Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (10 page)

There being nothing more to wait for, we proceeded two-by-two into the dining parlour. The Lieutenant’s presence was thus an immediate advantage—for he evened our numbers. Miss Gambier, to nobody’s particular surprize, was on his arm, and Mr. L’Anglois was forced to look lower—and carry in Cassandra.

“You are acquainted with the Lieutenant,” I murmured to Edward Gambier as he gallantly steered me the dozen steps from the Saloon to my dinner.

“We saw a good deal of him in Brighton last summer,” he agreed. “The Admiral was there, dancing attendance on the Regent, so naturally Gage was forced to trail after him and hold his hat and walking-stick. Should hate the office, m’self. These Navy chaps want to be chasing the French in a fast frigate, not doing the pretty to a lot of old court-cards.”

“Fast frigates have been singularly unlucky of late,” I observed.
The Americans had seized any number of them in battle. But Mr. Gambier appeared not to attend.

“And then Prinny sent my uncle off to Ghent at the end of September, to talk sense into Mr. Adams and the other colonials. I suppose the old fellow must have done it, if Gage is back in England again!”

“Did the Lieutenant inform you when you might expect Lord Gambier’s return?”

“He did not. P’raps Aunt Louisa knows. Uncle will have written her the particulars.”

The cold collation set out by the housekeeper in deference to St. Stephen’s Day was a summary of past delights—platters of the various viands left over from Christmas dinner. I contented myself with cold beef, some excellent cheeses, and a slice of black pudding; a selection of pickles rounded out my repast. A quantity of fruits was also on offer—apples, pears, and oranges. The informality of the meal sat oddly with our careful toilettes—I had put on my beloved claret-coloured silk, a gift from my brother Henry. Cassandra wore a pale green gown of excellent cut she had obtained in Canterbury, whilst on a visit to Edward at Godmersham. What we should do on the morrow, when our fund of finery had all run out, I did not trouble to think.

The simplicity of the meal, however, encouraged a sort of intimacy that the closeness of the weather, and our nearer acquaintance of four-and-twenty hours, only deepened. With the exception of my brother James’s wife, we were all disposed to laugh and be easy, to toss jokes at one another and engage in snippets of serious conversation. I was seated, this evening, between Mr. L’Anglois and the Lieutenant—who had Mary Gambier on his left hand. I suspected Eliza’s work in this; the change in Miss Gambier’s whole person
since the arrival of John Gage suggested that a love-match was in the air, and it should have been cruel to separate them by the length of a table. I was inclined to leave them in peace, and let them talk the evening away; but I found that the Lieutenant’s manners were too good. He would not permit the neglect of one dinner partner, for the prior claims of another.

“You are quite the hero, Lieutenant,” I said lightly as he bent his gaze upon me. “To ride nearly fifty miles, in drifts and driving snow, from Portsmouth to Basingstoke! It is a feat worth publication in the papers—or a place in the betting-book at White’s.”

“It was my duty,” he said seriously. “I ought, perhaps, to have changed my horse and stopped the night in Basingstoke—but Admiral Gambier had charged me with letters to his family, as well as the conveyance of official papers to London. Given the state of the roads, I thought it best to reach Lady Gambier while the daylight held, and break my journey here.”

“We are far more engaging than any company you should have found at the Angel,” I assured him, “and you have relieved the general tedium of a snowy day. We are all in your debt.”

“Forgive me, Miss Austen—but are you, by chance, a relation of Captain Frank Austen?” he said.

“His sister!” I beamed at him; Frank is very dear to me, whether sailing the high seas or turned on shore. “He has served twice under Admiral Gambier, I know—was it then that you made his acquaintance?”

“Far earlier,” he replied. “Around the Year Five—before the Trafalgar Action. I was fortunate enough to sail with the
Canopus
as a midshipman. It was Captain Austen who taught me to read a sextant, and command a gun crew, and board a French vessel with my sword drawn.”

It had been nearly ten years since Frank had commanded the
Canopus
; the Lieutenant must have been a lad of eighteen or twenty at the time. I wondered why such a personable young man, and enjoying an admiral’s influence, had not achieved the next step in rank of Master and Commander, or Post Captain. We were lately done with a punishing war against the French—when any number of zealous sailors had earned both fortune and advancement through their actions. Much as Buonaparte was deplored, and his exile cause for rejoicing, his existence these fifteen years has been a boon to the ambitious in the Royal Navy—provided they survived their battles. So many sailors were second sons, forced to seek their fortunes on the high seas; few could marry without the taking of rich prizes. No lieutenant, tied to an admiral on shore, could hope to share in such wealth; and I thought I understood a little of Miss Gambier’s melancholy. Her brother had confessed their parent died in debt. It was to be presumed she lacked a private fortune. If she had lost her heart to Lieutenant Gage last summer in Brighton, hers was a sad case.

But it did not do to wander in thought at the dinner table. “How fortunate you are,” I said to my companion, “to observe the negotiations in Ghent! You will understand that with two brothers serving the Admiralty, I am anxious about this American War.”

“Two brothers?”

“I may also claim Captain Charles Austen, lately of the Atlantic Station. He is presently gone into the Mediterranean—a sadly flat business, now Buonaparte is cast upon his rock!”

“—Unless he chuses to leave it,” the Lieutenant said facetiously. “Only think what glory for your brother then! But the Atlantic Station has indeed given cause for anxiety. Our ships have taken a drubbing at American hands. I doubt any at the Admiralty expected it. Commerce, not broadsides, has generally been the American object.”

“They are not unintelligent,” I protested. “Having shewn them how to rout British infantry in the last war, we have lately been teaching them the finer arts of gunnery in this one! The
Constitution
’s engagements with our
Guerrière
and
Java
—on separate occasions, in different parts of the world, and under different commanders—demonstrated that. Both ships were dismasted, I believe, and burnt as hulks? And this, from a forty-four-gun frigate!”

“I see you have closely followed the Naval dispatches,” Lieutenant Gage said with a smile.

“News of the
Constitution
is everywhere, I assure you. The Americans have taken five British warships in her—and will take more, no doubt, if the war continues. Nothing of our methods has escaped their notice—neither improvements in the design of vessels, nor in maneuvers, nor communications. We cannot end hostilities soon enough, lest Britannia’s rule of the waves be entirely overthrown.”

In the heat of my feelings, my voice had increased in volume; and I saw that it had fallen into one of those odd silences that sometimes seize even the most animated of dinner tables. Most of my companions were staring at me—James with disapproval.

“Pray remember where you are, Jane, and do not run on in the wild way you are suffered to do at home. Lieutenant Gage can have not the slightest interest in a woman’s idea of politics.”

“He may, however, admire her knowledge of Naval tactics,” the Lieutenant said.

“You are all condescension, sir.” James was at his most pompous. “I fear the attention my sister has won, with her frivolous publications—she has lately taken up the amusement of novel-writing—has entirely gone to her head. She fancies herself an Authority, tho’ she has not a syllable of Latin.”

“Neither does the crew of the
Constitution
,” Raphael West said quietly.

I met his curiously penetrating gaze and coloured. There was a spark of laughter in West’s eyes. He did not suffer fools; James, therefore, must be a delight.

“Your father is an American, I believe, Mr. West?” Mary enquired.

“No, ma’am. He is a Philadelphian.”

Among general laughter, she protested, “I do not understand!”

“To be a native of Philadelphia—the birthplace of freedom, unless one is talking to a Boston man—is to know a higher order of allegiance than mere country. What we British fail to understand,” West continued, “is that America is first a collection of states, more singly dear to their inhabitants than any collective idea of a republic. My father should always admit to Philadelphia, before he should claim America.”

We British.

Was West, indeed, an English subject? I wondered. Certainly he spoke as one; had been reared and educated as one. But his father was living an exile of sorts—celebrated by the Crown; a principal mover in the foundation of the Royal Academy; an object of esteem among a people who were not his own, and with whom his country had twice been at war.

“The late Benjamin Franklin was also a Philadelphian,” William Chute observed, “and a damned friend to the French.”

“As was my father,” West returned coolly. “There was a time when his sympathy for the French experiment made him unwelcome in this country. From being Surveyor of the King’s Pictures at Windsor, he was banished to Paris. But once the Monster showed his true stripes—once Buonaparte crowned himself Emperor—like every friend of Liberty, my father could not but be disgusted. He renounced
the tyrant and returned to London. Sensible men understood and forgave him.”

“Paris,” breathed Mary. “You must take us to Paris, James, now that the Emperor is overthrown. I long to see France before I die.”

All the Austens were so accustomed to Mary’s intimacy with death that we did not flutter an eyelash at this statement, but Thomas-Vere Chute positively choked on his wine in surprize.

“My dear Mrs. James,” he sputtered, and then looked with sympathy at my brother. Whether his fellow-feeling was born of grief at Mary’s secret decline, or grief for James at being burdened with her, I could not say.

Mary sighed tragically, and struck an attitude I mentally appellated: Beauty Expires.

“And how do you regard this American War, West?” Mr. L’Anglois asked.

“As a fight we ought not to have chosen,” he replied. “The object, I understand, was to secure our territories and Naval stations beyond the present American borders; but it would seem to arise in truth from more petty concerns. Quarrels over the impressment of American seamen. The desire to inhibit rival trade—”

“But surely,” I said, “the American alliance with France—the intimacy between the two nations—must be regarded as pernicious?”

“With Napoleon dethroned, who can say? France is an unknown quantity. Having helped Louis to his throne, we might find the French better friends in future.”

“Damned good thing Buonaparte has been routed,” William Chute interjected. “With our best troops—Wellington’s crack Peninsular units—cavorting in Baltimore and the swamps of Louisiana, we should never be able to answer a French threat if one came. Told Wellington as much myself, when last we met in London. Feel damned
exposed with our veterans being months across the Atlantic. Thank God for the return of a sensible Bourbon in Paris, I say!”

“Hear, hear,” Mr. L’Anglois intoned, and glasses were raised.

Once we had drunk the French King’s health, Eliza turned the conversation, and I was not afforded an opportunity to expose my deplorable opinions again; but as we ladies rose to leave the gentlemen to their port, the Lieutenant stayed me with a word.

“I think I may assure you,” he said in a lowered tone, “that the conflict is over. I cannot impart specifics—that should be a breach of duty, and my news must properly be saved for the Admiralty—but as I informed Mr. Chute, a treaty between ourselves and the Americans was signed two days ago in Ghent.”

“Then the season is indeed one day of peace,” I said. And left him.

N
O MENTION OF CHARADES
was made in the drawing-room this evening. Eliza attempted to rally her guests with the setting out of card tables. My mother dearly loves games of chance—although gambling at Commerce is more to her taste than a hand of whist—and fell in with her hostess’s plans immediately. Miss Gambier and Lieutenant Gage sat a little apart, engrossed in a tête-à-tête; Mary attempted to form an engaging picturesque, her head bent low over Caroline and her book. I assumed this was for Mr. Raphael West’s benefit—he had appeared in the drawing-room tonight with a leather bound notebook in his hands. But immune to the appeal of the maternal bond, he crossed the room to where Cassandra and I sat over our coffee cups.

“Your interest in the American War persuaded me to unearth this book,” he said, as we made room for him on our settee. “I was fortunate enough to visit the States some years ago, on a private errand of my father’s, and made numerous sketches. I thought perhaps you
both might wish to see a little of the place that has figured so largely in your brothers’ fortunes.”

I am no artist; that talent belongs to my sister, who employs her pencil as I employ words: to capture the likeness of home and landscape. Cassandra is so modest in her own valuation as never to produce a sketchbook whilst an artist of Raphael West’s stature should be by; not for Cassandra, the vain posturing of a Mary Austen with her charcoal and paper. She had entirely escaped West’s notice, being naturally of a retiring and self-doubting nature. But her intelligent comments as we reviewed the sketches—regarding light, and vantage-point, and scale of the subject—revealed her inclination to him; and without pressing her upon the point, he voiced an interest in seeing Cassandra’s drawings one day. She coloured, doubted, and was silent.

“My sister has received no formal training,” I said gently, “and must shrink accordingly from the censure of such a master as yourself.”

“I am no master,” he said abruptly. “I shall end my life as a student, Miss Austen—for Art is an exacting god, and accepts nothing but genius. But tell me: What do you think of America?”