Cassandra's Sister (23 page)

Jane might have been unable to thank James, but she thanked God when she saw their new house. It was a town house, certainly, in a row with many others. But it overlooked rarely used public gardens. The river was nearby, crossed by the impressive Poultney Bridge, and the house itself was large enough for Cassandra and Jane to have a private room. It even had a garden, “the size of a Bath bun” in Cassandra's opinion, which received enough sun for her lavender and Jane's lettuces to grow.

“You see,” said Cassandra as they made ready for bed on the first night, “our situation is not so bad, is it?”

Jane had to admit she was right. “No, indeed. The sight of the city in the sunshine today has lightened my spirits considerably.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Cassandra with relief. “How distressed you were, and how reasonable you are being now!”

“I am not Marianne Dashwood,” said Jane.

“Which reminds me,” said Cassandra. “Marianne Dashwood is in the box with Elizabeth Bennet and all the others, is she not? And the box is brought safely from Steventon, is it not? Well, now that you are in Bath again, you can revise
Catherine
, and perhaps start a new story.”

“Perhaps,” said Jane.

But the city of Bath did not yield the glorious immersion in fiction of her earlier sojourn there.
Catherine
stayed in the box, the paper on the writing table remained blank, and each day was so like the one before that the restlessness which descended upon Jane became almost too great to bear.

“I will die in this place,” she told Cassandra one night. “I must have air. Cannot we prevail upon Mama and Papa to take us somewhere else?”

“Where do you suggest?”

“They are always saying they would like to visit Dorset. Lyme and Weymouth especially. Those places are by the sea, Cass. I could breathe there. Being here makes me feel as if I need … adventure.”

“Adventure?” said Cass, stopping in her task of hair-curling.

“I daily feel my prospects closing. There is nothing here for me. We might even try Wales. What do you think?”

“You had better ask them,” said Cass.

Jane's suggestion was enthusiastically supported by her parents. “If we go as far as Weymouth, my dears,” suggested Papa, “we might as well go on to Hampshire and stay with James and Mary at Steventon. Mama and I can then come home, and you and your sister can go to Manydown. The Biggs are constantly inviting you. And you may also visit Martha at Ibthorpe.”

Jane expressed her joy in long letters to Martha, Catherine and Alethea, but it was a short letter from Mrs Bigg which interrupted the pleasurable preparations for their journey. Three days before they were to leave for Weymouth, Mama plunged the breakfast table into horrified silence.

“Mrs Bigg writes to tell me that her daughter Elizabeth has been widowed.”

Jane actually felt the blood drain from her cheeks, in a way often described in the kind of novels Catherine Morland liked to read, but which Jane had never believed could happen. Her breakfast turned to stone in her stomach as Papa and Cassandra questioned Mama, and the story was read out.

There was no mistake. William Heathcote, the charming, reserved clergyman whose physical beauty had been the first to stir Jane's blood, had died of a sudden seizure a week previously. His young wife, bereft not only of her husband but of her house, which was provided by the Church, had immediately packed her bags and taken herself and her baby son back to live with her parents at Manydown House. Mrs Bigg was at pains to explain that Cassandra and Jane were welcome to visit as planned, but they would find Manydown in mourning for some weeks, and Elizabeth in black for many months beyond that.

“Then we shall change our plans,” declared Papa.

“Oh, no, George!” begged Mama. “The girls are looking forward to seeing the Bigg girls so much.”

“Exactly,” said Papa. “I meant, we shall alter our itinerary, so that the girls do not arrive at Manydown until the autumn. Perhaps the Biggs will even reinstate their traditional Christmas ball, if two young lady guests are present at that season.”

“I doubt it,” said Mama. “Not this year, anyway.”

Jane and Cass composed a letter to Elizabeth. Neither shed tears, and they did not speak, or write, of William Heathcote's death in any terms but the conventional ones. But Jane was dispirited by the memories his passing produced. The ball where Elizabeth Bigg had met her future husband had taken place in a world now irrevocably lost to both Cassandra and herself: a world where Tom Fowle was still alive, where Tom Lefroy remained unsuspecting of Jane's existence, where “the Johns” – Lyford, Portal, Harwood – and many other young gentlemen had clustered around the punch bowl and swung their partners more and more exuberantly as the punch disappeared. It was a long time ago, and everything since then had changed.

T
he visit to James and Mary at Steventon Rectory turned out better than Jane had expected. As summer turned into autumn the weather remained unseasonably warm, and her parents were able to spend the afternoons visiting many of their old parishioners with James, Mary and their grandchildren.

It was on one of these afternoons that Madam Lefroy drove over unannounced from Ashe. Less sprightly than of old, but exactly the same in every other detail, she was shown by Kitty into the garden, where Jane and Cass were sitting in the sunshine. Jane, as ever, was reading, and Cassandra sewing.

“What do you think, my dears? What do you
think
? And how do you go along in Bath, by the way?” asked Madam Lefroy. “Reverend Lefroy never could abide the place, though I am not averse to it; do not tell him, poor man.”

“Will you not sit down, Madam?” asked Cass, offering her own chair to the visitor. “Kitty, please bring another chair from the kitchen.”

Madam Lefroy sat down and settled herself as solidly as if she would never move. “What an obliging girl that is,” she observed as Kitty ran into the kitchen. “If she ever wants to give Mrs James notice she would be heartily welcome at Ashe. So, what do you say to my news?”

Cassandra reminded her tactfully that she had not told them it.

“Why, it is about my nephew, Mr Tom Lefroy!”

Jane's heart leapt with such a bound she had to put her hand to her breast. She could not breathe until Madam Lefroy spoke again. If Tom had indeed been permitted to return, Jane was convinced she would kneel without embarrassment at Madam's feet, and kiss the hem of her gown. She could not look at Cassandra.

“Thank you, Kitty,” said Cass calmly. She sat down and took up her work again. “And is your nephew well?”

“I should say he is
very
well,” replied Madam Lefroy. “My dears, he has made
such
an advantageous marriage! Quite an heiress, I understand. An Irishwoman, very pleasing to the eye by all accounts. But then he always was a very presentable young man himself.”

Madam's eyes settled upon Jane. She met them briefly, but she could not continue to observe the determined carelessness she saw there. Dispirited, she kept her eyes on the book in her lap.

It was almost seven years since the Christmas ball at Manydown where Jane and Tom had met. The Irish Lefroys' all-too-obvious fear that Tom would marry Jane had embarrassed Madam Lefroy so much that she had been unable to face the Austens for months, and she had not allowed the name of Tom Lefroy to pass her lips in Jane's presence for years. But now, so anxious was she to impress upon the Austen family the excellence of Tom's match, such considerations seemed forgotten. Jane was too crushed to reply.

“An Irish lady, you say?” replied the socially skilful Cassandra. “And where in Ireland do they live?” She led Madam Lefroy away from Tom's marriage to his new house, and from there to his honeymoon journey, and from there to the Austens' own travels in Dorset. And all the time Jane stared at the book, her brain beset by visions. The way Tom had flipped his coat-tails when they “sat out” between dances. The joy and indulgence upon people's faces a week later at Ashe, when he and she had opened the dancing. The hair pushed impatiently back from his brow, his wrists in their starched frills, the neat closure of one boot against the other as he completed the measures. And especially that most cherished sight of all, his bright yet tender smile.

“Will you perhaps come and visit us in Bath, Madam?” Cassandra was asking.

“Oh, no, my poor legs will not allow me the luxury of travel these days, thank you all the same. But, Miss Jane, you are very quiet.”

Jane had to look up. But her throat had contracted; it was difficult to speak. Uncaring that she was being impolite, she stood up. “Madam,” she said, with a brief curtsey, “I am sorry, but I … I feel most unwell. Please excuse me.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Madam Lefroy in dismay, but without bewilderment. “As you wish. That excellent housemaid will bring you your tea upstairs, I dare say.”

Jane did not want any tea. Madam Lefroy sat with Cassandra a long time, while Jane lay on the bed and stared at the wallpaper, dry-eyed, silent, thinking. When she heard the carriage pull away she returned to the garden, where Cass sat with her head on a cushion and her work abandoned.

“You are weary, Cass,” said Jane, sitting on the grass at her sister's feet. “You have had a sorry afternoon of it. Please forgive me for deserting you. ”

“It does not matter,” said Cass. “In your shoes I would have done the same.”

“I did not cry, though.”

“What did you do?”

“I thought about money, marriage and men. I thought about the things men do. It gave me little comfort, but neither would crying, so it was of little consequence. What else did Madam say? I hope she did not press you to divulge the reason for my distress.”

“I believe she had no need,” said Cass. “She did speak of you, however. She wished to know what story you are working on these days.”

“Infernal curiosity of the woman! And what did you tell her?”

“I said I did not know.”

“Quite right.”

There was a long pause, during which Jane pulled up blades of grass and dropped them, concentrating on the task as if it were very important.

“I will never write anything again,” she said at last.

“Oh, please do not say that,” sighed Cass.

“But I have not written a single word since we moved to Bath.”

“That is because we have been so busy. And Bath is so frantic. Perhaps one day we shall settle in a house in the country somewhere, and you shall return to your writing.”

“Perhaps you can tell me where such a house will appear from? Though even if it did appear, that is no guarantee of anything. My urge to write – as strong as the urge to breathe, I once said to –” she paused, “to Tom – has gone.”

Cassandra did not speak. Jane was aware of her sister's watchful concern, and her own smarting eyes, but her voice was steady. “Perhaps, after all, I am an old-fashioned girl who simply likes to sit in this old-fashioned garden and read. Perhaps the pursuit of a literary career would bring me nothing but unhappiness. You must not take my words seriously. I am happy with my lot.”

“I shall take your words as they are meant,” said Cass. “You wish to write, but cannot, and you would rather blame yourself than our parents, whose desire to rush off to Bath like a couple of young puppies disturbed your peace so violently.”

“And yours,” said Jane.

“We are not speaking of me.”

As impetuously as if they were children again, Jane put her head on her sister's lap. “Dearest, dearest Cass!”

They sat in silence among the long shadows. From the house came voices and kitchen noises. Someone went by on a horse and exchanged a greeting with Dick, who entered the garden by the back gate and sauntered round to the stable.

Finally Jane lifted her head. “Do you know what I am inclined to do?

“What?”

“Marry the first man who asks me, whoever he is.”

Cass was dismayed “Even if you do not love him?”

Jane shook her head. “By Christmas I shall be twenty-seven. That is no age to be worrying about love.” She let out an unamused laugh. “Indeed, I am exactly the age of Charlotte Lucas in
First Impressions
, when she married Elizabeth's rejected suitor, the absurd Mr Collins.”

“Do you mean you will marry Mr Blackall, who is almost as absurd?” asked Cass, horrified.

“I am speaking of possibilities, Cass.”

“But Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins did not love each other at all,” protested Cass. “And do you not remember how Charlotte's marriage distressed Elizabeth? She could not forgive her.”

“I am not Elizabeth Bennet.”

Cass gripped her sister's hand. “You are not Charlotte Lucas either; you are real. Do not be hasty. Pray do not make yourself unhappy for the sake of securing your own household. It would break my heart.”

“When I created Charlotte Lucas,” mused Jane, “I was twenty years old, and twenty-seven seemed impossibly old. Indeed, I wondered if I should make her younger, so as to make her situation less pathetic! But twenty-seven has arrived all too quickly, and no one – not even Mr Blackall – has proposed to me.”

She stood up and brushed the grass from her skirt. “Come, let us go into the house and wait for them all to come home. We shall have a merry evening, our last one at Steventon for the present. We are to go to Ibthorpe tomorrow, and from there to Manydown. How pleasant it will be to see all our friends again! And if I cannot write, at least I can practise my powers of coquetry. If I do not find
someone
during all our travels, then I am a sorry specimen who does not deserve to marry, for love or anything else.”