“I should be very much surprised if that does not appear in the next letter.”
“The one I am intended to receive?”
“So we are told.”
“Not a very intelligent course, surely? For / cannot be expected to pay her.”
“She is a very foolish girl,” I finished lamely.
“Aha. So you say,” the magistrate muttered dubiously, and folded the paper away in his waistcoat. “You were present at the Earl's death, I believe?”
“Not at the moment of his passing, but I observed some part of his illness.”
“And what did you conclude?”
I hesitated, and the pause revealed me as less certain of matters than I would wish.
“Come, come, Jane!” Sir William chided. “You are not a blushing girl, given to airs and sighs; you have your wits about you, as I've always approved, and are readier than any I know to form a judgment when the facts stare you in the face. Was it a death you could ascribe to natural causes?” “In truth, sir, I must own it was not, though the physician would have it otherwise,” I told him. “The violence of the Earl's illness was Such as I had never witnessed, except under the influence of a deadly purgative.”
“Indeed,” Sir William said softly. “Indeed. And yet they called it dyspepsia. I had a few bad moments myself in hearing the news of Frederick's death; I swore off claret for a twelvemonth, though my resolve lasted but two days. The suddenness of his passing shook me. It disturbed you as well?”
“I cannot deny it, though I alone of the Scargrave household felt apprehension.”
“That is hardly to be remarked, my dear,” Sir William said dryly. “You alone had nothing to inherit.”
I STOPPED IN SIR WILLIAMS HOUSEHOLD LONG ENOUGH TO greet his dear lady, to hear her news of three daughters and four sons long claimed by marriage and profession, exclaim over the domestic arrangements of her new home, and offer what intelligence of my circle in Bath it was in my power to convey. Then Sir William very kindly ordered his carriage to the door once more, against the protests of his wife, who would have had me stop the night rather than venture out again in such weather.
“It takes more than snow to hinder our Jane,” Sir William said fondly, as he handed me into the carriage. “I shall communicate with you directly I receive the letter.”
The last sight of his bare white head, starred with falling flakes like a Saint Nicholas of old, was to be my comfort the length of that solitary return to Scargrave. It is much, indeed, to have a friend down the lane, when a murderer may be among the household.
Chapter 6
The Dark Angel
16 December 1802
I WAS ENGAGED BY MY JOURNAL WELL INTO THE EVENING last night, tucked up in my sombre room with the fire burned low and all the house, as I thought, abed; but sleep remained elusive, though the great clock in the hall below would chime eleven, and then the quarter- and the half-hour. I determined at the last to snuff out my candle and attempt to find some rest, though the doubts and fears that have occupied my waking hours would fill my head with a riotous clamour.
I had consigned the room to dark, and placed my head upon the pillow, when the clock struck midnight; and as the final toll died away, I heard a rhythmic creaking, as of a measured pacing, commence along the floorboards of the gallery beyond my door. The sound — unremarkable in daylight — caused me now to stiffen with apprehension and bate my breath. It was the very height of the witching hour, when dread comes easy to the mind. That the shade of the First Earl had come to mourn poor Frederick, his descendant, I might almost have believed; for rather than cease with entering a room or passing from the hall, as the footsteps of any mortal inmate of Scargrave should do, the footsteps continued their curious dragging movement. [21]
An age it seemed I lay there, with all thought suspended, until I felt of a sudden that I should sooner die from fright of an apparition, than sweat in my bed from foolish fancies. I threw back the bedcovers, swung a cold foot to the floor, and crept to the door as soundlessly as I knew how. It but remained to turn the knob quietly and slowly, to crack the door an inch or two, and peer around the jamb.
In the dimness of the hall I saw him: a tall, gaunt figure dressed in the outmoded fashion of nearly two centuries past. A gossamer veiling concealed his head, which bore a long wig of cascading dark curls; his shoes were heeled and pitched forward in the fashion of the long-dead Sun King, and from their precarious perch he seemed to plod down the gallery on the tips of his toes. Cobwebs hung from his fingers, and from the hem of his satin coat; he was as dusty as a tailor's dummy fetched from a forgotten attic. The very shade of the First Earl, called from the dead to mourn the late Frederick; and to my thankfulness, the spectre had passed and was departing with turned back. I readied myself to observe him glide through the wall at the gallery's nether end, when he stopped before a closed chamber door, listening in the stillness, never moving a spectral muscle. I felt my skin prickle with consciousness. Would that he did not turn his face and stare with terrible eyes upon my night-clad form! But perhaps he felt the weight of my gaze; there could be no other cause for such suspension of purpose. The door before which he halted led to Fitzroy Payne's apartments; and I prayed for that gentleman to awake, and fright the ghost back into the ether, until I recollected that Lord Scargrave was even still bent over his uncle's papers in the late Earl's library. I drew breath, and disturbed the stillness; and with that, the shade's head began to turn.
I shot back around the doorjamb, my breathing and pulse quickening, waiting for the wrath of the undead to descend upon my room; but all remained silent — no creaking boards, no ghostly wind progressing down the hall. The spectre had not moved. Summoning my courage, I peeked back into the hall and saw with relief that the First Earl had vanished. Movement alone must be adequate to dispel a wraith; but I did not care to test the efficacy of my exorcism. I bolted the oak, fled to my bed, and pulled the covers over my head; and when the boards creaked once more, not long thereafter, I merely burrowed deeper.
AND SO I AM COME TO MY TWENTY-SEVENTH YEAR, WITH the bleary eyes and pale complexion of one robbed of sleep. My birthday has dawned with little of cheer to mark it; the sky is a lowering grey, and a chill wind rattles the leafless trees. I declare that I feel old this morning, despite the gallantries of Lieutenant Tom Hearst (more concerning that in time). There was less of the frightening in being five-and-twenty, or even six-and-twenty, than I feel today. There is something so inevitable about seven-and-twenty; it is decidedly on the wrong side of the decade for a lady, particularly an unmarried one. But none here at Scargrave is apprised of my birthday, and so I would keep it; too much of a serious nature demands our attention.
Having slept rather heavily in the wake of the ghost's visit, I was a full half-hour late for breakfast. Tho’ the custom at home is to take one's chocolate and rolls at ten o'clock, the sideboard in Scargrave's pretty little morning room is laid an hour earlier, as befits a country household. I thought to find the table deserted, and rejoiced at the prospect of solitude; the peace of bright yellow walls and fresh muslin curtains — a rare note of cheer amidst Scargrave's ponderous decoration — should be my reward for dissipation.
But to my surprise, I found Madame Delahoussaye still lingering over toast and tea.
“My dear Miss Austen!” she exclaimed, studying my pale countenance. “I am sure you slept very unwell.”
“I suffered from nightmares, I am afraid,” I said.
21
Austen's tone in this passage evokes the breathless morbidity of the Gothic novels that were quite popular in her day. Such authors as Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Smith penned ghoulish tales intended to titillate and alarm their largely female audience. Though Austen often poked fun at such literature —