Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (18 page)

Twenty-nine

N ot ten minutes later Mary bursts into my room, dressed in a clean gown, her face flushed with excitement.

“Dearest friend, do you know we could actually leave Bath as early as tomorrow?” she says. “Even Mrs. Smith seems positively cheerful about it, though I feared she had not given the waters their due.”

“Shouldn’t we wait to hear back from your cousin? What if she is out of town? Or has already filled her house with guests?”

“Impossible. Just two days ago Louisa was lamenting the lack of company and the various obligations that prevented her leaving town. I need only send her word of our imminent arrival. That is, if you are agreeable to such a plan.”

I assure her of my eagerness to go, though I keep the reasons to myself, and she runs off to her room to pen the note to her cousin.

I start going through drawers and organizing clothes and books in neat little piles on the bed. Not that I need to do any of that, with all the servants at my disposal, but the busy work is what I need right now to stop thinking about Edgeworth’s eyes and the way he looked at me when we were dancing and whether Mary is actually more right about him now than she was when she was trying to warn me about him. I can’t let myself think about any of that, because putting some distance between him and me is the smartest thing I can do, and leaving Bath is the best thing for Mary, and besides, isn’t there the tiniest chance that being in the same city I’d visited in my real life might somehow bring me back home?

Stacking hatboxes on the bed and debating whether I could find a proper container in which I might borrow some of the rouge in Mary’s aunt’s room, and whether she’d miss any of it, it occurs to me that there’s another advantage to leaving immediately: There’s no chance I’ll get a letter from Mrs. M urging a postponement of our departure. She can’t possibly object to the propriety of the London trip, since we are to stay with Mary’s cousin, but she will most certainly object to its geographical distance from Edgeworth, should she know by now that he is in Bath. The thought of her frustration makes me smile.

Mary and I spend the rest of the evening packing our trunks (or more precisely, supervising Hortense, who is supervised by Mrs. Jenkins; we are absolutely superfluous) and planning quick take-leave visits to the three people for whom Mary insists we must do more than leave a card: Mrs. Randolph, Susan Randolph, and Edgeworth.

Our first stop the next morning is the Randolphs’. I cross my fingers that her daughter will still be in bed, as the hour is early for visiting. No such luck. The only fortunate thing is that Mary and I can keep our visit short without Mrs. Randolph’s urging us to stay, because the first thing we tell her is that we’re leaving that very morning.

Susan is oddly silent at first; she appears to be focused on some sewing in her lap, and an occasional nod or murmur of assent is the only proof that she’s paying any sort of attention. The only time she puts her needlework down and trains her dark blue eyes on us is when Mary mentions that our next stop is to say good-bye to her brother. Susan lifts her brows in surprise or skepticism when Mary says how sorry she is not to have a chance to spend more time with him in Bath. I find it sweet that Mary is so anxious to make amends to her brother that she makes it a point to advertise her newfound affection for him to the first people she sees.

Susan catches my eye, instantly turns her attention back to her needlework, and says softly, “And I suppose you too have had little time to spend with Mr. Edgeworth, cousin, what with all the time you devote to taking exercise in Sydney Gardens.”

She looks at me again and holds my gaze, this time with the detached yet focused look of a cat that has cornered a mouse.

I clear my throat. “I am not sure I understand you.”

Susan resumes her needlework and makes a slight shrug. “Perhaps I am mistaken then. Perhaps I saw you there only the once. I believe you were much engaged in conversation that day and did not see me, and then you seemed in a great hurry to leave, which is why you did not see me when you passed me by. I remember thinking you looked exceedingly well, and how the exercise must agree with you, for the flush in your complexion told me that you must have spent a great deal of time walking that morning. A most courageous undertaking, I thought, considering it was such a dirty day.”

And then, with a falling sensation in the pit of my stomach, I remember the woman with the bloodred ribbons on her bonnet, the woman I ran past when I left James, the woman who seemed vaguely familiar to me, but whose face was a blur in my panic to get out of there.

What is she up to? I feel my pulse quicken and my face grow hot. I open my mouth to confront her, but I feel Mary’s eyes boring into me, and so all I do is mumble that perhaps she is mistaken, but if indeed I was the person she saw in the Gardens, then I was sorry I did not see her as well.

“It does not signify,” Susan says, “for whether it was your mistake or mine, it was most assuredly an innocent one.”

“Would it be anything but?”

A clatter of teacup on saucer—Mrs. Randolph’s—turns my attention from Susan. Mrs. Randolph opens her mouth as if to speak, but Mary stands up abruptly and gently insists that we must say our good-byes if we are to leave in good time. I kiss Mrs. Randolph warmly; as for Susan, I barely touch her cold fish of a hand and look her in the eyes with what I hope is an intimidating glare. She is the first to look down, which gives me a little tingle of triumph.

As soon as we leave the Randolphs’ house, Mary starts saying over and over again, “Oh dear. Oh dear. What shall we do?”

“I know exactly what I want to do, which is what I would have done had I not felt you begging me not to with those puppy dog eyes of yours.”

“Thank heaven you did not admit you were actually there. It is her word against yours, and it is entirely possible that she was mistaken. That is what you shall say.”

Mary is so worked up that she’s practically racing down the street, and I can hardly keep up with her.

“Could we slow down just a bit? I couldn’t care less what Susan saw. Or how it may have looked.”

At this, Mary stops walking and looks at me, her eyes wide with alarm. “Oh God. What exactly did she see?”

“How would I know?”

Mary’s eyes dart around, no doubt assessing the proximity of a plump matron and the five teenage girls she has in tow. We are in the middle of the circular, cobbled expanse of the Circus, an echoey place to have a discreet conversation. Mary moves close to me and waits until the women are a good nine yards away. She hisses into my ear nevertheless. “Could it be worse than seeing you meet, unchaperoned, a young man whom she may have recognized as a servant in your parents’ house? Do you realize how serious this situation may be?”

I flinch at Mary’s vehemence, but I will myself to slow the pounding in my chest. Why am I getting so rattled?

“I held his hand,” I say loudly into the otherwise empty Circus. “And touched it to my cheek.”

“Are you mad?” Mary hisses. “For heaven’s sake, lower your voice.”

She grabs my arm and drags me out of the Circus, not slowing her pace or saying a word until we are halfway down Brock Street.

“Tell me it isn’t true,” she says.

“I was merely asking his forgiveness, not that it’s any of your concern.”

Mary starts walking rapidly again, repeating over and over to herself, “Oh dear. Oh dear.”

“Calm down,” I say, shuffling to catch up with her. “If Susan has nothing better to do than spread rumors, why should we care? We’re leaving tomorrow anyway. Besides, if she were going to gossip, why wait almost a week to do it?”

At this, Mary stops again and turns around with a fierce look in her eyes.

“Now you listen to me, Jane. If she decides to gossip about this, and you do not flatly deny it, then it will matter little where we are and why Susan decided to speak now rather than then. If your reputation is tainted, then I will suffer as well, as you are my traveling companion and my guest. If my relations will not receive you, then where does that leave us? We will each of us be confined to our own homes.”

“Are you suggesting your brother would refuse to let you see me?”

“Charles would never believe such gossip.”

“Even so, would he want his sister to associate with a woman the rest of the world saw as a whore?”

“Jane!” Mary gasps. “You will deny this, and that is all there is to say on the matter.”

We continue our breakneck pace in silence. How could I have romanticized this world? A world where a woman’s place, substandard as it is, hangs by a thread. Where a man, even a man like Edgeworth, would be just as turned off by the thought of my rendezvous with James as the rest of these hypocrites would be. If I had known I was forfeiting my good name by meeting with James, at least I could have had the satisfaction of all-out sex instead of a measly touch of his hand on my cheek.

The shattering of any remaining illusions I have about Edgeworth is actually a blessing. It’ll make forgetting about him that much easier. I suppose he’ll expect the next woman he marries to come to the marriage bed without having so much as kissed another man. God forbid the wife should have prior knowledge of sex, let alone enjoy it. What sort of meaning would a husband read into that? No, I imagine he must think that the only women who enjoy sex are those of the lower classes, who maybe aren’t expected to be so pure when they finally get married. Or maybe they are, but the ones who hire them as servants just indulge in sexual harassment whenever the mood strikes, and always with impunity.

After all, here is a place where the pregnant employee leaves her job in disgrace, and where not all bosses are kind enough to send them off with a reference, as Mary had done for her servant. I am in a thoroughly disgusting, absolutely hypocritical society, a prison for women of all classes, and the sooner I get out of here, the better off I’ll be. All I have to do, as the fortune-teller said, is be where I am. Ha! That’s about as clear as the germ-infested waters of Bath.

“Jane, are you listening to me?”

Mary has stopped walking and is staring at me.

I realize I am standing in the middle of the huge lawn in front of the Royal Crescent. I’ve been so immersed in my thoughts that I don’t even know how I got here. “What?”

“Will you promise to deny Susan’s accusations, should she decide, heaven forbid, to spread them?”

“Yes, yes. Can we please stop talking about this?”

“Thank you.”

We reach the door of Stevens’s house in the Crescent, where Edgeworth is staying. Mary is composed, at least outwardly, as she raps on the door, and I feel an empowering sort of indifference.

We are shown into the thickly carpeted drawing room, where Edgeworth and Stevens join us. Stevens glows as he greets Mary and stammers his apologies for not being able to present his mother and sisters to us. Edgeworth says what a sad loss to Bath our going will be and how he hopes to join his sister in the country soon. Mary is effusive in her encouragements, insisting we will be in London for only a brief stay. I watch them all playacting, and say nothing. Can we get this over with and get on our way already?

Yet, as I sit there in silence on the pale green sofa while we wait for our tea, while I listen to Mary and Stevens and Edgeworth engage in the usual polite nothings of what passes for conversation in this world, my detachment grows. I see nothing of depth in anything Edgeworth has to say; I see only that he is the perfect man of his class and his era, bred to think highly of himself and much less of women, regardless of the outward trappings of gallantry and deference. It is all an elaborately structured ploy to lure women into marriage, rob them of financial independence, turn them into breeders, and keep them in a luxuriously padded cell while they raise the heirs to the family fortune.

For the first time I am immune to Edgeworth; his face and form are beautiful to look at, but there’s nothing behind the mask that interests me. Suddenly I have my appetite back, and I eye the silver bowl of summer fruits that Stevens’s servant brought out. A plum is what I want. I’ll eat and drink and murmur like everyone else, and I’ll look Edgeworth in the eye without the slightest bit of discomfort.

I can tell he is off-balance by my unself-conscious silence, especially when his sister is being so openly approving of him. He tries to draw me out but gives up after a few minutes. Mary lets me be; I imagine she is grateful I’m not talking about unchaperoned meetings with single males of the lower classes and shouting out words like “whore.” Perhaps she hopes my silence is a thoughtful one in which I can meditate on the error of my ways. And she’s right. Never has there been a woman so cognizant of her errors as I am at this moment.

There is one pleasant aspect to the visit, and that is my continuing observation of Stevens’s huge crush on Mary. He stammers and blushes whenever he speaks to her. Mary appears to be entirely oblivious to it.

When we finish our tea, I remind Mary that we still have a lot to do before we leave Bath, and she takes the hint. As we say our good-byes, Edgeworth shakes my hand and clasps it firmly, then covers it with his other hand for a brief moment. His face is grave as he catches my eyes with his; we are both still until finally I look away, my stomach fluttering. Damn him.

Thirty

A fter clattering around in Mary’s coach for who knows how many hours, my bones have become castanets. Sleep is not an option, but I attempt it anyway. I open my eyes when I feel the coach slowing, and I welcome the sight of a roadside inn, its smoking chimney and candlelit windows inviting. I emerge from the carriage stiff and sore and hobble toward the door, anticipating a comfortable break from the rigors of the road.

How wrong I am. At the doorway to the inn’s dining room, in which a few bedraggled patrons listlessly spoon greasy chunks of a mystery stew into their faces, I am riveted by the sight of a ragged, spindly creature walking toward their table with a steaming plate of food in one hand and the other hand feverishly scratching his stringy mop of hair. I know if I stand there another moment I’ll have the stench of congealed grease in my nostrils for a month, but I cannot stop staring.

This can’t be where we’re staying. I can only imagine the conditions of the bedding in this place. Even in my own more hygienic world I hate to touch the bedspreads on hotel beds, which I know are not washed on a daily basis. The first thing I always do in a hotel room is throw off the bedspread and ball it up in a corner, then apply liberal amounts of antibacterial wash to my hands from the little purse-sized bottle I always carry with me (if only I had it now). The few who have witnessed this ritual dismiss me as a contamination-phobe, but I have seen too many of those “hidden universe”–type shows on the Discovery channel, the ones that reveal the colonies of microscopic beasts that live on our skins and in our houses, to be otherwise.

“Jane? Is something the matter?”

Mary’s smoky-sweet voice jolts me from my downward spiral.

“Mary, this place is filthy. Do you think we could just rest for a half hour and get back on the road?”

Mary pats my hand reassuringly. “Do not worry. It is an inconvenience, to be sure, but we shall make the best of it. Hortense has bespoken a private parlor for our meal and will secure the cleanest and best rooms. She and I will keep you safe and snug. And to ensure our comfort further, I have brought my very own bed linens. I never travel without them, being a fastidious sort of person myself.”

I am about to plead my case further, when Mary lets out a tiny sneeze. I know that if I press the matter she’ll give in, but I don’t want to risk her cold getting worse, not when it’s almost gone. So I resign myself to a night in germ paradise.

Granted, the private parlor is tidier and less rancid-smelling than the dining room, and instead of Rumplestiltskin’s brother serving us our meal, we have a moderately clean-looking maidservant who doesn’t scratch herself once. The roasted chicken she places on the table smells tantalizing and looks harmless, but I cannot get myself to take a bite, despite the grumblings of my stomach, Mary’s urgings, and the odd look from Mrs. Smith, who eats heartily herself. Finally, I settle on a chunk of bread and a boiled potato, both of which I examine minutely before saying a silent prayer and washing them down with a large glass of wine for its disinfectant as well as its tranquilizing effects.

Mary and I share a bed that night, which Hortense has covered with Mary’s bed linens. Despite that precaution, I spend a disastrous night, waking, it seems, every ten minutes, torn between fears that relaxing my vigilance will invite worse horrors than insects and germs into my bed (my fantasies by this time have settled on mice and rats, the staring eyes of the creature in the trap back in Mansfield House taking a starring role), and the soft but nonetheless irritating snores of Hortense, who is sleeping on the floor, wrapped in blankets, at the foot of the bed.

Mary, of course, sleeps like a baby; Mary, who could eat salmonella chicken and bathe in eau de typhus and get nothing worse than a cold. I suppose that one possible advantage of being born and bred in this time period is developing a stalwart immune system, and I suddenly realize that the body I am inhabiting is used to such customary insults to hygiene, unlike the daily-showered and antibiotic-treated one I am used to in my own era. But then I remember what I read of the life expectancy and infant mortality rates of previous centuries, and toss my way through another interval of insomnia.

When I awake from my last ten-minute nap, Mary is already dressed and downstairs, and Hortense invites me to wash myself in the “fresh” water she has just placed in the washbasin. The room looks even worse in daylight, the wear and tear of thousands of weary travelers no longer camouflaged by candlelight. Even worse, the washbasin has a ring of dirt in it, which apparently neither Hortense nor Mary noticed, since it is impossible for Mary’s white neck to have left that kind of color behind. I don’t have the heart to make Hortense lug the basin downstairs again and have it scrubbed (or scrub it herself ), so I just splash a bit of water on my face, clean, as it were, my teeth with the scouring powder that passes for toothpaste, and let Hortense maneuver my weary limbs into clothes as I steel myself for the sights and smells awaiting me below.

I am wise enough to avert my eyes as I walk past the main dining area toward our private parlor, but my nose is assaulted by the ill-smelling fare being served up. The fact that I am now thinking as well as saying things like “ill-smelling fare” is disturbing enough. What’s worse is that I practically brush shoulders with the skeevy waiter from the night before. His stench is unbearably pungent, and though Mary does her best to talk me into having some breakfast, I can’t get the thought out of my mind that he might have touched some of the food laid out for us. By this time I’m starving, but decide I will have nothing more than tea. It takes all my powers of persuasion to convince Mary that my fast does not indicate illness.

We resume our journey, and for the greater part of the day the bouncing around in the carriage is nothing compared to the itchiness I now endure. Once I start scratching I find it almost impossible to stop, despite the fact that it has to be psychological, since neither Mary nor Hortense, nor Mrs. Smith, for that matter, are similarly afflicted. Though Mary gently expresses her concern for my comfort, it’s clear she has no fears of catching whatever I have. Mrs. Smith simply raises her thin eyebrows and stays characteristically silent, focusing her attention on the book in her lap. Hortense, however, looks as if she is fighting the desire to fling herself from the moving coach every time I shift anywhere near her.

Mercifully, the lack of sleep and food finally catches up with me, and I sleep for who knows how many hours, waking only when we arrive at our destination. I stumble out of the carriage, bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed, and look up at the tall townhouse that is to be our home for a few days. I hardly notice or care what the house or the London of Jane Austen looks like, since I can only think of a comfortable bed and a hot bath and dread being introduced to a stranger when I feel so beaten up and dirty, not to mention barely able to form a sentence. I am even too tired to itch.

In the entrance hall, an attractive, fiftyish woman, done up in an elaborate hairstyle and headdress, rushes toward us in a cloud of gardenia perfume. The first thing that strikes me about her is that she is wearing makeup, almost the first woman I’ve seen here wearing powder and blush and what has to be color on her lips, and certainly the first person wearing makeup that I’ve been introduced to.

She and Mary embrace, and Louisa oohs and aahs, exclaiming at how Mary is “a preserver of life itself,” and how her last few guests had “cruelly absconded to the country and left her bereft of company.”

Whatever. Just get me to my bed.

Mary introduces her cousin as Lady Ashwell, but before I can say anything Louisa says, “You poor bedraggled darling. Do not even attempt to dissemble. Name what you wish this moment, and it shall be yours.”

“A bath,” I say, “and a bed.”

“Done,” she says, and goes to ring the bell. “You are quite pretty, you know. Even in your travel-weary state I can see that. I have a notion,” and she turns to Mary, “that it is my destiny to find your friend a husband. What say you to that, Miss Mansfield?”

“You needn’t put yourself out. I’m perfectly capable of making a mess of things on my own.”

Louisa laughs. “Cousin,” she says, “I am pleased to see that your friend is no simpering country girl. I like her already.”

“Likewise,” I say, which sets Louisa off into even more laughter.

Easy audience. Then a maid comes and whisks me off to my room, where I get my glorious bath and then sink into the softest, most inviting bed I’ve ever slept in.

“J ane?”

I open my eyes to what I dub from that moment the “bridal room,” everything covered with white frothy fabric, from curtains to bed hangings, and there is Mary, sitting on the edge of my bed, her pale pink gown the only spot of color in the room.

“From that smile on your face may I surmise that you slept as well as you look?”

I stretch out my arms and yawn, nodding. The feel of the clean bedding on my clean skin is delicious. And Mary smells of lavender.

“We did not have the heart to wake you for supper last night, but you must be hungry.”

Come to think of it, I’m ravenous.

“Shall I send Hortense in to dress you, and then see you downstairs in the breakfast room?”

I nod gratefully.

I inhale my breakfast, while Louisa watches (she will not allow me to call her Lady Ashwell, because she says it makes her sound far too old, and I’m grateful, because I know I’d end up calling her “Laura Ashley” by mistake).

In the harsh light of day I can see that “makeup” is an inadequate term to describe what Louisa has done to her face. Raggedy Ann–like blotches of red are exclamation points on her Kabuki-white cheeks.

“I adore your cousin’s natural, unspoilt beauty,” she declares to Mary. “And such a prodigious appetite, so unlike most women who eat like baby sparrows in company.” And this from someone who has been poking at a lone piece of toast on her plate without taking a single bite.

When I put my fork down for a moment and take a breath, Mary and Louisa ask me if I approve of the plans they’ve made for a day of shopping followed by a musical party at the house of someone named Lady Charlton.

Louisa adds, “I am sorry there is nothing more exciting in the way of entertainment to offer you, but London is rather thin this time of year.”

I pat my full stomach. “Thin or not, Louisa, I am ready for London.”

Louisa laughs. “You know, Mary,” she says, continuing her pattern of talking about me as if I were not in the room, “I do believe your friend means what she says. Delightful girl!”

I don’t know why Louisa is getting on my nerves, but she is. Perhaps it’s because she’s pegged me as a mistress of witty dialogue when I’ve hardly even spoken a word to her. On the other hand, what’s wrong with being encouraged to speak my mind and thought of as entertaining? Perhaps I’m just being judgmental because she’s allowed to wear makeup and I’m not, especially when she has no idea how to put it on in an attractive manner and I do. Or perhaps I’m even shallower than that. Truth be told, the white mask isn’t the only thing that makes Louisa hard to look at. Her teeth are brownish, a fact she attempts to hide with her fan as best she can, and I can see that the heavy hand with which she applies the face powder is a futile attempt to camouflage acne scars. Still, had she the benefit of modern dentistry and cosmetics, not to mention a chemical peel, she might have been a pretty woman.

So again I have to ask my judgmental self, why am I so bothered by her? The only conclusion I can draw is that I resent her de facto pronouncement that I am an amusing curiosity. And I resent it being a truth universally acknowledged, no matter what era I find myself in, that a single woman of thirty must be in want of a husband.

I particularly resent Louisa’s holy-grail view of marriage when she can barely be civil to her own husband, a rotund man in his sixties who pops his head into the breakfast room to say a warm good morning to me and welcome me to his house, and I resent the fact that she rolls her eyes the moment he leaves.

I also resent that I find myself wondering what Edgeworth is doing. And whether he’s thinking of me. But this too shall pass.

Shortly after breakfast we go out, and I have plenty of diversions; in particular, the most fascinating dose of people watching I’ve yet experienced, and my very first look at a horse-drawn traffic jam. London is a landscape of sensory opposites: the hint of a blue sky peeping from behind the gray cover of a million coal-burning fires (and I thought the smog back home was bad), the shouting of the street vendors and the rhythmic clip-clop of hooves on the cobbled pavement, the perfumed air of the shops and the stench of horse droppings in the streets, barefooted children with grime-streaked faces begging for pennies from gloved ladies in immaculate gowns.

We spend a lot of time in the shops; Louisa is on a mission to spend as much of her husband’s money as she can (her words, not mine), and Mary and I are dragged in her wake. After a few hours of conspicuous consumption, however, the novelty of my surroundings wears thin. I enjoy shopping as much as the next person, but in small doses. Here there are not enough clothes to look at and too much fabric, and how many bonnets could I examine, especially when I hate them all? I’d much rather watch the people going in and out of the shops than look at the wares. Even Mary’s determined cheerfulness is getting to me, and as I stand in yet another shop fingering merchandise I care nothing about, I decide it’s time to call it a day. I’m just about to venture a hint that perhaps it’s best for Mary’s health that we think about going home, when I hear something that stops me in my tracks.

It is a shop clerk saying, “Miss Austen? Here it is, wrapped as you specified. Thank you, miss. Good day to you.”

I wheel around to see the clerk smiling at the back of a woman, who is walking out of the shop. Could she possibly be the Miss Austen?

“Mary,” I say, “I’ll be back.”

“Are you all right?” she says as I rush toward the door.

And out the door I fly in pursuit of the rapidly retreating figure, certain of nothing but that I must have a real-life look at her.