“Indeed.”
A few more paces in silence, and I made another attempt. “However little you thought yourself acquainted with Captain Fielding, your well-being and happiness were clearly of some concern to the gentleman. He spoke well of you in my hearing on several occasions, and expressed some anxiety regarding your — situation — at the Grange.”
“I do not doubt he mentioned my situation, as you put it,” Seraphine said, her contempt flaring unchecked. “Captain Fielding was an officious and arrogant man, who little cared what damage his concern might do.”
“You regarded his interest as interference?” I rejoined quickly.
She turned and studied my countenance quizzically, while I endeavoured to assume as clear an aspect of innocence as my own sense of guilt should allow.
“Would not you have done the same, Miss Austen, when a gentleman's meddling occasioned the worst sort of calumny, and the grossest of lies, to be heaped upon a cousin you esteemed as dearly as a brother? But how come you to wonder so much about the affairs of people, of whom you know so little?”
This was abruptness indeed; and I felt the chastening power of her words as severely as a lash. Groping for some justification, however, I fell back upon events.
“It is just that the Captain's tragic end, Mademoiselle, has thrown his whole life into question — do not you agree?” I gestured towards the road, just visible at the foot of the downs behind our backs, and emptied now of any conveyance. “How strange to think that the gallant Captain shall drive the Charmouth road no more, when only a week ago I sat beside him in his barouche. The suddenness of events is inexplicable; and the mind struggles for comprehension/’
My excuses availed me nothing, however; Seraphine had stiffened beside me, and was grown as remote as marble — expressionless, opaque, and no doubt chill to the touch. My words might have been all unspoken.
I perceived no alternative but persistence, all the same. “The news was quite shocking, was it not?”
She stirred herself at last, but betrayed nothing of her emotion. “The news of the Captain's death? I suppose it was. Certainly? had not looked for it.”
“But you found it not incredible?”
“I found it to be justice, Miss Austen, however curiously achieved,” she cried, in some exasperation. “One cannot be otherwise than satisfied when justice is done.”
Whatever I had expected, it was hardly this — an avowal of nothing and everything at once.
“I do not pretend to understand you, Mademoiselle. Had the Captain committed some infamy of which I am unaware?”
She studied the sea as though my words had gone unspoken, for the space of several heartbeats. I counseled patience to myself, and stood as still as a stone, reflecting that many a wild thing will come to eat from the hand, if a suitable caution is preserved. At length, however, I observed to my horror that silent tears were coursing down her cheeks; and it was perhaps more terrible still that she did nothing to impede their flow, or disguise their traces, so lost in contemplation was she.
“Mademoiselle LeFevre,” I said, laying a hand along her red-cloaked arm, “whatever is the matter? What can he have done to you?”
She shook her head, and turned a watery smile upon my anxious face. “Never mind, Miss Austen. Whatever it was, it is past all remedy now, and all forgiveness. What le Chevalier did, was done in passion; and so his life has ended. There is nothing further worth asking/’
Le Chevalier. That name again; and spoken now with a depth of bitterness that could not but make it ironic. To probe the girl's natural reticence would be unseemly, and beyond even my application; my gentle education had not taught me how to so offend propriety, even did I claim the pursuit of innocence as my spur. There were others— Mrs. Barnewall rose immediately to mind — who might shed some light on the matter. I managed, then, only to press Seraphine's arm in sympathy, and stand in an awkward silence; and so, I fear, I left her. She would not accompany me back to the Grange, being unequal, perhaps, to her cousin's scrutiny; and it may be that she found some comfort in gazing out over the sea, towards France and the turbulent past. But her figure lingers long in memory as I consider her, red cloak flowing in the wind, as still as a tower at the cliff's edge.
I HAD BARELY ACHIEVED THE COURTYARD BEFORE THE FARMHOUSE, and steeled myself for the tedious return to Wings cottage, when I espied a strange coach pulled up before the Grange's door. A man, whose appearance bespoke him a gentleman, stood aloof and grim at the horses’ heads. Barely a moment upon the heels of this observation, the front door was thrown open, and a party of men exited, with Sidmouth in their midst. An expression of rage suffused the latter's countenance, and his bearing bespoke a wounded dignity; had not these apprised me that he went against his will, the manner in which the four burly fellows at his side secured his wrists and arms within their grasp, should assuredly have served as guide. In the grim huddle's wake came Mary, the housemaid, anxiously wringing her apron.
“Mr. Sidmouth!” I cried, aghast.
He found my eyes with an expression at once so ashamed and outraged it stopt all speech.
“Whatever has happened?” I enquired of the aloof fellow by the carriage. His eyes swept my figure with grudging interest, but he hesitated with his answer.
“I am Miss Jane Austen, a friend to Mr. Sidmouth's cousin, Mademoiselle LeFevre.”
The gentleman's eyes shifted from my face to something at my back, and I turned to find Seraphine there, her expression one of horror as she gazed upon Sidmouth.
“Geoffrey!” she cried. “Qu'est-ce que cest tout cela?”
At her appearance, the gentleman stepped forward and bowed. “Mademoiselle LeFevre, I presume.”
Seraphine directed at his person the wildest of glances, and sprang towards Sidmouth's side, until prevented from reaching him by his captors’ diligence.
“Some intelligence, for the love of God,” I said, in exasperation.
“Mr. Dobbin at your service, madam.”The gentleman removed his hat with a sweeping gesture. “I am appointed justice in Lyme, and am presently at High Down in that capacity.”
“What business can you possibly have with my cousin?” Seraphine interjected angrily.
“Mr. Sidmouth has been seized on suspicion of the murder of Captain Percival Fielding, and will be held in the Lyme gaol until the inquest Friday next.”
There was a gasp of horror from Mademoiselle LeFevre, and a swift glance of agonised sensibility for Sidmouth; it seemed almost to me as though she recognised, in one look, that he might have killed for her sake; and felt all the horror of her regret and culpability. That Mr. Dobbin might read an equally telling truth in her countenance, I greatly feared. Her cousin, however, maintained a superior gravity that betrayed nothing — neither sensibility of Seraphine's doubt, nor confirmation of his guilt.
“And on what basis do you thus seize him?” I enquired of Mr. Dobbin boldly. My familiarity with the unjust imperilment of friends — so lately undergone at Scargrave Manor — gave me the courage to probe the law.
The justice's face closed. “I suggest you attend the inquest, madam, for the better satisfaction of your curiosity. And now I must beg leave to depart. The law may not be tarried, nor impeded in its course.”
“Fiddlesticks,” I muttered under my breath, and looked to Seraphine. Her every attention was claimed by her cousin, however, as he was hustled into the carriage in the company of two fellows, while the remainder stepped up behind. One look only I had from the master of High Down, as his head was forced below the carriage's sill; an intensity of purpose was in it, that spoke volumes without a word. I was to care for Seraphine as best I might, in Sidmouth's absence; and I felt the charge as surely as though it were his last.