Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor

The words soon became intelligible.

“You are not to mention the name of Rosie Ketch,” one gentleman cried. “You have debauched her in speech often enough.”

“That is laughable, sir; coming from you.”

“You shall not support me in this?”

“Never; sir.”

“Then, my lord, I cannot be responsible for the consequences. You have driven me to my utmost extremity, and God forgive me! I know how it is that I must act.”

The voices were grown louder, as though one or both of the parties had approached the door; I looked about me for a place of safety, and could find none but the heavy draperies cloaking the tall windows. I had only tucked myself behind them, doing violence to my hair and gown, when the door was thrust open and a gentleman burst from the room, the fury of his words propelling him with like energy from the Earl's presence.

I stole a look around the curtain edge, certain to see Lord Harold — and found myself confronted, to my astonishment, with George Hearst, the Lieutenant's older brother. What could it mean? The gloomy ecclesiastic, revealed as a man of hot temper?

Mr. Hearst was not a moment gone when the Earl himself appeared in the hall, his face reddened as with apoplexy. I remembered then Isobel's care for her husband's health, and smiled. It was not an excess of claret that plagued the Earl, but a surfeit of family; and of this, no one was likely to cure him.

The Earl made for the ballroom, and after an instant's pause to right my feather and settle the clumps of curls about my cheeks, I followed my host. I was in time to see him raise a glass before the assembly to his newly-won bride, drink it to the dregs, and double over in a fit of acute dyspepsia. Protesting and declaring himself to be very well, our host was borne from the room on the broad backs of two footmen, an anxious Isobel in his wake; and so the revels ended.

I WAS JUST NOW RETURNED TO THE PRESENT BY ISOBEL'S appearance at my door.

“Jane,” she said, with great steadiness, “the crisis is passed.”

“God be thanked!” I cried, and threw down my pen.

“Is He, indeed?” She gave me a strange look. “You mistake my meaning. The crisis is passed, my dear friend, and the Earl is dead.”

I went to her in an instant, my countenance conveying all my sorrow, and bent her head upon my breast. But Isobel had no tears; her beautiful sherry-coloured eyes were blank and unseeing, her form as rigid as the Earl lying cold within her marriage bed. I released her without a word, feeling as though my heart should break, and watched her tortured progress down the corridor.

At my window now, I pull back the heavy draperies smelling of must, and gaze out upon a desolate dawn. No sun shall rise today for human eyes to see; the world entire is wrapped round in whirling white, an impenetrable cloud of cold and ice that chills the heart as it freezes the ground. Scargrave's vast parkland is adrift, its black trees etched like wraiths against the grey sky of morning. I think of Frederick, Earl of Scargrave — of his soul gone forth too soon from earthly happiness, and on such a frigid day — and I am consumed with sorrow for all of mortal men. What are last night's revels, its frivolities and petty triumphs, against the magnitude of the grave? I let fall the draperies, blocking out the snow, and shiver in my nightdress.

I came into Hertfordshire seeking diversion; and what I have found is Death, in more vivid and horrible a form than I had yet been taught to expect. I may take it as my reward for cowardice — for so such a flight from one's worst nature is always revealed — to witness the agonising end of the Earl of Scargrave, and be utterly powerless to reverse it.

14 December 1802

THE LIVING EVER FEEL UNEASE, WHEN THE DEAD ARE IN residence.

I had determined to leave for Bath the morning after the Earl's death, believing such a passing to be a family burden; but Isobel would have me stay, and so here at Scargrave I remain, tip-toeing along its labyrinth of corridors and hoping to draw as little notice as possible. Upon further acquaintance, the Manor is revealed as an incongenial house, its furnishings of a vanished generation and its air one of quiet decrepitude. I have trod the floors of endless rooms, unmarked by their master's happy spirits or decided taste; it is an abode in which Lord Scargrave can have spent but little time, and now departs forever.

The Earl is to be buried tomorrow. These two days past, he has lain in state in the hall, a vast and draughty place peopled by his ancestors, as though all the dead of Scargrave have assembled for this dreary wake. Dark faces in oil look down upon Frederick's bier with the smiles of Charles's time, or the dour scowls of Cromwell's; while suits of armour from an epoch still more distant huddle in the corners, awaiting their moment to joust with Death. The hall lies in the very centre of the great house, and all the principal corridors debouch or spring from it, making any attempt to navigate the lower floor a necessarily melancholy event. Masses of wax candles in branching silver holders surround the Earl's still form, and gold sovereigns are laid upon his eyes; no tallow tapers or pennies for a peer.

In the flickering glow, Lord Scargrave's face appears as ravaged as it did in the dim light of his death chamber; not the manner in which such a man would wish to be remembered. Were it not for the superstitions of the local folk, who come to pay their respects in a silent, shuffling file, Isobel should have ordered the casket closed; but the Earl of Scargrave must be seen to be truly dead by all the surrounding country before his heir may take up his title. And so convention is served, and delicacy sacrificed upon its altar.

I confess to a shiver or two myself in passing through the hall; I would forget this anguished look, still stamped in death upon the tortured face, as soon as ever I may. Perhaps then the thoughts that spring to my mind too vividly will be banished as well. The assurances of Dr. Philip Pettigrew, the London physician, have done little to quiet them. The good doctor claims to have seen a like disturbance in the bowels before, and found in its violence no sign of a malevolent hand; he imputes it to the quantity of wine the Earl had consumed that evening, along with a quantity of beef, a recipe I should rather think conducive to apoplexy than dyspepsia [10] For twentieth-century readers, some explanation may prove useful. Apoplexy was the common nineteenth-century term for stroke, while dyspepsia signified indigestion. — Editor's note. .

I cannot forget that Lord Scargrave's fatal sickness, as I have written before, bore the signs of an extreme purgative, as though the vomiting were induced by some force stronger than claret. But Isobel appears satisfied, if such a word may describe her quiet dejection; and the men of the Scargrave household are united without question in their mourning. And so my country knowledge must give way to London's greater experience.

Isobel keeps to her room, as is natural; Fitzroy Payne to the library, where he is engaged with his London solicitors in reviewing a quantity of papers pertaining to the late Earl's estate. Lord Harold Trowbridge, whom propriety should have instructed to depart, divides his time between Lord Scargrave [11] At the death of Frederick, Earl of Scargrave, Fitzroy Payne became the eighth Earl in his stead. As such, Austen now addresses him as Lord Scargrave, rather than Lord Payne, as he was when merely a viscount. — Editor's note. and the billiard room. The Hearst brothers, though dining at the Manor each afternoon, have chosen to mourn in private at their cottage in the Park; I observed George Hearst pacing a snowy lane, hands behind his back and features lost in contemplation of his personal abyss, while the Lieutenant appears to devote his hours to schooling a particularly troublesome hunter over the same series of hedges.