Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas (11 page)

“It seems strange and wild,” I observed, “more violent in Nature than the pastoral beauties of England.”

“Untamed,” Cassandra amended. “It puts me in mind of Derbyshire, Jane—the monstrous formations of rock near Bakewell. Even the Pinny at Lyme—surely you recall?—has crevasses and rifts in the cliffs like these.”

“You give us log cabins, but no cities.” I glanced at West’s profile as he studied his own work. “Surely there are some, however recent in their construction? Washington City was said to be burnt down by our forces.”

“Washington was established, as its name suggests, quite recently,”
he replied, “and was thus built largely of wood. But the older cities—Philadelphia, Boston, New York—have many fine buildings of stone and brick. These sketches, however, were made in the Blue Mountains north of New York, along the Hudson River. Native tribes were once numerous there. I am not surprized, Miss Austen, that you see savagery and violence in their lines.”

West’s art was astonishing—his charcoal drawings surging and vivid with life, fantastical in their representations. Under his hand, a felled tree became a vanquished god, all twisting branches and gnarled trunk, as though the gargoyles of an ancient cathedral had bewitched the forest and taken it for their own. Grotesqueries animated his landscapes; Nature warred; no spot was left serene. The notebook was a glimpse into a turbulent soul entirely masked by the gentleman’s well-bred façade. He had claimed passion, rather than the cool Platonics of his father’s art; but I saw the Gothick and the Romantic struggling for a Classicist’s soul.

Was the violence in the landscape—or in the man?

I might have voiced the question aloud, but for the sudden recurrence of Christmas in our midst.

Eliza had appeared in the doorway with a large, shallow bowl in her hands. Blue flames danced along its surface, casting eerie shadows on her neck and face. “Quickly!” she cried. “Snuff the candles, before the effect is run out!”

We hastened to do as we were bid, each of us dousing the nearest light.

Eliza swayed across the room like a Vestal, the flickering bowl in her hands. She set it on a table William Chute had swiftly cleared of its oil lamp.

“Snapdragon!” she cried, and stepped back. “Children—the three of you must snatch your raisins first!”

THE THIRD DAY

I do not know exactly what woke me in the middle of the night—an unaccustomed noise, perhaps, for certainly the vast pile of The Vyne is rife with them. I sat up. A shaft of moonlight cut through the draperies nearest me, which were imperfectly drawn. The snow had ceased. I pulled on my dressing gown, for the fire had burnt low and the bedchamber was chilly. My window gave out on the lake and The Vyne’s north front, the rear of the house; an unbroken carpet of white glowed beneath me, fringed with black trunks. It was a bewitching sight.

The moon was low in the sky, opaque and agate, brushed with cloud. I judged that the hour was near dawn. Thoroughly awake, I glanced over my shoulder at the sleeping Cassandra. If I lit a candle to write in my journal, the light might disturb her. Better to use the early hour to deliver young Caroline’s third gift.

This was a neat carriage dress for day-wear, made of chestnut-coloured French twill, with a brown velveteen spencer and a dashing tartan silk turban for Jemima’s curls. A rabbit-fur muff and a gathered velveteen reticule completed the costume. I had even persuaded the
cobbler in Alton to fashion a pair of diminutive brown leather boots. The perfect attire for a Fashionable lady’s airing, in Hyde Park or around her country estate.

The prospect of a hunt being distant, until a general thaw should be achieved, James and Mary might wish to depart The Vyne so soon as this morning. Cassandra and I had therefore decided last night that a carriage dress would be perfect for Jemima’s needs. I gathered up the doll’s clothes and moved noiselessly to the door.

There I halted, every nerve in my being aquiver.

A low murmur of conversation—words indistinguishable, but tone unmistakable—filtered to my ears from the passage beyond.

A woman was speaking, her voice angry and defiant; a man answered, calm but vaguely threatening. Blast these heavy oaken doors! I could make no sense of the words. Never mind that I had no right to do so—that at such an hour, and in such a place, this must be a private conversation. I did not hesitate to overlisten it. The scene was one more clew, if any were needed after the ugly end to our charades, that all was not well at The Vyne.

I laid the doll’s clothes on the washstand and pressed my ear to the door.

“Be damned to you,” the woman said with the sudden clarity of a bell.

“Very well, madam. I will know how to act.”

There was an instant’s silence in the passage, as tho’ all breath were suspended. Then the man—for he was still there—heaved a queer sort of sigh, part agony, part relief. I heard his steps turn and pace swiftly past my door.

I gathered up Caroline’s gift and waited for the space of ten seconds. Then I turned the knob and peered down the hallway in the direction of the vanishing footsteps. I saw no one, but the distant
glow of a candle flickering along the walls told me that the unknown gentleman was moving away from me.

I glanced to the right—and saw Mary Gambier.

“Good morning,” I said. “I thought I heard voices.”

“So did I,” she said, and closed her door.

N
OT
J
AMES
’
S VOICE.
N
OR
William Chute’s. I did not think it was Edward Gambier—nor could I find a reason why he should threaten his sister from the hall passage in the early hours of morning. That left four other gentlemen: Thomas-Vere Chute, Benedict L’Anglois, Lieutenant John Gage—and Raphael West.

I remembered the tortured tree limbs and dwarfed figures in his sketches, the undercurrent of menace in the unknown man’s voice.

I would wait for Cassandra to wake, before delivering Caroline’s present.

“Y
OU MUST PROMISE TO
return to us once your duty to the Admiralty is done, Gage,” William Chute said.

The Lieutenant stood on the south side of the Staircase Hall before the front door, his blue cloak caught at his neck and his hat once more upon his head. One of Chute’s grooms had saddled the messenger’s horse, rested and mettlesome after a night in the stables. The lad waited on the porch outside, ready to throw Gage into his stirrups.

“That is, if you’re able to cut your way through these drifts!” Chute continued. “I wonder you bother to attempt it.”

“Folly,” Eliza chided. “Pray listen to sense, Lieutenant Gage, and remain with us another day or two. Your news will keep—and far better to arrive in London with it safely, than to falter in the attempt!”

The Naval messenger smiled awkwardly. “I fear I have already
delayed too long, and will merit any penalty for tardiness the Admiralty chuses to impose.” His eyes drifted to the staircase, where Mary Gambier stood with her hands clasped and her countenance as expressionless as marble. Her aunt had not appeared that morning; it was her habit to take her breakfast on a tray in bed. “Your liberality in welcoming a stranger, Mrs. Chute, shall not be soon forgotten.”

“But you must return to us! Surely they cannot detain you so long in London. We shall expect you in a few days’ time.”

“I cannot promise,” he said with difficulty, “tho’ my heart wishes it. You are all kindness. But my time—indeed my life—is not my own. I must go where duty and the Admiralty bid.”

He doffed his hat, bowed to us all, and turned towards his horse. Painful, to watch a publick leave-taking between two hearts that must yearn to bid each other
adieu
in private, and far more tenderly. I hoped the Lieutenant and Miss Gambier had snatched a moment to say their farewells.

The groom offered the stirrup; the Lieutenant mounted with grace, and took the reins. He raised his hand and with one earnest, parting look for the lady standing on the stairs, he laid his heels to the horse’s flanks and was away.

“Nice lad,” William Chute said, as his butler, Roark, swung closed the great front door. “We shall hope those fellows are satisfied with his intelligence, and give him leave, eh? There might be a hunt in the offing, by the time he is returned to us!”

W
E SETTLED ONCE MORE
at the breakfast-parlour—a room Eliza called the Strawberry Parlour, for Horace Walpole’s having slept in it some fifty years since—in groups of two and three. Lieutenant Gage’s departure had brought us all to our feet, and now we were treated to cooling tea and cold toast. The chafing dishes of eggs
and pheasant and ham, however, were still warm. The servants had resumed their labours on Eliza’s behalf, so no crisis was too great for her resolving.

“Take away all these cold plates,” she ordered, “and bring us fresh tea and coffee. The snow may be done, but I declare the temperature is frigid! The poor Lieutenant, to be abroad so early on such a brisk morning!”

“I am sure he is accustomed to it,” James’s Mary said indifferently. “For he must often have walked an icy deck at sea. But I am so delicate, you know, that the least chill might carry me off. James was for returning to Steventon this morning, but I protested most violently. I cannot risk my health in venturing forth in such weather, no matter how sound your carriage and coachman might be, Mrs. Chute.”

Particularly, I thought, when such interesting guests should be left behind at The Vyne.

“James, however,” his wife persisted, “should rather see me in my grave than endure another hour of frivolity!”

“How Gothick your mind does turn, Mary,” Eliza said equably, “when it has nothing better to do. Cassandra, I am thinking of getting up a Children’s Ball for Twelfth Night. I wonder if I might consult you about the various courses for the dinner—and whether Jane would be willing to create some Character Cards for the masquerade?”

“I shall help you!” Thomas-Vere cried with a note of ecstasy in his voice. He was arrayed this morning in a shocking waistcoat of puce silk, figured with gold butterflies, and his wig was powdered silver. “I adore masquerades!”

“Popishness,” James muttered into his newspaper.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Austen?” Eliza enquired, startled.

“Popishness.” He snapped his pages closed. “Paganism. Twelfth
Night revels devolve from the Roman Saturnalia, my dear Mrs. Chute, as I am sure you are aware.”

“Nonsense,” my mother said comfortably. “Do not be a spoilsport and a prig, James. Your father was very fond of presenting a sprig of mistletoe to every young lady of his acquaintance on Twelfth Night, as I recall.”

“Then I confess I must regard his Christian doctrine—not to mention his taste—as questionable,” James retorted. “The Roman Saturnalia is a feast of Inversion, when the natural order is turned topsy-turvy. Nobles go as servants, and servants as noblemen. All distinctions of birth are ignored. Anarchy is thus the order of the day, ma’am, and a defiance of God’s Plan. It is an excuse for every kind of debauch in the name of liberty. Nothing less than the late revolution in France, to be exact.”

“But what have guillotines to do with my masquerade?” Eliza demanded, bewildered.

James hunched a shoulder. “I daresay a Children’s Ball may be innocent enough. But the rituals of Twelfth Night were bred in evil, and no good can come of perpetuating them. They ought to be consigned to the ash-heap of history, as Rome has been.”

“I take it you abhor the Classical world, Mr. Austen?” Raphael West enquired. His eyes were half-shuttered by indolent lids, but I detected a satiric glint.

“I flatter myself I appreciate the beauties of Classical form and Classical thought,” my brother said grudgingly. “No man who has been privileged to study at Oxford can fail to acknowledge our debt to vanished times. But I must plead the propriety of present improvements upon ancient ways. We in England have amended what Rome gave us, for the better.”

“Exactly so,” Mary agreed, “which is why there cannot be the
slightest objection to Mrs. Chute’s masquerade. I am sure it will be the most English party imaginable. But Cassandra cannot possibly be of use to you, Eliza, in planning your dishes,” she continued, “for she is not a married woman, and has never studied domestic economy! I should be very happy to consult with you. It does not do to go to spinsters, you know, for the elegance of one’s entertainments.”

Unless, I thought, one was in the habit of lying on a sopha in a chilly winter room. Spinsters were infinitely useful for fetching firewood and ham, whilst one lay in contemplation of the Abyss.

“Mary,” James said warningly. “You cannot mean to attend this Saturnalia. For one in the throes of spiritual battle, the temptations of frivolity—of giving oneself over entirely to pleasure—”

“It is a Children’s Ball, James.” She leaned close to him and said in an audible whisper, “I am sure it is meant to honour our Caroline and James-Edward. Miss Wiggett is only an adopted child, after all.”

“Thank you,” Eliza said crisply. “We shall gather our plans in the morning room—shall we?”