was observed to be missing.
“And so we returned from Lyme to such a tumult!” Miss Crawford exclaimed. “My poor niece received the news with a pathetic sensibility; her mother fainted dead away; and my brother is even now shut up in his library with a bottle of claret for company. And since we knew you to be likely to discover the Captain's death before very long,” she added, “we deemed it best to inform you as soon as possible, so that you might not hear it first upon the street, and receive a decided shock.”
A shock it should have been; and I would be cold-hearted, indeed, not to feel towards Miss Crawford some depth of gratitude for her present consideration, did I not believe her to find a despicable enjoyment in the spreading of her intelligence. I thrust such uncharitable thoughts from my mind, however, and saw in memory once more the weathered face of Captain Percival Fielding; his bright blue eyes, that could hold such warmth, or shine with steely command; his grace and forbearance in the face of a debilitating injury; his determination to prevail over Lyme's Gentlemen of the Night. Too young for such a miserable end, and taken too soon from the world; better, perhaps, that he had died while gallantly fighting the French off Malta, a few years past, than to have offered his life in defence of his purse. I felt all the tender emotion proper in the face of such a tragedy; but discovered, to my quiet relief, that I felt nothing more. My heart had been warmed by his gallantry, but my deeper emotions had remained relatively untouched.
“A highwayman!” my mother exclaimed, her colour draining away. “I had not an idei of it. That Lyme should be so beset with lawlessness is in every way incredible. I thank God that my dear Cassandra is safe in London. Do not you think, Mr. Austen, that we should quit this place as soon as ever may be?” She turned in some anxiety to my father, who for once appeared to give her fears some consideration.
Miss Crawford glanced around our cottage's small sitting-room with a calculating eye. “You are rather exposed to the street, my dear Mrs. Austen, in the placement of your windows. I should not feel safe, indeed, of an evening by the fire, without some stout barring of that door leading to the entry—perhaps you might have your young man thrust that heavy piece across the way?” She was intent upon a handsome, if somewhat scarred, secretary, that stood in a corner of the sitting-room, and which my father was in the habit of employing for his correspondence. “The windows might be effectively blocked, with the application of wood slatting.”
“Come, come, Miss Crawford,” my father interposed jovially. “If a highwayman were to prospect for riches in Lyme, he should hardly look to Wings cottage. We lack the sort of style to invite a concerted assault. I should imagine myself safer here,” he continued, with a wicked gleam in his eye, “than were I an intimate of Darby—so lonely as you find yourselves, out on the Charmouth road, which we must assume the highwaymen frequent.”
A highwayman indeed, I thought. I should rather believe it a smuggler's man, dispatched to foil the Captain's offi-ciousness, and stealing his purse out of simple efficiency—for Fielding should assuredly have no use for it where his spirit had gone.
Or perhaps the monies were seized in an endeavour to effect the appearance of misadventure, the better to preserve the murderer's security.
At this last thought, which so smacked of calculation, I could not prevent Mr. Sidmouth's face from rising in my mind. With an involuntary sinking of the heart, I forced the image aside, the better to attend to Miss Crawford's intelligence.
“I fear, Mrs. Austen/’ the good lady said, with admirable self-command in the face of my father's teasing, “that the dear Captain was too good for us. He was just such a noble character—such a feeling and excellent fellow—as is taken too soon from this earth. It is ever the way. Once a man is prized, he is lost.”
She leaned towards me with a rustle of black bombazine, the better to confide. “I feel for Lucy very much, you know, from detecting in her case something of my own poor history—though Mr. Filch had already proposed, and Captain Fielding had not. And my carriage was ordered some months at Mr. Filch's sudden death, and was to have been very