Jane Austen Mysteries 08 Jane and His Lordship's Legacy (9 page)

"And has he decided who the poor fellow is, Mr. Prowting?"

my mother enquired with an expression of interest.

"One Shafto French, as I understand--a nephew of Old 64 ~ Stephanie Barron

Philmore, who is a tenant of Mr. Edward Austen and the free-holder of several cottages in the neighbourhood."

"Are the Frenches a respectable family?"

"They are certainly a prodigious one. You cannot spit any-where on the ground between here and Alton--begging your pardon, ma'am--without striking a French, or a Philmore, come to that. Good Hampshire stock, all of them, and long-established in the neighbourhood; but Shafto was given to drink and indigence. It is not to be wondered at, after all, that he should end as he did. Still, he leaves a hopeful family be-hind--and this death will go hard on his wife, Jemima."

"Can Mr. Munro say at all how French died?" I asked.

"Not as yet."

"--Nor how he came to be in our cellar?" my mother inter-posed.

"Such questions, dear lady, may be answered in good time,"

the magistrate replied. "Due to the sad state of the corpse, Mr.

Munro gives it as his opinion that the inquest into French's de-mise should brook no delay. As magistrate, I should have liked to await the arrival in Chawton of Mr. Edward Austen, whom you have given me to understand is even now on his road from Kent; but in matters of physick I have no authority. I must give way. The inquest is to be held at two o'clock."

"Today?" I enquired.

"Indeed. In less than three hours' time, in the private par-lour at the George. Naturally, I shall be present."

"I should like to attend," I said firmly.

Mr. Prowting's eyes bulged from his head, and I am con-vinced he choked a little as he formed his reply. "My dear Miss Austen, there is not the slightest need. Not the slightest need.

Naturally you feel some interest in the man's history, having found him as you did--"

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 65

"--And some responsibility, as well, to inform the coroner's panel of what I observed," I rejoined calmly. "You cannot dis-suade me, Mr. Prowting--I am determined to go. I should be very much obliged, however, if you would convey me to Alton in company with yourself."

"My daughter, as you see, is a veritable ghoul when it comes to inquests and murder, Mr. Prowting," my mother observed. "I cannot count the number of panels Jane has attended; and given evidence, too."

Catherine Prowting, who overlistened the whole, gave an audible gasp.

"Many are the hours I have spent in enlarging upon the sub-ject," my mother continued, "but Jane will not see that no re-spectable man will take up with a lady who is so mad for blood.

It is unnatural in a woman. But she will not understand me. She will not listen to reason. I am sure, Mr. Prowting, that you suffer similar trials yourself--being the father of daughters."

"An
inquest
cannot be the proper place for a lady," Mr.

Prowting said doubtfully.

"In the present case, sir," I replied with dignity, "I believe at-tendance to be my duty. The man was found in this house; and surely we must learn the truth, at all costs, of how he came here."

The magistrate looked for aid to his daughter; but such a recourse must be useless. Catherine Prowting was pale as death, her hand gripping the back of my mother's chair; and in an in-stant she had slipped to the floor insensible.

We prevailed upon Mr. Prowting to leave his daugh-ter a little while in our care, and Catherine appeared--when consciousness was regained--not averse to the suggestion. We 66 ~ Stephanie Barron

laid her upon the sopha in the sitting room, and my mother went in search of vinegar-water, while the magistrate patted her hand in loving awkwardness.

"You will never be as strong as your sisters," he told her fondly. "It is the head-ache, I suppose?"

"Yes, Papa," she said tearfully.

"Well, well--rest a little in Miss Austen's care, and then re-turn to your mother. But do not be alarming her with talk of an
indisposition.
You know what her nerves are."

"Yes, Papa."

I saw the magistrate to the door and closed it quietly, so as not to disturb my suffering neighbour; and indeed, tho' re-turned to her senses, Catherine looked very ill. Had it been the talk of blood and corpses that had unnerved her so?

"I understand you will be dining at the Great House tomor-row," she managed as I dipped a cloth into the vinegar-water my mother had provided, and prepared to bathe her temples. "We are all to go as well, and my sister is devoting the better part of the morning to new-dressing her hair."

"At your sister's age--a period of high spirits, charm, and natural bloom--one's appearance is of consuming interest," I observed.

"Perhaps. There are four years' difference in age between myself and Ann--she is but two-and-twenty; but I confess I have never wasted a tenth part of the hours that Ann believes neces-sary to the perfection of her toilette. Of course, I have not her beauty; but is it not remarkable, Miss Austen, that the more beauty one possesses, the more one is required to nurture and support it?"

"A tedious business," I agreed with a laugh, "that must make the disappearance of all bloom a blessing rather than a pity!--As I have reason to know."

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 67

"But you are charming," Catherine protested.

"I am in my thirty-fourth year, my dear, and must put charm aside at last."

"I have lived the better part of my life with Ann's beauty and foibles as though they were quite another member of the fam-ily. There is more than enough of
them
to supply two women, I assure you--and when such a prospect as dinner at the Great House is in view, and in the company of a Bond Street Beau, there is hardly room for us both at Prowtings!"

This was bitterness, indeed, let slip so readily to a virtual stranger; but not all sisters are happy in possessing that perfect understanding and cordiality that have always obtained be-tween Cassandra and me. I gazed at Catherine--at the sweet-ness of expression in her mild dark eyes, and the nut-brown indifference of her hair; and understood that a lifetime of de-nial and self-effacement had been hers: supported almost un-consciously by the fond indulgence of parents whose collusion in their youngest daughter's vanity, though perhaps at first un-witting, was now become the sole method of managing her.

"That is enough vinegar," Catherine said abruptly. "I am very well now, I thank you--indeed, I cannot understand how I should have come to be overpowered in the first place. It is so very silly--"

"We were too frank in our conversation. We should have considered that you were not equal to it."

"I ought to have been, Miss Austen. I ought to be equal to . . . many things." She turned towards the window and stretched out her arms, as though she would fly from its case-ment to a wider world. I had been that way myself, once, in a small vicarage in Hampshire; I had dreamt of crossing the seas--of being an Irishman's wife--had exulted in hope of ad-venture and limitless skies, and chafed against the boundaries 68 ~ Stephanie Barron

of glebe and turnpike. A surge of fellow-feeling from my breast to Catherine's, then; a recognition of hopes blighted and dreams put away.

"Is Ann your only sister?" I enquired.

"Elizabeth, my elder, is long since married," Catherine replied. "We were all so unfortunate as to lose my two brothers to illness and accident; William being carried off while at school in Winchester; and John but a year later at home."

I had carelessly used the very same names in my request for a manservant; how Mr. Prowting must have felt it, and misun-derstood my levity's cause! I felt a surge of colour to my cheeks.

"You have all my sympathy. Were they very young?"

"William was fifteen, and John but nine."

"How dreadful!" I thought of Mrs. Prowting--of the black-edged handkerchief that appeared to be wedded to her palm--with a deeper comprehension. Despair and grief may appear to greater advantage when writ on an elegant form; but Mrs.

Prowting's large, comfortable bulk, though better suited to laughter, held as much right to suffering as my own.2

I saw Catherine over the stile in the meadow, with profuse thanks for the gift of eggs and cheese; and as she walked slowly into her house--into that orgy of preparation and exhilarated transport in which she was expected to take no part--I went back to the cottage.

If I hurried, I might just have time to read another of Lord Harold's papers before I journeyed to Alton, and met the cor-oner.

2 Jane makes a similar observation of her character Mrs. Musgrove, in
Per-
suasion,
who has lost a troublesome son in the navy.
--Editor's note.

Jane and His Lordship's Legacy ~ 69

Excerpt from the diaries of Lord Harold Trowbridge, dated
12 December 1782, on board the Indiaman
Delos,
bound
for Bombay.

. . . it is no bad thing to be a young man of two-and-twenty,
with the Paradise of the Subcontinent looming off the bow, and
all the riches of a sultan's court waiting to be plucked. There are
the women lodged in all the acceptable quarters--no longer
young, or lacking in fortune and looks, and in short the very dross
of English gentility, sent out as brides to men they have never
met and a life in a climate likely to kill them before very long.

They are desperate for sport and fun before the voyage should be
over--knowing, from the most ignorant of presentiments, that
marriage to a stranger cannot be very agreeable, and seduction
from a shipmate must provide present excitement and the comfort
of stories for telling hereafter. I have lifted five skirts to date in
the languid forenoon of a becalmed passage, and Freddy
Vansittart is no less lucky--with his dark looks and his roguish
smile, he can win any number of hearts. Stella from Yorkshire will
have him, and he does not take care.

We have sunk to betting on the women as we do at cards, the
boredom of this voyage being almost insufferable; and on
occasion, when I am feeling low, I am thankful to God for
Freddy Vansittart--his wild laughter and neck-or-nothing heart
are all that stand between me and a pistol ball in the head. Like
me, Freddy is a scoundrel and a second son; and if we do not
hang together we shall most assuredly hang separately.

I believe I have borrowed that last sentiment from another,
but cannot recollect whom.

I am not often so low. In truth, I cannot regret the chain of
events that have sent me here--the violence of that meeting at
dawn; the cut on Benning's face that will scar it like my
70 ~ Stephanie Barron

signature forever after; the loss of my father's good opinion or the
anger I met on every side; my mother's tears or the sober
interview with the solicitors. It is not as tho' Benning died; but
his father believed he would, the fever from the wounds having
put him on a kind of death-bed; and when one report of the heir's
passing was put out, damnably unproved, the Viscount St.

Eustace suffered a fit. In short, the old man was carried off in a
matter of hours--and Benning is now Viscount, and must be
called by his title, the prospect of which he used to dangle
sneeringly before me, all those years ago in school, when he called
me a commoner and a spy who should end in the gutter. I hated
him then and I hated him that morning when we met in the
duelling ground at Hampstead Heath. I wish that I had killed
him; his brother is a better man, and like all second sons, I wish
him greater justice.

No--if I regret anything at all, it is the stupidity and the
waste of those London days. The harlots lounging in the arches of
Covent Garden, the befuddlement of drink, the desperate crying
of a heart that loved only Horatia, and knew her to be pledged to
another. She will be a Viscountess these five months or more, and
great with child--tho' it shall not be Benning's. I have that
satisfaction at least.

And so to exile. Mr. Hastings awaits. "He shall be your envoy
to a better life," His Grace the Duke told me sternly; "pray that
you do not return having disgraced him." The burden is more
likely to be reversed. I have heard a little of Mr. Hastings: how he
fathered a girl by one partner, and wrested his wife from another;
how his slow ascent above his fellows has been managed with
cunning and industry. Hastings is a man after my own stamp--a
self-made creature, who owes his reputation and fearsome respect
to no title or gift of birth. I shall profit by Mr. Hastings; I feel it
in my blood.

And we shall both return to England invincible.

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Chapter 8

The Man Who

Drank Deep

5 July 1809, cont.

~

The George Inn sits in the very midst of Alton's High Street, not far from its rival, The Swan, where Mr. Chizzlewit had undertaken to lodge. I had quitted Mr. Barlow's house only yesterday morning in Joseph's pony trap; but a revolution of thought and feeling had occurred in the interval that far out-stripped a single turn of the globe. I left the George an impov-erished and dependant relation; I returned but four-and-twenty hours later an Heiress who had excited the Notice of the Great.