“But it is none of our affair!” my cousin cried. “We are strangers to Bakewell and everyone in it. If these vicious fellows would string one of their company from the nearest tree, then I for one shall not risk my neck to stop them.”
“And is this the issue of a day spent humbly on your knees, Cousin?” I enquired with scorn. “You had better have devoted the hours to your fishing rod. If you do not chuse to sound the alarm, when all of Bakewell must know what these ruffians are about, then I shall do so.”
“I beg you will not,” snapped Mr. Cooper, now white-faced. “You will bring the whole town in arms to the inn, and then who shall save us all? Charles Danforth is entirely unknown to us, and very likely a murderer. He can be nothing to you.”
“Nothing, sir, but a fellow creature and a gentleman,” I cried. “If Mr. Danforth is a murderer, let an English court pronounce him so! Come, come, Mr. Cooper! Do you think that rabble below has any notion of justice? They are moved solely by superstition and the most appalling ignorance. I despise that sort of public tyranny!”
My cousin had the grace to look somewhat ashamed. My sister Cassandra, who had overheard the whole, turned her gaze intently from one to the other of us, her troubled countenance betraying her dismay at family discord. I am always firm, however, when I know myself to be in the right. I reached for the inn’s supply of paper and searched among my things for a well-trimmed pen.
“Rough justice made a mockery of peace in France,” I told Mr. Cooper. “I shall not stand idly by while it has its way with England, sir!”
1 Although the Duke of Devonshire had not yet acknowledged his paternity of Lady Elizabeth Foster’s children by 1806, he was to do so several years later. Lady Elizabeth bore the duke a daughter, named Caroline St. Jules, in 1785, and a son, named Augustus William Clifford, in 1788. The Cavendish family has always maintained, however, that William Cavendish, born 1790 and here referred to as the Marquess of Hartington, was indeed Georgiana’s son.—Editor’s note.
Remedies for Whooping Cough
tew one gill sliced onion and one gill sliced garlic in one gill sweet oil, until the juices are rendered. Strain, and add one gill honey, a half-ounce paregoric,* and a half-ounce spirits of camphor. Bottle and cork tightly. For a child of two to three years, the dose is one teaspoon three or four times daily, increasing with the severity of the attack or the age of the child.
—From the Stillroom Book
of Tess Arnold,
Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire,
1802–1806
*By paregoric, the stillroom maid probably meant paregoric elixir—an apothecary’s compound of camphorated tincture of opium flavored with aniseed and benzoic acid.—Editor’s note.
Chapter 13
A Sinner in the Night
28 August 1806, cont.
∼
SALLY, OUR PARLOUR-MAID, WAS DEEMED WORTHY OF bearing secrets; and so she was summoned, and requested to despatch two missives, hastily penned and sealed up with wax. The first bore the name of Lord Harold Trowbridge; he should know better than anyone how to convey the news of a hanging party to the Danforth brothers, without alarming the Duke’s entire household. I did not feel secure in communicating directly with Charles Danforth—did the bearer read his name upon the letter, even one despatched to Chatsworth, Mr. Danforth might never receive it.
The second letter was directed to Sir James Villiers, at his ancestral home near Monyash. If violent men were abroad in Derbyshire at night, the local Justice was the most proper person to rout them; but I chafed at the delay necessitated by so indirect an approach. Could I have sent immediately to Penfolds Hall, and warned the steward, I should have done so; but the likelihood of a messenger’s being prevented from travelling the same road as the men he hoped to forestall, argued against that course of action.
Sally solemnly assured us that she would see the letters into the hands of her male relations, who might be trusted to carry them safely through the dusk. I pressed three coins into her palm, and offered fervent thanks; and so, with a wide-eyed impression of her own importance, Sally ventured forth on an errand whose nature remained obscure to her. Those of us privileged to know the evil that men may do, were forced to wait in painful suspense, while the darkness gathered and the company of ruffians increased in the streets below.
“I fear there is a poisonous quantity of gin in circulation,” observed my mother resignedly. “They will all be wanting coddled eggs in the morning.”
THE TORCHES MADE THEIR WAY OUT OF BAKEWELL along the road I had last travelled in Mr. George Hemming’s pony trap, towards Ashford-in-the-Water and Miller’s Dale and the small town of Tideswell just beyond, where Penfolds Hall was said to be situated. It was a considerable distance for such a party, a fact that Mr. Tivey the surgeon must have anticipated—for several drays and waggons were pressed into service, and those without mounts of their own obliged to crouch in the springless bottoms of their fellows’ equipages. I watched them quit Matlock Street in silence, for Mr. Cooper had abandoned his post by the window and was now established over his writing desk. My mother and Cassandra had gone to bed. I was considering of a sleepless night myself, when a small tap came at the parlour door, and Sally peered into the room.
“Please, miss, and I thought I did ought to tell Tha’ as me broother Jack is come home.”
“And what has he to say?”
Sally grinned. “He’s been nearly run off his legs, the past three hour. First he took the road to Chatsworth, while Nate undertook the road to Monyash—Nate’s me cousin, and fair put out about his dinner he were, but I don’t pay no mind to that, he were happy enough to have the coin, and Sir James paying him handsome to boot—”
“Sir James was at home?”
“He were,” Sally said carefully, “and at his dinner, too, but Nate says as how he seemed fair flummoxed and called for his horse direckly. The whole country is wanting their nags tonight—it’s like an army moving, miss.”
“And your brother Jack?”
“He never laid eyes on the gentleman as Tha’ were wanting,” Sally said doubtfully, “but gave the note to the housekeeper and was asked to wait for a reply. He sat in the servants’ hall at Chatsworth, miss, and his eyes were fair round as cups when he did describe it, so grand as it were! Like a fairy castle, Jack says, and they’m gave him bread and cold chicken—”
“Did he carry a reply?”
“Tha’ll never guess!” Sally grinned, triumphant. “Sent out in a great carriage, he were, to the constables in Buxton, with a letter penned by the Duke himself! Jack’s not likely to get over it! He’s strutting like a gamecock, he is, down in me moother’s kitchen, and telling anyone who’ll listen about the Duke’s horses.”
“Thank you, Sally. You have prevented a very grievous harm, you and your family, and I am sure that the Duke himself would thank you. But I would urge young Jack not to crow too loudly. There are violent men abroad tonight, and some of them may resent your part in thwarting their plans. Tell your brother he has done a noble thing, and that it is a very great secret. Important gentlemen rely upon his silence. That should guard his safety.”
“Aye, miss,” said the girl, bobbing a curtsey. She pulled the door closed behind her.
I was relieved enough in my mind to seek my own bed, and lay there in fitful slumber nearly three hours. If Sir James Villiers and the Duke’s men could not deter the rabble of Bakewell from firing Penfolds Hall, then Jane Austen’s attempts should be hopeless. Yet sleep remained elusive, a haze of impressions half-dreamt and half-understood, in which the figures of Chatsworth moved with the grace of knights and queens, across a chessboard of mown lawn and gravel.
THE TOWN CLOCK HAD JUST TOLLED THE HOUR OF two, when a clatter in the hallway and a stifled oath brought me bolt upright in the darkness. Someone was attempting to lift the latch on my bedroom door.
Heart pounding wildly, I reached for a taper, and then recollected that I had no embers in the summer grate by which to l
ight it. Thoughts of the masked men in the square—of the quantity of gin they had consumed—of Sally’s brother Jack boasting of his errand behind the Duke’s horses—flitted rapidly through my brain. I weighed the merits of screaming for aid, or retreating into the clothes cupboard, where my four muslin gowns now hung limply; neither course, upon reflection, should do me credit. The person seeking entry might be none other than my sister, Cassandra. But she should have knocked first, and called out my name; and in over thirty years of living, I could not recall a time when she had emitted a drunken oath.
I threw back the bedclothes and stepped lightly on the floor. The boards, though fairly new in their construction, creaked beneath my feet. The man—for I had concluded the intruder was a man—did not falter, however, in his fumbling at my latch. To his misfortune, I had thrown a bolt before retiring for the evening, and the latch itself availed him nothing; my door remained obdurately closed. The intruder’s invective flowed swift and furious, though it remained unintelligible; the speech was slurred and the sense fragmented. He must be completely disguised in drink.
When barely a yard from the doorway I called out in a harsh voice, “Who is it? What do you want at this hour of the night?”
All movement beyond the oak planks immediately ceased.
And then, to my horror, I heard a shrill scream and the crash of a heavy china object upon the floor. I pulled back the bolt, threw open the door—and found my sister, Cassandra, standing in the hall, well wrapped up in a dressing gown. Mr. George Hemming lay inert at her feet.
She had broken her chamber pot upon his head.
WE SUMMONED MY COUSIN MR. COOPER, AND BADE him carry his friend into the comparative privacy of our communal parlour, where Mr. Hemming was laid across two armchairs. The tumult in our passage had disturbed the innkeeper’s rest; he shuffled up the narrow back stairs from his quarters with a lighted lamp, and begged to know why decent people could not keep to their beds of an evening. At the sight of Mr. Hemming lying still insensible across his comfortable armchairs, Mr. Davies’s mouth dropped open, and the hand holding his lamp began to shake.
“It’s nivver anoother murther?”
“No, sir, it is not,” retorted my cousin. “Mr. Hemming has merely indulged too much in drink, and suffered an unfortunate blow to the head in navigating his way through your narrow corridors! He requires a vial of hartshorn, a damp cloth, and a quantity of hot coffee, which I trust an inn as reputable as The Rutland Arms should be capable of supplying.”
“And a fresh chamber pot, I think, Mr. Davies.” Cassandra cast the innkeeper a winning smile as he turned to go. “Mine has unaccountably shattered. Pray leave your lamp, as well—”
“How does Mr. Hemming appear, Edward?” I asked my cousin. “Are the bones of the skull at all injured?”
“I think not, Jane. But his brain must be sorely addled by the quantity of Blue Lightning he has consumed. His very clothes reek of gin!”
“I am quite well, damn it—or would be, if you’d leave off hovering!” muttered the solicitor, his eyes opening. “What in God’s name connected with my head, Cooper? It felt as though the house itself fell upon me!”
“I fear you struck your skull against the lintel of my door, sir, in attempting to open it,” I told him primly. The blow had succeeded in sobering the gentleman more swiftly than any coffee could do. “Perhaps you would explain what you meant by such a visit, and at such an hour? We are all agog at the honour of it.”
“Your door?” He had the indelicacy to look horrified. “I was assured it was Cooper’s.”
“Unhappily, he is presently occupying the next room down. But you have secured his attention, Mr. Hemming, as well as my own, by the manner of your approach. Pray tell us in what way we may serve you.”
George Hemming gazed around the circle of faces staring down at him, and the belligerence died out of his countenance. “I came to confess,” he told us. “I thought it best to seek out Cooper, and make a clean breast of it. Clergyman, you know—adept at this sort of thing. Shriving.”
“Confess?” I repeated, puzzled. “To playing truant? Avoiding the Inquest? Or to indulging in spirits beyond what any sound person should tolerate?”
Mr. Hemming began to shake his head, then stopped short as the pain in his skull seized hold of his senses.
“To the murder of the stillroom maid,” he said.
Remedies for Drunkenness
ake ½ oz gentian root, 1 drachm valerian root, 2 drachms best rhubarb root, 3 drachms bitter orange peel, ½ oz cardamom seeds, and 1 drachm cinnamon bark. Bruise all together in a mortar, then steep in 1½ pints boiling water, and cover tightly. Let stand until cold. Then strain, bottle, and cork securely. Keep in a dark place. Two tablespoonfuls may be taken every hour before meals.
Another cure is to compel the patient to drink nothing but strong spirits for a week. He is sure to be thoroughly disgusted.
—From the Stillroom Book
of Tess Arnold,
Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire,
1802–1806
Chapter 14
An Unlikely Story
Friday 29 August 1806
∼
“IMPOSSIBLE!” I CRIED.
Mr. Hemming scowled up at me, then struggled to a sitting position. “It is all too possible, I assure you, Miss Austen—though I admit myself quite gratified to discover you believe me incapable of violence.”
His speech was still somewhat slurred with drink, and he pressed a palm to one eye. As he did so, a small gold trinket slipped from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor. I bent swiftly to retrieve it: the miniature portrait of a golden-haired lady, arrayed in the style of perhaps thirty years before. Even shown thus, in the poorest likeness of watercolour on ivory, she was a beautiful creature, her glance imperious, her cheekbones high under slanting green eyes. The late Mrs. Hemming, I must suppose.
“Lord, how my head aches!” Hemming muttered. “Where the Devil is that coffee?”
My cousin Mr. Cooper dropped to his knees beside his friend’s chair and grasped his free hand firmly. It was not an attitude of dignity in the best of circumstances, but when adopted in nightshirt and cap, must verge on the ridiculous. “The Lord is rejoicing, George, though your misery be great; for He loveth nothing so well as repentance. Sing with me, brother! For the time of your sinning is at an end.”
“Bosh,” said Mr. Hemming succinctly. He kicked out at the chair directly opposite and struggled to his feet. “Be so good as to inform me where I might find Sir James and have done.”
“I believe he was called away on urgent business this evening,” I replied with circumspection, and held out the miniature.
Hemming stared as though he had seen a ghost, and accepted it with trembling fingers. His eyes, replete with shame and misery, slid away from mine. Aware, of a sudden, of my immodesty in standing before such a figure in my chemise, I sashed my dressing gown.
“I sought Sir James at Monyash before returning to Bakewell,” he said. “Having screwed up my courage before the prospect of the gallows, I was afforded no opportunity to throw myself upon the Law; and thus took solace in bottled spirits. I drank the health of the Snake and Hind’s last patron, and should be there still if Jacob Patter had not shown me the door. Do you know Sir James’s direction?”
“Even if I did, I should not offer it to you now. You cannot intend to inform him of your absurd claim, Mr. Hemming! He will have no choice but to send you to Derby, to await the sitting of the Assizes.”1
“Having done my duty, I cannot fault him for performing his,” the solicitor retorted carelessly.
Mr. Davies, our long-suffering landlord, materialised in the doorway with a steaming pot of coffee. All conversation was necessarily suspended some moments; but having seen Mr. Hemming furnished with a cup, and having supplied Cassandra with a fresh chamber pot, Mr. Davies soon bowed his way back to bed.
“Pray sit down, Mr. Hemming, and explain yourself,” I urged the solicito
r, when the door had shut soundly behind the innkeeper; “for nothing will satisfy me that you are guilty of this horror.”
“What is there to explain?” he airily returned. “I waited in the rocks above Miller’s Dale on the Monday night, and shot the maid as she walked up the path.”
“Merciful Heaven!” whispered Mr. Cooper. “Knowing that she was Tess Arnold, arrayed as a man?”
“Naturally,” he replied defiantly. “She had come out from Penfolds Hall at my urging; and the decision to adopt her master’s clothes was taken by way of security. A maid abroad at such an hour, and in such a place, might well give rise to comment, were she seen; but a gentleman, never.”
“That is very true,” Cassandra murmured.
“Did you then proceed to mutilate her person?” I enquired.
Mr. Hemming hesitated, and his gaze fell.
Of firing a shot, I could believe him guilty; but of cutting out Tess Arnold’s tongue or her bowels—this, George Hemming should never do. I sat down on the chair he had quitted. “And why should Tess Arnold come at your urging, Mr. Hemming?”
“Because I paid her a great deal of money, Miss Austen.” He passed a hand wearily over his eyes. “Tess had been sure of me for many years, you understand; our relations were so predictable and easy, she never thought to preserve a necessary caution. That is the one mistake I have known Tess Arnold to commit—she failed to regard me with fear—and it cost her life.”
“George!” my cousin cried in horror, “would you add to the list of your sins the debauchery of this woman—a woman in every way your inferior, and thus dependent upon your honour as a gentleman?”
“It was not her favours Mr. Hemming would purchase,” I told my cousin, “but her silence. Am I correct, Mr. Hemming, in believing that Tess Arnold held your very honour over your head?”
“She did,” he replied, “and to preserve it—and the delicate reputation of another creature, far too vulnerable in spirit for such as Tess Arnold—I have paid dearly, and in more than coin. How many years of sorrow and denial have I suffered! But I will not attempt to compel your pity—such tender feelings are not mine to claim. When the maid’s demands for money became importunate, I determined to put an end to the business. I considered carefully of the sin; I weighed the gravity of murder against the evil her blackmail ensured; and set myself upon the course of violence.”
Jane and the Stillroom Maid Page 14