“And how do you like my Eastwell, Miss Austen?” Sothey enquired in a lowered tone, when the attentions of the others had been diverted by the entrance of the little children, fresh from their dinners in the nursery, and bent upon an hour with Mamma and Papa before bedtime. “Does it suit your notions of Beauty? Or have I failed where I would most desire to succeed?” “I have never seen a place for which Nature has done more, or where natural beauty has been so little counteracted by an awkward taste,” I acknowledged. “You have seized the landscape's soul, the park as it might be in Paradise.”
“I merely let slip the spirit inherent in these woods and hills,” Sothey said. “One can do nothing, you know, without one pays homage to the genius of the place.”
“Alexander Pope,” I returned. “But I thought he meant only a sort of pagan homage — the construction of a grotto, for instance, in respect of the resident River God. I have been hoping for a glimpse of ours, at Godmersham, these six years at least — for you know we are situated on the Stour.”
Sothey smiled. “The more ardent contemporaries of Mr. Pope might interpret his injunctions too literally. But I assume him to have intended something perhaps more subtle — that the imposition of elements alien to a country can never be graced with success. The untamed crags of Derbyshire, Miss Austen, would look sadly out of place in the peaceful folds of the Kentish downs, however Romantic their wild beauty.”
He sat back against his chair and regarded me with a serious air; and in that moment — when his countenance was swept clean of wit and artifice, and overlaid with an unwonted gravity — I knew at once where I had seen Mr. Sothey before. The revelation must stop my breath, and spur my heart to a rapid pounding.
He was the young man who had drawn my attention at the Canterbury race-meeting — a gentleman of unflinching dignity, who had taken the lash of Mrs. Grey's whip full against his neck.
Chapter 14
A Tale of Assignation
23 August 1805, cont'd.
“ARE YOU QUITE WELL, MISS AUSTEN?”
“It is nothing, sir,” I told Mr. Sothey. “The heat — I felt a trifle overcome — perhaps some air—”
I stood up unsteadily and joined my brother and sister at the French windows. Mr. Sothey bowed, and turned his attention to the pianoforte, where Miss Louisa Finch-Hatton now warbled a beguiling Scotch air.
“Jane, my dear,” Lizzy murmured at my elbow, “if we do not escape this instant and dress for dinner, we shall be made to look the completest fools. It would be like Lady Elizabeth to ring the dinner bell early, on purpose to catch us out.”
“Never fear, Lizzy,” I whispered back with tolerable composure, “your little hint of Thursday — that the intimates of Eastwell dined before the fashionable of Godmersham — was hardly lost on Lady Elizabeth. She will keep us waiting until midnight for her elegant courses, and exult in our famished pangs. You may change your gown ten times over with complete equanimity. But I confess I should be happy to escape. Let us go at once!”
Her green eyes narrowed. “Has the Gentleman Improver routed you so entirely? He has a cunning air. Were I disposed to throw my daughter away, I could not do better than Lady Elizabeth. She shall see Miss Louisa eloped to Gretna with her protege before the summer is out, if she does not take care.”
I seized Lizzy's elbow and steered her to the door.
“Pray excuse us, my dear,” she called over her shoulder to Neddie, “Jane and I cannot hope to rival the Finch-Hattons in beauty, but must fly this moment if we are not entirely to disgrace you.”
Neddie bowed as we quitted the room, the very picture of a dutiful husband; but his eyes were a-brim with laughter and the frankest admiration as he gazed after his wife. It was clear from his looks that all Miss Louisa's petulant blonde charms could never sway his devotion to the dark and enchanting. Mr. Sothey's quotation rose unbidden into my mind. “There is something in a face / An air, and a peculiar grace… “Kent is indeed the only place for happiness, and everyone is rich there — but in far more than mere pounds and pence.
I CONVEYED MY APPREHENSION REGARDING MR. SOTHEY to Lizzy as we dressed hurriedly for dinner. Sayce was busy about my sister's hair for some time, and our conversation was necessarily curtailed while the lady's maid was present in the room; it would never do for even so superior a servant as Sayce to carry tales of murder to the servants' hall. But as soon as Lizzy was suitably adorned for an intimate dinner among friends — in a cream lawn gown, sprigged and trimmed in exactly the colour of her eyes; its negligent cut and dampened underskirt displayed her form to breathless effect — I concluded my tale of the silent figure poised at the mounts of Mrs. Grey's phaeton, and the cruel descent of the whip.
“Of course,” Lizzy murmured, “I recollect the whole. Mrs. Grey's dreadful end had the power to put flight to every other scene we witnessed that day; and I confess that Sothey's features were hardly clear to me at such a remove. They must have stood an hundred paces from our carriage; and my eyes were never strong. I retained only the memory of a rather spare, gentlemanlike figure, that offered not the slightest protest to her abuse. But tell me, Jane,” she went on, turning slightly away from the mirror to face me, “—you cannot believe Sothey capable of Mrs. Grey's murder? And on so slight a provocation as a public insult?”
“I do not know what to believe,” I said despairingly. “We can know so very little. Certainly there was a discord between them; and we know that Sothey determined to quit The Larches that very day. No one has thought to enquire where the gentleman should have been, while Denys Collingforth's chaise was upon the Wingham road. How simple for him to borrow it, and ride in pursuit of the woman who shamed him!”
“You believe Mr. Sothey to have been Mrs. Grey's lover, as well as Mr. Collingforth—and the French Comte?” Lizzy adjusted the petals of a flower that Sayce had secured in her hair, and surveyed herself acutely in the glass. “The lady certainly made effective use of her time.”
“We know that Mr. Sothey was resident at The Larches for nearly six months, and that, when Mr. Grey was much in Town,” I observed. “In such unusual circumstances, an illicit passion would not be unthinkable. Even Mrs. Grey, moreover, would not dare to strike a mere acquaintance in so public a manner. So they must have been intimate. There was a passion to the entire scene, quite subtle but undeniable, that might have borne the parties to any length of indiscretion.”
“Even murder? But pray consider, Jane — did not the passion we witnessed emanate from the lady herself, rather than the man you would suggest did away with her? And was it the fury of love denied, or of love unrequited? Was there not more of wounding, than rejection, in the blow?”