerves — though they are shattered already. I attribute the shocking decline in my condition, Miss Austen, to the date of Cholmondeley's embarking upon fossil-collecting; and I have made it a policy not to encourage him in the pursuit. I should never have come today, in fact, did not I have the opportunity to meet your dear sister”—this, with a simper for Cassandra—“whose interesting trouble has given rise to such concern among the intimates of Lyme. The poor state of the roads, and the worse state of the drivers! Something ought to be done about our modes of private transportation. Though I do say, that those who undertake to hire as disreputable a fellow as Hibbs for postboy must take their chances of a bruising. Not that I would speak of it for the world, now your dear sister has come to grief. Indeed, I said as much to Mrs. Schuyler only last evening; and she quite agreed.”

“But we were not to know of the man's propensities beforehand,” Cassandra said gently. “We accepted his services in Crewkerne, where his general character could not be known. When one is a traveller, one must trust a little to Fortune.”

“And look where Fortune took you! To the very brink of death! No, my dear — the only driver worth consideration is one's own coachman, at the head of one's own carriage. I should not think to trust dear Lucy to anyone but our Summerfield when she is to come down from Bath, though her father would send her post.”