A Walk with Jane Austen (11 page)

I felt soft and light as I left Oxford the next afternoon. The whole world was beautiful, or my mind was just in a state to see beauty everywhere, like poet James Wright said: “If I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.”
¹
The sun shone on the trees and on the vines that grew over the train tracks, and four trains—first to Reading, then to Ash, Aldershot, and Alton—took me from commercial Oxford into the hills and wheat fields of the green countryside. I was thrilled to be on my own—gloriously alone—me and my sixty pounds of luggage and my rail pass.

My mind was full of goodness, of a tremendous confidence I cannot articulate—of Jacks regard, of my respect for him and his worthiness of it. I am sure I love him, though I'm afraid of using that word. I've never felt so sure of anything in my life. I'm not so silly as to begin to speculate about exactly what it will mean, though I wonder what
form it will take, how long it will take to meander through casual dinners to beach trips with friends and holidays with family, to its perhaps inevitable conclusion.

When you deal with regular insomnia and fatigue, you reach a point at which your sleeping and waking selves are very much alike. The main differences being that when you are “sleeping” your eyes are closed, and when you are “awake” you are ever so slightly more coherent. Such was my state of being this morning. On these days, I have trouble eating anything, and a flight of stairs can seem insurmountable. I find myself in a kind of stupor where time acts out of character—I may be doing nothing but daydreaming or looking at a book without actually comprehending words or shutting my eyes to pretend to rest, and hours pass in the space of what should be fifteen minutes.

Jack's small words had been incredibly kind that last day in Oxford. He wished me good morning—such a small thing—more than once, with so much energy and attention, with such a kind look that if you saw it, you would forgive me for feeling it to be significant. There's a way couples talk to each other, and Jack started talking to me, looking at me, that particular way. To be so far at the end of myself and to be met with this affection made me feel warm and loved.

But I knew (and felt rather spitefully) the insecurity of all the looks and all the
good mornings.
There was still the girl in North Carolina. We were still officially just hanging out, whatever that meant. I knew there was nothing solid to back up all of these small goodnesses, and so I did not always reply in kind.

I'm afraid at times I gave him little meannesses in return.

Generally though, I was guarded, attempting to be stalwart Elinor and not betray the depth of my feelings. We sat drinking tea at a patisserie on our way downtown to meet Spencer for lunch, and I told Jack that he and my roommate would probably have a lot in common in a teasing way that could have implied I'd like to set them up. I was almost daring him to say something, to tell me with words what his actions and looks had been saying all week. He was not entirely functional this morning either, but he didn't slip. He said nothing substantial, nothing to give me false hope.

When we were alone close to St. Mary's, he looked at me and said, “Well, it's been great hanging out with you this week.”

So than it
,I thought and then said, with far less warmth than I felt and with a chilled heart, “Yeah, it's been great.”

When it came time to actually say good-bye, I left them both on a little overgrown road outside of Oxford, in front of the place they would stay overnight tonight before heading out tomorrow. Spencer kissed me warmly on the cheek and gave me a close hug, talking about how wonderful the week was and how we would definitely have to get together when we got home and how I must meet his fiancée. And then he made himself scarce—getting his luggage out of the cab, I think—and I turned and saw Jack leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.

His bending down to meet me was so rare for this week of falling into something like love that it startled me, in the best way. We barely touched all week, Jack and I, but I remember him putting his hand on my back once, making sure I made it across the street, and our legs touched briefly by accident as we sat listening to Baroque music in the corner of candlelit Exeter College Chapel. But that's it.

So for a moment I felt lost in him, in this simple closeness. I threw my arms around him and buried my face in his neck and kissed him just there, wherever my lips happened to be, awkwardly and spontaneously. My heart danced. My tongue was stilted as usual. I couldn't say even half of what I'd said to Spencer in genuine friendship. Jack didn't do much better. He told me we'd get together when I got home and, as I went away, called out something about not working too hard.

There is one particular scene in the BBC version of
Pride and Prejudice
that may be my favorite. I sometimes have to go back and watch it again, even though nothing happens. Elizabeth is at the piano, helping Georgiana, and Darcy—Colin Firth—just gazes at Elizabeth for a moment, with complete adoration. That's it. One moment, the best possible look on his face. I never thought to be looked at that way. I mean, it's a movie after all and a Jane Austen movie at that. How many guys just sit back and give a girl adoring glances like they are wholly entranced—in a way that's more than just wanting to get her into bed?

But when I left, Jack had the best look in his eyes—like he couldn't smile enough so it was coming out everywhere else. It was more than happiness. For those few moments I was adored, and the feeling was so strong as to be tangible, sending me off with the confidence of something I didn't dare put into words.

And then I was alone with this great goodness, this thing that no one around me would ever guess.

My welcome to Hampshire was soft and quiet—the dusky air, the green trees overarching the stone buildings of Alton Abbey. There are
many kinds of love, and what I needed most now was not captivating and energetic romance, but the quiet kindness of hospitality, which I found here in abundance. (It was just as well, this being my state of mind, that I was staying in a monastery, where they were well-equipped to lavish me with the one and could never begin to approach the other.) My elation and certainty waned; my exhaustion began to take over.

My cab pulled into the parking lot at exactly the wrong time, around ten to eight. (“Right. Jane Austen. So you're American, yeah? Always the Americans and the Japanese too, tourists, coming to see Jane Austen stuff. Don't understand it myself”) The brothers were in the chapel praying or meeting. Dom Nicholas, the guest master, heard my car and came to meet me, slightly bent, feet moving fast beneath his ankle-length black robes.

“Mrs. Smith,” he called me. I guessed he might be somewhere between sixty and seventy, though which end of that I am not sure, with whitening hair and softening skin. He was about six feet tall, on the thin side, and carried my terribly heavy bag up the stairs before treating me to a half-whispered tour with his Irish lilt.

My room spoke of solace: terribly clean, a worn parquet floor, two twin beds with duvets, a large window overlooking the wide lawn and rose garden. The monks’ quarters were down the hall, behind a closed door.

The abbey itself is big and meandering. It's what you would expect: simple but lovely, with a beauty in spite of its more functional practicality. It must feel small to the six or eight men who live here—the abbot has been here forty years. Still, it took me awhile to get my bearings. The hall and wide stairway outside my room have windows looking out on a central stone courtyard, with benches and water plants and a fountain. Downstairs there's a huge great room, with five or six couches,
bookshelves, and old-fashioned bay windows looking onto the garden. Next door in the dining room, our meals would be taken in silence. Around the corner and down a hall is the entrance to the church, which forms one side of the seemingly square structure.

I feared that I would inevitably do something to offend the monks. Their goal is to welcome all as they would welcome Christ, and I knew I was welcome, yet they live by a strict code with which I'm largely unfamiliar (aside from my reading Kathleen Norriss
The Cloister Walk).
I wonder how often they experience a tension between their Benedictine way and their ignorant guests.

Dom Nicholas showed me the bathroom down the hall, still in an earnest whisper, charging me to remember to leave the rubber shower mat out to dry on the edge of the tub, rather than on the heater where it would melt. He graciously brought me three towels since my own was dirty and asked several times to make sure I had soap.

I joined them in the church for night prayer. These are sort of formal dances of prayers—psalms read responsively, almost chanted, in a strong monotone, a few simple melodies with no accompaniment. I was raised not with this but with the most casual kind of verbal freestyle with God, which I still use. I've grown to love the more formal prayers because they often remind me of things I cannot remember myself, a strong rope of what perhaps in some cases may become rote, but to me helps bind my heart and my faith when I don't have words of my own, when I can't entirely remember exactly what I believe. I feel tied by them to generations of Christians who prayed the same words, thought the same things, had the same doubts.

Three English women were also staying at the monastery on retreat, so the four of us sat in the first row. The prayers brought me a sense of
great peace and comfort, and I felt like I had met with not only clean towels and a shower mat that must not melt, but with the hospitality of God. I was welcome here. They welcomed me as Jesus would welcome me, and Jesus would never turn me away. We sang a hymn as the day closed and the sky darkened, and then the monks filed out, raising the hoods of their robes. They would not talk to anyone until morning.

The other guests—Susan, Lane, and Catherine—invited me to join them for a cup of tea, but what I wanted more than anything else was to be alone. So at the end of the day I sat in the narrow ceramic tub, full of the sense of peace, feeling as though I had entered the silence, though sure to put the shower mat back in its proper place.