Jane and the Wandering Eye (31 page)

“Well, girls!” my aunt cried, upon perceiving us at the door, “and so you have put on black gloves for Madam Lefroy! Aye, I heard it all from John Butcher, who is to marry the daughter of your Cook; and I wonder that you did not trouble to visit us before! It is very bad, to have the news of a person of that kind; they are all for puffing themselves up with importance, in a most unbecoming and insolent fashion! That veil is very fine, Cassandra—but I am sure you gave too much for it. You always do.”

My aunt was established today on the sitting-room sofa, a lap rug tucked well about her, quite splendid in
dressing-gown and cap. Jane Leigh-Perrot is possessed of the most manly features I have ever observed in a woman—a square chin, long nose, and frankly assessing eyes. Her countenance
must
convey an impression of vigour and health entirely at variance with her languorous airs; and I shall probably be guilty of abusing her on her deathbed, so little confidence do I place in her claims to ill-health.

“Good morning, Aunt.” Cassandra advanced to offer her cheek. “You look very well.”

“I do not
feel
myself to be so, I assure you. Such palpitations of the heart! Such faintings and flutterings in my head and my bowels! Do you fetch my vinaigrette, Cassandra, and then tell me all the news.”

“Indeed we have none, Aunt—being quite sunk in mourning, and little disposed to society,” I interposed.

The good lady snorted, and subjected my figure to the very coldest appraisal. “Do not be affecting modesty in
my
eyes, Miss Jane! I have heard it all from your mother these two days at least! I know that you are quite abandoned to pleasure and dissipation, and go about with a most disreputable set! No amount of black ribbon can deceive
me!”

“That is very well, Aunt, for deception is hardly my inclination.”

She snorted again, like a well-exercised horse, and rounded upon my mother. The poor lady had perched anxiously on the edge of a chair, in an effort to avoid my gaze. “Is she buried, then, Mrs. Austen?”

“The service is to be on Friday,” my mother supplied, “and James is to have the performing of it.”

“That is very singular—for she died in the early hours of Sunday, did she not? I fear the decomposition of the corpse will be highly advanced. There will be a stench. Most distressing to the unfortunate relicts.”

We were saved the necessity of an answer by the appearance
of my uncle, a spare, lithe, twinkling personage with a high forehead and ruddy complexion. He was today all smiles and affability. “Ah, there you are, sister!” he exclaimed, and advanced upon us with that mingled expression of pain and forbearance that generally marks the gout sufferer. “This is happily met, indeed! For I was just upon the point of seeking you in Seymour Street, and you have saved me the job of it! What do you think? I have taken a subscription to the concert tomorrow evening, and there are places for us all—if you will do me the honour of accepting!”

“It should be quite beyond our power, brother,” my mother replied with an anxious look, “for you see we are in mourning, on account of Madam Lefroy.”

“Well—and what is the point of mourning, hey, if not to be observed by all the world? We do not go about in black merely to sit at home quietly by the fire, and admire one another! I doubt Cassandra would wish to keep so fine a veil from the sight of the wondering public.”

At this brilliant sally, he doubled over with laughter, and poked my sister in the ribs. Cassandra looked discomfited, and shifted uneasily in her chair. “Indeed, Uncle, I have no desire to parade my distress before anyone, I assure you.”

“And Jane has never very much enjoyment in a concert,” my aunt observed with conscious malice.

“No, indeed—she has the most wretched ear imaginable when it comes to Rauzzini and Mrs. Billington,” my mother agreed. “The music should
quite
be wasted upon Jane.”

“So I fear you must give up your tickets, Perrot,” my aunt pronounced with decision. “They are not wanted at all; and do you be certain to retrieve your money from the ticket-sellers—they are all for what they can get, and will be pressing in their claim that you must exchange one concert for another! We shall stay at home tomorrow,
and invite the Austens to make an additional table at whist. There is no harm in cards, surely, when one is in mourning?”

My unfortunate uncle looked crestfallen. “But this is too bad!” he cried. “I was as fond of Madam Lefroy as anyone, to be sure—but I do not think she would wish for us to endure the season with long faces. What is Christmas, without music or amusement? I had thought perhaps we might return here after the concert, Jane, for a game of charades. We cannot observe the holiday, without we have charades!”

My Uncle Leigh-Perrot is a rare hand at the composition of these gentle conundrums, they having formed the chief part of the Leigh family’s revels in his childhood; and he takes such obvious delight in the confusion of all his relations, that we none of us are at pains to guess his riddles too soon.
⁶
In nine-and-twenty years of observing Christmas, I have survived only a few without charades; I learned the art of their construction at my mother’s knee, and all the Austens may profess a certain ingenuity in their devising. In considering of my uncle’s disappointment, and my own dread of martyrdom to my aunt’s affection for cards, I at last determined to speak.

“If I might venture an opinion, Uncle—”

“By all means, Jane.”

“I must believe that a soul oppressed by misery and grief should far sooner find consolation in the strains of the violincello, or the airs of an Italian love song, than in betting and trumps. I shall be happy to accompany you, sir, should you wish to pursue the concert scheme; and stand ready to brave your most inveterate wit, upon our return.”

“Capital! Capital! And perhaps we shall persuade your brother Henry and his little wife to make another couple!” He beamed all around, and reached for his fine black hat. “I shall invite them myself—for I am bent upon the Pump Room this very moment, Jane, in pursuit of my glass of water, you know—and am sure to meet them there! There is nothing like Mrs. Henry for the Pump Room of a morning!”

But his energy was not required; the door was hurriedly opened, and the housemaid announced the Henry Austens, in a breathless accent that suggested they were hard upon her heels. And indeed, it required only an instant for Eliza to enter, beaming, in a ravishing blue silk gown and fur tippet, with Henry hurrying behind.

“My dear Mrs. Perrot!” she exclaimed, “and Uncle James! How delighted I am to see you all! But surely you are not on the point of leaving, Uncle—for we have had the saddest struggle in the world in adventuring the streets, and it would be too bad of you to run away now that we are come.”

“It is the Christmas holiday,” my aunt opined sagely. “Bath is ever a hurly-burly at such a time; and in a week it will be worse—what with mummers, and Waits, and singing bands, and children begging coins for the slightest service.
⁷
Good-for-nothings, all of them, intent on profiting by a sacred observance!”

“It was not the crowd, Aunt, but the chairmen! Only fancy! Our chairs were very nearly overturned! I was reminded of poor Mr. Lawrence, Jane, and thought of you extremely.”

“Mr. Lawrence?” I said with a frown.

“Why, yes! Did you not hear of his misfortune? It was all about the Pump Room yesterday—though I had the news myself of Isabella Wolff, while attending service at the Laura Chapel.”

“What news?”

“Mr. Lawrence was waylaid Saturday evening, upon his return to the Bear from the Theatre Royal, and not a stone’s throw from our own lodgings. A band of ruffians set upon him, and very nearly exacted his life! The poor man was most shockingly beat about the head, and was several hours insensible, until the ministrations of Dr. Gibbs succeeded in reviving him.”

“I am astonished!” I cried, my colour rising. I was devoutly happy, at that moment, that my father had elected to remain at home in Green Park Buildings, for his sensibility should have betrayed the truth of my own misadventure. “And did not the chairmen come to his aid?”

“They were all run off; and I believe the Mayor of Bath is to make a representation to the principals among them, protesting Mr. Lawrence’s shocking treatment, for he is a figure of some note, and his misfortune cannot show the town to advantage.”

“Assuredly not. Mr. Lawrence is recovered, I hope?”

“He is; but keeps to his rooms, and sees no one but my dear Isabella. She was much distressed, and attempted the Laura Chapel a-purpose to beseech Divine Providence for intercession.”

“I wonder she did not find in his misfortune a visitation of Divine Judgement,” Cassandra mused, “upon her reprehensible behaviour in encouraging the gentleman’s attentions. She might more profitably have sought to mend her erring ways, and returned to London and her husband.”

“Oh, pshaw!” Eliza cried. “You are become a sad stick, indeed, Cassandra, since your unfortunate overturning in Lyme!”

My brother Henry had been speaking in a low voice all the while to my mother; and at this, he made his way to my side, and folded me to his bosom. “My dearest Jane,” he said, with a speaking glance, “I am made most unhappy by this dreadful news from Ashe.”

“What is it, Henry?” his wife broke in. “Of what are you speaking?”

“Did you but observe my sisters, Eliza, even so headlong a wit as
yours
must endeavour to form a notion.”

She gazed, her happiness fled; comprehended the sombre nature of our gowns, and the dusky colour of our ribbons and gloves; and entreated us for explanation.

“Our own dear Madam Lefroy,” I said with difficulty. “She was injured in a fall from a horse on Saturday, and died but a few hours later.”

“Oh, Jane! How desperate for yourself—and indeed, for all our dear family,” Eliza cried, and sat down abruptly upon a footstool. “I had not an idea of it! But how melancholy for the unfortunate Lefroys! The youngest cannot be sixteen!”

“Thirteen,” Cassandra supplied, and turned to my mother, who had commenced a quiet weeping.

“When I consider, that we spoke our last to her only a week ago, in Laura Place—with never a notion that we should see her no more!” Eliza pressed her little hands to her head. “La, this is a miserable business. And you
should feel it most acutely, Jane, who were as another daughter to her. She will be very much missed.”

“And so she is already.”

“Even
I
, who knew her only slightly, can remember her with nothing but affection. Do you know,” Eliza said with a small laugh through her tears, “that I credit Madam Lefroy with encouraging dear Henry to press his suit? Yes! It was she! For you know your mother should never have looked kindly on him marrying his cousin, and one full ten years his senior, at that. But Madam Lefroy had known us together in our youth—when we played at
The Wonder, or A Woman Keeps a Secret
, at Steventon one Christmas. Your brother James wrote an epilogue for it. Do you remember, Jane?”

“Vaguely—but I was very young.”

“Not above eight or so, I should think. I was only just returned from France. Yes. It was the year ‘87, little Hastings was yet a babe in arms, and my husband established on his estates with his mistress—and I felt, as I gazed upon poor Henry, that I had never seen a boy so callow and yet so filled with every noble emotion. It was ten years, of course, and the Comte de Feuillide a victim of the guillotine, before I felt myself free to marry again; but I learned to my joy that it was Madam Lefroy brought dear Henry to the point.”

“Madam believed in marriages of attachment a great deal more than marriages of prudence.”—Though prudence had taken the upper hand in the case of her nephew.

“It is strange, is it not,” Eliza mused, “that she should lose her life so hard upon the heels of the Duchess’s rout? We must declare the evening ill-fortune’d in every particular, for it has certainly occasioned a tide of melancholy and loss.”

“Madam’s death can have little to do with the masquerade, my dear,” I replied, with far more assurance
than in fact I felt. “But I will admit the coincidence of events may bear so unhappy a construction.”

“And now Mr. Lawrence is set upon at the doors of his inn,” she reflected. “I cannot like the present aspect of Bath; it is but too reminiscent of my last days in Paris! I shall not trust myself to the streets, and must exert my energies to a swift removal.”

I smiled and sat down beside her. “Eliza, Eliza—I cannot think an overturned chair, or a lady’s fall from a horse in Hampshire, can recall anything of the revolt in France. Endeavour to compose yourself, my dear, and attend to my Uncle Perrot. He has a scheme devised solely for your pleasure.”

She turned immediately to that affable gentleman; heard his proposal for the concert; and had only to learn that I intended to make another of the party, to accept in the most delightful accent possible—and so Eliza’s mourning passed, as all her extremes of spirit must—with the force and transience of a summer shower.

W
E MADE OUR MELANCHOLY WAY ONCE MORE TO
G
REEN
Park Buildings, and found my father had quite deserted us. My mother confessed herself somewhat exhausted by the emotions of the day, and the rigours of her sister Perrot’s conversation, and sought her rooms in the hope of rest. Cassandra set about the instruction of Cook, in the matter of mince pies; and I returned in solitude to the little sitting-room. But I had not even attempted the composition of these few lines, when a knock on the door announced a visitor; and I very soon was presented with Mary the housemaid, a most anxious look upon her countenance.

“If you please, ma’am, there’s a gentleman as wishes to see you,” she said.

I studied her with irritation. “I am not inclined to visitors today.”

Poor Mary’s visage clouded. “I know that, ma’am. And so I told him. But he
would
have it as I should bring you his card, and so I have done.” She crossed, and held out the offending object; and with a sudden exclamation I set down my pen.