From the difference in the lady’s name, I must assume she was actually the sister of Mr. Middleton’s deceased wife, and had established herself in the household to oversee the education of his five children. However long ago Mr. Middleton’s lady had departed this world, he had not learned to love her sister instead; but Miss Maria Beckford appeared entirely in command of the situation, in her richly-trimmed silk gown and her dignified posture. I should not have judged her to be much beyond the middle thirties, an age I am myself approaching; her hair, though pulled back severely from her forehead under a lace cap, was still a rich reddish-brown, and an expression of intelligence and good humour lit her dark eyes. This was no female dependant or shrinking drudge sacrificed to her family’s service, but a lady who could command all the glories of Mr. Middleton’s income and establishment — without the bother of being his wife. I thought her rather to be congratulated than pitied.
“You are Miss Austen?” she demanded.
“Miss Jane Austen. My elder sister is as yet on her road from Kent.”
Miss Beckford surveyed me from head to foot; lingered an instant in contemplation of my own unwavering gaze; and then nodded slightly as though in approval.
“And are you fond of books and reading?”
“I am, ma’am.”
“Do you sketch or paint in watercolours?”
“Unhappily I lack that talent.”
“A pity. The beauties of Hampshire afford innumerable subjects for contemplation. But perhaps you play or sing?”
“I am a devotee of the pianoforte — although my own instrument. is not yet arrived.”
“That is very well. You may delight us with a performance this evening. We are happy to welcome you to Chawton, Miss Austen. The accomplishments of ladies in these parts are most unfortunately limited. But for Miss Hinton and the Prowtings we should have no society worth the name. — But I see that the Hintons are arrived. If you will excuse me—”
She brushed past, intent upon the couple who now stood in the doorway; and as I had no desire to hasten my meeting with the avowed enemies of the Squire, I stepped forward to claim the notice of the rest of the party, to whom my brother Henry was already speaking. He intended, I knew, to make the most of his proximity to such exalted circles, and dine out on the strength of his intelligence regarding Julian Thrace for the next twelvemonth.
“Mr. Thrace and Miss Benn you know,” Mr. Middleton was saying, “but I do not think you are as yet acquainted with Lady Imogen Vansittart.”
The handsome young woman inclined her head with a regal air, but uttered not a syllable. She was tall, slender, darkeyed, and eloquent of feature; her gown was white muslin; she wore a circlet of emeralds in her dark hair. Tho’ I should judge her to be several years younger than Miss Catherine Prowting, who stood a little distance apart from the elegant Lady Imogen, she was so far beyond Catherine in countenance and assurance that she seemed the woman, and Catherine the girl.
“And Major Charles Spence,” my host continued, “who comes to us, in company with Mr. Thrace and Lady Imogen, from Stonings — the Earl of Holbrook’s seat near Sherborne St. John.”
If my own heart quickened at the name of that man and that estate, Henry was before me. My brother’s keen grey gaze was immediately fixed upon Major Spence.
“Sherborne St. John!” he cried, with unforced delight. “But then you must be acquainted with the Chute family, our friends these two decades at least. As a boy, my brother James and I hunted with the Vyne.”[14]
“—As it was my privilege to do only last winter,” Major Spence returned amiably. “Mr. Chute is a very respectable, gentleman-like man, and a most welcome neighbour.”
“I cannot perfectly recall Stonings, however.”
“My father caused it to be let to a family from the North for much of the past two decades,” Lady Imogen supplied. “But the Rices have lately given the house up — and I took a fancy to see it. It is possible the estate may fall to my lot in time — and I have never been the sort of woman to buy a mount without first having a look at its teeth.”
She threw a look of challenge at Julian Thrace. There were several meanings implicit in such a speech, and I thought I had missed none of them. Lady Imogen was the Earl of Holbrook’s daughter — the legitimate issue about to be supplanted in the bulk of her inheritance by a man sprung from exactly nowhere. Her looks said plainly that she was fiercely determined to rout her rival, and expose him to the world’s censure as an imposter; but she should never fail in politeness while she did so. I guessed her to have courage and wit enough to meet any trick the Bond Street Beau might serve her.
Henry smiled at the lady, his face alight with all the interest of the party before him. There was a fortune to be made among the betting books of the St. James clubs, and if truth was to be drawn from present company, my brother was poised to reap the whirlwind. The Viscount St. Eustace was as naught; the wise money should be entirely on the Earl of Holbrook. I wondered Henry did not post immediately to London.
“I should not wish you to put the horse through its paces at present,” Charles Spence observed. “Stonings has been sadly in want of refurbishment for many years. I am presently employed by the Earl of Holbrook as his steward, Mr. Austen — and am charged with the duty of bringing order where neglect has been the rule.”
“The place is in such a degree of decay,” Mr. Middleton added, “that I pressed Spence most earnestly to make a stay of some duration here at the Great House. It cannot be a pleasant thing, to sleep amidst dust and plaster, with the sound of Dyer’s joiners toiling away in the lower parts of the house; but our Stonings party comes to us for this evening only, and will depart on the morrow — depriving Chawton of its most lovely flower.”
He bowed in Lady Imogen’s direction.
Dyer’s joiners, I thought. Had any of the present labourers discovered Shafto French’s secret? And did the handsome party assembled before me share his guilty knowledge — or that of his sad end?
As Mr. Middleton quitted us to greet another of his guests, Major Spence said, “Am I to understand, Miss Austen, that you are but two days arrived in Chawton?”
“That is true, sir. We are hardly strangers to Hampshire, however, having lived in this county the better part of our lives. My father was once rector of Steventon, where presently my brother James is incumbent.”
“A clergyman’s daughter,” he observed with a smile, “and I am a clergyman’s son.”
“Are you, indeed? From what part of the country do you hail?”
“The North. I was raised in Yorkshire. Do you know that part of the world, ma’am?”
“I regret to say that I do not. But how are you come to be in this part of the world? It is a great change of scene, surely?”
“It does not follow that such a change must be unwelcome. Unlike your brother, I had no inclination for the Church, Miss Austen, and broke my father’s heart at the age of seventeen by running away to the Army. I am recently sold out from the Eighteenth Light Dragoons, having suffered a trifling wound at Vimeiro.”
A military man just back from Spain, and limping with it. I had not yet observed the game leg in action — but should have dearly liked to examine the Major’s footwear more closely. The notion of this particular gentleman riding some twelve miles at night in order to drown a man and hide his body in my cellar seemed, however, fantastic. “You were with Sir Arthur Wellesley, then, last September?”
“I was — altho’ the injury to my leg required me to be taken off the coast of Maceira immediately following our engagement with the French. I was not required to endure the privations later visited upon my fellows during Sir John Moore’s catastrophic retreat — to my enduring shame.”
14
The Vyne, or Vine — ancestral home of the Chute family at Sherborne St. John a few miles beyond Basingstoke just north of Chawton — was the site of one of the more famous hunting groups in southern England. William Chute (1757–1824), the patriarch in Jane Austen’s time, was both Master of the Vyne Hunt and a Member of Parliament for his borough.