Chapter 4

Le Chevalier

7 September 1804

THE LYME ASSEMBLY ROOMS SIT ON BROAD STREET, AT BELL CUFF and Cobb Gate, and their windows so o'erlook the sea, that when one is twirling in the midst of the floor (and well supplied with negus[21]), one might almost believe oneself aboard ship, and borne on the crest of a wave. Or so Captain Fielding observed; and as he is a Naval man, albeit lame in one leg and now retired, I must take his observations as more generally apt than most

But I run ahead to the middle of the play, and neglect to draw open the curtain and set the scene; and so I give you the Reverend George Austen, attired in a shabby if respectable black tailcoat of uncertain vintage, his younger daughter by his side in her borrowed pink feathers, entering upon the Assembly at the stroke of eight o'clock. Henry and Eliza intended joining us later, believing the hour far too early for fashion; but I rejoiced to find the majority of Lyme society less nice in their distinctions, and the rooms already quite full, and of a happy mixture of ladies and gentlemen — the former being generally of that middle age that assures them either married or safely beyond susceptibility, and the latter retired Naval officers. Lyme has proved so attractive to the seafaring set, in fact, that a coterie of Naval families has settled in the cottages lining the streets of town; and their society seems at once so self-sufficient, and so cheerfully good, that one quite longs to marry a daring commander of the Red or White[22], if only with a view to settling in Lyme some twenty years hence.

But perhaps Captain Fielding has influenced my views.

“What a fearful crowd, my dear Jane,” my father remarked, in his vaguest tone, as though only just emerging from the leaves of his book. “Had not we better return to Wings cottage, and the society of your mother? For the crush is heavy, and we know no one/’ And he would have turned for the door, had I not seized his arm, and urged him firmly into the room.

“There are not above four-and-twenty couples, Father, and you know that in Bath we are commonly burdened with thrice that number. We cannot know anyone, unless we meet someone; and for that, you know, there is nothing like an Assembly.”

“I wish your mother might have come, Jane. I wish I had insisted.”

My mother remained at home, administering spoonfuls of medicine from Mr. Dagliesh's green bottle to a suffering, though improving, Cassandra.

“I think, sir, that you will like the card room. I am sure that whist is to be played there. Shall I conduct you thither, and claim a chair?”

“But what of yourself? You will be all unchaperoned!”

I stifled my impatience — and stilled my foot, which would tap in time to the music, the orchestra having just struck up the first dance; and considered the Reverend's delicacy. Despite having almost nine-and-twenty years, I remain for my father a chit of a girl, and shall claim such attentions as long as he is able to give them. But on a sudden thought, I searched the gay throng for the one woman whose acquaintance I might claim in Lyme, the better to still my father's fears. I had only to look for the peevish young ladies met with that very morning at the linendraper's — and there I very soon found her, standing a head above her companions and arrayed in a cloth-of-gold costume cut along Egyptian lines, with a circlet of rubies in her black hair. She had a gentleman on either arm—one of whom must surely be her husband.

“There, Father!” I cried, turning him in the proper direction. “I see my acquaintance, Mrs. Barnewall. She is the wife of the Honourable Mathew Barnewall, of Ireland, whom I understand is to have the viscountcy of Kings-land.”[23]

“Barnewall, do you say?” my father replied doubtfully. “She looks rather like an actress.”

“My dear Miss Austen,” Mrs. Barnewall cried, swooping down upon me from her considerable height, and bearing with her several of her party, “how lovely you look. As fresh as a rose from an English hedgerow. Does not she look lovely, Captain Fielding? I am sure you admire her. So much loveliness cannot be resisted, even by le Chevalier.”

The man to whom she spoke was neither in that first youth, as to be called callow, nor so advanced in years, as to appear beyond the temptation of so daring a woman as Mrs. Barnewall; but he had the grace to look discomfited by the lady's effusions, which could not help but recommend his character to me. He bowed low, and offered a smile, and asked if he might beg an introduction. At which point, I found myself indebted to the bold Mrs. Barnewall for the chief of my pleasure that evening.

She looked first to the ladies in her train. “The Miss Schuylers, of Shropshire, I believe you have seen already, Miss Austen,” she said, “but may I have the honour of presenting Miss Letitia, Miss Susan, and Miss Constance Schuyler to your acquaintance.”

The first and second were familiar; the third, their youngest sister — left behind, it would seem, on the morning's visit to Mr. Milsop.

I nodded; the other three bowed; and there our mutual interest ended.

“They are also privileged, in being able to call Percy— Captain Fielding — our cavalier.”

At my expression of enquiry, Captain Fielding looked diffident, and would have turned away, the better to avoid explanation, but Mrs. Barnewall intervened.

“There!” she cried. “Was ever a man so perverse in accepting praise! I assure you, Miss Austen, that Captain Fielding comes by the name through nothing dishonourable, as his countenance would suggest. But I shall leave you to tease him about the story, and so give you grounds for conversation; for one must talk in the dance, and I am sure he means to ask you.”

Captain Percival Fielding is of good height and very well-made, with fair hair, a quick blue eye, a sudden smile, and the ruddy countenance of a man accustomed to being and doing in all weathers. That he is possessed of a wooden leg joined just below the knee detracts not at all from his charm; if anything, it adds a certain dash to his otherwise commonplace appearance. His impediment certainly impedes him very little, as I was to learn in the course of the evening; for tho’ he forewent this first dance in order to make my acquaintance, to enquire as to my engagement for the next, required but a moment; and for my acceptance of his offer, only another.

“And I believe this is your father, Miss Austen? For we have not been introduced,” Mrs. Barnewall said.

I hastened to amend my stupidity, and made each known to the other; and was made acquainted myself with the gentleman on Mrs. Barnewall's other arm, who was no more the Honourable Mathew than the Captain. A Mr. Crawford, an elegantly dressed gentleman of undistinguished countenance, balding head, and perhaps five-and-forty years — a widower possessed, so Mrs. Barnewall tells me, of a prettyish sort of place called Darby, out east along the Charmouth way.

“We were just speaking,” Mrs. Barnewall said, “of that dreadful business on the Cobb.”

My father looked vague.

“The hanged man, Father,” I supplied.

“Ah, yes — dreadful business, dreadful.” He looked a trifle dismayed — at a lady's advancing the topic, I imagined, rather than the topic itself.

“They say he must be one of the Reverend's men, and killed by a rival,” the ginger-haired Letty Schuyler remarked.

“And / heard that it was the Reverend did the deed,” her sister Susan rejoined scornfully, “because the man betrayed his trust.”