Jane and the Canterbury Tale (12 page)

21 O
CTOBER
1813,
CONT
.

“M
R
. W
ILDMAN BEGGED THAT
I
WOULD SAY ALL THAT IS
proper, Papa, in gratitude for the morning’s shooting,” Fanny offered with creditable calm, “and added that he hoped you would excuse the press of anxiety, which made it impossible for him to suspend his errand to Chilham any longer.”

“He is gone, then?”

“And George Finch-Hatton with him.”

“Good. I could do without Finch-Hatton’s lounging in such a crisis; if a corpse cannot hope to excite the fellow to honest activity, nothing may.”

“And yet,” sighed Harriot Moore, who was engaged in knotting a fringe as she sat with Fanny in the saloon, “young Mr. Finch-Hatton is so
excessively handsome
. And you must see, Edward, that all that lounging is essential to his
charm
.”

We had discovered the ladies in this elegant little sitting room at the rear of the house, overlooking the faded garden, where they were safe from the depredations of Fanny’s brothers and the younger children, of whom Harriot’s son now formed a part; he was relegated with Lizzy and Marianne to Miss Clewes’s preserve of schoolroom and nursery. Of the billiard-playing gentlemen there was no sign; perhaps that party had broken up when Mr. Wildman quitted the house.

Fanny flushed at Harriot’s words, but her look was all for Edward. “I believe you do Mr. Finch-Hatton an injustice, Father! I found his air of calm good sense quite
refreshing
a few hours since, when my brothers could offer only
ghoulish
remarks, and others I shall not name must be insufferably prosy!”

It is a thing with Fanny to call Edward
Papa
when she is on easy terms with him, and
Father
when outraged. I suspect she is not entirely immune to Jupiter, no matter how tiresome he may appear to a woman of eight-and-thirty like myself—he is so very tall, after all, and so very blond, and so very langourous in his gaze as his eyes survey one from bodice to hip. All the young ladies cannot help but be out of their senses about him.

And then there was Harriot, I reflected—not so very young, but just as susceptible.

“Nonsense,” Edward said briskly. “It is impossible to do Finch-Hatton an injustice—that would be according him far more worth than any man should allow. The fellow ought to buy a pair of colours in a fighting regiment, and
lounge
about the Continent under Wellington’s eye. To have a horse shot out from under him would be the making of him. Have all the young men left us, Fanny?”

“Mr. Plumptre did not think it proper to depart before speaking with Dr. Bredloe. You
had said
, if you will recall, that the coroner must wish to question all the shooting-party.”

“Now
there
,” Harriot interjected with the voice of approval, “is a young man I
thoroughly
esteem. Such cogent reflections! Such solid respectability! So much sense in every word and expression! I am certain Mr. Plumptre is a great comfort to his mother. I am certain a young woman could go a
long way
, Fanny, without meeting a more worthy man—or one so deserving of every tender consideration.”

“Worthy,” Fanny repeated in a hollow voice.

“Indeed,” Harriot concluded mistily, “he puts me in mind of my own dear Mr. Moore, in the first days of our courtship.”

It must be a fatal allusion; Fanny cast up her eyes towards Heaven.

“Trust Plumptre to follow my instructions to the letter.” Edward sighed. “Shall I find him in the library, engrossed in a book of sermons?”

“I believe he is debating theology there, with Mr. Moore,” Fanny supplied, with admirable command of countenance.

“Of course he is. I shall spare you the interview, my dear—but pray inform Cook we will have another to dinner. Bredloe has had the sense to decline the honour; he wished to make arrangements in Canterbury regarding the unfortunate Mr. Fiske. But we must feed Plumptre, I suppose.”

As it was probable no dinner would be served without the speedy removal of the corpse from the scullery, I silently blessed Dr. Bredloe, and carried Fanny upstairs to change her dress for the evening—her boudoir having the advantage of being as
far
from the intellects in the library, and the wits in the saloon, as Godmersham could offer.

“A
ND WHO, PRAY, HAS BEEN SO UNWISE TODAY AS TO BE
insufferably prosy
within range of your hearing?” I demanded.

“I am sure that John Plumptre is an excellent young man,” Fanny began as I stirred up the fire. She was curled on the sopha before the blaze, her slippers discarded and her feet tucked under her. It is so much the fashion for young ladies to go about half-naked, that she is in a perpetual state of gooseflesh; and as I glanced at her, she shivered. If the idea occurred that a corpse in the house was the source of her discomfort, rather than the chill weather, I did not voice it, but threw another log upon the fire and drew the curtains against the swift autumn dark.

“An excellent young man,” I echoed, “and not unattractive, with his expressive dark eyes and sober look. However—”

“However, when a gentleman of one’s acquaintance will read one a lecture on the
impropriety of the waltz
, despite having solicited one’s hand for the very same dance in the course of the evening—”

“Oh, dear. You refused him, I collect?”

“I was already engaged to waltz with Mr. Thane.” Fanny’s chin rose. “Had Mr. Plumptre been rather more
beforehand
with the world—”

“Or simply with you—”

“Exactly. But to suggest that I
disgraced
myself, Aunt—merely because I showed a relative stranger the same sort of disinterested favour I might have bestowed upon John Plumptre, had he solicited my hand
prior
to Mr. Thane, instead of standing about in that stupid way, conversing with his companions, as tho’ all one intended at a ball was to
talk
—”

“Mr. Thane, I suspect, is the real difficulty, and not merely for John Plumptre.”

Fanny threw me a look brimful of laughter. “It is excessively diverting, is it not, how Mr. Thane has ruffled all the male plumage? Even Jupiter, I swear, was thrown off his stride by the Corinthian’s air and address.”

“Jupiter does not
stride
,” I scolded. “He swings into orbit,
far above the scene, and suspends all animation until required to answer for himself.”

“ ‘Pon my soul,’ ”
Fanny growled in a creditable imitation of Mr. Finch-Hatton’s utterance.
“ ‘Ought to be horsewhipped. My opinion, course.’ ”

“Confess, Fanny—you should be bored to tears with an excess of Finch-Hatton’s society!”

“Naturally”—she sighed—“but I shall never say nay to standing up with him in a ballroom. There is every possibility he will be an earl one day, you know. Besides, he holds so much weight with the other gentlemen that any lady Jupiter deigns to solicit for a dance is in request the entire evening thereafter.”

“Whereas Mr. Plumptre—”

“—Achieves the reverse. He is excessively
worthy
, I am sure,” Fanny persisted in a voice of loathing, “and no doubt brilliant in his understanding—but so
tedious
in his opinions, Aunt! He is like an old woman, tho’ he cannot be more than one-and-twenty! To condescend to
scold
me on my conduct at the Chilham ball—and to say that the waltz is an
activity unbecoming in a lady
, one no
true Christian
should countenance, when I am perfectly aware he was longing to dance with me all the while—”

“And so, being denied that pleasure, he must regard you as a Work of Satan—set down to tempt him from the path of virtue. It is his youth, I think, that betrays him,” I said thoughtfully.

Tho’ I would not declare as much to Fanny in her present attitude, I do admire John Plumptre, as one whose mind and character are unimpeachably elevated—and I have guessed a little at the ardent nature of his feelings for my niece. Poor man! That a quiet, unassuming fellow with a strong intellect and noble feelings, who possesses neither moist palms, a gangling frame, nor an unfortunate wetness about the mouth, as
so many youths appear to do, should nonetheless be supplanted by his more dashing acquaintance—is the way of the world, I am afraid. Plumptre has every advantage behind him, and if his chief fault is to utter platitudes in moments of pique, a few Seasons should cure him of the evil. “Both Wildman and Finch-Hatton are several years Mr. Plumptre’s senior, are they not?”

“They must be full five-and-twenty, I believe, and the closer friends of the trio,” Fanny replied. “Plumptre is rather like our George, you know—always desperate to be included among the older boys, and affecting a greater maturity so as not to be caught out.”

Our George was but seventeen years of age; he is a stripling beside the Wildmans and Plumptres of the world. “George must have been awed, indeed, to be among this morning’s shooting-party—and shall probably suffer nightmares on the strength of it. I cannot think a corpse has come in his way before this.”

Careless words—and it did not require Fanny’s stricken look, or choked silence, to remind me that
all
my brother’s children had been forced to endure the sight of their mother, turned to lifeless clay at the tragic age of five-and-thirty, not many years since. Before I could beg forgiveness, however, Fanny rushed into speech.

“If the fact of Mr. Fiske’s death disturbed Mr. Plumptre, he hardly betrayed it. If I must charge him with a fault, Aunt, it is that he lacks all
sensibility
. When confronted with murder, does he blench, and fall back? No! He must draw himself up, and assume the airs of a magistrate—and pronounce the decided opinion that one
Julian Thane
shall be found guilty of violence.”

I stared at Fanny, aghast. “Plumptre never said such damning words in the presence of James Wildman! Mr. Thane is Wildman’s
cousin
, after all.”

“Ye-es,” Fanny agreed doubtfully, “but I do not believe James
likes
Thane very well, for all that. He said that Julian was a
smoky fellow
, for all he had excellent
ton
, and that he wouldn’t answer for his temper when the claret was in him.”

I sank down on the sopha beside her. “Do not regard it, Fanny. Those young gentlemen will say a good deal they ought not, when thrown together with little to do, and a fresh corpse laid out in the scullery. Only conceive how unsettling for all of them, believing that one of
their guns
had despatched Curzon Fiske.”

“Yes, but the knowledge—which I fear my brother Edward conveyed to them—that Mr. Fiske was in fact killed by a
single lead ball
, has relieved their minds so much, that they are ready to indict the first stranger who comes to hand.” There was a fretful edge to Fanny’s tone. I must credit her delicate sense of Justice—or Julian Thane’s dexterity in the waltz.

“It seems,” she continued with a diffidence not wholly natural, “that Mr. Thane has
been out
some once or twice.”

A lady who has
been out
is considered on the Marriage Mart, and a virginal member of Society intent upon changing her status as swiftly as may be. A gentleman who has
been out
, however, is quite otherwise: for he is one who has met a rival at twenty paces on a duelling ground, with seconds to the rear and a swift carriage standing ready to convey him to the Continent, should he prove so unlucky as to kill his opponent.

“How very dashing, to be sure,” I murmured. “And does Mr. Thane keep his duelling pistols by him, when he comes into Kent?”

“He certainly did not display them in the ballroom!” Fanny flashed with asperity.

  
CHAPTER TEN