Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (21 page)

Thirty-five

W ithout Mrs. M’s tyrannical presence, the entire routine of the house is different, as is Mr. Mansfield. At breakfast he shovels his food with even more gusto than before, and without his wife’s sarcasm and general disapproval in the air, he is even talkative. He wants to know every detail of my trip, and after satisfying him with a highly edited version, I persuade him at dinner to tell me about his day in the atelier. It doesn’t take much to open the floodgates, and with a little more encouragement, he is soon pouring me a glass of wine in his sanctum sanctorum.

I sip my wine and walk around the room, inhaling the heavy scent of oil paints and trying to make out what’s on some of the canvases stacked along the walls and behind almost every piece of furniture. There are a couple of easels draped with paint-splotched cloths, and I pause before one of them. “Is this the one you worked on today?”

“How did you know?”

I move my hand toward the cloth. “May I?”

He clears his throat. “It is not nearly finished, and I fear the subject may not be suitable, though I have made some improvements lately.”

He shrugs, then uncovers the canvas and reveals a semi-repesentational painting of two lovers entwined.

He takes a long drink of wine. “The figures were, how shall I say, undraped before. But I feared that if I kept them in such a state they might shock those with delicate sensibilities.”

The pale skin of the two figures is set off by bold swirls and splotches of color behind them, and I wonder whether the lovers might not make a more powerful contrast without the purple swaths of cloth that strategically cover their bodies.

“I like it,” I say, “but I can’t help but wonder why you would alter your work just to placate a bunch of prudes.”

Mr. Mansfield lets out a short sputtering laugh. “That is just what Mr. Edgeworth said when he made his take-leave visit here, though in far more polite terms than my daughter.” He attempts a disapproving frown, but the corners of his mouth are twitching.

I ask to see more of his work, and one by one he lifts up each canvas and props it up on his desk. Most are completely nonrepresentational, wild streaks, swaths, and dashes of color, some angry and dark, others bursting with golden and pastel lights. Again I am struck with how ahead of his time his canvases are, a universe away from the formal portraits and sedate landscapes that comprise the typical paintings I have seen elsewhere. I imagine his passion must be a lonely one, and he glows with pride when I praise his work.

As I am about to leave, I notice a small framed picture on his desk. It is covered by a cloth except for a corner that’s sticking out. “May I look?” I ask, and he hesitates before nodding his assent. I lift the cover and see a portrait of a young man, quite handsome, sitting in a garden, his face suffused with sunlight. It is a small painting, but the details are so fine that I can read the expression on the subject’s face. He looks happy, content.

“Who is this man?”

He clears his throat. “It is a likeness taken of me when I was but one-and-twenty.”

“Who painted it?”

He stammers his reply. “Her name was Miss Allcott, now Mrs. Lyle.”

“You were very handsome.”

“Ah, well.” He fusses with the cover as he replaces it on the picture, and puts it into a desk drawer.

“Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“Miss Allcott.”

He averts his eyes, his face crimson, and busies himself by rearranging a few of the stacked canvases. “You mean Mrs. Lyle. I heard she married into a family of—”

“No, I mean Miss Allcott.”

“Jane—”

“You were in love with her, weren’t you.”

He almost drops the canvas he’s holding. “You forget yourself, Jane.”

“But I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Jane, your mother—”

“This is not about her. I want to know about you—Papa.” Saying that gives me a warm feeling inside that has nothing to do with the wine.

Mr. Mansfield sighs and puts down the canvas, then sinks into a chair and takes a sip of his wine. “It is getting late.”

“Tell me about her. Please?”

“It was a long time ago. I was very young, she had no fortune, and my father forbade the match. Her parents sent her away, and of course, I met your mother.”

“And Miss Allcott?”

“I never saw her again.”

I don’t know why, but I tear up, and I can tell he sees it happen. He swallows hard and springs up, busying himself again by covering up the canvas of the lovers.

“Thank you for showing me the picture,” I say. “The lovers are an inspiration. With or without clothes.”

He smiles. “Good night, my dear.”

“Good night…Father.” I hug him hard, which generates an embarrassed chuckle.

“Well, well, Janey girl. It’s heaven to have you back.”

W hen I go up to my room, I wonder how different my life might have been if I’d had a father like Mr. M instead of the sorry excuse for a dad whose face I can hardly remember. Or how different Mr. M’s life would have been had he married this Miss Allcott, someone who loved him as only a woman in love could make the spindly Mr. M look like a hero from a novel.

But life doesn’t usually have happily ever afters. Mr. M is stuck with Mrs. M, just like my mother is stuck with the boyfriend she’ll never leave for fear of dying alone, and just like I was almost stuck with Frank for fear of never getting married.

But I’m not stuck with Frank now, so why should I even think of myself in such terms? Besides, not getting married couldn’t possibly be a worse fate than having Frank for a husband. In fact, in some circumstances not getting married might not be so bad at all. For example, if Mr. M were a widower, sharing his house might not be so bad for an unmarried daughter.

Still, things change. Say his unmarried daughter got married after all. And he got lonely. What if Miss Allcott’s husband were dead?

I laugh when I realize I am fantasizing about the deaths of two people, which seems to be the only option in this world for getting out of a lousy marriage. Better to stay single than to venture into that territory.

I wonder what kind of marriage Edgeworth had. I suppose it couldn’t have been too bad; why else would he be willing to do it again? Then again, his wife could have been a humorless priss. That would be a sorry fate indeed for someone with Edgeworth’s sense of the ridiculous. I smile, thinking of his having made a similar comment about the lovers painting.

No, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s not to be trusted.

But are you not tempted to hear the accused testify before pronouncing your final sentence?

Of course I am.

No. I am not. I will not be tempted by him, or by Wes. One thing I must say on Frank’s behalf. He never even tried to explain himself. After all, there’s no denying one’s nature.

Thirty-six

A t breakfast the next morning, I am sipping my hot chocolate while Mr. Mansfield demolishes a stack of toast. Suddenly he looks like he’s just bitten into a rock and puts down a half-eaten slice.

“I almost forgot. Your mother decided to return in three weeks instead of the six she had planned.”

“Ah.” And thus ends my career as an old maid living in happy contentment with her single father.

Mr. M puts down his napkin and leaves the table, mumbling something about going into his atelier.

As for me, I intend not to waste a single hour of freedom from Mrs. M. Today I’ll start by rereading a few chapters of her first edition of Sense and Sensibility and maybe taking a stroll.

When I pull all three volumes from their shelf in the library (where I only just returned them after their travels with me to Bath and London), I notice the third volume has a bookmark in it; for some reason I hadn’t noticed that before, probably placed my own slip of ribbon right over it when I got to that page. Randomly placed? Or did Mrs. M stop reading at a certain point?

I open the book to see, and get sucked right in. It’s the part where Willoughby, having heard that Marianne is dying, shows up to seek forgiveness.

I remember the first time I read that chapter; I actually felt a little sorry for Willoughby. But the second time I read it was right after a breakup, and I changed my tune. Thereafter I would always get a bit irritated that Elinor was such a pushover for Willoughby’s sufferings, despite her attempts to remain unmoved. Is his pain supposed to eclipse the fact that he abandoned Marianne’s predecessor after knocking her up, then dumped Marianne for an ice princess with a fat checkbook?

Is Wes’s pain supposed to eclipse the fact that his alibi made it possible for Frank to cheat on me? Would I be as seduced by his sufferings—if I ever returned his phone calls—as Elinor is by Willoughby’s? Of course I would. Which is why I had to shut him out—why I’ll still have to shut him out; that is, if I ever get a chance to do so.

Maybe I should start the book from the beginning and skip that scene when I get up to it. Who am I kidding? As if I’d ever skip any scene that Jane Austen wrote.

I pick up the first volume and take it up to my room, ready to settle in for a couple of hours of reading. But first, I’ll get that knitted blanket from the bottom of my armoire and prop up my feet. That’ll be nice and cozy.

I go to pull out the blanket, but it appears to be caught on something in the back of the armoire. I tug a little harder, and out comes the blanket, as well as the bottom panel of my armoire, which reveals the top of a rectangular compartment I’ve never seen before. But why would I; there’s no apparent handle or groove for one’s finger. In fact, I suppose if it weren’t for Mrs. M tearing everything out of my armoire, which must have jarred the lid of the compartment enough to catch the knitted fabric of the blanket when I put everything back, I never would have discovered it myself.

Could this be where—I peer into the compartment, and sure enough, there are packets of letters tied with ribbon, several journals, and a book whose leather covers with gold-tooled edges give me a jolt of recognition. The book is impossibly familiar, but how could it be? Yet I know I have held it in my hands before. Many times. The title page reads, Poems by William Cowper and the date, 1806.

The book is place-marked with several strips of paper and lengths of ribbon. I open to one of the places marked with paper. There are a few lines underlined in a poem called “Mutual Forbearance, Necessary to the Happiness of the Married State”:

The kindest and the happiest pair

Will find occasion to forbear;

And something, every day they live,

To pity, and perhaps forgive.

This is what Edgeworth said to me at the ball. I turn over the strip of paper, and penned in tiny letters are the words Whatever I have done, I beg you take pity and forgive—C.E.

I open to another page marked with a ribbon. Underlined is a passage from “The Progress of Error”:

Remorse, the fatal egg by pleasure laid

In every bosom where her nest is made,

Hatched by the beams of truth, denies him rest,

And proves a raging scorpion in his breast.

Is this in response to the first passage I read? Did I even read them in the proper order?

And all at once I know that this is a conversation in passages, the book passed back and forth between Edgeworth and Jane, each underlining passages for the other, hers marked with ribbon, his with paper.

There are more than just strips of paper marking Edgeworth’s underlined passages; there are larger folded sheets tucked in here and there. I pull out one at random, and in Edgeworth’s spidery handwriting is a passage he attributes to Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel”:

True love’s the gift which God has given

To man alone beneath the heaven.

It is not Fantasy’s hot fire,

Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;

It liveth not in fierce desire,

With dead desire it doth not die;

It is the secret sympathy,

The silver cord, the silken tie,

Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,

In body and in soul can bind.

I reread the same three passages over and over, and each time I see myself in the one marked by ribbon. Each time it is less as if someone else had marked it. And I know that remorse—the beams of truth that deny me rest—is a confession, not an accusation.

There is a quick rap at the door. I shove the book into the recess in the armoire, and Mr. M pops his head in to tell me he will be out for a couple of hours. I stand up and stretch—I need some air before I can examine whatever else is in that book. And then there are the journals, the packets of letters. I have days of reading ahead of me. Now that I’ve finally discovered Jane’s writings, it is almost too much to face. I need to walk first.

Closing everything up securely in the compartment, I go down to the library and open the French doors to the garden, and the mild warmth and blue skies are irresistible.

I literally have one foot out the door when Barnes appears at the entrance to the library and announces Edgeworth.

My stomach goes into freefall. I’m not ready for this. I could tell Barnes to say I’m not here, but before I complete the thought I hear myself say, “Send him in.”

I have half a second to prepare myself before he appears at the library door, his face flushed and the ends of his hair slightly damp, as if he’s been running, or swimming. His eyes are questioning, and my knees turn to water.

“Would you like to sit?” I say, wobbling into the nearest chair myself.

Edgeworth perches on the edge of a sofa and fidgets. He opens his mouth to speak, which is the exact second that I do the same.

“I—”

“Please.”

“No, you first,” we say in unison.

A pause, and then we both stammer out a syllable at the same moment. We both stop cold, and at the exact moment start laughing.

“One thing you could say in favor of such a conversation,” Edgeworth says, “we will never have occasion for conflict.”

I sober. “You don’t need language to have conflict.”

He’s not smiling anymore.

I clear my throat. “I was just about to take a walk.”

“Shall I leave or—may I join you?”

I nod, and we leave the library through the French doors. I am hyperaware of his proximity to me, vigilant about not brushing against his shoulder, even though he is at least four inches to my right.

We enter a grove of trees, and he breaks the silence. “I have a lot to say to you.”

A chill rushes up my back. That’s exactly what Wes said to me when I ran into him on that last day of my old life.

All of a sudden I’m trembling. Edgeworth doesn’t seem to notice. He does stop walking, however, which is good. I cannot possibly walk this rigidly and hold a conversation at the same time. I lean against a tree trunk.

He points toward a bench. Not, thankfully, the same one where he proposed to me. “Shall we sit?”

This is an even better way to camouflage the shaking of my knees. What’s wrong with me?

He keeps a comfortable distance from me on the other end of the bench, looking down at his hands before he finally raises his soft hazel eyes and says, “I know what Mary told you about me.”

My stomach drops.

His eyes bore into me. “I want you to know what happened.”

“All right, then.” And I look him in the eye right back, affecting a bravado that I don’t feel.

But he doesn’t speak right away; he drops his gaze and moves off the bench, breaking off a twig from the tree above us and stripping its leaves. “Mary did see me kissing a lady who was in my service. It was wrong, but it happened only once. A kiss, nothing more.”

He drops the naked twig on the ground and looks at me. I keep my face as expressionless as I can.

He clears his throat and flushes a deep red. “Not that I was not tempted, willing as the lady was, and unattached as I was then. You see, I had not yet met you.”

He thrusts his hands into his pockets and looks down at his boots. “Mary would not speak to me of what she saw. When next she mentioned the lady’s name, it was to accuse me of fathering her child. Which I most certainly did not do.”

He sits on the edge of the bench again and looks me in the eye. “Now you know everything.”

I stand, drawing myself up to my full height, which is pretty tall in this body. “You know what’s most astonishing? You actually look like you believe what you’re saying.”

“I do not understand,” he says, springing to his feet.

“Why don’t I spell it out for you then. Jane—I mean I—saw you coming out of the stables followed by a woman with auburn hair. And that was after you had met her; I mean, me.”

His face pales, and he swallows hard. “Dear God.” He buries his face in his hands.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Stupid, stupid. How could I be so stupid?” He thumps his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“Spare me the mea culpas.” I stalk off toward the house.

Within seconds I hear the crunch of his rapid stride on the gravel path close behind me. “Jane.”

He catches up alongside me. I keep my eyes trained straight ahead. In a couple of minutes I’ll reach the house.

He grabs my hand and pulls me to a stop, stands in front of me to block my path. “Jane, nothing happened. I swear to you. She wanted my advice, and I agreed to meet with her. I could not do so in the house, for I did not wish to…I had no idea if others in my household had the same mistaken notion of my role in the young lady’s situation as my sister did.”

If this is a lie, he’s a fast thinker.

“She said she trusted me because I did not take what she had so freely offered. I urged her to tell me who the father was, but she would not. And so I added to the sum already promised her by my sister. What more could I have done?”

His eyes are imploring. He looks sincere. No, I’m not going to fall for it. “You sure looked like you did a lot more than that,” I say, remembering the straw in his hair and the way the woman reached for him. But my words sound hollow even to my own ears.

What is stopping me from believing him? What am I holding on to? Fear? Guilt? Shame creeps over me as I remember how I ran into James’s arms the second I doubted Edgeworth. And how I almost lost my virginity to Emery, a calculating, and by all appearances, experienced seducer.

I ran into James’s arms? My virginity? I’m starting to get dizzy.

Edgeworth’s voice brings me back. “I won’t deny the lady, shall I say, attempted to express her gratitude in a manner I did not encourage.”

He puts his hand on my arm, but I shrug out of his grasp. Why did I do that?

“Jane.” His voice is breaking.

I look up into his face, which is almost as pale as his shirt. A tear is running down his cheek.

“Not only would it be dishonorable to accept remuneration of any kind for my charity toward this lady, but I had also already met, and fallen in love, with you.”

“But I thought—”

Edgeworth flings out his arms. “You’re not listening to me.”

He grabs my shoulders. “Don’t you understand? There is no one else.”

He pulls me close, wrapping his arms around me. And my whole body relaxes its grip on all the anger, all the bitterness, all the fear I’ve been holding onto for so long. I’m so light I could float. I don’t even think I’m resting my weight on my own feet. And then his lips graze my neck, leaving a trail of tiny featherlight kisses as he works his way up to my mouth, and I hold his face between my hands and kiss him back, drinking in the taste of him, the warm-linen-and-soap scent of his skin that is so inexplicably familiar, yet so new and unexplored.

He kisses me harder, and for a second his glasses knock into my cheek. I want to laugh, but instead I put my arms around his waist and feel the muscles of his back through the thin material of his T-shirt. I marvel at the newness of him, the way the ridges of his spine feel against my fingertips and the softness of his lips against mine. How can I be kissing Wes, my friend Wes, my ex-friend Wes, the best friend of my ex-lover? How can it be that I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone?

But this isn’t Wes. I open my eyes, and Edgeworth is stroking my cheek with his hand, his hazel eyes glowing. I want to ask him what is happening to me but he finds my mouth again with his and I close my eyes, and I feel little kisses on my eyelids, and I touch his coat and it’s Edgeworth’s coat.

And in my ear is a whisper, and it’s Wes’s voice. “I love you, Courtney. I’ve always loved you.”

I hold him tighter and Edgeworth says, “I love you, Jane. I’ve always loved you.”

I pull away, the flesh rising on my arms.

The look on Edgeworth’s face is so tender, so like Wes’s face, that I can hardly breathe.

“I want to marry you,” he says.

“On your terms, Jane. With all the freedom you want.”

He kisses me again, and my whole body aches for him. His scent, the touch of his lips, the feel of his chest as he crushes me against him. So exciting, yet so familiar. Those words roll through my mind, over and over like a mantra. So exciting, yet so familiar.