“I cannot think the episode too soon forgotten!” I cried. “Better you had saved your cloak to hide your shame! The reprehensible nature of your conduct — the blatant admission of your interest in the smugglers’ affairs — and now, to parade your renegade self before all of Lyme, and with impunity — it is, in every respect, incredible!”

His countenance changed; and the dark eyes lost their intensity, and became remote. “I can find nothing for which to reproach myself,” he told me. “I acted as any honourable man should, when a friend's endangered; and I should act in a similar way again, should circumstances require it.”

“A friend! You call such a common criminal friend!”

“I do,” he replied, with a set to his jaw. “I call any man friend who should not hesitate to lay down his life, if need be, in order to preserve my own. Davy Forely has risked as much, on several occasions 1 can number; and my own poor efforts to secure his freedom a few days past, are as nothing in the tally of obligation I owe.”

“You amaze me, sir! Do the claims of a gentleman, of your very country — indeed, of everything affecting your respectability and position in life — have so little power to move you?”

Mr. Sidmouth bowed, and was silent; but that he struggled with conflicting emotions, I perceived in his countenance; and felt that my words, and the truth behind them, had succeeded in striking his hardened heart. Indeed, I believe he would have spoken, had Captain Fielding not approached at that very moment, and with the barest acknowledgement of Sidmouth's presence, requested my hand for the next dance — a cotillion.[57] I was enough possessed by my fever of indignation, to accept him with a very pretty grace; and when I turned to witness the triumph of my regard upon Mr. Sidmouth's features, I found him already across the room, and in the happy company of Miss Armstrong and Mrs. Barnewall.

I regret to say, that though Captain Fielding attempted to engage my attention the length of our half-hour, and exerted the full force of his intelligent person — though he paid me some fulsome compliments, and affected to place me above every other occupant of the room — that my thoughts were abstracted, more often than not, and my gaze would wander.

“You are not yourself, Miss Austen; you are decidedly not yourself,” the Captain observed, after several unsuccessful trials at conversation.

“Pray forgive me, sir,” I replied, with some remorse, and pulled my gaze back to his weathered face. “I am merely distracted by the remembrance of events I witnessed a few days ago.”

“Ah. I recollect. You were there, on The Walk, when Sidmouth showed his hand; I observed you standing in all the appalled recognition of the import of his behaviour.”

“I cannot deny that I was then as one amazed; but I am little reassured now by his appearance tonight! So easy as he seems, with all of Lyme in possession of his true identity, his unscrupulous way of life!”

“I agree that it is in every way incredible,” Captain Fielding said soberly. “But I expect little else of a man like Sidmouth. His propensities are so very vicious — his principles so very depraved — that even the open acknowledgement of the evil is as nothing to him.”

“Can he be so lost to everything?” I cried, unwilling to believe that any man might be.

“He can, and he is.” Captain Fielding's assurance would have been more acceptable to my ears had it rung less with quiet satisfaction. “But Lyme shall suffer his sort of insolence only a little while longer.”

I almost tripped in my movement through the figure, but recovered, and turned once more to face my partner. “You would apprehend him, then? Why did you not do so, that very morning of which we speak?”

“It would have won us only half our game,” the Captain replied, in a lowered tone. “To take the Reverend, as we might have a few days past with but a little application, should be to leave his confederates abroad and capable of continued Free Trade.”[58]

“But I thought the men were apprehended! There, on the shingle, and by the dragoons!”

“In the event, our effort was for naught,” the Captain admitted unwillingly. “When the barrels were examined, they were found to contain only common beer, and from the Golden Lion. No, Miss Austen — the Reverend won in the last instance. Mr. Cavendish, the Lyme Customs man, believes the true cargo to have been retrieved during the small hours of morning; and the effort you witnessed at dawn — and which the dragoons thoroughly routed — was but a sham, a diversion for the law. We could apprehend no one, for the unloading of a cargo of beer; and indeed,we were forced to make embarrassing amends, for the blows and injuries the labourers sustained.”

“I am all astonishment,’” I said faintly, though I felt a ridiculous desire to laugh; and I remembered Mr. Sidmouth's tousled appearance, and my conviction he had been out all that night previous. Truly the man was despicable. His bravado, his dash, knew no limits.

“But we shall have our man,” Captain Fielding continued. “We have gained intelligence of a landing some few nights hence, and Cavendish will be waiting. A very little rope remains to Mr. Sidmouth, and I may fairly say there is a noose at the end.”

I understood the Captain's feeling of triumph; but I could not glory in his sentiments. The dance very soon thereafter being come to a close, I parted from the Revenue spy with something like relief, though I chided myself for the contrariety of my feelings. The weight of principle, of all that is right, must be said to be firmly on Captain Fielding's side. And yet I cannot be easy at his eagerness to place another man upon the scaffold. However much Geoffrey Sidmouth has cheated the Crown of its due, through years of clandestine importation, I do not think he deserves to die for it. But what do I see as the alternative? Is lawlessness to be permitted, simply because it is effected with a certain style? Jane, Jane! Where are your finer sensibilities? All o'erthrown, by a man with a golden tongue and a mocking glance?

I was sufficiently out of sorts with myself to summon my mother at the close of the dance, and plead with her for an early return home; and though I took comfort in the notion that I denied Mr. Sidmouth of my company as much as his was denied to me, by my quitting the rooms, I cannot suppose him to have felt equally wounded in the loss. Maddening man! Why will you not be banished from my thoughts?

Chapter 9

Le Chevalier Unhorsed

Monday, 17 September 1804

MY HAND IS SHAKING AS I PEN THESE WORDS, AND I FEAR THEY MUST appear remarkably ill upon the page; I cannot credit the anxiety of my own mind, nor the truth of the news it has received — but steady, Jane! and consider your better self. Endeavour to be calm; to reason through events; to find amidst the discomposure of your senses, some resignation to all that has occurred—

I MUST RETURN IN THOUGHT, THEREFORE, TO MR. CRAWFORD'S Darby, and the excellent dinner that gentleman composed in honour of his niece, Lucy Armstrong — for I shall better comprehend the result of violence, only once I have considered its precipitation. Banish, then, the quiet of Sunday, and the gentle service at St. Michael's, in Church Street; forget yesterday's bright weather, and my walk into Up Lyme, blest with sunshine and the first turning of the leaves; banish, too, the strange happiness occasioned by Mr. Sidmouth's attentions during Saturday's dinner party at Darby, of which more anon — such quiet concerns are all o'erlaid by this morning's news, of so terrible an import!