Cassandra's Sister (21 page)

She knew that the people she met dismissed “Miss Austen” – neither pretty nor plain, accompanied by a sharp-eyed mother and an indulgent father – as yet another husband-hungry girl. But they did not, to her unutterable satisfaction, know that Miss Austen went back to her uncle's house every night and wrote by candlelight.

Catherine
was taking shape very satisfactorily. Catherine Morland, as she had decided to name the heroine, was seventeen years old when the story began. From the instant Martha had observed that Jane herself had visited Bath for the first time at that age, the character had begun to create itself. Jane had merely to bundle up the many pleasant but undoubtedly “girlish” girls she knew, and tie up the bundle with Catherine Morland's particular traits: hair that would not curl without papers, a face described by Mr Morland as “almost pretty”, and a keen interest in reading dramatic poetry as well as novels of unstinting horror.

Bath society fulfilled all Jane's expectations of satirical opportunities. She set down its whims and foibles, its wit and lack of it, its wigs and snuffboxes and feathers and fans. She took Catherine Morland shopping the length of Milsom Street. She took her to the theatre, the concert-hall, the Assembly Rooms and the “watering-places”, introducing her to the people who would provide the story. A young man, of course, and another rival young man, and a lively girl designed to make Catherine feel her own social shortcomings. Then she took her to stay at an ancient abbey, exactly like the heroines of a dozen novels whose chief intention was to terrify the reader. But instead of Catherine's bravery being tested by supernatural events at Northanger Abbey, her expectations were confounded by the very ordinariness of the place.

Jane was lost in writing. Sometimes, just before they ventured out in the morning, her mother would catch her turning this way and that before the looking-glass. She would accuse her, approvingly, of learning the insufferably vain ways of Bath ladies. Jane, however, would not have been admiring her reflection at all, but weighing up possibilities in her imagination. Did Catherine wear her bonnet bow in the centre, like Jane herself, or to the side? Would Catherine have a silk parasol for daywear, or only in the evening? Would she accept an invitation to go for a carriage-ride with a young man, chaperoned, of course, or would she be too shy? The character had ceased to be merely a means for creating a comic story. Like Marianne and Elizabeth before her, Catherine had entered Jane's profound, secret self.

Upon their arrival home from Bath, Cass was also back at Steventon, Elizabeth having been safely delivered of another boy. When everyday life had settled around Jane again, she showed the half-written manuscript to her sister.

“Why, Jane, how busy you have been!” exclaimed Cass. “And yet you wrote nothing last summer in Kent. I was convinced that even after I had my coloured dresses made you were not going to adhere to your side of our bargain.”

“I could not think of anything to write,” confessed Jane. She paused, decided to add something, changed her mind, then said it anyway. “To own the truth, Cass, the rejection from Cadells was hard to bear. I wondered for a while if the publishing business is too intimidating for a mere rector's daughter to enter. But when I came back to Steventon the writing-desk – and the chair with that cushion you made for it, and Edward's old pen-wipers, and all my own things – seemed to speak to me, and tell me to start something new. I had the idea of looking over some old manuscripts, and found
Lady Catherine
. Do you remember it?”

“I do indeed!” laughed Cass. “A great deal befell that poor young lady in a few pages, if I am not mistaken. Have you changed it much?”

“I have used nothing except the name,” admitted Jane, “and she has lost her title. She is plain Catherine Morland now, one of a large family like ours, but otherwise, I think, not much like us. She is too much influenced by sensational novels, which neither of us would ever admit to being, of course.”

Cass's eyes scanned the first page. They began to shine. “Oh, Jane! Your writing improves with everything I read.”

Jane did not reply, though she felt grateful for this response from her sister, never her most severe critic, but not an indulgent one either.

“I adore Catherine already,” declared Cass, reading on. “If she considers herself ‘in training for a heroine' – how sweet! – then I have every confidence she will prove delightful. How artless and eager for life she is! She almost makes me wish to be seventeen again myself.”

“This is only half of the first draft,” protested Jane. Her heartbeat had quickened. She had written that first short chapter on a rainy night in Bath, when everyone else had gone to the theatre and she had pleaded a sore throat. It had taken perhaps an hour to write, another hour to revise. And here was Cass reading part of it aloud, and praising it as any newspaper critic might praise a new writer's work. “I must admire your perception, Cass,” she continued. “Catherine is exactly as you say, artless and eager.”

“It is not my
perception
that has made her so,” said Cass in exasperation, “it is your
talent
.”

Jane smiled her pleasure. “Thank you, dearest. I shall soon finish it, and then it will need some revision, but perhaps I can present it to Papa in a few months, and see what he thinks.”

“Any simpleton can predict what he will think.”

By the time the autumn arrived,
Catherine
was finished. It lay in the drawer, much crossed and blotted, during the last months of 1799. Dramatic news from Europe had made its way to Steventon: Admiral Nelson's rout of the French navy at the Battle of the Nile had lifted everyone's spirits, but Bonaparte, undeterred, had now seized power, and become the ruler of France. Often during that chilly, blustery season, Jane and Cassandra put on their capes and muffs and walked in the lanes around Steventon, sometimes visiting parishioners but more likely merely passing the time together.

Passing the time. Jane imagined the nineteenth century as a stony path twisting to an invisible horizon. Would she and Cass still be walking between these hedges in ten, twenty, thirty years time, leaning on each other for physical, as well as moral, support?

“Papa says the true start of the nineteenth century is not until January eighteen hundred and
one
,” Cassandra observed on the way home from church one wet Sunday. “He says eighteen hundred is actually the last year of the eighteenth century, which logic decrees is correct, you know.”

“Logic never yet made any impression upon public perception,” replied Jane, stepping round a puddle. “The world wishes eighteen hundred to be the start of the new century, and the world shall have its way.”

“True,” sighed Cassandra.

“But you know, Cass, I do find myself wondering, at this special time, what the future holds.”

“God has made His plans already, and His servants must accept them,” mused Cass. “Frank and Charles are still away, and Papa and Mama are becoming older. Did you notice last evening that Mama could not read the newspaper even with her spectacles on? And Papa is forever falling asleep in the middle of sentences.”

“His habit is to sit too near the fire,” said Jane. “The heat makes him soporific. But at least since the school closed he no longer has to employ his energies in teaching.”

“Do you miss the boys?” Cassandra asked unexpectedly.

Jane thought. “I confess I do not miss the extra work they made; but the advantage of the boys was that their families became known to us. Our circle of acquaintance has shrunk since they left.”

Cassandra was silent for a long time. Jane, with a stab of embarrassment, wished her words unsaid. Cass had met Tom Fowle because he had been one of Papa's pupils, as had all his brothers. The Fowles had heard of the school in the first place because they were related to Mrs Lloyd's late husband, and in those days the Lloyds had lived close by at Deane. A circle of acquaintance was exactly that: connected, reliable, satisfyingly logical.

“I miss them, every one,” murmured Cass at last.

Jane took her sister's elbow to guide her to the edge of the flooded lane. “Hold up your hem, dearest, or Kitty shall have to dry and brush our clothes.”

“She shall be attending to Mama's without doubt,” Cass declared, indicating their mother, who walked ahead of them, allowing her cloak and skirt to trail in the muddy water. “But she is used to it, thank the Lord.”

Papa was excited about the passing of the old century and the birth of the new one. He planned special New Year celebrations and a thanksgiving service at Steventon Church.

“What exactly are we giving thanks for?” asked Henry, who had arrived one afternoon with the news that he had left the militia and was about to embark on a financial career in the City of London.

“We are giving thanks for my long and happy life as vicar of this parish,” explained Papa. “I am not far off seventy years old, Henry, and as my parishioners insist this is the turn of the century, it seems an appropriate occasion on which to reflect on years past and years to come.”

Jane was sitting in the inglenook sewing a nightgown for Mary's little James-Edward. Her stitches were fine, but sewing strained her eyes. She put down her work and joined the conversation. “Shall you bring Eliza for Christmas, Henry? We have not seen her for a long time.”

“Sadly, no,” replied Henry. “We have a long-standing invitation to visit her friends in the north country.”

“Do they wish to inspect her husband, in case he is unsuitable?”

“If he were, there is little they could do, two years after the wedding,” observed Henry. He gave Jane one of his bright-eyed looks, which always reminded her why he was her favourite brother, and why Eliza had preferred him to James.

“I am persuaded you will charm them, Henry, as you charm everybody,” she said. “Now, tell me, how do you get on in the City?”

“Tolerably.”

“Do you go out to business every day, in a black coat and hat, carrying your papers in a leather case like an attorney? I should like to see it.”

“No, I do not,” he told her solemnly, his eyes still bright. “My associates and I meet whenever it is necessary, to discuss our affairs and contract business. And I have been known to wear striped breeches in the City as, indeed, anywhere else.”

Papa leaned forward in his chair, amused. “Striped breeches? And a silk cravat?”

“Exactly so, sir. I leave the wearing of sober attire to my brother James, who was ever more serious than I.”

Jane's birthday passed like the previous one, in cold weather and with all her brothers away from home. The only difference was that Cass was “being with” Elizabeth at Godmersham in the expectation of another confinement, and Jane had to dress her own chilblains and brush her own hems. It was always cold in the Rectory, but that winter seemed colder than ever, and lonely. No schoolboys, no brothers, no Cass. Martha was too far away, at Ibthorpe, for daily visits. Most heavy upon Jane's heart, though, lay the conviction that when Tom Lefroy had returned to Ireland he had taken her future with him.

She tried scolding herself, accusing herself bitterly of over-exaggeration, self-regard, self-pity. But it did not work. If another man should ever love her enough to propose, and if she should ever love him enough – as much as Elizabeth loved Darcy – it would be a miracle. And then she would scold herself for her nonsensical habit of pretending her characters were real, and idealizing love between a man and a woman who had never actually existed. But where was Tom now, and did he ever think of her?

Mama seemed distracted, running from one place to another and changing her orders, exasperating Mrs Travers and Jane as well as the long-suffering Kitty. Visitors came and went: Madam Lefroy, slower on her legs now, with one or both of her sons; Alethea and Catherine, with or without their parents.

Martha, who was visiting her sister at Deane that November, appeared on her last morning at Steventon with Anna at her side and her little nephew James-Edward in her arms, ready to have Grandmama admire his two new teeth and indulge her grandchildren with bonbons and Christmas fruits.

Martha, meanwhile, insisted upon helping to add to the pile of baby clothes. “Your stitches are smaller than mine, Jane,” she said, “but I am far better at smocking, so give me that pitiful piece you are working on. Here, you can hem this feeding-bib.”

They sat in the upstairs sitting-room, listening to Anna's chatter and Papa's laughter through the floorboards. Jane's dread of encroaching solitude began to disperse; Martha's friendship, always welcome, seemed more invaluable now than ever before.

“Why not come back to Ibthorpe with me tomorrow?” Martha suggested. She tugged at the row of smocking, holding it up to the light. She did not look at Jane. “Mama will not mind, she loves you. Your company will enliven our quiet Christmas greatly.”

Jane was sorely tempted to go to Ibthorpe and not come back until after Christmas, which would be equally as quiet at Steventon. She envied Cass, surrounded by children at Godmersham. Why could not Christmas be like it was when they were all at home, and had acted plays and taken provisions through the snow to the villagers?

“Martha, visiting Ibthorpe is exactly what I want to do, though I cannot stay for Christmas. Papa and Mama will expect me here.”

“Then stay until just before. I shall put it to your parents before I go back to Deane this evening. We shall have so much opportunity to talk, and you know I always love to hear about everything you are writing.”

“Dear Martha.” Jane put out her hand and grasped her friend's. “Your intuition is so extraordinary. I believe you should go on the stage as a mind-reader, and I will join you as the accomplice who pretends to be a member of the audience. We could run away to London and make our fortunes.”