Jane and the Man of the Cloth (16 page)

I must have looked my surprise at his terse words, so clearly expressive of a proprietary interest in the
place,
rather than in Cassandra's state; but in a moment, I understood the cause of Captain Fielding's distress.

“I must chide myself for an overactive enthusiasm in exhibiting these grounds—and in so vigourous a manner,” he said, “for assuredly the walk has proved too much for her delicate health.”

And indeed, Cassandra was slumped upon a bench in an attitude of great fatigue, while Lucy Armstrong searched frantically among her green muslin pockets for what I imagined to be some errant smelling salts. The enquiring eyes of a stone wood nymph, arranged over a little door that stood ajar in the temple's wall, looked down upon the tableau. That the door shielded an area for the storage of garden implements, I readily discerned; for a huddle of indiscriminate shapes, cloaked in sailcloth, was revealed by the setting sun—and a clever usage it was for a wilderness ruin. Captain Fielding's house is entirely fitted out with such similarly charming notions— reflective, perhaps, of a man accustomed to tight quarters on a ship. I had observed the snug arrangement of his bookshelves and desk, the latter article having a removable surface for writing in one's chair, as we earlier passed through the library; and indeed, little that the Captain owns is designed purely for ornament, or for a single purpose, serving a variety of duties in ways that are decidedly ingenious. I thought of Frank, whose life is similarly efficient in its organisation, and shook my head fondly at my brother's plans to marry.
²
Mary Gibson should make a sad business of Frank's tidy habits.

As we approached, Cassandra raised her head, her countenance suffused with pain. “I have overtaxed my strength, dearest Jane,’” she said, “and must run the risk of offending you, Captain Fielding, with my plea for a return to Wings cottage.”

He turned from securing the door beneath the nymph's head, and cried, “It shall be done with the greatest dispatch. A moment only is required for the summoning of Jarvis. But tell me, Miss Austen—can you attempt the walk to the house?”

“If Jane will support me on the one hand, and Miss Armstrong on the other, it may be done,” Cassandra replied, and slowly regained her feet with an air of grim resolution. I hastened to her side and suffered her to rest her weight against my shoulder, my arm around her waist and my heartbeat rendered the more rapid by a fearsome anxiety. A quick glance at Captain Fielding revealed the agony of regret that suffused his countenance; and I knew as though he had spoken aloud, that his mind was a turmoil of recrimination and anger at the disability that prevented him from providing greater assistance. But a lame man, dependent upon a cane for his own support, was hardly likely to serve as a prop for my suffering sister; and so I left him to sort out his manly feelings in peace, and turned my attention where it was the more necessary.

We had progressed perhaps one half the full length of the garden walk, when Cassandra begged to rest upon a bench; such dizzyness as overwhelmed her, coupled with a throbbing at the temples, nearly dropping her where she stood. I bit my lip, and wished for some greater aid— my brother, perhaps, or even Eliza—while Lucy Armstrong satisfied her tender feelings in repeated enquiries of Cassandra, and the triumphant production of the smelling salts. At last my sister rose, and managed to regain the house; whereupon Captain Fielding sent for his carriage and bade the housemaid fetch some brandy. This last having been administered, Cassandra sat back upon the settee with streaming eyes and a choking cough, unaccustomed as she is to strong spirits; and turned to me with all the terror of her infirmity upon her face.

“Jane!” she cried, though her voice was but a whisper; “I had thought myself completely recovered! It was not so very great an injury; the rest of my dear family suffered little from the coach's overturning; and? am several days removed from the event. And yet my present pain is unbearable. Can it be that I have received a greater knocking than was at first understood? Or that Mr. Dagliesh has mistaken the extent of the malady?”

“Such fretful thoughts cannot improve your prospects for the remainder of our travel home,” I said gendy, as the sound of wheels upon the gravel revealed the barouche as even then standing before the door. “We will consult with Mr. Dagliesh as soon as ever we may.”

Captain Fielding assisted us to the carriage with the greatest concern alive upon his countenance, and urged the coachman to achieve his two-miles’ journey with all possible speed, though mindful not to jar the lady. And so, with these conflicting orders setded upon his head, poor Jarvis clucked to the horses, and we were off.

The ride itself was uneventful, being spent chiefly in the sort of silence that only arises from great perturbation of spirit; and I sighed with relief as the barouche began the descent into Broad Street, and the cheerful lights of Wings cottage appeared through the growing dusk.

We were not to be afforded the comfort of an uneventful arrival, however—for Cassandra had only to set foot to paving stone, before crumpling in a faint upon the ground.

AND SO MR. DAGLIESII WAS SUMMONED AT THE BEHEST OF MY
brother Henry, who was even then within the cottage awaiting our return, the better to give his fondest adieux—for he and Eliza depart for Weymouth today, to tour the town and observe the embarkation of the Royal Family.
³
From thence they should travel to Ibthorpe, and by a leisurely route return to No. 16 Michael's Place, and their neat little home. But at the outcry and bustle from the very gate, my dear brother rushed to our assistance; and his anxiety was the more extreme, from being motivated by surprise. Miss Armstrong and 1 were more sanguine, having journeyed in some anticipation of the event.

I may say that Mr. Dagliesh was
very
angry; he regarded us all as having precipitated a dangerous relapse, by our determination to force Cassandra over-early into activity; and he ordered the strictest quiet, the administration of broth, and the application alternately of ice and warm compresses, for the relief of my sister's throbbing temples. The poor surgeon's assistant stood some few minutes by her bedside, holding her wrist between his fingers as though intent upon her pulse; but I knew him to be utterly inattentive to the flutter of Cassandra's heart, so clearly were his thoughts fixed upon the agony within his own.

He departed not long thereafter, in search of some ice from the Golden Lion, and assuring us of his return at the earliest hour of the morning; and it remained only for us to determine the wisest course. The consultation of Dagliesh's superior, Mr. Carpenter, was much canvassed, and rejected by my mother, who had learned something to that gendeman's detriment from a recent Lyme acquaintance, one Miss Bonham, who claimed a persistent nervous fever. Henry at last voiced the thought chief within all our minds—that Cassandra should accompany himself and Eliza on their return to London, that trip being expedited by the amendment of the plan, and a determination to proceed with all possible swiftness towards Michael's Place; for the opinion of a physician, with all the experience of a city practice, should be solicited as soon as possible. My father agreed; my mother lamented and groaned at this loss of her favourite; and I felt a pang at the loneliness I should undoubtedly feel in Cassandra's absence.

“Should not I accompany you, Henry, the better to nurse my sister?” I asked, in a lowered tone, as my mother hastened to the kitchen for a warm poultice.

“Eliza shall amply supply your place, Jane; for, you know, she was many years in attendance upon poor Hastings.
⁴
Better that you remain to comfort my mother and father.” Henry smiled and patted my arm. “Despite the events of this evening, I do not believe Cassandra to be in any real danger; a bit of peace and quiet, and restorative sleep, shall soon reverse the indifferent state of her health.”

I GAZE UPON HER NOW, AS SHE SLUMBERS
SHLL
JN THE EARLY WATCH of morning, and pray that it may be so. In a few hours she shall be torn from me, and all the delightful prospects of our Lyme visit o'erthrown; I shall have no one but Miss Armstrong for rambling the Cobb, or climbing the chasms of the Pinny, and my solitary visits to Mr. Milsop's glove counter shall be melancholy indeed. Poor Mr. Dagliesh shall feel it acutely, I am afraid—but Cassandra was afforded little time to return him anything but gratitude, for his attentive and solicitous care; a deeper emotion— an emotion capable of displacing the unfortunate Tom Fowle in her heart—would require such lightness of spirit and limitless days as are presently denied her.

And what of myself? Exists there the seed of feeling, that I might try what limitless days and lightness of spirit may do? And if there be a seed—in whose favour planted?

I had occasion to lie awake much of the night in contemplation of the vagaries of the heart—due, perhaps, to the shallow breathing of my sister tossing beside me, or perhaps to the contrariety of my own heart's impulses. 1 have ever been possessed of too passionate a nature, however I would cloak it in a general appearance of sobriety and sense. It has led me to care too readily and too deeply, for men whose circumstances are utterly unequal to my own—being separated the one from the other by either a gulf in fortune, or a disparity in nature that does not recommend of happiness. Geoffrey Sidmouth belongs most clearly to the latter. A more reasonable woman should give her heart without reservation to the gallant Captain, whose apparent good nature, firm principles, and forthright contempt for all that is ignoble, proclaim him to be the stuff of which England is made. And yet my heart is unmoved by Percival Fielding; I find him possessed of intelligence and integrity, and wish him more blessed by cleverness and good humour.

And beyond all this, is a something
more
—a want of that which I cannot quite define. The Captain speaks and behaves entirely as he ought; and yet I cannot feel that he is open. There is an
affectation
of openness—he was surely frankness itself yesterday, in discussing the smugglers” affairs—and yet I have the creeping certainty that he is open by design, and
that
only when it suits his purpose.

Geoffrey Sidmouth, on the contrary, is neither open nor secretive; that gentleman is merely the master of his own business.
His
emotions are so hardly checked, as to be almost transparent; one will always know where one
is,
though utterly confounded as to
why.
His is an eager, a forthright, temperament; and even in his blackest moments—when I find nothing easier than to mistrust his purpose—I know myself to be in the presence of the man. With Captain Fielding, one is ever in the presence of a caricature. Even his gallantries are studied.

I had reason to consider this but a few hours ago, well before my return to Cassandra's still-slumbering form, and the quieter comforts of my pen. I was awakened, as two days before, by a great hallooing along the Cobb; and with a sickening certainty I saw in
t??
mind's eye the ghastly scaffold raised once more, and the lifeless body awash in surf. At the sound of men's voices I threw back the covers, and hastily exchanged my nightclothes for yesterday's discarded muslin; a moment's thought instructed the choice of stout boots over my usual slippers. It required but an instant to descend the stairs as noiselessly as I knew how, and exit Wings cottage.

I lifted my trembling eyes to the Cobb's end—but not a gibbet was to be seen. Along the wide beach that fronts The Walk came a parade of toiling men, casks upon their backs; and great wains were drawn up along the shingle, with the horses full in the water to their very flanks’ height. Feeling rather foolish, but nonetheless thoroughly roused, I proceeded along The Walk until I had gained a better view—and espied two galleys, with crews at their oars, bobbing in the very waters where the smugglers’ cargo had been dropped the previous day!

“So they would retrieve it, then, as Captain Fielding asserted,” I said aloud, in some wonderment; and was rewarded by a reply of sorts, and from my very elbow.

“At an hour when most women should dread to be seen abroad, you are lovelier than I might have imagined, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.”

I swifdy turned, in some dismay and confusion, and found Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth on the sand below, seated easily astride a black stallion of fearsome appearance; the animal's nostrils flared as it chuffed at the wind and tossed its powerful head. I stepped backwards involuntarily, and clasped my arms together, shivering somewhat from the morning's chill. In an instant Sidmouth had dismounted and secured the horse; and in another, he had divested himself of his cloak and draped it about my shoulders, so swiftly I had not time to protest.

“The breeze is cold off the water at dawn,” he said, with an indifferent air. “We cannot have you catch your death, however deserved of your impetuous nature. Dagliesh has enough to do at Wings cottage.”

I swept my eyes the length of his powerful figure, and noted that he was in a similarly-disheveled state. His wine-coloured coat was stained with a dark liquid I could not identify, but took to be spirits; his stock was undone, his jaw unshaven, and his hair decidedly ruffled by long exposure to the wind. He might almost have been abroad the entire night through, and be only now upon his road home, and tarrying by the scene at the water's edge; and with a sudden blush, I imagined the hours of dissipation now put behind him.

“What brings you to the Cobb, sir?” I enquired. “And at such an hour!”

“I might ask the same of you, Miss Jane Austen of Bath.” His voice held too much amusement for my fragile pride.

“I thought to observe another unfortunate fisherman, hanged for the Reverend's sins,” I retorted, “and at the hullabaloo below my window, ran out to offer assistance”

“Singular,” Mr. Sidmouth observed coolly. “Very singular indeed. Most women should faint dead away at the mere prospect. But then, you are always a singular personality, Miss Austen. It was just such a sense of purpose in extremity that drove you to my very door, some few days ago.”