Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (27 page)

I
SETTLED MYSELF IN THE COOL SHADE OF THE PORTICO
,and embarked upon a thorough appraisal of my cunning heroine. I must confess that time has taken its toll on her drolleries; she is too much the figure of the previous decade—indeed, the previous century!— and should hardly please the devotees of the
modern
, like Lady Elizabeth, who prefer their heroines fainting, modest, and utterly stupid. But I write entirely for my own amusement, and Lady Susan persists in her influence over my heart and mind; I cannot quite give her up, tho' I should never subject her to the ruthless eyes of the world, by attempting publication. The censure her activities should win, would then be all my own; and I cannot bear a public tongue-lashing.

I had just taken up my pen to write /
am now satisfied that I never could have brought myself to marry Reginald; am equally determined that Frederica never shall
—when I observed with an inward sigh that Lizzy, Fanny, and Miss Sharpe were toiling up the gende rise that led to my cherished retreat. I tucked my papers between the leaves of a novel, secured the volume firmly in my hand, and rose to greet them.

“Aunt Jane! We are taking a tour of the park, for the express purpose of finding out what is wrong with it,” Fanny cried. She ran up the last few yards of the slope, grown brown with the heat and intermittent rain, and tumbled panting at my feet.

“I have had a letter in the morning post from Lady Elizabeth Finch-Hatton,” Lizzy informed me, as she, too, achieved the temple. “She abjures us most strenuously to visit Eastwell this evening, with the object of introducing Mr. Julian Sothey. We are to be treated to dinner— that is very handsome, since she would take none of ours—but I daresay you shall not like it, Jane. Lady Elizabeth's cooks are as modern as her taste in architecture, and Neddie rarely comes away anything but famished. We shall take a hamper and picnic somewhere along the road, before we are obliged to sit down. How tedious, to travel such a distance in fashionable dress! The roads are certain to be dirty with this morning's rain; we shall be stifling in the closed barouche the entire four miles.”

“And what to wear, in respect of both a tour of the grounds and dinner?” I wondered.

“That settles it,” Lizzy rejoined immediately, “we shall convey ourselves sensibly in carriage attire, and send our evening things with Sayce in a coach to follow. She may dress us both.”

“And what have you learned from your tour, Miss Fanny?” I enquired, with a kiss to the little girl's flushed cheek.

“Mamma is of the persuasion that nothing might be saved—but I do not care two straws for an improver!” she declared hody. “They are all for swelling brooks into lakes, and stocking them with nasty fish—and I prefer the shallows of our own dear Stour. I
like
our trailing willows—I think them quite romantic! Do not you agree, Sharpie? Is not a tree that weeps more romantic than anything in the world?”

“It is certainly easier to endure than a lady who does so,” Miss Sharpe replied, as she achieved the portico. Her own eyes, to my surprise, appeared puffed and reddened from recent tears. “Good morning, Miss Austen. We are come to destroy your privacy, I fear.”

“What is privacy, if not to be destroyed?” I replied with a smile. “Had I known you intended the disposition of the entire park, I should have insisted upon being one of the party. I like nothing better than to strike down an ancient avenue for the sake of a whim. And by all means, let us set the common footpaths in the most winding and artistic—not to mention least convenient—fashion, so that the townsfolk are exceedingly put out in their travels from place to place. One cannot disturb one's dependents too much for their own good, I believe.”

“Exacdy so,” Lizzy agreed, “nor the pilgrims, neither, who must benefit from a certain arduousness in their way.
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I am forever telling Neddie he disconcerts them far too litde. He should consider his deer and pheasant as having a far greater claim than a herd of trespassing strangers; and as for the value of a Horrid Prospect— something as like
The Castle of Otranto
as one may make it—I am sure we might sacrifice an avenue or two for the achievement of such a paragon.”
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“We may do Mr. Sothey an injustice,” I warned. “He may be discovered a man of perfect sense and unimpeachable taste, when once we survey his plans for Eastwell.”

“Mr. Sothey?” Anne Sharpe enquired. The climb had certainly not agreed with her; she had gone exceedingly pale.

“The improver, my dear. The
gentleman
improver,” Lizzy amended. “I spoke of him only a moment ago. We drive to Eastwell this morning on purpose to meet him. I had hoped that you and Fanny would consent to be of the party.”

“Lady Elizabeth is the proud mamma of several little boys, who might teaze and amuse Fanny at once,” I added, “unless your abhorrence of improvers, my dear, extends so far as to preclude the delights of a roadside picnic, and a change of dress to follow.”

“I believe Miss Fanny has a great deal of study left uncompleted,” replied Miss Sharpe hurriedly. “The tumult of packing has thrown the schoolroom into confusion, and we have not applied ourselves in days. Indeed”—with an anxious, unseeing look over the peaceful countryside—“I believe we should make our way back to the schoolroom now. The weather is too oppressive to endure for long; and I would not have Miss Fanny the worse for the exercise.”

“Or yourself, my dear Miss Sharpe,” I observed. “We must not bring on another headache. Where is your parasol? That bonnet cannot shield you enough!”

“Indeed, it is quite adequate at present. The rain has proved most refreshing. But I am afraid that the weather in general does not agree with me of late,” she faltered. “It has been at once so dry, and so hot, that I am forever sneezing. My eyes have not stopped watering for days— only observe how reddened they have become.”

“You must lie down for an hour this morning with cold compresses of cucumber,” Lizzy told her, “and forgo your needlework for a time.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Miss Sharpe murmured, and dropped a curtsey. “Come along, Fanny.”

“But I should like to go to Eastwell above all things!” the girl protested, as her governess dragged her down the hillside. “I long for a picnic in the woods!”

“It would prove exceedingly damp, I am sure.”

“But I should not care a jot for that! Please say that I may go, Sharpie…”

I watched them idly for a moment, and then turned to my sister. She was perched on one of the temple's chairs, and looked as cool and elegant in her sky-blue muslin as though she lingered in a mountain glade.

“And what do you make of the governess's secrets, Lizzy?” I asked her. “For she certainly guards them jealously.”

“You astonish me, Jane. Can you believe little Sharpie to have a deceitful bone in her body?”

“Not, perhaps, deceitful,” I amended, “but retiring. She is a woman who keeps her own counsel, my dear— and at the moment, that is enough to make her ill.”

Lizzy said nothing for a moment, her green eyes following the diminishing pair. “Mrs. Metcalfe suggested that there might be something in her nature—unreconciled, perhaps—to her present situation.”

“Mrs. Metcalfe?”

“An excellent woman, and an old friend of my mother's. She was the instrument of Miss Sharpe's engagement at Godmersham.”

“I see. Miss Sharpe had been employed in the Metcalfe family?”

Lizzy shook her head. “She was brought up from a girl by Mrs. Metcalfe's sister, Lady Porterman. General Sir Thomas Porterman was a great friend of Miss Sharpe's parents, I believe—who died abroad, in a carriage accident, and left the child quite unprovided for. She was raised as almost a sister to Miss Lydia Porterman, but on the latter's marriage last year, Lady Porterman felt it was incumbent upon herself to arrange a situation for Miss Sharpe.”

“Raised as almost a sister,” I said slowly, “in a very elegant situation; and now descended to a position only slighdy above that of a servant. What a sad reversal of Miss Sharpe's fortunes! I cannot wonder that she is unreconciled. It is only through the good offices—and generous purses—of my dear brothers, that Cassandra and I have escaped a similar fate.”

“It was improbable, you know, that she should remain with the Portermans forever; she must make her way in the world one day; and the sooner the break was forced, the more quickly she might recover.”

“But she has not recovered. How unfortunate that she did not follow Miss Porterman in matrimony.”

Lizzy pursed her lips, and fanned herself with a slip of paper I had discarded upon the table. “Can one ever reconcile oneself to so material a change? I am sure it has broken her heart. To be removed from a condition of elegance—a house in Town, a carriage at one's command, and every comfort contrived—the very best circle of Society—and to accept, instead, the instruction of a girl such as Fanny—! Who, however excellent in her way, must be a trial to one for whom every prospect of future delight must seem so decidedly at an end?”

I could offer no reply for several moments; my heart was torn. There are too many young ladies of good family and litde fortune, consigned to the near-slavery of the governess trade—a condition neither exalted nor demeaning, but open to both influences, as the temper of the employer's household must dictate. Such women live in a half-world, neither domestic nor genteel, and must suffer a thousand slights, a thousand deprivations, a thousand hopes deferred; they end their days as impoverished as they began, forced to live on a pittance saved from the successive rounds of foolish young girls they have scrambled into a litde learning—their own beauty quite wasted, the better part of their youth sacrificed. But for the generosity of my brothers, whose incomes must make up the default of my late father's, Cassandra and I might find ourselves dependent upon a similar fate—urging the haughty and condescending among our near-acquaintance to pay for the privilege of our indifferent French, our accomplishments on the pianoforte, and our claims to such elegance as a few years' residence in Bath might afford us. I shuddered and averted my eyes from the small figure of Anne Sharpe, now several hundred yards beyond the haven of the temple.

“I do not know what to do for her, Jane,” Lizzy said quiedy. “A litde higher, and she might be my intimate; a little lower, and I might be her patron. But as it is—”

“You may only preserve her from further degradation, with the sum of twenty pounds per annum. No wonder she longs to go to Town.”

Lizzy glanced at me swifdy. “Does she? I had understood she abhorred London. The dirt—the noise—”

“She was wild to be gone but a few days since. The prospect of packing assured her of the event's achievement. I thought I had denied her dearest wish, when I informed her that a removal was only a distant possibility.”

“How very odd,” Lizzy murmured. “Perhaps she has had a letter… an acquaintance returned to London…” She straightened up and shook the dust from her flounces. “We shall be late for Eastwell, Jane, and much tho' it should give me pleasure to incommode Lady Elizabeth, your brother is correct in believing that I cannot allow her the pleasure of despising me. In any case, we cannot plumb the depths of Anne Sharpe by speculating at a distance. It puts me in mind of the sort of complacent old cats who lined the ballrooms of my girlhood, making matches and scandal between the most improbable of lovers.”

“They line the ballroom still, Lizzy,” I replied, “and I am in a fair way to joining them myself.”

W
E RETURNED TO THE GREAT HOUSE, AND PETITIONED
Cook for raspberry cordial; it arrived almost directly from the icehouse, beaded with the most delicious moisture, on a silver tray. It was as we had finished one glass, and had determined we must exchange our morning gowns for travelling costumes more suited to the rigours of an open carriage, that Neddie and Henry returned from Mrs. Grey's funeral.

“My dear!” Lizzy cried, with more appearance of animation than was usual for her, “we are on the point of dressing for Eastwell, but cannot stir until you have told us all the news. How was the service conducted? Did the Comte and Mr. Grey come to blows? Who was so judicious in feeling as to attend?”

“Mr. James Wildman—Mr. Edward Taylor—Captain Woodford, of course; Mr. Toke, Mr. Sansible, and a few others not unknown to you.
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Denys Collingforth failed to put in his appearance, as did your brother Edward, Lizzy; but the former was hardly expected, and the latter we may suppose to have been detained by his duty to his mother. Our Henry, however, was generally acclaimed the most sportingly—if inappropriately—attired.”

“And Mr. Grey?” Lizzy persisted. “How did he appear?”

Neddie eased himself onto one of the drawing-room's uncomfortable gilt chairs with a grimace. “We were denied the pleasure of meeting Mr. Grey, my dear.”

'You have no pity on my poor nerves,” Lizzy scolded him crossly. 'Jane and I have exhausted nearly every occupation open to a woman this morning—needlework, novel-reading, and the sketching of a quantity of children”—in this, she exaggerated a little, given the indolence of our employment in the temple—“in feverish expectation of your return. I am sure that Jane wore out her pen entirely in her repeated efforts to sharpen it; and yet she cannot have composed more than two sentences together, in the entire course of the morning! You are unspeakably cruel to serve us out in this manner. Mr. Grey, fail to attend his wife's funeral! Impossible, Neddie! Impossible!”

“Improbable, perhaps—unpardonable, even; but impossible? Not at all. The Larches' housekeeper—an excellent woman, one Mrs. Bastable, and a deft hand at blood pudding, as Henry may attest—informed us direcdy we arrived that the master was called to Town in the early hours of morning. He is expected at home this evening, however—so your visit of condolence cannot be put off.”

“How extraordinary!” Lizzy exclaimed. Her countenance was less composed than I had ever had occasion to remark it. “To ride into Town, when one's wife is as yet unburied, and without the slightest regard for public opinion!”

“We can know nothing of Mr. Grey's regard for public opinion,” Neddie objected. “It might be quite strenuously excited by his demonstration of poor taste. Indeed, his concern for the feelings of his neighbours on this point might even deprive him of sleep. You should not judge harshly, Lizzy, without a full knowledge of the particulars.”