Jane and the Man of the Cloth

Chapter 18 The Sagacity of Fathers

21 September 1804, cont.

I FOUND MY FATHER ENSCONCED IN A DIM CORNER OF THE LION, HIS book open upon his lap. My mother had long since departed the inn to pay a call upon an acquaintance — an intelligence I received with some relief, as I had feared her too-eager canvassing of Seraphine LeFevre's affairs in so public a place. I could now avail myself of my father's advice without concern for interruption; and so, as he gathered up his things, I suggested we take a turn along the Cobb. A dubious proposition for one of my father's unsteady gait; but the day was fair enough, and the wind not of a strength to overwhelm. He appeared surprised at the suggestion, but ready enough to seize the opportunity for exercise; and thus we set off, companionably arm-in-arm.

“And so, Jane — what is your opinion of this sad business of Sidmouth's? I should enjoy a share in your thoughts at the present; for I know that your acquaintances among the great have taught you much about scandal and violence,” my father began. That he referred to Isobel Payne, and her nephew Fitzroy (who were even now upon the point of uniting once more the titles of Countess and Earl of Scargrave), I immediately understood.

“I fear that my singular experience of two winters past prepared me for nothing in the present case — unless it be a greater tendency to question the truth of everything I hear, and to assume that the persons appointed to safeguard the law, are little likely to look beyond the most obvious construction of events,”I replied. “But I would gladly share my intelligence, Father, if you will promise in return some measure of perspicacity.”

And so, as we coursed the length of the breakwater's stone, I told my father all that I had learned of the infamous Reverend and of Mr. Sidmouth — who might, or might not, be one and the same man. I did not neglect to mention my dubious commission from Roy Cavendish, nor the curious movements in the Grange's garret, nor the appearance of a wounded man on the Charmouth shingle, nor my own midnight adventure in the cavernous tunnel, nor my interview with Maggie Tibbit. When I had done, the good man was lost in silent contemplation for some few minutes; and when he had sufficiently roused himself from thought to pay his companion more heed, he turned to me with an expression of wonder and — dare I say it — respect.

“My dear Jane,” he said. “My dear Jane. I knew you for a lady of fine understanding and natural courage; but I dared not hope you possessed such faculties of determination and initiative. Forgive me if I must observe that they seem rather the part of one of your brothers, than a member of the weaker sex. I am not entirely assured that the affairs of either Mr. Sidmouth or the Captain required so much active benevolence on your behalf — and at such risk to your person — but I will not pain you with suppositions regarding your motives. Only tell me,

“Jane” — and here he hesitated — “are you quite convinced of Sidmouth's innocence in the Captain's death? For I should not like you to suffer for what you will discover.”

“I am convinced of nothing, dear sir,” I replied, “and do not imagine me to harbour such tender emotions towards the gentleman in question, that my senses should be entirely routed if I find my labour has gone only to confirm his guilt I may congratulate myself upon a clearsighted view of his character. Sidmouth is forthright, but self-serving; loyal to those he values, but indifferent to the broader claims of society. His temper is mediated only with difficulty, though I could not charge him with unwonted meanness of spirit And though I know no real evil of him, I cannot profess a complete confidence in his motives or aims. I hear such conflicting reports of him, as should bewilder a finer understanding than my own. There — have I satisfied your anxiety?”

“For the moment,” my father replied. “But tell me, Jane — could you ever love a man you regarded with such ambivalence?”

“Must love, then, be blind, in your opinion?”

“Not blind — but preferably unalloyed; and best bestowed upon a worthy object.”

I hesitated before I answered him; for I knew from the kindly tenor of his words, that my father's whole heart was in the subject. “I am not now in love with Mr. Sidmouth, Father,” I said with remarkable firmness, “and I do not know that I could ever be, or that the question should even be put to the test, in the event that he returned such feeling. And since the gentleman promises fair to hang before he should have time for a tender dalliance, you may set yourself at ease.”

“Jane! You cannot jest in such a matter!”

“Matters have come to such a turn, my dear sir, that I may fairly do little else. But I wiilbe serious. I will promise you to take what care I can in the business. I shall not plunge whole-heartedly into a matter that might offer only harm, without judicious thought beforehand.”

“That is as I should expect of you, my dear,” my father replied, with a pat to the hand he held close in the crook of his arm. “You were ever a girl whose heart was ruled by her head.”

Was I? I thought fleetingly; and is that to be preferred to a head ruled by the heart” I cannot be entirely certain,

“Father—” I said, with a purposeful effort at changing the subject, “—what should, then, my next step be? For so much cries out for elucidation, that I am in a confusion as to my proper path.”

We had reached the end of the Cobb, and lingered to feel the freshness of the spray; and I knew with a sinking of the heart that autumn was advancing, and winter coming on. The sea air was sharper than it had been only a few weeks before, and I shivered as I drew my shawl closer about my thin muslin gown. We had but a little of our Lyme sojourn remaining to us; but Geoffrey Sidmouth had fewer days still. I must not be a spendthrift with time.

“You have declared the horseshoes to be the crux of the business,” my father said thoughtfully. “And since you are unlikely to have success where Mr. Dobbin did not, I should counsel against a useless review of the Lyme blacksmiths. Your appearance in their midst, and in pursuit of such information, should only arouse suspicion against you, and excite the attention of the local tradesfolk.”

“Very true.”

“Let us consider, my dear Jane, whether any of the people hereabouts might spurn the Lyme trade, and engage a private smithy for the maintenance of their beasts.”

“No one in our acquaintance is likely to require such a service,” I objected. “Even Mr. Crawford has a modest stable, as we observed only a few days ago.”

“But the Honourable Barnewalls have gone in for horses on a larger scale, have they not?”

“In Ireland, perhaps,” I said doubtfully, but my father waved away such temporisations with surprising vigour.

“Forgive me, Jane, if I beg to speak from greater knowledge,” he said. “I have known a few of your race-mad fellows in my time. They are never far from horseflesh if they can manage it; and from Barnewall's conversation the other evening at Darby, I should adjudge him to be perpetually in a fever of acquisition over some mount or another. You will recall he wished to purchase Sidmouth's Satan; and undoubtedly he has snatched up a horse or two — or ten—in the course of his visit to Lyme. Have you paid a call on Mrs. Barnewall, Jane?”

“I have not,” I replied, with new respect for my father's turn of mind.

“It is very remiss of you, when one considers the attentions she has shown. I should not have thought you capable of such rudeness.”

“Indeed. And I might solicit her excellent taste, in the matter of my new silk — for Mrs. Barnewall is the very soul of fashion, and would appear well-acquainted with Maggie Tibbit's wares.”

“And perhaps even with the woman's manner of obtaining them,” my father finished smoothly. “I should think a visit to the Honourable Barnewalls highly profitable.”

We turned with some reluctance from the vivid view of the bay, and had the wind at our backs for the remainder of the way home. It was a slow walk, and marked only by desultory conversation, for my father was much fatigued; and I was far too preoccupied with his perspective on the matter, to spare a thought for much else. The Honourable Barnewalls had their fingers in every piece of this pie; and I wondered I had not troubled to notice it before. It was he who had first introduced le Chevalier to my acquaintance, and he who elicited the valuable intelligence that Geoffrey Sidmouth marked his horses’ shoes. It should take less than a few hours for a private smithy to render a Barnewall horse similarly shod; and the Honourable Mathew had enjoyed the span of a day, between learning of the Grange's brand and the murder of Captain Fielding. Could he have so wished to obtain the stallion Satan, that he resorted to theft and murder to do it? It seemed incredible. But might there exist some other motive in the matter, that should make the death of Captain Fielding, and the guilt of Geoffrey Sidmouth, in every way delightful to the peer-in-waiting?

For Mrs. Barnewall was familiar with the River Buddie district, and the Tibbit household; she clearly spent a fortune on dress, and her husband a fortune on horses; and yet, they continued to live in a style that suggested a comfortable income. Could it be that Mathew Barnewall — stupid, vulgar, utterly uninteresting Mathew Barnewall — was the very Reverend himself?

But my interest in the Barnewalls’ affairs, though quickened by my father's observations, must await another day's satisfaction; for the afternoon was much advanced, and my father wanted his dinner, and I confessed to feeling much fatigued in my own right, and to be longing for the quiet of Wings cottage, and my too-long neglected Watsons. The fitful attention I had paid poor Emma in recent days, had left my heroine marooned in the midst of a fairly tedious ball — albeit her first in her adopted neighbourhood — and at the mercy of a small boy, who had been dancing with her far longer than was necessary, owing to my scattered wits. And so, I sat down once more before the fire in the HtUe sitting-room — having crossed through the scullery in order to reach it, the doorway to the hall being now permanendy barred by the bulk of the oak secretary — and applied myself to my writing with every intention of industry.

It would not do, however; in a very little while my attention wandered, from the odious Lord Osborne and the bland Mr. Howard, and the still less amusing Tom Mus-grave; they were all of them pale substitutes for Geoffrey Sidmouth, and my emotions were all alive to the dangers that so threatened that gendeman, and over which I had but little power. He was at once more real, and more vividly engaging, than anything my imagination might summon — and thus a person unique in my experience. For I have generally found the creations of my pen more pleasing, and arguably better company, than the bulk of the men thrown in my way.

With a sigh, I closed up my ink bottle, and gathered up my little papers, and submitted to a dubious glance from my father. “Your efforts do not engage you, Jane?”

“No, Father. The words come only with difficulty this evening.”

“Then I trust you are off to bed.”

“I believe I shall retire, if you have no objection.”

My father gave a look to my mother's comfortable countenance, which bore the ghost of a smile as she laboured over the stitching of a child's undergarment (which should go, no doubt, to St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary, of which she had become a temporary member), and nodded. “I trust that tonight, at least, you shall endeavour to sleep,” he said, with a slight warning in his tone; and I knew that he thought of my nocturnal ramblings along the Charmouth road, and the mortal danger they had invited.

“But of course,” I replied, with as much innocence as I could muster; and made my way back through the scullery.

It was as I gained the hall, however, and would turn towards the stairs, that I encountered our valuable James. He was engaged in trimming a lanthorn set into an alcove in the entryway. It would smoke, despite our best efforts, and we had all but despaired of its utility, and determined to abandon it for another, of more recent vintage; but I observed to my delight that James had succeeded where less able hands had failed. He is genuinely a master of all things domestic. At my appearance, he stood to his full height, and turned to me with an expression of deference. Such an opportunity for confidence — and beyond the ears of my mother — should only rarely offer; and so of a sudden I seized it.

“James,” I said, in a barely-audible whisper and with an eye for the barricaded sitting-room door. “I would speak with you in private.”

He looked over his shoulder, as though my parents’ eyes might bore through even the oak secretary, and nodded conspiratorially. I turned back into the scullery — but it remained the province of Cook and Jenny, who were setting the bones from dinner to boil — and felt myself in a quandary. Did I exit the front door, my father should hear, and believe me gone on some mysterious errand; I should not put it past him to follow, and leave my mother in some confusion as to his purpose.

“The back garden, miss?” came a whisper from James; and indeed, it should be the very thing. I slipped past him, and mounted the stairs, while he followed along behind — as was entirely proper, for he served to valet my father in the evenings, and was generally engaged at this hour in setting out his nightclothes, and arranging his toiletries upon the wash stand.

Wings cottage has a peculiar charm, in being built into the rising ground at its back, so that the first storey might almost be another ground floor. With a door just off the first-floor hallway, the back garden is suitable for ladies’ use, being accessible to the bedchamber and dressing-room; and indeed, my mother and Cassandra had sat here in the sun of a morning or two, while Cassandra was recovering, and enjoyed the gentle breezes, and the last of the summer's flowers, nodding from the bank. I had not had time to give the garden much thought; but I was pleased to find that two wooden chairs remained upright in the grass, despite the storms of the past week, and that today's sun and wind had entirely dried them. I took one with alacrity, and gazed up at the heavens; the first stars had begun to make their appearance, though the sky as yet held light. We Austens are determinedly unfashionable, and dine early; and so the sun had barely set, though we were some hours already pushed back from the table.

“How may I be of service, miss?” James enquired, with an uneasy glance over his shoulder for ears beyond the doorway. He had remained standing, and could not but feel the awkwardness of the arrangement; for indeed, there was the faintest whisper of an assignation about our presence together in the garden. I should not like him to seem less than at ease, and so paid him the respect due to his situation.

“I shall not keep you long,” I began, in a lowered tone. “Are you perchance acquainted, James, with a fellow by the name of Matthew Hurley?”

“What — Matty the Nob?” he rejoined, with a broad smile. “We all knows Matty. There's nothin’ he can't fix nor find, for a price — and it's allus too high. What you want wit’ Matty, miss? Leastways—” he amended consciously—“if I'm not bein’ impertnunt.”

“You will remember that I had an errand to Mrs. Tibbit.” I leaned towards him, the better to inspire confidence. “About the clothes for the Tibbit children.”

“Right you are, miss.”

“It seems that Mrs. Tibbit believes her late husband is owed some monies by Matthew Hurley, for some job of work they recently performed together; and though the manner of her husband's death must throw suspicion upon all his former activities, not to mention confederates, I felt it my duty as a Christian to pursue the matter on her behalf.”

“Bill owed some money?” James snorted in disbelief; “I reckon ‘tis the other way ‘round. But I guess you're wantin’ the way to Matt Hurley, is that it?”

“In truth, James,”? said, with a pitiful expression of dependence, “I had understood that the fellow keeps such low company, that it should be a penance for any lady to seek him out. I had rather hoped that you might enquire of Mr. Hurley as to the particulars of his dealings with Mr. Tibbit. He might prove more forthright to a man of his acquaintance, and a native of his town known to him some years, than he should to a lady and a stranger.”

James shrugged. “If ‘tis important to you, miss, I'm happy to oblige. But I can't see rightly why you pay such mind to Maggie Tibbit. The truth's as scarce as teeth in her mouth, beggin” your pardon, miss; and from the manner of his death, I reckon Bill Tibbit got what he was owed.”

“I gave the woman my solemn vow, for she was much disturbed in the matter — and indeed, she has many mouths to feed, and might feel the want of coin severely.” I hesitated, wondering how openly I might direct the course of James's enquiries. “I gathered that the labour was a matter of digging, performed for the late Captain Fielding — and that Maggie Tibbit might have gone to the Captain himself, but for his sudden death.”

James did not respond for a moment, and his eyes narrowed shrewdly. “They've been a number of sudden deaths, to my thinking,” he finally said thoughtfully, “and none of ‘em too well explained, for that matter. I'll see what Matty Hurley has to say for himsel’. You just place your cares in James's keeping, miss, and think no more about it”

I thanked him, and pressed a few pence into his hand, which he blushingly accepted, though only after profuse entreaty; and I sent him on his way. As I watched him go, I gave thanks for the Jameses of this world, and their easy access to places a lady should take care not to visit. He is very likely to form his own construction of matters, but little likely to divine the truth of my purpose — suspicion being far from his nature, and detection beyond his power. I have observed that men will quite happily believe they are rendering a service to a lady, where they might baulk at being made a mere pawn; and yet it is the latter that is so often the case.

And with that thought, the face of Seraphine LeFevre rose unbidden before my eyes. The equivocations of this afternoon did not sit well upon my mind. I could not be easy in her character; I mistrusted her motives, and her purpose was unclear to me. Did she tend the wounded at the Grange tonight, as the stars shone from a darkening sky? Or had my suspicions unnerved her — and sent her out on the beach to a dark green boat, and a hard row against the tide, and a cutter waiting to sail for France— leaving Sidmouth alone in a stone-hearted gaol?