Jane and the Man of the Cloth

by Stephanie Barron

  Geoffrey Sidmouth, on the contrary, is neither open nor secretive; that gentleman is merely the master of his own business. His emotions are so hardly checked, as to be almost transparent; one will always know where one is, though utterly confounded as to why. His is an eager, a forthright, temperament; and even in his blackest moments—when I find nothing easier than to mistrust his purpose—I know myself to be in the presence of the man. With Captain Fielding, one is ever in the presence of a caricature. Even his gallantries are studied.

  I had reason to consider this but a few hours ago, well before my return to Cassandra’s still-slumbering form, and the quieter comforts of my pen. I was awakened, as two days before, by a great hallooing along the Cobb; and with a sickening certainty I saw in t?? mind’s eye the ghastly scaffold raised once more, and the lifeless body awash in surf. At the sound of men’s voices I threw back the covers, and hastily exchanged my nightclothes for yesterday’s discarded muslin; a moment’s thought instructed the choice of stout boots over my usual slippers. It required but an instant to descend the stairs as noiselessly as I knew how, and exit Wings cottage.

  I lifted my trembling eyes to the Cobb’s end—but not a gibbet was to be seen. Along the wide beach that fronts The Walk came a parade of toiling men, casks upon their backs; and great wains were drawn up along the shingle, with the horses full in the water to their very flanks’ height. Feeling rather foolish, but nonetheless thoroughly roused, I proceeded along The Walk until I had gained a better view—and espied two galleys, with crews at their oars, bobbing in the very waters where the smugglers’ cargo had been dropped the previous day!

  “So they would retrieve it, then, as Captain Fielding asserted,” I said aloud, in some wonderment; and was rewarded by a reply of sorts, and from my very elbow.

  “At an hour when most women should dread to be seen abroad, you are lovelier than I might have imagined, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.”

  I swifdy turned, in some dismay and confusion, and found Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth on the sand below, seated easily astride a black stallion of fearsome appearance; the animal’s nostrils flared as it chuffed at the wind and tossed its powerful head. I stepped backwards involuntarily, and clasped my arms together, shivering somewhat from the morning’s chill. In an instant Sidmouth had dismounted and secured the horse; and in another, he had divested himself of his cloak and draped it about my shoulders, so swiftly I had not time to protest.

  “The breeze is cold off the water at dawn,” he said, with an indifferent air. “We cannot have you catch your death, however deserved of your impetuous nature. Dagliesh has enough to do at Wings cottage.”

  I swept my eyes the length of his powerful figure, and noted that he was in a similarly-disheveled state. His wine-coloured coat was stained with a dark liquid I could not identify, but took to be spirits; his stock was undone, his jaw unshaven, and his hair decidedly ruffled by long exposure to the wind. He might almost have been abroad the entire night through, and be only now upon his road home, and tarrying by the scene at the water’s edge; and with a sudden blush, I imagined the hours of dissipation now put behind him.

  “What brings you to the Cobb, sir?” I enquired. “And at such an hour!”

  “I might ask the same of you, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.” His voice held too much amusement for my fragile pride.

  “I thought to observe another unfortunate fisherman, hanged for the Reverend’s sins,” I retorted, “and at the hullabaloo below my window, ran out to offer assistance”

  “Singular,” Mr. Sidmouth observed coolly. “Very singular indeed. Most women should faint dead away at the mere prospect. But then, you are always a singular personality, Miss Austen. It was just such a sense of purpose in extremity that drove you to my very door, some few days ago.”

  For this, I had no answer; and we were silent, observing the activity below in the fitful light. The sun was not yet up, and the industrious figures flitted like shadows in a graveyard. Sidmouth’s eyes were narrowed over the sharp hook of his nose, and his lips compressed; and I wondered, as I stole a glance at him sidelong, whether I stood next to the very Reverend, in the act of overseeing his cargo’s landing.

  “It is a smuggler’s goods,” I said, with the most casual air I could effect; “Captain Fielding and I observed the cutter only yesterday, as it jettisoned those very casks.” For the labouring men were wading through the surf with a massive barrel suspended from each shoulder, and heaving them into the carts drawn up to the water; and despite the weight of the contraband, as evidenced in their bowed backs, their progress was swift indeed. In but a moment, I imagined, the last of the waggons should be filled, and the horses turned towards some safe place of hiding in the midst of the downs—but would they be welcorned by a girl in a sweeping red cloak, her spigot lant-horn5 held high in the dusky dawn?

  “Trench brandy.” Sidmouth spoke as though remarking upon the weather. “It shall be turned a proper brown in some hole in the woods, and be on its way to London in a very few days.6 But you look stupefied, Miss Austen—surely you knew that French brandy, like the cheeks of so many French ladies, does not win its colour from Nature?”

  “I am simply all amazement, Mr. Sidmouth,” I rejoined, “that so much brandy exists. There must be enough in those waggons to keep London afloat for a year!”

  “Or the members of White’s,7 at the very least,” the gentleman replied ironically.

  “And what organisation! What dispatch! The Royal Navy should observe these fellows’ methods, the better to order their gunnery crews!”

  “See there, the one in the blue cap, who stands aloof along the shoreline?” Mr. Sidmouth’s face moved closer to my own, and his left arm extended before my nose, the better to distinguish his object. “He is Davy Forely, this crew’s lander; and a better lander is not to be found along the entire Dorset coast.”

  “And what, pray, is a lander?”

  “The fellow employed by the smuggling captain to organise the men on shore,” Mr. Sidmouth said patiently. “He it is that recruits them, and pays them, and makes certain they are loyal to the game.”

  “I had not realised it to be so sophisticated a profession, as to admit of hierarchies,” I replied. “Your knowledge of the whole can hardly be to your credit”

  He looked at me with some surprise. “I have known these men some few years, and may call them the most honest band of rogues in the entire Kingdom. Indeed, I have had occasion to depend upon their very efficiency and organisation. They have served my ends whenever needed, and saved my life more than once; and 1 should be churlish indeed, did I not offer them the praise that is their due.”

  “Mr. Sidmouth—” I began, in some perturbation at the import of his words; but my speech was stopped in my mouth, by the appearance on the shingle of a gentleman in a good blue coat, who leaned upon a cane, and observed the proceedings with an air of satisfaction—Captain Fielding, without a doubt, and beside him in the darkling dawn, a stranger to my sight—a short, spare man of wizened appearance, and heavy spectacles, and a protruding lower lip, whose gaze was bent upon the shore’s activity with the bulbous intensity of a frog’s. I had barely noted the Captain’s arrival, in the company of this rare fellow, when the latter raised his arm as though in prearranged signal, and with a cry to harrow the bones of the very dead, a company of dragoons in the bright-hued uniform of the Crown descended upon the beach, bayonets extended, pell-mell into the crowd of burdened men.

  “Good Lord!” 1 cried, forgetting myself in the tumult of the moment, “they shall be overrun!”

  Sparing neither an oath nor a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Sidmouth unloosed his horse, sprang upon its noble back, and threw himself down the Cobb to the shoreline’s edge, his black hair streaming behind him. Full into the swarm of dragoons and struggling men he rode, lashing to the left and right with his crop. I stood open-mouthed upon The Walk, aghast at his activity; for the King’s men were armed, and I assumed that Sidmouth was not, any more than the smugglers
themselves should bear firearms—for to do so, I knew, was punishable by death. Clubs only they had in defence of their illegal trade, and these they brandished; but the threat of ball and powder proved too much, and even the hardiest of the lander’s crew were soon forced to submit, and shuffled downcast from the surf past the triumphant Captain Fielding. I observed that result of the melee only at its close, however; for I confess the first object of my eyes was Geoffrey Sidmouth and the progress of his plunging horse.

  He forged a path through the tumult, and rode to where the lander, Davy Forely, stood, shouting orders to his routed men; and in an instant, had grasped the fellow’s shirt back and heaved him behind. With a cry and a lash, the stallion sprang forward, and broke from the chaotic scene; but Sidmouth was not to be let slip so easily. Captain Fielding had observed his course, and now harried a party of three dragoons to spring to the pursuit; and with weapons lowered and animal yells loosed from their lips, the men closed in upon the horse’s hindquarters. Forely shouted, and kicked at the faces of the pursuing dragoons; the stallion screamed and reared as Sidmouth struggled with the reins; and as I watched, the master of High Down turned in the saddle, pulled a revolver from his coat, and aimed it, thankfully, in the air. A single ball was fired, and resounded above the duller noises of clubs and bitter oaths; and the dragoons, incredibly, halted where they stood. Mr. Sidmouth is plainly a gendeman, of a higher order than the smugglers’ band; and, unlike them, his possession of a firearm could hardly cause comment; but the King’s men were nonetheless amazed. One only shook himself out of his stupor, and levelled a blunderbuss; and though Sidmouth mastered the horse and attempted to flee the shingle, the dragoon let fire a ball. I saw Forely arch his back in pain, his teeth clenched in a terrible grimace; for an instant of suspended breath, I felt certain the lander should slip from the stallion’s heaving flanks; but he proved greater than his wound, and clutched the tighter at Sidmouth, who kicked his horse up the slope with a furious oath. In a very little time, he and his clinging passenger gained the streets of town, the dragoons outstripped, and vanished from sight.

  I heaved a shuddering sigh, and wondered at the racing of my heart; and attempted, as best I could, to quiet the chaos of my mind—until, recollecting how unseemly was my presence in the midst of such brutish behaviour, I turned and hastened back along the Parade towards the safety of Wings cottage. I cared not whether Captain Fielding had observed my silent form, high above the brawling men—I cared not what he thought of its purpose or propriety—I felt only the bitterest anger towards that gendeman, though for the life of me, I knew not how to reconcile it. The Captain had done what any man of decency and sound principles should do; he had observed the weighting of the cargo in exactiy that spot by the Cobb, only the previous afternoon, and he had reported the same to the Revenue men at the nearest opportunity. Having received such excellent intelligence as Captain Fielding was able to provide, the dragoons should have been decidedly remiss in failing to apprehend the smugglers; but it smacked, all the same, of the setting of mantraps on purpose to break a poacher’s leg—poor sport indeed, and reflective, in my humble opinion, of a man who delights in mastery at any cost.

  “But Sidmouth is yet free,” I murmured, 21s I opened our garden gate, “though he is the Reverend, without a doubt”; and I swung myself up the path, feeling a sadness and an exhilaration at his reprehensible daring.? opened the cottage door, and stepped inside, to my mother’s open-mouthed regard—and stopped short, overcome with a blush.

  “Whatever have you got about your shoulders, child? And where have you gone in such a state, so early in the morning?”

  “I took a turn along The Walk, Mother,” I replied, realising, as I did so, that a smuggler’s cloak was yet warm upon my back. “It is the very soul of a September dawn, and I could not be kept indoors.”

  “Mind you wake Cassandra in time for the coach,” she called after me, as I mounted the stairs, her puzzlement at my garb replaced by more immediate concerns. I fluttered a hand in the good woman’s direction, and hastened towards the comfort of my room—the heady scents of pipe tobacco and brandy, lingering as they will in fine English wool, aflame in my lungs at every breath.

  1 Tom Musgrave, a charmingly vacant womanizer in Tlie Watsons manuscript, should not be confused with the more finely drawn Musgrave family of Persuasion. It was Louisa Musgrove who received a near-fatal head injury in falling from the Cobb—an event that may have been inspired by Cassandra Austen’s misfortune recounted in this diary. Austen clearly liked the sound of the name and its variations; and her godmother was Jane Musgrave of Oxfordshire, a relative of her mother’s. —Editor’s note.

  2 Frank Austen had recendy fallen in love with Mary Gibson, a girl of Ramsgate whom Jane found disappointing—she considered her as vulgar as her town. Frank married Miss Gibson in 1805; they had six sons and five daughters before her death in childbirth. —Editor’s note.

  3 George III and his retinue made a habit of visiting the Dorset village of Weymouth, where his brother the Duke of Gloucester often stayed. —Editor’s note.

  4 Henry refers here to his stepson, Hastings de Feuillide, Eliza’s sickly son. The boy died in 1801 at die age of fourteen. —Editor’s note.

  5 A spigot lanthorn is as Austen described it in the first chapter—a curiously shaped lamp designed specifically for signaling. It was tall, cylindrical, and entirely closed except for the spigot projecting from one side, the open end of which could be covered and uncovered by the signaler’s hand, emitdng a blink of light. It was frequendy employed by smugglers. —Editor’s note.

  6 French brandy was considered “raw” when it hit English shores, because it was colorless. The smugglers would mix it widi burnt sugar to give it the deep golden hue the English expected, and probably thinned it with water as well. —Editor’s note.

  7 An exclusive men’s club in Pall Mall. —Editor’s note.

  Friday, 14 September 1804

  ∼

  IT IS ALMOST A SE’ENNIGHT SINCE I LAST TOOK UP THIS JOURNAL, AND much of import has occurred. I have had a letter of Cassandra in Weymouth, remarking upon the Royal Family’s embarkation (which she and Eliza failed to witness, on account of a preoccupation with a milliner’s wares), and the lack of ice in the entire town, which cannot have done her aching head much good. I had heard already of both eventualities, for Mr. Crawford had occasion to travel to Weymouth yesterday, and encountered Cassandra there— and his being able to assure us that she appears in good looks and improved spirits, somewhat outweighed the pain of our separation, which I am sure she feels as acutely as myself. But she sounds as cheerful as one might, who has been denied the delights of Lyme and her sister’s company, not to mention the anxious attention of Mr. Dagliesh. Of that gendeman, whose spirits are quite sunk at Cassandra’s absence, I had occasion to write—but forbore from doing so, in the knowledge that my dear sister and the surgeon’s assistant are little likely ever to meet again. To convey tidings of his undiminishcd regard, and know how little it might avail Cassandra in her general loneliness and poor health, seemed nothing more than foolishness. And so when I answered her letter this morning—posted to Ibthorpe, where I believe Henry’s carriage shall convey them this evening—I chattered on cheerfully about the ubiquitous dirt of Wings cottage, and the slovenly Cook, and my own poor efforts to supply Cassandra’s place, and be useful and keep things in order. I told her a little of the manservant James, a willing and good-hearted young fellow, who is so earnest a student at his letters, that I have undertaken to supply him with my father’s discarded newspapers; and of my own expedition to Charmouth in recent days, for the daring trial of sea-bathing.

  It was then my occasion to ruminate on last night’s Assembly—which, though pleasant, was not very full for Thursday; the Miss Schuylers were gone away some days, and though their return is imminent, I understand from Mrs. Barnewall that they think of quitting Lyme altogether in the coming week. I was actually honoured in Mr. Crawford’s asking me
to dance twice, that gendeman being moved to pity by the dearth of younger fellows in the rooms; though a new, odd-looking man, whom I judged to be Irish by his ease, and in the company of the Honourable Barnewalls, might have asked me—but came to the point of it only as I was quitting the rooms.

  Mr. Dagliesh was present in the Assembly from the first moment, until called out by Mr. Carpenter to answer the pressing need of a child scalded in a pan of dishwater. At my entering the rooms, the surgeon’s assistant was indeed the first acquaintance I perceived—for he hastened to my side, and took my hand so earnesdy, and enquired what news I had of my sister—at which Mr. Crawford intervened.

  “Her flight from your ministrations appears to have done her a world of good, Dagliesh, “Mr. Crawford said, with great good humour and a slyly conscious look for the blushing fellow; “I was so very fortunate as to encounter Miss Austen this morning with her party in Weymouth, and found her much improved. I was able to convey the happy intelligence to all her dear family only a few hours ago.”

  “Happy, indeed, to have been in so lovely a creature’s presence,” Mr. Dagliesh murmured, with a distracted air. “I am relieved to find that Miss Austen’s removal did not increase the pain of her injuries.”

  “My brother Henry’s carriage is so good, and his horses so gentle, that I am sure her passage along the coastal roads occurred without incident,” I assured him. “We were sorry, Mr. Dagliesh, that you failed to make your own adieux to my sister; but her departure could not be delayed, as it depended upon die wishes and needs of others; and you had said you would attend her very early that morning.”

  The gendeman stammered, and looked confused; and indeed, seemed in such an agony of emotion, that I instantly took pity upon him. “But a surgeon’s days are never his own to command, as my sister and I fully comprehend. You could not, perhaps, have come any earlier.”