Jane and the Man of the Cloth

by Stephanie Barron

  “Indeed, I know not how to explain this visit—though I should not like you to believe it an unwelcome one, sir.”

  “You are all kindness.”

  I waited, believing the burden of conversation to be on his side; and Mr. Cavendish did not disappoint me.

  “I shall turn direcdy to the point, Miss Austen. You will have heard,” he said, tapping a black band high upon his arm, “of the death of the gallant Captain Fielding.” At this, the Customs agent’s countenance assumed a remarkable expression of mournful gravity, as though he had swallowed something inimitable to a frog’s digestion. “His loss is a heavy one—for his King and country, no less than for his intimate circle.”

  “Indeed,” I said, with circumspection. I et us try what Mr. Cavendish would reveal; let us observe how closely he guards his purpose. A gentle trap, delicately baited, should tell me much. “It is some time since I have been able to think of it with anything but indignation, sir. For such a gendeman, blessed with the noblest qualities, to be cut down by a common footpad! Are decent people no longer to move at liberty? Are we all to be victims of the rabble, as though we called ourselves anything but Englishmen?”

  Mr. Cavendish’s eyes protruded, and he leaned closer to study my countenance. “So they would have it in Lyme, Miss Austen, but in Lyme it naturally suits the purpose. I do not credit this tale of a footpad; I do not credit it at all.”

  “But the Captain was relieved of his purse!”

  Mr. Cavendish offered an eloquent shrug. “A trifling matter. Any man intent upon taking the Captain’s life should seize his valuables, the better to suggest a death by misadventure.”

  I had already determined as much in my own mind; if Geoffrey Sidniouth (or anyone else) meant to disguise the nature of the Captain’s end—since affairs of honour inevitably ended in the victor’s flight to the Continent, if not his hanging—how better, than to turn out his pockets, like a common thief?

  “Whatever do you mean to say, Mr. Cavendish?” 1 enquired mildly, with a view to encouraging his confidence. That Captain Fielding had an enemy?”

  An instant’s silence, as the Customs man weighed his thoughts; but an instant only, and he had formed a resolution. “Have you heard, Miss Austen, of the Reverend?”

  “I have. Captain Fielding himself related the chief of what I know about the man.”

  “I understood as much. That is why I am here.”

  “I confess I do not take your meaning, Mr. Cavendish.”

  “Do not trifle with me, Miss Austen. I know as much of your business regarding Captain Fielding as he might allow himself, as a gendeman, to reveal.” The slight frown I adopted at this intelligence availed me nothing; Mr. Cavendish swept on with all the certainty of his purpose full upon his face.

  “On the occasion of my final meeting with Captain Fielding, he informed me that he had admitted you to his confidence—a necessity precipitated by your own penetration. How much he may have betrayed himself, I cannot be certain; but he laid the credit entirely on your side, Miss Austen, in declaring that you had divined his business entirely from appearances, and had confronted him with your knowledge.”

  “I was aware that the Captain was engaged in affairs of a very serious nature, regarding the smuggling trade— that much is certain. He was not as he professed himself to be, a simple Naval officer living in retirement, and consumed with a passion for the cultivation of roses.”

  “You will have guessed, then, that the Reverend was his object; and that in his pursuit of the Reverend, the Captain invited considerable peril.”

  “You would suggest, then, that Captain Fielding died at the Reverend’s hand?”

  The Customs man sat back in his chair somewhat abruptly. “I am certain of it. But 1 have no proof.”

  “And it is my understanding, Mr. Cavendish, that the Reverend’s identity is all but unknown.”

  “Come, come, Miss Austen,” he cried, with marked irritation, “you know what Mr. Sidmouth’s display has been. Consider his abominable behaviour only last week, and before all of Lyme. His actions then declared him the smugglers’ lord. He has been cleverness itself to date—his shipments follow no set schedule, being dependent upon the onset of foul weather, and the cover it provides; and there are others he employs, to captain the vessels and arrange the conveyance of goods, so that he is always far from the scene of a successful landing—but he must have the ordering of such agents at one time or another; and what is required is that we seize him in the very act. Once, then, in the clutches of the law, we might force him to an admission of Fielding’s murder.”

  “And why do you tell me of all your plans, Mr. Cavendish?” I enquired, my heart sinking.

  “Because, Miss Austen,” he replied, rising and crossing to my side, “Fielding gave me to understand that you were an intimate of High Down Grange. It was his belief—and his anxiety, if I may speak frankly—that Sidmouth meant to seduce you as he has seduced his unfortunate cousin. The Captain’s benevolence on your behalf was very great, young woman, and you should be cold-hearted indeed, did you turn from the memory of his goodness!”

  This last was delivered in so abrupt a tone, as to make me jump where I sat; but I quelled my indignation, though my flushed cheeks surely betrayed my perturbation.

  “You overreach the bounds of propriety, sir,” I said, in a lowered tone. “1 beg you will desist/’

  “Not until I have won your consent, Miss Austen, in a scheme of some importance to His Majesty.”

  “What can such schemes have to do with me?”

  “Nothing—or everything, did you bear the Captain’s memory some gratitude.”

  “Speak less of gratitude, and more of sense!” I cried.

  “Very well.” Roy Cavendish turned to pace before my chair, his head bent and his hands clasped behind him. “You are acquainted with High Down Grange. You have met, I think, Mademoiselle LeFevre.”

  “I have.”

  “It is in your power, then, to visit the household—to press your advantage—to discern the movements of its inmates, and discover, perhaps, the night of an expected meeting between Sidmouth and his henchmen/’

  I could make no reply.

  Cavendish wheeled and gazed at me with penetration.“You, Miss Austen, might fill Captain Fielding’s place— and with less danger to yourself, in that your gentler sex, and the inevitable presumption of good on your part, would render suspicion unlikely. You might venture where a man could not. And in so doing, you should perform a service very dear to the Crown, and to the memory of the excellent fellow who died in its service.”

  “You wish me to turn informer,” I said clearly; but my hands clutched at the arms of my chair.

  “No such despicable term as that,” Mr. Cavendish rejoined, his thick lips curving in an unfortunate attempt at a smile. “You should serve rather as handmaiden to justice.”

  “A handmaiden,” I said. “You are so convinced of Mr. Sidmouth’s guilt?”

  “I am. As surely as I stand before you now, Miss Austen, I may state that Sidmouth’s mind alone has directed the foulest of deeds. The cleverness of the smugglers’ work; the killing of Bill Tibbit upon the Cobb, so publicly and yet so secretly done; and now, the felling of the Free Traders’ chief adversary, Captain Fielding—it cannot be coincidence only. Surely your heart cries out in a similar vein, Miss Austen. The Captain had moved close to his prey; and his prey turned predator in an instant. You cannot witness his death and be unmoved by a desire to avenge it.”

  I sat as though turned to stone, my eyes upon the sitting-room fire; and gave a few moments to contemplation. My despairing wish for SidmouuYs innocence met at every turn conviction of his guilt. Only a few nights previous, at the Lyme Assembly, Captain Fielding had declared him to be the very Reverend, and declared that the man was nearly in his grasp. He had believed himself assured of SidmouuYs taking; but his assurance was as dust. The master of High Down was a formidable foe indeed. Could I muster the courage to contest his maste
ry? Was the prize worth the risk—to my heart as well as my person?

  And with this last thought, a wave of revulsion overcame me. It was impossible that I should harbour any sort of tenderness towards a man so recognised as lost to all morality—a man whose every energy was given over to the pursuit of wealth and unrestrained passion, regardless of law, regardless of cost. But I did harbour such an emotion; and I detected within it the refusal to credit Mr. SidmouuYs guilt. Much had been laid at his door—but still I could not find it in me to abandon him entirely. Was Mr. Crawford likely to exhibit such affection for a man whose reputation was entirely ruthless? And what of Seraphine? That she regarded her cousin as the source of all goodness was decidedly evident, regardless of the calumnies that surrounded them both.

  If I were to settle the contest within my soul, however— if doubt and disapprobation were to be banished—I must have the truth. And Roy Cavendish’s plan was as good an one for procuring it as any. The proof of my own eyes should serve to silence the warring voices within my heart. A delicate balance must be achieved, however, if my own pursuit of knowledge were not to run afoul of the Crown’s.

  I raised my head and gazed at the Customs agent evenly. “I shall do as you wish, Mr. Cavendish, on one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  ‘That I direct my own efforts. Your scheme depends upon my discretion; and a too-public converse between ourselves should ignite the suspicions of those we least wish to rouse.”

  He bowed his head.

  And what if I discovered that Mr. Sidmouth was indeed capable of anything? Having gained the knowledge, how was I to act? I thrust aside thai dilemma as trouble enough for another day.

  “And one thing more, Mr. Cavendish.” I rose to convey to him that our meeting was at an end.

  “Miss Austen?”

  “If you honour my reputation as a lady, you must never reveal the source of your information, do I succeed in obtaining it” I knew myself in that moment, and called myself a coward. For if I embarked upon a program of spying at High Down, and determined Mr. Sidmouth’s guilt, I should be the means of bringing him to the scaffold, for the sake of all that I valued in society. But I could never bear to confront him, at his final day, with his knowledge of my betrayal full upon his face.

  1 Miss Crawford describes the common practice among genteel families of ordering the construction of a new carriage for a wedding—usually at the groom’s expense. —Etlilor’t note.

  2 This letter no longer survives in the collected correspondence. Cassandra Austen is believed to have destroyed many of Jane’s letters after her sister’s death. —Editor’s note.

  19 September 1804

  ∼

  ALL THROUGH THE LENGTH OF YESTERDAY THE WIND TORE ABOUT Wings cottage—shuddering at the casements, howling around the corners, and ratding the very door frames— while the rain lashed at the roof, and sheets of salty spray cascaded over the Cobb. I have never known what it is to sail the seas, and feel the tossing of a fragile vessel in the maw of a storm; and having witnessed the raging tide so close upon my stoop, I am happy to leave such adventures to my hardier brothers. The only consolation in foul weather is to turn one’s lock upon the street, and settle in by the fire with tea and a good book—and hope that Cook will devise a meal that comforts, as the day fades into night.

  But that meal, once taken, reveals itself as the high point of an unendurably dull day; and the slow mounting of stairs, while one’s candle flickers in the turbulent air, affords a moment to attend to the voices in the wind. My sleep was certainly marked by their ceaseless crying— though sleep itself was long in coming, and my tossing and turning amidst the bedclothes a parody of the frenzied trees beyond my window. Such thoughts as roiled within my brain—of murder, and deceit, and a sinister smiling frog—would not be stilled, and required the full compass of the night for their consideration. I awoke from a fitful dreaming not an hour past dawn, and found the daylight sky turned peaceful, with the tattered remnants of cloud fading blackly at the horizon. Rivulets of water ran down Lyme’s steep high street, to end in the calmer basin of the bay; and the first carters bound for the market were busy about the cobblestones. Peace after tumult, and with it, a clearing of the mind; I should take up the errand of returning Mr. Sidmouth’s cloak, which he had placed about my shoulders some ten days before, and all but forgotten in a corner of my clothes press. I would attempt the few miles’ walk to the Grange that very morning.

  HOW VERY DIFFERENT WERE MY FEELINGS UPON THE PRESENT occasion, in approaching the old frame farmhouse high upon the downs, than they had been the night of my sister’s misfortune! Then, my anxiety was active on another’s behalf; but now, to my trepidation, I found it exerted entirely on my own. Deceit has ever been foreign to my nature, and the adoption of stratagems and disguise abhorrent; but truth and frankness would not serve in the present case, where so much of both were already prostrate upon dishonour’s altar.

  With firmer resolve, then, I redoubled my grip on Sidmouth’s cloak and crossed the familiar courtyard, expecting every moment the onset of the dogs, or the boy Toby and his blunderbuss; but I was allowed to proceed unmolested today, and took it for a favourable omen. The courtyard itself was a confusion of waggons and harness, cast aside but not yet stored; and I remembered Roy Cavendish ‘s words with a sudden chill. The Customs man had offered it as certain knowledge that the smugglers preferred to land their goods in the very worst sort of weather, the better to confound the Crown’s dragoons; and assuredly last night had been highly propitious for any sort of skulduggery. At this further suggestion of Sidmouth’s propensities, I confess my heart sank; but I determined to go forward, there being little comfort in turning back, as ever benighted by ignorance.

  My arrival at the door occasioned another tremor—for what words should I summon, did the master of High Down confront me at his very portal, though I had committed to visit his cousin? The mere sight of Sidmouth should reduce me to a painful penury with words, so conflicted were my emotions towards himself. But I was spared even this trial; after some few moments, when I felt certain the entire household had been called away, the housemaid Mary answered my ring at the bell, and bade me come in search of Mademoiselle LeFevre.

  I followed her down the cool stone hallway, and out a door on the nether end, and along a path to the kitchens—which, owing to a fear of fire, were separately housed. And there I espied the three dogs—jasper, Fang, and Beelzebub, if memory served—in attitudes of languor about the kitchen door, and the sound of song emanating from within. It was assuredly Seraphine, her head bent over an ankle propped in her lap; and had it not been for a conviction that the foot was too small to be Sidmouth’s, I should have turned and fled that very moment.

  A sound I must have made, and her blond head came up; an instant’s bewilderment, superseded as swiftly by recognition, and the ghost of a smile. “Miss Austen,” Seraphine said quietly, and set down the shears she held in her hand; “what a surprise. And a pleasure. Please”— with that, a gesture towards the kitchen’s interior— be so good as to find a seat. I am almost finished my work here.”

  I entered, and found that the ankle was attached to Toby, and that his face and arms appeared singularly bruised. “Whatever can have befallen the boy!” I exclaimed, and received a surly glance from the fellow in question by way of reply.

  “He has had a fall,” Seraphine said smoothly.

  “From the hay-loft,” Toby added, with a quick look at his nursemaid. “Missed the ladder in the dark, miss, on account o’ the lanthorn blowin’ over in the storm. Quite a tumble I had, and my foot gone lame.”

  A hay-loft, indeed. To judge by the Grange’s barn, such a fall should have succeeded in finishing young Toby, with a broken neck at the very least. More likely, to my mind, that he had taken a fall about the cliff, in the darkness of night and the confusion of a storm.

  “I trust it is not broken?”

  Seraphine shook her head and patted the bandage she
had only just secured. “Our good Mr. Dagliesh has been and gone, and he assures us that Toby will be walking in no time. But until you are, young sir,” she finished somewhat sternly, “you are to pay heed to Mr. Dagliesh’s words. Rest and sit, or your leg will be the worse for it.”

  With a dark look and a mutter, Toby swung his ankle from Seraphine’s lap and set it on the floor, barely disguising a whimper as he did so; and at that very moment, a shadow fell across the door and I turned to find Geoffrey Sidmouth standing behind me, his eyes intent upon my face and a pair of newly-whitded crutches in his hand.

  “Mr. Sidmouth,” I said with what I trust was my usual composure, and a bob of my bonneted head. “I am able to return your cloak at long last, with my deepest thanks. I have no excuse to plead for my neglect of your kindness these many days, but the usual absorption of a lady in seaside schemes of pleasure.”

  “There is no need for apology, Miss Austen—I might have sent a manservant, had I felt the cloak to be wanting—but your exertion in returning it is considerable, and not to be dismissed.” And at that he bowed, though the hint of mockery in the gesture served to lessen somewhat its civility, and reached a hand for my burden. I gave over the cloak into Sidmouth’s safekeeping; and saw that his thoughts had shifted already to the stable boy Toby.

  “Come along, lad,” he said, with a hand to Toby’s head. “These crutches will have you to rights in an instant. Well do I remember my own turned ankles, from falling out of trees, Miss Austen,” he added, with a look for me, “and tripping over fox holes; they were as much a part of childhood as the turning of the seasons. And fortunately I remember how to fashion a crutch, when need be.”

  Such gentleness, as he helped the boy to his feet! Such a tender concern for a stable lad’s well-being, that he should whittle some support with his very hands! And how fond the look, as he watched Toby swing haltingly out the doorway, and cross the yard to the barn! Could such benevolence co-exist with the most vicious propensities? Impossible! But how, then, to explain the waggons about the courtyard, all speaking so eloquently of haste and necessity in the night?