24 August 1805, cont'd.
TOWARDS NOON MY BROTHERS RETURNED FROM THE Hoop & Griffin in Deal — travel-weary, drenched to the skin, and quite put out of humour.
Denys Collingforth's body had revealed nothing of the nature of his murderer, and far too much of the grisly manner of his demise. Henry, I understood from several delicate intimations of the Justice's, had been quite sick for a quarter-hour together, and could not be brought to look upon the corpse again; Neddie had only suffered it through the application of a handkerchief to the nose, and a stout brandy to the stomach.
The cords of the neck were severed quite through, my brother told me, and must have spattered the murderer's clothes in the cutting. Neddie had hired a team of local labourers to dredge the millpond whence the body was recovered, and scour the surrounding underbrush, in the faint hope of discovering the murderer's discarded clothing, which might yet bear a tailor's or a launderer's mark; but he held out very little hope of their discovery. A clever man, who had planned Collingforth's death, might as easily have carried a change of clothes, and burned the bloodied ones along the way. Or he might simply have disguised his sins with a voluminous driving cape until achieving the sprawl of London. There any amount of refuse might be discarded undetected.
“And how was Collingforth's body recognised in Deal?” Lizzy enquired, a faint line of confusion between her brows.
“He had been seen in that town on Thursday morning, by one of his acquaintance — a Mr. Pembroke, not unknown among the Sporting Set. As I understand it, Pembroke makes a tidy profession of cheating at cards, Lizzy; and Collingforth was formerly intimate with him. He espied Collingforth loitering in a doorway in a shabby part of town, looking quite desperate; and as Pembroke could not believe him capable of murder— he had heard the news of Mrs. Grey's death, and the result of Wednesday's inquest — he undertook to shield his old friend. He carried Mr. Collingforth away to his rooms, and kept him there, drinking brandy until after dark. Poor Collingforth was almost beside himself at the news of the charge laid against him, Pembroke said— and they agreed that the best course he might adopt, was to get himself away to the Continent. The Downs anchorage is at Deal, you know — and Pembroke charged his friend with buying a passage on any ship that might soon weigh anchor, and be away. Indeed, he pressed some money upon Collingforth for that express purpose, although he declined the office of arranging the matter for him — Pembroke was loath to entangle himself in the flight of a man charged with murder.”
“As he was quick to point out to Mr. Justice Austen,” I murmured, amused. “Have you questioned this fellow narrowly, Neddie? He seems entirely too plausible. Might he not have helped Mr. Collingforth into the millpond, for a small consideration between friends?”
“I am before you, Jane,” my brother retorted with a smile; “I have learned, independent of Mr. Pembroke, that he parted from Collingforth at ten o'clock. His landlady — an elderly, quite disinterested personage — was required to bar the door behind the two men, and found them utterly disguised with drink. Pembroke met with an acquaintance in the street, who bore him away to a cock-fight, and remained in his company some hours; Collingforth, much muffled as a surety against discovery, set off towards the Downs anchorage. That is the last that Pembroke saw of him — until learning by chance that a murdered man had been found on Friday, and was lying at the Hoop & Griffin, he stopped to view the corpse.”
We were all silent an instant, in consideration.
“And so Mr. Collingforth never booked his passage,” I mused. “One is compelled to wonder why. Was he afraid of discovery? — Or discovered, in fact, between the time he parted from friend Pembroke, and fetched up at the quai's steps?”
“If the landlady may be believed, and Collingforth was decidedly in wine, he cannot have posed much resistance,” Henry observed sombrely. “Two stout fellows— or even one in his right senses — might have bagged him as easily as a bird.”
“I cannot think that many of the townsfolk should have recognised him,” Lizzy objected. “Deal is above sixteen miles from his home at Prior's Farm! He cannot often have had occasion to go there.”
Neddie shrugged. “Denys Collingforth was generally to be found wherever there was a matter of sport — or a wager that might be laid against it. I should not be surprised to learn that he was known, among certain circles, in every town in Kent. And you forget, my dear, that he was a hunted man. I posted an offer of one hundred pounds for his retrieval, unharmed — a handsome sum, in the eyes of many.”
“And thus sealed his death warrant,” I concluded, “for whoever killed Denys Collingforth had determined that he should not return unharmed. Such an eventuality could hardly serve the purpose of Mrs. Grey's murderer. Better he should die, and the whole affair die with him.”
My brother went pale. I had spoken without consideration — and now regretted the callous words immeasurably. “Do not blame yourself, Neddie!” I cried hastily. “I would not have you to feel yourself in the slightest regard responsible. You acted as a reasonable man should always think best — and cannot have foreseen the outcome. We may yet discover, moreover, that Mr. Collingforth was killed by a common footpad.”
He did not reply, but sat staring at the small gilt table before him, as tho' he saw the dead Collingforth's ravaged face reflected in its surface. Lizzy went to him, and seized his hand; Henry looked at me speakingly, and I felt myself very much to blame. It is always Neddie's way to harbour his injuries, where the rest of us might find relief in a single outburst; and I knew, from the cast of my brother's countenance, that my unwitting blow had gone home.
“What shall you do, my love?” Lizzy gently enquired.
He turned to stare at her blankly, and seemed to emerge from reverie.
“Why — as to that, my dear, I believe I have done all that I can, as Jane so rightly observes. I have despatched a messenger to London, with a request of the magistrates for any intelligence regarding Mr. Collingforth's absent friend, Mr. Everett. I have ordered the constable at Deal to interrogate the captains still anchored in the Downs, in the hope of discovering whether Collingforth attempted to purchase a passage on Thursday night; and I have set another man on the trail of Mr. Grey.”
“Mr. Grey?” she exclaimed. “But Mr. Grey was gone to London on Thursday night!”
“—or so his housekeeper was informed,” Neddie sanguinely returned. His eyes met mine over the crown of his wife's head. “But I have had cause to wonder, my dear, if his midnight messenger was not from London, but rather a man sent by Mr. Pembroke of Deal, who detained his friend so long over a bottle in the privacy of his rooms. Such an interval might allow of communication with The Larches. Perhaps Mr. Pembroke thought to retrieve tenfold the passage money lent to Colling-forth, in a small service to Mr. Grey.”
IT WAS WELL AFTER NOON BY THE TIME NEDDIE'S recital was done. He took a small nuncheon, exchanged his soiled clothes for fresh, and rang for Pratt around the hour of one o'clock. Some moments later we set off for The Larches and our call of condolence, in a carriage closed against the final showers of rain. Lizzy was a picture of fashionable decorum — her dark grey dress a trifle warm for the season, but perfectly suited to mourning; and just elegant enough, with a latticework of black satin running about the bodice, and a trim of jet beads capping her white shoulder, to proclaim it only recently delivered from the modiste's. More black ribbon was twined among her auburn curls, and jet dangled from her ears. She had adopted a pert little illusion veil that slanted fetchingly over one eye, and her gloves were dove-grey lace.
For my own part, I had removed the traces of ash from my person; pinned up the straying fragments of my hair, and exchanged my very damp muslin for a dry one. The period of mourning undergone for my late father being so recently at an end, I boasted no less than three gowns suitable for the occasion — and detested every one of them. The sight of dusky cloth must always evoke the most painful memories. I spurned them all, and borrowed a lavender muslin from my sister's store, left behind when she removed to Goodnestone.
“How far is The Larches, Lizzy?” I enquired, as the chaise slowed to skirt a daunting puddle.
“Not above five miles, I should think. We might achieve it in half an hour. You shall like to revisit the neighbourhood, Jane — it is not far from Rowling, a place you always regarded with affection.”
Rowling! I had not thought of it in an age; it might be a word from my vanished girlhood, and to speak it again thrust me swiftly back in memory. It is a smallish house— little more than a cottage, in fact — that sits about a mile from Goodnestone Farm. Neddie and Elizabeth spent their earliest years at Rowling, before old Mrs. Knight made over Godmersham to Edward, and removed herself to White Friars. I had spent some weeks at Rowling when I was twenty; it was there I learned to admire Mr. Edward Taylor's beautiful dark eyes, and tried to forget the hazel ones of a certain Tom Lefroy. I had danced the Boulanger at Goodnestone Farm, and walked home in the dark under a borrowed umbrella. At Rowling I had begun my work upon Elinor and Marianne, and struggled with the burlesque of Susan. Such a place must always linger in memory as fondly as dear Steventon — the scene of youthful hopes and dreams. So many of them dashed.[47]
“How I wish that we might have time to walk around the garden,” I said wistfully.
“You shall have walking enough at The Larches,” Neddie reminded me. “There is not a finer showplace in Kent.”
“Particularly now that Mr. Sothey has had his way with it,” I observed.
We proceeded then in silence, for Lizzy was not of a disposition for idle chatter, and my brothers were too weary to keep their eyes from closing. Tho' I would have given much for their opinion of my morning's discoveries — the curious fact of Mr. Sothey's handwriting, on letters destroyed by the governess — I could not feel it wise to canvass the matter so soon. My own part in disturbing the ashes was suspect enough, and open to censure; but I hesitated to expose Anne Sharpe to the contempt of her employers. Lizzy should be unlikely to look with favour on a governess familiar with intrigue; she would not scruple to dismiss a woman whom she considered unsuitable for the instruction of her daughters; and that I might be the agent of Anne Sharpe's ruin, was more than I could bear.
I could conceive a perfectly innocent explanation for the entire matter. Anne Sharpe had been taken much into Society during her years with the Porter-mans, and it was not incredible that she should have met Sothey somewhere, and formed an attachment. Fortune being scant on either side, the two might have considered it imprudent to marry, and determined to separate. Miss Sharpe came to my sister, in the regrettable role of governess, while Mr. Sothey was left to barter his talent for the arrangement of landscape. The gentleman might quickly have thrown himself into new things, new acquaintance — including his affaire with Francoise Grey. Miss Sharpe's heart, however, may have proved unequal to her sense of duty.
She had borne with her disappointment tolerably well, until the morning of the Canterbury race-meeting. There she must have witnessed, in company with myself, Mrs. Grey's stinging rebuke of her cicisbeo. The outrage! The betrayal! The mortification! And then, in the privacy of her own room, the desolation of loss. It should be enough to pique the sensibility of any well-bred young woman.
That Mr. Sothey had discerned his Anne in the Austen carriage, I little doubted — his marked interest in the Godmersham nursery, so evident during our conversation at Eastwell, was now explained. The mysterious letter that Fanny perceived on Wednesday would have been his communication; and no answer to it arriving— no Anne Sharpe appearing at the Eastwell dinner on Friday — he would necessarily have been at a high pitch of nerves. Whatever Sothey wrote to the governess, it had precipitated a different reply than he had expected, for she had ordered a fire as early as Thursday and destroyed the entirety of his correspondence.
But would a young lady, bred to the most delicate sense of duty, have consented to correspond with such a man, absent some private understanding of marriage? Had Anne Sharpe, in fact, been secretly engaged to Mr. Sothey?
Then his attentions to Francoise Grey — and the subsequent public rupture at the Canterbury race-meeting— were despicable, indeed. What if Anne Sharpe had somehow precipitated Mrs. Grey's anger? And incited Julian Sothey to murder?
Fantastic as the notion might seem — the merest flight of fancy — one consideration must lend it weight: Mr. Brett's disturbing glimpse of a woman with raven hair emerging from The Larches' stables. If that lady had been Anne Sharpe—
“Here we are at last, Jane — tho' well before I expected,” Lizzy murmured. “No one but Pratt may manage a team so nobly through the mud, to be sure! And how fortunate that the rain is ended — you shall have a delightful prospect of the valley as we approach.”
I thrust aside Mr. Sothey and his amours — consigned Anne Sharpe and her secrets to a safe compartment in my mind — and prepared for delight.
NOTHING MY BROTHER HENRY HAD TOLD ME OF Valentine Grey's consequence had urged me to believe The Larches a modest little place. My brief impression of the late Mrs. Grey — bold, dashing, and devil-may-care — had done nothing to dampen expectation. A woman may only flout convention when she commands sufficient power, either of rank or fortune; Francoise Grey had commanded both. I knew that her home would be in the first style of luxury. To this I was indifferent — one great house richly furnished may be very much like another. It was the grounds of The Larches alone that utterly deprived me of speech.
One approaches the place by a winding drive, that runs for some time through rolling Kentish downs; clumps of trees, in the style of Capability Brown, dot the greenest meadows, and an arched bridge surmounts the river perhaps a mile before the house. In this, there is nothing to astonish — Stourhead or The Vyne[48] might boast as much — and even the prospect of The Larches itself, first perceived around a turning of the drive, is only as noble as any other modern villa of its type. I could cry out in delight, and admire it as I have done any number of places, without feeling moved by a deeper beauty; it required a walk around the remarkable park, before I was completely overcome.
One enters the grounds from a terrace running perpendicular to one side of the house; a series of steps leads to a gravel path, that descends through a wood; and after a period of winding among larch tree, and beech, under-planted with the rarest specimens of rhododendron and azalea, the wood opens out to reveal a plunge of valley, its sides steeply planted with every variety of growing thing, massed in the most pleasing arrangement of colour and form. Below lies the river, now swelled to something greater — a lake, in fact, that is spanned at its narrowest points by first a bridge, and then a ferry. Emerging from the trees, on promontories of their own, and offering rival views of the valley's charms, are three temples — dedicated to Philosophy, Science, and Art.
I rested several moments under the portico of the last, surveying the fall of ground before me, and the ferry boat plying its oars between the near shore and my own; and rather wondered that Mr. Grey had neglected to raise an altar to the god of Mammon — his consequence and his garden both being dependent upon it. But these thoughts seemed ungenerous in the face of such beauty; and besides, the gentleman in question stood silently near me. It would never do to excite his contempt when we had progressed so admirably towards a better knowledge of one another.
But I forget myself, and proceed apace to Mr. Valentine Grey, when I had better have begun with his housekeeper.
Our excellent Pratt pulled up before the house in due course, and we found one Mrs. Bastable standing in the open doorway, as tho' in expectation of our visit. She was quite magnificent in an old-fashioned gown of black lawn, a starched white apron, and a ribboned cap; and she bobbed a cold curtsey as Neddie handed my sister from the carriage.
“Good morning, madam,” she said, in a colourless voice, “it is very good to see you at The Larches again, and after so long a period. You have been well, I trust?”
“Perfectly, Bastable, I assure you,” Lizzy said in a tone of faint amusement. The woman's implication was hardly lost upon her; she had been rebuked for neglect of the dead mistress, and for descending like a vulture upon the funeral-baked meats. “You do not know my sister, Miss Austen, I believe.”
I was treated to a similarly chilly courtesy, and ushered into the house.
Immediately upon entering, my eyes were drawn to the figures of two men — Mr. Valentine Grey, who stood grim-faced and stalwart next to his friend, Captain Woodford; and the Comte de Penfleur, who was established almost indolently upon a settee. Now that the rain had ended for good and all, a watery light played about his fair hair as tho' in benediction. The Comte must have felt the weight of my gaze; his own came up, and searched the room — only to pass indifferently over my unremarkable countenance and fix, with some earnest study, upon Lizzy's glowing one. But I was denied further occasion to observe — some few of our acquaintance were present in respect of the dead, and demanded recognition. Charlotte Taylor of Bifrons Park was there, with her eldest daughter, tho' not her husband; the Colemans, from Court Lodge, stood nervously in a corner; Nicolas and Anna-Maria Toke advanced immediately to pay their respects. It was heavy work, I own; a little awkwardness, in respect of the occasion and Neddie's role, was inevitable. Cordial as the feelings of all towards our party might be, there was nonetheless a little reserve; my brother must be viewed in this house, above all others, in the capacity first of his commission— and only secondarily as a valued friend. We others, as probable parties to his counsel, were treated with an equal respect; and so we were left a little apart, while our neighbours eyed us sidelong, and hurriedly concluded their visits.
“Mrs. Austen!” Charlotte Taylor cried, “how very well you are looking, to be sure. Such a cunning employment of jet beads! I do not know when I have seen a more ravishing gown, to be sure. Pray pirouette a little upon the carpet, that we might observe the flounce!”
“You are too kind, Charlotte,” Lizzy replied, without the slightest suggestion of a pirouette. “I am pleased to find you thriving. Mr. Taylor is well, I trust?”
“Oh, Edward is never less than stout,” she cried. “He quite puts me out of countenance. How am I to contrive a visit to Bath, when he will not suffer from the gout? Now tell me how you like my gown!”
Lizzy surveyed the apparition — a striped green silk, with a perilous quantity of soutache about the sleeves and hem, and smiled faindy. “It suits you admirably, Charlotte.”
“It is handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is not overtrimmed; I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being overtrimmed; quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments, naturally; I should look naked otherwise; but my natural taste is all for simplicity. A simple style of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery.”
“Indeed,” Lizzy murmured.
Delicately, I began to edge away, in the direction of a fine Italian landscape that hung against one wall. Charlotte Taylor on the subject of simplicity was not to be endured; she was constitutionally unfit for the task, and must be insincere.
“But I am quite in the minority, I believe,” she went on. “Few people seem to value simplicity of dress — show and finery are everything. I have some notion of putting such a trimming as this to my white and silver poplin. Do you think it will look well, Lizzy?”[49]
The landscape artist had captured a distant prospect of an ancient hillside, surmounted by Cyprus and a few tumbled columns; the mood was one of desolation and peace, a glorious past recalled, and now thankfully put to rest. Mr. Sothey should have found it admirable — the very soul of Picturesque — but whether congenial as a back garden, I could not presume to say. With a little start, I recollected that Mr. Sothey had probably known this picture well — he had frequented these rooms at The Larches for some months, and might almost have regarded them as his own. What had occurred between the Greys and the improver, to precipitate his hasty flight? And how did Mr. Grey regard Julian Sothey now?
“Lizzy,” my brother Neddie was saying to his wife, “you must allow me to introduce the Comte de Penfleur.”
I turned, and was in time to catch the Frenchman bending low over my sister's hand. “It is an honour, madam,” he said. “Rarely have I seen such beauty and elegance united in the figure of a woman — particularly so far from Paris.”
“You are too kind, sir,” Lizzy replied coolly, “but I am afraid that your experience of England is regrettably narrow.”
“Au contraire.“ He released her hand.
“And may I present my sister, Miss Austen,” Neddie said, with a faint frown for the Comte.
I curtseyed, and the Frenchman bowed. “I should have detected the family resemblance anywhere. You have quite the look of your brother Henry, Miss Austen, particularly about the eyes. His character, I imagine, is somewhat less deep; he has the look of a ban vivant, while your own aspect is more of reserve and understanding.”
“Indeed?” I replied, amused. “And are you a student of character, monsieur?”
“I am a student of humanity,” he replied with great seriousness. “The infinite variety of human expression and inclination is endlessly diverting, would not you agree? Particularly in England, where the national character is one of suppressed emotion. The necessity of schooling one's impulses to conform with an imposed convention is accepted here without question; but the result must be a soul eternally at war with the self. One cannot find happiness without a disregard for convention, Miss Austen; in France, the Revolution has taught us this.”
“I see.” Such a philosophy at work on Franchise Grey might have done incomparable mischief, but from the glow of his looks and the ardour of his phrases, the Comte must intend only good. Thus are all revolutionaries formed. “It has been my observation, monsieur — and I, too, am a student of character — that the flouting of convention, particularly for a woman, may often lead to great unhappiness.”
“In England, perhaps,” he mused, “for there is little room for the expression of the self. In England, yes, such a policy might be difficult — and bring unhappiness, even, in the short term — but eventually the joy of living by one's lights would undoubtedly prevail.”
“Provided one survived so long,” I murmured. “And have you travelled much in England, monsieur?”
“The hostilities have prevented me from visiting as often as I should have wished; but there was a time — around the year 'two — when I nearly made England my home. I have the widest experience of the country and its Fashionable Set; and thus I may protest with some energy” — turning smoothly to Lizzy — “that you are too modest, Mrs. Austen.”
“A mother of nine cannot be thinking any longer of her own beauty,” Lizzy said indifferently. “She had far better look to her daughters'.”
“In such cases,” Neddie broke in somewhat tartly, “a lady has not often much beauty to think of.”
“Nine children?” cried the Comte. “But you must have been married very young!”
Lizzy merely inclined her head without reply — not for her, to be trapped into revealing her age — and turned the conversation without a flicker. “The late Mrs. Grey, monsieur, was a paragon of style. Nothing in Canterbury was equal to her; nothing, indeed, in all of Kent. She was an adept at conveying the thousand little differences between a French manner of life and the English; and we shall not soon forget her. You have my deepest sympathies.”
Admirable, I thought — she had managed to suggest a respect for the lady that she had never felt, without the slightest hypocrisy of word or look. Nothing she had said was open to dispute; and it might be heard in any number of ways, according to the inclination of the auditor.
“You are very good,” the Comte replied. “I was often troubled by the tone of my Francoise's correspondence — she appeared to live in such wretched loneliness and isolation — but to know that she was not entirely without friends is a considerable comfort. Indeed, in having made the acquaintance of your excellent husband, Mrs. Austen — and now yourself — I feel I have secured my hope that justice shall be done. Mr. Grey does not command the will of every gentleman in the country, I find.”
“Upon my word, Hippolyte, you place a great deal of confidence in your own charm,” Mr. Grey said wryly from behind the Comte's back. “Do you believe for a moment that by flattering his wife, you may convince the Justice that I murdered Francoise? This is not France, where insinuation will pass for statecraft, and influence suborn common sense.”
He spoke just loudly enough to be audible to most of the room, and the pleasant murmur of conversation among the assembled guests died abruptly away. We were left standing in a little island of quiet, with barely a head turned in our direction. No one should have dreamt of suggesting in public that Valentine Grey had ever raised a finger against his wife; to have the gentleman propose the worst himself, was indelicate in the extreme.
Then Captain Woodford laid his hand easily on Grey's shoulder, and drew his friend away; the two men adjourned to a decanter standing on a demi-lune side-table. Mr. Grey poured out a drink, and tossed it back; Woodford spoke low and urgently into his ear.
Charlotte Taylor rose to leave, her cheeks flushed and her eyes averted from Lizzy. She grasped her daughter's hand firmly in her own, and made her adieux in a breathless accent. Anna-Maria Toke was swift to follow.
“My apologies, madam, for this little unpleasantness,” said the Comte de Penfleur. “I have learned to expect it in Mr. Grey's household; but I shall not trouble him for very much longer.”
“You are returning, I collect, to France?” Neddie enquired.
“I hope to be able to cross from Dover early in the week, perhaps as soon as Monday. There remain a few… uncertainties, however. I might be prevented by circumstance from embarking for some time. But I believe I shall remove this evening to an hotel in that town, in expectation of my passage; it cannot do to remain in a house where I am regarded with so much suspicion and dislike.”
“Are you familiar with Dover, sir? I should recommend the York House among the coaching inns; the Ship cannot be relied upon.”
“Thank you, Mr. Austen — but I always put up at the Royal. I have already written to the landlord to bespeak my room, and shall be gone in a matter of hours. You may reach me there, should the occasion require it; and I depend upon you, sir, to convey the slightest detail regarding Mrs. Grey's affairs. You know how deeply I am concerned that the man Collingforth, or” — with a significant look over his shoulder at Mr. Grey — “whoever is responsible, should not go unpunished.”
So the news of Denys Collingforth's murder had not yet reached The Larches. It could not be far behind us, however; there is nothing like the country for the rapid communication of what is dreadful.
“Perhaps you would be so good as to afford me a little of your time this morning, monsieur,” Neddie replied, “when the duty you owe these visitors is done. I have recently been placed in possession of some intelligence that may prove of interest to both Mr. Grey and yourself.”
“Indeed?” the Gomte cried. “And may I ask—”
“My deepest sympathies, Monsieur le Comte,” said Mrs. Goleman with a bob.
“Deepest — that is, I am very sorry for you, indeed,” muttered her husband, and with a hand to her elbow, steered her towards the door. The little party, it seemed, had run its course; only the Austens and Captain Woodford were left in possession of the saloon.
“You are not leaving, Austen?” Valentine Grey enquired of my brother in a lowered tone. “There is a matter regarding which I greatly desire your attention.”
“I am at your service, sir,” Neddie replied, “provided you may afford me a little of your time for the communication of some urgent news.”
Grey glanced about the thinning room, his eyes drifting indifferently over the Comte de Penfleur. “Then I suggest we repair to the library.”
“I would beg that you allow the Comte to accompany us.”
Grey frowned. “Is that necessary?”
“What I would say must necessarily concern him.”
“Very well.” The banker turned for the door abruptly. “But he shall not be privy to my words. He may listen to the Justice, and pack himself off to Dover. Bastable!”
The housekeeper appeared in the doorway, an affronted expression on her countenance. Presumably she preferred the master to ring for a maid, rather than to shout like a common publican. “Yes, sir?”
“Pray be so good as to summon a lad for the purpose of conveying our guests around the grounds,” he said impatiently. “They may be some time at it, and will require refreshment in the temple. Have you adequate shoes, Mrs. Austen?”
“Perfectly, sir, I thank you.”
He eyed Lizzy's elegant slippers. “You shall be swollen and blistered before a quarter-hour is out; but no matter. The park does not give up its beauties so easily; they must be teazed into submission, like a spirited woman. And you, sir? What is your pleasure?”
This last was directed at Henry. He had been most intent upon the study of a very fine snuff-box abandoned on a marquetry table, but lifted his gaze at Grey's address, and said in as colourless a voice as possible, “My shoes are perfectly adequate to your grounds, Mr. Grey, if that is what you would know. My stockings, perhaps, might be thinner; and as for my smallclothes—”
Grey threw back his head and laughed with undisguised delight There was a difference in his manner of behaving this morning, from what it had been in his interview at Godmersham; he was at once reckless and carefree, grim and abandoned. It was as tho' a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, or as tho' he found himself in the thick of battle, and had wagered his all on the toss. Intriguing. His entire air suggested a man with nothing to lose, and everything to defend.
“Come into the library, Austen,” he said, “and send the rest of your family out into the garden. Unless the weight of your brother's smallclothes prohibits the tour.”
“I believe they should be admirably suited to visiting the stables,” Henry offered mildly. “I quite long to see the filly Josephine at closer quarters. You may have heard, Mr. Grey, that your late wife's horse bested my own at the Canterbury Races, on the very day of her tragic… accident”
There was the briefest of silences. The Comte de Penfleur adjusted his cuffs, a look of abstracted pain upon his countenance. Then Grey said, “I should be happy for you to inspect the filly, Mr. Austen. The bulk of the stables will be sent down to Tattersall's in a matter of weeks; and if, having seen Josephine, you wish to make an offer for her, I should not be loath to consider it.”
“You would sell her horses?” Penfleur cried, all complaisance fled.
“I cannot send them out of my sight fast enough,” Grey replied, with a bitter emphasis.
“Then I shall take them all!” The Frenchman's face had reddened, and he walked slowly towards Grey, his hands clenching slightly.
The banker regarded him with undisguised contempt. “I regret to inform you, monsieur, that they are not for sale.”
The Comte tore his glove from within his coat and dashed it in Grey's face. The other man neither flinched nor dropped his gaze from Penfleur's; but breathing shallowly, as tho' an iron band constrained his lungs, he said, “I beg you will ignore what the Comte has just done, Mr. Austen. It can have nothing to do with you; and I should abhor your interference in so delicate and private a matter.”
“Just as I should abhor the necessity of mounting a watch upon your movements, Mr. Grey,” Neddie replied steadily, “or yours, Monsieur le Comte. I have no wish to post men outside your door all night, for the prevention of a dawn meeting; so pray retrieve your glove, sir, and let us hear no more about it.”[50]
“You saw how he insulted me.” Penfleur's voice, in that instant, was colder and more deadly than I could have imagined. “I cannot allow such abuse to go unaddressed. My honour—”
“—cannot have been abused by a simple truth,” Neddie protested. “Mrs. Grey's stables are presently not for sale. They shall be under the gavel at Tattersall's in a matter of weeks, and did you wish to appear in the ring, and place your bids with the rest, I am sure you would be heard as readily as another. Now, may I suggest, gentlemen — as Mrs. Bastable has appeared with the lad who is to guide the ladies — that we repair to the library? The Comte must not delay on his road to Dover; and the news I would communicate is decidedly pressing.”
Neither Grey nor the Comte offered a word in reply; the malevolence of their mutual regard was chilling. The banker was the first to turn away, and at last the Frenchman followed him through the door.
He did not deign to retrieve his glove.
Elinor and Marianne was published in 1811 as Sense and Sensibility. Susan was sold to a publisher in 1803 but did not reach print as Northanger Abbey until 1818, after Austen's death. Steventon was Austen's birthplace; she spent the first two decades of her life in Steventon Rectory, which was later razed. — Editor's note.
Stourhead was the ancestral home of the Hoares, a wealthy and ennobled family of bankers whose chief passion was the creation of a classical pleasure-ground running to over a thousand acres. There is no record of Austen ever visiting Stourhead, but as it sits a short distance from Bath, she may have done so. The Vyne, in Hampshire, was the ancestral home of the Chutes, and best known for its hunt; Reverend James Austen, Jane's eldest brother, was an intimate friend of the Chute family. — Editor's note.
Austen later ascribed almost exactly these words to one of her more insufferable characters, Mrs. Elton, of Emma. Perhaps her extended caricature of that lady is taken, in part, from Charlotte Taylor. — Editor's note.
Magistrates (and, by extension, Justices of the Peace in country neighborhoods) were charged with preventing public demonstrations of violence. This included prizefights, which were illegal, but was particularly aimed at duels — which were conducted, of necessity, in the greatest secrecy. — Editor's note.