Jane and the Man of the Cloth

Chapter 6 Pits and Pitfalls

7 September, cont.

THE DRIVE WAS HARDLY A LONG ONE, FOR MR. CRAWFORD'S FOSSIL site was among the cliffs below Charmouth about two miles from Lyme, and indeed, but a stone's throw from the heights of the Grange. And so, the penalty for cowardice being the loss of such a pleasure party, I bowed to Fate and allowed Mr. Sidmouth to hand me up onto the barouche's box, and waited stiff-backed while he settled himself beside me, and took up the team's reins. I had never before had the occasion to watch a gentleman drive four-in-hand, and must declare myself quite fascinated; his strong, broad fingers in their leather driving gloves seemed endowed with a particular sensibility, that read the intentions of each animal's mouth almost before it was itself aware of them. As we headed east up the long coastal road, however, the team picked up speed; and the effects of wind and motion so high upon an unprotected seat almost unnerved me. I would not allow myself the indulgence of giving way — no feminine shrieks, no pitiful hands clutching at Mr. Sidmouth's arm — but rather maintained a stoic appearance as I swayed beside him; and if my jaw was clenched and my fingers knotted, I pray he was too intent upon the road to spare either a thought.

“How fortunate that the weather is fine,” he said, after a time, “and yet, not too fine — not so very dry that we should have a cloud of dust before and behind. One wants a little rain at night, when one embarks upon a plan of driving.”

“Mr. Crawford is very good to think of us, and to endeavour to afford so many so much pleasure,” I said.

“Crawford is always bent upon pleasing. It is his chief fault.”

“His fault! Can goodwill and generosity ever be so considered?”

“When they lead to obligation, I believe they can,” Mr. Sidmouth replied. “Cholmondeley Crawford is a wealthy man, and may have the pleasure of doing as he likes; but some of those he entertains, cannot afford to treat him in a like manner, and the mortification of it goes unnoticed by the man himself. If the distinctions of rank have any value, it would seem that they should be preserved, if only to prevent embarrassment.”

“If this is a fault, then Mr. Crawford has chosen wisely,” I cried. “I should rather be charged with doing too much, of being too easy, than of being above my company. Pride is a quality I abhor beyond all things. However justified by the accomplishments of the possessor, it renders the power to do good, onerous when once bestowed. We none of us like condescension when it is offered.”

“Very true. Condescension, and officiousness — the unwonted interference of others in our private affairs.”

He spoke with an edge of bitterness, as if at a painful recollection; and unbidden, Captain Fielding's face arose in my mind. His opinion of Mr. Sidmouth was so very bad; and yet, so kind and generous a gentleman as Mr. Crawford counted the master of High Down among his intimate friends. It was a puzzle.

“And what is your fault, Mr. Sidmouth?” I enquired, bracing my right hand against the seat as the barouche rounded a ragged curve.

“Following my own inclination, when I should consider the needs of others,” he said, without hesitation. “You will notice, for example, that I drive to suit myself, rather than in deference to your fear of heights and speed. But having observed your hand clutching at the seat, I cannot persist; I must imagine the rest of the party to be similarly incommoded.” He sawed at the reins, and glanced over his shoulder at the four heads bobbing behind; all were engaged in animated discussion, the sense of which was drowned in the tumult of hooves and wheels; and none, to my eye, looked the slightest bit discomfited.

“To follow one's inclination first, is the habit of a solitary man,” I observed.

“And how then have I acquired it? For I can hardly be called a hermit.”

“I did not mean you wanted a household,” I replied. “Only that a household cannot claim the consideration that a family might.”

“Ah! The wife and children!” he said, with some amusement. “Yes — I admire your circumspection, Miss Jane Austen of Bath. It is rare for a young lady in my company not to broach the subject of marriage within an hour's acquaintance; and you have withstood the test now several days. But I fear my habits are not conducive to a settled life. For domestic bliss, you must search elsewhere.”

“I spoke but in the general way!” I cried, mortified. “I meant only to illustrate my point, by describing your situation.”

“But you have not described it as you should,” he replied. “For I do not live alone. There is my cousin Seraphine.”

I must have flushed hotly at the name, for his eyes, when they glanced my way, narrowed shrewdly.

“You have heard something to her discredit. I am sure of it.”

“Of your cousin I have heard little — and that, only praise. But of yourself, Mr. Sidmouth—” I faltered, and searched for a means of carrying on. “I hear such conflicting reports of your character, that I confess I know not what to think.”

“If you would draw my likeness from the opinion of men such as Percival Fielding, you cannot hope to capture it truly.”

“Captain Fielding appears all that is honourable,” I replied, stiffening.

“Appears! Aye, he appears to be a great deal.” At this, Sidmouth laughed with contempt, but his countenance was decidedly angry. “He has sunk Mademoiselle LeFevre before the eyes of all Lyme. The sorrow Fielding has caused — the pain — I tremble to think of it, Miss Austen.”

“How can you speak so!” I said, my attitude all indignation. I clutched involuntarily at the seat's edge as the barouche began to descend towards the Charmouth shingle. A broad sea vista was spread before us — breathtaking in the extreme — but I was too intent upon my thoughts to give it proper notice. “You, Mr. Sidmouth, who should have been your cousin's protector! You — who are responsible for reducing her to misery of the acutest kind! I wonder at your encompassing a man so honourable as the Captain — his motives all disinterested, his aims merely just — in the ruin of Mademoiselle LeFevre! Your own sense of decency, Mr. Sidmouth — of respect for the duties of a gentleman — must cry out against it!”

His countenance paled above his bitten lips, and his gaze, levelled as it was over the horses’ heads, became stony. “I would beg you to speak no more to me, madam, of Captain Fielding,” he said. “You cannot know what is toward between that gentleman and myself, and I shall not stoop to deriding him to others, as it has suited him to serve me.”

“I am glad to know you retain some claims to the honour of a gentleman,” I replied tartly; and so we pulled up before Mr. Crawford's fossil works, in silence and some confusion of emotions the one towards the other.

“MY DEAR MR. CRAWFORD,” MY FATHER EXCLAIMED, AS HE advanced upon that gentleman with hand extended, “I quite revel in this opportunity to view your pits! What industry, on behalf of science! What energy, towards the greater glorification of God!”

Mr. Crawford stood in his shirtsleeves (for the day was decidedly warm), his bald head shielded by a monstrous hat. The redness of his countenance testified to the energy with which he had been stooping and carrying the small articles of stone laid neatly to one side upon a blanket; and the weariness of the two men employed in his behalf, who worked deep in a quarry hewn from the cliff face with picks and trowels, spoke eloquently of the labour undergone. The heat was intensified by a smallish fire ignited near a bellows, where Mr. Crawford's men might repair such tools as required attention, on a crude sort of forge; and all about lay piles of rubble, the detritus of scientific endeavour.

Eliza and Henry were admiring the view from the shingle; Mr. Sidmouth was attending to the horses; and so Cassandra and I followed my father towards the day's burden of treasures. There we found the two ladies of the Crawford household ranged on either side of a blanket, in the process of unpacking a hamper.

“Miss Crawford! And Miss Armstrong!” Geoffrey Sidmouth declared, coming up behind. “How delightful to see you, indeed. I did not know that you were to be of the party. May I present to you the Miss Austens, of Bath.”

And so there were introductions all around — and several glances the length and breadth of our simple white gowns from Miss Crawford, who is fully as sharp and shrewish in aspect as I judged her to be the previous e'en. She is Mr. Crawford's sister, and his housekeeper since the death of his wife some years ago; and I judge her to labour under the burden of disappointment, for her pinched and suffering countenance bears the mark of regret. This, and her customary black, give her the general air of a raven, an impression that the harshness of her voice does nothing to dispel.

Miss Lucy Armstrong is their niece, down like ourselves from her home in Bath.[36] She is not above nineteen, with the freshness of complexion and sweetness of temper common in those untried by life. She met Mr. Sidmouth's eyes only with difficulty, and seemed to prefer the study of an ant toiling across the blanket, so firmly did her gaze seek the ground. She was likewise impervious to the slings and arrows of her aunt's tongue — which suggests some greatness of mind, upon reflection, for one consigned to living with Miss Crawford so many months together. At Mr. Sidmouth's moving to join the gentlemen, young Miss Armstrong recovered her faculties enough to attend to our conversation — though not so well as to partake of it.

“Well! And so you are the famous Austens, of whom we have heard so much,” Miss Crawford began, as she set out forks with the efficiency of a Commander of Foot. Her malicious glance flicked up to meet mine, and as quickly dropped away. “Mr. Crawford is quite full of you, I declare, and Mr. Sid mouth. One is reminded of the smallness of Lyme, when the slightest addition to our society is regarded as such an event.”

“Mr. Crawford is too kind,” 1 replied. “1 am sure he makes all his acquaintance feel equally celebrated.”

“Oh! Cholmondeley has no discernment in his society, 1 assure you. He is forever acquiring strangers on the road, and compelling them to visit these dreadful pits. Such dirt! Such noise! And in pursuit of what? The tracings of a few vanished creatures, too poor to survive, too abject and miserable for consideration. It quite works upon my nerves — though they are shattered already. I attribute the shocking decline in my condition, Miss Austen, to the date of Cholmondeley's embarking upon fossil-collecting; and I have made it a policy not to encourage him in the pursuit. I should never have come today, in fact, did not I have the opportunity to meet your dear sister”—this, with a simper for Cassandra—“whose interesting trouble has given rise to such concern among the intimates of Lyme. The poor state of the roads, and the worse state of the drivers! Something ought to be done about our modes of private transportation. Though I do say, that those who undertake to hire as disreputable a fellow as Hibbs for postboy must take their chances of a bruising. Not that I would speak of it for the world, now your dear sister has come to grief. Indeed, I said as much to Mrs. Schuyler only last evening; and she quite agreed.”

“But we were not to know of the man's propensities beforehand,” Cassandra said gently. “We accepted his services in Crewkerne, where his general character could not be known. When one is a traveller, one must trust a little to Fortune.”

“And look where Fortune took you! To the very brink of death! No, my dear — the only driver worth consideration is one's own coachman, at the head of one's own carriage. I should not think to trust dear Lucy to anyone but our Summerfield when she is to come down from Bath, though her father would send her post.”

“I observe, however, that you trusted us to Mr. Sidmouth,” I interjected.

“True — but he would insist. And when Mr. Sidmouth insists, even / find myself overruled. Cholmondeley becomes decidedly bullheaded in the man's presence; there is no managing him. Lucy, dear, do fetch your uncle. He is turning quite purple. This heat and exertion cannot be good for him.”

Miss Armstrong smiled prettily in our general direction, and floated towards the gentlemen; I say floated because of the airiness of her cloud of green muslin, which was quite sheer, and draped to becoming effect across her full bosom. She is a well-grown girl — though petite, like my sister Eliza, and possessed of decidedly red hair, and the freckled complexion that so often accompanies it. But I detect some acid in my description of Lucy Armstrong, and must hasten to retract it. Freckles on the one hand, a pleasing figure on the other — of what importance are such? If I resent her youth and simplicity of manner, it is only because I remember possessing both myself, and fancy I can foretell Lucy Armstrong's future. When, indeed, I know nothing of her fortune, or prospects; merely assuming that both are slight, since she appears in the guise of poor relation dependent for her pleasures upon a spiteful maiden aunt and widower uncle. She might as easily have three thousand a year, and a bevy of suitors waiting to snatch her back to Bath. Much may preserve her from a state such as mine — growing old, unloved, and unprovided-for.

And yet I am only ten years her senior. Only ten years! — Of balls, and flirtations, and new dresses and fashions; of disappointments, broken hearts, and fading hopes. I shall be nine-and-twenty next Christmas; and Lucy only just embarked upon her ten years. I would not wish them to end as mine have done.

I was jolted from my reverie by the appearance of the gentlemen. Mr. Crawford walked somewhat slowly, as though fatigued, and had Miss Armstrong by his side; but to my surprise, Mr. Sidmouth quite monopolized my father's attention.

“… then you would agree with Bentham[37], that the question is not ‘do animals reason,”but ‘do they suffer? my father enquired. I started, knowing him to be anything but a Benthamite, and hardly believing him acquainted with that gendeman's philosophy.

“I would.”

“Though that places the animals on a par with mankind?”

“I would say, sir, with Kant, that I cannot lay claim to the distinction of being Creation's final end.[38] These very fossils in Crawford's cliffs proclaim us but a stage upon Nature's great journey. We cannot but wonder if we shall be quarried ourselves, by some inhuman hand, millennia hence.”

There was a loud Tsk! of disapproval from Miss Crawford.

“You would not see them, then, as merely the confirmation of God's great design,” my father continued, “as a reflection of Man's infinitely greater powers?”

“Forgive me, sir — but I cannot.”

“Well, well! Very stimulating to be sure! We have been debating philosophy, my dears,” my father said, as the two men joined us. “I quite wish your brother James were here to make a third in the discussion. I rather fancy, being of the next generation of Austen clergymen, he might fall somewhere between the two poles of Mr. Sidmouth and myself.”

“You are determined in disagreement, then?” Cassandra enquired.

“As surely as Lucifer and St. Peter, my dear — though I meant no offence, Mr. Sidmouth, in the comparison.”

“As I assumed you to be pleading the part of Lucifer, my dear sir, none was taken.” There was a slight ripple of laughter, and Mr. Sidmouth began again with better grace. “I quite applaud your liberality, Reverend Austen. It is rare, indeed, to find a man of the cloth so open in his acceptance of what science tells us. For these very fossils must put paid to the Bible's notion of the world being formed in only seven days; the age of these cliffs, and their silent inhabitants, speak of thousands upon thousands of years’ passage before creatures like ourselves walked this earth.”

We were silent a moment, in gazing upon the chalk heights, and the excavations of Mr. Crawford's labourers; and it was then that Mr. Sidmouth turned to me, and took my hand. He turned over the palm, and pressed into it a fragment of rock, perhaps six inches across, with the barest impression of a life-form. A shell, it seemed to me; the remnant of a forgotten sea creature, curled like a ram's horn. The sensation of movement was palpable— whorling away within the rock for thousands of years, adrift in the seas of time.

“What is it?” I enquired.

“The rock is Blue Lias,” Mr. Sidmouth said. “Much of these Char mouth cliffs are formed of it.”

“And the creature?”

“An ammonite. Though a very small one. Crawford has others, full six feet across.”

I looked, and marvelled. (And I am still gazing at it, as I write — having propped the bit on the bedroom dresser at Wings cottage.) “Thank you,” I said, looking into Mr. Sidmouth's grave dark eyes. Our discord of the drive appeared entirely forgotten. “It is very beautiful.”

“There is something of eternity in it,” he said.[39]

IT WAS SEVERAL HOURS LATER, AFTER THE CRAWFORDS’ EXCELLENT repast was consumed, and we had listened with as much sympathy as we could muster to Miss Crawford's sad history of her blighted romance with one Jonas Filch — who died of a fever, thus leaving his fiancee to wear black for the subsequent thirty years — that Cassandra and I persuaded Eliza to walk with us along the water. We had left poor Henry and Miss Armstrong in Miss Crawford's grip (while she recounted for their edification the good works she superintended as the head of St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary), and coursed along the beach. We discovered, to our delight, a small cavern not far from the fossil site, its entrance marked with a cairn of stones; but Cassandra lacked the courage to venture inwards, and I would not go alone. I could look for no aid from Eliza's quarter— she was delighted with the cave's discovery, but too concerned with the possible ruin of her apparel to try its interior. “A cavern, Jane, as foetid and dank as Mrs. Radcliffe[40] should make it! Shall we venture within, at the very peril of our lives?”

“You know very well, Eliza, that a heroine must be alone to invite peril,” I said; “but let us venture all the same. We may fancy ourselves exposed to mortal danger, and so achieve a modest victory in braving the cavern's terrors together.”

But Eliza's attention, as readily let slip as it was secured, had already wandered. She preferred gossip to trials of courage, and made a very poor adventuress indeed.

“I am quite taken with your Mr. Sidmouth, Jane,” she declared, having traded the cavern for a seat on a weathered log. “Such tempests of emotion as are graven upon his countenance! First, the darkest of clouds; and then, as if under the influence of a warm breeze, the threat of rain is swept away, and sunlight breaks! Upon first espying his countenance before the Lyme Assembly, I thought it quite ugly; not a single feature may be called handsome. And yet the whole is not displeasing. I could watch the play of his emotions for hours.”

“It would appear that you already have,” Cassandra observed.

I feigned disinterest, and prodded at some seaweed with a piece of driftwood I had seized for a walking stick.

The tide being quite low, all manner of sea-life was washed up upon the shore, and every step afforded new wonders.

“And so much the man of the world,’” Eliza continued, as though Cassandra had never spoken. “I felt myself almost returned to Paris, in the course of our nuncheon!”[41]

“You were singularly engrossed.” Cassandra straightened up from the sand with a bit of sea-glass in her hands. “This appears to be a fragment of a bottle, Jane — cast overboard from a passing ship. Only think, if it should have fallen from one of our brothers’ hands!”

“Mr. Sidmouth is quite an habitue of that dear city,” Eliza resumed. “It seems he has occasion to travel to France fairly often — or did, before the peace ended.”

“Indeed?” I was compelled to attend to her chatter despite myself. “And what could be his reason for such travel? I had understood that those French relations he once possessed were all murdered in the revolt.”

“Oh! I daresay he is in some line of trade.” Eliza's tone was careless. “Though while the Monster yet holds the throne of France in thrall, all trade is at an end. Mr. Sidmouth and I are quite agreed that now Buonaparte has crowned himself Emperor, and has begun to murder his opponents[42], the condition of the country can only worsen. I was forced to turn the conversation, in fact, from fear that the gentleman's opinions should become too heated. He grew quite warm in his discussion of French policy, and that, with a lady.”

“In trade?” I said, all wonderment. “He certainly gives no indication of it. I should have thought Mr. Sidmouth a gentleman of easy circumstances.”

“Even a man with four thousand a year, my dear Jane, may use his property in a profitable fashion.” Eliza was all impatience. “I cannot name for you the legions of gentlemen in London alone who serve as Venturers[43] for all manner of commercial enterprise. Their money is their proxy — they may benefit from its utility in the hands of others, and keep their own fingers clean of such vulgar stuff as buying and selling.”

“How very extraordinary,” Cassandra murmured.

I turned to agree with her; and found she was absorbed in examining a fragment of shell. “The whorls and chambers of this bit of stuff — this sea-creature's home — are as fully a work of art as any Italian sculpture. How wonderful is Nature!”

Put out of temper with both my companions, I left the water's edge and wandered aimlessly back towards the fossil site. I was required to stop, however, and glance about to find my way; Charmouth beach at such an hour was crowded with pleasure-seekers, attempting the waters in bathing machines, or walking with some difficulty through the heavy drift of sand. I raised a hand to my brow and narrowed my eyes, the better to find a familiar face — and stopped short in my survey, upon sighting what could only be an overturned skiff drawn up on the shingle, quite barnacled and scraped about its exterior, as from heavy use. What paint remained upon its wood, however, was a rich, deep green.

I approached it slowly, my pulse at fever pitch, the thought of the ring at the end of the Cobb my only consideration. Was this the very vessel that had borne the unfortunate Bill Tibbit and his gallows to the stone pier's end? At the skiff's side, I dropped to my knees in the sand, heedless of my muslin, and studied it soberly. Several long scratches were cut deeply into the wood — the result, perhaps, of bobbing against the Gobb in the dead of night, though they might have been acquired in any number of ways.

“Miss Austen,” came a voice at my elbow; and I jumped.

“Mr. Sidmouth!”

“Should you like to take a turn upon the waves?”

I attempted a smile. “I confess, it is not my favoured pursuit, though I am of a Naval family.”

He bent and patted the boat's sturdy prow, from which an anchor, small but mortally sharp, protruded. “La Gascogne could never do you harm,” he said. “She is Lyme-built, and has performed many a useful service.”

“You know the boat, then?” I enquired, its very name having the power to rob me of all complaisance.

“These ten years, at least,” he replied with a smile. “When a local fishing family had no further use for her, I took her under the Grange's wing, and seaworthy she has proved. You are certain you do not wish to take a turn? A pair of stout fellows at the oars, and we should be beyond the surf in a thrice.”

“My apologies, Mr. Sidmouth,” I said, rising with effort, the image of the gibbet before my eyes, “but I fear my stomach is not equal to a ride in such a vessel.”

“AND DID YOU ENJOY YOUR FIRST DAY ABROAD, MISS AUSTEN?” Captain Fielding enquired, as his stout ponies jogged up the road from Charmouth. Given the lateness of the hour, we had determined to forgo a pleasure drive, and turn instead towards the Captain's house, there to take tea and a tour of his gardens, of which he was quite proud. “I trust you are not overly fatigued?”

“I must confess to feeling a little,” exhausted Cassandra said faintly from her seat opposite. Captain Fielding had settled himself at my side in the open carriage, while Lucy Armstrong held the place next to my sister. Fielding's coachman, Jar vis, sat alone high upon the box; and I felt a twinge of consciousness at the thought of an earlier ride in a barouche-landau, and a more precarious seating. Mr. Sidmouth had parted from us some hours since — to avoid meeting Captain Fielding, I suspected, though the Gentleman Venturer of High Down claimed only pressing business about the farm.

“So much sun, and good food, and cheerful company, will prove tiring, I own,” the Captain said, with a broad smile on his weathered face. “We are quite surfeited with schemes of pleasure, are we not? Your uncle, Miss Armstrong, is the chief culprit, I fear, in all our cases of exhaustion.’ ‘Miss Armstrong dimpled prettily at this, but Cassandra seemed to find even so little effort as a smile beyond her powers, as I observed in some dismay. The Captain studied my sister an instant, and must have surmised the same. “We shall not tax you much further, Miss Austen,” he told Cassandra, “merely to charge you to enjoy the splendour of the countryside hereabouts, and that, in silence.”

And indeed, Captain Fielding could not have spoken with greater justice. The waving golden-green of the high downs in early September was a spectacle to behold; even so late in the day, with shafts of sunlight stretching warm and long towards the sea, haymakers were abroad in the fields, and the picturesque was completed by the introduction in the distance of the occasional hay-wain and stout horse, blowing at the chaff and the flies. To our left, as we progressed northwest, was the grey-blue edge of the cliffs, dropping precipitately to the sea; and then the sea itself, curling and re-forming ceaselessly against the rocks.

“Look!” Miss Armstrong cried. “A cutter! And a fast one indeed! It might almost be racing the ship behind.”

“I fear that it is.” Captain Fielding spoke grimly. “Jarvis! Pull up!”

The barouche rolled to a gentle stop with the coachman's “Whoa, there, Jezebel. Whoa, Shadrach,” and we four turned, as if possessed of one head, to gaze at the horizon.

The cutter was, as its name suggests, a fast little ship of light build and sleek lines; it clove through the waves like a knife through warm butter, making the most of a stiff breeze. Behind it came a heavier brig, flying the ensign of the Royal Navy — and that the one pursued the other, we little doubted.

“They would apprehend it,” Lucy Armstrong said, with all the wonder of nineteen. “Whatever for?”

“Wait but a moment,” Fielding replied, “and you shall see something curious.”

The cutter was nearing the distant end of the Cobb, and the Navy brig was well back; it looked as though the lead vessel should triumph. And then it came round, and almost to a halt in the waters west of the Cobb, and a frenzy of activity on the main deck could be observed.[44]

“They are jettisoning the cargo,” Cassandra said qui-edy. “It must be contraband.”

“Exactly.” Captain Fielding's voice held only satisfaction.

“Smugglers!” Miss Armstrong cried, her face alight. So even she was prey to the romance of the age. Her aunt could not approve it; but happily, we were spared Miss Crawford's strictures.

“What a fearful loss this must be, for the captain of that cutter,” I observed.

“Loss? That is very unlikely,” Captain Fielding replied. “They will have marked the place in Poker's Pool where the casks went down — indeed, they may even have buoyed them just below the surface — and will in due course retrieve them in the dead of night, in smaller boats. Provided, of course, the captain is not impressed.”[45]

“Why even attempt a landing in broad daylight?” my sister enquired. “It seems the worst sort of folly.”

“Lyme has been known as an hospitable port,” Captain Fielding said drily. “The local Revenue men and dragoons are so well-supplied with French brandy — of the sort that is very hard to come by — that more often than not, they are elsewhere engaged when the contraband arrives. Only one of your Revenue men is worth his salt— Mr. Roy Cavendish, the local Customs man — but his duties are too numerous, and his territory too broad, for the effective policing of Lyme. I cannot tell you how many afternoons I have watched waggons come in a long line to the shingle below the Cobb, their horses standing in surf up to their flanks, on purpose to fetch the smugglers’ shameful cargoes and bear them into the deep recesses of the Pinny[46], and thence to the Dorchester road, and Bath, and London beyond. But of late Cavendish has been quite pressing in his charge to apprehend such cheats of the Crown's revenues. What you see before you, ladies, is a miscalculation on the part of our Gentlemen of the Night. They did not hear of the Royal Navy's sudden interest in their trade. The brig looks to be the Renegade. I imagine she has been chasing that cutter all the way from Boulogne.”

“Jane!” Cassandra cried. “Our brother is even now engaged in blockading that very port Is it credible a smuggling ship could penetrate where so much active vigilance holds sway?”

“There are many methods for winning blindness from one's countrymen,” Captain Fielding broke in. “I regret to say it — my years of service in the Blue would urge me to prevaricate — but the truth of the matter is that many who were once in the service of the Crown form the chief part of the smugglers’ bands. Who better than a sailor, accustomed to privation and endurance in the worst of seas, to pilot a ship into enemy territory? Who better than a soldier, accustomed to long marches, to carry a barrel of brandy slung from each shoulder several miles through the Pinny to safety? And who better than either, to suborn old friends in strategic places, with the gift of a length of silk or a bottle of rarest cognac?”

“I am all amazement,” Cassandra said, with averted eyes. “It is my custom to believe those who serve in the Royal Navy to be among the most honourable of men.”

“And in the main, they are, I grant you,” Captain Fielding said gently. “Certainly I could not suggest that your own brothers would be so easily corrupted, Miss Austen. I speak but in the general way, and of the common lot— the ordinary man-at-arms, who cannot look to rise to an officer's rank, and achieve great fortune. One night's despicable work on behalf of such a one as the Reverend could suffice to feed a family for a week.”

“The Reverend?” Cassandra looked her puzzlement.

“I am forgetting,” Captain Fielding exclaimed. “We were deprived of your loveliness last evening, and you of our conversation.”

“The Reverend is a smuggling chief,” Lucy Armstrong supplied. “His identity remains one of Lyme's greatest secrets. The very cutter below us may well be one of his boats.”

We gazed once more at the sea, and observed the Navy vessel come alongside the cutter, which, having abandoned its cargo, now stood off Lyme some little distance with an affectation of innocence; in an instant, the little boat was boarded; and a search of her holds no doubt begun. To my surprise, I found myself wishing her good fortune and Godspeed, and that the officers of His Majesty's ship Renegade might find nothing to her detriment. Then abruptly I shook off such fancies, appalled at my want of moral sense. How should it be, that our hearts leap at the sight of anything graceful, fast, and daring, and turn away from the stolid predictability of the tried and narrow way? Only Eve, clutching at her apple, might have the answer.

WE DROVE ON IN A MOMENT, THOUGH MORE THAN ONE OF US craned a neck backwards to observe the progress of events on the cutter's deck; but though we espied the boat itself, the actions of its men were veiled from our sight, and the conclusion of such a story must await another day. Cassandra's eyes were closed, and her pallor such as gave rise to concern in my breast; but believing her to be resting, I chose not to disturb her with unnecessary enquiries. Turning instead to Captain Fielding, I thought to pursue a nearer interest, by probing his dislike of Mr. Sidmouth.

“I had understood you to tell me, Captain Fielding, that Mr. Sidmouth's relations in France were all deceased, and that Mademoiselle LeFevre represents the sole surviving leaf of the family's foreign branch.”

“I believe that to be the case,” he replied.

“And yet my sister Eliza finds that Mr. Sidmouth goes often to France — or did so, before the outbreak of the latest hostilities. Having been long a resident of that unfortunate country herself, she was delighted to meet with a gentleman capable of offering the latest intelligence regarding Parisian society, something for which she is always longing.”

“I am happy to learn that Mr. Sidmouth was capable of offering anything that could be described as pleasing,” the Captain rejoined soberly. “That he was engaged in conversing with a lady — and a lady of the world, as everything about your brother's wife proclaims her to be — must speak for itself. Sidmouth's charm is always most lively in the company of the fair sex.”

“You are aware, then, of his travel?” I persisted.

“I am. It has been many months since I have regarded it with anything but dismay.”

“Dismay!” I cried, with a look for Lucy Armstrong, whose eyes were cast down upon her folded hands. Her cheeks were remarkably rosy for one so apparently indifferent to our conversation.

“Indeed.” Captain Fielding appeared to hesitate, as if debating within himself; and then the desire to relate his anxieties won out over the impulse towards discretion. “I have reason to believe, Miss Austen, that Geoffrey Sidmouth is engaged in business of a most unscrupulous nature; that he ventures to Paris on behalf of certain nefarious interests whose result you saw only moments ago; that he is, in fact, none other than the reprehensible Reverend of whom the world speaks with such a strange mixture of repugnance and admiration.”

“Mr. Sidmouth! The very Reverend!”

“It cannot be,” Cassandra said, with some urgency in her tone. Her eyelids had fluttered wide, and two spots of colour burned in her cheeks. “Mr. Sidmouth retains every aspect of the gentleman. I cannot believe so good a man as he proved himself to me, in my time of need, to be so lost to the expectations of society — of duty — indeed, of every moral purpose!”

“I wish that I could share your approbation,” Captain Fielding said. He spoke gently to Cassandra, as was his wont, but his blue eyes were cold and hard in his tanned face. I understood, in gazing at him then, what it must have been to answer his commands on a surging deck in the midst of battle. “I have watched his movements for some time. The trips to France are but a part of it; to this, I would add the strangeness of waggons coming and going at the Grange at all hours of the night; the appearance of bands of men who shelter in its barns for a few days only, and then are seen no more; the constant traffic along the cliffs, in the foulest of weather; and the habitual walks of Mademoiselle LeFevre.”

“Mademoiselle LeFevre?” Lucy Armstrong said, in a tone of bewilderment.

“Mademoiselle LeFevre,” Captain Fielding rejoined. The barouche tilted suddenly, in turning into a private avenue of well-grown trees, and I looked up to find we were come very nearly to the end of our drive. “She is given to walking, as all of Lyme has observed, along the cliffs in her bright red cloak, and on particular afternoons.”

“There can be nothing singular in a lady's taking exercise, ” I objected, as the barouche rolled to a halt before Captain Fielding's door, “nor in the fact of a scarlet wrap, when one is speaking of Lyme.”[47]

“There can — and there is — when the lady's constitutionals are followed without fail by the landing of a smuggling ship along the beaches that same night. I am convinced her red cloak is a signal; she wears it for the benefit of the Reverend's cutters, lying offshore, and straining at their sea-glasses for a glimpse of scarlet. At times when the dragoons are particularly active — when they feel, for the sake of propriety, a need to assume an attitude of vigilance, and stand about the town as if ready to arrest us all — I have observed Miss Seraphine to remain within doors for whole days together.”

The Captain eased his game leg out of the barouche with the coachman Jarvis's assistance, and, once steady upon the ground, turned to hand down first Miss Armstrong and then my sister. “Having seen the cutter running offshore today, I find it in me to wonder, indeed, if Mr. Sidmouth's presence at Mr. Crawford's fossil pits was entirely without design. From such a point, one might have an unimpeded view of all sea traffic; he could combine a pleasure party with scrupulous observance of his cargo's fortunes.”

“But he departed before the cutter appeared,” Lucy Armstrong argued. Captain Fielding merely bowed, and gestured her towards the open door, where a housemaid stood ready to usher her within. Cassandra followed, with the faintest of smiles. Her gait was unsteady, as though she moved under the influence of a fearful headache. My heart misgave me as I watched; but Captain Fielding's hand was outstretched to receive my own, and I returned to the subject uppermost in my thoughts.

“You have indeed been an avid observer of all Mr. Sidmouth's movements,” I said, as I grasped the Captain's gloved fingers and found the carriage step. “I would venture to say that even your place of abode is not without design. With no other object than the closest scrutiny, can you have chosen to settle in a house not a half-mile from High Down Grange. For no other reason than to calculate his ruin, can you have chosen a neighbour so abhorrent to you.”

How my heart reacted to this knowledge of Captain Fielding's design, I cannot say. I confess to a confusion of emotions — some all in admiration of his penetration and bravery, and others, having more to do with Geoffrey Sidmouth, that were marked by regret. But I could not deny the calculation of Fielding's words, and the careful study behind them; I myself had spent two nights at High Down Grange, and had seen the red-cloaked girl with a lanthorn bobbing along the cliffs. What had Mr. Sidmouth said to Seraphine, in those few phrases of French? Something about the men, and the dogs, and the bay. And the name of the bottle-green boat on the beach — La Gascogne. Presumably a cargo was expected the very night of our precipitate arrival — hence the hostility with which we were met, and the stable boy's levelled blunderbuss. Seraphine LeFevre was undoubtedly dispatched to divert the men and their wares to another place of hiding, for the length of our unfortunate stay.

“You are possessed of a singular understanding,” Captain Fielding said, his eyes intent upon my face. We stood thus a moment in the drive while Jarvis remounted the box. “But then, I have allowed myself an unwonted frankness in your company. It may be that our minds are formed for such effortless meeting.”

“I am happy to learn that you are not entirely languishing in retirement, Captain Fielding” I rejoined, deflecting his gallantry with a smile. “Indeed, I think you are possibly the most active former Naval officer I have ever met.”

He threw back his blond head and laughed. “You have found me out, Miss Austen. I am, indeed, as yet employed — though on behalf of His Majesty's revenues rather than his seamen. I shall have the Reverend yet— and when I do, I shall be very much surprised if he is not Geoffrey Sidmouth.”