The housemaid, one Joan by name, bobbed me a curtsey, and informed me that Mr. George Hearst was within. I immediately regretted my impropriety — a woman alone, calling upon a single male acquaintance — but there could be no turning back, and I suffered myself to be led into the cottage's parlour. It bore all the signs of a bachelor's abode — books lining the walls and prints of grouse hanging above the mantel. A distinct smell, part pipe tobacco and part wet dog, hung in the air, despite the crackling fire. Mr. Hearst had been comfortably ensconced over a book, and rose with an air of consternation I fear my own features mirrored.
“Miss Austen!” he cried. “I did not think to see you until the coach should bear us all hence. Has some further calamity befallen the Manor, that you have hastened here in search of aid?”
“Pray calm yourself, Mr. Hearst,” I replied. “I have nothing of an alarming nature to report.”
“Then may I ask you to sit down, and take some tea?” He gestured vaguely about the room, as though to indicate any number of chairs.
I surveyed them hastily. Though of a decidedly comfortable appearance, the Hearsts’ furnishings were of a sort in which a lady should quickly lose herself. I shook my head in the negative. “I merely wished to have a word with Lieutenant Hearst.”
“My brother is not within. But perhaps I may be of service?”
“I fear not,” I said abruptly.
Mr. Hearst hesitated, and studied my countenance with anxious penetration. “I hope to God he has not so far forgot himself—” he began, and then broke off, biting his lip.
“Mr Hearst,” I said quickly, “do not give way unduly to fearful speculation. I know my coming here, in this manner; cannot but seem strange; but you must rest easy in the knowledge that no impropriety on the part of your brother has occasioned it.” On a sudden inspiration, I added, “I come on behalf of the Countess, with a message for the Lieutenant, that is all. You know that she is barred from coming herself. Perhaps I ought to speak to the Lieutenant's batman?”
“Certainly. Certainly. I should have thought of it myself.” The ecclesiastic's brow cleared. “I shall have him for you presently.” He threw down his volume and crossed to the parlour door, but I could not suffer him to leave unmolested.
“Mr Hearst,” I called after him, “I understand that congratulations are due. The Lieutenant tells me that you are to have a living after all. And so it but remains to take Holy Orders.”
He appeared first thunderstruck and then uneasy, his eyes dropping to the floor. “I would that it were so simple, Miss Austen,” he said. “But not all those who are called are worthy to serve.”
And so he left me. As the Lieutenant observed, Mr. Hearst parts only grudgingly with his grievances. Or perhaps my awareness of a matter he has chosen to keep dark, has stirred a guilty conscience. But why? I was not allowed to ponder the matter long, however for a jocular Cockney voice soon rang out from the doorway.
“So you're the cheeky bit as ‘as turned my master's ‘ead.”
I looked over my shoulder in astonishment, to find a dapper fellow in his shirtsleeves still applying a rag to one of Lieutenant Hearst's boots. “Never done talkin’ about you, he is. Miss Austen this, and Miss Austen that! If I didn't know the gent's way with the ladies, I'd swear he was a goner. What'll it be, love?”
I swallowed and maintained my composure with difficulty; never had I been addressed in such intimate terms by one of his station. “You are Lieutenant Hearst's batman, I take it?”
“Jack Lewis's the name, and war's the game,” he rejoined, scraping an affable low bow, “but I ‘aven't got all day, and that's a fact. The old sod'll be ‘ell-bent for leather, soon's he gets back from ridin’ that nag, and I'll be jumpin’ two steps ahead o’ his lash all the way to London town.”
“Lewis!” A curly head peered around the sitting-room door, eyebrows drawn down and scowling. “Don't stand here nattering with Joan, for God's sake — get my damn bags packed.”
“As you like, guv,” the batman tossed over his shoulder imperturbably. He turned back to me with a wink. “Doesn't like me movin’ in on ‘is territory.” For one fearful instant I thought the fellow might actually seize my hand for a kiss, but he satisfied himself with a grin and a broad nod, encompassing me in some scheme of which I knew nothing, but greatly misgave the outcome. “I leave you to it, sir.”
“Miss Austen!” Lieutenant Hearst exclaimed, upon entering the room, all consternation and discomfiture; “I had no idea you were within. Pray, let me call for some tea and make you comfortable! I fear Private Lewis has incommoded you dreadfully.” This last, with a scowl for his batman, and a gesture of the head towards the door. Jack Lewis heaved a sigh, ran his insolent eyes the length of my figure, and turned upon his heel; but his air of disgruntlement was entirely for his own amusement, I judged, since he was whistling as he moved down the corridor.
“What an extraordinary man,” I said, in a tone of wonderment, uncertain as yet if I had imagined him. “His impertinence is beyond belief, Lieutenant.”
“I fear you are right,” Tom Hearst replied, gesturing to the one straight-backed chair in the room, and standing until I had seated myself. “I should have dismissed the rascal long ago, but for the obligation I owe him.”
“And what can you possibly owe such a man?”
He hesitated, and then shrugged. “My life, Miss Austen.”
Whatever I had expected, it was hardly this; I felt myself overcome by a surprising humility, and looked to my clasped hands.
“But you did not come to Scargrave Cottage to discuss Private Lewis, however extraordinary you may find him.” Tom Hearst threw himself into an armchair by the fire. “To what do I owe this honour, Miss Austen, and in the midst of all our packing?”
“In truth, Lieutenant, it is because of your batman that I am come. I understand him to be in possession of the belongings of the late Marguerite Dumas, which you so thoughtfully sent him to retrieve of the washer-woman, Lizzy Scratch.” I spoke the words as though they were nothing out of the ordinary way, but narrowly observed his response.
“How came you to think of this?” he said, his handsome aspect puzzled.
“Isobel has charged me with returning the maid's things to her family in the Barbadoes,” I said. That this was, in fact, an untruth, I forced myself to put from my mind.
“But she has—” he began, and then stopped, as if considering. “It was my very same thought, and had the trip to London not put it out of my mind, the girl's few belongings should already be on their way.”
“I must say that I wondered at your thinking of it.”
The Lieutenant forced a smile. “I am accustomed, from years of army service, to disposing of the belongings of the men in my company when they happen to be killed,” he told me. “It is as second nature to me, to consider the family left behind, and their solicitude for the fate of their loved ones. Often the belongings are precious to them, however little value they might have for us.”
“But — forgive me, Lieutenant — the maid was not of your company, exactly. She was rather of Isobel's. How did you come to know where her things were to be found? For surely none of the household knew that she had sought shelter from Lizzy Scratch.”
He coloured at this, and was silent a moment. “I might ask the same of you, Miss Austen,” he said, “for assuredly you know more of my movements than I should have thought usual for a young lady of discretion. But it is of no matter — my greater knowledge of the maid is due only to a greater tendency to dissipation. “At this, he grinned ruefully. “When I can abide my brother's silences no longer I hie me to the Cock and Bull; and at the Cock and Bull, Marguerite's new lodgings were commonly known.”