Jane and the Man of the Cloth (6 page)

But at the thought of France, 1 was seized by a memory and a notion at once.

“Eliza,” I said, as we ploughed ahead against the wind, “how great still is your command of the French language?”

As great as my enjoyment of it, Jane—which is to say, excessively good.”

I had observed it to find its way into your conversation.”

“Oh,
thai,
my dear—when one has a reputation for liveliness, one is forever ejaculating bits of French and Italian. It passes for breeding, in some parts of town. But you cannot mean
betise,”
she said, as if suddenly struck. “Even
you
must know it to mean a stupidity.’

“I thought it a
faux pas,”
I rejoined, with a hint of dryness, at which Eliza laughed aloud.

“How I have missed you,” she cried, patting my arm. “You must come to London this winter, my dear, and throw yourself in the way of some dashingly handsome murderer, so that I may have the enjoyment of following in your train as you go about exposing the man's vileness. In fact,
a propos
of vile men, I have several we might pretend are murderers, and expose for the fun of it Nothing has been so delicious, I assure you, since you ended the Scargrave business so tidily. I have been quite overcome with
ennui;
but then, I always am in the summer. One so
wants
a little scandal, now and then, that one is almost tempted to make it oneself!”
⁷

“Now, Eliza—” I cautioned.

“Oh, never mind,
cherie.
Unmixed felicity is rarely found in life, but your Henry knew when he married me that I was unaccustomed to control, and should probably behave very awkwardly, did he attempt it; and so, like the wise man he is, he makes
my
will his own.
⁸
And thus we get along quite happily.”

“I am relieved to hear it.”

“Of course you are. You mistrust the married state so well, you have never ventured near it yourself—and may be forgiven for assuming it to be the ruin of all those around you.”

“I deserve neither such praise, nor such censure,Eliza!” I cried. “I should gladly have assayed the estate, had it been offered by a gendeman for whom I could feel sincere affection. But in cases where such affection was possible, the gentleman did not offer; and when it was the reverse, I could not accept.”

“I am very sorry for it, Jane,” Eliza replied soberly, “and for the unconscious cruelty of my words. I meant but to make a sport of men, in holding them up to your supposed derision; but I ended by wounding
you.’

“I, et us think no more about it,” I replied, mortified at my own susceptibility; were my feelings regarding my single state, at the advanced age of eight-and-twenty, so exceedingly raw? But I shook off such thoughts and returned to my first subject. “Regarding your mastery of French,” I said. “Can you give me the sense of a particular word, did T attempt to repeat it?”

I can but try.”

“Very well. I believe it was
lascargon.”
A French word spoken in the drawing-room at High Down Grange.

Eliza's brows lowered over her eyes with a pretty air of penetration. “But that means nothing, my dear Jane. You cannot have got it right.”

“Think, Eliza. What
might
I have heard?”

“Lascargon. Lascargon.
I suppose it might have been
les garfons
—the boys—or
La Gascogney
a woman from Gas-cony, a province of France.”

“That could very well be!” 1 cried, considering Seraphine. “But why did he not simply call her by name?”

We had achieved the end of the Cobb, and were thrust quite far out into the sea; a drenching plume of spray burst and churned against the rocks at our feet, and in the distance, a cutter sped by under full sail, its stem harried by seabirds. The breeze off the waves was decidedly stiff; and after a summer of Bath's closeness and poor drains, the smells of a city given over to medicinal waters, I revelled in Lyme's freshness, and breathed deep.

Eliza was not so sanguine. “Jane, my dear, I am all to pieces in this wind,” she declared, turning about with a hand to her turban, “and your confusion of pronouns has quite worn out my patience. Let us turn round, and find our way to the Golden Lion, while you explain yourself.”

And so, as the shadows of afternoon grew longer on the Cobb, and the gulls wheeled and dipped above our heads, I told Eliza of High Down Grange, and the mysteries of a lanthorn on the cliff edge at night.

“And you cannot place the girl Seraphine's purpose in the household,” Eliza mused, her eyes upon the stones. “She seems neither a domestic nor a lady. Well! There is only one possibility remaining! She is his little French lovebird—though why he dresses her in sacks, and sends her about the shingle at night, I cannot undertake to say. You have once again found yourself the company of a rogue, my dear Jane, and we must know more of his character before such questions may be resolved.”

“I do not think you have the right of it, Eliza,” I protested. “Seraphine had not the look of a mistress.”

“And what is
that,
in your understanding? An open vulgarity, a blowsy aspect, a decided want of taste? I assure you, the
chere amies
I have known—including my late husband's—were hardly as the novels have painted them.” At my expression of horror, Eliza threw back her head and laughed. “I shock you, Jane; I am sure that I shock you; but, after all, that
is
my purpose in life. I continue to exist merely for the upsetting of Austen conventions. And when are we likely to encounter this most intriguing gendeman? At the Lyme Assembly?”

“I should not think Mr. Sidmouth prone to dancing. He wants the sort of easy temper that finds diversion in frivolity.”

“Perhaps,” Eliza replied. “Perhaps. But I would charge you to take care with your appearance on the morrow, in the event Mr. Sidmouth comes.”

“You cannot believe me to wish for the attentions of such a man!” I protested.

“I can, and I do. Your air, when you speak of him, is hardly easy, and you were ever a girl to find the eccentric character more engaging than the open. You delight hi
mystery,
my dear Jane; and Mr. Sidmouth has piqued your interest. Admit it! Your reddened cheeks even now bespeak your susceptibilities/’

Indeed they do not” My voice was sharp—but then, I
was
rather mortified. “They are merely brightened by the wind.”

“I could find it in my heart to believe you, my dear, Eliza said comfortably, “did not the wind blow to our backs at present.”

I HAD REASON TO PONDER ELIZA'S WORDS WHEN ONCE I HAD SEEN
her safely into the care of her devoted maid, Manon, and her little dog, Pug, in the rooms Henry had engaged at the Golden Lion. I was returned once more to the street, and only steps from my cottage gate, when a brief scene unfolding near a shopfront opposite, drew my curious eye. A flash of a scarlet cloak, a stream of unbound blond hair, and the angelic features of Seraphine—and behind her, Mr. Sidmouth, his brows drawn down in an expression of angry contempt. Another man—a common labourer, and quite astoundingly tipsy, by his wavering appearance—was lounging in the shop doorway, an unattractive leer upon his face. That he had only just unburdened himself of a phrase of abuse, I read in his countenance; and knew Sidmouth's anger to be the result. Seraphine, to her credit, appeared unmoved.
Her
noble head was high, and her carriage graceful; she moved, as always, as though possessed of wings. I bent my head, much intrigued by what had passed, but desirous of drawing no attention from their quarter; and in a moment I had gained the safety of the cottage door. One further glance sufficed to tell me that the intimates of High Down were turned the corner; and I breathed a sigh of relief. But why? Why this emotion at the sight of
him,
and in
Iier
company? A man of whom I know next to nothing, and have even less reason to think well of; a man so little likely to prove congenial to my sensibility or expectations? The ways of the mind and heart are sometimes past all understanding.

Except, I am reminded, for the Elizas of this world.

1
It was customary in Austen's time to stay at home on evenings with little moonlight, and accept engagements for those nights when the moon would be full. Travel along unlit roads could otherwise be quite hazardous. —
Editor's note.

2
In Austen's day, relations by marriage were generally referred to as relations of blood. Although the term
in-inw
existed, it was more of an affectation than common usage. —
Editor's note.

3
The Pump Room was the social center of Bath, where many of the residents and visitors congregated daily to drink the medicinal waters pumped up for their refreshment, and to stroll about in close converse with their acquaintance. To be seen in the Pump Room of a morning, and in the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms at night, was indispensable to the conduct of one's social life. —
Editor's note.

4
Eliza's first husband, the French comte Jean Capot de Feuillide, was guillotined in 1794. Eliza retained her title of Comtesse de Feuillide even after she married Henry Austen, out of habit and a liking for its aristocratic air. —
Editor's note.

5
Austen probably refers here to the stairs she later used in her final novel,
Persuasion,
in which Louisa Musgrove falls in jumping from one level of the Cobb to another.
—Editor's note.

6
Francis Austen, born between Cassandra and Jane in the order of the Austens’ eight children, and Charles, the youngest child, were both officers in the Royal Navy. Frank Austen would end his life as Admiral Sir Francis Austen, Admiral of the Fleet. —
Editor's note.

7
Eliza refers to the first of Jane Austen's detective memoirs,
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.
—
Editor's note.

8
Eliza de Feuillide used words very similar to these to describe her marriage in a surviving letter written from Ipswich in 1798. —
Edi tor's note.

6
September 1804

∼

C
ASSANDRA AND
I
WERE ROUSED FROM SLEEP AT DAWN BY THE HUE
and cry of a large party of men; and when I had stumbled to the window, and o'erlooked the lightening Cobb,
¹
I found them to be racing back along its length in an attitude of urgency. I might have spared a thought, in my fuddled state, to wonder at such a noise; but, in truth, I merely felt all the strength of honest resentment, in being roused so early by a party of brawling flsherfolk. Though I have lived more than three years in Bath, and must be accustomed to the sounds of a city's daybreak, I have not yet forgot the felicity of early-morning birdsong, and the gender down of the country. And so I gaped, and glared once more upon the beach, in the direction from which the men were running—and started where I stood.

For the first rays of a rising sun had picked out the end of the stone pier, to reveal erected there a scaffolding ominous in its outlines, even from the distance at which I beheld it; and depending from its crossbar, what appeared to be a bundle of clothing, swaying dejectedly in the stiff breeze off the sea. It must—it could not be other—than a parody of a man; a straw form, perhaps, for burning in effigy—-or so my bewildered thoughts insisted, as I gazed with palpitating heart. For if it were truly a
man,
then he could not be otherwise than hanged. And how a man should meet his end in so extraordinary a manner— in a place I well knew to have been free of a gibbet only the previous afternoon—was past all understanding.

As I watched, a wave rose up and broke whitely against the rocks, drenching the crossbar's nerveless form, and the cries of the fleeing fishermen drew nearer.

“What is it, Jane?” came Cassandra's sleepy voice behind me. “A fire?”

“Nothing so general in its destruction,” I said slowly, “though perhaps as inexplicable.”

WHEN
I
HAD DRESSED, AND BADE THE HOUSEMAID, JENNY, TO SUPPLY
Cassandra with tea and toast, I slipped on my bonnet— which was Leghorn straw, quite new, with an upturned brim and violet ribbons—and ventured out of doors. I had told my mother I wished to purchase a pair of gloves, my own being unhappily spotted from the effects of Monday night's rain; but, in truth, I intended to find what the townsfolk might tell me, of the body at the end of the Cobb.