Jane and the Man of the Cloth (38 page)

“And what do
you
believe is Sidmouth's business?” I enquired of her tentatively. “He is much abroad, in France, I hear—though perhaps not so much of late.”

“Because of the war, you would mean?” She sat back against the cushions, one delicate forefinger to her reddened nostrils. “Aye, that is very bad for business, I have no doubt. I myself intended to purchase a lovely length of silk, promised me by one of the Free Traders hereabouts, and I find it is not to be had. The controls at the ports are much stronger, I hear, and the Royal Navy less amenable to turning a blind eye, no matter how much brandy is waved beneath their noses.”

“Whatever would you speak of, Mrs. Barnewall?” My brow was furrowed, my countenance the very picture of confusion.

“Why, the Gentlemen of the Night, of course! The Reverend's men, who keep us all in silk and snuff, and playing cards and sealing wax. You
will
have heard of the Reverend—as I recall, we discussed his exploits at your very first Assembly.”

I studied my acquaintance's expression—the slanting eyes, sparkling with fun—or was it calculation?—the determined smile, which might hide a mind curious to know how much I had guessed of her affairs—the impenetrable facade of a carefully composed woman, betraying nothing of her true mind. She had allowed mc to know that she was familiar with the smugglers’ habits, that she patronised them for their wares; and had even referred obliquely to Maggie Tibbit's silk. One might almost think that she knew of my visit to the woman, and my own purchase of the stuff—as perhaps she did. For the first time I was afraid in her presence, from knowing myself to be in waters too deep for steady footing.

“I did not know that people in my acquaintance were aware of the clandestine trade,” I said slowly.

“Aware of it? But, my dear, they
run
it,” she replied, in some amusement. “Whatever do you think Sidmouth's business is? His errands for the little LeFevre? His grudge against the Captain, whom we all know to have been opposed to the Trade? Depend upon it, Miss Austen, the Captain's death—however conveniendy it might be ascribed to an
affaire de coeur
over the
petite
mademoiselle—was a matter of business. And if I adjudge Sidmouth righdy, he will dispose of the coroner's charge in similar terms. He will disappear, of a sudden, from his Lyme gaol, and take a swift ship for France, where he shall be given up for dead; but in a little while, in a different town, on another part of the coast, the Reverend will reappear.”

“You are very intimate with the gendeman's business, Mrs. Barnewall,” I observed.

“Am I?” She laughed mockingly, and reached for her snuffbox with the archest of glances. “I must say I find the gentleman irresistible. But then, most women do, do they not, Miss Austen? I daresay you have fallen victim to Sidmouth yourself, on one or two occasions.”

“If I have, I should be the very last to own it,” I said firmly, and rose to take my leave. “It has been a most enjoyable afternoon, Mrs. Barnewall; I regret that I visited Wootton House only at the close of your stay in these parts. I should like to have seen it in finer weather.”

“Then do not stay away, while yet we both remain in Lyme,” she rejoined, with perhaps an equal level of insincerity; and so we parted—two women of self-sufficient habits, and little inclination for the society of females, and yet driven together by a mutual need for confidences gained. I had come to Mrs. Barnewall with the intention of soliciting intelligence; but it was only at our parting that I knew her to have received me with an
equal
aim in view. I felt that I had been carefully managed from my first step inside her hail; but the
why
of it eluded me.

1
Wootton Fitzpaine is a small village some three-and-a-half miles northeast of Lyme, between the forested Wootton Hill and Coney's Castle Hill, on which sit the ruins of an Iron Age settlement. —
Editor's note.

2
Tattersall's was the most famous of the horse auction houses in the London of Austen's day; it was also known for its betting book, kept in an anteroom, and forming the secondary occupation of the gentlemen who frequented the place. —
Editor's note.

3
There were numerous varieties of snuff in Austen's day, rather as there are of herbal teas in our own, and different blends were chosen according to the mood of the consumer or the time of day. The Prince of Wales kept varieties from all over the world in his snuff cellar, though he disliked snulT itself, and contrived never to inhale it however many times a day he went through the ritual. His mother, Queen Charlotte, consumed from the age of seventeen only one blend
⁴
—of tobacco, ambergris, attar, and bitter almonds. —
FAilor's note.

Sunday, 23 September 1804

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I
T WAS NEARLY THE HOUR FOR DINNER WHEN
I
RETURNED TO WINGS
cottage from Wootton Fitzpaine yesterday afternoon, but the fog had lifted under the influence of a light breeze, promising a shift in the weather; and so I seized a few moments of liberty to slip down Pound Street to the linendraper's, of a mind to view Mr. Milsop's latest sketches of evening gowns, so important to the effect of a good length of peach-coloured silk, and to consider whether a demi-turban
¹
or a feather should be better suited to my headdress; and with such pleasant fancies dancing before my eyes, and banishing all thoughts of smugglers, their wives, and their purported bloodlettings, I very nearly ran down poor Mr. Dagliesh, who was engaged in conversing with a rotund lady of middle age, not five paces from Mr. Milsop's door.

“Miss Jane Austen!” he cried, with a flourish of his hat and a hasty bow. “I hope I find you well?”

“Very well, Mr. Dagliesh,” I replied, with a nod for his companion, who paid no heed to ceremony and made her lumbering way on up the street, leaving me to enjoy the gentleman's undivided attentions. “I am relieved to see you in excellent health.”

“Had you any reason to fear for it?” he enquired.

“Oh! No reason at all—though I guessed you were so much in demand, and in the middle of the night, too— about the shingle and the downs, in attending to all manner of wounds of a sudden received, whose victims have not the luxury of appearing by the light of day—that I thought you must soon be quite broken down.”

He started, and gave me a narrow look, and with a foolish smile, said that the demands of a country practise were sometimes unmanageable.

“Particularly when one is under the obligation of attending to one's friends,” I continued. “The demands of a stranger might be put off to another day; but the necessity of one's intimate acquaintance may not be gainsaid. And there has been so much of that sort of thing in Lyme, of late! A lady thrown from a horse here, a shot to the back there, a skirmish at sea that might leave a man at the mercy of Fate—I wonder you have slept at all, from riding to the Grange.”

“Miss Austen—” he began, and then halted in confusion.

“I know now why you could not be summoned, the very night of my sister's unfortunate injury—for you were undoubtedly in attendance upon some smugglers’ band, deep in the folds of the Pinny, or secreted in a convenient cave. And nothing is plainer than your failing to appear the morning of her departure for London, to pay your respects. It was the very morning that Mr. Sidmouth routed the dragoons, just below the Cobb, and even
1
observed Davy Forely the lander to have been shot Was it Mademoiselle LeFevre who cared for him there, in the kitchen garret, against the Preventy Men's discovery?”
²

“I could not undertake to say,” the surgeon's assistant replied. “It was not
there
that I attended him, certainly. But tell me, Miss Austen—would you have a man die of a wound he did not merit, when a surgeon could easily be called? Is there some
wrong
you might find, in my ministering to such unfortunates? For to heal
is
my calling in life.”

“No wrong, Mr. Dagliesh—unless it be that your care for the local criminal set prevents you from attending to those more worthy of your attention. Had my sister died of her injuries, I should look with less gentleness at the manner in which you spend your evenings.”

“Heaven forbid!” he cried, with a sensible look. “And how does your sister? She continues to mend?”

“As swiftly as we might have hoped—her
Ijmdon
physician having
no other
claim upon his time and attention, that might prove more remunerative.”

“You are severe upon me.” He turned his hat in both hands, worrying at the brim. “But money has not been my object, though you
would
have my motives solely mercenary. I may go so far as to assert, Miss Austen, that neither my conduct, nor that of those I have attended, merits such censure; but honour forbids me saying more.” His look, when he raised his eyes, had something of pleading in it, and a circumspection I should not have guessed Mr. Dagliesh capable of. “There is a nobility in the most common of men, Miss Austen, when they are spurred to act from principle; and I have found that the
appearance
of what is wrong may often cloak, conversely, a very great good.”

“As I am sure the opposite is true,” I rejoined, somewhat tardy, “with all manner of evil parading itself as circumspection and propriety.”

“That has ever been the case,” he said, with some gentleness. “The wonder is that we should still be equally as fooled.” And with a civility, he left me—though less happy in my designs upon peach-coloured silk.

IT WAS AS I RETURNED FROM POUND STREET TO WlNGS COTTAGE, that I first noticed the presence of a man to my back. He appeared to find interest in shop windows at exacdy the moment I turned to gaze at something on offer; and resumed his slow stroll in my train whenever my interest was satisfied, and my own walk recommenced. Upon first perceiving him, I was puzzled; then alarmed; and finally, determined upon calculation. Though I had half a mind to confront him with questions, the possibility that I but succumbed to an overactive imagination, could not be discounted; and so I turned instead into a local purveyor of comestibles, in search, ostensibly, of tea. I knew the shop to let out onto an adjacent street at its rear; and upon learning that no tea was to be had in all of Lyme—a curious notion, that—I exited by this latter way. Imagine my dismay, upon perceiving the gentleman as yet behind! For he had assuredly pursued me to the shop's interior, and thence into the adjacent street.

I had no desire to alert him to my awareness of his presence, by attempting blatantiy to lose him; and so, with my head down and my feet purposeful, I made as swiftly as I might for Wings cottage. A hurried ascent to my room, to dress for dinner—and to observe the gendeman posted in the street below, arranged so very casually in a doorway, for all the world like one of my brother James's Loiterers.
³

I wonder what shall become of him? Does he intend to remain there the rest of the night? And who has set him upon me—and for what possible reason? Is he, perhaps, one of Roy Cavendish's men, intent upon learning the direction of my enquiries, since I have been so rude as to avoid communication with the Customs man himself?

I was unsettled the length of dinner, and could make only the most cursory of replies to my mother's many suppositions regarding Wootton House, and my father's observations of the history of Wootton Fitzpaine's church.

And now, alone with my pen and paper in the clear light of a Sunday morning, with little of activity before me other than the writing of a long-overdue letter to my poor Cassandra, I am incapable of so simple a task, and must rise continually to peer out at the street, in as stealthy a manner possible, in search of an unknown watcher.

Monday, 24 September 1804

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NOT LONG AFTER BREAKFAST THIS MORNING, AS
I
SETTLED DOWN IN
the sitting-room to mend the slit in my brown wool, and mull over all that I knew of Lyme's tangled affairs, I was starded to find in the depths of my workbasket, a bit of paper—its edges sealed with a drop of tallow. Opening it in some wonderment, I discovered it to be a missive from our man James, written painstakingly with a bit of lead, and looking something of a scrawl.

Dear Miss,
it ran, /?????
be seing Matty Hurley as you askt it
being my free day. Do you come to St. Michael's church at
3
o'cfock. I hope as this will serve. Yours respeckfuUy James.

I had but to waste the better part of the morning, then, in fitful bursts of work, and occasional glances from the scullery window—which revealed no watchers waiting in doorways; and indeed, I am forced to wonder if my fancies did not run away with me Saturday e'en, in being surfeited with all manner of preposterous schemes.