Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (2 page)

Now, as I stood in the dusky heat of a Hampshire July, lark song rising about me, I felt the first faint stirrings of life. Feeble, yes—and a hairsbreadth from guttering out; but stirrings all the same. I unknotted my bonnet strings and bared my head to the sun. Lord Harold’s gaze—that earnest, steadfast look—wavered before my mind’s eye; I blinked it away.
Perhaps here,
I thought, as I opened the door of the cottage and stepped inside its whitewashed walls,
perhaps here I might begin again.

Chapter 2

An Indifferent Welcome

4 July 1809, cont.
~

I
T WAS AIRLESS AND DIM INSIDE THE COTTAGE, AS THOUGH
the windows had been too long shut up, and I recollected that although the workmen had been busy about the house some weeks, Mrs. Seward had quitted the place full four months previous. I hesitated in the entry hall, my gaze taking in the uneven floorboards, and was reminded inevitably of my childhood home at Steventon Parsonage, where my brother James now lived. Just so had the spare rooms been whitewashed, the low ceilings crossed with beams.

The passageway divided on the right hand at the dining parlour and on the left at the sitting room. In the latter, Edward had caused the broad front window—so necessary to a publican’s commerce, but injurious to our privacy—to be bricked up, and had ordered a bow thrown out overlooking the garden. This was all the main floor of the house for domestic use; an ell at the rear housed the kitchen; and a staircase from the entry led upwards to six bedchambers, none of them large. My mother was to have one, Martha Lloyd another, and I must share a third with Cassandra in a few days’ time when Edward escorted her from Kent in his carriage. A fourth was set aside for Edward’s use, should he care to visit—Chawton Great House, my brother’s Tudor pile at the opposite end of the village, being let at present to a gentleman by the name of Middleton.

One glimpse of these modest arrangements, however, and I suspected that Edward should repair for comfort to the George Inn at Alton, where my mother and I had lately been staying. Alton is the principal market town in this part of Hampshire, and Edward the absentee owner of the George; Mr. Barlow, his publican, has been our especial servant in all the bustle of this removal. It was Barlow’s man, Joseph, who drove us to Chawton today in the George’s pony trap, and we have tarried under Mr. Barlow’s roof on several occasions during the past twelvemonth—probably, in the poor man’s estimation, frequently outstaying our welcome.

The remaining bedchambers were already apportioned to those as yet unknown servants we intended to employ: a maid, a cook, and a man to do the heavy labour about the place. Martha and I have settled it that the manservant—who naturally shall be named William or John—is to marry the cook and seduce the maidservant, thus providing endless matter for conversation among ourselves.

I moved from dining parlour to sitting room and back again, drawing off my bonnet as I did so. Most of our furnishings from Castle Square had long since arrived by dray from the south, and been placed at random by the carter in various rooms. With a good airing and brisk activity we might contrive to make the cottage feel a home. From the side window I could just glimpse Chawton Pond, as I believed it was called: a shallow but broad expanse of muddy water across the lane, useful for the watering of cattle and the amusement of small boys given to skipping stones. From the rear I might observe a parade of riches: the well, with the pump newly-primed; the bake house that Martha will love to command with her cherished receipts; a granary just large enough to house a donkey and cart; and a henhouse. It is hardly the abode of people of Fashion, but for a party of women long since on the shelf, should do well enough.

We had each of us carried modest hopes to this place: Cassandra wished to procure a dog and raise some poultry; my mother yearned to grow vegetables again, while I was determined to purchase a pianoforte, the best that could be got for thirty guineas. I could scarcely believe that such a sum was now in my possession, or that I contemplated squandering it entirely for my own use.

Edward pressed the coins into my hand four nights ago as I prepared to quit Godmersham. When I protested that he had already done far too much, he curled my fingers over the leather pouch.

“It is nothing,” he told me firmly, “or rather—it is a something in remembrance of one whose ears are forever stopped with earth. You know how much Lizzy admired your playing, Jane. It distressed her exceedingly that you were denied an instrument on which to practise. Pray play a song for her—now and again. . . .”

I could say little as he turned away, my throat constricted by tears; he has buried the carefree gentleman of Fashion, and we shall not see that ghost again.

A rough young voice disturbed my reverie.

“Are you the Squire’s lady?”

I peered through the open doorway into the sunlit afternoon and espied a boy, of perhaps thirteen years, standing at the pony’s head. He was sharp-eyed, brown as a guinea hen, and wiry of limb. Tho’ his nankeen trousers were worn, they had been neatly patched. I judged him to hail from the yeoman class of Edward’s tenants.

“I am Miss Austen,” I supplied, “and the Squire is my brother. My mother and I are come to take up residence in this house. What is your name, young sir?”

“Toby Baigent,” he returned promptly, “from Symond’s Farm.” One careless hand gestured somewhere west, beyond my ken; I had not yet acquired the necessary knowledge of Chawton village to be able to reply with authority. “We heard you were expected, from Dyer’s folk. They’ve been working hard days a fortnight or more, now.”

These words I interpreted as a reference to Mr. John Dyer, of Ivy House in Alton, a builder whose men were responsible for the blocked window and new privy so admired by my mother. “And we are very grateful for their labour,” I said.

Toby Baigent spat indecorously in the dust. “Labour wasted, so my pa says. You’ll be leaving soon enough.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Reckon you’ll be cursed, in a house not rightfully your own.”

“That’s enough, young Baigent,” said Joseph, our driver, with a lowering expression on his brow. “Be off with ye, before I find a better use for my whip, and tan your hide.”

The boy smoothed the pony’s nose, his eyes fixed on the mane between the beast’s ears, then lounged his way down the street without a word.

“Don’t you pay no heed to that young chuff,” Joseph advised me, his gaze following the boy’s thin form as he ambled towards his home, big with news. “He’s got more mouth than mind, as they say.”

“What did he mean when he said this house was not rightfully ours?”

“Speaking where he ought not, mum,” the driver replied; but he did not meet my gaze as he reached for my mother’s heavy trunk, and hoisted it with a grunt to his back. “Every folk knows as how the houses hereabouts, aye, and much of the land, too, belong to Mr. Austen. Where would you see the trunk stowed, then?”

“The bedchamber at the head of the stairs.” I stepped aside to allow him passage. “The boy suggested we should be
cursed.
Decidedly strong language, Joseph. Particularly for a child of his years.”

“P’raps he’s had it from the father.”

“Is Farmer Baigent disposed to contest our right to the cottage?”

The man persisted in studying his boots. “There’s been a bit o’ feeling, like, about Widow Seward.”

“—who quitted her home to make way for us. But surely she was accommodated elsewhere in the village?”

“Mrs. Seward’s gone to live with her daughter, Mrs. Baverstock, in Alton.” Another vague gesture, this time to the east. “It were a sad day when Mr. Seward died, mum. This house to be given up, and the tenancy of Pound Farm—which the Sewards’ve held for donkey’s years—made over to that new man, Mr. Wickham. The Baigents in particular don’t hold with Mr. Wickham, mum. They’d thought to lease Pound Farm themselves. Adjoins their property, like, at Symond’s Farm.”

“I see. But my brother settled his affairs in favour of Mr. Wickham, no doubt for excellent reasons of his own. And is the animosity towards ourselves quite general throughout the village?”

“I’m an Alton man,” Joseph returned with some asperity, “and can’t speak for those as live in Chawton. I did ought to be getting back to Mr. Barlow, if you take my meaning, once these bits of baggage are stowed.”

I took his meaning; he did not wish to stand gossiping in the street with a relative stranger, under the scrutiny of his intimates and neighbours. It would require more than a protracted stay at the George to command Joseph’s loyalty.

“The second trunk, and the two brown bandboxes belonging to myself, are to be placed in the room down the hallway on the left.”

“Very good, mum.” He bent slightly under the strain of my mother’s things, and made his strenuous way into the house.

I
CONFESS
I
DID NOT WASTE A GREAT DEAL OF TIME IN
revolving the grievances of the local folk during the ensuing hour, as I dusted china and aired linens. There were beds to be made up, foodstuffs to be stored, the Pembroke table to be positioned in a number of places, none of which pleased my mother; and our small treasure of books to be unpacked and placed upon the shelf. I may perhaps have considered with exasperation that security in his own position, in the essential rightness of his ideas, that had preserved my brother’s complacency on the subject of his tenants, and prevented him from imparting a warning as to the sort of reception we might expect here; but I thought it very likely Neddie had been too distracted by private concerns—by the well of grief into which he continually dipped—to spare any thought for the villagers. Not arrogance, but absence of mind, was surely accountable for my brother’s lapse.

“Well, Jane,” said my mother as she entered the front passage, “here is our neighbour, Mr. Prowting, come to offer his services; but I have assured him there is not the slightest need to put himself out—Jane will have everything in hand, I told him, being a clever girl and decidedly capable when she sets her mind to it, though not so efficient in the domestic line as her elder sister, being no hand at all in the stillroom. Make your courtesy to Mr. Prowting, my dear. My younger daughter—Miss Jane Austen.”

Mr. Prowting was a man of some means—one of Chawton’s dignitaries, in the commission of the peace of the county as well as its Deputy Lieutenant.
¹
He was a grey-haired, portly, and rather carelessly-dressed gentleman of middle age, beaming all his benevolence.

I dropped a curtsey and said, “I have heard much of you, Mr. Prowting, from my brother Mr. Austen. You are our nearest neighbour, I collect.”

“Indeed, indeed—our home is but a stone’s toss from your doorstep, my dear Miss Austen, and easily accessible by a stile in the adjoining meadow.”

I could not have avoided a glimpse of Prowtings, as the house was called, had I wished it; the place was a fine, modern building of substantial size on the same side of the Gosport road as our own, but happier in its situation, being set back a good distance from the carriage-way.
Their
beds should not be shaken in the dead of night by the passage of the London coach-and-six, as I imagined our own should be.

“Mrs. Prowting and my daughters, Catherine-Ann and Ann-Mary, would, I am sure, have joined me in this brief visit of welcome,” he said, “but that the latter is practising upon the pianoforte, and the former is lying down with the head-ache. The heat of July, you know, is quite a trial to young ladies prone to the head-ache.”

“So I understand. Tho’ increasing age, I might add, is no preservative against the malady.” I was too well acquainted with my mother’s imagined sufferings whenever heat, or cold, or too much of both, should disoblige her expectations and send her reeling to her bed.

“Mrs. Prowting wished me to convey her compliments,” he said with a bow, “and desires me to press you most earnestly to join us for dinner this evening at Prowtings. You need not make yourselves anxious on the subject of dress; we are all easy in Chawton, Mrs. Austen, with no unbecoming formality.”

“Thank you most kindly,” my mother replied. “We should be very happy to accept your invitation.”

I was about to add my thanks to hers when the sound of an equipage drawing up in the street outside our door claimed all our notice. Mr. Prowting turned, as though in expectation of espying a neighbour come upon a similar errand of civility; but I understood instantly from his expression that the person now alighting from the chaise-and-four was a stranger even to him. A spare, stooped, ancient man, dressed all in black and grim of expression, hobbled forward as though a martyr to dyspepsia. The newcomer wore a tricorn hat and supported his infirmities with a beautifully-carved walking-stick of ebony and gold, which stabbed at the pavings of our walkway with such vehemence that I almost expected sparks to fly from its tip.

He was followed by two lackeys in a livery of primrose and black, bearing between them a massive wooden chest bound with silver hasps. The chest’s aspect was arresting: it was carved and painted with curious figures that were hardly native to England. It was clear that the party’s object was our cottage, but what their purpose might be in seeking it, I had not the least idea.

“Good day to you, sir,” Mr. Prowting said in the peremptory tone of one who has served as magistrate.

The gentleman in the tricorn lifted up his gaze, a withering look of contempt on his countenance. He did not deign to return Mr. Prowting’s salutation, nor did he waste another instant in surveying his figure. He merely turned his eyes upon my mother and myself, came to a halt at our doorstep, and lifted his hat with extreme care from the exquisitely-powdered wig that adorned his head.