Jane and the Man of the Cloth Read Free Page A

fright, and reached again for Hibbs's arm; for we were held at bay by the business end of a very imposing blunderbuss, levelled in the hands of a stable boy—of malevolent intent, to judge by his aspect.
    ‘Put up the gun, Toby,” the master of High Down said gendy. “You need not be threatening a bedraggled woman. She looks harmless enough.”
    “She ain't no woman, Mr. Sidmouth, sir. She's a lady to you.” Hibbs's hands were clenching and unclenching at his belt. That he kept a pistol there, for fear of highwaymen, I well knew; and that he had left it with my father, the better to safeguard the ladies, I surmised he very much regretted.
    “Be off wi’ ye,’ the boy said menacingly; but he lowered the blunderbuss, with evident mistrust. “'re no more in a pack o’ spies, ye are. Be off, ‘fore I blows ye down the lane!”
    “Toby!” Mr. Sidmouth—for so I assumed him to be, as Hibbs had named him—strode swiftly from the doorway to the boy's side, with nary a glance for ourselves. He pried the gun from Toby's hands and turned him towards the back of the house, from whence he had appeared. “Tell Mary we've company, and then fetch Miss Seraphine, there's a good fellow.”
    “Run ‘em off, Mr. Sid,” the boy said, by way of reply. “They're here as ‘formers, I'll lay my soul on't.”
    A sound bussing on the bottom was his only answer, and the master of High Down turned once more to face us. “My apologies,” he told us. “The boy has yet to learn his manners.”
    “You astonish me.” My tone was dry. “And with such a paragon as yourself for instruction?”
    In the lamp's glow, Sidmouth's mouth tightened, and the black brows lowered over his eyes. I felt sure that in a moment he should drive us down the hill with the butt of the gun, but instead, he drew breath and managed a smile. “Your reproof is well-placed, Miss Jane Austen of Bath,” he said. “I fear I have shown myself to disadvantage upon first meeting. Do not, I beg of you, take the instant for a portrait of the man. And now, I trust, you will do me the honour of entering High Down Grange? For it rains”—at this, he cast a look towards the heavens—“undoubtedly it rains.” There was an air of immense satisfaction about the man, that I was at a loss to understand; but mindful of my sister's plight I wasted not another thought upon Mr. Sidmouth and his mysteries, and followed him into the house.
    It is a simple-enough affair, rather reminiscent, at first glance, of dear Steventon, 6 in its exposed beams and whitewashed walls. I imagined the upstairs rooms would have sloping floors, and dormer eaves, and all the comfort of age and use to recommend them—and as I sit here now, writing by the light of a single candle, in one such a room, I find my conjecture immediately proved. It is a house made for laughter and song and the fresh-blown scent of roses in the doorway, and that it is sadly lacking in all such delights, I readily discerned. For High Down Grange has been subject to decided neglect—the result, perhaps, of having no mistress. Geoffrey Sidmouth is a single man, prone, as are all such fellows, to thoughtlessness with regard to his surroundings, and to an overactive benevolence towards his hounds, his horses, and his hunting. Or so I surmise.
    The drawing-room eloquendy bespoke the want of a lady's attention, in its shabby fittings and dusty aspect, and I wondered, as I stood uneasy upon the hearth, at the aforementioned Mary—was she cook, or housekeeper, or merely a slovenly attempt at both? And who should Miss Seraphine be?
    “Allow me to introduce myself,” Sidmouth said, in closing the door and crossing to the fire. “I am Geoffrey Sidmouth, and High Down Grange is my home—at present. I take it from Hibbs being your attendant, Miss Austen, that you are a traveller in these parts; and that his regrettably poor driving has unhorsed your equipage.”
    Hibbs glowered from his place near the doorway, all the anger of