Jane and the Genius of the Place jam-4
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“Do not attempt to claim that you strangled Mrs. Grey out of love for me,” she retorted bitterly. “I have never understood what you are. From the first moment of our meeting, I pledged my heart to a creature of my own invention; and I reap nothing now but my just reward.”
He would have touched her then, but she shrank away; and in utter silence, he bound her hands.
“Where shall you go?” I enquired, as he came to me.
He merely shook his head. “Mr. Canning, I must believe, will have some use for a desperate man. There are any number of noisome holes throughout the world, where such an one might be hidden — and so die.”
When he bent to tie my wrists, I caught his fingers in mine. “Do not give way entirely to despair, Mr. Sothey. If these hands have shed some blood, they have also been the instruments of a remarkable beauty. In your art I glimpsed a little of Paradise; but there cannot be a garden without a serpent or two. I shall not soon forget the beauty of your works, or the genius I have glimpsed.”
“My genius, Miss Austen, is akin to Lucifer's; and I fear that he was cast out from Heaven.”
“There is something of the demon and the angel in all of us, Mr. Sothey,” I replied, “and I know that your angel shall prevail. Let that hope be your guide — the beacon in your darkness — that redemption, and atonement, might come to you at last.”
The knots tied, he bowed low over my coupled wrists and kissed the back of my hand. Then, his eyes averted from Anne Sharpe, he quitted the room without another word.
And so they left us.
IT WAS A TEDIOUS INTERVAL, POSSIBLY AS LONG AS AN hour and a half, before the first clatter of feet on the servants' stair announced the housemaids come in search of water. Anne Sharpe could provide no conversation to relieve the boredom of that passage; she was lost in a peculiar torment, that did not admit of speech; and the greatest kindness we could offer, was to respect her silence.
Of Neddie I enquired only once.
“You remarked that there were many forms of justice, and that Mr. Sothey would come to his in time. Of what were you thinking, Neddie? Do you intend to pursue him to the limits of the law?”
“I may risk the wrath of Mr. George Canning,” he replied wearily, “and perhaps, even, of Mr. Pitt. I cannot pretend to understand so deep an undertaking, Jane, as was unfolded here before us. But I may discharge one duty upon my conscience — I may inform Mr. Valentine Grey of exactly how his wife came to die.”
“You believe him as yet in ignorance?”I cried.
“He should never have handed over her letters,” Neddie said, “did he comprehend the ruin he should bring upon his friend Sothey's head. No, Jane — I believe Grey's part in the puzzle extended only so far as indemnification of the Royal Navy's ships. Of his wife's ungentle handling, he can have known nothing.”
“—But suspected a great deal,” I returned thoughtfully. “Perhaps his conscience, indeed, argued the presentation of those letters.”
“And if I know anything of the man's character,” Neddie observed grimly, “he shall not rest until his honour is satisfied. It is for Grey to pursue his friend Sothey to the ends of the earth, and setde the account at pistol-point. And to my great relief, Jane, my dear, I shall be nowhere within hailing distance, when the deed is done.”
Chapter 22
The Genius of the Place
16 September 1805
I HAVE COME AT LAST TO THE END OF MY KENTISH interlude; nearly four months of dissipation, vice, and the corruption of high living — a period I relinquish with infinite regret. Ahead lie all the pleasures of a visit to the seaside at Worthing, in company with my sister Cassandra, our friend Mary Lloyd, and my widowed and querulous mother; then the return to winter in Bath, in temporary lodgings and all the inelegance of reduced circumstances. I cannot look upon the succession of months with anything like complacency, nor contemplate the fulfillment of my thirtieth year with particular satisfaction. I must trust, however, in the vagaries of Fate — which invariably surprise when one has ceased to expect them.
I closed my visit to Godmersham as I have so often marked its extent — by repairing to the litde Doric temple across the Stour, and sitting awhile in contemplation of the beauty of the downs. The lime trees of Bentigh, it seemed, should proceed in their march unmolested; so, too, the kitchen gardens, amidst their harried traffic of scullery maids and under-gardeners. The promise of Mr. Sothey's Blue Book was at Godmersham unfulfilled, just as at Eastwell it remained unrealised — to Lady Elizabeth's confusion and pain. Of Mr. Sothey's whereabouts she has learned not the slightest syllable. No explanation of her protege's abrupt departure has been offered to her — just as none was ever given for his sudden appearance at her door. She professes to believe his desertion immaterial; but thinks her daughter Louisa decidedly ill-used.
Anne Sharpe, who has more occasion to believe herself abandoned, must enjoy the satisfaction of knowing it to be the result of her own design. She has rallied tolerably in spirits, tho' she remains unequal to the challenge of Lizzy's daughters, and has accepted a position with a Mrs. Raikes, who possesses only one little girl. She is to leave Godmersham in January, and I hope that she may find tranquillity in her future employment.[62]
I had much to consider, as I lingered in the late summer air — the conclusion of the tragic business of Mrs. Grey, and the mysterious death of the Comte de Penfleur.
It was while I was suffering the blandishments of Edward Bridges, on the third day of my visit to Goodnestone Farm, that I learned the intelligence of Neddie. My brother enclosed a short note in Cassandra's letter, to the effect that the Frenchman had been found shot through the heart in the middle of a gallop not far from the outskirts of Dover. It is presumed that the Comte met another gentleman there, at dawn, for the satisfaction of some affair of honour; but why he brought no second, who might have exposed his murderer, remains a mystery to all of Kent. Suspicion has fallen on Mr. Valentine Grey, of course — but that gentleman has chosen to say nothing regarding the Comte's untimely end; and there are those — Mr. Justice Austen among them— who maintain that Grey was away in London on a matter of business at the time.
I was so honoured during my week's residence among the Bridges family, as to receive a proposal of marriage from a certain desperate curate — but of my reply, let us relate as little as possible, beyond the fact that it was in the negative. Mr. Bridges's declaration coincided with the Coldstream Guards' secret troop movement towards Deal; and we must assume that only an excess of boredom at being forced within doors, and the most extreme anxiety regarding the security of the pheasants, could give rise to so foolish an impulse.
I have now the distinction of having loved two men, from whom it was my destiny to be parted forever; and of having refused another two, whom it was my destiny never to love. I begin to resemble the interesting career of one of Mrs. Burney's heroines, and cannot expect so much of romance in future.
It was as I was seated over the pages of my little book, wrestling Lady Susan at last to her deserts, that the figure of a gentleman toiling up the hill intruded upon my sight. It was a spare figure, tho' tall and elegantly dressed; a trousered gentleman quite at a loss in the country, whose shoes should never sustain the effects of the previous night's rain. The hair beneath his rakish hat was silver, and the knife-blade of his nose must scream his name aloud as clearly as a hot-pressed calling card. I felt all the rush of recognition — rose, and gained support from the temple's table — breathed deep, and endeavoured to calm the racing of my heart.
And when Lord Harold had at last achieved the summit of Neddie's little hill, I was tolerably in command of my countenance. I might curtsey, and extend my hand, and say with admirable composure, “An unlooked-for pleasure, Lord Harold, indeed! What could possibly bring you to so remote a corner of Kent? — For I assure you, sir, that we know nothing at Godmersham of coalitions and accords, or the subtle employments of diplomacy. You had better turn back by the road you have come, and ask the way
to Eastwell Park.”
“I had intended to pay my respects to Mr. Finch-Hatton,” he replied, with an effort to subdue his smile, “but that I recendy learned of his posting abroad — to a sinecure in India, much embattled at present. With tigers on the one hand, and mutinous sepoys on the other, who can say how Mr. Emilious shall fare?”
“Having survived the dangerous Miss Austen,” I replied, “we may consider him as equal to anything.”
Lord Harold threw back his head and laughed — the first genuine expression of mirth I had ever witnessed in that gentleman. Then taking up the pages of Lady Susan, and placing my hand within the crook of his arm, he led me back towards my brother's house.
If ever there is a monument built on Godmersham's heights — a propitiation of the local spirit, perhaps— then pray let it be dedicated to the genius of laughter.
Примечания
1
Edward Austen (1767–1852) was third among the eight Austen children. In 1783, at the age of sixteen, he was adopted by a wealthy cousin, Thomas Knight II, from whom he inherited three estates — Godmersham in Kent, and Steventon and Chawton in Hampshire. Edward lived a life of privilege and ease quite beyond the reach of his siblings. In 1812, he took the surname of Knight. — Editor's note.
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2
In the late Georgian period, horses of different ages and both sexes commonly raced one another and were handicapped with varying weights designed to level the field. A stone equaled roughly fourteen pounds; from the considerable weight of the Commodore's handicap, we may assume he was being brought down to a pack of less fleet or older horses. — Editor's note.
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3
Miss Sharp — whose surname Jane was in the habit of spelling variously with or without a final “e” — refers here to a popular work of young lady's instruction, Letters from Mrs. Palmerstone to her Daughters, inculcating Morality by Entertaining Narratives (1803), by Mrs. Rachel Hunter. — Editor's note.
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4
Richard Tattersall (1724–1795) was the foremost horse trader of London. Although deceased by Jane's writing of this account in 1805, the institutions he fostered endure in part to this day. By 1775, Tattersall was providing the newly formed Jockey Club with a room (and his famous claret) for its meetings, and in 1780 he opened a Subscription Room, a club with an annual paid membership, for the laying and settling of bets. The committee that adjudicated betting disputes was known as Tattersall's Committee — the governing body of bookmaking. — Editor's note.
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5
Frances, Countess Jersey, was finally deceased by August 1805; but not before her ruthless methods had once enslaved the much younger Prince of Wales. — Editor's note.
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6
Eclipse, a chestnut horse with a white blaze and one white leg, was foaled for the Duke of Cumberland in Windsor Park in the year of the great eclipse: 1764. He was one of the greatest racehorses of all time, and his bloodline is arguably the most important male line in the world of horse racing. — Editor's note.
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7
It was customary in Austen 's time for spectators to gallop alongside the competing horses in the final lengths of a race. Though commonplace, the practice was highly dangerous and often led to mishap — either for the mounted spectator or the racehorses themselves, more than one of whom was denied a victory by the interference of an overzealous fan. — Editor's note.
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8
Edward refers to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft, first published in 1792. Elizabeth Austen was educated at an excellent finishing school in London, known as “the Ladies' Eton.” It may be there that she fostered her interest in women's issues. In 1808, she signed her name in a work written by the radical London feminist Mary Hays. — Editor's note.
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9
“Caky” was the nickname Edward Austen's children bestowed on their nurse, Susannah Sackree, who was employed at Godmersham for over six decades. She often served as Jane Austen's personal maid when Jane was resident at Godmersham; she is buried at St. Nicolas's, the old Norman church just south of Godmersham Park, where Edward and Elizabeth Austen Knight are also entombed. — Editor's note.
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10
It was common in Austen's day to refer to relations by marriage as though they were relations of blood. Although the term in-law existed, it was frequently used to describe step relations. — Editor's note.
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11
Edward Austen Knight's male children attended Winchester College, some seventeen miles distant from his principal Hampshire estate, at Chawton. — Editor's note.
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12
A cicisbeo was the acknowledged lover of a married woman. In some circles the term was used platonically, to signify a male escort. — Editor's note.
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13
To call a man out was to challenge him to a duel. — Editor's note.
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14
A gentleman's vowels were his IOUs — signed with his name, and binding as a debt of honor. — Editor's note.
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15
Lady Susan, first drafted in the mid-1790s, was never titled or published during Austen's life. Even at the time of its composition, the novel's epistolary form was considered more appropriate to the eighteenth than the nineteenth century. Why Austen abandoned The Watsons, which she had begun in 1803 or 1804, in order to finish the more cynical Lady Susan, is a mystery; but some Austen scholars impute the decision to a persistent depression that resulted from her father's death in January 1805. Despite its flaws, Lady Susan's calculating and amoral heroine is utterly irresistible. — Editor's note.
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16
The sweep, in Austen's day, was the common name for the driveway. — Editor's note.
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17
From his youth, Jane's elder brother, Francis Austen, RN, was called “Fly.” He was posted to the Channel station in 1804 as captain of the Leopard, and transferred in 1805 to the Canopus, a French-built ship of the line under Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson's ultimate command. — Editor's note.
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18
Warren Roberts, in Jane Austen and the French Revolution (Macmillan, 1979), relates that evacuation plans were disseminated to every household within fifteen miles of the Kentish coast. Godmersham lay some miles west of that perimeter, but perhaps its position along the retreat toward London made it worthy of the Guards' notice. Sainfoin, also known as cockshead, was a common forage plant used as animal fodder. — Editor's note.
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19
Edward Austen refers here to a demand for satisfaction in a matter of honor, in which the offended party usually threw a glove at his opponent's feet or, in extreme cases, struck him with the glove across the cheek. An affair of honor was usually settled at pistol-point. If either party killed the other, the survivor could be charged with murder. — Editor's note.
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20
George Canning (1770–1827) served as Undersecretary of State in 1796, and as Treasurer of the Navy from 1804–1806. As such, he had virtually no authority over naval organization or policy, which was administered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, but he was responsible for matters of naval finance in Parliament. This included the salaries of naval captains, the naval budget, and the disposition of the Secret Funds — monies set aside for the purpose of espionage, and unaccountable to Parliament. — Editor's note.
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21
The House of Hope was the powerful and influential Scots banking concern based in Amsterdam. Hope financed, among other things, Napoleon Bonaparte's government and campaigns. — Editor's note.
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22
William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) was in his last months of life in August 1805. As minister of the Treasury, he was also prime minister of England. A brilliant, lonely, and calculating political genius, he was the foremost Tory of his generation and a lifelong adversary of the Prince of Wales. He was also an alcoholic, and his liver failed when he was forty-seven. He was carried, dying, from the House of Commons in December 1805, and died early in 1806. — Editor's note.