Jane Fairfax

by Joan Aiken

  Soon she had forgotten, or at least pushed out of memory, the terrible days before Miss Taylor’s arrival.

  On the first of these, little Jane Fairfax had arrived, unheralded, at the house. News of the death of Mrs Woodhouse had, of course, been passed in hushed tones about the village and discussed with due solemnity. But, such is the natural self-absorption of early childhood, Jane had not related this event in any way to her own doings. It never occurred to her, for example, that the fatality might affect the twice-weekly visits of Signor Negretti. For almost a year, now, she had been accustomed to take her way unescorted to Hartfield whenever she chose; Patty, her grandmother’s sole servant, had a thousand daily tasks to perform, and it was such a short way through the village that no one felt the least anxiety about the child. Nor did her aunt think to warn her that at present the usual music classes must very probably have been suspended; so, as was her custom, she ran eagerly along the narrow path among the Hartfield laurel-bushes—only to stop short when she reached the lawn, startled at the wholly unwonted sight of Emma, huddled miserably on the low, broad bench that encircled the cedar tree.

  Not only was Emma never to be found alone in the garden at such a time of day, but this was an Emma never seen, never even imagined by Jane before: an utterly wretched, crumpled, tear-drenched Emma, her cheeks pale and smeared, her shoe-laces undone, hair uncurled, hardly so much as combed, and, most astonishing of all, instead of her usual carefully chosen attire, she wore a plain, unbecoming black serge dress at least two sizes too large for her. (It had been one of Isabella’s, made at the time of their grandfather’s death four years previously, which nobody had, as yet, found time to alter.)

  “Oh — Emma —” exclaimed Jane, pausing irresolutely, “I am sorry, I did not know — that is, I was told you had gone away into Kent —”

  She was very ready to turn tail and run homeward, for at various former encounters Emma’s manner to her had been decidedly rebuffing. But this time, perhaps, might be different?

  Emma looked up. Her hazel eyes were reddened, hardly to be glimpsed between swollen lids. She cried out wildly, “Jane, Jane, my mother is dead! Mamma is dead! How shall I ever go on without her?”

  Jane was much struck. That Emma, always so surrounded by friends, comfort, affection, should appear thus solitary was strange indeed.

  “But — have you not your papa still — Mr Woodhouse?”

  “Yes; but he is in bed, where he lies and cries, and if I go near him he only tells me to run away to Mrs Hill.”

  “Well, but you do have Mrs Hill — and Serle, and James, and your maid Rebecca —”

  “They are only servants!”

  “And your sister — Miss Isabella —”

  “She is not the same as Mamma! Besides, she is in Kent.”

  This was unarguable.

  “Oh, Jane!” cried Emma. “What shall I ever do?”

  An appeal so simple, so heartfelt, was not to be resisted; certainly not by Jane, who, though she could not recall her own mother with any clarity, was all too familiar with the anguish of a loss only a few years past; she remembered, also, what a kind, gentle, solicitous lady Mrs Woodhouse had always been, not infrequently stepping into the music-room for a moment to say a kind approving word.

  Without a moment’s hesitation she ran to the bench, flung her arms round the other child, and embraced Emma tightly, crying out, “Oh, poor, poor Emma! I am so truly sorry for you! Indeed it is dreadful — I do not know how you can bear it.”

  Such sympathy, so spontaneous, direct, utterly sincere, was the only thing, just then, that could have done Emma any good, and she laid her head on Jane’s shoulder and wept abundantly for many minutes.

  “What shall I ever do?” she repeated, over and over. “Who is there to take care of me? Mr Knightley sent a message to Papa that he is finding a governess. A governess! I am sure she will be hateful. How can she ever, ever take the place of Mamma?”

  “Well; if she is hateful,” said Jane stoutly, “I will stand by you.”

  The thought that she might actually be of use to Emma was sweet indeed.

  “Oh, yes!” cried the other. “Do! We shall be friends for ever, shall we not? And tell each other all our secrets!”

  “Everything,” said Jane, who had no secrets to impart. “And love each other best, always. And never be cross or unkind.”

  This promise ratified, over and over, many times, they huddled together, clasping each other like two fledgling birds blown from a nest, until Serle’s voice calling, “Miss Emma! Miss Emma! Where ever have you got to? Come in, now, like a good girl, to your dinner!” brought Emma to her feet and, for the time being, separated them.

  Jane, finding the hour so late, turned homewards to her own dinner, deep in thought. But her step was unusually elastic, and her head held high; pity, aghast pity for Emma’s stricken state being, within her breast, almost equally combined with a species of wondering joy at this undreamed-of friendship that had, like a gift from the gods, been so suddenly and unexpectedly bestowed. A friend! Emma Woodhouse has offered to be my friend! thought Jane. Now we shall be able to do so many delightful things together. We can take walks — perhaps Mr Knightley will come with us — he is very fond of Emma, I know — and she will come back to my house, sometimes, and look at all the drawings I have made for Mrs Pryor, and my paper dolls, and Aunt Hetty will bake one of her sweet cakes for us, I am sure. We can have pretend tea-parties, using acorn tea-cups; and play house under the table with the red cloth cover.

  In preparation for which events, she collected a great many acorn-cups and persuaded Aunt Hetty to cut her out a new set of spillikins.

  Before any such plans could be put into execution, however, Emma’s mourning dresses must be made; she could not endure to be seen outside the grounds of Hartfield looking, as she said, such a fright, in clothes that fitted her so ill. With which feelings, Jane could only sympathize.

  For six days, therefore, with the cordial permission of her aunt and grandmother, Jane went daily to Hartfield, where the two children, usually in the garden, for the season was fine, mild, and open, amused themselves with I-spy, Bilbocatch, conundrums, and other quiet pastimes considered permissible during the period of mourning: cards, counters, dolls, and other such playthings were naturally put by for the time.

  Jane’s first suggestion had been for hide-and-seek. Ever since the commencement of her visits to the house, she had been longing to explore the Hartfield gardens. Now that, for the first time, she was at liberty to roam about the shrubberies, walks, and wildernesses of the extensive grounds, she had discovered in herself considerable skill for locating crafty, unexpected places in which to hide, crouched among the ivy against a wall, perched in the mossy niche over a lion’s head fountain, or just above eye-level in the fork of an old willow; but hide-and-seek proved unsatisfactory as an activity, involving, as it did, long spells of solitary waiting, or of solitary search for the other player, during which periods Emma rapidly became bored and restless. If she were the seeker, her attempts to find Jane would grow more and more languid and desultory; if the hider, she would begin, from her place of concealment, to call impatiently, “I’m here! I’m here! Come and find me. Jane, Jane, I am here!”

  And, when Jane had reached her, “I’m tired of this game. Let’s do something else. Let’s play weddings.” Since Emma was the hostess, she must of course command the choice of game; Jane, too, had been taught good manners. Yet to her this “wedding” game, which consisted of planning imaginary nuptials for all the inhabitants of Highbury, seemed intolerably slow and dull.

  They would sit for hours together in the revolving summer-house and discuss the imaginary ceremonies down to the most minute detail; Jane, who had never attended a wedding in her whole existence, sometimes wondered at Emma’s grasp of the procedure.

  “And what about Mr Knightley? Whom shall he marry?” she asked, stifling a yawn, when the Misses Cox and the Gilberts and the Otways had all been run throu
gh, with their hymns, gloves, bouquets, lace trimmings, white satin, the love scenes, the wording, the proposals, and the presents.

  “Mr Knightley? He is by far too old to marry. — His brother, now, Mr John, I have sometimes wondered — but Mr Knightley is much too old. And so is Mr Weston. In any case, Mr Weston is a widower, he was married before …”

  Emma’s voice faltered. Mr Weston’s marriage had been brought to an end by the death of his young wife, and that was a subject too closely allied to her own trouble. Jane, with ready comprehension, said quickly, “Well, then, how about Miss Bickerton, the young lady who has become a parlour boarder at Mrs Goddard’s school? What gentleman would do for her?”

  “Miss Bickerton? She is scarcely older than my sister — far too young to marry. In any case, I daresay she will have to become a teacher; or an old maid; Mrs Goddard told Papa that she has no family, but is paid for by charitable subscription.”

  This careless comment cast Jane into silence. Young though she was, she had already begun to speculate, with a great many doubts, on the subject of her own future.

  “Who else could be married?” demanded Emma, yawning in her turn. “Come on, Jane! Think of somebody else, do! You are so quiet; you never have ideas.”

  “Am I quiet?” said Jane in surprise.

  “Yes; too quiet.”

  “Well:” said Jane after some thought, “I suppose it is because Aunt Hetty talks so much.”

  On the following morning at breakfast Aunt Hetty’s usual flow of incessant conversation was, for a wonder, stilled; the cause of this, to Jane’s observant eye, seemed to be a long white envelope with a red lawyer’s seal which Patty had brought from the post office. For once, Aunt Hetty did not try to persuade Jane to eat a second slice of bread-and-butter; her request to leave the table and make herself ready for the daily visit to Hartfield was absently granted, and as she put on her pelisse (for the mornings were growing chill) she heard a low-voiced conversation between her elders.

  “Should the child be informed? What is your opinion, ma’am? So very kind! So very unexpected! I hardly know what to think —”

  From the old lady, her grandmother: “Had we not better wait and invite the opinion of some gentleman with greater knowledge — it may, you know, be our legal duty to tell her — but Mr Knightley, perhaps — or Mr Pryor —”

  “Run along, Jane dear,” said Aunt Hetty. “That is right. I daresay Emma will be waiting for you so impatiently —”

  But on that morning Jane, with the acute sensitivity of the natural solitary, detected a change, a coolness in Emma’s welcome.

  “Oh, are you there, Jane?” she said listlessly. “It is very cold today. What shall we play to keep warm?”

  “Shall we stay indoors? Go to the music room and play duets?” Jane suggested.

  This plan had, for some days, been lurking at the back of her mind, since there were a few pieces for four hands on the piano which she had long been eager to try; they had been procured by Mrs Woodhouse for her daughters before the day of Isabella’s rebellion against music, and from that time had lain in their place unopened.

  But — “Duets?” cried Emma with a look of disgust. “I thank you, no! What a disagreeable idea! Duets are wretched things! You only say that —” she checked herself, looked, for a moment, very downcast, then burst out irrepressibly, “You need not think yourself the best pianist in Surry, just because Mamma left you one hundred pounds! It is no great matter, after all!”

  This remark was so incomprehensible to Jane that she stood perfectly still, wondering if she had heard amiss.

  “What can you possibly mean, Emma? Your Mamma left me one hundred pounds? What can you be talking about? She did not leave me anything.”

  “Yes — she did,” muttered Emma resentfully. “Her Will was read yesterday. Mr Cox the lawyer came and read it to Papa. Mamma had money of her own, and she left one hundred pounds ‘to my young neighbour Jane Fairfax, to be used for her education, because of the very great pleasure her music has given to me.’”

  “One hundred pounds! But I do not understand.” Jane was totally puzzled. “Mrs Woodhouse never came into the music-room while I was practising — except, perhaps, for a moment sometimes, just at the end …” her voice faltered as she remembered the thin, pale, elegant lady who would now never come again. At this moment she began to comprehend the full permanence of death. “I do not think Mrs Woodhouse ever heard me playing, above once or twice,” she said doubtfully.

  “Well: she did.” Emma’s tone held all the outrage of the child who has been unjustly excluded from some privilege enjoyed by his siblings. “She used to go and sit in Mrs Hill’s room and listen; Serle told me so. And now she has left you one hundred pounds. She has not left me any money — nor Isabella; not until we are twenty-one when we shall have thirty thousand; but what use is that? I think it is very unfair.”

  “But, Emma,” began Jane, “you have everything now —” She looked about her at the gardens. A thick frost today whitened the lawns.

  “I don’t have Mamma!” cried out Emma passionately.

  “It is far too cold, sitting here like this,” said Jane in haste, to forestall an imminent outburst of tears. “Let us run races. Quick, Emma! I will beat you to the chestnut tree.”

  Jane, though so small for her age, was nimbler than the more heavily-built but somewhat clumsy Emma; she won two races out of three.

  Soon tiring of this diversion — “Let us go and talk to James and the horses,” Emma proposed. “If we ask, I daresay Serle will give us some bread for them.”

  Jane, in secret, was a little afraid of the huge glossy carriage horses, but of course offered no objection to this plan; however, when they reached the cobbled stable-yard they found the stalls empty; neither James nor the horses were there. Tom, the stable-lad, told them James had taken the carriage to Kingston to meet the new governess and, he added, ought to be returning very shortly with his passenger. Accordingly, after loitering about the yard and jumping off the horse-block a few times, they dawdled round to the front carriage-sweep with its great iron gates, and so were at hand to witness the arrival and descent from the conveyance of Miss Taylor, who proved to be, not at all the severe elderly lady of Emma’s imaginings, but young, pretty, and kind-faced.

  “Which of you is my pupil?” she asked immediately, and, on being told, “What game were you playing? May I not play it too? Or should I first go and introduce myself to your Papa?”

  “Oh, no. Papa does not at present come from his chamber until two or three in the afternoon,” explained Emma, while Jane excitedly cried, “Do, please, ma’am, play hide-and-seek with us!” — longing to put to use a few of the ingenious hiding-places that she had discovered.

  “Very well!” answered the new governess, laughing. “Do you, then, go and hide — what is your name? Jane? — while Emma and I begin to make one another’s acquaintance. We shall give you no more than three minutes by my timepiece, then come in search. Away with you!”

  Overjoyed, without observing Emma’s discontented expression, Jane sped off. Emma has found a grown-up friend, she thought comfortably; that lady will be kind to her, I am sure. Buried under this pleasant impression remained the strange radiance of that one hundred pounds. What a thing, what a thing to have happened! That must have been what Grandma and Aunt Hetty were talking about at breakfast.

  Jane knew just where she planned to conceal herself, in a kind of double laurel-hedge that formed a boundary between the shrubbery and the lawn; one of the trees in it was already of large stature and had a fork, several feet above the ground, where she could perch hidden in a nest of greenery. Thither she flew, and, as soon as she was in position, called out loudly, “I am ready!” and settled herself to wait in patience.

  Great patience was required of her, for the seekers proceeded at what seemed to her a most dawdling pace. Several times she saw them in the distance, talking to one another, but walking in the wrong direction, and she was tempted to
call again, but restrained herself.

  And then, unexpectedly, she heard their voices close by; apparently they were strolling down the wide dry walk that lay along the border of the shrubbery.

  “And is Jane Fairfax your great friend?” Miss Taylor was asking kindly. “Does she share lessons with you and your sister?”

  “Oh dear — no!” came Emma’s reply, in a tone of pitying astonishment. “Jane’s family are quite poor. She has no father or mother, and lives with her grandmother over a barber’s shop. Mamma used to call on them, but it was out of kindness. And Jane will never be able to marry, for they have no money, none at all. Except —” Emma hesitated, then went on. “When she is grown, Jane will be obliged to earn her living, she will be —”

  There she halted, possibly because she had been on the point of saying, “be a governess.” Belated caution had overtaken her.

  “Well,” commented the new governess in a neutral tone, “that is very sad for Jane, to be sure, but it would not, surely, hinder your being friends?”