It was a few days before Christmas, Mrs. Frank Austen and I in the second-best parlor with her youngest and oldest children, Herbert-Grey and Mary-Jane, when the servant opened the door to Cassandra and Jane, newly home from London.
Mary-Jane’s plain little face underwent an extraordinary transformation. “Aunt Jane!” she screamed, leaping from her hassock and running to tackle her aunt as she entered the room.
When Jane stood up from greeting her niece and gave me her hand, I was startled. She was thin and drawn, yet her skin was as bronzed as if she’d been under a tropical sun.
“How was your journey?” I asked, trying not to stare. “Did you come down with your brother?” Ladies did not travel solo; she had to have been accompanied. I meant Henry, but felt strange saying his name. We could not in propriety write to each other, and it was appropriate for him to leave me alone while I was thinking over his offer. Yet we’d been in Chawton nearly three weeks; his silence was becoming mystifying. Couldn’t he have found a reason to visit his bank at Alton by now, or to write to Liam and ask after me?
“Richard was sent with me as far as Farnham, and then my nephew James-Edward came up from Winchester, where he is at school.” She studied me. “Henry sends his best love. He is consumed with the bank these days, and still not perfectly well.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
She gave me another look, more penetrating and thoughtful. “He will come as soon as he can.”
“Did you get here only yesterday, Jane?” Mrs. Frank Austen asked. “How good of you to come to see us.”
“I could not wait, my dear, to see little Herbert-Grey, and to be able to send word to Henry of his new friends’ not having perished in this shocking weather, accustomed as they are to the Indies. And to see Mary-Jane, I would trudge through snowdrifts far deeper than these.”
Mary-Jane giggled appreciatively, and we pushed Jane into the best chair by the fire, where she was briefly allowed to admire Herbert-Grey and then questioned: London, Henry’s health, Fanny, the road from London, the weather on her walk from the cottage. Despite looking ill, she seemed relaxed, less wary than she had been in town, as she described an outing to the theater with Henry, Fanny, and Mr. Haden.
“Mr. Haden accompanied you to the theater?” Cassandra asked. “Henry’s apothecary?”
“I told you, my love, he is not an apothecary. He is a Haden—something between a man and an angel.” She looked at me. “Is it not the case?”
“He does have gentle manners. And the most extraordinary eyelashes.”
Cassandra, unsatisfied, looked from me to Jane and back. “But you do not think that Fanny—”
“Fanny will be certain to bestow her affections rationally. Unlike most nieces of my acquaintance—present company excepted, Mary-Jane! Which reminds me, what of Anna?” That was James’s oldest daughter, married the year before and now a mother at twenty-two. “What of her little Jemima? I long to see them. Why is Wyards so far off?”
“But it is not, really, is it?” I asked. “Is it not upwards of a few miles from Chawton?”
“Not as the crow flies,” Jane replied. “But we are not crows. And worse, have no carriage; we live in a very small way. In better weather, I could take Mother’s donkey cart, but in winter it would not answer.”
“Mr. Knight’s carriage is at your disposal, it is not?” I could not imagine it would not be. He was so kind to everyone. Had given them a place to live. And she was Jane Austen! Everything should be at her disposal. That I was thinking this way only showed that in my excitement at seeing her again I had temporarily lost my mind.
A little silence followed before Cassandra answered: “To be sure, in case of need—Edward is the best of brothers, and would never refuse us. Yet we do not impose on his good nature.” I remembered learning how Cassandra would spend months at a time at Godmersham, the Knights’ estate in Kent, after the birth of one or another of the many children, helping out with the older ones or with whatever needed to be done. A maiden aunt, one might say, had nothing better to do. But Mrs. Frank Austen, despite six children younger than eight, did not seem to expect her sisters-in-law to be her unpaid servants.
Feeling less delighted with Edward than before, I said, “Then I hope you will consider our carriage as your own, for even the most frivolous of outings.”
Everyone laughed at this, even Mary-Jane. “You are very kind, Miss Ravenswood,” Mrs. Frank Austen said, “and very free with your brother’s carriage.”
“Is it not as much mine as—” I began, and stopped, realizing my mistake.
“We must put Dr. Ravenswood among the first rank of excellent brothers,” Jane said quickly. “I am not sure that even any of ours can compare, Cassandra. And that he drives a landaulet, as opposed to a curricle—this says everything one needs to know about that gentleman’s consideration for his sister, and indeed for anyone else within range of his benevolence.” She had begun this speech with her usual mock gravity, but grew earnest midway through, almost dreamy, as if a new thought had struck her.
“You puzzle me,” I said, grateful for how she had turned the conversation. “Why does a landaulet make him a better brother than a curricle would?”
“A curricle is a selfish vehicle, when we consider it closely. A carriage for a gentleman, but only for him. A lady can go out alone in a landaulet in complete propriety and comfort.”
“Vastly practical,” Mrs. Frank Austen said. “Particularly when one’s husband is away at sea for years at a time.” She gave a little sigh.
“He will make someone an excellent husband,” Jane continued. “If I were of a matchmaking turn of mind—But fortunately for you, Miss Ravenswood, my imagination is channeled in other directions, and he can continue to be your most excellent brother. His new wife will not turn you, penniless and shivering, out of her opulently furnished home on Berkeley Square, or wherever she might find it incumbent to live.” She surprised me with a wicked smile, and I realized how much I had missed her.
“I should like to see her try!” I said, as Cassandra gave her sister a warning shake of the head.
“But of course you have an ample competence of your own,” Jane went on, looking dreamy again. “More than ample, perhaps?”
“Jane!” Cassandra said.
Just then, Herbert-Grey woke up, screaming inconsolably and ending that particular line of inquiry as we turned to admiring his lungs.