Jane and the Canterbury Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

direction of the lane in front, which ran just beyond the river—quite the opposite end of Edward’s acres.
    “I do not understand you,” I protested. “The Pilgrim’s Way is on high ground to the north!”
    “Yes, yes,” she said hurriedly, “but you must know there is a side-path, often used by those who know of our church, that runs from the Downs, skirts the house, and comes out into the lane. I do not think it is above a mile from the
true
Pilgrim’s Way; and Papa does not mind those who employ the bridge for the purpose of visiting St. Lawrence’s, for Mamma’s grave is there, and he likes to think of more than just ourselves visiting the church. When I was little, Mammaused to say that grass never grew on the Pilgrim’s side-path, because so many pious feet had trod it.”
    I suspected grass never grew there from a dearth of sunlight, but forebore to utter so acid a remark. “I see. And now there is a man lying there?”
    “Indeed,” my niece hurried on, “and I suppose he might be a pilgrim in earnest, from the look of him.”
    “Not one of our neighbours, then, thank Heaven?”
    She shook her head. “A tradesman, I should judge, in a stout travelling cloak, with a leather satchel lying a little off the path, beside a walking stick. He must have dropped them as he fell.”
    I turned resolutely towards the river and the ancient Pilgrim’s Way. “How did he die, Fanny?”
    “Shot through the heart, John Plumptre says.”
    I stopped short and stared at her in dismay. I will confess that I had been perfectly content to think nothing of corpses and death during my visit to Kent; it was not the sort of country for melancholy. Weddings suited the general animation of the neighbourhood far better.
    “Bessy, Mr. Plumptre’s spaniel, set up a baying over the body—”
    Fanny’s voice wavered as she offered this inconsequential information; in all her haste to report the news she had forgot, for a little, to be tender-hearted. “Oh Aunt—I think Mr. Plumptre is afraid that one of
us
killed him!
Quite by mistake
, of course—having aimed for a pheasant.”
    Fanny, I could see, feared this, too: That one of her brothers or friends had taken an innocent pilgrim’s life as carelessly as he might a bird’s.
    “I must go in search of my father,” she said more steadily. “You will forgive me, Aunt—he must be informed.”
    “Of course.”
    Among his various duties and honours as a man of consequencein Canterbury, Edward counted the office of First Magistrate. A surgeon being now useless, my brother was the next person who ought to be summoned.
    Fanny was off again at a run for the house, her hand pressed against her stays, which must be cruelly impeding her lungs. Edward would still be closeted with his valet, unaware of the signal burden about to befall him. There would be the coroner to rouse, the jury to empanel. An inquest held in some publick house in Canterbury. An attempt to ascertain the unfortunate man’s identity, and convey the dreadful news to his relicts—
    And one of our own young men to console, for having murdered a man all unwittingly. I sent up a hurried prayer that
which
fowling piece had fired the fatal shot, should
never
be ascertained—and kicked savagely at a pebble as I mounted the old stone bridge.
    The River Stour chuckled below, but the happy dream that had been my sojourn in Kent was suddenly all to pieces.
    1 Bentigh was an avenue of limes and yews. It led toward the old Norman church of St. Lawrence, where the Knight family worshipped. —
Editor’s note
.

   CHAPTER THREE   
     

The Unexpected Hessians
     
     … Fortune had once
    Been his friend, for a time, and then his foe
.
    No man can ever expect her favor to last.…
    G EOFFREY C HAUCER, “T HE M ONK’S T ALE ”
     
    21 O CTOBER 1813, CONT .

    T HE GENTLEMEN LOUNGED IN AN UNEASY GROUP, RESTRAINING their dogs, near the publick footpath. The beaters—two fellows employed by Edward’s gamekeeper—sat