For Myself Alone: A Jane Austen Inspired Novel
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Authors: Shannon Winslow
For Myself Alone
A Jane Austen Inspired Novel
By Shannon Winslow
A Heather Ridge Arts Publication
Kindle Edition
Copyright Shannon Winslow 2012
All Right Reserved
Except for brief quotations, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real people, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
For My Dear Parents
Harold & Doris
Soli Deo Gloria
Preface
Like many of you, presumably, I adore the work of Jane Austen. Her subtle stories of love triumphant and her witty, elegant prose suit my taste exactly. They have influenced my own writing more than anything else.
When I began this novel, my goal was to create, not a sequel or tie-in this time, but a new story – one I imagined Miss Austen might have written next. I didn’t have in mind any direct reference to her work, only a nod to her style.
With her words so deeply entrenched in my mind, however, I often found myself thinking of and alluding to various passages from her books as I went along.
Rather than fight the temptation to borrow some of her expertly turned phrases, I decided to go with it. After all, I couldn’t hope to improve upon the master. So, if you are a Jane Austen aficionado, you will no doubt recognize a quoted line here and there (a list of which you will find in the appendix). I had a wonderful time tucking these little jewels in between the pages. Hopefully you will find just as much fun discovering them as you read. I trust you will accept this as I intend it – as a tribute to Jane and to her fans. Enjoy!
Respectfully,
Shannon Winslow
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.
– Jane Austen
Table of Contents
Part Two
Through the first two decades of her existence, Josephine Walker led a singularly uneventful and ordinary life that gave little hint of what was to come. She had done nothing in that period to significantly distinguish herself from her contemporaries by way of either excessively good or prodigiously bad behavior. So it was, therefore, a matter of considerable surprise to those who best knew her when, at the promising age of one-and-twenty, she became the concentrated focus of so much local speculation and gossip.
The inhabitants of a place so unaccustomed to serious scandal could not reasonably be expected to ignore an exceptional bit of news when it came their way. Tongues wagged tirelessly as accounts of “the trouble in Bath” made the rounds. Where or how it began not one of the residents of Wallerton, in Hampshire, could testify with any security. What is not in dispute, however, is that Mrs. Oddbody was overheard dishing out a fine portion of the story to her neighbor in the street one day.
“My dear Mrs. Givens, have you heard about Miss Walker? She is just returned from Bath, you know, and in quite a state of agitation. There is big trouble brewing with that young man of hers; depend upon it. I expect it is the corrupt atmosphere that worked the mischief. The things that go on in that town… Well, let me tell you, it is quite shocking! I daresay many a respectable young woman has lost her character in that heathen place.”
Mrs. Givens, being of an unselfish nature, shared the somewhat-altered morsel with her husband. “Miss Walker has completely lost her character, Mr. Givens. I have just had it from Mrs. Oddbody, a most reliable source. Evidently, she began cavorting with a very unsavory element in town, keeping company with some strange man. Now she has brought a great calamity down upon her head.”
Mr. Givens, in turn, generously passed the tidbit on to his brother-in-law Mr. Pigeon, adding his own considered opinion to the report. “It will lead to legal action, I shouldn’t wonder. It shows a careless disregard for the credit of her family to involve herself with a man of obscurity. Then, as they say, ‘The apple does not fall far from the tree.’ Was there not rumor of some trouble of that kind with the mother years ago?”
Mr. Pigeon recapitulated the account to his wife. “They say the mother is to blame. But mark my words, Agatha, it is the money at the heart of the matter,” he concluded with irrefutable sagacity. “By heaven! A woman should never be trusted with money. No doubt it has completely gone to her head. She would have done much better never to have been given it in the first place. Bad judgment on the part of the uncle; bad judgment indeed.”
“Unfortunate as the event may be,” summarized Mrs. Pigeon for her brood of three fledgling girls, “we may draw this useful lesson from Miss Walker’s plight. A lady cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the other sex. No matter who is to blame, it is the woman who gets the worst of it when things go wrong. We must take care that nothing of the kind will ever befall any of you, my pets.”
Miss Walker’s name was on everybody’s lips. The more her story was exaggerated and embellished by repetition, the better it suited the assorted purposes of those who told it. To the charitable, she became an object of pity; to the hard-hearted, a source of cruel diversion; and to every teacher of morality, an example conveniently close to hand. Various versions of the tale, containing various proportions of truth to fiction, spread throughout the village at lightening speed. No one could agree upon the particulars, but about one idea all opinions united. This misstep was sure to damage the lady’s standing in the community and be the ruination of her chances of ever making a respectable match.
Part One
Josephine Walker
I know that in the grand scheme of things the misadventures of one country girl amount to no more than a drop in the great watery deep. However, in the infinitely smaller scope of that particular young lady’s imagination, the very same drop may prove enough to thoroughly drench her. I am one such girl, just come in from a soaking rain.
With my hand still damp, metaphorically speaking, I take up my diary from its traditional resting spot on the bedside table. I stroke the pebbled surface of the embossed red leather binding and trace the name engraved on the cover in gilt lettering: Josephine Walker. The book was a present for my seventeenth birthday, a parting gift of sorts from my hapless governess. In it I have diligently documented, without embellishment, the meager fare of which my life has consisted for the four years since. Putting pen to paper always gives me comfort, although the stories I write for children are on the whole, I trust, far more entertaining than the entries in my diary.
Judging from the stillness of the house, even the last of the servants has retired. Only the great clock in the hall and a distant discontented dog keep me company through the watches of the night. The relief of sleep escapes me. My restless mind continues pacing to and fro, retracing the turbulent events of the past few weeks. How glad I am to be home at Fairfield again; vain was my wish to leave it in the first place. How much misery might I have been spared had I never gone to Bath? I craved adventure then. Now the peace of privacy and the company of my closest friends are all I yearn for.
By the flickering candlelight, I revisit a simpler past as set down in the foremost part of the volume in my hand. As I leaf through, my eye catches upon a date with a small star carefully drawn beside it. A significant day: my first grown-up ball, I remember, smiling. A dozen other entries of similar import are denoted by the same fanciful symbol, marking bits and pieces of my innocent youth.
As I continue turning forward in time, my diary falls open to the twenty-seventh day of April, the current year – a day which earned not just one star, but an entire constellation. With equal agitation of an entirely different sort, I likewise opened to a fresh page in my diary that night. I remember taking inordinate care writing the date, adorning the capital “A” with as many scrolls and flourishes as I could devise. I was in no hurry. At last I had something truly worth recording for posterity. Yet in my excitement, I hardly knew where to begin. Nothing in my past had prepared me for the circumstances in which I found myself.
I grew up here on our small estate on the outskirts of Wallerton, in Hampshire, and my childhood was in most ways quite unremarkable. Although, looking back, I must admit my conduct was often far from exemplary. Being more interested in playing cricket with my brothers than learning my music and French lessons, I daresay I gave my poor governess a very difficult time.
Nevertheless, to her great credit and my parents’ supreme relief, Miss Ainsworth somehow managed to equip me with all the basic skills society considers essential for a lady of my station. Thus, I can play and sing passably, hold my own in trite conversation, pour tea without disaster, and do every kind of needlework imaginable. Still, although the word is often very liberally applied, no discriminating person would be tempted to call me truly accomplished.
With my genteel education complete and a decent dowry laid by, I was deemed “finished” and ready to make my way in life. Yet, when I came out into society – my debut upon the larger world – the world was generally unimpressed. Oh, my height does give my figure a certain degree of elegance, and my hazel eyes are often complimented, but I believe the consensus at the time was that my looks did not much exceed the average. The young men of my acquaintance were apparently of the same opinion, since I noticed they withstood my modest beauty with remarkable ease.
Had I been born male, my agile mind might have been judged my most valuable asset. Though as it is, this particular quality has not always served me to advantage, especially in my relations with the opposite sex. To my dismay, I have discovered that most gentlemen do not wish their prowess in the intellectual realm challenged, especially by anyone female. I remember once reading that a woman, if she have the misfortune to know anything, should conceal it as well as she can. Perhaps I should have taken this advice to heart, for I believe my wit has proved a bit too sharp for some. Having once been cut by it, many a man has declined to be put at peril of it again.
Mr. Walter Summeride, a man of a more courageous constitution, did like me well enough to ask my father’s permission to pay his addresses earlier this year. He is doubtless a very good sort of man but, alas, entirely lacking the qualities most likely to engage a lady’s affection. Being little disposed to marry at the time, I was, therefore, unmoved by so slight a temptation. I found it impossible to return his regard, his discriminating taste and my father’s decided recommendation notwithstanding.
“I insist that you consider this proposal, Josephine,” Papa advised me on the occasion. “Marriage is your only honorable option, as you well know. Mr. Summeride would be a respectable match for you. A curate’s income is not large, to be sure, but he has excellent prospects for a better situation, what with your uncle taking such an interest in his career. And think how pleasant it would be to settle in Millwalk parish.”
He paused, staring down at me from his position of authority with a look of studied grimness. “You must take into account that, as a young lady of small fortune… and limited claims of any other sort… you have little reason to hope for anything better. The facts are these: you are now twenty years of age and have no other prospects in view. If you do not marry, you must go out as a governess or be a burden to your family the rest of your life.”
Before I could make my choice between the unhappy alternatives thus so eloquently laid before me – being Mrs. Summeride for all eternity or staring the ignominy of spinsterhood in the eye – fate intervened.
My dear uncle, my father’s elder brother, died suddenly. Apoplexy, the doctor said. On the twenty-seventh day of April, my family and I traveled to Millwalk, his country estate, gathering there with a dozen other people (including the amorous curate) to hear the contents of the will. In a solemn, steady voice, a bespectacled solicitor read out the smaller legacies – for the distant relations, the household’s perennial servants, and so forth – before moving on to the major bequests, the part which most concerned my family.
We took the news calmly enough when the man announced that my eldest brother Frederick had been given the estate proper. Next, he said Tom, my other brother, would receive the valuable living provided by the rectory. I smiled serenely. All this unfolded exactly as any competent observer would expect; since Mr. Joseph Walker died childless, his nephews were the obvious beneficiaries. But not one of us anticipated the will’s final entry:
“To my beloved niece and namesake, Josephine Walker, I hereby bequeath the sum of twenty thousand pounds, which is invested in the funds at five percent, and which shall be administered by her father, Mr. Harold Walker, until she reaches her majority – upon her twenty-first birthday or upon her marriage, whichever of these events should occur first.”
I am certain I must have gasped, and I remember it took a curious amount of self-control to keep my jaw from dropping slack in disbelief. I was suddenly made a woman of independent means! That my uncle should have remembered me with some mark of his affection came as no surprise. That he should have chosen such a generously pecuniary way of doing so astonished me exceedingly.
Which of the other competing emotions that next tumbled over me claimed the greater share, I truly cannot say. However, when I glanced across the room at the unappealing Mr. Summeride, I felt only profound relief.
