Jane and the Man of the Cloth (15 page)

The Captain eased his game leg out of the barouche with the coachman Jarvis's assistance, and, once steady upon the ground, turned to hand down first Miss Armstrong and then my sister. “Having seen the cutter running offshore today, I find it in me to wonder, indeed, if Mr. Sidmouth's presence at Mr. Crawford's fossil pits was entirely without design. From such a point, one might have an unimpeded view of all sea traffic; he could combine a pleasure party with scrupulous observance of his cargo's fortunes.”

“But he departed before the cutter appeared,” Lucy Armstrong argued. Captain Fielding merely bowed, and gestured her towards the open door, where a housemaid stood ready to usher her within. Cassandra followed, with the faintest of smiles. Her gait was unsteady, as though she moved under the influence of a fearful headache. My heart misgave me as I watched; but Captain Fielding's hand was outstretched to receive my own, and I returned to the subject uppermost in my thoughts.

“You have indeed been an avid observer of all Mr. Sidmouth's movements,” I said, as I grasped the Captain's gloved fingers and found the carriage step. “I would venture to say that even your place of abode is not without design. With no other object than the closest scrutiny, can you have chosen to settle in a house not a half-mile from High Down Grange. For no other reason than to calculate his ruin, can you have chosen a neighbour so abhorrent to you.”

How my heart reacted to this knowledge of Captain Fielding's design, I cannot say. I confess to a confusion of emotions—some all in admiration of his penetration and bravery, and others, having more to do with Geoffrey Sidmouth, that were marked by regret. But I could not deny the calculation of Fielding's words, and the careful study behind them; I myself had spent two nights at High Down Grange, and had seen the red-cloaked girl with a lanthorn bobbing along the cliffs. What had Mr. Sidmouth said to Seraphine, in those few phrases of French? Something about the men, and the dogs, and the bay. And the name of the botde-green boat on the beach—
IM
Gascogne.
Presumably a cargo was expected the very night of our precipitate arrival—hence the hostility with which we were met, and the stable boy's levelled blunderbuss. Seraphine LeFevre was undoubtedly dispatched to divert the men and their wares to another place of hiding, for the length of our unfortunate stay.

“You are possessed of a singular understanding,” Captain Fielding said, his eyes intent upon my face. We stood thus a moment in the drive while Jarvis remounted the box. “But then, I have allowed myself an unwonted frankness in your company. It may be that our minds are formed for such effortless meeting.”

“I am happy to learn that you are not
entirely
languishing in retirement, Captain Fielding” I rejoined, deflecting his gallantry with a smile. “Indeed, I think you are possibly the most
active
former Naval officer I have ever met.”

He threw back his blond head and laughed. “You have found me out, Miss Austen. I am, indeed, as yet employed—though on behalf of His Majesty's revenues rather than his seamen. I shall have the Reverend yet— and when I do, I shall be very much surprised if he is
not
Geoffrey Sidmouth.”

1
In her letter to Cassandra, written from Lyme Sept 14, 1804, Austen refers to Miss Armstrong without revealing her Christian name; in another letter dated April 21, 1805, she mentions renewing the acquaintance in Bath. We learn here for the first time that Miss Armstrong's name was Lucy. —
Editor's nete.

2
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is best known as a wealthy lawyer of the Georgian period who advocated Utilitarianism: the belief that society should be regulated by inherent principles, much as his rough contemporary Adam Smith (1723-1790) believed economies operated by self-evident market forces. Chief among these principles was that social action should produce the “greatest good for the greatest number”—a frankly democratic notion. Bentham attracted a coterie of “philosophical radicals,” who, by 1815, advocated universal suffrage in England. Reverend Austen is referring here, however, to a famous passage from Bentham's 1789 work,
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and legislation.
—
Editor's note.
³
Mr. Sidmouth is paraphrasing Kant The philosopher actually wrote that he was unable to find “any being capable of laying claim to the distinction of being the final end of creation.”
(Critique of Judgment,
1790). —
Editors note.

4
The search for fossils was well advanced along the Dorset coast by the time Austen visited it in 1804. A local schoolgirl, Mary Anning, would be credited with the discovery of the world's first ichthyosaur in the cliffs between Lyme and Charmouth in 1811, when she was just twelve years old. —
Editor's note.

5
Ann RadclifTe Is best remembered for the Gothic romance,
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
which Austen satirized in
Northanger Abbey.
She was, along with her contemporaries Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith, and Fanny Burney, one of the women novelists Austen read and admired. —
Editor's note.

6
Nuncheon
was a common term for food taken between breakfast and dinner—which in the country was usually eaten in the late afternoon, around four o'clock—since the term
luncheon,
or lunch, did not exist. —
Editor's note.

7
Eliza refers here to the March 1804 execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of royal Bourbon blood. Napoleon had the duke seized, imprisoned, secredy uied, and executed, in the wake of several Royalist plots to dethrone him. —
Editor's note.

8
Venturers were what we might call venture capitalists—titled or simply wealthy gentlemen who invested in others’ business ventures. —
Editor's note.

9
The cutter Jane describes probably came about near Charton Bay, two miles west of Lyme proper; this was a lonely stretch of shoreline favored by smugglers. —
Editor's note.

10
Captain Fielding is referring to the Royal Navy practice of pressing smuggling captains into active service when apprehended. Such seamen were known 10 be remarkably skilled, from long experience of landing on difficult coasts in bad weather and under cover of darkness; exactly the sort of captains the Royal Navy needed in time of war. —
Editor's note.

11
The Pinny, in Austen's time, was a heavily wooded wilderness a short walking distance from town. She describes it in
Persuasion
as possessed of
^4t
grcen chasms between romantic rocks, where the scat tered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state….” There were to be additional land-tails in subsequent years, the most spectacular of which took place in 1839. It was the ideal place for a smugglers’ band to meet —
Editor's note.

12
Jane alludes here to the whittle—a shawl of red wool traditionally worn by the women of Lyme's laboring class. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, the tradition was on the wane, as Lymc residents of all classes were increasingly exposed to the cosmopolitan dress of fashionable visitors. —
Editor's note.

8 September 1804
Dawn

∼

I
HAVE PUT ASIDE MY FOOLSCAP AND MY EFFORTS TO FORM
E
MMA
Watson to my liking—a more wrongheaded heroine I have never encountered, so intent is she upon ceding the stage to her spiteful sisters and the ridiculous Tom Musgrave
¹
—and taken down this journal once more to record all that has unfolded since yester e'en. I had progressed only so far, in relating the chief of that tumultuous day, when Mr. Dagliesh appeared at my brother Henry's dispatching. And so I must set down something of how the surgeon's assistant came again to Wings cottage.

We had partaken of a little refreshment, and decidedly superior tea—an excellent Darjeeling—in Captain Fielding's attractive blue and white drawing-room, and had then quitted the house to observe the last slanting rays of sunlight in the gentleman's garden. Captain Fielding reveals himself as a devotee of the rose, on a scale that rivals the Empress Josephine, for almost the entirety of his grounds is given over to beds of that noble flower— though sadly for us, well past its blooming.

“But this is charming, Captain Fielding!” my sister exclaimed; among the Austens, she is the true lover of the garden and its healthful exercise, and is possessed of a remarkable taste in the arranging of beds and successive waves of seasonal bloom. “Utterly delightful! And in June, when the roses flower, it must be a veritable Eden!”

“Eden must not be considered as approaching it, Miss Austen,” the Captain replied. “For
my
garden has no snakes.”

“But what energy and industry has been here applied!” Cassandra continued. “And you are not even resident in the place very long.”

“No—but where application is steady, and the means exist for the furthering of work, all manner of change may be swifdy effected. I have had teams of men labouring here to rival Crawford's fossil pits. Where we stand this very moment, was only two years ago a pitiful stretch of downs, replete with scrub heath and the occasional fox den.”

“Extraordinary,” Lucy Armstrong said quiedy, and gazed around her with a wistful air. “I remember this place some months ago, Captain Fielding, when you entertained us all at dinner. The roses were then in bloom— and a glorious sight it was.” She gave me a brief smile, as though lost in a pretty memory, and moved on down the path with my sister.

Captain Fielding offered his left arm, which I gladly accepted, and we followed behind. The Captain employs a walking cane when attempting a greensward, and must progress more slowly as a result, so that Cassandra and Miss Armstrong were soon at some little distance from ourselves.

“I venture to hope, Miss Jane Austen, that you shall again walk among these flowers, when their scent fills the air with a headiness unequalled, and their petals suggest a grace that can only be found in your lovelier form/’ my companion said, in a lowered tone.

I blushed and turned away; for the import of his words was unmistakable. But I affected not to understand him, and said only, “I hope I shall often have reason to visit Lyme. It is a place and a society that has become quite dear to me. To fix one's residence by the sea, is, I believe, to live in the greatest privilege and the most salubrious circumstance.”

“You dislike Bath, then?”

“Who can feel otherwise, who is consigned to spend the entire year through, in a place destined for pleasure parties and occasional travellers? The sameness, and yet the constant parting with friends, happy in their return to quieter homes; the bustle, and the self-importance, and yet the nothingness of the town; the white glare of its buildings, the fearful drains, the endless parade of the fashionable and the foolish, hopeful of cures from the sluggish waters—no, Captain Fielding, I cannot love Bath. It is become a prison to my spirit, however gilded the trappings of the cage.”

“I regret to hear it,” he said slowly. “But you will have some weeks yet in Lyme.”

“Yes,” I said, recovering. “We intend to remain here through November. I cherish every day, and count out those remaining, as though I turn the rarest pearls along a string.”

The Captain raised his fair head, and gazed into the distance, his eyes narrowing. “Miss Austenl” he cried. “Miss Armstrong! We are losing the light, I fear, and must turn back.”

“And what is that place my sister has come to?” I enquired, in gazing upon a prettyish little wilderness some yards before us.

“It is my temple ruin,” Captain Fielding said abruptly, “a colonnade of stone, in wisteria and hedgerose. Your sister has found it necessary to rest some few moments, but she cannot remain there.”