Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (3 page)

“Have I the honour of addressing the Austen household?”

“You do, sir,” said my mother doubtfully. “I am Mrs. George Austen.”

“My compliments, ma’am,” he replied, “but I need not disturb you further. It is Miss Jane Austen I seek. Is she at leisure to receive me?”

Chapter 3

A Contested Provision

4 July 1809, cont.
~

“I
AM
M
ISS
A
USTEN,
”
I
ANSWERED, IN SOME BEWILDERMENT.

“Bartholomew Chizzlewit, of Lincoln’s Inn, at your service, ma’am.”
¹
The elderly gentleman bowed low. “I must beg the indulgence of perhaps half an hour of your time, on a pressing matter of business that has already been delayed some months.”

“A matter of business, sir?” I repeated. I could claim no business in the world, save the arrangement of domestic affairs too inconsequential to be of concern to such a man.

“Indeed. A matter of so delicate a nature, ma’am, that I must demand complete and uninterrupted privacy”—at this, his gaze shifted narrowly to my mother’s countenance—“for the discharging of my trust.”

An instant of silence followed this declaration, as my mother attempted to make sense of it and I considered the disorder of unpacking that was everywhere evident within the cottage. How was I to even attempt a
tête-à-tête
?

“I am putting up at the Swan in Alton,” the attorney added firmly, consulting a pocket watch, “and have ordered my dinner for precisely six o’clock. If you find you are unable to accommodate me today, Miss Austen, I must beg you to wait upon me in Alton tomorrow morning, well in advance of my intended departure for London, which I anticipate occurring at ten o’clock. I may add that I am unaccustomed to brooking delay.”

“Extraordinary behaviour!” Mr. Prowting exclaimed. “You can have not the slightest pretension to these ladies’ consideration, sirrah, much less the freedom to demand the terms of your admittance to their household.”

“Sir,” Chizzlewit declared in a voice rich with contempt, “I neither know nor care whom you might be, but I must emphatically state that a man of your obviously rustic experience and modest station can claim no influence with the representative of the noble and most puissant house of His Grace the Duke of Wilborough, whose forebears and heirs I have had the honour to serve as solicitor these sixty years and more.”

“Wilborough?”
my mother cried in startled accents. “Good Lord, Jane—has the Rogue left you something after all? I should not have believed it possible! That a gentleman—even one of Lord Harold’s unsavoury reputation—should offer the insult of monetary consideration to one whose reputation he has already sullied beyond repair—”

“Mamma,” I said firmly, “I believe I should receive Mr. Chizzlewit and learn the burden of his news. I shall require the use of the dining parlour for an interval. You might walk in the direction of the Great House before dinner—and observe whether the tenant, Mr. Middleton, is entirely worthy of my brother’s trust.”

“But my dear Miss Austen—” Mr. Prowting protested. “A young lady of your sensibility—”

“I am nearly four-and-thirty years of age, good sir, and feel not the slightest anxiety at receiving so respectable a person as Mr. Chizzlewit. Would you be very good—and attend my mother on her walk?”

I
F THE SERVANT OF THE NOBLE AND MOST PUISSANT HOUSE
of Wilborough was dismayed by the surroundings in which he presently found himself, he did not betray his discomfiture. I seated myself on one of my mother’s straight-backed chairs and waited while Mr. Chizzlewit disposed himself in another. With a wordless gesture of his right hand, he had ordered his minions to follow him; they set the curiously-carved chest on the dining-parlour floor and then retreated impassively to await their master’s pleasure.

“I have it on the very best authority, Miss Austen, that your understanding is excellent,” he began, “and therefore I shall not sport with your patience. Under the terms of the late Lord Harold Trowbridge’s Last Will and Testament, written by his lordship on the third of November last and witnessed by one Jeb Hawkins, Able Seaman, and one Josiah Fortescue, publican”—Chizzlewit’s distaste for such witnesses was evident—“you have been named as the legatee of a rather extraordinary bequest.”

I felt my countenance change, my visage flush. I knew all the circumstances under which that testament had been written: the third of November, 1808, the very day before Lord Harold’s aborted duel with a young American by the name of James Ord. The former had opened his box of matched pistols—made to his specifications by no less a master than Manton in London—and affected to practise with wafers and playing cards in the courtyard of the Dolphin Inn. His aspect had been brutal that morning, and it had not changed when I pled for the young man’s life. It was Lord Harold’s I secretly hoped to save; but he had ridiculed me—and put one of the pistols into my hands. He would have challenged my shrinking, and sought to determine whether I could stomach his way of life. Had he drawn up his Will before that hour, or much later? Impossible to say.

“What can his lordship have wished to bequeath to me?” I enquired in a subdued tone. “I am wholly unconnected with his family.”

“—As has been vociferously pointed out by His Grace the Duke of Wilborough, Her Grace the Duchess, the Marquis of Kinsfell, and indeed, Desdemona, Countess of Swithin, all of whom seem convinced that Lord Harold’s wits were sadly deranged when he penned the document.” Chizzlewit studied me with a shrewd expression, his ancient lips pursed. “I may frankly assure you, Miss Austen, that his lordship has been frequently drawing up his Will, as necessity and the perils to which he was exposed demanded it. That this document supersedes and governs any previous form is indisputable, as I repeatedly assured His Grace. My commission as solicitor and executor of his lordship’s estate should have been long since carried out, to the satisfaction of all parties, had not the Wilborough family protested this legacy.”

Another lady might have been humbled by a sense of shame and mortification; I confess I felt only indignant. “And what is his lordship’s family, pray, that I should consider their opinion in a matter so sacred as a gentleman’s dying wish?”

“Nothing,” the solicitor returned with surprising mildness. “It is for me, as their man of business, to dispose of disappointment and outrage. I have been doing so, for all the Wilborough clan, for some six decades. I was but eighteen and a clerk in my father’s chambers when the Fifth Duke proposed to marry a chit from the Parisian stage; and the furor over the marriage articles
then
may fairly be described as incredible. Instability and caprice have characterised all the family’s habits, against which Lord Harold’s lamented passing and general way of life may almost be called respectable. It has always been for the firm of Chizzlewit and Pauver to support the family and maintain a proper appearance of decorum before the
ton;
there our influence—and indeed, I may add our interest—ends, Miss Austen.”

“What is the nature of the legacy?” I demanded.

“It is this.” The solicitor drew a piece of paper—ordinary white foolscap, such as might be found in the public writing desk of an inn—from his leather pouch. Was it possible that this was Lord Harold’s Will, penned in his own hand? I felt my heartbeat quicken, from an intense desire to glimpse that beloved script—but the solicitor did not offer the paper to me. Instead, he took a pair of spectacles from his pocket and set them carefully on his nose. With a dry rasp of the throat, he began to read.

“To my dear friend, Miss Jane Austen of Castle Square, Southampton, I leave a lifetime of incident, intrigue, and conspiracy; of adventure and scandal; of wagers lost and won. To wit: all my letters, diaries, account books, and memoranda, that she might order their contents and draw from them a fair account of my life for the edification of posterity. There is no one in whose understanding or safekeeping I place a higher trust; no one whose pen is so well-suited to the instruction of an admiring multitude. With such matter at hand, not even Jane may fail to write. I should like her to entitle the work ‘Memoirs of a Gentleman Rogue.’ Miss Austen is to be the sole beneficiary of all proceeds from the publication and sale of the aforementioned work, to which my surviving family may have no claim. Neither are they to attempt to prevent its publication, upon pain of pursuit by my solicitors in a court of law.”

Mr. Chizzlewit raised his eyes from the paper and studied me drily.

At such a moment, in contemplation of his own death, much might have been said. But it was like Lord Harold to utter not a syllable of assurance or endearment; not for him the maudlin turn upon Death’s stage. He had probably believed this testament would never be read—but in the event it was, had been all business as he wrote: brisk, ironic, cynical to the end.

“Once the protests and objections of the family were laid aside—once all talk of contesting the Will’s provisions in court was at an end—I attempted first to fulfill the bequest in Southampton,” Mr. Chizzlewit said, “but learned that you had already quitted that city. It has been some weeks since I was able to trace you through your brother, Mr. Henry Austen of the London banking concern, and fixed the very hour you would be arriving in Chawton.”

“Good God,” I murmured blankly. “Is this a joke?”

“I fear not.”

I rose from my seat and took a turn about the room, agitation animating my form. “All his papers—! His most intimate accounts—! He must have been quite mad!”

“So His Grace conjectured. The Sixth Duke should rather have burnt the lot, than seen such a legacy pass into the hands of a stranger. Blackmail is the least of the ills Wilborough forebodes.”

“Well may I believe it.” At the thought of the outraged peer and his anxieties, I could not suppress a smile. “How is it that so much as a fragment of Lord Harold’s papers has survived His Grace’s wrath?”

“Lord Harold, being of a peripatetic habit, formerly made the chambers of Chizzlewit and Pauver the repository of his documents,” the solicitor answered primly. “It has been a heavy charge. Our premises have been violated no less than four times in the past decade, as we believe with the specific object of robbing Lord Harold of his papers, requiring us to stoop to an almost criminal ingenuity: to greater measures and vigilance—as well as the addition of a variety of locks. I must warn you, Miss Austen, that there are many who would not hesitate to incur bodily injury in order to secure a glimpse of these papers, or to excise their own names from mention within them. It is a powder keg you observe before you, ma’am, in the form of a Bengal chest. I do not envy you the responsibility of shepherding his lordship’s legacy.”

“May I refuse it?”

Mr. Chizzlewit scrutinised me in silence.

How could I refuse it?

All the mishaps and alliances, the seductions and great passions—the acts of heroism or cowardice that might be contained within that Bengal chest! —Written, without flinching, in Lord Harold’s own hand. It was possible he had even set down something of his sentiments towards
me.

Of a sudden I was tempted to fall on my knees before the iron hasps and force them with my fingernails.

“I am empowered in the present instance only to discharge my duty,” Mr. Chizzlewit rejoined. “What you do with the papers is your own affair. Read them—burn them—despatch them by the London stage to His Grace the Duke of Wilborough.
I
do not care.”

But Lord Harold had cared very much indeed.
With such matter at hand, not even Jane may fail to write.
Lord Harold had been determined to influence my future, however little of it he might hope to share.

The elderly solicitor reached for his walking-stick and, with one hand braced on my mother’s table, thrust himself to his feet. I was struck of a sudden by the devotion that had kept him sedulously in pursuit of his duty, when another man of his advanced years should have been already nodding by the fire.

“Mr. Chizzlewit, you have my deepest gratitude,” I said soberly.

“No thanks are necessary.” He stared at me as though I had uttered an impertinence. “I was honoured by his lordship’s confidence. We are all of us diminished by his foul murder.”

And pressing a heavy lead key into my palm, he wordlessly bowed.

The interview, I perceived, was at an end.

Chapter 4

Of Knights and Villains

4 July 1809, cont.
~

“L
ETTERS!
”
MY MOTHER EXCLAIMED IN HORROR UPON HER
return, unmindful of Mr. Prowting at her elbow. “What kind of a man leaves his paramour
letters
? A cottage perhaps, in a good situation—an annuity of a thousand pounds for the remainder of your days—but a bundle of papers not worth the ink smeared over them? Was the Rogue
mad,
Jane?”

“Never more so,” I replied. “Have you enjoyed your walk, Mamma?”

“Fiddle my walk!” She rounded on Mr. Prowting. “You will have heard, I am sure, of Lord Harold Trowbridge—a Whig and an adventurer, for all he was the son of a duke; not content with having his fingers in every Government pie, and spoiling them all, but he must break my poor girl’s heart! I can only say, Mr. Prowting, that murder is too good for him. He was born to be hanged!”

“So I apprehend, ma’am, from the London papers,” the magistrate said stiffly. “I had not understood that you were on terms of acquaintance with the gentleman— For so we must call him, in deference to his birth. That
at least
remains unimpeachable.”

“And a good deal of money the old Duke must have laid down to make it so,” my mother retorted shrewdly.

I chose to ignore this impertinence, in deference to the heaviness of her disappointment, and turned instead to the magistrate. “His lordship’s Bengal chest is of considerable size, Mr. Prowting. Would you be so kind as to assist me in securing it?”

Mr. Chizzlewit’s warning had not been lost upon me. Lord Harold’s enemies were numerous and determined; death alone should not quiet their fears. I had weighed the merits of henhouse and privy as unlikely objects of a thief’s interest, but settled instead upon the depths of the cottage as being more convenient to hand. Our present abode having once served as an alehouse, it must be assumed that the cellars were commodious and in good repair. A double-doored hatch protruded from nether region to yard, undoubtedly for the purpose of rolling barrels of ale within; but this could be secured from below by a stout bar. I might sit upon Lord Harold’s papers like a hen upon an egg, a priest upon a crypt, alive to every threat of violation.

“I am entirely at your service,” Mr. Prowting said with a bow.

A foetid air rose from the damp and musty space as I descended the narrow stairs, a tallow candle held aloft.

“You will require a manservant,” the magistrate declared. He was puffing from exertion, the wooden casket clutched precariously in his arms. “I shall take upon myself the task of securing a likely fellow from Alton.”

“He must be called William or John, mind. I depend upon that.” A scuttling of feet greeted my flame, and for an instant I hesitated on the bottom step. “Does the history of our former alehouse encompass smuggling, Mr. Prowting?”

“Every alehouse in the country must. Your brandy will not serve, unless it comes by stealth from France. But that is no Gentleman of the Night, Miss Austen. You will also be wanting a dog, I think—a stout little terrier to clear your cupboards for you.”

In the glow of the tallow I observed several dark and stealthy forms stealing from a heap of sacking that filled one corner of the cellar.
Rats.
Decidedly rats. I repressed a shudder and quitted the final step, the fitful play of my candle throwing grotesque shadows about the stone walls.

“Pah—we must open the hatch.” Mr. Prowting set the chest heavily on the sandy floor, and heedless of the dust and cobwebs that must adorn it, reached for the wooden bar that secured the double doors set into the cellar’s ceiling. In an instant they were thrust wide, and light and air streamed down from the pleasant summer afternoon above like a benediction of Providence.

“Ah,”
the magistrate breathed with satisfaction. “That shall soon mend matters. The atmosphere was better suited to a tomb—”

He broke off, mouth sadly agape, eyes fixed on the cellar corner. I turned my head to follow his gaze, and to my shame let out a cry. The bars of sunlight shafting through the open hatch revealed the pile of sacking to be something more: the figure of a man, laid out in all the rigour of death.

“Good God!” Mr. Prowting moved with surprising swiftness to the corpse.

The unfortunate wretch was clothed as a labourer—from village or field—and from the strength of his form, had been in the prime of life. His arms were slack by his sides and one leg sprawled akimbo, as tho’ he had dropped off to sleep of an afternoon; but his countenance was unrecognisable.

The rats, I judged, had been feeding upon it some time.

“Quite dead,” Mr. Prowting murmured.

“But how did he come here?” I exclaimed. “The house was shut up!”

The magistrate’s looks were blank. “Mr. Dyer of Alton will have possessed a key.”

Of course. The builder and his improvements. “Do you know this poor man at all? Is he one of Dyer’s men?”

“With such a visage, who can say? How is his own mother to know him?” Prowting stared down at the ravaged figure. “A dreadful business. And on the very day of your arrival—for the Squire’s sister to make such a discovery—”

“It is a pity Mr. Chizzlewit is already gone,” I observed. “We might otherwise have sent word to the George and summoned a carter. The body should be removed to the inn in expectation of the coroner. I am sure my brother would wish it.”

My neighbour appeared to return to his senses from a great way off. He studied me strangely. “You are not overpowered by the sight, Miss Austen?”

“I am sadly lacking in delicate sensibility, Mr. Prowting. I have lived too long in the world.”

His gaze sharpened and he drew me towards the stairs. “There is likely to be some unpleasantness these few hours. You will wish to retire, I think; and will be very welcome in Mrs. Prowting’s drawing-room.”

“But, sir— How did the unfortunate die?”

“A fit, perhaps.”

“What sort of fit strikes down a healthy man?”

“There is a strong stench of spirits about the corpse,” Mr. Prowting said abruptly. “I think it very likely he died of excessive drink, Miss Austen. And now, if you would be so good—”

I bowed my head, and went to break the news to my mother.

“Y
OU ARE NO STRANGER TO
H
AMPSHIRE,
I
COLLECT,
M
RS.
Austen?” enquired the magistrate’s wife as she served herself from a dish of chicken and peas. Dinner at Prowtings had been delayed until the fashionable hour of seven o’clock, from all the necessity of a corpse’s removal. Mr. Prowting had found occasion to stand for two hours in the street, while a crowd of gawking village folk materialised to observe the proceedings. Word of the gruesome tragedy had spread like wildfire through every tenant’s cot, but no one appeared in the guise of anxious mourner—no woman stood with wringing hands and suckling babe to claim the Dead as her own. I observed this, and drew the obvious conclusion: the corpse did not belong to Chawton. We should have to look farther afield for the dead man’s name.

Poor Joseph, our driver of the morning, had returned from Mr. Barlow’s establishment in Alton with a heavy dray, and an ominous object swathed in old linen was swung upwards from the cellar hatch. At the departure of the corpse, a few boys made to follow it into Alton; but the majority of our neighbours dispersed, hastened on their way by the magistrate’s abjurations.

My mother, after an appropriate shriek and fainting fit, had suffered herself to be supported the length of the Prowtings’ long gravel sweep under the eyes of the entire village—and hugely enjoyed her role as tragic heroine. There could be nothing like the Austens’ descent upon their new home, I thought with some exasperation. First, a delegation of solicitors bearing mysterious chests; and then a dead man in the cellar—all in the space of a single afternoon! We should provide the village with matter for conjecture sufficient to endure a twelvemonth, and feed young Baigent’s claims that our household was indeed cursed.

Mrs. Prowting made my mother comfortable for an hour in a spare bedchamber; calmly bade her daughters leave off staring out the front windows; and observed that there was nothing like a body to drive folk from their work. She was a lady of significant proportions, her countenance placid; a woman whom even Death could not disturb. I observed, however, that she clutched a black-bordered square of lawn firmly in one hand throughout dinner—in expectation, perhaps, of being momentarily overcome by the Awfulness of the Event.

“I have lived in this country nearly all my life, Mrs. Prowting, with the exception of an interval in Bath,” my mother declared in answer to her polite enquiry. “I do not count my childhood in Oxford—for that was decidedly long ago—and though Southampton is quite southwards, it is nonetheless Hampshire.”

It had required several lessons in geography to impart this certainty to my mother’s mind; I thanked Providence the point no longer admitted of doubt.

“And you are soon to be joined here in Chawton by two other ladies?”

“My elder daughter is, as we believe, already on her road from Kent; and our dear friend Miss Lloyd—who has formed a part of our household since the not entirely unexpected death of her mother a few years since—is presently visiting her sister at Kintbury. We look for both ladies every day—and Mr. Edward Austen as well.”

“Mr. Austen is expected in Chawton!” ejaculated Mr. Prowting. “That is news indeed! We shall have to organise a party of welcome for the Squire. We shall indeed, my dear.”

“Mr. Austen is always welcome in this house,” rejoined his wife comfortably. “He is often in the country, as you must know, Mrs. Austen, for the settling of his tenant accounts. He is wont to engage a room at the George for that express purpose each quarter, and all his folk come and go to pay their respects—and their rents.”

“We are quite the family party in this corner of the world,” my mother sighed, as though rents and their accounting were all the joy she asked of life. “My eldest son, Mr. James Austen, is rector at Steventon, but a dozen miles distant; my fourth son, Henry, maintains a branch of his London bank—Austen, Gray & Vincent, perhaps you know it?—so near as Alton; and the wife of my fifth son, Captain Francis Austen, has lately taken a house in the same town.”

“So many sons,” observed Mrs. Prowting. “And which Alton house does the Captain’s wife rent, ma’am?”

“Rose Cottage, in Lenton Street.”

“I know it well! That is excellent news; you shall have a daughter within walking distance.”

“I had almost considered removing to Mrs. Frank,” my mother faltered, “on the strength of this dreadful business—I know I shall not sleep a wink in
such
a house—a house of
death . . .
but Mrs. Frank is indisposed at present, and I cannot presume upon the kindness of one in her condition. Her first child nearly killed her, you know.”

“You are most welcome to remain with us, ma’am,” Mrs. Prowting said warmly. “I should not
think
of sending you back to the cottage this evening.”

My mother looked as though she might accept with gratitude—but I considered of Lord Harold’s papers, lodged for the nonce in the henhouse, and interposed a negative.

“You are very good, Mrs. Prowting, but we are perfectly content in the cottage. A clergyman’s family, as you know, is accustomed to the Dead.”

A pompous speech enough; but Mrs. Prowting looked as though she admired it. My mother was nettled, and kicked my shin quite savagely beneath the table. She had the grace, however, not to engage in public argument.

“I think you said that Captain Austen is serving on the China Station?” Mr. Prowting enquired. “Excellent! Excellent! We hope to welcome another member of the Navy into the bosom of our family before very long; a young man we greatly esteem—”

“Papa! I beg you will not run on in that unbecoming way! I am sure I shall die of consciousness! The Austens can have no interest in Benjamin Clement—and to be sure, he is grown so odd of late—so inconstant in his attentions—that I protest I have
no
interest in him either!”

This impassioned cry fell from the lips of the youngest Miss Prowting, a girl I should judge to be at least twenty. She was fair-haired, blue-eyed, and full-figured; her white muslin gown was bestowed from neck to hem with fluttering primrose ribbons. It was clear she was accounted a Great Beauty, but I could not join in the general acclaim. Tho’ Ann’s complexion was good, it bore an expression of peevishness, and she had not the slightest pretension to either wit or conversation.

“Eh, do not be pouting at me, miss!” her father returned fondly, chucking her under the chin. “Young Benjamin is always the most constant of your beaux, no matter how little you are inclined to notice! Quite the belle of the village, our little Ann!”

It was as well, I thought, that my mother and Ann Prowting had divided the dinner table between them; for I had rarely been so ill-disposed to the rigours of Society, nor been so woefully unable to concentrate my energies. My mind was full of Lord Harold’s bequest and the puzzle of the corpse in our cellar. I could not be attending to the insipidities of a country neighbourhood, however congenial the party.