“Well, Sidmouth,” Mrs. Barnewall cried with some asperity, as that gentieman stood protectively by his beautiful cousin, “and so you have brought the ravishing Mademoiselle into society again, and only a few weeks after her mysterious trouble! And how well she looks, too!
I wonder what le Chevalier must feel on the occasion?” And with that she cast a knowing glance towards Captain Fielding, and awaited the effect of her words. But whatever their import, Seraphine proved equal to the tall Irishwoman.
“I feel very well, madame, I assure you,” she replied, and with a slight nod in Mrs. Barnewall's direction, moved delicately to the French windows that let out onto the garden, as though absorbed in the decline of the season. I looked to Mr. Sidmouth, and found his gaze already upon me, with an expression so torn between tenderness and pain as to arouse the deepest suspicion of his thoughts. I wondered that Mrs. Barnewall did not observe it; but the lady had turned already to Lucy's mother, the redoubtable Mrs. Armstrong, and was engaged in offering false compliments on the woman's shocking red gown.
But my own curiosity could not be gainsaid, and speculation hounded me like a nipping dog the remainder of the evening. Though Mademoiselle LeFevre sustained an admirable composure, and Mr. Sidmouth retreated into a mute gravity, all enjoyment of the party for themselves was at an end. It could not be merely that Captain Fielding's disapprobation of their domestic circumstance had inspired such strong dislike, such discomposure of manner; and that some other episode lay among the three, I was firmly convinced.
But all my idle thoughts must be deferred for social necessity, though Mr. Sidmouth would place himself at my right hand once we had followed the Honourable Barnewalls to the dinner table, utterly confounding the slower Captain Fielding, whose game leg in this instance proved a decided encumbrance. Mademoiselle LeFevre, I observed, was safely seated between my father and Mr. Armstrong (whom I suspected to be quite deaf); and so the gallant Captain had no choice but to place himself between Miss Lucy Armstrong and my mother, at the far end of the table where Miss Crawford held sway. I found myself breathing a sigh of relief.
“And so, Mrs. Austen, I find that your dear child has been torn from the maternal bosom,” Miss Crawford declared, in a very loud voice indeed, so that her words travelled the length of the table. “I do hope that you shall be blest with another sight of her. How you can find any enjoyment in Lyme, with the constant concern for Miss Austen's health that must daily plague you, I cannot think.” The officious woman appeared insensible of the start her words gave my poor mother, and swept on in an ill-considered tide.
“How melancholy one's thoughts, in parting from a child in decline! What terrors, what palpitations! I am sure that if I had been blest with a daughter of my own— had Fortune proved kinder — I could never have suffered her to be taken from me in such a parlous state. I should sooner have thrown myself beneath the carriage wheels, than submitted to a like parting!”
My mother's looks were very nearly apoplectic, as though she waited now only for poor Cassandra to be brought into the room, a cold and lifeless form, in retribution for her parents’ heedlessness; and so I hastened to interject some reason to the scene.
“We were so fortunate as to have very good news of my sister only a few days ago, Miss Crawford, and from Mr. Crawford himself,” I said, leaning towards the nether end of the table. “I wonder he did not tell you of it? He met with my brother, Mr. Austen, and his party in the very midst of Weymouth, just after the embarkation of the Royal Family, which I understand my sister failed to witness, being preoccupied with the finery in a neighbouring shop window.”
“Aye, so he told me,” Miss Crawford said, nodding sagely. “It is ever such absence of mind, such regard for the smallest detail, that will herald a rapid decline. My own Mr. Filch was prone to spending hours in his hothouse, his poor gaze fixed upon the first tender sprouting of a prize tulip, in his final days. It is as though the soul would cling to the insignificant in life, at the very moment of parting with it. I would adjudge your sister's preoccupation with the shop window a very malignant sign, Miss Austen. Very malignant.”
Poor Lucy Armstrong was sunk in a misery of mortification, her cheeks flushed and her eyes upon her soup; her mother, happily, was engrossed in discussing horse-racing with Mrs. Barnewall, and those two ladies appeared to have heard nothing of what Miss Crawford had said. My mother, on the other hand, was completely devoid of animation; and I knew her to be suffering from terrors of the acutest kind.
“And what of my absorption in fossils, Augusta?” Mr. Crawford interjected impatiently. “Do you but wait for me to fall dead in the pit, the very victim of your worst predictions? It is utter nonsense!”
“So you may say, Cholmondeley, but time shall prove the right of it.”
“Undoubtedly,” Mr. Sidmouth drily replied, “for in the long run, we shall all of us be dead.”
“Hear, hear,” my father said quietly from his place by Seraphine, and devoted himself to the soup, which was admirably made.
“Miss Jane Austen,” Miss Crawford continued, in an imperious tone, “may I be so bold as to enquire whether you are a needle woman?”
The question was so very unexpected, coming as it did on the heels of an altogether different topic, that I may perhaps be forgiven for starting, and letting fall my soup spoon.
“There, I have put the girl out of countenance. I suppose she never learnt.” The old termagant could barely suppress a smile of triumph.
“Indeed, Miss Crawford,” my mother broke in, with a look of mortification down the length of the table, “I think I may assure you that Jane is as pretty a hand with the needle as may be. She has the fashioning of all her sister's clothes.”
“Then it should be as nothing to construct a few items for the St. Michael's Ladies Auxiliary,” Miss Crawford replied, without hesitation. “We are collecting a contribution from all of Lyme's ladies, and should count ourselves honoured to include yours, Miss Austen.”
“Now, Augusta—” Mr. Crawford interjected, with something less than his usual good humour.
“I am sure Miss Austen cannot mind it. It is a trifling enough affair, for a girl of her age, and as yet unburdened with the dudes of a married woman.”
It was the Honourable Mathew who served as my deliverer. Having heard nothing of what had passed, he emerged of a sudden from a brown study, and leaned across the napery to prod Mr. Sidmouth with a blunt forefinger.
“I say, Sidmouth, that was a demmed fine horse you rode the other day. Confounded the demmed dragoons in the handiest fashion. How much would you take for ‘im?”
A sudden silence gripped the table, marked only by the slightest cough from Captain Fielding. If a cough could be declared ironic, then his was the very soul of irony. I could not lift my eyes to observe his countenance, nor yet Mr. Sidmouth's; but the air between us seemed to crackle with contained emotion. Did I imagine it, or had the master of High Down been paralysed at a word?
Then Mr. Sidmouth raised his serviette delicately to his lips, and the tension seemed to ease. “I should not have believed you abroad at such an hour, Barnewall. I trust you were merely returning home from the previous evening's entertainments, rather than already about your business for the day.”
Mathew Barnewall threw back his head in raucous laughter, to the evident disgust of Miss Crawford. “Capital!” he cried, slapping his thigh with the greatest enjoyment. “You have the right of it, sir. But it makes no odds. What about the horse, man?”