Jane and the Ghosts of Netley

Chapter 9 On Heroines

28 October 1808, cont.

My mother stood before the mirror in the hall, arranging withered leaves and raspberry canes in a Staffordshire vase. Although she had not elected to make a cake of herself in crouching before the parlour latch, I recognised the diffident look of guilt on her reflected countenance.

“Jane!” she hissed. “That man is closeted within! I learned the whole from Martha. What is he about? How can he conceive of showing his face in Southampton, after the shabby treatment he served you in Derbyshire?”

As the shabby treatment had consisted of several intimate visits to the ducal house of Chatsworth, I could not share her indignation.

“If you would mean Lord Harold, Mamma, he has very kindly paid a call of condolence, having learned of our dear Elizabeth’s passing. His lordship is likewise in mourning. He recently lost Her Grace the Dowager Duchess.”

“Naturally — I saw the notice a few days ago. Poor woman; she was but three years older than myself, though hardly as respectable. An actress, you know, and French. That must account for the strangeness of the son — for I cannot find out that his brother Wilborough is so very odd. He must take after the paternal line.” She gave up her efforts with the vase and surveyed me critically. “Lord Harold might as easily have written you a note regarding Elizabeth, as any trifling acquaintance should do. What does he mean by descending on Castle Square in all the state of a blazoned carriage?”

I shrugged indifferently. “No doubt he has business in Southampton, Mamma, and merely offered us the civility of a morning call. As for the chaise — I have an idea it is on loan from Wilborough House. His lordship is but this moment arrived from London.”

“Is he, indeed?” She looked much struck, and began to fidget with the pair of garden shears she held in her hands. “And what does he prefer by way of a cold collation, Jane? For I have not a mite of meat in the house — not so much as a partridge! We might send to the tavern for brandy, I suppose—”

“Pray do not disturb yourself,” I begged her.

“Lord Harold has kindly invited me to take an airing in his equipage. He declares that I am looking peaked.”

“And so you are!” my mother cried. Two spots of colour flamed suddenly in her cheeks. “An airing in his equipage! And he is only this moment arrived in town! But, Jane — my dear, dear girl! Now his mother is gone, I suppose there can be no objection to his marrying where he likes! Not that she was so very high in the instep — and foreign besides — yet she may have had her scruples as to connexion. There can be no question of prohibition now, for I am sure His Grace the Duke doesn’t trouble himself about his lordship’s affairs. Only think of it, Jane! How grand you shall be!”

“Mamma,” I interposed desperately lest Lord Harold should overhear, “I believe Martha is in want of you in the kitchen.”

“Fiddlesticks!”

“Indeed, madam, Martha is calling. You should not like your dinner spoilt.”

Nothing but food is so near my mother’s heart as marriage. She turned hastily for the passage. “Enjoy yourself, my dear! And when you have accepted his lordship, pray apologise for my having disliked him so excessively in the past. I am certain we shall deal famously together, once he has given up his opera dancers. Take care to wrap up warmly! You never appear to advantage with a reddened nose!”

In the event, the carriage was a closed one, with the Wilborough arms emblazoned on the door — as I had suspected, an equipage of his brother’s, pressed into service. The squabs were of pale gold silk; a brazier glowed at our feet. The coachman had been walking the horses this quarterhour in expectation of his master’s summons. Orlando was mounted behind. He was magnificent today in a round hat with a broad brim, and a dark blue livery; the woodland sprite was fled. I smiled into his dark eyes and received an answering twinkle; but he was on his dignity, and offered no word.

“The Itchen Dockyard’s fate is uncertain, with the shipwright murdered; but it is possible we may find Mr. Dixon’s workers there, labouring to reverse disaster’s effects,” Lord Harold said.

“They cannot cause the ship to spring, phoenixlike, from the ashes.”

“Absent the shipwright, to whom should I speak, Jane? Is there a yard foreman?”

“I do not know whether he bears that title — but there is a Lascar, one Jeremiah by name, in whom Mr. Dixon appeared to repose his trust.”

“We may achieve the place, I think, from the road above Porter’s Mead?”

His lordship informed his coachman of the direction, and settled himself on the seat opposite. The door was closed, and all the bustle of town abruptly shut out; and for an instant, consigned to that sheltered orb of quiet, I was struck dumb with shyness. When I had last driven out in Lord Harold’s company, it had been August in Derbyshire, and the equipage an open curricle. Then he had taken the reins himself, the better part of his attention claimed by the road. Now we surveyed each other across an expanse of satin-lined cushions. The interior of the chaise was finer by far than the condition of my dress; I felt that I ought to be arrayed in a ball gown, with shoe-roses on my slippers.

“I have treated my mother to a falsehood,” I said in an effort to break the silence, “for I assured her you desired to give me an airing. That must be impossible in a closed carriage.”

“We shall not be confined for long.” The keenness of his glance was disconcerting; was it possible the Rogue felt as awkward as I? “I am so accustomed to your company, my dear, that I forget what is due to propriety. Your excellent parent is even now surveying our departure from behind her parlour curtain, and considering whether I have compromised your reputation. Have I ruined you, Jane, a thousand times in our long acquaintance?”

The question was so direct — and so unexpected — that I failed to contrive a suitable answer.

“Naturally. Having been seen even once in your company, I have not a shred of respectability left.”

“Shall I offer for you, then?” he demanded abruptly.

The rampant colour rose in my cheeks. Oh, that I could believe he had heard nothing of my mother’s speculations!

“Pray do not say such things even in jest, my lord. You must know that I aspire to a career as an authoress, and such ladies never marry. Domestic cares will eat up one’s time, and leave no room for the employment of a pen.”

“If you insist upon trifling with a gentleman’s heart — then tell me of this novel of yours. This Susan.”

I remembered how Orlando had enquired about my book’s publication, as he stood in the Abbey ruins; naturally his intelligence derived from his master’s. “I never speak of my writing to anyone.”

“But your brother Henry does. He possesses not the slightest instinct for discretion, you know. It shall be his undoing one day.”

Henry and his fashionable wife, Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide, had long formed a part of the London ton, though their circle was less lofty than Lord Harold’s own. The Rogue enjoyed my brother’s company whenever they met — and how often that might occur, in the mêlée of London routs, I could not say. It had been some time since Eliza had mentioned Lord Harold in her correspondence.

“I wrote Susan so long ago, I declare I hardly recall her outline. She was the first of a long succession of works to fall from my pen.”

“There are other novels? All dedicated to a different lady?”

“No less than four books are entombed in my wardrobe, sir, and none of them fit to be read beyond the fireside circle, I assure you.”[12]

“I wonder.” He studied me thoughtfully. “You are not unintelligent, and possess, moreover, an acute understanding of the human heart.”

I found I could not meet his gaze.

“The novel portrays, one imagines, the veritable apogee of all Susans?”

“She is a young girl, for there can never be so much interest in a woman once she has passed the age of five-and-twenty. It is better, indeed, for the novelist’s fortunes if her heroine should expire before that point.”

“I am entirely of your opinion. Does Susan suffer a painful end?”

“Hardly as swift as she might wish, and not within the compass of the novel. I fancy she dies in childbirth, like all the best women of my acquaintance — but for the purposes of this story, I have merely sent her to an abbey.”

“Excellent decision, given the environs to which you are subjected. Does she moon among the ruins, intent upon discovering a swain?”

How to describe my poor neglected darling, languishing these many years in the dust of Stationers Hall Court?

“Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that my purpose falls beyond the mere entertaining power of the best novels,” I attempted. “Let us assume, in fact, that my object is to satirize such works — in the very act of mastering the form.”

“Subtle Jane! But how is such an ambition to be satisfied?”

“By portraying a creature so enslaved to the practice of novel-reading, that she ceases to discern the difference between the stuff of books, and the stuff of life.”

“A victim of literature!” Lord Harold crowed aloud. “Very well — and so, among the ruins, does she mistake past for present, and imagine herself a nun?”

“Nay, my lord. She is sent on a visit to an ancient abbey, where she hopes to encounter mysterious decay — only to suffer the disappointment of a modern establishment, thrown up over the bones of the old, where all is just as it should be! The master of the house has not murdered his wife; his daughter is not a prisoner in the tower; and the handsome young suitor is anything but a foundling prince. In short, he is a clergyman.”

“How very provoking! I did not think you could be so cruel to children of your own invention.” He leaned towards me, his face alight. “What is it about novels that engages your interest — nay, that commands your powers?”

Torn between the duty of turning his scrutiny with an arch remark — and the desire to unburden myself to one who might actually comprehend — I gave way, as is generally the case, to Desire.

“All of life, my lord, is found among the workings of three or four families in a country village. You may laugh if you dare” — for his sardonic mouth had turned up at the corners — “but what I say is true. In the hopes and sacred dreams of a young girl on the verge of womanhood, one may see as much of courage and destiny as in the most valorous deeds of the Ancients, with far better scope for conversation.”

“All of Fate, encompassed in a Susan! I do not like your ambitions so circumscribed, my dear. You had better call her Clorasinda, or some other name of four syllables, and exchange this respectable watering-hole for London, where the full panoply of human folly is on daily parade.”

“I cannot bear the thrust and noise of a town; and besides — people themselves alter so much, with the passage of time, that there is infinite material for a patient observer. In the relations between men and women alone, one might detect endless subtlety and variation.”

“Just so. I wonder, Jane, when I shall meet myself in your prose?”

“Never, my lord. You should defy my attempts at subjugation.”

He drew down his brows at this. “At last you have said what may be understood. It is a delicious power, is it not, to subject the unwitting to the lash of your pen? This is what truly beguiles you, Jane. You have found your weapon in words. You set out your creatures as examples of the human type — you anatomise them with a few deft strokes — and there is the character of Man exposed: in all its weakness, foible, arrogance, and careless cruelty.”

“And its goodness,” I amended. “I may laugh at what is absurd, but I hope I may never meet true worth with derision.”

“I cannot regard the world with the indulgence and affection you do,” he returned. “My greatest fault is a propensity to despise my fellows, when I do not condemn them.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested hesitantly, “that is because a man is more often taught to exploit another’s weakness — to use what is vulnerable for his own ends — than to respect what is admirable and good?”

He glanced at me swiftly. “Tell me, Jane — have I ever attempted to exert that kind of power over you?”

“No, my lord.”

“—Though I may often have been tempted?”

I knew, then, that I had played at cat’s paw with a lion. Lord Harold apprehended my vulnerability — my brutal weakness: how I longed to be at his side at any hour, the merest observer of an intellect and a decision so acute as to leave me breathless — how I longed for his regard, and strove to merit it. How I led a parched existence in his absence — though that absence might endure for years — aware that true life occurred wherever he might be. The knowledge of all Lord Harold understood fell upon me there, in the intimacy of his closed carriage; and I gasped, as though I wanted for air.

“Do not look so alarmed, Jane,” he said briskly.

“We were speaking, I think, of novels. You ought to demand the return of your Susan from Messrs. Crosby and Co.; they seem disinclined to publish, and the sacrifice of so much talent upon the altar of male stupidity is not to be borne. Once you have succeeded in retrieving the copyright, you must entrust the manuscript to me.”

I swallowed hard on my emotions. “You are very good, my lord.”

“I am a scoundrel,” he rejoined gently, “but as we both apprehend that much, there is nothing more to be said.”

In the interval of a day, the yard’s mud had dried somewhat, though the smell of pitch and timber was just as strong as I had found it the previous morning. I understood the cause once Lord Harold handed me down from the carriage: Mr. Dixon’s men had cleared a space at the centre of the yard, and piled the remains of the seventy-four near the sea wall. Vast charred timbers of elm and oak rose into the sky like a devil’s scaffold, and flames licked at the base. The ship was become a pyre, with all Mr. Dixon’s hopes freighted upon it.

“The Lascar?” Lord Harold shouted.

The cloud of smoke was heavy enough that I could distinguish none of the men who tended the bonfire. My eyes smarted and my nose burned. I shook my head helplessly. Lord Harold, perceiving my streaming looks, motioned me back to the carriage. The coachman and Orlando both were at the horses’ bridles, for the great beasts had no love of fire.

“Take Miss Austen to Porter’s Mead,” his lordship cried to his coachman above the crackle of burning wood. “I shall join you there in a quarter of an hour.”

Amble handed me within, and I collapsed on the elegant cushions in a paroxysm of coughing. We were under way in an instant, the horses wheeling towards the sea. I found, when I recovered myself, that Orlando was seated opposite, and that in his hand he extended a clean linen handkerchief marked with a great scrolling monogram: H.L.J. Lord Harold’s own.

In his other hand was a silver flask.

“May I suggest a drop of brandy, ma’am, to clear your throat? I need not attest to the quality.”

I took both the linen and the flask without a murmur. In managing women, the valet, it seemed, was as adept as his master. “Orlando, how did you happen to join Lord Harold’s service?”

“Out of gratitude,” he said gently. “His lordship saved my life.”

“And are you able to describe the circumstances?”

An expression of pain — or was it hatred? — flickered across his countenance. But he neither hesitated nor demurred. “I was sentenced by the French governors of Oporto to hang, ma’am, on a charge of thievery. His lordship. . persuaded. . the men who held me in keeping to let me go. You will forgive me if I say no more.”

“You need not. I have an idea of the scene. Are you Portuguese, Orlando? For you betray not the slightest hint of accent in your speech; from your manners, I might believe you born to luxury in an Earl’s household.”

“I never knew my mother,” he replied, “but was named in the Italian at her insistence, before she died. My father was English, an army infantryman. He was carried off by a fever when I was but sixteen. From that moment to this, I have made to shift for myself. I wandered the world for some years, until I was so fortunate as to earn his lordship’s notice.”

“You have no other family?”

He smiled faintly. “None of which I am aware.”

“And you are how old?”

“Seven-and-twenty, ma’am.”

“What did the French believe you stole, Orlando, during your sojourn in Oporto?”

“Bread.” His gaze remained steady. “We had been subject to blockade, you understand, some months. Food was exceedingly scarce. I was hungry; the French plundered what little we had, and kept their stores under guard in a warehouse. It had once been a shed for aging sherry. I noticed an aperture for drains — I am a slight fellow, and adept at worming my way into every sort of hole.”

“Lord Harold must find such talents useful,” I observed under my breath, and returned the flask to Orlando’s keeping.

“The Lascar is a capital fellow,” his lordship declared as he joined me on the Mead some twenty minutes later.

I had quitted the carriage and commenced walking the length of the meadow, out of a desire for exercise and a compulsion to feel the wind on my face; Lord Harold came up with me quickly, covering the ground in long, easy strides that must always appear graceful.

“He means to urge the Company of Shipwrights to put their silver behind retrieving the Itchen yard, and asked that I help him to do it.[13] I shall certainly intercede — indeed, I may invest funds of my own — for with such a dedicated fellow among the ranks, the yard is likely to prosper.”

“Provided you may protect it against purposeful arson. Jeremiah is a shipwright, then?”

“The Lascar? Lord, no! I should not think the Company would allow a foreigner to set up in business, when good English shipwrights are in want of places — but he is certain to find employment if the yard remains open, and is canny enough to comprehend that greater influence than his is required to secure his future. He has agreed to serve as my spy, moreover, within the ruined yard. But I digress: I meant to learn from him what I could of the night the seventy-four was fired.”

“And?”

Lord Harold offered me his arm, and turned towards the carriage. His excellent black coat of superfine bore a distinct odour of charcoal.

“Jeremiah lodges off the Rope Walk, with several of his kind — Able Seamen who take ship for a year or two, then spend their earnings in a single week ashore. The Lascar had taken his dinner and turned his attention to his favourite pastime — the carving of a model ship — when a cry arose in the street outside. One or two of his fellows had been sitting on the lodging-house roof, drinking rum together and wagering as to the names of ships presently anchored in Southampton Water, when the flames first lit the Itchen yard. Jeremiah climbed immediately to the rooftop, astounded at what he saw. From that height it was clear the blaze had already reached the thirdrate’s masts. The speed of the conflagration seemed at the time remarkable, but we apprehend now that pitch, in being liberally spread upon the timbers, effected it. Unlike his mates, however, who were agog at the fire, Jeremiah searched with his gaze among the surrounding streets. From his lofty perch he hoped to espy Mr. Dixon raising the alarum. The Lascar, you must understand, has spent years at sea and is accustomed to standing watch in the crow’s nest. His eyes are very keen, even in the falling dusk.”

We reached the blazoned chaise, Orlando standing at attention. He swept open the carriage door and bowed low, managing the air of the loyal retainer so well that he might have affected it on the stage. Play-acting, I decided, must be the valet’s true calling: he ought to be put in the way of an introduction to his lordship’s old friend, the tragedian John Kemble. Then he might spend his days in adopting strange masks, and throwing his voice — child’s play for one of his experience.

“Tho’ a crowd of folk commenced to run towards the yard,” Lord Harold continued as we paused by the open carriage door, “Jeremiah espied a single figure running away from it. The man was cloaked in black from neck to boots, and wore a hood over his head. He carried no lanthorn, though the streets were growing dark; and to the Lascar’s mind, he seemed at pains to avoid the most trafficked road. Jeremiah watched him course through the alleys that join the yard with the Rope Walk, and disappear from view somewhere in the vicinity of Orchard Lane — at which point the crisis at the yard could no longer be ignored. The Lascar recognised the utility of opening the sea wall in order to douse the flames, and summoning his mates, raced to accomplish the purpose. It was then he discovered the body of Mr. Dixon.”

“The cloaked figure he espied was responsible for firing the ship?” I enquired as Orlando handed me within.

“And possibly for slitting the shipwright’s throat.”

Lord Harold pulled closed the door. “The man may have worked alone, or in the company of another whom the Lascar could not see.”

“Mrs. Challoner?”

“Recollect, Jane, the evidence of your own eyes. You saw her curtsey to a cloaked figure in the Abbey ruins only yesterday. Perhaps she intended to thank the fellow for a job well-done.”