Cassandra's Sister

by Veronica Bennett

  First Impressions had now joined Elinor and Marianne in the bottom of a box in the wardrobe. Jane had set her winter boots upon the lid, partly to disguise the existence of the box, partly as a gesture of finality. How could she indulge herself by making up stories about non-existent people, however witty, beautiful, clever, long-suffering and heroic, when her dear sister’s world – the real world – had collapsed so irrevocably? Writing fiction was the pastime of a trivial nature, a mere childish game. The death of her sister’s hopes would be the death of childhood. From now on she would be an adult and face life as it should be faced, with the stoicism she had seen from Eliza and James in their bereavements, and would soon see from Cassandra in hers.

  For three days Jane sat at the window of the sitting-room, pretending to work or read, and thinking, thinking…

  Cassandra lay on the bed in the next room, with the connecting door open so that she could alert Jane if she needed her. She ate almost nothing, barring Kitty from the room and allowing only Jane to bring her soup. After two or three mouthfuls she would lay down the spoon and gesture for her to take the bowl away. At night, she slept so fitfully that Jane offered to spend the nights in the sitting-room, in the hope of giving her more repose. But Cassandra had clung to her and begged her not to leave.

  On the fourth day Jane awoke before her sister. It was early; the silvery light of a May morning crept around the curtains and the birds were in full song. Jane swallowed the lump which rose in her throat every morning when she remembered that Tom would never see another dawn. She slid out of bed and put on her house-robe as quietly as she could; but before she had found her slippers she heard Cassandra’s voice.

  “Are you there, Jane?”

  Jane’s heart swelled with compassion for the tear-streaked face on the pillow, and the small hand reaching for hers. “Would you like some breakfast?” she asked, without much hope of success.

  Cassandra let go of Jane’s hand and propped herself up on her elbows. “Would you open the curtains, please?” She squinted at the light as it poured in. Then she sat up and raised her arms towards the window, her expression calm. “I think I would like breakfast, dearest. Would you bring it yourself?”

  “Do you feel different this morning?” asked Jane. Unsure how to put a question she did not truly understand the meaning of, she hesitated, and tried again. “Has something changed?”

  “Something has passed,” said Cassandra simply. “Tom is dead, and has taken my love with him to his grave. But this morning I know I shall not die; I shall go on in this world, secure in the knowledge that he loves me and is waiting for me to join him in the next world. When I do, however many years hence, we shall rejoice because we shall be together at last.”

  Cassandra’s eyes shone with love, though for Tom or for God, Jane could not tell. A terrible peace had descended upon her sister, terrible because, at that moment, Jane knew Cassandra would never give herself to another man. She was Tom’s widow, though they had never been married, and she would remain his faithful companion for the rest of her days.

  Jane embraced her. Neither spoke for a long time. Jane fought against the memory of the letter-burning, when it had been she herself in need of comfort. Cassandra’s loss was so much worse; how could she, Jane, be so self-centered as to make any comparison? Yet the memory did rise, and lay in Jane’s breast until Cassandra broke the embrace.

  To Jane’s unutterable relief, the smile she had thought never to see again glimmered in her sister’s eyes. “Breakfast?” she reminded her. “I would like to eat it at the work-table, like we always used to. Will you fetch my robe for me? We can get dressed later.”

  Jane fingered Cassandra’s mourning gown, which lay, neatly folded, on the lid of the chest at the foot of the bed. “How long do you intend to wear black, Cass? If Tom had been your husband, it would be a year. But is there another rule for a fiancé?”

  “I shall order several more black gowns,” said Cassandra, beginning to undo her braid. “I shall never wear colours again.”

  Jane was shocked into saying the sort of thing that she would have despised, had it come from the lips of Madam Lefroy or Mrs Bigg. “But what will people say?”

  “I care not what people say,” returned Cass. “You may have as many white and printed gowns as you wish, Jane, and go into society whenever the opportunity presents itself. But I shall not, and that is the end of it.”

  Jane knew better than to protest further. Unwilling to distress her sister, she went to get the breakfast. But as she climbed the stairs with the tray she felt convinced that her sister’s avowal of lifelong mourning was extreme. Eliza was back in her social round, rejecting present suitors and wearing gifts from previous ones. James was married again, less than two years after Anne had died. Jane did not expect this of her sister – she understood the profundity of feeling which had made Cassandra turn her face against marriage – but it was tragic for a lovely young woman to resign herself to black clothes for ever.

  Self-centered though it might be, Jane feared for her own future. If Cass would not go with her into society, who would? And even if she could persuade her sister to do so, what would be a stranger’s perception of these two young women, the younger prettily dressed and on the look-out for partners, the elder in black and refusing to dance? Would Jane ever enjoy a ball again? By the time she set the tray down on the work-table she was convinced that a life of no writing and no parties stretched before her to the grave.

  Cassandra ate with more relish than Jane herself could muster. Seeing that her sister was unwilling to speak, Cass tried to draw her on an irresistible subject. “What has the delightful Elizabeth Bennet been doing lately?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not? Is she ill?”

  “No, she is deplorably healthy for a character in a book,” said Jane. “Her mama will never have any scares about her, not that Mrs Bennet would care anyway, as her favourite is the youngest sister, Lydia. But I have not written any more of First Impressions since … we received the news.”

  “Then you must start again immediately.”

  “I am never going to write any more of that or any other book,” said Jane, looking down at her hands, which were clasped uncomfortably in her lap. She had no wish to witness her sister’s bewilderment.

  But Cass was not bewildered. Her tone was as near to vexed as Jane had ever heard it. “Have you made this resolution because of my resolution, about the mourning clothes?” she demanded strictly, as if she were testing a Sunday-school child.

  “Of course not,” Jane protested, looking up. “I hid the manuscript on the day we heard the news, and decided never to look at it again. In a world where a young man can die so pointlessly I feel a fool to be making up stories.”

  “A fool? A fool?” repeated Cassandra. “I insist that you take out the manuscript and put it back on the desk where it belongs!” She waved her bread and butter about in her agitation. “You are not a fool, Jane, you are a writer of rare gifts, who is capable of giving great joy. And it is precisely because things like Tom’s death happen that the world needs literature. It needs art, and music, and plays.”

  Jane shook her head, unsure whether to be flattered by or contemptuous of her sister’s words. “But novels are frivolous, are they not?”

  “God would not see them as frivolous. He has given you this gift and He does not expect His bounty to go unused. You must finish this book and send it to a publisher, and show the world your talent. Do you not see? My disappointment in love must not be yours in literature.”

  As Cassandra said this the tension which had racked Jane’s limbs relented. She untangled her hands. An idea had occurred to her.

  “All right, Cass, let us strike a bargain. If I go on with First Impressions, might you be persuaded out of mourning in, say … a year?”

  Cassandra’s expression hovered on the edge of dismay. But then her shoulders eased themselves. Her neck lengthened, her chin tilted, and she suddenly looked to Ja
ne like the Cassandra she had always known, a beloved inspiration for her own attempts to acquire beauty, grace and good humour. “You sly thing!” she cried. “You see, you will always outwit everyone, just like Elizabeth Bennet!”

  Then she dropped the remains of her bread and butter, put her hands over her face and began to sob so bone-shakingly that Jane was unable to soothe her. Despairingly, as Mama’s night-capped head and worried expression appeared round the door, Jane wondered if, despite her sister’s brave words, Cassandra’s heart was not broken beyond repair.

  BOOK THREE

  Betrayed

  Papa

  The marriage register at Steventon Church was a heavy book in leather covers. It lay open at the present date of 1797 on its sloping table in the registry, with a thick silk ribbon marking the place. Each entry was written neatly, followed by the man’s and woman’s signatures, or, in the case of illiterate parishioners, a cross.

  Jane had lingered after the service. She stood before the altar, observing how the morning sunshine brightened the east window and splashed its splendour on the stones beneath her feet. Tom, she thought, Thomas Lefroy, if you are in church this morning, are you thinking of me, or only of your prayers?

  Quickly, she went into the registry and laid aside the ribbon. She turned the register’s pages until she found the place she sought. It was still there, then. Papa had not torn it out, as he had threatened.

  Jenny’s eyes filled with tears. Years ago, when she was sixteen, she had turned to a blank page near the back of the register and written in her own imaginary marriage entry. It had been a little girl’s game. Her father had laughed when he saw it, especially since she had experimented with several different husbands.

  She looked at the husbands’ names. With a stab she noticed that one of them, a Mr Fitzwilliam, was the name she had used for Mr Darcy’s first name in First Impressions. How strange that this fictitious Fitzwilliam was so potent in her imagination that he had appeared, then been forgotten, then appeared again.

  Her tears dried; interest had overcome them. She ran her finger down the other made-up names. They were evidently supposed to be gentlemen, of varying grandeur, some with three or even four names. They came from all over England, from London to the north country and back again. None from Ireland, she noted. Then, right at the bottom of the page, when she had perhaps been tiring of the game, she had written a simple name, like that of a farm labourer, next to her own. That is what made Papa laugh, she told herself. What a nonsensical girl I was!

  She did not close the book, nor did she find the current page again. She stood there, in her bonnet and gloves, and the black silk jacket which had once belonged to Anne and did not fit Mary, thinking, thinking…

  Did Tom Lefroy remember that on their very first meeting he had asked her to call him Tom, and called her Jane? She had never met a gentleman who had shown anything approaching such intimacy with her. For over a year now she had nursed the memory of those three meetings: the first at that Christmas ball, the second the next day, when he had visited the Rectory with George Lefroy. She could still see Tom, nervously clutching his hat, asking her for the first dance at the forthcoming ball at his aunt and uncle’s house, the scene of that third and final encounter.

  She could still feel Mama’s pearls around her neck, and hear the rustle of the hem of Cassandra’s pink dress. She saw Tom’s ravishing smile, which bore out what she had heard about the charm of the Irish, since his father had something of it too. She felt the pressure of his hand through her glove when he had led her to the floor for the last dance, and recalled everyone in the room looking at them. The room itself – every candelabra, every garland of winter greenery, the position of every musician, every footman – was fixed timelessly in her memory.

  Had he forgotten it all? Or did he, like Jane, permit himself the occasional fantasy that opposition to their match would somehow fall away, and he would send the tenderest letter ever written by a man to a woman, hoping that her affections remained as warm as his? Of course, she would reply that they did, and within days he would arrive at Steventon, not quite on a white horse, but in a carriage, and march straight into the study to speak to Papa.

  Jane turned back to 1797 and put the ribbon in place. The fantasy was as impossible as the dreams of the sixteen-year-old and her Mr Fitzwilliam. Without a backward glance she walked out of the registry, along the aisle and out of the door. In the churchyard she put up her parasol against the midday glare. It threw a black shadow, and, since the Rectory garden was no more than a few steps away, she was glad to hide her face.

  Martha Lloyd had come over from Ibthorpe for a week’s stay with her sister at Deane Parsonage. The day after her arrival Jane and Cass took the lane to Deane, a walk more familiar than any other, to visit their friend. Seated upon a hard chair at the parlour fireside with Martha, Cass and Mary, Jane almost felt as if recent trying events had never occurred, and the four of them were carefree girls again. Martha, eager to hear about Jane’s latest work, had absorbed the plot of First Impressions with her usual keenness, and was now ready to question it.

  “Would you accept a man whom you had refused before?” she asked Jane. “If someone insulted me as deeply as Mr Darcy insults Elizabeth, I should never speak to him again.”

  “But Elizabeth is prejudiced against Darcy long before that,” put in Cassandra loyally. “And after her conclusions are proved too hasty, she realizes that she wants to marry him after all.”

  “And he is rich, and handsome,” added Mary with a smile.

  “I still think she would not do it,” insisted Martha, “though I am prepared to wager, ladies, that our clever Jane will write it in such a way as to make it the most natural thing in the world.”

  “May I speak?” asked Jane meekly. “As Elizabeth’s creator, I feel my knowledge of her to be somewhat more profound than anyone else’s.”

  “There you are, Martha!” cried Mary. “That is politeness itself, but of course it really means, ‘Martha Lloyd, you do not know what you are talking about’.”

  “Not at all,” Jane assured Martha. “All observations are useful. And I confess, I am unsure whether I can make the second proposal convincing. What must Darcy say that will excuse his former conduct, capture Elizabeth and satisfy the reader?”

  “Oh, that is easy!” cried Martha. “I suggest that he says, ‘Miss Bennet, my passion for you has made me as noble in character as I am in rank, and if you do not marry me I shall quit Pemberley for ever and live as a beggar on Cheapside.’”

  During the ensuing laughter Mary stood up and smoothed her skirt. “Jane, dear, I wish you the very best with your story, but writing it appears very complicated. I am very glad I am only the mistress of a parsonage, and do not have to consider such things. Now, shall I bring tea? Or wine? And some cake?”

  When she had gone Martha reached across and patted Jane’s hand. “The book is going to be wonderful. What shall become of it when it is finished?”

  Jane kicked the edge of the hearthrug gently. “It will join its predecessors in a box, I predict.”

  “No, it will not!” protested Cassandra. “This one must be sent to a publisher, I insist.”

  “Have your parents read any of it?” enquired Martha.

  “Yes,” Jane told her, glancing at Cassandra. “Perhaps, when it is completed, Papa may decide if it is good enough. Will that satisfy you, Cass? I shall do nothing without his permission.”

  “Very well,” returned Cassandra. “But he will give it willingly. He is so proud of you.”

  “He is a representative of the Church, however, and some of the clergy consider novels immoral, or at best unscholarly.”

  “You are a very good daughter,” said Martha with approval. “I confess if I had written a novel I would be so pleased with myself such scruples would not deter me from publication.” Her eyes brightened. “If you did publish First Impressions, Jane, would it bear your real name?”

  “I have not considered
the question,” said Jane uncertainly.

  “Perhaps to confound disapproving clergymen, you could pretend to be a man,” suggested Martha with glee. “Mr Janus Austentatious!”

  Jane laughed, but her heart was heavy. She knew that First Impressions had promise, and some scenes were undoubtedly among the best things she had ever written. When she had read the opening chapter to Henry, he had protested that Mr and Mrs Bennet were so comic they should have a whole book of their own, or better still, a play. But good though the book was, Jane was convinced it was not yet good enough for a public airing, and perhaps never would be.

  She resolved to review it that very evening. If Papa were to approve of it, it must be light, and bright, and sparkling, but enforce the moral described by the title: first impressions are not always the correct ones. Elizabeth and her sisters must be exuberant, but over-exuberance must be punished, and virtue rewarded. And what if Martha’s misgivings were correct, and nobody would believe that Mr Darcy would risk a second proposal to Elizabeth after she had refused him so vehemently? What could she do to make them believe it?

  On the walk home, she was silent.

  “If I were Catherine Bigg, I would say ‘A penny for your thoughts, Miss Jane?’” said Cassandra eventually.

  “Thank goodness you are not,” replied Jane. “It is to you, not Catherine, that I will admit freely my concern about the ending of First Impressions. I do not wish a lapse in credibility to spoil the story.”

  “It is only Martha’s opinion that there is a lapse,” said Cass. “She may be wrong.”

  “No, she is right,” insisted Jane. “And I am grateful to her for pointing it out. But what can I do?”

  “Do nothing,” advised Cassandra as they came within sight of the Rectory. She waved to Mama, who was waiting for Dick to bring the trap round. “Something will suggest itself to you when you least expect it. Where do you think Mama is going?”