Cassandra's Sister (25 page)

She thought about Elizabeth Bigg, whose husband's untimely death had wrenched her from her happiness. She would not remarry, Jane suspected. Her boy, who at two years old had so much of his father's looks and ways it was almost distressing to see, would be the centre of her future existence. And at least she
had
him
. If she had never been married, she would never have been widowed, but neither would she have her son. There was no doubt, Jane reasoned, that in view of the unexpected dangers of the world, marrying Harris and having his children was the rational thing to do.

But Charlotte Lucas's justification for marrying Mr Collins was that it was rational. What Elizabeth Bennet recoiled from, Charlotte sacrificed herself to. In making her do this, Jane's intention was to show readers – if anyone was ever going to read
First Impressions
, which was not at all certain – that a rational marriage was not the same as a love-match.

She sat up suddenly. There was no denying it. Not only was a rational marriage not the same as a love-match, it was
inferior
. And she had known that even when she was twenty years old, when she created Charlotte Lucas.

She threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. The cold was intense. Reaching for her robe, she huddled in it, shivering and thinking.

If Charlotte Lucas was a realist, then Elizabeth Bennet was surely an
idealist
in her refusal to applaud Charlotte's decision. Jane had been on Elizabeth's side then. But by the age of twenty-seven, had she, Jane, not become a realist like Charlotte? And she was not even making the same sacrifice, since Harris Bigg was very far from being a Mr Collins. So why had the euphoria disappeared, and been replaced by this vast doubt which weighed on her, almost crushing her, as heavy as a stone?

It was almost morning. But it was midwinter; no gleam of dawn yet lit the room. Jane walked about, her slippers silent on the thick carpet, thinking, thinking…

What had she truly seen when Harris had looked at her? Had she seen what was actually there, or had she only seen what she hoped was there – the love she had mourned for seven years? Tom had secured his Irish heiress. But whoever he was married to, and however much he did or did not love his wife, he still belonged to Jane, and she to him. He still possessed her, even in memory, with a strength of feeling she could not summon for Harris or any other man. Tom's slight frame, his expressive eyes, his bony fingers and floppy hair, and his irrepressible air of joy had touched her heart with a power whose excitement she could not rid herself of, were she to try for the rest of her life.

She would have to admit the truth, first to herself then to the world. However suitable Harris was as a husband, and however tenderly he might love her, when he looked at her she saw another pair of eyes, lit by a force far greater than Harris's desire. Harris Bigg was not the man she loved. And she could not, as Cassandra had wisely declared, marry a man she did not love.

By the time the maid came in Jane had given up trying to sleep. The looking-glass showed her red-rimmed eyes. But she did not flinch from what she had to do. She waited until the household had begun to rise. Then she dressed and packed her remaining belongings for the journey. Tiptoeing downstairs, she sought out Elizabeth, who always brought her small son down to have breakfast with his grandparents, and, leaving him in their charge, walked in the loggia, reading prayers.

“Why, Jane, what is it?” she asked in astonishment. “Why are you dressed to depart? Where is Cass?”

“Elizabeth, help me,” pleaded Jane. “Please would you find Harris, and bring him to the library? I must speak to him.”

Elizabeth was wise enough not to pursue her questioning. She shut her book and departed, and Jane made her way dejectedly to the library, where she sat down on a studded leather chair, her bonnet in her hand. She did not want to stay in the house one more minute, but she could not leave without doing the honourable thing by Harris.

“Good morning,” he said, shutting the library doors behind him. When he came near her, his expression changed. “My dear Jane, are you well?”

“I am quite well, but I cannot marry you.”

He sat down heavily. “You have changed your mind?”

She tried to collect her thoughts. Hours of rehearsing her phrases were as nothing; they had vanished from her memory. She resolved to trust instinct instead. “Sir, I have made a mistake.”

“Do not address me as sir.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped with such constriction that the fingers showed red. “After last night.”

Jane could scarcely bear the expression of his eyes: bewildered, disbelieving, yet trusting. “I realize now that I was not being truthful, to either you or myself, when I agreed to become your wife,” she said.

He did not speak. No trees rustled outside the library windows, no housemaid swept the stairs. In the eerie silence it seemed to Jane that she and Harris were the only living beings left on earth. But even if they had been, she could not marry him.

She saw him draw breath. She knew she must speak before he did. “When I accepted your proposal, which I assure you I was most honoured to receive, my thoughts were cast in an altogether wrong direction.”

“Wrong?” He swallowed hard. He was trying to understand.

“I was thinking of another marriage, not ours.”

She looked into his face. His expression had changed. Not unexpectedly, disbelief had turned to suspicion as he waited, as still as a statue, for her next words.

“Recently a marriage took place, far away in Ireland. The news of this marriage clouded my perception of what was right. I resolved that I would do everything in my power to secure a husband, now that I could no longer hope…”

Her voice broke. She could not go on. Before she could recover her composure Harris had left his chair and was kneeling on the carpet beside her. She found her bonnet knocked from her fingers, her hands taken up and kisses bestowed upon them. “Jane, Jane,” he urged, “you must not speak of this. If this man is now married to another, turn to a new hope – of marriage to a man who holds you very dear.”

She could say nothing. Tears wetted her face, and splashed onto the gloved hands which Harris still clasped. Barely in control of his own voice, he whispered, “And what of
my
hope, Jane?”

“Stop!” she blurted, pulling away her hands. “Sir, I cannot be prevailed upon to revise my decision. Make no further appeals to me; to do so will increase the unhappiness of us both.”

Agitated beyond polite endurance, she retrieved her bonnet and stood up. As she did so her skirts brushed the kneeling man's face; resolutely she swept them aside. The room blurred into a maze of light and colours as she crossed to the door; she did not think to wipe the tears away.

Her hand upon the doorknob, her back turned to him, she spoke as steadily as she could. “I cannot enter married life with a man I have deceived. You are young, and will find another woman who will love you as I cannot.”

She heard him take a step towards her.

“Sir, I beg you!” she implored, turning.

He was standing in the centre of the room, his face as white as his necktie, his hands hanging by his sides. But he was astute enough, and proud enough, to recognize defeat. “Very well,” he said solemnly. “I release you from your engagement.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They faced one other. His eyes searched hers, but he said nothing.

“I will make my peace with God and with my conscience,” she said. “If you will forgive me.”

He nodded.

“I travel to Steventon with my sister within this half-hour.”

He nodded again.

“We shall visit Manydown again, though perhaps not for a long time.”

“I understand,” he said, without expression. His eyes looked like a blind man's. Jane and Cassandra were his sisters' friends, he must expect them to come and stay at his parents' house. But, being a man, he could make sure he was from home when they did. And once Manydown was in his hands, any hospitality extended to them would be his prerogative, not his family's. He would never have to see Jane again if he did not choose to do so.

Cassandra did not ask what had happened. When their goodbyes had been said, and the carriage had rumbled between the gateposts of Manydown, she allowed her sister to collapse against her shoulder. Exhausted, and chastened by the knowledge that she had inflicted unhappiness upon a man whose only folly was to fall in love with her, Jane allowed the movement of the carriage to soothe her like an infant in a cradle.

At the end of the journey back to Bath, life would go on. And it mattered little whether Jane ever wrote another story, since her three completed novels were still hidden in their box. Sometime, when she did not feel sleepy as she did now, and when only Cassandra was in the house, ready with her praise and criticism, she would open the box. She would resurrect Elinor and Marianne, and Jane and Elizabeth and Catherine from their grave, and make them live. And in their lives, she would live hers.

“What was the name of that publisher Papa mentioned?” she asked her sister drowsily. “A Mr Murray, was it?”

“Go to sleep,” murmured Cass. “And stop thinking.”

“I can do the first, but not the second,” said Jane, and closed her eyes.

N
either Jane nor Cassandra ever married.
Elinor and Marianne
was given the new title of
Sense and Sensibility
and published in 1811, generating interest among critics and delight among the public. This was followed in 1813 by Jane's biggest success,
Pride and Prejudice
, which started life, of course, as
First Impressions
.
Northanger Abbey
, as
Catherine
was eventually titled, did not come out until after Jane's death in 1817 at the age of forty-one.

The Austens remained without a permanent home after the Reverend Austen's death in 1805, then in 1809, with Edward's help they secured a cottage at Chawton in Hampshire, not far from Steventon. Once settled there with her mother, sister and Martha Lloyd, Jane returned to writing. She revised and published her first two novels, and produced three other books, two of which,
Mansfield Park
and
Emma
, were published during her lifetime. The remaining book,
Persuasion
, joined
Northanger Abbey
in the same posthumously published volume.

And what of Cassandra? Considering herself the widow of a man she had never married might seem extreme, but this dramatic action did not detract from the support, good sense and devotion she unstintingly bestowed upon her only sister. She outlived Jane by twenty-eight years and her mother by eighteen, living alone at Chawton until her own death in 1845.

The cottage at Chawton is now a museum devoted to Jane and her works. Steventon Rectory met its own demise only six years after Jane herself, in 1823, when it was demolished to make way for a new house. Jane might well see it as fitting that although the place in which she wrote some of the world's favourite novels does not exist any more, its influence lives on in her pictures of “three of four families in a country village”.

As for the other principal characters in this book, they are real. Twelve years after this story ends, Jane's niece Anna married Madam Lefroy's elder son, Ben. Still later, in 1828, Martha Lloyd became the second wife of Frank Austen. His brother Charles also married twice, and Jane's estimate of a large number of future nieces and nephews was accurate. In all, the Austen brothers produced over thirty children.

We cannot know which young gentlemen touched or did not touch Jane's life, nor what they said and did; but there is no escaping Willoughby, Bingley and Darcy, or even Mr Collins, who show themselves as confidently in fiction as Jane herself hides her life in shadow. The last service Cassandra performed for her sister was to destroy as many of her letters as she could find, in the hope of keeping private details secret, so our factual knowledge of Jane's life has been pieced together from other sources by painstaking scholars.

Jane would appreciate the irony that it is Cassandra, who, by keeping the facts from us, has given us what Jane herself so cherished – the power of imagination.

I saw no one but him, dreaming or waking. I fell in love so madly, I almost did not recognize it as love. It was madness and nothing else
.

Mary and her sister Jane have always longed for a handsome young man, preferably a poet, to whisk them away from their mundane life. Then, in the spring of 1814, Percy Shelley walks into their father's shop, like an angel of deliverance. Seduced by Shelley's radical ideas – freedom from marriage and the binds of religion – the girls flee with him to Europe.

But when tragedy strikes, Mary begins to realize that her dreams have become nightmares – and her angel … a monster.