Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave - Stephanie Barron [17]
In the flickering glow, Lord Scargrave's face appears as ravaged as it did in the dim light of his death chamber; not the manner in which such a man would wish to be remembered. Were it not for the superstitions of the local folk, who come to pay their respects in a silent, shuffling file, Isobel should have ordered the casket closed; but the Earl of Scargrave must be seen to be truly dead by all the surrounding country before his heir may take up his title. And so convention is served, and delicacy sacrificed upon its altar.
I confess to a shiver or two myself in passing through the hall; I would forget this anguished look, still stamped in death upon the tortured face, as soon as ever I may. Perhaps then the thoughts that spring to my mind too vividly will be banished as well. The assurances of Dr. Philip Pettigrew, the London physician, have done little to quiet them. The good doctor claims to have seen a like disturbance in the bowels before, and found in its violence no sign of a malevolent hand; he imputes it to the quantity of wine the Earl had consumed that evening, along with a quantity of beef, a recipe I should rather think conducive to apoplexy than dyspepsia.1
I cannot forget that Lord Scargrave's fatal sickness, as I have written before, bore the signs of an extreme purgative, as though the vomiting were induced by some force stronger than claret. But Isobel appears satisfied, if such a word may describe her quiet dejection; and the men of the Scargrave household are united without question in their mourning. And so my country knowledge must give way to London's greater experience.
Isobel keeps to her room, as is natural; Fitzroy Payne to the library, where he is engaged with his London solicitors in reviewing a quantity of papers pertaining to the late Earl's estate. Lord Harold Trowbridge, whom propriety should have instructed to depart, divides his time between Lord Scargrave2 and the billiard room. The Hearst brothers, though dining at the Manor each afternoon, have chosen to mourn in private at their cottage in the Park; I observed George Hearst pacing a snowy lane, hands behind his back and features lost in contemplation of his personal abyss, while the Lieutenant appears to devote his hours to schooling a particularly troublesome hunter over the same series of hedges.
And so Isobel's aunt, Madame Delahoussaye, and her daughter Fanny, prove my sole society. I doubt that such a felicitous term, so laden with the promise of good conversation, mutual warmth, and general elegance, has ever been so wantonly applied. Three women confined by weather, over needlework and books in which they can have little interest, with a dead earl lying in state beyond the sitting-room door! It is not to be borne for many hours together.
Madame Hortense Delahoussaye is the sister of Isobel's mother, these many years deceased, and a native like her of the Indies. Madame has made her life business the social launching of her two girls, as she calls them—meaning her daughter Fanny and her orphaned niece Isobel. She talks enough for a household; we may perhaps impute her husband's demise these two years past to a surfeit of his lady's conversation. I should listen to it with better grace if her manners were equal to her niece's; but Madame Delahoussaye's pride in her station has been too strongly felt. When I appeared at Isobel's side at the commencement of the ball, the aunt swiftly took the measure of my gown; learned that my father is a clergyman; and thereafter