Bow Street Runners.
My cheeks flaming with colour, I glanced around Miss Radcliffe. There were so few gentlemen dotted among the crowd of women that the Runner’s round black hat and scarred visage were instantly perceptible. Bill Skroggs.
He was turning over a set of fashion plates displayed on a gilt stand, as tho’ intent upon securing the latest kick of the mode — but as I stared at him, aghast, his gaze rose to meet mine. He must have read my consternation in my looks, for a slow smile o’erspread his countenance, and he raised his hat with savage amiability.
“I shall not press you to disclose why that scoundrel makes you the object of his chivalry,” Miss Radcliffe said evenly, “but should you ever require assistance, Miss Austen, you may be assured of mine. He has earned an implacable hatred.”
She nodded, and would have passed on without another word — but the suggestion of pride in her carriage, the fear of being rebuffed by an outraged and respectable woman, urged me to call after her, “Miss Radcliffe!”
She turned.
I was tempted to ask how Skroggs had made her his enemy — but found I could not presume so far on acquaintance.
“That is a very fetching hat,” I said lamely. “May I know where you obtained it?”
“At Mademoiselle Cocotte’s,” she replied, a dimple showing, “but you should be shockingly out of place there, I am afraid. You would do better to mention the style at Mirton’s. They will have what will suit you, there. Good day, Miss Austen.”
Bill Skroggs was not alone in following Miss Radcliffe’s passage from Grafton House — she could not fail to command the attention and envy of many wholly unknown to her — but I profited from the Runner’s momentary inattention to myself to put as much distance between us as possible.
Eliza had abandoned the gloves for a selection of swansdown trimmings.
“Only look, Jane! Three shillings per ell! I must and will have a quantity. It would do very well to trim a new pelisse — if I could have one made … ”
“The counters are too crowded, Eliza, and consider of Henry! We must abandon our errand and return at a better hour.”
“Perhaps you are right.” She sighed. “I am all too often prey to a kind of madness that overcomes me in this place — and find myself returned home with packets of goods for which I have not the least use! But oh, Jane! Feel the softness of this paisley shawl— and quite reasonably priced too! I saw just such another in Bond Street for nearly fifty guineas, and here they want only ten! Conceive of the saving!”
“Henry, Eliza,” I said firmly, and steered her through the throng to the door. I did not attempt to determine if Bill Skroggs was in pursuit; the mere fact of his presence in Grafton House informed me that he was spying upon us — and intended that we should know it. The Runner hoped to haunt our dreams, and so torment our waking hours that we must scatter like pheasants before a beater. I had too much pride to betray to the man that I was, indeed, frightened — that I met his appearance in this comfortable place with the deepest dismay. My energy was now bent upon shielding my brother from all knowledge of how we were pursued. Bill Skroggs should not cut up Henry’s peace — or Eliza’s — if I could help it.
Chapter 20
The Frustrate Heart
Saturday, 27 April 1811, cont.
“SHE IS COME,” MADAME BIGEON SAID CALMLY AS she closed the kitchen door and returned to her chair by the fire. “Manon has shown her to the saloon. We have now only to wait. The tea, it is hot enough, yes?”
“Quite hot,” I returned in a whisper, “but pray, Madame, hush!”
The housekeeper had established me at the oak work table with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits, the better to fend off anxiety while we endured the Comtesse d’Entraigues’s interview. We had barely returned from our expedition to Grafton House— Henry grumbling that it had proved to be a fool’s errand — before the hour of the Frenchwoman’s visit was upon us; and my brother was very glad to hie himself off to his club immediately, maintaining that he had some letters of business to write, that could only be undertaken in the sanctity of the Members’ Room.
The kitchen door was quietly opened, and Manon slipped within, bearing the Princess Tscholikova’s journal beneath her arm. “I am to bring them sherry,” she observed sotto voce, “and then busy myself about the hall, so as to be close at hand if la comtesse grows ugly in her manner.”
“How does she seem?” I whispered.
Manon shrugged. “Much as usual, that one. She does not betray her fears; she looks always as tho’ she has supped on whey. Madame Henri, however, is in high spirits — and will not sit, but has adopted a position in the drawing-room, with her back to the fire. She intends to employ a poker, voyez-vous, if her life is at issue.”
I took a long draught of tea, and wished that we had admitted Henry to our confidence. From the front of the house the faint shrill of a woman’s voice — Anne de St.- Huberti’s, by its tone — was audible; she did not sound to be as yet enraged. I prayed that Eliza should have the good sense to betray nothing of her suspicions, and conduct her conversation according to the plan we had determined: no accusations, but a cunning attempt to elicit what intelligence we could.
I feared, however, that the Comtesse d’Entraigues should prove cleverer by far than Eliza.
Madame Bigeon was already setting out the sherry glasses on a silver tray, and was reaching for the decanter. Manon turned over the leaves of Tscholikova’s private volume, her brow furrowed. “I find that the Princess was a great one for writing to herself — hours and hours she must have been engaged, comme d’habitude, over her pen, out? And much of it bien mélancolique. There is a something here,” she murmured, “that I particularly wish you to see. It is noted down for the Saturday before she did herself the violence — but the writing is most agitated.”
She turned the book so that I might peruse its pages. I am better able to read the French tongue than to speak it — and as the maid lifted up her tray and swept once more into the hall, I attempted to make out the furious hand. Manon was correct: the slim volume was so crossed with writing that it more nearly resembled a letter to an intimate; and I felt a swift stab of pity for the dead Princess. It was as tho’ all the outpourings I despatched to my dear sister Cassandra had found no object in the Princess’s life — Tscholikova enjoyed no friend of the bosom to whom she might turn — and so the frustrate heart cried aloud to the empty page. I turned back to the beginning, and skimmed the first entries — which had been laid down but six months before. There was little of acute interest to the present investigation — a monotony of visits paid, and rebuffs received; of trips to the milliner’s; of plays endured at various houses.
Not a word of assignations with Lord Castlereagh — and tho’ I looked for the name of d’Entraigues, I could detect it nowhere.
A month before Tscholikova’s death, however, was inscribed an entry that must give me pause — if only because of the extreme agitation betrayed by the shaking hand.
I saw him today in Hyde Park [she had written in French] and could not approach. The gentleness of his look! And yet the aura of a god that clings to his person! The extraordinary kindness from one who has every reason to despise me — I, who am not worthy to kiss his boot — and yet, when I recall the circumstances under which we met — the strange benediction it seemed, to move for even a little while in his orbit, to breathe the same air … I could not help myself: when he had nodded and passed on, I followed his showy hack and observed the ones he chose to notice, the fortunate few with whom he exchanged greetings! I went veiled, and kept myself at a distance; but he must have known me — must have felt the intensity of my gaze, and the ardour of my spirit. Can so much yearning, from a heart tormented, go unfelt, unrecognised? I will not believe it to be so.