Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

“Aye, so he told me,” Miss Crawford said, nodding sagely. “It is ever such absence of mind, such regard for the smallest detail, that will herald a rapid decline. My own Mr. Filch was prone to spending hours in his hothouse, his poor gaze fixed upon the first tender sprouting of a prize tulip, in his final days. It is as though the soul would cling to the insignificant in life, at the very moment of parting with it. I would adjudge your sister's preoccupation with the shop window a very malignant sign, Miss Austen. Very malignant.”

Poor Lucy Armstrong was sunk in a misery of mortification, her cheeks flushed and her eyes upon her soup; her mother, happily, was engrossed in discussing horse-racing with Mrs. Barnewall, and those two ladies appeared to have heard nothing of what Miss Crawford had said. My mother, on the other hand, was completely devoid of animation; and I knew her to be suffering from terrors of the acutest kind.

“And what of my absorption in fossils, Augusta?” Mr. Crawford interjected impatiently. “Do you but wait for me to fall dead in the pit, the very victim of your worst predictions? It is utter nonsense!”

“So you may say, Cholmondeley, but time shall prove the right of it.”

“Undoubtedly,” Mr. Sidmouth drily replied, “for in the long run, we shall all of us be dead.”

“Hear, hear,” my father said quietly from his place by Seraphine, and devoted himself to the soup, which was admirably made.

“Miss Jane Austen,” Miss Crawford continued, in an imperious tone, “may I be so bold as to enquire whether you are a needle woman?”

The question was so very unexpected, coming as it did on the heels of an altogether different topic, that I may perhaps be forgiven for starting, and letting fall my soup spoon.

“There, I have put the girl out of countenance. I suppose she never learnt.” The old termagant could barely suppress a smile of triumph.

“Indeed, Miss Crawford,” my mother broke in, with a look of mortification down the length of the table, “I think I may assure you that Jane is as pretty a hand with the needle as may be. She has the fashioning of all her sister's clothes.”

“Then it should be as nothing to construct a few items for the St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary,” Miss Crawford replied, without hesitation. “We are collecting a contribution from all of Lyme's ladies, and should count ourselves honoured to include yours, Miss Austen.”

“Now, Augusta—” Mr. Crawford interjected, with something less than his usual good humour.

“I am sure Miss Austen cannot mind it. It is a trifling enough affair, for a girl of her age, and as yet unburdened with the dudes of a married woman.”

It was the Honourable Mathew who served as my deliverer. Having heard nothing of what had passed, he emerged of a sudden from a brown study, and leaned across the napery to prod Mr. Sidmouth with a blunt forefinger.

“I say, Sidmouth, that was a demmed fine horse you rode the other day. Confounded the demmed dragoons in the handiest fashion. How much would you take for ‘im?”

A sudden silence gripped the table, marked only by the slightest cough from Captain Fielding. If a cough could be declared ironic, then his was the very soul of irony. I could not lift my eyes to observe his countenance, nor yet Mr. Sidmouth's; but the air between us seemed to crackle with contained emotion. Did I imagine it, or had the master of High Down been paralysed at a word?

Then Mr. Sidmouth raised his serviette delicately to his lips, and the tension seemed to ease. “I should not have believed you abroad at such an hour, Barnewall. I trust you were merely returning home from the previous evening's entertainments, rather than already about your business for the day.”

Mathew Barnewall threw back his head in raucous laughter, to the evident disgust of Miss Crawford. “Capital!” he cried, slapping his thigh with the greatest enjoyment. “You have the right of it, sir. But it makes no odds. What about the horse, man?”

“I should not part with him for a kingdom.”

“You drive a hard bargain. I like that in a fellow.” Barnewall glanced roguishly down the table to his wife, who regarded Mr. Sidmouth with an indulgent smile, as though he were a very small boy. “Perhaps I shall have Evie work upon you, eh? The woman can charm a cock out of a henhouse.”

“I fear even such a talent would prove of little use in the present case, Barnewall,” Captain Fielding interposed drily. “Sidmouth holds tenaciously to his dearest possessions. There is no wrath more powerful a man may excite, than to wrest from him that which he prizes.” The two men exchanged a long look, and that the Captain spoke of far more than Sidmouth's horse, I felt convinced.

But it was Mr. Sidmouth who dropt his eyes first, seeming absorbed in the fork he turned in his hand. “Though Mrs. Barnewall may claim a stupendous advantage over poultry, and I am given to crowing on occasion, I beg to consider myself as anything but fowl,” he said with a slight smile. “The horse is not for sale.” With that, he turned away from the Honourable Mathew, as though the conversation were at an end, and bent his dark glance upon my countenance; but Barnewall was not so easily put aside.

“Come, come, Sidmouth! Having bested the dragoons at their own game, you cannot wish to engage them further! One would think you intended a swift escape from the country, and would keep the stallion at the ready!”

“And what do you intend for Satan?” Mr. Sidmouth enquired levelly — halting the table at the very mention of the horse's evil name.

Mr. Barnewall hesitated, and looked about the dining-room, some of the wind drooping from his sails. “By Jove,” he muttered, “I hadn't thought to buy a horse with such an ill-made handle. Might bring all the wrath of God upon the house.”

“He intends to race him,” Mrs. Barnewall said briskly in the continued quiet. “You know, Sidmouth, that Mathew is a formidable owner of a string of nags. He is quite the prop of the Jockey Club at home — to the detriment of our funds. He has excessive plans for Kingsland, does he ever come into his inheritance — and does he fail to squander it before he may truly lay his claim.”

“I gather from your lady's words, Barnewall, that she fears your liberality, and should rather I kept my horse in Lyme, than sold him to you; and so much for her celebrated charm. We may consider the matter as settled.”

“Now, now,” Mathew Barnewall exclaimed, his scowl for his wife giving way to a fatuous smile, “don't force me to rob your stables!”

“If you did, my dear sir, it should avail you nothing,” Mr. Crawford broke in, “for Sidmouth so prizes his horseflesh, he has undertaken to mark them in a singular manner. You should not get far without discovery.”

“Do you brand them, then?” Mrs. Barnewall enquired, her nose wrinkling with repugnance.

“Never,” Sidmouth replied.

“He has his initials cut into their shoes!” Mr. Crawford declared, with a delighted slap upon his mahogany table. “No thief could fail to leave a telling trail behind him.”

“Shoes?” my mother enquired, only now, it seemed, emerging from the fog of suspense into which Miss Crawford's words regarding my sister's fate had thrown her. “But cannot one merely exchange one shoe for another?”

I knew her immediately to have mistaken the master's shoe for his horse's, and to have stumbled upon a point all unawares; for Mr. Crawford seized at her apparent perspicacity with the greatest delight. Assuredly, madam, and a clever ruse it would be — but even did the thief know beforehand of the shoes’ mark, he could do nothing without a blacksmith; and horse and thief should undoubtedly be apprehended while still bent upon the forge. I consider it a capital idea.”