Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (4 page)

“The Squire was well, I hope, when you quitted Kent?” Mrs. Prowting enquired. A brief silence ensued; her gaze, I saw too late and with sudden horror, was fixed upon
me.

“My brother was very well, I thank you, Mrs. Prowting,” I returned in a rush.

“It’s a sad business, a gentleman of Mr. Austen’s circumstances being left with all those children on his hands.” Mrs. Prowting continued to study me, as though attempting to discern some likeness in my features—but it is Henry whom I resemble, not Edward. “A sad business, indeed; but Man proposes and the Lord disposes, as we have good reason to know. Does Mr. Austen think of giving up the Kentish place, and settling here in Chawton, with so many of his family fixed in the neighbourhood?”

“I do not think my brother has any idea of quitting Kent,” I replied. “All his affections and interest are bound up in the environs of Canterbury.”

“I should adore to go into Kent!” Ann Prowting sighed. “Hampshire beaux are nothing to those of Canterbury, I am sure! All the smart
ton
fellows descend upon the place for the races in August, Mamma!”

Mamma did not appear inclined to notice this effusion; and it was the elder daughter, Catherine, who turned the conversation. She was dark where her sister was fair, and retiring in her disposition. We had not yet had five words together from her lips.

“We were very sorry to hear of Mrs. Edward Austen’s passing,” she managed. “That lady only came to Chawton once within memory, but she left an impression of goodness as well as of fashion, and appears to have been everything that is amiable.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We have all felt my sister’s loss most keenly; and as Mrs. Prowting observes, my brother’s children above all. There are no less than eleven little Austens, and the youngest has not yet attained a year of age.”
¹

Mrs. Prowting lifted up her eyes to Heaven, and then retreated for a moment behind her square of linen.

“Mamma is thinking of William again,” Ann observed in a bored tone, “or perhaps of John. They were both of them odious little boys; I am sure I cannot count the times they teazed me unmercifully, and pulled my hair.”

“Ann,”
Catherine whispered fiercely.
“Consider where you are.”

But her sister continued insensible of danger.

“Perhaps your brother will chuse a second wife, Miss Austen,” Ann suggested brightly, “should he ever return to Chawton. He will not find the ladies so high in the instep as in Kent! We are all easy here! I should set my cap at him myself—but as he is so
old,
I do not think there could be any fun in it. He shall do very well for Catherine.”

“Minx,” Mr. Prowting said fondly. “She is a sad baggage, Miss Austen.”

“Catherine cares nothing for flirtation or good jokes,” Ann added with a curl of her lip, “and would not object to so many children, provided she were left in peace with her harp. Lord, Mamma! Only conceive of the look on Jane Hinton’s face, when Catherine was presented as the Squire’s wife! How you should love to parade it over the Hintons, with their endless preaching about
entailments
and
usurpers.
”

An appalled silence greeted this sally, but as Ann was engaged in adjusting her bodice lace, she failed to notice. Mrs. Prowting had flushed rosily, and her elder daughter could not lift up her eyes. It required only this united weakness, I supposed, for Ann’s impudence to rule the Prowting household.

“The Hintons?” my mother innocently enquired. “I do not recollect the name. Are they also our neighbours?”

“Mr. John-Knight Hinton is the son of our late rector, who was a most excellent man,” Prowting said with an appearance of discomfiture. “I wish that I could say the same of his son. But Jack Hinton is an indolent fellow, dissatisfied with his station in life, and unequal to improving it by either wit or exertion.”

“You are too unkind, Papa.” Catherine’s countenance was suffused with a blush. “Mr. Hinton’s character is good, and his understanding—tho’ perhaps not brilliant—”

“—is as high as you may safely look for a beau,” her sister observed waspishly.

“Ann,”
Mrs. Prowting protested.

“The Church would not do for him,” continued the magistrate with impatience, “—nor yet the Army; and as he is the youngest child and only son, Mrs. Austen, he has been much spoilt. Tho’ now fully five-and-thirty years of age if he is a day, Jack lives in idleness with his elder sister at Chawton Lodge, directly opposite the Great House.”

My mother glanced from one Prowting to another in considerable puzzlement. “The Lodge did not pass to the new incumbent, I collect?”

“Dear Mr. Papillon—such a kind gentleman, and so eloquent on the subject of forgiveness—rebuilt the old Rectory when Mrs. Knight gave him the Chawton living several years since,” Mrs. Prowting supplied. “But the Lodge was not in that lady’s gift; it was formerly the Dower House, and has passed through the female line to the Hinton family.”

My mother frowned. “Then I must have seen the place not an hour ago, when you were so kind as to escort me to the Great House gates, Mr. Prowting. I wonder you did not mention it. And Mr. Hinton’s Christian name is John-Knight, you say? And he lives in the former Dower House? Are the family at all related to the Kentish Knights?”

It was the Knight family that had adopted my brother Edward as their heir, and the Knight family that had inherited the manors of Chawton, Steventon, and Godmersham that Neddie now enjoyed. There had once been Knights in Hampshire, but they were all died out; and their Kentish cousins had come into these distant properties as a matter of course. My mother’s questions were posed in all innocence, but their effect was galvanic.

“Lord!” cried Ann Prowting, “Do you mean to say you are ignorant of what everybody hereabouts knows—that the Hintons and all their relations are the last true descendants of the Hampshire Knights?”

“Ann,”
her mother attempted once more. “I do not think it is for us—”

“But, Mamma,” she retorted impatiently, “it is beyond everything great! Here Jack Hinton has been saying for an
age
that he ought to be Squire of Chawton—and the Squire’s mamma don’t even know it!”

Chapter 5

Chapters in a Life

Wednesday, 5 July 1809
~

A
FLOOD OF BIRDSONG ROUSED ME AT HALF PAST SIX THIS
morning. I opened my eyes to find the sunlight full in my face; the bedchamber looks south and the window is still undraped.
Strange,
I thought,
to hear no sound of the sea.
The relentless murmur of wave upon shingle was one aspect of Southampton life I should regret.

With consciousness came the memory of the dead man in the cellar; there might be intelligence today of both his name and the nature of his end. I reached for my dressing gown and crept quietly out of the room, determined not to wake my mother—but I need have had no fears for her slumber; the shock and exertion of yesterday, coupled with Mr. Prowting’s excellent claret, ensured that she should lie slumbering yet a while.

The peace of this country morning was indescribable, a balm for jangled nerves. I stood in the silent kitchen, and listened to the rustling of some small creature against the exterior boards, the lowing of cattle in the distance, and the crowing of a cock—then threw open the back door and stepped out into the yard. A tin pail hung on a hook nailed to the lintel; I took it up, and moved to the well to draw some water. This, I decided, as the pump moved easily on its oiled hinge and the clear water began to flow, should be the work I would claim within our new household: the drawing of water and the preparation of fires in the early morning, the making of a simple breakfast, when everyone else lay abed. The freedom and quiet of an undisturbed hour should be a luxury beyond everything; indeed, it was all the luxury I desired.

Having escorted us from his dining parlour the previous evening, Mr. Prowting had helped us to lay a simple bed of coals in the kitchen hearth before departing for his own bed. The fire, properly banked, would serve to boil our tea this morning. The cottage boasted no ingenious modern stove, nothing but a spit and a quantity of iron hooks for the arrangement of kettles, and even Martha might find the conditions less than desirable; but Mr. Prowting had pledged himself to the task of securing a few servants among that class of village folk as were accustomed to labour in genteel houses—had several prospects already in mind—should be happy to interview them so early as today, etc., etc.—and should send the likeliest recruits to my mother for final approval. I foresaw little difficulty, delay, or exertion for myself in the business, and was content this morning to set my mother’s kettle on the fire.

The task done, I hesitated briefly in the small kitchen. Ought I to dress and walk out into the street, in search of the woman Mrs. Prowting assured me was the best baker of fresh bread in the village? Or could I trust to Providence and my mother’s slumber a little longer, and steal a glimpse at the contents of Lord Harold’s trunk?

After yesterday’s discovery of the corpse, Mr. Prowting had carried my bequest to the henhouse for safekeeping, as I did not think it kind to require the gentleman to enter a stranger’s bedchamber. The Rogue’s lead key hung heavily in my dressing-gown pocket. I curled my fingers around its length and walked swiftly back out into the yard, in the direction of the outbuildings.

It is in the nature of treasure chests to yield their contents unwillingly. I expected a lengthy engagement with the lock that dangled from the hasp; expected to be reduced to stratagems and tears, blood flowing from my ravaged fingers—but in the event, the key turned in a well-behaved fashion and released the heavy iron pad easily from its bolt.

Barely breathing, I lifted the trunk lid with care.

From Lord Harold’s last testament—his wish that I might bring order to his correspondence and somehow construct a narrative from a chaos of events—I had anticipated much confusion of parchment. But it seemed that this morning all my cherished notions were to be o’erthrown. Before my eyes was a compartmented cabinet, as neatly arranged as a solicitor’s desk, and filled with all manner of letters bound up tidily in varicolored ribbons. In one area of the cabinet was a place reserved for leather-bound copybooks; in another was a grouping of ledgers. Several rolled documents, when unfolded, were revealed as ships’ charts and battlefield maps—at a glance, I could discern the entrepôts of the Indian Ocean, and a plan of the city of Paris.

One last despairing hope was finally laid to rest. I had not allowed myself to form an idea of a single piece of paper, hastily scrawled with the word
Jane
and sealed in black wax. But the idea had formed itself even so. I longed for a parting gesture from the man—a bit of foolscap I might carry in my reticule like a relic of the True Cross. But there was nothing. How could there be? Lord Harold had written his will in anticipation of that duel; but never had he truly believed he would die.

I reached for a packet of letters at random and slid the first from beneath its bonds of faded blue silk.

It was dated January, 1770, Eton College—and bore the direction of Eugenie, Duchess of Wilborough.

My dearest Mamma—

I must thank you for the box of comfits you sent down with Attenborough, for they have made me the toast of the form, as you might expect. My brother would have denied me the whole, but that I hid the parcel amidst the soiled linen until he was safely away in his own house, and brought out the feast last evening with a stub of candle that I had secured in my gown. I received twelve lashes across the buttocks this morning when the Crime was discovered, but care nothing for that; my alienation from the Realm of College at present merely affords me the occasion to compose a proper letter of thanks to my most Beloved Mother . . .

Such assurance! In 1770, he had been all of ten years old—and I was not yet born. I held the childish scrawl between my fingers and tried to imagine him: thin, lanky, with a shock of blond Trowbridge hair. He had cultivated even then the talents of a spy.

I ran my fingers swiftly through the packet: there were more than twenty letters preserved from Eton days. Had the blue satin ribbon been Eugenie’s? I folded the missive carefully and returned it to its place, selecting as I did so another quantity of envelopes.

Calcutta

17 August 1784

My dear Fox—

I received your last, written nearly six months ago, only yesterday; and must assume that the news of Whig politics it contains is now irrelevant. I cannot read your strictures on my respected employer, however, without offering this response. You speak of crimes—of offences that stink in the eyes of the Nation—with all the fervour of one unduly influenced by Edmund Burke. And yet, of what can you honestly accuse him? Mr. Hastings has engaged in all manner of peccadilloes: a devious military campaign against the Afghans; a bit of extortion in the matter of Benares; an injudicious killing of a native ruler; a duel in which he failed to despatch his principal enemy and thus ensured the man would poison his Company’s councils ever after. But against this accounting is all the glory of Mr. Hastings himself: a cultivated mind that has mastered both Urdu and Bengali; a commanding knowledge of the historical, geographic, and commercial truths of the Subcontinent; a subtlety of manner and appreciation for the customs of the region that have won him numerous friends, vital to our interest. Should this bill of Pitt’s succeed in wresting the Company’s power to the side of Government, it will ensure Mr. Hastings’s quitting his post—a loss not only for the East India Company, but for the Crown. I must urge you to transcend the petty divisions of party and class. Far more is at stake than a toss of the dice at Brooks’s.

You will be happy to learn that I have succeeded in winning to my side the Princess of Mysore, who proclaims herself to have abandoned everything for love of me; or love of my pocketbook, as the case may prove. I anticipate a scented paradise in her tent these next three months as she follows me to Madras.

Do not die of apoplexy, old fellow, before I glimpse the cliffs of Dover again. My exile shall conclude in another year, at which point I intend to cut up my father’s peace most dreadfully—

I reread this letter twice in some puzzlement. I knew Lord Harold to have been an intimate of the late Whig leader, Charles James Fox; yet never had he mentioned a period of employment with Warren Hastings, the former Governor-General of Bengal. Indeed, I had not understood the Rogue to have lived in India at all. Mr. Hastings, on the other hand, was remotely connected with my family, as the putative father of my cousin, Eliza de Feuillide; he was a man whose reputation we had been taught to both revere and suspect. And what was the exile to which Lord Harold referred? Had he fallen out with his father at the tender age of four-and-twenty? I could well believe it possible. A duel—an elopement—a significant loss at cards . . . or simply the defection of his interest from the Tory party to the Whigs, might have achieved it.

Another letter, this time from 1788:

His Majesty’s bilious attacks continue apace, with the novel variation of insanity: this morning he cawed like a crow and defecated in his bed, called the Queen a whore and a poxmonger, while Her Majesty cried out and could not be comforted, tho’ her Ladies attempted to restrain her. His madness certainly increases, and the moment for the Prince to seize power is nearly ripe . . .

And this, from a year earlier:

Mrs. Fitzherbert is brought to bed of a son, and how we shall prevent a revolution when the truth is out, I know not—

The henhouse was growing hot. I was aware that a considerable interval had passed, and that my mother would soon be rising. I surveyed the wealth of packets with dismay. There was too much to be read, too much to digest in an ordered fashion, beginning with the earliest dates, to achieve much. I should have to devise a more orderly method—and I must secure a place of safety and solitude in which to work.

I replaced the correspondence and was about to close the chest’s heavy lid, when of a sudden I reached for one of the leather-bound copybooks. Perhaps, in his journal, he might once have made mention of me . . .

Paris

8 September 1793

I walked out into the Rue de Sévigné this morning convinced that I should be seized and thrown into the tumbrel myself as a renegade and an Englishman, and caring little for the outcome. If my head were to fall to the blade, what would it matter, in the end? There are corpses piled beneath the trees of the Luxembourg and the stink is unimaginable. What we require is a cleansing fire—a fire that might rage like a storm about the limestone walls of this city and burn its evils to ash, as the souls of the dead in India are sent up in smoke on the holy river of Benares. This is Liberty, then, that Burke was wont to prattle of: The freedom to exact revenge for the inequities of life; to tear down and trample beneath one’s feet all that is beautiful and forever denied; to cut and maim as one has been maimed. Last night, as I stood beneath the vaulted walk of the Palais de Justice, I saw the tumbrel go by: and in it a young girl with her hair shorn for the blade, her face as white as her cotton shift: Jouvel’s daughter, with whom I danced the quadrille two summers ago at the
château
near Cluny. Her brother stood beside her: face stark and shadowed, an expression of rage about the lips—quite useless. A smear of shit on his brow where someone had insulted him. He was perhaps fifteen. At that age I thought of nothing but riding to hounds. They are both dead this morning—they were dead even as I watched them roll past, and stepped backwards against the archway’s wall that they might not recognise me—might not hope for a fleeting second in their own salvation. The long brown hair is tossed like offal into the basket, her terrified gaze fixed on God or Hell—one and the same, for those who ride in the tumbrel. I could kill myself for failing to save them. I could place a pistol against my head and pull the trigger. All that stops me is my duty to the boy—

I slowly closed the book, my hands no longer steady.

He had given me much in this cavalier bequest: the key to a lifetime of agonies and dreams. I had believed that I understood his character—I had even thought that I loved him. But it was clear to me now that I had tasted only a draught of the deep waters that o’erwhelmed Lord Harold’s life.

“Jane? Jane!”

My fingers clutched around the copybook, I gazed quickly through the henhouse door.

“Henry!” I cried. “Good God—where did you spring from?”

“Alton,” my brother replied carelessly. “I keep a bank there, you know. What do you mean by sitting in the middle of a poultry yard in your dressing gown at eight o’clock in the morning?”