Cassandra's Sister

by Veronica Bennett

  “Shush, Jenny,” admonished Cassandra gently. “We cannot presume to ask what passes in a private conversation of such importance.”

  “I do not remember my words anyway,” said Eliza, looking up, “any more than I remember my words to James. I suppose I must have said that it was too soon after Jean’s death. It was afterwards, when he had gone, that I walked round and round the music-room for over an hour, tormented by the expression of his eyes when he heard my refusal.” She leaned forward in her chair, her beautiful face full of tenderness. “Henry, you see, though he has much to recommend him as a husband, is ten years my junior, and should have the chance to father children. But I am unwilling to risk bearing another child with the same condition as my poor Hastings. I did not say this to your brother, but he must know it all the same.”

  Again she broke off, closing her eyes and shaking her head as if to dispel unwelcome thoughts.

  “Perhaps,” offered Jenny by way of comfort, “so many reasons not to marry him came into your mind, you did not think carefully enough about the reasons for marrying him. Perhaps he will conclude this himself, and try again.”

  “I do not know if I wish him to,” replied Eliza. “I do not know what to think.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then, with her complexion restored to its usual shade and the beginning of a smile on her lips, she put up her hands to tidy the back of her hair. Jenny had seen her do this before, in the company of gentlemen. “At any rate,” she said, “the poor boy must have had a very melancholy ride that evening. And I was so agitated, I slept not a wink, and must have looked wretched at my party the next day.”

  “You did not,” Jenny assured her. “Cass and I were there.”

  “And of course, Henry was not there!” cried Cassandra, remembering. “The day before the party he rushed off to Dover for no reason, assuring us he would come to the party later. But he never did, and he never had any intention of doing so!”

  Jenny’s heart increased its exertions. She, and she alone, knew that Henry had come to Eliza’s house that night. Had she maligned him, in assuming his intentions were concerned with finance, when in fact they were concerned with romance? Poor Henry, he must have been anxious to see Eliza alone, perhaps to press his suit further, or to offer to make amends for presuming on her affections. But everyone was still up, and instead of enjoying a private conference with Eliza, Henry would be obliged to play the part of the apologetic latecomer, indulged by his sisters, his cousin and the late-staying guests, and possibly even offered a supper of left-overs. Realizing this, his nerve had failed him. But thanks to Jenny’s silence, no one would ever know that he had been in London at all.

  “Do you blame him?” asked Jenny, “after his disappointment?”

  “And that very evening, when Henry was sulking in Dover, Anne died,” said Cassandra solemnly. “Which brings us back to the subject which began this conversation. Now that Eliza has refused the position of stepmother to little Anna, who will take it instead?”

  “I cannot imagine,” said Jenny. She looked at Eliza. “Are you quite sure you wish to thrust James back into the rough-and-tumble of courtship?”

  “Oh, my dear, do not jest! But you know, I think he will not have much trouble. He is a very presentable man, and Deane Parsonage is quite a large house to be mistress of. Do you remember, girls, taking tea in the garden when the Lloyds lived there, when I had just heard the news about Jean? I am sure there must be a woman somewhere, who looks well in a sacking apron, Jenny, and who will be very pleased to take James for her husband.”

  Cassandra

  The church at Ibthorpe did not look its best in January. It was too late for the surrounding elms to show their autumn colour, and too early for the crocuses lining the path to bloom. But willing gardeners had redoubled their efforts when they heard that the Reverend James Austen of Deane Parsonage was to be married in their church, to their own Mary Lloyd.

  The gravel path was weeded and swept, the yews trimmed, the gravestones tidied. But the work went unseen, for on the morning of the wedding a thick covering of snow fell. The air was crisp, however, and the sun shone on the small party of Austens and Lloyds that followed the couple out of the portal. Anna, in her best bonnet and cloak, was carried in the arms of her grandmother. Her solemn face peeped out upon the world as if to say, “What is happening? Cannot I stay with my aunts and grandmama as usual, while Papa goes home to Deane with this lady? How can she be my mama?”

  Jenny held Anna’s hand, and thought for the thousandth time how lucky she herself was that both her parents had lived to see her twenty-first birthday. She resolved to visit Anna often at Deane, and have her at Steventon whenever she could. There was a brightness in the child she warmed to. At not quite four years old, Anna was already talkative and interested in everything around her, especially the stories Aunt Jane invented for her. As Anna grew up, Jenny was sure they would pass many happy hours together in the upstairs sitting-room. And when Cassandra was married she would bring her children from Shropshire, and Jenny could teach them their letters.

  “How do you think the bride looks?” said Martha in Jenny’s ear.

  Mary, clutching her new husband’s arm, was smilingly accepting congratulations. The only concession she had made to wedding finery was a small veil over her bonnet, and new gloves. But in her ordinary features Jenny saw a thawing of tension, and a hint of what could only be described as relief. For Mary, the plainer of the Lloyd sisters, living without a fortune in a country parish, marriage to a well-respected clergyman spelled the end of anxiety over her own and her family’s future.

  “I think the simplicity of her attire becomes her,” replied Jenny. “And she looks truly happy, do you not think? As well she might.”

  “It is a good match for James, too,” said Cassandra, who had joined them. “I welcome Mary to the family. And it means that you, Martha, are a relation. Now your sister is our sister too, you have no reason not to be at Steventon as often as distance allows.”

  “Dear Cass,” said Martha. “I long to be inspecting your appearance outside a church.”

  “Tom hopes to return in May,” said Cass.

  “But it is only January!”

  “Five months is a short time, Martha, compared to the five years we have waited already.”

  Henry approached. “Come, ladies,” he said, removing his top hat with a flourish and bowing unnecessarily low. He was evidently enjoying playing the part of groomsman. “The carriages and the wedding breakfast await. Miss Martha, may I offer you my arm?”

  “What if Henry were to marry Martha?” whispered Cass to Jenny as they followed.

  “No, never!” replied Jenny, laughing. “Do not wish him and his monkey tricks on her!”

  First Impressions was moving on apace. Of all the stories Jenny had written, it was the one whose plot fell into place most easily. Charles Bingley and the eldest Miss Bennet would overcome the obstacles placed in their way by the haughty Fitzwilliam Darcy, who would turn out to be a secret hero and marry the heroine, the irrepressible Elizabeth Bennet. And it would begin with a public ball, just like the ones she and Cass had attended at the Basingstoke Assembly Rooms, where Elizabeth and Darcy would form their “first impressions” of one another.

  Now that Anna had gone back to live at Deane with her father and Mary, her Aunt Jane had more peace to write. And now that Aunt Jane was twenty-one, she considered that she looked upon the world with a more sagacious eye. She had succeeded at last in her quest to be called Jane, not by pleading or threatening, but simply by commandeering the help of her sister.

  “If you do not call me Jenny, no one will,” she had reasoned.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Wait and see.”

  James already insisted that Anna call Jenny “Aunt Jane”, and had ceased to use “Jenny” himself. Under his influence so did his new wife. And because Mary did not use it, Martha and Mrs Lloyd did not use it either. It took Cassandra a while to adjust to the c
hange, but before February was out everyone in the household seemed to have forgotten that anyone called Jenny had ever existed in their midst. In her heart, Jane knew they approved of her more grown-up appellation. Why had it taken so long to establish?

  Being twenty-one did feel different, just as she had imagined it would. Now she could go without Cass or Mama to Godmersham and London, though, like any lady, she must have a male escort, even if the only one available was a manservant. Now she could be privy to discussions which would hitherto have been deemed unsuitable for her ears. And with the knife-mark Tom Lefroy had made in her heart still smarting, she had come of age in more than merely years.

  Around her, life went on. The new term began, bringing to the Rectory two new boys, as well as the old ones, and Mama was preoccupied with the familiar task of ministering to the homesick feelings of these two tender twelve-year-olds. Letters were written to mothers, encouraging parcels from home. Toasting cheese at the drawing-room fire was allowed on Saturday evenings, as were ghost stories. Drawn especially to the more serious of the two, a boy called Edmund, Jane taught him to play piquet, the most complicated card game she knew, which Tom and Charles Fowle had taught her when they had been Papa’s pupils.

  The war with France had spread throughout Europe. While Bonaparte’s power grew on land, mutinous sailors were fuelling the relentless anxiety endured by the officers of the British navy. Frank reported that he had been obliged to have some of his men flogged. “Baby” Charles’s letters were staunchly cheerful, but Mama’s chin still quivered when she read them.

  And the bloodshed in France went on. Jean Capot de Feuillide was now one of many, many thousands who had perished. Robespierre, this “madman” as Papa called him, was not interested in the ideals of the Revolution. He wished only to save his own skin, inflicting upon others the same ruthless tyranny for which the King and Queen of France had been murdered. Jane’s heart still folded with pity whenever the memory of Eliza’s husband’s terrible death arose; she could not forgive his killers, however horrifying their own fate might now be.

  She busied herself with domestic concerns, helping Mrs Travers with the preserving, sewing boys’ shirts. The sun shone on the Rectory garden as brightly as usual, despite the dispiriting news from across the Channel, and Jane wandered about its paths and bowers with undiminished pleasure. This would probably be the last year she would have Cassandra at home, with Tom expected to return before the summer. Knowing this, Papa presented Cass with the money for her wedding dress, and Jane accompanied her to Basingstoke to buy the material.

  James seemed happy enough with Mary, but after his disappointment in his first choice Jane wondered when, if ever, they would see Eliza at Steventon again. No doubt she would remarry and perhaps go to live far away, and the attentions of the Austen brothers would become as misty in her memory as the scenes from their childhood plays.

  As the spring days lengthened, Jane sat on the embroidered cushion and wrote. She decided to call the eldest Miss Bennet Jane, in homage to her own newly acquired proper name. She wrote her own loss of Tom Lefroy into Jane’s grief at the loss of Mr Bingley. But the ink flowed most freely when she created her questioning, thoughtful, loving, impulsive, merry-hearted heroine, Elizabeth Bennet.

  One windy April morning, when the countryside was bright with blossom, Jane accosted her sister in the hall as she was putting on her bonnet and cloak, and read aloud a newly completed conversation between Elizabeth and Jane. “Do you like her?” she asked eagerly. “Or is she too impertinent?”

  “She has exactly the right amount of impertinence to enslave Darcy,” replied Cassandra.

  “And you are confident she does not remind you of anyone else?”

  Cass was immediately alert to the anxiety in Jane’s voice. “Anyone else? What do you mean?”

  “I have written of two sisters again!” wailed Jane. “The elder one is beautiful and kind and calm, like Elinor, and the younger one is impatient and unyielding and hasty, like Marianne. And Marianne was eighteen when I was eighteen, while Elizabeth is twenty because I was twenty when I began to write about her!”

  “All this is perfectly understandable,” said Cassandra.

  “But is it not rather … limited?”

  Cass gave her sister the look that meant she was about to say something quite incontrovertible. “No, Jane, it is not.”

  “But my novels are not like other people’s,” insisted Jane, walking restlessly around the hallway. “Other novels are about haunted castles, or are stories of high romance, or are satirical like those of Samuel Richardson, whose writing I admire so greatly, Cass. The people in them have adventures that make one alternately laugh and cry. But I sometimes feel as if…” She thought for a moment, unsure how to go on. Cass waited. Then Jane continued. “I feel as if I am working on a little bit of ivory, two inches square, like a painter of miniatures.”

  “And do you not think the beholders of miniatures have the wit to appreciate the detail?” asked Cassandra, tying her ribbons, then, dissatisfied with the bow, untying them again.

  Jane hugged the banister post, contemplating her sister with agitation. “I do not know what to think. Help me, Cass. You are wise.”

  “Very well. First, if you do not consider your novels satirical, then you are not reading the same words as I am. Second, readers are as satisfied with detailed portraits as with any adventures or romances. And third, you must not worry that your families of sisters are limited. They are wonderfully interesting.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yes, they are.” Cassandra checked her appearance in the hall mirror. “And you know, perfectly believable though they are, neither characters nor events bear any great resemblance to our own life here at Steventon. I do not recall a man of Darcy’s wealth or Willoughby’s beauty, or treachery, ever being seen in these parts, and I have not to my knowledge been cast into despair by a Mr Ferrars or a Mr Bingley, older sister though I may be.”

  “You are right,” said Jane gratefully. “You are quite right. I may start with what I know, but I finish with fiction.”

  “Exactly,” soothed Cassandra. “And now, will you come to the post office with me? I am hoping for a letter from Tom, and shall only be able to bear the disappointment at not finding one if you are there.”

  Jane ran for her cloak, and the sisters set off along the lane as they had many times before. Jane chattered and Cassandra listened, and they admired the budding foliage as they passed, and held down their skirts against gusts of wind, laughing.

  There was a letter from St Domingo. Cassandra descended upon it as if she would devour it. But outside the post office she caught Jane’s arm. “This is not addressed in Tom’s hand,” she said in dismay. She turned the letter over. “Why should his commanding officer write to me?”

  The sisters looked at each other. Jane saw the light go out of Cass’s eyes. “Oh Jenny!” she whispered, reverting in her agitation to the old name. “I cannot… ”

  Fearing Cass would faint, Jane helped her to an oak seat covered with carved initials, which had stood outside the post office at Steventon for as long as they had lived there. They had played upon it with the village children, though Jane had always baulked at carving her own initials, bravely disbelieving the big boy who had told her that it would bring a curse on whoever sat there if she did not.

  Cassandra did not faint. She opened the letter and began to read it, frowning her small frown. All the colour vanished from her face. Jane waited in silence.

  “He is not coming back,” said Cassandra faintly.

  “Oh, no! Has his departure been postponed?”

  “No.” Cassandra’s trembling fingers folded the letter, smoothed it and laid it on her lap. “He died of the cholera two months ago. We shall never see him again.”

  It was madness even to consider such a thing, but for a long time after that day, Jane wondered about the curse on the oaken seat. Had the village boy been right? Had she, by her refusal to mark the w
ood with her initials, brought this calamity upon her beloved sister?

  She told herself that every village had a wooden seat; every village had its own nonsensical beliefs; every village had a large boy who wielded power over little girls. But then her conviction that God could not forsake so devout a servant as Cassandra would descend again. And if Tom’s death was not God’s will, whose was it?

  Though spring continued its transformation of the landscape outside the Rectory, the days inside the house were dark. Cassandra wept and prayed by turns. Papa was so dejected that it was twenty-four hours before he summoned the will to write a letter of condolence to the Reverend and Mrs Fowle. Mama, tormented as much by her daughter’s loss of prospects as by her own heartfelt grief, kept to her room.

  None of the brothers were at home, and the schoolboys, as subdued by the death of “Miss Cassandra’s” fiancé as if she had been their own sister, went about their business on tiptoe and forwent their garden games. For them, Jane suspected, it was an unwelcome reminder that the safe surroundings of the Reverend Austen’s school, which Tom and his brother had once enjoyed, were temporary. They, like Tom, would soon face the dangers of the world. Meanwhile James, who had so recently experienced a sudden bereavement himself, visited daily with a new passage marked in his Bible, in the hope that the simple words of faith would comfort his sister.

  Jane was familiar with the helplessness of bystanders at a tragedy. She had felt it keenly when Jean Capot de Feuillide had died, alone and so far from his loved ones. When Anne had passed from life to death as swiftly as the guillotine blade travels, by her own fireside in the presence of her husband, Jane’s sense of superfluity had increased. But upon the death of Tom, her helplessness took on a life of its own. It filled the room where Cassandra lay. It spread to the sitting-room, where Jane had so recently written exchanges between those two most attractive of characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. She remembered how she had read them aloud to her sister, and been rewarded with Cassandra’s intelligent appreciation. “They must marry!” she had exclaimed. “How could they ever be satisfied with anyone else?”