Jane and the Man of the Cloth (28 page)

I strained in the darkness to put names to the huddled objects, and was rewarded with a king's ransom of goods. There were brandy kegs by the dozen, and deep casks of fragrant tea—the best China leaf, too dear for the humble Austens’ housekeeping—and rough sacks of coffee beans, and pounds of chocolate; exotic spices, from Malabar and the Canaries; the finest Spanish lace; a snorting wealth of sneezing snuff; coal, coffin-nails, hair-powder, and sealing wax; and in one extraordinary chest, all disordered at the tunnel's very entrance, a quantity of newly-strung pearls. Cool and silken to the touch they were, and I understood now Eb's unwillingness to let them slip, and felt a strange respect for the stalwart Dick's refusal. The morality of the Gendemen of the Night was indeed passing strange.

I stood up, and let the pearls drop back in their chest, a frown of puzzlement creasing my brow. Something was missing. What could it be? What had the two besotted fellows sought and failed to find?

Silk.

But of course.
Silk,
so necessary for clothing a beautiful woman as vanity and fashion dictated; silk, that draped the costliest windows on the most breathless streets of the country's principal towns—most precious of tissues, its sheen unrivalled, its colours brilliant, its sinuous length wrapping the kingdom from north to south—
silk.
Spun principally on the Continent, and in the south of France, and taxed within a hair'sbreadth of everyone's life, and thus a smuggler's fortune. I had owned only
one silk
gown
in
my entire life; but I had not yet learned to despise its glorious folds.

And so the Reverend was a silk trader—
a Man of the Cloth.
The sobriquet's sly pun bespoke a certain cleverness^—a tendency to flout convention, and turn the comprehensible on its head; both qualities quite native to Mr. Sidmouth's character. And my very own Eliza had declared Sidmouth a frequent traveller to France, where his cousin Seraphine must provide a valued service, in speaking the language fluently. I little doubted that whatever her
professed
distaste for Buonaparte, or the depth of her wounds from the revolutionary past, that with a brother well-placed in the Imperial army, she was not disinclined to cross the Channel on behalf of Sidmouth's interests. From Roy Cavendish I had it that the Reverend employed agents—and who better to employ, than Seraphine? Was this the source of the enmity between Captain Fielding and High Down Grange? Had he discovered that Mademoiselle LeFevre was but a pawn in her cousin's game, and endeavoured to separate them, for the preservation of her liberty?

I sat down on a keg and put my head in my hands. The night's burden of knowledge was all too heavy, and my store of sleep too small. There was nothing more to be done, than to discover my whereabouts, and effect a return home—by the road, if all within the Grange were yet abed, or the tunnel, if need be.

There was a staircase at the room's far side, and I quickly sought it, and in the greatest stealth and trepidation, turned the doorknob at its head, expecting at every instant to be set upon by Sidmouth's dogs. But all was quiet; and a delicate light streamed over the threshold as I swung wide the door—dawn had come to the cliffs above the sea. I waited an instant, listening for some sound in the stillness, and then stepped into sunshine and looked about me, blinking in disbelief.

For I had emerged from a gardener's shed, and found myself in a ruin—a prettyish sort of place, surrounded by rosebushes now long past their bloom, and the arched forms of wood nymphs trapped forever in unyielding marble.

Captain Fielding's wilderness temple.
¹

Austen's description of the tunnel corresponds to several discovered in recent years throughout the coastal towns of the Channel counties. Some lead to landing areas from the cellars of inns, which often served as smugglers’ central meeting places and storage areas for contraband; others, from manor houses on the cliffs above; and still another, from a family vault in the crypt of a church—used to store brandy barrels, no doubt, instead of dead ancestors. —
Editor's note.

20 September 1804, cont

∼

“H
OW VERY PROVOKING OF
M
R.
S
IDMOUTH TO GET HIMSELF
arrested,” my mother was saying, in some vexation, as I descended the stairs to the breakfast room. “For he is certain to hang, so Miss Crawford tells me, though he seemed to be overflowing with admiration for our dear Jane. I declare I never saw a more promising inclination, Mr. Austen—excepting, perhaps, Captain Fielding's—but that came to nothing, and Miss Crawford assures me in any case that he intended to make his proposals to her niece. But, there it is—the poor man died before he could speak, and Miss Armstrong is denied even the interesting circumstance of mourning a proclaimed lover.”

“Indeed,” my father responded drily. “To mourn for a gendeman one may only claim as an acquaintance, lacks something of verisimilitude.”

“A sad business altogether,” my mother resumed, having heard, one imagines, the sense of her husband's words, without their subtle derision. “I shall never speak of Mr. Sidmouth again, as I told Miss Crawford only yesterday. He is a very undeserving young man, and his want of consideration for the feelings of others is truly abominable—and I suppose there is not the least chance of Jane's getting him
now.
Ah, my dear, here you are at last!”

As I claimed my place at table, my father peered at me over the top of his spectacles, and remarked at my wearied countenance.

“You are not lying awake of nights, my dear, in consideration of Sidmouth's affairs?” he said, with a brief smile. “It is something indeed, for a girl to pine after a gentleman in gaol; it lends a certain style to her attitude, and renders her remarkable among the circle of her friends; but I should hope my stout Jane not unduly affected in her
finer
sensibilities.”

“No, Father,” I replied, and knew not where to look.

“Mr. Sidmouth is one of the most undeserving young men in the Kingdom,” he said, with an air of evident enjoyment, “or so your mother assures me. The very worst of men, I understand, for having shot the gallant Captain—or for failing to petition your hand
first
—I am not quite certain which. But one assumes he had his reasons, for both his trifling actions.”

“I cannot believe a man should act as he has done,
without
a very good reason,” I rejoined.

“Ah, there you would debate philosophy, my dear— and I never entertain philosophy before breakfast It
is
unfortunate, all the same. I cannot find out that anyone in town believes Sidmouth innocent; and so he shall probably hang; and yet I liked the man. He had a sound understanding, and a forthright temper, and a dignity of purpose that was not unbecoming. Jane,” my father broke off, “I am sure you are indisposed. Your aspect is decidedly weary for one who has lain so long abed.”

I endeavoured to reassure him, and divert my mother's attention, in pleading the probable onset of a cold (nothing very remarkable, when I consider the manner in which I spent the better part of the night); and was accordingly counseled to keep to my room, and partake frequendy of warm lemon-water. I made no objection to the plan, perceiving some benefit in quiet reflection; for I have much to consider. A few pleasantries over chocolate and rolls, then, and my mother's petitioning me for an opinion as to the trimming of a hat she purchased yesterday for Cassandra, and in a very little while I found myself alone once more, and established over my journal and pen.

To SAY THAT I WAS ASTOUNDED AT FINDING MYSELF IN THE CAPTAIN's garden is perhaps to say too little. With what disbelief, did my eyes encounter the familiar landscape, and how, with a mind revolting against the evidence of its own perception, did I cast about for understanding amidst the utter routing of my sense! Every precept I believed to be founded upon rock, I must discard as so much baseless sand; and those cherished notions of my own ability, as a canny student of
character,
I must vigorously disown. They are the product of vanity, and being acknowledged as such, deserve their sudden abandonment.

The revelations of the wilderness temple have forced a revision of all that pertains to Captain Fielding's affairs, and the conclusions I drew—was intended to draw—from his words and actions. His extensive establishment of the gardens—over so short a period of residence—becomes more comprehensible when one considers the labour so necessary to the excavation of the tunnel and storerooms, and the secreting of their purpose amidst a quantity of greenery. (I must endeavour to find the labourers who effected it, since the Captain assuredly did not) His behaviour, too, on the first occasion of my visiting the wilderness temple, now bears a different construction; for the Captain's anxiety at Cassandra's indisposition is revealed now as a fear of discovery—and I recall, with all the clarity of the remembered day, his haste in summoning the ladies from their stopping-place, and his closing the tool-shed door, before ever he enquired as to the extent of my sister's distress. I wonder I did not remark upon it before—how a gendeman encumbered by a wooden leg, should choose the greater exertion of crossing the little pavilion entirely, on such a trivial errand.

But what, exactly, did he endeavour to hide?

Are the goods stored below the temple but a repository of the Crown, and the representation of contraband seized on behalf of the Revenue men? —Or are they symbols of a duplicity more sinister still, in being the fruits of
Captain Fielding's
clandestine trade, achieved amidst the odour of sanctity he wore like an epaulette? If the former, then assuredly Roy Cavendish should know of the goods’ existence, and I had but to apply to the gendeman for a full disclosure. I could not feel myself to be easy with this notion, however; for why should such contraband not be immediately transferred to the Lyme Customs House, and thence to London? For what possible purpose should it be retained in hiding?

At the thought of Mr. Cavendish's unfortunate countenance, his oily manner, his effort to twist my affections and obligations to his own ends—I could not flatter myself secure. For all I knew, he might well have colluded with the Captain himself, and the two embarked upon a profitable enterprise, in the seizing of others’ hard-won cargoes without the knowledge of the Crown. They might summon the dragoons, and take possession of kegs and caskets, without a single remark other than a smuggler's curse; and none in Lyme be the wiser. I could credit Mr. Cavendish with such nefarious behaviour, though I knew him not at all; there is something in his manner that does not inspire confidence.

I will keep my own counsel for a time, until I know what may safely be said in his hearing.

But Captain Fielding? Could so noble a gentleman be so wanting in principle?

His knowledge of the smugglers’ operations must tell against him. He understood the nature of captains and landers, and their preferences in coasdine and weather; his very home afforded a likely spot for the observation of all their traffic, being sited on rising ground. I imagined that he possessed, as any Naval fellow might, a sound spyglass for scanning the horizon; and he was better placed than many to anticipate the disposition of Royal Navy ships, and the strength of their pursuit, in foiling Channel crossings. Valuable intelligence indeed, if one but put it to the purpose; but what motivation might the Captain have had, to so betray his trust?

I summoned to memory his weathered face—the bright blue eyes, the boyish shock of hair; and could find there no hint of malevolent purpose. But when I considered again his broken figure—the indignity of his affliction, his dependence upon a cane—my heart perceived another sentiment. Captain Fielding had sacrificed a great deal, in the height of his powers, and lived to see all his hopes blighted; denied advancement, denied glory, denied a lifetime his youth had toiled in the making— and given, perhaps, very little by way of gratitude or pension. Had he died off the coast of Malta, he should have won a place in glorious history, and been saluted by his comrades for valour and example; but as it was, he merely suffered for the winning of ignoble retirement, with a lifetime of regret and thwarted purpose before him. A terrible bitterness, coupled with a weary cynicism, in observing the considerable profits of Free Trade, might be little enough to effect his transformation—from gallant officer of His Majesty's ships, to roguish profiteer.

I must consider, finally, what he himself had avowed— that the skills of many a smuggling captain were so very great, given their familiarity with the most challenging coasts in the very worst of weather, that the Royal Navy placed their value above many more reputable veterans. Why should not Fielding, then, have turned his talents to use? —He had been denied a Navy ship; but why not purchase another vessel, more secretive and private, and range his wits against the best the Navy had to offer? For this, Roy Cavendish should be unnecessary, except in that by gaining his confidence, and affecting to labour on his behalf, the Captain might hope to secure himself from suspicion.