Here was a source from whom I might profit. “You mentioned his fondness for mills, as I believe they are called — but with every Corinthian in the country an enthusiast, it is not to be wondered that Mr. Hinton is no less immune.”
“A prize-fight or two should be nothing,” she returned dismissively. “Even dear Mr. Middleton has been known to indulge the taste. But I cannot disguise, Miss Austen, that there have been other habits which every person of sense and feeling must deplore. I will not offend you with particulars; I will say only that two housemaids at least have quit Mr. Hinton’s employ, and complained of ill-usage — of improprieties— at his hands. Neither girl was friendless, and Mr. Hinton has inspired a degree of dislike in the surrounding countryside that is not to be wondered at.”
“I see. Miss Beckford — I wonder—”
She stared at me enquiringly.
“Was either housemaid any relation at all to Shafto French?”
Her expression altered. “I cannot undertake to say. I am not in possession of the girls’ names — my intelligence derives from local gossip only, not personal experience. Tho’ Mr. Middleton leased the Great House once before, my sister was alive then, and my place was elsewhere. He has only been returned to Chawton under the present lease for a twelvemonth.”
“I understand. My thought was a passing one only. I did not mean to suggest—”
“Naturally not.” She drew her light shawl about her shoulders as tho’ suddenly chilled. “I hope that you will join us for the picnic at Stonings on the morrow, Miss Austen. The Hintons are not to be of that party.”
“I look forward to the day with every possible hope of enjoyment,” I told her; and after a quiet interval of examining the flower beds, and discussing my intentions for the cottage garden, I bid Miss Beckford adieu.
• • •
The morning was a fine one, as all Hampshire mornings in July must be; and as I exited the gates and made my way along the Street past the Rectory, I observed Mr. Papillon hard at work among the herbaceous beds, with a straw hat on his head and his shirtsleeves encased in paper cuffs against the dirt. JohnRawston Papillon is a diminutive, apple-cheeked man with luxuriant silver hair and the correct, if fussy, conversation of a determined bachelor. His sister Elizabeth, whom I had glimpsed the previous evening, keeps his household, and both appear so comfortably situated in life — so decidedly happy with the lot they have chosen — as to never wish for amendment. Having attained the age of six-and-forty without encumbering himself with a wife, Mr. Papillon might have been supposed safe from the speculation and notice of the impertinent; but my mother is no respecter of single men’s peace. My brother Edward’s patroness, elderly Mrs. Knight of Kent, having once voiced the thought that Mr. Papillon should be the very husband for her own dear Jane, my mother has been insufferable in her impatience to meet with the gentleman. Despite the dazzling alternative offered by Julian Thrace last evening, Mamma had not been disappointed. She had no notion I was as little likely to win the heart of an aging clergyman as an Earl’s putative son nearly ten years my junior.
“So very amiable!” she had exclaimed in a barely contained whisper when first Mr. Papillon was introduced to our notice.
“So clearly the gentleman in looks and address! I declare I am quite overpowered, Jane! You could do far worse than to set your cap at him!”
The rector of St. Nicholas’s straightened as I neared his garden, his hands full of lilies, and smiled at me benignly. “Ah, Miss Austen, is it not? I must offer my sympathy this morning. Your cottage was violated, I understand, and a valuable article stolen.”
“Thank you, Mr. Papillon,” I replied with a curtsey. “I am sure my mother would join me in thanks, did she know of your concern.”
“—And stolen, it seems, by poor Bertie Philmore! It is a dreadful business, when one of our fellow creatures falls in the way of temptation. We must certainly pray for him.”
“Are you at all acquainted with the Philmores? I had understood them to be Alton people.”
“And so they are, in the main — but Old Philmore, Bertie’s uncle, is quite the Chawton institution. He is landlord to Miss Benn, you know, and a rare old character. I wonder that he did not appear in front of your home last evening, to intercede for his nephew. It is not like Old Philmore to preserve a respectful silence, when one of his own is in danger of hanging for murder!”
“Perhaps he is from home at present.”
“Then it will be the first time he has shaken off our dust in the eight years I have lived here,” Mr. Papillon observed. “I must send Elizabeth to Old Philmore’s cottage, and make certain he is not unwell. It would be a dreadful thing, if he were lying alone on his cot, suffering from some disorder, while Bertie is in want of a steady hand and counsel!”
“Are the two men very attached?”
“Old Philmore has served Bertie in place of a father these many years. Indeed, they are most devoted — in the rough, unschooled fashion of their kind. I could wish for the younger man a kinder example, perhaps — Old Philmore is very close with his money, quite the miser of Chawton, as Miss Benn has found! — but in truth, there is no real harm in either of them.”
“I see.” It was possible I saw a great deal more, in fact, than the rector. Old Philmore had been absent from the scene of Bertie’s arrest. What better confederate for the younger man than the trusted figure of the uncle? Complicity within the family would surely ensure Bertie’s silence in the hands of the Law; and if Mr. Papillon’s opinion of their bond was to be believed, Bertie was unlikely to incriminate Old Philmore.
“It is decidedly odd,” Mr. Papillon mused, “that we have heard nothing of Old Philmore this morning. I should have expected him to have paid me a visit, with the earnest desire that I should bring the air of Christian charity to his nephew’s gaol cell, as indeed I shall before the day is out.”
The old scoundrel, I thought with sudden heat, was probably miles from Chawton even now, and my chest with him. I left the rector pulling off his paper cuffs, and finished my walk in pensive silence. I could not reconcile myself to the loss of Lord Harold’s papers; it was too much like losing the man himself, all over again.
At my return to the cottage I was surprised to discover Catherine Prowting waiting upon the doorstep with a cheerful, plain-faced young woman of perhaps twenty by her side.
“Good morning, Miss Austen,” Catherine said. “My father has charged me with bringing Sally Mitchell to you, and offering you her services as maid of all work. She is a good girl, reared in the village; her mother is our cook.”
Sally Mitchell bobbed a curtsey. Tho’ young, her hands were roughened and red from hard labour, and her general appearance was of tidy cleanliness — positive signs in a domestic servant. Her dress had been neatly mended, and her half-boots were in good repair.
“I should have first consulted Mrs. Austen,” Catherine said apologetically, “but that I knew her to be steadily at work in the garden, and did not wish to intrude.”
I stood on tiptoe to overlook the hornbeam hedge, and observed my mother busily digging in the field beyond the privy. She wore an old green sack gown and a battered straw hat, and tho’ all of seventy, was turning the earth with a vigour that belied her years. She might have been taken, in fact, for one of her son’s tenants. Could the prospect of planting potatoes have excited such ardent activity? Of Cassandra there was no sign; she was probably lying down in the bedroom with the shades drawn, after the exhausting journey by post-chaise from Kent. I must therefore interview the girl alone.