Jane the Authoress

by Jane Lark

  “Oh, Jane.” Cassandra, touched Jane’s arm.

  “I just saw a woman, in a storm, and a man wrapping his cloak about her. I am not sure which story it should fit within, but perhaps it might be a story of its own. I shall see who speaks to me.”

  “That is wonderful, and we are not even in the carriage.” Cassandra smiled. She knew too, that Jane hoped for the return of inspiration during their travels, or if not then, in Southampton.

  A light sensation flooded Jane when they stepped outside. Hope was growing from a small shoot and forming its first leaves. Her characters had not spoken for such a long time. They had used to constantly press in on her for a voice to tell their tales.

  Jane looked across the street; the arguing men had moved on and taken their disagreement into John St, yet the woman remained, standing beneath the arch, her shawl clasped in her hands, holding it tight across her chest.

  Jane looked away, pity in her heart. Perhaps, when she felt like writing again she ought to review the scenes describing Lydia’s elopement. Lydia would have run to a place like this. She would have hidden in the worst areas of London. Jane knew now what the worst areas would be like. Yet silly Lydia would be blind to them.

  Her fingers embraced Cassandra’s arm tighter, perhaps clinging a little. But she was clinging not only to her sister’s arm, but to life. Cassandra was Jane’s stronghold, her reassurance. Cassandra’s friendship was the thing Jane had held tightest to throughout these last months of dark and even darker days.

  The damp, dirt-smeared cobbles glistened with a metallic gloss in the rain, akin to rusty iron.

  Bath had become a glum place. Jane thanked heaven for the carriage about to arrive and rescue her.

  Jane’s character, Susan, thought Bath a paradise. She enthused and thrilled over every scrolled decorative carving and pale stone pilaster, and treasured the sophisticated friends she met. That had been Jane, when Jane had first come to Bath in the company of her mother; though she had been older and wiser than Susan.

  Jane had also spent six weeks here with her brother, Edward, at the age of four and twenty, and then, too, Bath’s statuesque and dramatic structures and its vibrant style of life had held some enchantment.

  Jane’s heels struck the uneven slippery cobbles as she walked across the street arm in arm with her sister. They turned the corner. On the right was a remnant of an ancient wall, and before them was the Mineral Water Hospital for the poor souls who came to take the waters, yet had no money for Bath’s high-priced doctors and surgeons.

  Not that high-priced doctors had helped her father, or Edward. She had always thought Edward recovered despite the glasses of putrid smelling water that he’d drunk, and the fussing doctors who had hovered about him, with their good advice and hands held forth for payment of it. She had still left Bath then, though, with pleasurable memories of assemblies, walks and social engagements. This time she would leave with a heavy sense that Bath could only be remembered with misery.

  Susan was suddenly with Jane, walking beside her. Her steps quick, not because of the rain, but from excitement and eagerness to reach the next moment of pleasure.

  Jane’s father’s eyes, shining with excitement and tears of pride, when he’d come to tell her that Susan had been accepted for publishing, took over the images in Jane’s mind. Jane had felt the excitement that was intrinsically a part of Susan’s nature then. The memory of that emotion put the dull image of the street into shadow. Jane held on to the view of her father as she and Cassandra walked on, with Susan beside her, a living person waiting to be known by the world.

  Jane must remember that those moments, Susan’s creation, and her father’s joy at the recognition of Jane’s work had occurred in Bath. It had not always been a place of sorrow.

  A poor woman, with a twisted leg and a distorted, hunched spine sat on the floor near the steps of the grand Mineral Water Hospital, begging from passers-by. Cassandra stopped, her arm slipping from Jane’s as she delved into her purse. Without an income of her own Jane had no money to give. She was a beggar like this woman; Jane lived on charity, albeit that of her brothers. Guilt pierced through her heart. She would like to help as Cassandra did, but the lace and muslin she longed for called… Who knew when she would next have money for luxuries?

  Cassandra pulled the drawstrings to close her reticule.

  Jane glanced towards the corner leading into Milsom street. There were many well-dressed men about them, carrying canes, that swung with the pace of their strides, as their grip upon the handles revealed gold, ivory and silver. Like Darcy and Bingley, such men had the money to help this poor woman, though many of them would not.

  Darcy would have given something, but he would wait until his friend walked on and subtly pass over a coin. He had a generous but private nature that was filled with charitable emotions. When Lizzy met him it was only empathy, a recognition of the real life those of lesser wealth lived and openness that he lacked, beneath those weaknesses he was a good man from the beginning to the end of Lizzy’s and Darcy’s story.

  When the lover Jane had created for Lizzy had been rejected by the publishers, long before Susan’s acceptance, it had been a cutting blow to Jane’s career as an authoress. Jane was a little in love with Darcy and his over-proud bearing—because she knew the soft, vulnerable heart he hid beneath it. Of course Darcy had created himself in her head and written himself through her hand, so perhaps he had charmed her, just as Lizzy, with her intelligent eyes, easy smiles and quick, challenging wit, had charmed him.

  As Lizzy had broken Darcy down with a harsh image of the man she saw, dressed in his prideful armour, the publishers had broken Jane’s confidence for a while, criticising her skill in creating characters, saying they lacked any depth, and the story was not rounded to any degree. The issue was, her characters wrote themselves, so how could she change and recreate them? When she began a story she knew a little of them, but as their stories commenced, they told her how they wished to feel, and what would become of them. It had been a very personal insult then, not only to their author, but to Lizzy and Darcy.

  Jane captured a slight sound of humour in her throat, before it could erupt.

  In her head every one of her characters had become a living, breathing person. They were like friends, family—a part of her. They were her children.

  Cassandra looked up and down the street preparing to cross, then she caught hold of Jane’s elbow and hurried her over the cobbles. They passed between carriages and joined the bustle of Milsom St.

  Jane breathed out. It was so good to be thinking of characters again, about stories. By the grace of her brothers, her thoughts had been freed to wander back into fiction, and soon she would be back in the country and away from this town that had hemmed her in for far too long.

  Perhaps that was why her characters had begun whispering to her again, because they knew she was about to return to the countryside where they had been born. She wrote mostly about country life, and the town life here in Bath had been like a wall to her inspiration. A wall she had been unable to pass through.

  When Cassandra pushed open the shop door, a bell rang above their heads.

  After they had flicked through the strands of lace and ribbons in the haberdashery and exhausted their inspirations there, Cassandra led Jane farther into Bath, to look at other shops, and choices.

  It was not quite happiness that rose up inside Jane as they walked on towards the shops on Poultney Bridge, but perhaps it was excitement, an expectation of future joy. They would all be happy with Frank and his new wife, Mary, in Southampton, she knew it, and there was this short holiday to enjoy.

  If it was not excitement within her, then it was at least hope—hope for future happiness. Though that hope was very quietly spoken.

  When she and Cassandra returned to Trim St, the carriage Edward had sent for their use, awaited them. Behind it men were loading their trunks and other belongings onto a cart. Many of their articles were to go directly to Fra
nk’s but their personal items, which they needed for their journey, were strapped onto the carriage they were to travel in.

  “My manuscripts…”

  Jane’s arm slipped free from Cassandra’s and she ran to the cart. They should be in the trunk that would accompany her, she would not risk them travelling independently. “Where are my papers?” She asked one of the men.

  “Still in the room, miss.”

  “Thank you.” She turned away and went inside to fetch her precious stories.

  Her fingers grasped a handful of her cloak and the skirt of her dress when she hurried up the narrow stairs. Her other hand slid over the wooden bannister.

  She would never climb these steps again, with any luck. I will not come back.

  In the small, dull, dirty, cream room, the room she would be glad never to sleep in again, Jane picked up the manuscripts and held them to her bosom, gripping them beneath her cloak for a moment, embracing them.

  Emotion clutched in her stomach.

  It really was hope.

  She turned and bent to open the smallest of the trunks left in her room. There was space to lay the manuscripts flat on top of her clothes.

  When she shut the lid, the emotion of hope slipped away, and darkness flooded in, surrounding her once more.

  She was not shutting them in the dark. She was merely keeping them safe. They would be in the light again soon, among open fields, trees and birdsong, and they would experience the constant visits of country life, as country society circulated. The world would be brighter, and life would be full of stories…

  Chapter 3

  5th August 1806

  Jane’s cheeks ached from the smile she had forced her lips to hold for many of the hours since she had left Bath. Their trip had failed to deliver the immediate tonic she had anticipated from the country air and new acquaintances.

  Like the water in the pump room in Bath, the tonic tasted putrid. It should not. It was her mind that was at fault, not their activity. She had become too engrossed in misery to feel happiness when she ought to.

  Perhaps what she needed was time for quiet country walks—time to listen to the birds singing, and the leaves swaying on the branches in the trees, and to smell the scent of flowers in the fields. Time to be away from people—and alone with her thoughts—with her characters. Time to listen to the words of imagination.

  Since leaving Bath she had done very little other than sit in a parlour or a carriage.

  Lizzy, Darcy, Elinor and Marriane remained hidden in Jane’s trunk, in the dark, rocking from side to side as the carriage rumbled across the uneven muddy roads.

  “Hey up, there!” The driver called to the horses, his sharp, low voice piercing through the glossy wooden roof of the carriage.

  Jane’s fingertips gripped the little sill on the carriage window, as the carriage rocked more heavily to the right, racing over a rut, then tilted back as they began to climb a hill.

  “I shall be black and blue by the time we reach the parsonage at Aldestrop.”

  Jane glanced at her mother and smiled.

  They were all fatigued from travelling. This time it was to Gloucestershire, to visit another of her mother’s cousins, Reverend Thomas Leigh, who lived in the parsonage at Aldestrop with his sister. Jane could not remember meeting him before.

  Cassandra caught Jane’s eye and smiled; it was a smile that conveyed private words of agreement, over a lack of enthusiasm for another hasty visit before they carried on to one last relative before settling at Frank’s.

  Jane’s mother was making up for years of being unable to pay calls on her kin, either because she had been needed at Steventon by her husband and children, or because she could not afford the expense of such extensive journeys.

  Jane looked out of the window, as she had done for half a dozen hours today, and watched the tall nearly-ripe wheat sway in a breeze in the field. Then she looked at the hills on the horizon and let her gaze hover on the far distance until the carriage passed through woods and she could no longer see. Then she tried to see deeper in between the trees.

  Not a single character spoke within her head, even though her thoughts were free to receive their words.

  Yet, no matter that it was from within the boundaries of a carriage, it was still good to be in the countryside. To see the world stretching on forever, and not feel hemmed in by high buildings, no matter how ornate and beautifully carved those illustrious buildings were. This is what her soul had been craving—expansive sky and endless fields. Perhaps the tonic was working a little.

  In her head she was walking, striding out in unladylike fashion, as dampness from the long dewy grass seeped through the leather of her walking boots and moistened the hems of her petticoats. Her lips lifted in a slight smile as she reached an imaginary stile and waded cautiously through the churned mud, full of footprints, from several people passing. She gripped the skirt of her dress, which was tucked up at one point, caught in at her waist to save it from the mud and damp, and clasped at a handful of petticoats too as she climbed up onto the step of the stile and over the wooden bar, flashing an entirely indelicate length of her stocking clad leg.

  When she arrived home from such walks she would have glowing cheeks and be smiling from the invigoration of a good swift ramble, and from the inspiration and wonder of nature too, and the hems of her petticoats would be six inches deep with mud beneath her dress; just as Lizzy had appeared at Netherfield.

  It would be nice to enjoy a walk like that again, but unless they could find a moment to do so on their travels it would continue to be hard to achieve such things in Southampton because, once again, they would be in a city. That was not to say that she could not walk out from the borders into countryside as she had done in Bath. Yet like her time in Bath, it would only be a couple of hours of escape before she must return to the imprisonment of streets and buildings.

  Cassandra spoke with their mother. Jane’s mother’s voice rang high with excitement at the prospect of meeting another cousin with whom she had only communicated in writing for years.

  Before they had left Bath they had all been living beneath a cloud; for her mother it had lifted. Jane would not be disappointed in that. Whether she achieved a country walk or not, she would rejoice in her mother’s pleasure.

  “You see you cannot imagine how I lived when I was young…” her mother progressed. She was reminiscing on the days of her childhood. She had spent many hours looking back as they had travelled; her memories stirred by the relatives they had already called upon.

  “You are very lucky girls that you have not acquired the Leighs’ aristocratic nose as I did.”

  Jane’s head spun to look at her mother as Cassandra spluttered into laughter. A sound of amusement was wrenched from Jane’s throat too.

  “Well I would consider myself lucky if I did have it,” Cassandra answered, “because then I may constantly remind people of my superior origins. It is your mark of pride—”

  “To have a bump on your nose.” Jane teased.

  “To have the nose that descended from Elizabeth I’s Lord Mayor of London, and a Baron who sheltered Charles I,” Cassandra continued. “I would be very proud of my nose, if I had that bump.”

  Jane laughed along with her mother and Cassandra. She would be happy for her mother, even if she could not be happy for herself.

  ~

  “I am sure it is near here. It cannot be much farther…” Jane’s mother leant towards the window trying to see along the road. Cassandra leant towards the other window, looking too. But the brims of their bonnets’ prevented them from getting close enough to the panes to actually see.

  “I thought you have never been to Aldestrop, Mama?” Jane watched her mother’s struggle to see, with a smile.

  She looked at Jane. “I have not.” She laughed then.

  She could hardly know if they were close or not in that case.

  Cassandra’s head turned as she broke into laughter too.

  They had l
aughed often on their journey.

  Happiness. It should be in reach. Jane must pull herself up out of this pit of the doldrums. She had no cause to be unhappy now they were to live with Frank. It would insult him if they arrived in Southampton and she remained melancholy.

  At least visiting a parsonage felt like going home.

  But Reverend Leigh’s home would not be Papa’s. Or rather James’s. Her eldest brother had taken over the living at Steventon years ago, when their father had retired.

  It would be lovely, though, if the parsonage at Aldestrop were full of light like Steventon, and if the sound of a cockerel rang from the gardens, and geese could be heard… Jane had missed the sounds that had been so much a part of life at Steventon. Her heart ached to hear them again.

  She leant towards the window and looked out, as her mother and Cassandra turned to look once more.

  “I see cottages” Jane said, as she was able to look along the road, while her mother and Cassandra twisted around struggling to see. “We are approaching a village, Mama. You may have been right.”

  Her mother looked back and smiled at Jane. “See. As I told you, I have not been before, and yet I have seen the place a dozen times in my imagination. You are not the only one of us capable of picturing things in your head, Jane.” It was said in a very light mocking voice, to make Jane laugh.

  “Of course it may not be Aldestrop…” Cassandra answered dryly, teasing them both.

  “It is though,” Jane answered, “I can see a sign ahead which begins with A.”

  “Appleton,” Cassandra offered.

  “And I saw the milestone a little while back that very clearly said, ‘one mile to Aldestrop’,” Jane’s mother replied wryly.

  Cassandra laughed, then took a breath to control her mirth and replied, in a tone of accusation, “So that is how you knew we were nearly there.” She turned away to look through the window once more as they passed a short row of narrow cottages, with uneven whitewashed wattle and daub walls and thatched roofs. Next they passed a village green, smaller than the green at Steventon but very picturesque. In the middle was a large pond, on which several ducks swam, while about its edges a flock of geese grazed on the lush grass.