Jane and the Stillroom Maid (3 page)

This morning Mr. Hemming came, at the reins of his admirable trap; he displayed no irritation at the company of a female; and his comments during the course of the hour’s journey from Bakewell to Miller’s Dale were always sensible, and sometimes droll. I quite liked him, for the amiability of spirit that urged the revival of a friendship of such ancient formation, as much as for the evenness of temper that marked all his conduct. The conversation of well-informed men falls but too rarely in my way, and I intended to profit from Mr. Hemming’s company.

“Are you Derbyshire born and bred, sir?” I enquired, when my cousin’s five verses were done.

“I am,” he replied, “and have never found a cause to repine. Other than a brief period in the South, when I was so fortunate as to make Mr. Cooper’s acquaintance, I have been happy to call Bakewell my home these thirty years and more. I should never exchange it for another.”

My cousin closed his eyes, as though lost in contemplation or prayer; I knew he should soon be asleep. The gig had not progressed another mile before the gentle sound of snoring fell upon my ear.

“I think I should be content to live my whole life in Derbyshire, Mr. Hemming,” I said. “Never have I seen a country so blest in the marriage of the tame and the wild, so replete at once with romance and comfort.”

“You do not share the opinion of so many fine ladies, then, that these hills and rocks lack refinement?”

“What is refinement,” I cried, “when one has glimpsed the whole force of Nature? Who, having witnessed the Dove toiling amidst her course, could wish for the quieter banks of the Stour? If by refinement you would offer me the dull, Mr. Hemming—if you presume that having spent my life in Hampshire, I know nothing of Beauty—then I must assure you to the contrary.”

“What is it Cowper writes?” he mused. “That ‘Nature is but a name for an effect,/Whose cause is God’?”

Admirable fellow, to have looked into Cowper! “I have always supposed him to mean that true Beauty, true
perfection
—which is the essence of God, is it not?—may only be found in what is
simple
. A life of artifice and affectation
must
prove hollow, and incapable of granting happiness.”

“You shall not win an argument from me, Miss Austen,” replied Hemming. “I have seen your life of artifice in my younger days; and I assure you it will break its victim as a butterfly on a stone.”

His words were heavy; they belied the sunshine of the morning. Abruptly Mr. Hemming fell silent. Some memory he had stirred, of bitterness or regret; it was not for me to probe the wound. I turned my energy to an enjoyment of the landscape beyond the gig, and found everything to delight.

We travelled west for a time through a lovely passage of country, along the banks of the River Wye. The water gurgled in its bed, the horse’s hooves clopped comfortably along the dusty August road, and the green Derbyshire hills rose up around us. It is a northern custom to divide the fields with stone walls, rather than the hedgerows so suitable to the flat meadows of the South. I found the practise charming, and longed for a hut among the rocks, where I might survey the entire country of a morning, and breathe the clear sweet air. We rolled on, through Ashford-in-the-Water, while my cousin Mr. Cooper was yet lost in slumber, and the sun climbed higher in the cup of sky.

Near Blackwell, the road turns north and plunges into the Dale itself, a precipitous and winding drop among the crags towards the torrent of water below. I had grown accustomed to such a pitch in the course of our Derbyshire travels; and I prided myself upon a measure of complaisance. It should not be said that Jane Austen was so little familiar with the world, that a smart stretch of road might reduce her to hysterics. Upon reflection, however, it was greatly to be thanked that
Cassandra
had remained in Bakewell.

I gripped the leather seat of Mr. Hemming’s equipage more firmly, and trained my eyes upon his hands as they managed the reins. He spoke in a low voice to his horse, holding the animal in, and we descended by degrees to the Wye, and Miller’s Dale itself. I had a moment for the drawing of breath, and a swift prayer of thanks, when Mr. Hemming brought the gig to rest under the shade of a venerable oak.

He roused my cousin with a few jocular remarks, and the threat of a dose of river water to clear Mr. Cooper’s head; then led our party to a secluded spot some distance downstream, where the limestone crags rose in harsh and fantastic shapes. An ancient mill stood beside a weir; and the picturesque was so delightful that I gasped with pleasure.

“You must not neglect to form an acquaintance with the miller,” Mr. Hemming informed me with a smile, “for he is the purveyor of an excellent cordial. We shall all be desirous of a glass before the day is out.”

The gentlemen disposed themselves with their rods and tackle, their figures quite charming amidst the willows and reeds. It was a bucolic scene that had grown quite familiar. Fishing, I will own, is one of the more healthful and least vicious of gentlemen’s pursuits; but it is unfortunate that it should produce such a number of fish, that must be consumed or otherwise disposed of, before they rot. The rivers that spring from the High Peaks are justly celebrated for their quantities of
trout; they have provided generations of gentlemen with sport, well before Mr. Izaak Walton wrote of their charms in
The Compleat Angler
over a century ago. Our progress through Derby had been marked by an assay of waters: the Trent, the Derwent, the Dove, and at last the Wye. It was through a tangle of line and tackle that I first espied Dove Dale; it was in the odour offish that I descended upon Burghley House, and was granted permission to tour the estate. By the time we achieved Matlock, I was heartily sick of trout, and utterly refused it for dinner in Buxton.

I set about the business of unpacking Mr. Hemming’s commodious hamper, which contained a generous store of bread and cheese, a packet of sliced ham, and some peaches—all of it warm and fragrant with the heat of the day. He had considered of cutlery and napkins, and a cloth to lay upon the ground; an admirable host in every respect. It was as I laid out the fruit knives that my cousin Mr. Cooper commenced to sing.

Mr. Hemming was at a little remove, between my cousin and the bend in the river, where the mill was situated; he glanced over his shoulder as my cousin achieved a fulsome baritone, looked a trifle uneasy, and then glanced at me. I waggled a gloved hand in salutation.

Mr. Hemming returned his gaze to his rod; but I observed that the set of his back was rather more rigid than before. “Do you always sing, Edward, when angling?” he enquired.

“There are few pursuits, I suppose, that are not improved by a hymn,” replied my cousin gaily. “I may assure you, George, that a burst of song is highly beneficial to the lungs. My esteemed patron, Sir George
Mumps, has condescended to follow my example—and Sir George survived the whole of last winter without so much as a cold. You must attempt it.”

“I am unfamiliar with your tune,” Mr. Hemming managed.

My cousin’s countenance was suffused with delight. “But the words themselves you certainly recognise. They are Donne’s, from the
Divine Poems
. My ambition is to set all of his work to music, in the course of time.”

Mr. Hemming did not vouchsafe a reply. His brow was furrowed and his attention claimed by the tying of a fly.

“As no doubt you comprehend,” Mr. Cooper continued, in happy oblivion of his effect, “Donne is sometimes problematical. What is one to do with ‘And through that bitter agony/Which is still the agony of pious wits/Disputing what distorted thee/And interrupted evenness, with fits’?”

Mr. Hemming’s rod twitched; so, too, did his jaw; and then the line broke free of the river and was swiftly reeled in. He was keeping a check on his temper, I perceived; but the excess of his feeling was visible in his handling of the rod. There would be few fish to catch, at this present rate.

“Not to mention ‘as wise as serpents, diversely/Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,’” I murmured.

“Exactly.” My cousin wheeled about, jerking his line from the river with a spattering of drops. “I have been forced to abandon those for a time, Jane, until the Lord provides for their arrangement. But I have infinite faith in His devising.”

Mr. Hemming raised his rod in preparation for a cast, his gaze trained upon the coursing river. “If I might make a suggestion, Edward—the counsel of an old friend—”

“But I should be delighted, George!”

“I believe your singing—excellent though it may be in its way—is driving off the trout.”

A look of the most extreme mortification clouded Mr. Cooper’s countenance. “I had not the slightest notion the creatures possessed ears.”

“I am not convinced that ears are entirely necessary. The … vigour of your performance—”

“Perhaps the fish do not approve of Donne,” I suggested.

Mr. Hemming threw a glance my way. “It must be said that there are many who do not,” he observed.

My cousin looked from my serene countenance to the blacker one of his friend. “If I have offended you in anyway, George, I humbly beg leave to apologise—.”

“Pray do not mention it,” Mr. Hemming retorted abruptly. He cast, and the line tangled upon a tree branch. Mr. Hemming stifled an oath.

The waters of the Wye lapped at our feet; a curlew called in the crags somewhere above; and off in the distance I caught the clatter of crows. It was a distinctly mournful sound, rife with dispute and acrimony; and for an instant, a shade was thrown over the brightness of the summer day. I lifted my head, and studied the heights. Nothing but a soaring of rock and green things among them, a footpath winding above. I was not yet seized with hunger, and now that my cousin was cowed to silence, the gentlemen were absorbed in their sport. It was time to attempt the heights of Miller’s Dale.

T
HE WAY WAS GENTLE ENOUGH IN ITS EARLY STAGES
, but steepened inexorably even as it narrowed, until with the passage of three-quarters of an hour, I felt myself to be a sort of sheep or mountain goat, clinging with my half-boots to the edge of the earth. All about me swung the green hills and stone walls of Derbyshire, with the river a bright ribbon below. I looked my fill upon this corner of the sceptre’d isle; saw, as with the eye of Heaven, the flocks of sheep like clouds against the pasturage, the rapid gallop of a distant horse, the
tumbled stones of ancient habitation. Smoke curled from the miller’s chimney. I felt as Henry, my brother, must once have done, marshalling toy soldiers. I commanded all that was at my feet.

And then the crows rose up in a great black cloud and tore the peace of morning into fragments. I focused my gaze upon a massive crag of rock, some distance further up the path. The birds were gathered there, a darkling company.

Small heaps of cloth—the remnants of a pleasure party, perhaps—were tossed about the crag’s base. There would be crusts of bread amidst the refuse, enough sustenance for a crow to squabble over. I schooled my gaze to pierce the shadows thrown by the great rock, but the glitter of sunlight on limestone pained my eyes. The crows were settled on the limbs of a tree at the crag’s foot. But surely a tree branch would have no use for a gentleman’s shoe? And yet it
was
a gentleman’s shoe I espied—

Without hesitation I hurried forward, the beauties of the day forgotten in a sudden access of anxiety. My breath came in tearing gasps, as though born of great exertion, and yet here the pitch of the slope was in my favour, and I might have flown the distance on winged feet. To reach him required but a few moments.

He lay in the shelter of the great rock as though seeking relief from the sun, one hand serving as pillow under his head—a young man, with a delicate countenance and golden curls, dressed entirely in black. He might almost have been asleep. But to my sorrow, I knew better. The stench of blood was heavy in my nostrils, and the raven tearing at the man’s entrails did not suffer itself to move, even when I screamed.