Jane and the Barque of Frailty

Chapter 23 Willoughby’s Shade

Monday, 29 April 1811

ELIZA’S FRIEND, MRS. LATOUCHE, IS A FAIR-HAIRED and plump little woman with protuberant blue eyes, who dearly loves to talk a good deal of nonsense about her health, her clothes, and her acquaintance among the ton. Born Mary Wilkes in Kingstown, Jamaica, she embarked at seventeen upon a storied career: marrying first Mr. Edward East, a widower with several children, to whom she dutifully presented two more, before his taking off with a fever peculiar to those island parts. In the handsome swell of her twenties, she bestowed her hand, her surviving child Miss Martha East, and her late husband’s considerable revenues from the production of sugar, upon Mr. John-James Digges-Latouche, also of Jamaica. Mr. Latouche eventually rose to such distinction as a Governor-Generalship of that island; when he died, his widow determined to sell her holdings and her slaves, and decamp for England — the better to puff off her daughter in a respectable marriage. But Miss East did not “take,” and the hopes that buoyed her first Season in the year 1798, have long since gone off. Like me, she is now firmly upon the shelf, and appears to find that it quite suits her — a spinster lady of some five-and-thirty years, established in all the style and comfort of Portman Square. As she may expect to inherit her mother’s fortune when that lady’s aches and nerves put a period to her existence, Martha East is hardly to be pitied.

She is decidedly unlike the round little Dresden doll that is Mrs. Latouche, being tall and angular, with what one must presume are her father’s sharp features. Moreover, Miss East is of a bookish disposition, quite formidable in her understanding — and has taken to wearing spectacles and a cap. In honour of Sunday dinner among friends, it was a lace cap; and Miss East looked very grand last night in her amber-coloured silk. She might almost have been headmistress of a school for girls, and her mother her incorrigible pupil.

I am chiefly useful to Eliza on such evenings in monopolising Miss East’s attention, so that my sister might have a comfortable coze with Mrs. Latouche — and canvass all the latest spring fashions. Miss East, I observed, was armed and ready with conversation from the moment of our arrival in Portman Square, for she held in her hands a volume of Mary Brunton’s Self-Controul.[23]

“What do you think of this novel, Miss Austen?” she cried as I advanced with words of greeting unspoken on my lips. “It is everywhere praised as a piece of perfection; and tho’ I would hope I am more exacting in my tastes than the common run of humanity, I will own there is much to admire in the heroine — for rather than self-control, the author would champion self-reliance; and thus in Laura every woman must find a salutary model, do not you agree?”

“I regret to say that I have not yet had the pleasure of reading Mrs. Brunton,” I said, “being unable to locate the set of volumes in my last expedition to Lackington’s. But how happy for the author that you find much to admire!”

“The author?” Miss East repeated, as one amazed; “I confess I never think of the author when reading a book — my mind is wholly given over to the conduct of the characters, to the representation of life as one finds it for better or worse portrayed; I am wholly given up to the situations presented. The author never enters my consciousness — except, of course, when I am reading Scott.”

“Indeed! I do not think Sir Walter Scott may be barred from anywoman’s consciousness,” I returned.

“Only consider what perils to mind and virtue Laura must withstand!” Miss East shook her volume with enthusiasm. “First made the object of a rake’s unwelcome attentions — escaping seduction by a hairs-breadth — refusing marriage from that same disreputable (tho’ very dashing) gentleman when he sees the error of his ways — she attempts, as so many of us must, to live upon her own resources — and yet finds not a single lover of art willing to sell her paintings in the entire Metropolis! I am only just come to the part where she must escape the savage horrors of America in a canoe; but the whole is of the deepest moral instruction, I assure you. I should not hesitate to press it upon any young girl of my acquaintance, as a warning against the bitterness of the world.”

I eyed the book somewhat dubiously, and wondered what best to say; but was happily forestalled by a bustle of arrival in the front passage.

“That will be the Count. How tedious the interruption! But we shall talk more of literature later, I hope.”

“The Count?”

“Young Julien. He was supposed to bring his mother — but in the event, she is lying down with a sick headache.” My companion made a moue of distaste. “These elderly women and their disorders! I refuse to countenance Mamma’s continual appeals for attention, on the score of some megrim or another; but naturally she was inclined to sympathise with the Comtesse d’Entraigues, and accepted her refusal — tho’ Watkins had already laid the places — with her usual grace.”

I glanced towards the door, and there he was: slim, elegant, dark-haired, and roguish of eye, with an exquisite air of fashion. He was bowed low over Eliza’s hand, his lips grazing it; then with a swift, laughing look he muttered something in French that caused her to giggle, and rap him with her furled fan.

“Naughty boy! And my poor husband not twelve hours absent from London!” she cried. “Jane — come and say hello to Julien!”

I approached the young Comte with a strange sensation of trepidation. Could this scion of a scheming roué and an opera singer be other than venal in his habits and intercourse? He was present only briefly in the drawing-room at Barnes when we descended upon Surrey a week ago, playing an air upon the pianoforte before quitting the house; Eliza had explained carelessly that a young man of nineteen could not be expected to spend his evenings with a parcel of dowds. I understood Comte Julien had set up his own establishment in the Albany, where any number of single gentlemen take rooms; but how he lived, when his parents’ pockets were entirely to let, must be cause for conjecture.

“Miss Austen,” he said with a bow. “I am honoured to renew the acquaintance of one whom la Comtesse de Feuillide must always speak of with esteem and affection.”

“The pleasure must be mine, monsieur,” I returned. “I hope your mother is not decidedly unwell?”

“A trifling indisposition — the return of an old complaint.”

“And your father, Julien?” Eliza put in with unusual acid. “Does he sit by her bedside, bathing her temples with lavender water?”

The gentleman smiled as tho’ she had offered him a jest, and turned to greet Martha East.

“Is he not a buck of the first stare?” Eliza murmured. “And but nineteen!”

“He bears himself with the possession of a man twice that age.”

“Your Frenchmen usually do. They are not suffered to run about with guns and dogs as our English boys will; their sport is of a deadlier kind, involving swords and hearts, and their apprenticeship is from infancy. I wonder where the old Comte has gone this evening?”

“To sit at the feet of Miss Radcliffe.”

“Let us hope she kicks him, then,” Eliza said, and went off to coze with Mrs. Latouche.

“YOU HAVE QUITE THE LOOK OF YOUR EXCELLENT brother,” Count Julien observed, as the first covers were removed from the table. “He is from home, I collect?”

“Yes — called away to Oxford, on a matter of banking business.”

“And you are not uneasy? Forgive me — but the violence of the neighbourhood of Hans Town — the suicide of the Russian Princess — and your house now unprotected by a man—”

“My brother left his valet in Sloane Street,” I answered evenly, “and the Princess died in Berkeley Square.”

“Indeed. I was forgetting. My family was a little acquainted with the lady, you understand, and all I have heard in recent days is Hans Place.”

“I suppose it is only natural for émigrés to know one another,” I observed.

His smile twisted. “Our very un-Englishness makes us cling to one another? There is some truth in that, tant pis.”

“I am sorry — I did not mean to offend — but her death must have come as a shock to all your family. I believe your mother felt it so.”

“They were not on the best of terms,” he said, fixing his eyes on my countenance, “but I esteemed the lady, and pitied her loneliness. Yes, I felt her death to be a horror. I had seen her alive that very evening.”

“At the Theatre Royal? I had not known you were one of your parents’ party.”

“I sat in the pit, among my acquaintance,” he said simply. “But I do not think I noticed the Princess then. I saw her later in the courtyard of the Albany, where I have my rooms.”

A frisson of interest swept up my spine, but I schooled my voice to indifference. “I wonder what she can have found to take her there?”

He shrugged. “Un amant, n’est-ce pas? It is an abode for single gentlemen, after all; and at such an hour — it was all of two o’clock in the morning. Pauvre enfant. She was an unhappy woman.”

This was the first hint of information I had been certain must elude us — a suggestion of the Princess’s tragic course, in the hours between her first visit to Castlereagh’s house, and her death four hours later.

“She was alone, I collect?”

“Always — that night, and every night, no matter how many persons she gathered about her. La Tscholikova had a genius for solitude; she carried it, like the Russian winter, within her.”

“What very extraordinary behaviour! I wonder whom she might chuse to visit in the Albany? Nothing of a friendship in that quarter was mentioned at the inquest.”

His expression sharpened. “You attended the coroner’s panel?”

“My brother was required to give evidence,” I said primly, “and I merely accompanied him, my sister being indisposed.”

“I see.” He hesitated an instant, as tho’ weighing my words; then said, “Whomever she sought, she did not find him. She would not otherwise have been standing like a lost child in the courtyard.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“I did not. I was already in my rooms, vous comprenez, and observed her from the window. And as I watched, she turned and quitted the courtyard for the street. I assume she had a carriage waiting there — for she was still in evening dress.”

It was remarkable how neatly he offered this intelligence, pat as a rehearsed recital, and I must be forgiven for meeting it with as much suspicion as interest. I studied Count Julien’s profile as he bent over his dinner, and noted once more the maturity behind the youthful façade — the look of a young man too well-acquainted with the world.

“You are an admirable son to devote your evening to a parcel of dowds, Count. What is the meaning of such charity?”

I had used the phrase deliberately, as reflecting Eliza’s careless remark, but in truth the insipid conversation of several women in their fifties, two spinsters nearly twice his age, and a clutch of gentlemen whose long association with Mrs. Latouche’s husbands recommended them to her society, must have proved unbearably tedious to the boy. I was certain some other interest compelled his attendance; and my evil genius whispered that he was come in the guise of spy — at his mother’s behest. Was it possible that the Comtesse d’Entraigues had learned to fear her oldest friend — Eliza?

“Dowds!” the Count returned, with an easing of his expression; “you move me to utter a compliment on your beauty, Miss Austen — for certainly no one treated to the vision you present, could proclaim you a dowd!”

“I hope I am not such a gudgeon as to credit such stuff,” I said calmly. “Do admit that you are bored to desperation — and accept our thanks for enlivening the party. What are the usual pursuits for a gentleman of nineteen? I enquire as the aunt of several young men, who shall be on the Town in a few years.”

Count Julien allowed me to turn the conversation from the Princess with good grace. “For those of means as well as birth, the possibilities are legion! There are the clubs, where one might play at cards or dice; the wagers on horseflesh; the carriage-driving in the Park; cockfights and mills — these are the prize-fights, you understand — and of course, the pleasures of Society, such as assemblies at Almack’s, or the private parties of the ton.”

“Decidedly, you mortify your flesh in enduring this evening! I am even more in your debt, sir. Do gentlemen such as yourself patronise the Muslin Company? Or is that reserved for an elder set?”

If I had expected to jar his complacency — excite his consciousness of his father’s affairs — I was to be disappointed.

“I spoke of those who possess means,” he reminded me, “not merely birth. The High Flyers scorn those of us whose hearts are ampler than our purses; and if I may be so coarse as to declare it, Miss Austen, your genteel ladies are much the same. I have a title — a certain breeding — but I am heir to a château presently in ruins somewhere in the Auvergne, and the doors of the ton are not always open to me, you understand. When the gift of friendship is offered — as Mrs. Latouche offers it — I should be a fool to do other than honour her. Presently she will beg me to play the pianoforte — that is my gift — and after a little show of modest unwillingness, I shall oblige. It is possible I may have to earn my bread in such a way, with time.”

“Surely not! Even in England there are any number of expensive young men, whose fortunes are unequal to their births,” I persisted. “Second sons, for instance — or seventh sons. Surely they shift and contrive?”

“You think me suited to the Church?” said he, with a sardonic lift of the brow. “My father’s cleverness and my mother’s art are my sole inheritances, Miss Austen; neither is given to a pious turn. I had much better marry my fortune — if any schoolroom chit possessed of means will entertain my suit. That is the solution so many of your second sons employ. But which heiress? Perhaps Miss East will have me, if I can but acquire a taste for reading.”

The cynicism of the speech should have been an effrontery, had it not been uttered with a boy’s painful bitterness; and for an instant, I glimpsed the raw youth full-blown behind the polished manners, and pitied Count Julien. He reminded me a little of my Willoughby — born to a station he could not maintain, but for a desperate gaming — the courting of aged relatives — and finally, the sale of his soul in pursuit of an heiress. Society is reckless, in teaching its youth to despise honest labour.

“If not the Church, then consider the Law,” I suggested. “Or, my dear Count—! You might be endlessly useful as a secretary, particularly among such men as require translations from the French! Consider the realm of politics. Surely with your father’s connexions … I know of an Earl’s son, Charles Malverley, who finds no shame in such a situation. … ”

Count Julien rose abruptly from his chair, tho’ the second course was hardly begun. “I can well believe that Malverley is insensible to shame,” he said, in a voice tense and low. “He has no feelings to offend. You must forgive me, Miss Austen — I find I cannot support this party after all.”

He would have quitted the room on these words, but that Mrs. Latouche clapped her hands, and said with obvious delight, “Julien! Do you mean to play? His performance on the pianoforte is most superior, I assure you.” With effort, and an enchanting smile, the impoverished nobleman bowed. “Of course, chère madame,” he said. “You have only to call the tune.”

IT WAS, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE MOST EXQUISITE music I have ever been privileged to hear. His fingers moved with a delicacy and precision that lacked nothing in skill; but the emotions they conjured forth owed everything to passion. I had only to listen once to Count Julien d’Entraigues, to know that in him I had met a young man of complex forces; a man whose obvious charm hid a subtler, more potent self; a man who might be capable of anything.

I quitted the house on Portman Square not long after his hands had stilled, and the sweetness of the final notes died away in the air. There seemed nothing more to keep us in that over-furnished drawing-room.

“Beethoven, I think,” Eliza murmured as our hackney pulled up in Sloane Street; and I was still sufficiently bemused — canvassing every detail, every word of my conversation with the Frenchman that evening— that I failed to pay sufficient attention to her words, or even to Eliza herself. I was already mounting the stairs as she paid off the jarvey; I had opened the door — it had been left on the latch — and had stepped into the front passage as the hackney pulled away. It was only as I turned to pull off my gloves and remove my bonnet, that I caught Eliza’s sharp cry.