“None that Edward or I have heard. The renegade appears to have vanished into thin air.”
“Then he will soon be desperate. With all the country alive against him, how can he hope to obtain so much as a cup of water?”
“—Unless he has found friends who will help him.”
“How can such a man — a stranger to Hampshire — recruit friends?”
“He might buy them, I suppose, among those who have no concern for murder.”
She set down her pen. “And what of Henry?”
“He must have reached Brighton some hours ago — but has not seen fit to despatch the news to his sisters Express. I suppose all such activity must be reserved for the Earl, and all such letters for Charles Spence.”
Charles Spence.
I had written to him myself only this morning; he might even now be reading my letter — the post between Chawton and Sherborne St. John being no very great distance.[26] What should be his feelings upon perusing my words?
... pray accept my very deepest condolences on the sad loss you have recently suffered. Lady Imogen was all that was lovely and amiable, and to witness her sudden taking off — at such an interesting period of life, when youth, high spirits, beauty, and the privilege of birth must conspire to make her existence a blessed one — is a dreadful reminder of the end we must all someday face, and our daily proximity to our Maker. It is regrettable at such a moment to allow the personal to intrude. Circumstances, however, require that I be perfectly frank. I have reason to think that her ladyship’s natural exuberance — her desire to best Mr. Thrace at every turn — and her very commendable wish to prevent her respected father from committing an error his friends must all deplore — may have led her to engage in an activity injurious to her reputation, and beneath her better sense. In point of fact, I believe the chest taken from my home — a bequest of my friend Lord Harold Trowbridge — might even now be found among Lady Imogen’s effects.
If what I have related causes you pain, I am heartily sorry for it. I am aware, however, that Stonings may soon be shut up and yourself gone from the premises, as must only be natural; and I should wish the chest returned before all your party has quitted Hampshire. Do I ask too much, Major Spence, or may I be allowed to wait upon you at Stonings as soon as may be convenient?
I had taken a good deal of trouble over the letter, as being a most awkward composition to a man in Spence’s state of mourning. Indeed, I had winced at the brutal force of it — the necessity of putting so delicate a matter into the bluntest prose. But I had done my work, and seen it into the hands of the post some hours before; and could not call it back again. The knowledge that Spence himself was encompassed in Lady Imogen’s crimes, however, made the communication a bitter one. It was possible he should read in my letter a veiled threat to his own security. If I professed to know that Lady Imogen had taken the Bengal chest, how could I be ignorant of the methods by which it was obtained? Did Charles Spence think to find me at Stonings’ door with Mr. Prowting the magistrate at my back?
I feared that I had blundered in writing as I did. Spence was no fool; and despite the misery of his present circumstances, must be alive to the implication of my charge. He was as likely to sink Lord Harold’s chest in the bottom of the Stonings’ lake, as return its contents to me; and I had only my own impatience to thank.
I placed my letter to Martha near Cassandra’s own, for posting on the morrow; made trial of a novel in three volumes that my sister had brought especially from Canterbury; picked up and set down a bit of mending the light no longer permitted me to see; and at the last, went up rather earlier than was my habit, to bed.
It was the dog, Link, that woke me: starting up from a sound sleep and barking furiously into the night. His small, sinewy body trembled with indignation; his attention was fixed on a disturbance below; his outrage filled our ears.
“Link!” Cassandra hissed. “Lie down, boy! There’s a good fellow! Link! ”
I threw back the bed linen and reached for my dressing gown. The terrier dashed to the window, his forepaws on the sill.
“What is it, lad?” I whispered. “What do you see? Another burglar, perhaps, come to steal into the household?”
A low growl escaped his quivering throat; I hushed him with a hand to his head.
The full moon of the previous week — which had allowed Julian Thrace to ride out at midnight, Shafto French to be murdered, and Jack Hinton to make his way from Surrey despite the befuddlement of his senses — was nearly gone. The night was dull as a blown candle, and heavy shadow lay about the fields surrounding the house. Chawton Pond was barely a gleam on the edge of my vision; no figures swayed in desperate combat beside it tonight. I strained to pierce the darkness of our yard, and could make out nothing; no furtive movement of man or beast could be detected near the henhouse or the privy. It might be any hour between the tolling of St. Nicholas’s curfew bell and dawn; I could not undertake to say.
“What is it, Jane?” Cassandra demanded in a hushed voice; there was anxiety in her accent.
I lifted my hand for silence, and Link growled again.
Perhaps he had seen what I had: a faint wisp of light bobbing down the sweep from Prowtings. It was, I guessed, the pale glow of a candle encased in a lanthorn — the kind that might be shielded from prying eyes by the fall of a cloak or wrap. Someone was setting out through the darkness on an errand that did not admit of scrutiny; and as the fugitive achieved the Gosport road, I thought I understood why. In the form and height of the figure — the hesitant, half-furtive movement — I recognised a woman.
Catherine Prowting.
I have found it difficult to sleep of nights for some weeks past. Where was she going, alone and at such an hour?
Her errand was not an open one. She did not intend her family to know of it.
With all the country alive against him, how can he hope to obtain so much as a cup of water?
I had been wrong. One friend at least in the neighbourhood Julian Thrace had no need to buy. I might follow Catherine, I thought, as Link strained against me.
I might rouse the neighbourhood and her father, bring a man to justice, and ruin forever the reputation of a young woman rather like myself — restless for life, bounded by country lane and glebe, her prospects lowering with each passing year. A starling beating against the bars of its cage. Lady Imogen. Shafto French.
Justice.
“Jane?” Cassandra repeated. “Is anything amiss?”
I shut the window.
“Nothing at all, Cass. Your dog must have scented a hare on the wind.”
I lay sleepless long into the night, listening for Catherine Prowting’s return.
Chapter 23
An Unexpected Visitor
Monday, 10 July 1809
“Major Spence?” I called, peering hesitantly from behind a marble column; and then I observed him, motionless and upright at the far end of the room.
It was Rangle who conducted me to the library, a handsome apartment in the very heart of the great pile that was Stonings. I had not glimpsed it during my previous visit, and once led through a series of passages by the chapfallen butler, could hardly have found my way out again. But the space in which I now stood was in better repair than any other part of the ramshackle estate; indeed, it was a delightful room, and perfectly suited to study. The chamber’s ceiling was painted indigo blue, and an array of stars and planets swam across its firmament; the walls were full two storeys in height, lined with bookshelves and myriad volumes; at the far end was a bank of tall windows, undraped at present, through which flowed the dull green light of a rainy summer’s morning.
Charles Spence was posed with his back to me, his gaze fixed on the landscape. The prospect here gave out onto high woody hills, rather than the lake that sat to the south; he could not have noticed the arrival of the gig, but I was certainly expected. Rangle had instructions to convey me to the steward the moment I arrived.
26
The rapidity and frequency of mail delivery during Austen’s era, despite the relatively bad quality of the roads, is astonishing compared to the infrequent but predictable service of the present day. Sunday mail service, such as Austen describes here, was expected.