Jane and the Canterbury Tale (13 page)

F
RIDAY
, 22 O
CTOBER
1813

I
T WAS A SUBDUED PARTY THAT SAT DOWN TO DINNER LAST
evening; and I might have passed over the interlude without comment, and proceeded directly to my account of today’s events, had not Mr. Stephen Lushington, MP, obtruded himself on my notice.

I have said before that I am half in love with Mr. Lushington. He reminds me a little of my brother Henry, with his persistent good humour and air of Fashion. It cannot be an accident that both men are fourth sons—your fourth sons being left so entirely without expectation, that they must push for themselves from the moment they leave the cradle, and are, as a result, creatures of charm and insinuation their whole lives long. In this, Stephen Lushington is all that a Member of Parliament
ought
to be—so smiling, so replete with energy and fervour, and so condescending in his notice of
the generality of mankind, even females who may be judged essentially worthless for their lack of vote. Mr. Lushington, one instantly perceives, is possessed of the sort of fine understanding that acknowledges the
unofficial
power of Woman in the Home—the sort of influence a Sister, or Aunt, or Daughter, or Wife, may exert upon the opinions and strength of the Voting Member. A subtlety of mind and a delicacy of expression, in the condescension of such politicians, as they cultivate the vanity and good opinion of ladies like myself, who have only to see the London papers brought round to the door, to have them read; ladies who consider themselves to be thoroughly informed on all matters of Governance and Policy, and may be trusted to voice those opinions in the firmest language imaginable—is the kind of perfection I cannot fail to enjoy. Mr. Lushington offers exactly that complex of High Art and Absurdity I find most diverting in Modern Life.

Our MP was determined to be gay this evening; and as gaiety was so decidedly out of place, given the fact that Dr. Bredloe had
not
succeeded in removing the remains of Curzon Fiske from the servants’ wing, Mr. Lushington’s only appreciative auditors
must
be Miss Clewes and Harriot Moore. Edward, to whom most of his sallies were directed, preserved a quelling silence, his fingers idling on the stem of a wineglass and his looks devoid of all but polite disinterest. Young Edward, Mr. Lushington’s principal acquaintance in our household, was hardly more communicative. The two had formed an easy alliance over a pack of hounds, Young Edward’s chief interests lying in the realm of Sport; but hunting could hardly be deemed an appropriate topic of conversation, given the unfortunate circumstances of Curzon Fiske’s discovery—which left the Sporting Fellows casting unsuccessfully for a topic.

Fanny, who held the honour of hostess at the lower end of the table, was in excellent looks this evening. She had determined to meet the lowering event of
murder
by donning one
of her most cunning gowns, a very daring confection of burnt-orange silk with mammeluke sleeves—introduced last Season but still novel in Kent—which were draped and fitted at three-inch intervals from shoulder to wrist with bands of bronze spangles. The neckline of this interesting mode was cut in a diamond shape, ornamented with a garnet cross; and the whole apparition suggested a Fanny cast back to the days of Juliet and her Romeo—to which she had added the fillip of short curls held by a riband about her forehead. She required only a balcony and a swain beneath it, and looked both romantickal and ravishing. I little doubted she was the object of every male eye in the room. Fanny appeared determined to ignore Mr. John Plumptre, however. He, tho’ seated at her right hand, was in no state to appreciate either her dashing appearance or her degree of pique, being as yet engrossed in a convoluted discussion of Ecclesiastical Privilege with George Moore, seated opposite. Mr. Lushington and I faced one another in the middle of the table. He was resplendent in a bottle-green coat and dove-grey satin breeches. I was flanked by my nephews, and he by Harriot Moore and Miss Clewes, who had been added merely to round out the numbers; ordinarily the governess would have been dining on bread-and-milk in the nursery.

“And how have your young charges amused themselves today, Miss Clewes?” Mr. Lushington cried. He is a married man, after all, with children of his own, and may be allowed to shew an honest concern for the Infantry. “Sewing their samplers and toasting crumpets by the fire, while young George Moore torments them with charges of toy cavalry?”

“Oh, sir, I should hope that Master Moore may never teaze his cousins in the brutal way most boys find commonplace—he holds the little girls in such esteem, you know, as being able to speak a little Italian, and find such places as Ceylon on the globes.”

“Ceylon!” The MP was amused. “Are Lizzy and Marianne intent upon joining the Honourable East India Company? Or have they a taste for tigers?”

“I believe the matter of Ceylon arose,” Miss Clewes said in a lowered tone, “because of poor Mr. Curzon Fiske. It was in Ceylon, I believe, that he died. Or rather—where he was
thought
to have died. Oh, dear, it is all so very confusing!”

“Do you mean to say,” Lushington demanded with a penetrating look, “that you spoke of the … 
accident
 … in the nursery?”

Miss Clewes looked conscious. She darted a nervous glance first at Edward, and then at Harriot Moore, who appeared impervious to Mr. Lushington’s words, being engrossed in a halting tale my nephew George had commenced. We cannot curb George of his graceless habit of speaking across the table, tho’ it is frowned upon in polite society; in a family party such as this, however, much may be ignored.

“I ought to have shielded the children from all knowledge—and well I know it!” Miss Clewes threw an appealing glance at me, as if I might defend her against the Member’s attack; but I make it a rule
never
to speak across the table—when I am disinclined for a particular party’s conversation.

“I fear the intelligence so cut up my peace that I was on the point of
swooning
, Mr. Lushington,” Miss Clewes continued, “and once Lizzy had secured my vinaigrette, and Marianne had burnt the ostrich feathers intended for Miss Knight’s new hat—”

“What?” Fanny exclaimed, from the lower end of the table. “Miss Clewes, you
didn’t
!”

“I commend Marianne,” John Plumptre interjected gravely. “It is something to find, in so young a child, a disregard for mere objects of vanity—and a
truly Christian
sense of duty towards a fellow creature in distress.”

“Fiddle,” Fanny retorted. “It was all play-acting and heroics,
I am sure. The vinaigrette must have revived Miss Clewes, without the sacrifice of my feathers. They were only recently procured in London, at considerable expence!”

Plumptre’s expression hardened. “I wonder very much, Miss Knight, if there is
any
pleasure you would be willing to forgo, out of consideration for another’s welfare?”

Fanny flushed, torn between mortification and outrage.

“You go too far, sir,” Edward said quietly from his position at the head of the table. “All of us who have reason to honour and cherish Fanny know the sacrifices she has long made, on behalf of her little brothers and sisters, since the hour of my dear wife’s death; no one could so ably have filled Elizabeth’s place. Fanny rates her own concerns so far beneath everyone else’s; it is what one must particularly admire in her. But being a stranger to this household, no doubt you have failed to apprehend what all of us know too well to mention.”

Fanny’s eyes welled with tears at her father’s words; and in part from a desire to turn the conversation, I said rather loudly to Miss Clewes, “You are quite recovered from your indisposition, ma’am, I hope?”

“I am a little better, thank you, Miss Austen,” the governess said as she pressed one trembling hand to her heart. “I am sure that
you
, who went immediately to the
dreadful
scene, must particularly feel how
violent
death cuts up one’s peace! I wonder you were not prostrate upon a sopha the remainder of the day! To
consider
of the unfortunate man lying on the Pilgrim’s Way—such a
sacred
place, too—and quite dead, with none of us the wiser, but going about our business as tho’ we had hearts of stone!”

“Your sentiments do you credit, Miss Clewes,” George Moore said with a satiric edge to his voice, “but in the present case you may rest easy. Dying on the Pilgrim’s Way is perhaps the
only
sacred note Curzon Fiske struck in his varied career. For my part, I shall not mourn him.”

“George!” his wife cried reprovingly. My nephew’s tale, it seemed, had failed to entirely drown out the interesting conversation.

“Forgive me for speaking plainly, Harriot,” Mr. Moore returned, “but I never loved the fellow, tho’ we were raised as boon companions; and if his death inspires any regret, it is that it did not come sooner—in Ceylon, as was reported! At least
one
person might then have been spared further humiliation,” he added, in an undertone.

“One person,” Mr. Lushington declared, “appears to have been so entirely in accord with your sentiments, Moore, that he made certain Fiske proved as dead in fact, as he was reckoned in rumour!”

The clergyman met his gaze coldly. “You go a little fast for me, Lushington. I will not yet admit another party to have been involved. Is it inconceivable that Fiske should have done away with himself?”

“Completely and utterly!” The MP pounded his fist on the table, and my wineglass teetered. “Do you honestly believe the man journeyed long months by sea, risking all to return to England, merely to despatch himself in the middle of a common footpath? Nonsense! Where is the motive? And, more to the point—where is the weapon?”

“I never understood Fiske’s reasons for
living
as he did,” Mr. Moore asserted. “I cannot be expected, therefore, to apprehend why he should chuse to end that life. As for the weapon—no doubt it shall be found, in time. And then we may thankfully put a period to a scoundrel’s existence.”

“Oh,
George
,” Harriot mourned.

But Mr. Lushington would not be silenced. He shifted his chair a little so as to face Mr. Moore, and leaned towards him with a fixed smile. “I rather wonder at your confessing so violent an antipathy before the Magistrate—and at his own table, too!—while Fiske’s manner of death remains uncertain. But perhaps you have sources of intelligence others do not.
Perhaps you are privy to the judgement of the coroner, before even a panel has been named. As you are comfortably united by marriage to the Law, in this instance, I suppose you may believe yourself safe from suspicion!”

This clever little speech, so vicious in its implication, was offered in a jovial spirit, as tho’ Mr. Lushington meant nothing but good humour all round. His beaming looks and the droll twinkle in his eye, as he practically accused the clergyman of murder, inspired Miss Clewes to titter behind her hand, as if our Back Bencher had offered a very good joke. Harriot Moore, however, sat frozen in her place beside Mr. Lushington, unable to turn her head in either his direction or her husband’s; and Edward went so far as to rise from his seat.

“Have a care what you say, Lushington.” My brother’s voice was as steel. “I take the responsibilities of my office with as much seriousness as you regard
yours;
and to suggest that George Moore would expect otherwise, in any dealings between ourselves, is an offence to both.”

“Good Lord!” Mr. Lushington cried, and raised his broad hands in protest. “Pure badinage, Mr. Knight, I assure you! I have a lamentably idle tongue, that wags all the day long as most of your politicians’ tongues will—and it has caught me in coils long before this! I beg your pardon—I should not like to give offence to
anyone
present.”

George Moore, too, was on his feet; his cold grey eyes glittered with malice. “Offence! You offered much the same thing to Fiske, did you not, on the night he fled England for India? —The night, Mr. Lushington, that your
lamentably idle tongue
accused him of cheating at cards?”

  
CHAPTER ELEVEN