Jane and the Barque of Frailty jam-9

by Stephanie Barron

  “If he were, I should never betray him.” Tilson’s countenance eased, and he reached for his wine glass. “I could wish his friend Lord Moira at the ends of the earth, that is all. Henry may chuse to style his lordship as a great and useful patron — a name that lends tone to our banking concern — but the Earl is importunate in his demands for money, and a Whig besides. One might as well throw silver down a hole as lend it to a member of the Carlton House Set! Our thousands are gambled away in a single hand of whist! But Henry will not be brought to see it.”

  “Do you wish me to use my influence with my brother?” I asked.

  “Have you any?” James Tilson enquired flippantly. “I assure you I have not, and we have been friends and partners these many years. Nor can I bring Eliza to the point; she is persuaded that all manner of good fortune will result from a connexion with the nobility, and encourages Henry to make Lord Moira his debtor. Try if you will to sound your brother on the matter, Jane; I acquit you of all responsibility if you fail.”

  “This troubles you, Mr. Tilson,” I said, “and I am sorry for it. It is not like Henry to cause anxiety in the breasts of those he loves.”

  “Henry has no children,” Tilson observed ruefully, “while I am possessed of more than enough for both of us; naturally I am the more provident, having so many mouths to feed. I leave it to you, Jane — and will cease to worry the matter. The musicians have arrived!”

  THEY APPEARED AT EXACTLY HALF-PAST SEVEN o’clock, in two hackney coaches hired for the purpose: a harpist with her instrument, bulky in flannel wrappings and requiring the services of two footmen to install in the front drawing-room; a pianist who would perform upon Eliza’s beautiful little pianoforte; and a party of singers, led by a Miss Davis: quite short and round, with a flushed fair face, and a remarkable quantity of Voice to her small person. Half an hour passed in the arrangements of these people, and the necessary entertainment of our dinner party in the interval between the conclusion of the meal and the arrival of our guests for the evening — who began to appear by eight o’clock. Eliza had despatched some eighty invitations, and more than sixty people came: quite a rout for Sloane Street. I was relieved to find Mr. Egerton in the company of a Captain Simpson, of the Royal Navy, who possessed himself of the young man’s sleeve and engaged him most earnestly in conversation pertaining to Whitehall; and saw James Tilson surrounded by gentlemen of his London acquaintance: Mr. Seymour, the lawyer; Mr. John-Lewis Guillemard, who has no business but to look smart and flirt with ladies young enough to be his wards; and Mr. Hampson, the baronet, who from strict Republican principles refuses to be called by his hereditary title. It was he who condescended to bring me a glass of wine — and abandoned me hastily at the descent of a thin, effusive lady in long gloves and a terrifying pink silk turban.

  “Miss Jane Austen!” she cried, as though we two were met on a desert shore, the wreck of all hope tossing in the sea behind us. “How well you look, I declare! Town bronze, I believe they call it! You have certainly acquired that polish!”

  “Miss Maria Beckford,” I returned, and accepted her hand with real cordiality. “And Miss Middleton! Your father told me you were in London for your come-out!”

  “We have taken a house in Welbeck Street,” Miss Beckford replied, “and I serve as Susan’s chaperone to all the smart affairs! You must certainly pay us a call. I long to hear all the Chawton news!”

  Miss Beckford manages the household of her late sister’s husband, Mr. John Middleton, who is my brother Edward’s tenant at Chawton Great House— and thus my neighbour, when I am at home. She is a formidable woman, spare and abrupt and sensible, with a fund of learning and an enviable want of foolishness. I have long admired her ability to accommodate herself to circumstance. Lacking a husband, she entered instead her dead sister’s household — and reared Middleton’s children. She lacks for no comfort, is esteemed by all, and merits the respect due to an independent woman — without the necessity of submitting to a husband. I quite like Maria Beckford.

  Her eldest niece, however, is another matter: a stout, well-grown girl of sixteen, who curtseyed with civility enough; but I detected boredom in all her looks, and guessed that to be dragged in her aunt’s company to a Musical Evening — in a quarter of Town too far west to be considered fashionable, among a parcel of dowds — was to her an indignity tantamount to torture.

  “It seems but a few months ago that you were playing in the long grass at Chawton,” I told Susan, “and here you are, a Beauty in her First Season!”

  She smirked, and muttered a nothing, her fingers plaiting the pink ribbons cascading from her bodice; an awkward child, with dull brown hair and coarse features, who will be dreaming of balls and private masques, of the assemblies at Almack’s and the afternoon ride through the Park. But Susan, I fear, is destined for disappointment: Neither her fortune nor her beauty is great enough to figure in London. Almack’s, and the breathless notice of the ton, will be denied her — as it was denied me.

  “I must introduce you to my cousin, Mr. Henry Walter,” I said, taking her hand firmly. “He looks as though he were in need of a dance.”

  My unfortunate cousin was engrossed in a discussion of Theosophy with Mr. Guillemard and Mr. Wyndham Knatchbull, a clergyman — and barely disguised his outrage at being so imposed upon, as to be forced to trade insipid nothings with a child. The harpist striking up an air at that moment, however, my cousin was spared the duty; and Miss Beckford and I left Susan in his orbit. She might, perhaps, serve as Mr. Guillemard’s latest flirt. We retreated to the passage, so as to achieve the maximum degree of coolness with the minimum of crowding, and composed ourselves to listen.

  ELIZA COULD TAKE PLEASURE, ON THE MORROW, IN the fact that the last of her guests did not quit her house until midnight, and that the evening was deemed such a success — so much of a crush, in fact, an intolerable squeeze — that it merited a notice in the Morning Post. No less a personage than Lord Moira, the Regent’s crony, condescended to grace Sloane Street with his presence; and it was thanks to the Earl that all my suspicions regarding Princess Tscholikova’s end were animated long into the night.

  “I own to some delight at Lord Castlereagh’s discomfiture,” his lordship confided to a group of five gentlemen arranged respectfully around him in the interval between Miss Davis’s Airs in the Italian and the performance of Mozart upon the pianoforte. “There will be no talk of the Tories forming a government now.”

  “But it can never truly have been under consideration,” Mr. Hampson — the Republican baronet— protested. “The Regent is known to espouse the most radical principles! As his intimate these many years, my lord — and a partisan of the Whigs yourself — you can only have expected His Majesty to approach Lords Grey and Grenville for his Cabinet! This Tory posturing is all rumour, with the paltry object of disconcerting the Regent and elevating the star of Mr. George Canning — whose service in the furtherance of his own ambition is well known to men of sense!”

  “Hear, hear,” Mr. Guillemard intoned.

  “Damn me,” Captain Simpson exploded, “that’s treason!” He lurched a little, as tho’ he felt the roll of a deck beneath his feet. It must be said that the good captain — who had disconcerted me earlier in the evening with the news that my sailor brother, Frank, was superseded in his command — had been drinking deep of

  Henry’s claret. “Would you have us turn over the Kingdom, aye, and all the Continent, to Buonaparte and his crew? That’s what a Whig Cabinet will get ye!”

  “Naturally I would have us do so, if it meant peace,” Mr. Hampson rejoined equably. “The cost of this war — ceaseless and senseless as it has been — is bleeding the country and the poor to the point of annihilation! Peace, I say, at any cost — and if the Whigs will help us to it, I felicitate them with all my heart!”

  Lord Moira raised his glass in approval, but a heated argument immediately broke out, as to the merits of Tory governance, which should stand firm against France to the dying bre
ath, versus the Whig desire to conciliate the Monster and withdraw Lord Wellington from the Peninsula before the rout of French troops should entirely be achieved. There was mention of our ally, Russia, and the clauses of treaties published and secret; and while I lingered near Fanny Tilson, who talked of her children, my ear trained to the more interesting conversation of the gentlemen — the trend of remark circled back to the strange death of Princess Tscholikova.

  “The poor lady could not have done away with herself in a better fashion, nor at a better hour,” Lord Moira observed. “I am no ghoul, and must feel for the unfortunate creature in her misery — but if the woman must slit her throat, thank God she chose to do so at the present moment, and at Castlereagh’s door! It has been a close-run thing; we might almost have had Canning and Castlereagh returned to the Cabinet, and a host of Tories beside, and no end to the war in sight. The Regent, for all his Whig friends, has been considering of an approach to Canning and Castlereagh — His Highness regards them as likely to inspire publick confidence, and he is desperate to marshal the same in support of his Regency. Earls Grey and Grenville cannot offer him that.”

  “I cannot believe George Canning would ever consent to serve again with his greatest enemy,” my brother Henry observed quietly. “Recollect, my lord, the duel.”

  “George Canning would serve with Satan himself, if the Prince of Darkness offered him power,” Mr. Hampson returned scathingly.

  “But now that the breath of scandal has touched Castlereagh,” Lord Moira said, “all hope of a Tory Cabinet is fled. There are even those who speak of a Publick Enquiry in the House of Lords! I say it in confidence — but some would suggest — with the utmost delicacy, I assure you — that the Princess may not have died by her own hand. It is even suggested that the one who struck her down was Lord Castlereagh himself … ”

  “Good God!” Captain Simpson exclaimed. “That we should come to this! The governance of the land and the conduct of war determined by paramours!”

  “It has always been thus,” Lord Moira told him kindly, “but I will admit the present case to be positively Providential.”

  Providential, I thought, to the enemies of Lord Castlereagh — and scented in the phrase the iron smell of blood.

  Chapter 5

  The Warmest Man in England

  Wednesday, 24 April 1811

  … The Dashwoods were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland half its charms, were engaged in again with far greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their father.

  I confess that I sighed as I read through those first few lines of Chapter Nine — that peculiarly interesting chapter in which my Willoughby must first emerge, like a questing knight of old from his dripping wood, and Marianne his Holy Grail. I sighed …. because the words seemed to me to be stilted past all bearing as I sat in Henry’s book room this morning, lapped in the quiet of a house not yet recovered from the previous evening’s exertions; sighed at the perversity of the printed word, which must appear as distinctly less lovely in its shape and significance than that same word set in flowing script. There is a clumsiness to typeface, I find, that strips from my prose its elusive mystery; I am revealed as a cobbler of letters as rigid and austere as the lead from which they are stamped.

  — Or so I felt this morning. I may have experienced some lingering fatigue from Eliza’s party, so great was my concern last evening to delight all those with whom I met, and to ensure their comfort lacked nothing. Or perhaps my attention was drawn from the story on the page — so innocent and familiar — to the story taking shape in my thoughts: a collection of vague suspicions given an alarming trend by Lord Moira’s conversation. Whatever the cause, I could spare but half my mind to Willoughby, as he strode towards the hapless Marianne and her twisted ankle; the better part of my wit was sorting furiously through rumour, fact, and innuendo.

  … His manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Marianne, received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. —

  Which is to say: Had Willoughby been short, fat, and ill-favoured, Marianne would rather have limped home.

  I twitched the typeset proofs together with impatient fingers.

  “Mademoiselle,” Manon said from the doorway. “Do I intrude on your peace?”

  “Not at all. I was just considering of my toast.”

  “Monsieur is already in the breakfast parlour. Madame Henri takes her tea in bed today.”

  “Thank you, Manon.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, then shut the book room door very quietly behind her so that we should not be disturbed. “While the house was yet asleep, I walked in Cadogan Square for nearly half an hour. The maid Druschka was there.”

  “Indeed?”

  “She would not at first discuss the Princess or her death. But after a little — a period of quiet sympathy— she chose to confide.”

  I waited for what would come.

  “Druschka would have it that the Princess Tscholikova would never se suicider,” Manon said firmly. “She insists that her mistress was killed by another.”

  “Deliberate murder?”

  “The most deliberate, but yes. Druschka vows she will not rest until justice is done.”

  I thrust aside the small table on which I had been writing and rose from my chair. “This might be the loyalty of a devoted servant, Manon — one who cannot bear the Princess to be dragged through the mud.”

  “A servant so devoted, mademoiselle, that she was admitted to her mistress’s confidence.”

  “We cannot know that! The woman might claim anything in her grief!”

  “One truth Druschka holds as absolute, look you: that Princess Tscholikova knew milord Castlereagh not at all.”

  I stared. “But the Princess’s intimate correspondence with that gentleman was published in the Post!”

  Manon shrugged. “Simply because a thing is printed, it must be true? In France we know better than to believe this. The principals were never named, in any case. A matter of initials only.”

  I revolved the maid’s words in my mind. All lies. Not just the manner of her lady’s death, but the scandal that led up to it: a fabrication entire. Impossible to say whether the scandal was invented to pave the way for murder — or whether murder was the inadvertent result of a botched attempt at scandal. Certainly the notion of the lady’s suicide— and the plausibility of its occurring on Castlereagh’s doorstep — were accepted solely because of those damning letters. But if Evgenia Tscholikova had never known the minister …?

  Why was it necessary for a Russian princess to die in so sordid a way? And whose hand had held the knife that cut her throat?

  “What you say interests me greatly,” I told Manon.

  “Like a vignette from a novel, is it not?” she said.

  I WAS COLLECTED FROM THE BREAKFAST PARLOUR BY a sister so divinely habited as to appear every inch the Countess, from her spencer of willow green embroidered with cream knots, to her upturned poke bonnet. Gloves were on her hands, half-boots on her feet, and a reticule dangled from one arm. Eliza held a square package wrapped in brown paper; she did not quite meet Henry’s gaze as she said, “I cannot waste another moment, my love, before returning this wretched soup tureen to Mr. Wedgwood’s establishment; I declare I was miserable last evening, for being unable to place it in a position of honour on the supper table. It must and shall be repaired.”

  “Eh?” Henry replied, glancing up from his morning newspaper. “Ah, yes — the tureen. Very proper you should attend to it yourself, Eliza; I daresay Madame Bigeon has much to do this morning, in clearing the household of last evening’s effects. But is your cold improved enough to permit of going out? Are you wise to expose yourself to the ill-effects of this spring wind? I had
expected you to keep to your room this morning, and had quite resolved to dine at my club, rather than incommode the weary household.”

  “Dine at your club by all means,” Eliza said hurriedly. “Jane and I shall step round to Ludgate Hill, and feel no compunction as to the hour of our return. We may content ourselves with the remains of last evening’s supper, and perhaps some cold chicken.”

  “But does Mr. Wedgwood’s shop lie in Ludgate Hill?” Henry enquired, rather puzzled. “I had thought it to be in St. James’s.”

  “To be sure,” Eliza amended, her gaze fixed on the Turkey carpet. “I am forever confusing the two. Come along, Jane.”

  My brother opened his mouth in bewilderment, but I silenced him with a look. Eliza’s eyes were feverish and her nose quite red, but I knew her determination of old. Had the heavy box not already apprised me of the nature of our errand, her slip of the tongue confirmed it: We were bound for the elegant premises of Rundell & Bridge, jewellers to His Majesty the Regent and other sordid characters — to haggle over an opera singer’s baubles.

  LUDGATE HILL WAS USED TO BE THE SITE OF ONE of the City’s ancient gates, before these were demolished to ease the passage between the tradesmen’s square mile of London and the gentry’s fashionable quarter. Here the ways are narrower than in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park, and the hired hack that served as our conveyance was jostled by carters and draught horses. The City, as it is known, is not a part of Town the Comtesse de Feuillide is accustomed to frequent; but the pollution necessarily derived from such quarters is as nothing to the privilege of entering Mr. Rundell’s select establishment.

  “He is a spare little man,” Eliza said as we jostled over the cobbles in our coach, “much ridiculed as a miser, who rose from the merest silversmith’s apprentice to the foremost goldsmith of our day. Do not expect a gentleman’s manners, Jane — but pray treat him with absolute courtesy. He has the Regent’s ear. I have it on excellent authority that Rundell provides His Majesty with the diamond settings for the Royal portraits — which you must know Prinny bestows upon each of his mistresses, at the outset of an affaire.”