Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

This response so confounded my mother's understanding, as to silence her for the moment; and the conversation turned to other things.

MY MASTERY OF CURIOSITY WAS REWARDED AS SUCH MASTERY ONLY rarely is — with Mr. Sidmouth's broaching the subject of his cousin in a very little while. The ladies had retired to the drawing-room, and at the gentlemen's following soon thereafter, bearing the scents of tobacco and excellent port about their persons, Mr. Sidmouth joined me before Captain Fielding should have the chance. Miss Armstrong had seated herself at the pianoforte, and Mademoiselle LeFevre stood at her side, her voice swelling with Italian airs; so captivatingly beautiful, and so clearly freed of all the evening's anxiety, as to make the heart sing with her.

“Your cousin is very lovely, Mr. Sidmouth,” I ventured, with a glance at his brooding face.

He was engaged in studying Seraphine intently, and seemed almost not to have heard me. After an instant, his dark eyes turned back to mine, and he said abruptly, “I would ask of you a favour, Miss Austen. My cousin is too much alone. You will have guessed that she labours under the effect of some sad business; discretion, and a care for her delicacy, forbid me from saying more. I would ask only that you consider her gende nature, her evident goodness — the fragility of her understanding—” At this he halted, for the first time in our acquaintance, completely tongue-tied.

“I do not pretend to comprehend your cousin's place in your household,” I began slowly, “nor her entire relationship to yourself. But if I take your meaning correctly, you wish me to visit Mademoiselle LeFevre — to undertake a certain … intimacy.”

Sidmouth had flushed at my initial words, and appeared in an agony of indecision as to his response; but now he bowed his head and touched a hand to his brow. “I cannot convince you of what you have no reason to believe,” he said quietly. “Rumour and calumny are accepted of themselves, and a simpler goodness hardly to be credited. I know to whom I owe your hesitancy. But for Seraphine's sake I will say nothing of this here; I will merely trust in your goodness. You cannot turn away from a soul in suffering — your every aspect declares you to be a woman of sympathy and such warmth as is rarely met with.”

Seraphine's liquid voice rose in the final tremulous notes of an aria — the cry, no doubt, of a woman betrayed and dying, as with all such songs — and fell away into silence. There was a moment's indrawn breath, a hesitation, and then a sudden patter of applauding hands.

“I shall call upon your cousin as soon as ever I may, Mr. Sidmouth,” I said; and received a fervent look of gratitude in return.

I HAD OCCASION TO CONSIDER ALL THAT PASSED SATURDAY E'EN, while sitting this morning with my mother in the little breakfast parlour of Wings cottage — which I must confess is decidedly shabby, when exposed to the strong sunlight of morning.

“I still cannot comprehend, my dear, why Mr. Sidmouth should take his shoes to the blacksmith,” my mother was saying to the Reverend Austen, whose head would droop over his volume of Fordyce's Sermons —when Jenny, our housemaid, threw open the door. Her fresh young face bore a look of alarm, and she twisted her apron in anxious hands.

“Miss Crawford, madam, and Miss Armstrong,” she said, bobbing swiftly as the black-clad form of Augusta Crawford swept by her.

My mother stood up abruptly, her serviette dropping to the floor, while my father snorted to wakefulness and struggled to his feet A chorus of salutation all around, which afforded me just enough time to notice the marks of weeping upon Lucy Armstrong's face; and then the ladies seated themselves without further ado.

“We do not come to you this morning merely for the pleasure of a social call,” Miss Crawford began briskly, her hands gripping the reticule she propped upon her black-gowned knees; “no, I fear we are come with the saddest of tidings and the blackest of news.”

At this, Lucy Armstrong could not stifle a sob; and drawing forth her handkerchief, buried her reddened cheeks in the sodden scrap of linen.

“Whatever can be the matter?” I cried. “Surely Mr. Crawford remains in excellent health?”

“Oh, Cholmondeley is as hearty as ever,” Miss Crawford replied, with sharp impatience. “It is not he “who was overturned on the road last night.”

“Overturned!” my mother cried, her hand going to her heart; that she thought of Cassandra, and feared Miss Crawford's intelligence, I instantly discerned, and moved to offer her the assistance of my arm. But she struggled free of me and crossed with unsteady gait to Miss Crawford's chair. “Pray do not keep us in suspense!”

“Overturned, indeed,” Miss Crawford said, with gruesome satisfaction; “and shot into the bargain.”

“I think, Aunt, that the proper term is ‘unhorsed.’”

Miss Armstrong interjected; but her faltering voice was heard only by myself.

“Shot!” my father ejaculated, removing his reading glasses.

“Through the heart.” Miss Crawford looked to the shaken Lucy, her aspect all disapprobation.

“Of whom can you be speaking, Miss Crawford?” I enquired, with something less than my usual graciousness— for the picture of misery that was Lucy Armstrong suggested that it could be but one person. Surely only some injury to Mr. Sidmouth could have occasioned so much distress.

“Oh, Miss Austen!” Lucy cried, her reddened eyes emerging from her kerchief. “It is so very horrible! Captain Fielding is dead — and I have nothing now to live for!”

17 September 1804, cont.

WHEN LUCY ARMSTRONG HAD BEEN MADE CALM, AND SENT UPSTAIRS to rest upon my bed with a cool compress on her eyes, we were able to satisfy our outraged curiosity in plying Miss Crawford with questions. It required but a few to determine the nature of the evil so recently befallen Captain Fielding; and not above four sentences sufficed for her relation of what little was known of his untimely end.

The Darby household was only just preparing to depart for town and some shopping this morning, when the sudden arrival of a boy on a lathered horse claimed their attention. A man had been found upon the Charmouth road not far from the house, it seemed, quite dead; the marks of hoofprints round about showed him to have been thrown from his horse, and the animal fled. It but remained for Mr. Crawford to send the ladies on to Lyme in the coach, and for himself to accompany the boy to the scene of the disaster, and discover there the person of Captain Fielding, to the routing of the unfortunate Mr. Crawford's senses. The surgeon Mr. Carpenter, who served as Lyme's coroner, his assistant Dagliesh, and a local justice by the name of Mr. Dobbin, were immediately summoned; the mortal wound to Captain Fielding's heart duly noted; and the conclusion reached that highwaymen had precipitated the gentleman's misadventure, since his purse was observed to be missing.

“And so we returned from Lyme to such a tumult!” Miss Crawford exclaimed. “My poor niece received the news with a pathetic sensibility; her mother fainted dead away; and my brother is even now shut up in his library with a bottle of claret for company. And since we knew you to be likely to discover the Captain's death before very long,” she added, “we deemed it best to inform you as soon as possible, so that you might not hear it first upon the street, and receive a decided shock.”

A shock it should have been; and I would be cold-hearted, indeed, not to feel towards Miss Crawford some depth of gratitude for her present consideration, did I not believe her to find a despicable enjoyment in the spreading of her intelligence. I thrust such uncharitable thoughts from my mind, however, and saw in memory once more the weathered face of Captain Percival Fielding; his bright blue eyes, that could hold such warmth, or shine with steely command; his grace and forbearance in the face of a debilitating injury; his determination to prevail over Lyme's Gentlemen of the Night. Too young for such a miserable end, and taken too soon from the world; better, perhaps, that he had died while gallantly fighting the French off Malta, a few years past, than to have offered his life in defence of his purse. I felt all the tender emotion proper in the face of such a tragedy; but discovered, to my quiet relief, that I felt nothing more. My heart had been warmed by his gallantry, but my deeper emotions had remained relatively untouched.