The Jane Austen Society

by Natalie Jenner

  Dr. Gray put his mug down on top of his now-empty plate. “There. See? I hadn’t even made that connection yet. Imagine, giving Mr. Knightley something in common with Harriet.”

  “We are all fools in love, as they say.”

  “My Jennie would have loved this.”

  “My poor Samuel would have had no patience for it,” Adeline answered with a melancholy smile. “He never got my love for the books. Something about her voice left him cold. He needed characters to be straightforward, the plot like the engine of a runaway train. You were lucky you and your wife could share this.”

  “We shared a lot of things.”

  “Samuel and I shared our childhood together. We didn’t get the chance for much more than that.”

  “There is something to be said for growing up with someone.”

  “Yet that’s what Knightley and Emma fight against the entire book. How funny.”

  Sitting there on the bench together, with no one else to confide in, Dr. Gray and Adeline felt a strange connection through these books.

  During the Great War, shell-shocked soldiers had been encouraged to read Jane Austen in particular—Kipling had coped with the loss of his soldier son by reading her books aloud to his family each night—Winston Churchill had recently used them to get through the Second World War. Adeline and Dr. Gray had always loved Jane Austen’s writing and could talk together for hours about her characters, but her books now eased their own grief, too.

  Part of the comfort they derived from rereading was the satisfaction of knowing there would be closure—of feeling, each time, an inexplicable anxiety over whether the main characters would find love and happiness, while all the while knowing, on some different parallel interior track, that it was all going to work out in the end. Of being both one step ahead of the characters and one step behind Austen on every single reading.

  But part of it was the heroism of Austen herself, in writing through illness and despair, and facing her own early death. If she could do it, Dr. Gray and Adeline each thought, then certainly, in homage if nothing else, they could, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chawton, Hampshire

  At that same moment

  Frances Knight could see the two of them on the bench in the courtyard below, having tea outside in the late-summer air. She had a little window seat in the second-floor gallery where she could sit beneath the Elizabethan stained-glass panelling, each window decorated by a different coat of arms for every successive freeholder of the estate, as well as their dates of ascension. She had used this window seat the most as a young girl growing up in the Great House, and again now, when getting out of doors seemed to be growing harder for her to do.

  She recognized Adeline Grover from church and had at one time been somewhat friendly with Beatrix Lewis, the young woman’s mother. Dr. Gray, on the other hand, was the most visible person in the entire community—he had birthed dozens of babies in the village and tended to even more deaths and had dealt with a whole host of injuries and ailments in between. In recent months he had been ministering to her own father, although she knew that Dr. Gray had not been due at the Great House that day.

  She wondered what the two of them were talking about and opened the lead crank of the window next to her in an effort to listen.

  It was not at all what she had expected.

  “Another little secret moment I just discovered . . . the scene where Mr. Knightley calls, and old Mr. Woodhouse hesitates to leave him to go out on his planned walk, and both Mr. Knightley and Emma are so quick to encourage him to walk alone. . . . Here, let me find it for you. . . .”

  Frances watched from above as Dr. Gray pulled a small, slight volume from inside his coat pocket, while Adeline gave a slightly mocking gasp.

  “You’re carrying Emma around now, Dr. Gray, right by your heart?”

  He grinned as he flipped through the pages, until he found the line he had been searching for:

  “‘Mr. Knightley called, and sat some time with Mr. Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose.’”

  Adeline wrinkled her nose. “I think you might be reading too much into that one.”

  “Hmm, well, yes and no, perhaps. Certainly this part of the scene—which goes on for several lines, with Mr. Woodhouse continuing to demur, and Mr. Knightley continuing to not budge a bit—comically reduces the two men to their intractable natures, one all fussiness to his detriment and one all abrupt and overly decided to his. But if you think about it, this is the absolute most that Austen would be willing to show at this point, about the hidden currents of attraction between Emma and Knightley that they are way too bogged down by history and situation to acknowledge. This helps us to first mistake Knightley’s dislike of Frank Churchill as that of an elder overprotective family member—since she has her father wrapped around her little finger, someone in the book has to be up to the task—rather than the raging jealousy he is starting to be consumed by.”

  “Mr. Knightley is another one who is so clueless—do none of these men know they are in love? Why are so many of her characters so lacking in self-awareness, do you think?” asked Adeline. “Is that the essence of our folly, our fate as humans: to not understand why we do things, or whom we love? Is that why so much of it ends up rubbish—and if it doesn’t, it’s just dumb luck?”

  “It does seem to me that when her characters truly know and understand themselves from the start, they are less successful to the reader. Fanny Price comes to mind.”

  Adeline knew how much Dr. Gray disliked Fanny Price.

  “I think the reader on some level resents that purity of intent and action,” he continued. “It’s like, ‘Come on now, mess it up—do what other people would do. Fall for the Henry Crawfords.’ We love Jane Austen because her characters, as sparkling as they are, are no better and no worse than us. They’re so eminently, so completely, human. I, for one, find it greatly consoling that she had us all figured out.”

  Frances slowly shut the window, then leaned back against the side of the nook and closed her eyes. It had been a long time since she had chatted with a friend about anything meaningful. The more she stayed indoors, the less people visited. She understood the logic to that—for all that friendship was not supposed to be logical.

  It was now only her, her father—the ailing patriarch in his second-floor suite—and Josephine who resided in the Great House, along with the two young house girls, Charlotte Dewar and Evie Stone, who took care of the laundry and cleaning. For day employ, there was Tom, the stable boy, who also looked after the walled garden, caring for her beloved roses and apples and squash, and Adam Berwick, that sad, silent man, who tilled the fields for her.

  But she was the last in line of the Knight family, now that her father was dying. The very thing her ancestors had fought so hard against, in adopting Edward Knight, had come to pass after all, and on her watch. She felt such pain over that, a pain far out of proportion to the simple sad fact that she had never been lucky enough to marry and bear a child. That she would feel obliged, from the weight of family history, to mourn for even more than that—for the crumbling Elizabethan bricks around her, for the break in a chain that included the world’s greatest writer—was something a good friend would have tried to talk her out of.

  She also berated herself for failing at friendship itself. She had once been one of the most prominent members of the community, sharing the privilege of her beautiful estate, opening it up for fall fêtes and spring fairs and winter tobogganing down the back hill. And she had always had a natural compassion and concern for other people. The energy that she got from learning about others, hearing their stories, and thinking of ways to help them had been a real gift. She resented greatly that for some unfathomable reason, she no longer had the energy for the very things that had
always sustained her. If ever there was a recipe for decline, that surely would be it.

  She did not mean to feel so sorry for herself—and she was fully aware of the great losses many others in her village had survived. Look at the Berwick family, losing both the father and two of the sons so soon after each other—the two boys in the exact same battle even. And poor Dr. Gray, whose beautiful wife could not have children, and then one day took just one little misstep and died—and now Dr. Gray had to spend all of his days listening to other people’s stories of woe, with the same engagement and care he always had. She couldn’t even begin to imagine doing that.

  She also knew that if life was indeed a process of loss, then she had been gifted at the beginning with simply much more to lose: a precious family heritage, and the tremendous comforts of wealth. She might not be fully to blame for losing it all, but unfortunately she was the only one left to blame, and she felt the weight and gravity of that as much as anyone would.

  Small raindrops were starting to hit against the windowpanes, and she rang the bell next to her on the plush red velvet seat. After a few minutes Josephine appeared at the top of the stairs that led to the second-floor gallery.

  “Josephine, thank you—I do dislike having to use this bell so much.”

  Josephine nodded. “I know, ma’am. You were never one to begrudge a trip to the kitchens.”

  “Has the solicitor arrived yet, for Father?”

  “Yes, ma’am, right on the half hour. He is a right prompt one, Mr. Forrester.”

  “I suppose they are discussing the estate, for such a long visit.” Frances squinted out the window again and saw Dr. Gray starting to shelter Adeline from the stray drops with the coat he had taken off. “Josephine, I think Tom and Adam should be finishing up in the barn by now—they were tending earlier to one of the mothering sheep. Why don’t you suggest that Adeline get a ride home in the automobile with Tom, to keep her out of the rain in her condition?”

  Josephine went back down the old oak staircase and out into the courtyard with both an umbrella and Miss Knight’s unexpected invitation.

  Adeline and Dr. Gray looked at each other quickly as Josephine made the offer on her employer’s behalf, and then Dr. Gray started to stand, Adeline still holding up one side of his coat as shelter with her right hand. With her left she pulled on his sleeve, a movement so intimate and pleading, that he stopped to look down at her again.

  “I’m fine, really—the rain is nothing. But I would love to see the new lambing in the barn if I can. We can wait out the worst of the rain there.”

  Dr. Gray hesitated a bit, then nodded to Josephine. “Please thank Miss Knight for her thoughtfulness, as always. But we shall do as the young lady suggests.”

  Adeline now stood up, too, a little more slowly in her state. Josephine passed the umbrella over to her, muttering, “That coat’s not much up to the job.”

  Adeline nodded her thanks and passed Dr. Gray’s coat back to him, all under the protective gaze of the old woman.

  “What was that about?” Adeline asked Dr. Gray as they hurried together under the umbrella and along the redbrick path that led from the courtyard down to the medieval stable block. “Did we offend her?”

  “I don’t think Josephine Barrow is sensitive to offense.”

  “Maybe it’s all that rattling about in such a huge, empty house, just those two old women and that crusty, spiteful old man. I was even a little intimidated by Miss Knight when I was little—although not in a bad way. Just, growing up, she always seemed so calm and elegant, so unflappable. One hardly sees her now.”

  “I have long admired Frances. I had hoped she would not end up alone like this. Perhaps it wears on one.”

  “Why do you think she never married?”

  “Her parents were quite particular, you know, and so her choices were fairly limited from the start. Rather ironic as her own early ancestors were yeomen, not even gentlemen farmers. And goodness knows it’s hard enough to find the right person without strictures or limits of any kind.”

  “Did she ever come close? What about you—you’re the same age, aren’t you? Grew up together?”

  “The exact same age, actually—we were both born right before the turn of the century, in 1898. Went to school together our entire lives.”

  “Long enough for romance to bud,” Adeline suggested.

  “And still never good enough for the Knights,” he replied light-heartedly. “A lowly country doctor and all.”

  “Nonsense,” scolded Adeline with a teasing smile. “I bet you were quite the catch as a bachelor.”

  Dr. Gray never enjoyed it when people pressed him about his love life before meeting his late wife, and he quickly changed the subject. “Well, anyway, even then Frances Knight kept pretty much to herself. I do know several of our classmates were after her, but nothing ever came of it. I suppose she eventually gave up on ever finding the right one, stuck as she was in this small village.”

  “It’s strange, don’t you think, that I found my right person in this very town where I grew up? But I bet it happens more than one would think.”

  Dr. Gray nodded somewhat distractedly as he focused on pulling the umbrella down to shake it off.

  They were now standing in front of the open door to the stable and peered inside. In the middle stall, under a single dangling lantern, Tom Edgewaite and Adam Berwick were tending to the mother sheep and her newborn lamb. Both men jumped up from what they were doing when Dr. Gray and Mrs. Grover unexpectedly walked in.

  Adam pulled off his cap, even though he was only two years younger than Dr. Gray, but he barely looked at Adeline to say hello. He had known the Lewis family his entire life and yet had never really spoken to their only daughter. Adam saw her as one of the village’s bright young things, highly energetic and friendly to everyone, but her direct manner always brought out his shyness. Even in the relaxed environment of the barn, he could only give her a quick nod.

  Tom was much more outgoing and a bit of a scamp, and couldn’t help commenting on how well Mrs. Grover looked given her condition.

  Dr. Gray gave him a curt look. “Let’s leave the medical pronouncements to me, Tom, shall we?”

  Adeline took her time sitting down in the hay next to the mother sheep and the baby lamb suckling at its side. Tears suddenly started in her eyes. One minute she and Dr. Gray had been laughing in the rain together, and now here was life, new life, no father to be seen, her own husband gone, her own baby about to arrive, and the overwhelming reality of everything was hitting her all at once. She reached out to pet the baby lamb to distract herself, and Adam moved forward quickly.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but they’re plenty protective, these ones. Don’t want the baby touched as of yet. Not like people that way.”

  With a noticeable struggle, Adeline started to get back up. “Maybe not so different from people after all,” she offered, then smiled obligingly as Dr. Gray came forward faster than the other two men to help her up. “Thank you for letting us see. Your mother is well, Mr. Berwick?”

  He nodded.

  “And how is young Evie Stone? Is she well, too?”

  He nodded again.

  “She was my star pupil you know, before she had to leave school and come work at the House. I hope you are all taking good care of her.”

  “Tom’s looking to that, ma’am, as always.”

  Adeline looked at Adam curiously. Perhaps there was more to the quiet farmer than she had always thought.

  “Well”—she smiled at all three men—“the rain looks to have eased up. We should get going.”

  The two other men watched as Dr. Gray led Adeline out of the stable and across the fields leading back to the main road.

  “He knows what side his bread’s buttered on, don’t he,” remarked Tom.

  Adam frowned as he watched the two figures beneath the umbrella head back to town. “He’s a good man, Dr. Gray.”

  “I’m not saying he’s not,” laughed Tom. “But he
puts us two bachelors to shame.”

  Adam scoffed, “You’re full of nonsense, Tom Edgewaite.”

  “I’m just saying,” Tom persisted, as he turned back to the nursing lamb. “I knows what I see—I see it all day long.”

  Adam left the stable without a word and headed home himself. It was getting close to his supper, and after that he would do some reading. He didn’t care to hang around for Tom’s constant gossip and innuendo—he would read some Jane Austen instead.

  Adam had not ended up adoring Emma Woodhouse as he had once been promised by the young American woman.

  He loved Elizabeth Bennet instead—loved her in a way he had not thought possible with a fictional character. Loved the way she always spoke her mind but with such humanity and humour. He wished he could be her—wished he always had the perfect, tart remark at the end of his tongue, the ability to draw people to him, and the strength to assert himself with his mother. He saw Elizabeth as the lynchpin to the entire Bennet family, the one whose boldness and emotional intelligence was keeping her own family from the brink. But she never flaunted herself as a saviour—she just loved so thoroughly, and so wisely, that the saving of others was the inevitable result.

  Adam felt as if he could hardly save himself, let alone anyone else. Yet on his loneliest of days, he sometimes felt as if he was being saved by Jane Austen. He could only imagine what the villagers would say about him if they suspected any of that. Still, he often wished there were someone with whom he could discuss Austen and her books. The only person he had met so far lived on the other side of the world.

  Of course, he had recognized the young woman in blue the very first time he had seen her face at the cinema. He had since become a devoted fan of Mimi Harrison and had watched all of her movies, including Home & Glory three times. He thought of her out in Hollywood, reading the books again and again. It bemused him to have something in common like this with a movie star. He knew it said a lot more about Austen than it did about him, but it also made him feel a little less odd, a little less damaged, all the same.