Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Man of the Cloth

Cassandra is stirring now, and calls my name; I set aside my pen and journal and reach for her hand. A touch alone suffices; we two are so familiar to each other, from the happy intimacy of our minds and hearts, that at the pressure of my fingertips upon her brow, her troubled mind relaxes. A moment more, and she slumbers deep, the pain of injury forgotten. I regain my seat, and take up my pen and modest book — formed, according to my habit, from a sheaf of paper sewn quite through and trimmed to manageable size. A stout book, for the stoutest of thoughts; and of considerable comfort, in serving as confidante when no living mind may answer.

All around us the eaves of the old farmhouse creak with the violence of the wind, but the intimates of High Down Grange are lost in storm-filled slumber — no sound emanates from the shuttered rooms, so that I might be the last soul alive, left here at the edge of the world. Beyond is darkness, and cliffs, and the depthless sea; England is to my back as 1 sit by Cassandra's bed. And so I cross the room to peer out at the unknown, stretching before me like all the days I have yet to live; and can discern nothing beyond my own wavering reflection in the window's glass. A shiver — of foreboding, perhaps — at the hidden landscape, and I would turn away to find comfort in candlelight. But a sudden flare in the darkness below seizes my gaze; I peer more closely, my eyes narrowing, and discern the bob of a lanthorn. A lanthorn just come up over the cliffs edge in the distance, and toiling even now towards the Grange itself. A curiously-shaped lanthorn, perhaps, with a protuberant spout, of a utility unknown to me? Clutched in an angel's ethereal hand, while the other flutters at the nape of a flowing red cloak?

5 September 1804

Lyme

AND SO WE ARE AT LAST COME TO LYME, AND TO OUR VERY OWN Wings cottage — a smallish affair of a house tucked into a hillside, with two ground floors-one in its proper place, and the other at the top of the house containing the bedrooms and a back door opening onto a greensward behind. The house fronts upon a busy block of Broad Street, a location not entirely as our imaginings had made it; for where we had looked to gaze upon the sea, and throw open our casements to its gentle roar, we are instead meant to be happy with a partial view of the Cobb, and that only from the garden at the house's top. But the sitting-room is pretty; and the bustle of traffic at the foot of town, and the eternal cries of muffin men and milk carters climbing its precipitously steep main road, little more than we should have heard at home. More to the point, we are free at last of High Down Grange.

We were obliged to presume upon Geoffrey Sidmouth's taciturn hospitality for the sum of two nights and a day — my dear sister Cassandra's condition permitting of no removal to Lyme so early as yesterday morning. We saw little enough of the gentleman himself during our tedious sojourn, however — he being occupied with the concerns of his estate, and much out of doors in their pursuit. It was to Mary I applied for the necessities of the sickroom; and she provided them with alacrity and good sense. Of Seraphine I neither saw nor heard a word — in any language — though I found myself listening betimes for the whirling passage of a long, full cloak.

It was not until yesterday's dinner hour, in fact, that my own care for Cassandra allowed me to descend the stairs; and I was then to discover that the Austens partook of the meal alone, the master of High Down being yet abroad, and no one able to say when he should return. In a similar state of independence we claimed the drawing-room that evening, and finally retired; and it was well after midnight that a busde about the gates, and all the noise of a courtyard arrival, bespoke the end of Sidmouth's day.

We could not but be grateful this morning, however, in learning from the postboy Hibbs that some part of the master's activity was motivated by a concern for our affairs. A team and dray he had rousted, in the early hours, for the removal of the tree from the Lyme road; and our coach ordered repaired by a blacksmith fetched from town for that purpose. All this, before departing on some business of his own, of which we learned nothing.

We were to see him once more, however, as we assisted Cassandra somewhat shakily into the coach, and settled ourselves with bated breath in a conveyance we had little reason to trust. My mother was clutching at a handkerchief, in readiness for tears should the carriage disintegrate before her very eyes; and my father, who had seated himself beside Cassandra, was engaged in patting her hand in a comforting, if absent-minded, fashion; when I was startled by a voice at my elbow.

“Farewell, Miss Jane Austen of Bath, though 1 believe we shall meet again,” Mr. Sidmouth said. “Indeed, I shall be sustained by the hope of such a meeting's being not too long delayed. Your health, Miss Austen,” he continued, peering in the carriage window at my sister, who nodded faintly; “and to you both, sir and madam. Godspeed to Lyme.”

“Less of speed, and more of care, I truly hope,” my mother replied tardy, with an eye towards the carriage front and the unseen Hibbs.

The master of High Down smiled faintly. “The fellow knows it is as much as his life is worth, to come to ruin again. I have told him so — and what I say, he believes.”

With a nod, and a slap to the coach's side, we were sent off; and more than one of us breathed a sigh of relief, I am sure. There is something hard and sharp about Geoffrey Sidmouth, that commands attention, and quickens the pulse, however much he would soften it with the air of a gentleman. He is a man much accustomed to being obeyed, I suspect; and to enjoying the power of making those around him do as he likes. A difficult manner to endure for too many days together, however bewitching in moments.

THE ROOMS WE NOW POSSESS ARE SUCH AS ONE TAKES WITH GOOD grace for the space of a few weeks, though they should never do for a twelvemonth. Dressed in foxed paper peeling as a consequence of salt air, the house is meant to be enjoyed as briefly as possible — the majority of one's day in a seaside town being spent out of doors, in pursuit of schemes of pleasure. Cassandra's delicate state, however, will confine her yet a few days to her room; or so we are assured by the surgeon's assistant, one William Dagliesh. He is but lately in the employ of Lyme's venerable surgeon and coroner, Mr. Carpenter, and sees to many of that gentleman's patients — Mr. Carpenter having little time to spare, we are told, from his chief passion — the excavation of fossils.

He appeared on our doorstep not an hour after our arrival — sent, so he informed us, at the direction of Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth, who appears to be one of his particular friends. Mr. Dagliesh is a young man of perhaps thirty, well-made and possessed of a cheerful countenance easily read — too easily, perhaps; for at the sight of Cassandra, reclining in all the interesting attitude of one lately blessed with suffering, her pallor heightening the beauty of her features and her languorous spirits suggesting a certain mystery about her person, the surgeon's professional solicitude became marked by something verging on the mortifying. He flushed scarlet, and lost his tongue; and could so imperfectly meet Cassandra's gaze, as he held her wrist to feel her pulse, or touched her forehead to judge of her fever, that his performance was painful to contemplate. On several instances of his speaking low, we were forced to request that he repeat his words; and this further embarrassment of circumstance completely unmanned him. Though I had seen him to possess a voluble and easy manner at his arrival, it was entirely unequal to the proximity of so much loveliness and distress, and I doubted that we should make any sense of the good surgeon's diagnosis, when once it did come. To aid him in regaining his composure, therefore, I determined to distract his sensibilities; and so embarked upon a topic of some idle interest to myself.