Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery (25 page)

“Lady Elizabeth!” my sister Lizzy cried from the doorway. “What is this I hear of your not intending dinner? Is it possible? And I have had white soup enough for an army simmering in the kitchens!”

“It may yet serve, dear madam, if Buonaparte has his way,” Mr. Finch-Hatton observed drily, and thrust his watch at last into his pocket. Perhaps he had placed an idle bet or two as to the time required for Lizzy's preparation. “You look well, Austen,” he said to my brother with a bow; “surprisingly well, under the circumstances.”

“You mean the evacuation orders?” Neddie enquired smoothly, as though Mrs. Grey had never lived, much less died. “I cannot take them in earnest, however diligently I set the servants to packing.”

“Then I pray the Monster may land on my doorstep rather than yours,” Finch-Hatton returned. “I hope I shall know how to receive the renegade! I have been drilling my tenants these two months at least; and there is powder and shot enough in the stores to hold off an entire brigade of cavalry!”

“I applaud your foresight, sir,” Neddie said, “but I cannot expect so litde of our gallant Navy. With an Austen and a Nelson scouring the Channel, the Monster shall not pass beyond a nautical mile from Boulogne.”

“But tell me, Lady Elizabeth,” my sister broke in, “must you
certainly
go on to Eastwell tonight? If it is the lateness of the hour that concerns you, I am sure there are bedchambers enough.”

“Lateness of the hour! It is not above six o'clock. I am sure that at Eastwell we dine fully as late as you do at Godmersham, Lady Elizabeth returned frostily. “We are never behindhand, you know, in matters of elegance.”
²
Lady Elizabeth is the daughter of an earl, a fact she would have no one forget—particularly the daughter of a baronet

“You! Behindhand! As though anyone could think it,” Lizzy returned, with that pale green gleam in her eye that suggested an inner amusement “I believe that everything at Eastwell is in the first rank of taste—would not you agree, Jane?”

“Entirely,” I murmured. Knowing my opinion of the place all too well, Lizzy was cruelly impertinent; but I endured the test to perfection, and betrayed nothing in my countenance.

“Pray tell me,” Neddie persisted, “what improvements do you presendy undertake about that remarkable place? Not that it could be said to
require
improvement, but I know your artistic spirit too well. It will never rest while the least suggestion of beauty remains at bay.”

Well put
, I silendy commended my brother. He had got the notion in one. At bay would beauty forever remain, however desperately the Finch-Hattons pursued it.

“The interior of the house is quite nearly complete,” Lady Elizabeth confided, unbending a litde, “but for the trifling matter of some painted Chinese papers that are intended for the drawing-room, and are shockingly delayed
en route.
And then there is the matter of the dining-parlour's draperies—I could never be sanguine regarding the shade of pomegranate silk; it seemed to me to border on the tawdry.”

“That is often the way with pomegranate,” Neddie remarked, with a compelling command of countenance. “One may meet it anywhere—and not always in the best company.”

“Exactly! I believe I shall change it out for green,” Lady Elizabeth said complacently. “But it must await Mr. Finch-Hatton's present passion, which quite consumes our energies.”

Lizzy's brow furrowed slighdy in an effort to discern
which
, of the numerous Finch-Hatton projects, Lady Elizabeth intended. “The construction of the foyer's free-floating dome?”

“The dome!” Finch-Hatton himself cried out, as if in pain. “No, no, my dear lady—the dome is quite complete, the most marvellous thing you shall ever observe! St. Peter's is nothing to it! Although it might be accused of wanting in frescoes—but I shall attend to that presently, when the necessary Florentines may be shipped with safe-passage.”

“Florentines,” Neddie murmured. “Of course.”

“What I would speak of, my dear Mrs. Austen,” said Lady Elizabeth with her first suggestion of animation, “is Mr. Finch-Hatton's design of the park. It is to be entirely new-laid—approach, prospect, shrubberies, and all!”

“The park?” I could not but be surprised. “But I thought it had been done in your father's time, by Mr. Capability Brown.”

“Not Brown himself,” Finch-Hatton supplied carelessly, “but one of his journeymen. And as for
Brown
, well—”

“Oh, do not vex me with the name of
BrownV
cried Lady Elizabeth. “When I consider how much of the Picturesque that man destroyed, with his sweeps of turf, and his litde clumps of trees, and his ha-has built up like a moat about the house, I could weep with vexation!”
³
Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1715-1783), the supreme interpreter of the natural style in landscape gardening, transformed the English countryside in the eighteenth century. He abolished rigidly geometrical park designs, such as the formal terracing and allees of the French style then predominating, and achieved a free-flowing, bucolic terrain dotted with copses tiiat has come to epitomize the late Georgian landscape.

A ha-ha was an elaborate livestock guard, separating the area of free-ranging parkland from die more formal garden space. It was formed of either a sunken ditch or a raised wall. Maria Bertram, in Austen's
Mansfield Park
, is trapped by a locked ha-ha gate at her betrothed's estate—a symbolic reference to die prison of social convention.—
Editor's note.

Lizzy and I exchanged a speaking look. Neither of us could ignore Lady Elizabeth's recourse to the Picturesque. It had become the chief phrase of Mr. Humphrey Repton's acolytes—those who would dot the landscape with scenes both romantic and wild. Eastwell Park, I surmised, would swiftly be turned into a wilderness, with haunted grottoes and abandoned cottages just ripe for a wandering hermit; a lake would be constructed, with an earth-work island, raised expressly for the purpose of displaying a Gothic ruin—all of it quite
modern
, of course. How it would all appear, with the Roman fantasy of a house as backdrop, I could hardly imagine.

“And so you aspire to the Picturesque,” Neddie offered, in a dangerous spirit of encouragement.

“How often have I observed to Mr. Austen,” my sister Lizzy said provokingly, “that the little copse on our hill is too insipid for words!—That the walled garden lacked all enchantment! That the path of the Stour might be swelled to something greater—an ornamental pond, perhaps, for the siting of a Chinese pagoda! I even appealed to his desire for coarse-fishing—but to no avail!”

“Perhaps not a
pagoda”
Mr. Finch-Hatton countered doubtfully, “but a smallish ruin, now—”

“And that avenue,” Lady Elizabeth added sadly. “Bent-ley, as I believe you call it—”

“Bentigh,” Neddie corrected gently. “It was planted in the first Mr. Knight's time.”

“So I assumed,” she rejoined placidly. “I am sure it is shockingly old-fashioned.”

“I believe the lime trees are over fifty years old,” Neddie agreed. His lips were a trifle too compressed, as though the humourous had given way to the insulting. “Nasty, unnatural sorts of things, limes—don't you agree, Jane?”

“My dear,” cried Lady Elizabeth, “I truly believe that the Austens might benefit from an introduction to Mr. Sothey! Is it not the very thing? Would it not be a service in the calling of Art?”

“Of course,” her husband replied. “You
must
have Sothey, Austen—he is quite the genius of our little place, as the saying goes, ha! ha! I should not order a spade to be shifted, without I consulted Sothey.”
⁴

“He is your chief gardener?” Neddie idly enquired.

” Gardener! Good
God, no!” Finch-Hatton cried.

His daughter, the inscrutable Louisa, echoed a shocked and irreverent, “Julian, a gardener? Lord!”

“Mr. Sothey is the second son of the Earl of Matlock,” Lady Elizabeth assured us. “His mother and I were quite the best of friends, before poor Honoria died. I have made it a little cause, you know, to look out for Julian— to further his interest, and so on, where a word or two might help. Particularly since the Earl went all to pieces in that shocking way, a few years ago …”

She left the matter hanging. I had never heard of the Earl of Madock, much less his shocking ruin; but Lizzy nodded shrewdly.

“It is a pity, is it not, that those who most lack success at the tables, are the very ones who game to their ruin?”

“And his heir is just like him!” Lady Elizabeth cried, as hot on the scent as a foxhound. “The Honourable Cecil Sothey has fled to Switzerland these two years or more, and how he lives no one can say!”

“But the younger son takes an interest in … landscape?” I ventured.

“Exacdy so! Julian was always of an artistic disposition— a painter in oils, and put to study with the finest masters of Europe, before Buonaparte quite destroyed the Grand Tour, and the Earl's circumstances brought an end to all education. But dear Julian's taste is entirely beyond dispute, is it not, my love?”

Mr. Finch-Hatton had withdrawn his pocket-watch once more, and was studying it intendy.

“Mamma
, “Miss Louisa cried in a warning tone, “if you do not leave off chattering, we shall be late for dinner at Eastwell. And then what will Julian say?”

“He is presendy a guest at Eastwell Park?” I enquired.

“At last!” Louisa exclaimed. “Julian has been all the summer promising to come, and never setting foot through the door! I declare I was quite distracted with disappointment. But there it is! One lady's misfortune is another's good luck. No one will want Julian at The Larches, I daresay, now that Mrs. Grey—”

“Louisa!” her mother interjected sternly. “It does not do to talk of such things. I am sure Mr. Austen is already sick to death of that odious woman. I quite pity you, Mr. Austen. To be let in for such a tiresome business, and in such heat!”

There was a fractional pause. Then my brother enquired negligently—as tho' merely from politeness— “Mr. Sothey was a guest at The Larches?”

“Julian served Mr. Grey as consultant for nearly half a year,” Lady Elizabeth confided proudly. “And you know how much the park is admired! There is nothing to equal The Larches in all of Kent—tho' it
is
the Garden of England.”

“So I have been assured. I regret that I have never had occasion to tour the full extent of Grey's grounds,” Neddie replied smoothly. “But as you are intimate with Mr. Sothey, perhaps you have been more fortunate.”

“We were often invited to pay a call,” Lady Elizabeth said vaguely, “but that woman, you know—I could never approve her. To pay a visit might lend a certain countenance to her behaviour. And Julian was so very much occupied—but now that Mrs. Grey is dead, it would not do for him to remain in the house. Julian determined to come to us directly, the very day of the Dreadful Event.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa urged again.

“To devote six months,” Neddie observed, “to a single estate! Mr. Sothey must have found a great deal to employ his time.”

“Mr. Grey, I believe, has a passion for improvement,” Mr. Finch-Hatton interjected approvingly.

“And as Grey was called so often to Town, Mr. Sothey must frequently have acted in his stead,” Neddie mused.

The implication—that the landscape designer had found more than mere parkland to occupy his attention— was entirely lost on Lady Elizabeth.

“Julian is a very responsible, steady sort of young man,” Lady Elizabeth cried, “and if he possessed the fortune he ought, I should never say nay to him! Our Louisa and Julian have known one another since childhood, you understand—I make nothing of any trifling attachment, of course—but, then, one does not often meet with a girl as good-looking; and now that Julian is grown into such a sprig of fashion, all the young ladies are quite
wild
about him.”

“Mamma,” Miss Louisa wailed in exasperation.

“My dear—the time!” Mr. Finch-Hatton exclaimed.

“And how long will Mr. Sothey be with you, ma'am?” I enquired hurriedly.

“We are so fortunate as to have his undivided attention for several weeks,” Lady Elizabeth replied. “We met with him quite by chance at that unfortunate race-meeting, you know, and he told us it would at last be in his power to pay us a visit. I was overjoyed! I declare I could not stop talking of it, until that lamentable woman put flight to every other consideration.” This was the nearest approach she would allow herself to strangulation. “But, however, it is immaterial now. We expect Julian for dinner this evening.”

“Then you had certainly better be on your way,” Lizzy supplied, with her usual good breeding, as though she had never been jilted of a dinner partner herself, nor vexed beyond imagining by the quantity of effort undergone only this morning in the Godmersham kitchens. “I suppose we cannot hope to see you for several weeks, if Mr. Sothey intends to engross all your time.”

“As to that—I cannot say, to be sure—but we are to have quite a little dinner gathering at Eastwell on the morrow—should be charmed, if you are not engaged? You might meet Mr. Sothey, go over his plans for the grounds, and judge of his talents yourselves!”

“You are all kindness, Lady Elizabeth,” said my brother swiftly. A quelling look to his wife, who might have refused the invitation, went unnoticed by the Finch-Hattons.

“You are too good, ma'am,” said Lizzy distantly.

Lady Elizabeth smiled at her with infinite condescension. “Tho' Julian
shall
be much taken up with our little place, Mrs. Austen, I am sure that Mr. Finch-Hatton would be delighted to spare him, should you require a consultation about your grounds. I am strongly of the opinion that you should have that Bendey down—and I do not think I flatter myself when I say, that my opinions on matters of Taste are everywhere celebrated.”

And so the Finch-Hattons were shown to their barouche-landau, without having taken so much as a glass of Madeira—in a fever, one supposes, to welcome the genius of Eastwell Park.

We watched them the length of the sweep, and when they had crossed the little stone bridge and were labouring up the hill to the Ashford road, Lizzy muttered, “Insufferable woman! I quite detest her. Must we indeed go to Eastwell on the morrow? Could not we decline a full hour after we are expected, and afford them all the misery they have served to us?”