Jane the Authoress

by Jane Lark

  While most of the men took seats among the women, Mr Butler sought Jane out, walking across the room to join her by the bookshelves. “Are you looking for something particular?”

  Excitement swept over Jane. It was not in the least part romantic, she was beyond such silliness—except that the twinkle of charm and humour in his eyes and his smile did have some effect upon her. But her excitement was merely to have someone with whom she felt able to have amusing discourse. Mr Butler was entertaining.

  “No, nothing particular,” she glanced at him and smiled in the conspiratorial way they had established during their morning walk. “Unless there is a volume here entitled the avoidance of Lady Saye and Sele.”

  A humorous sound rose from Mr Butler’s throat, in a low deep pitch that must have drawn attention from others in the room, but Jane did not turn to look and see if it had.

  She did not need to turn to hear, though.

  “It was very good of you to invite Mr Butler to dine, I am glad you approved my suggestion. One has to be generous to those who serve us.”

  Was it possible for Lady S & S to be any ruder? She spoke in a way that implied she had no recognition that her words might be overheard, or perhaps she did not care.

  How could I think her at all like Darcy… Jane had likened her austere stance and manner to him at first, but really there was nothing of similarity. Lady S & S could never show a moment’s compassion.

  But then Darcy…

  If Lizzy were to look at him in this uncomfortable setting. Among a group, with his insecurity so intense it made his severity officious, and if she overheard him speak, refusing to dance… He might say it out of discomfort and be blind to those hearing his words. He would, in his first appearance, perhaps be as ill-judged in his behaviour as Lady S & S. Jane’s fingers itched to pick up a quill, but it must wait; she could not dash from the room as she might have at Steventon.

  But, thinking of Lizzy’s reaction; “I hope you are not offended, Mr Butler?”

  “I have a thick skin, Miss Jane, it takes far more than words to pierce it.”

  “And besides you have good reason not to take it personally when she disparages everyone equally.”

  Again there was a deep laugh, it echoed about the room slightly in an obvious punctuation of their otherwise whispered conversation.

  He leant a little closer, increasing the sense of conspiracy in their tête-à-tête. “Forgive me for saying so, Miss Jane, but there is one person in this room, besides my Lady’s closest family, whom my Lady does not disparage.”

  Jane looked at him, which probably gave away to others that their conversation was not at all about the books they had been staring at. “No, who?”

  “Have you not guessed?”

  “No. Tell, I insist. You cannot tease me like that.” Jane’s lips pulled into a broader smile, at the pleasure of this torrent of lively conversation.

  “Did you not hear the essence of it in that last retort. Her ladyship is a great approver of the occupation of Reverend Leigh. I believe we are all of us pieces upon her chessboard in general, and you and I considered no more than pawns, but the clergy—they are a little higher in the game.” Jane glanced over at Reverend Leigh. He was sitting beside Lady S & S. They were deeply involved in conversation, and from their postures Lady S & S was dictating her good advice, and ways of organising a large house, while Reverend Leigh listened and absorbed every word.

  Jane bit her lip on a laugh and faced Mr Butler. It would not be good for them both to be overheard laughing.

  “Of course, perhaps her interest is not to win the goodwill of Reverend Leigh but the goodwill of the man for whom he has worked. Perhaps she believes it is The Almighty she impresses and manipulates with such attention.”

  Good Lord. Oh the good Lord indeed. “Ha, ha…” Too late, the sound was out.

  “What are you speaking of, Miss Jane Austen?” The charge was called across the room. Jane turned to face Lady Saye and Sele, the chess master; she was about to be moved across the board.

  Yet before she could answer—

  “My Lady,” Mr Butler bowed his head in deference, acting out the part of the pawn he thought himself. Jane bit her lip. “I am telling Miss Jane the story of her relation in this portrait here.” He lifted his gaze to the portrait of a woman, sitting. It hung to the right of the bookshelves they had been pretending to study. It was an expensive image, not with a leg but with both arms and hands in full view. It was painted to the knee, and the woman wore a white satin dress, decorated with intricate lace and large pale blue bows.

  “Who is she?” Lady Saye and Sele charged.

  “Elizabeth Wentworth,“ Mr Hill answered.

  “Well now you might share with us all what has made Miss Jane Austen laugh.”

  Jane glanced sideways and smiled at him. She was not worried in the least. Mr Butler had barrows full of charm to wheel himself out of this, pawn or not.

  “This lady, my Lady,” he bowed slightly to Lady Saye and Sele, once more, before progressing, “fell under the spell of romantic love at a very young age, and I am sad to say, with a man who her father and mother considered highly unsuitable. You see he was fortuneless, but worse still he was without family connections or expectation, nothing but a poor soldier born of a trivial family.”

  Lady Saye and Sele’s eyebrows drew together in a frown, which bordered on a scowl.

  “The lady, I believe, was to be pitied, because she was truly devoted to the young man, and he to her. Yet with such strength of feeling, and such youth, foolish decisions are made in a moment. Decisions which might be regretted at leisure as youth turns to age and experience.”

  “What decision?” Lady S & S pressed.

  Mr Butler had a way with a tale; the flowing pitch of his voice enthralled, and made Jane long to hear the end as much as anyone else in the room, and every person had now stopped what they were doing. Frank’s shirt lay in Cassandra’s lap as her needle rested over it, and even Mrs Leigh had ceased to stare at the floor and watched the teller of the story, waiting for more.

  “She was in romantic love you must understand, and that being a powerful emotion which outdoes any other, such as duty or honour and family loyalty, when the young man proposed an elopement there was nothing within her that would hold her back. He was to leave with his regiment and he would have her hand before he left. He could no more stand to be denied her hand than she could bear to be parted from him without the surety of knowing he was hers.”

  Lady S & S stared at the portrait in horror as though she thought the woman painted there mad. She would have a lot to say to Elizabeth Wentworth if she were sitting within the room and not in a painting; there would be directions and judgements by the dozen.

  “They married,” Jane said. “How did they manage it?”

  “With the help of her sister,” Mr Butler answered, glancing at Jane with a smile. “A few years ago you did not need to run away to Scotland to marry without consent. The couple snuck away for a day only, with the help of Elizabeth’s sister, and married in secret, and then Elizabeth returned with her sister, and her husband went off with his regiment, and nothing more was said.”

  “She did not tell her father and mother…” Jane’s mother twisted about in her chair, to better see Mr Butler, and the portrait.

  “No, Mrs Austen. For she may have loved her soldier more than any loyalty to her family, but it does not mean that she did not have affection and respect for her parents, and besides, her husband had gone away, abroad, to fight in battles, and he could not support her; where would she have lived if she had spoken? Her parents would have most likely cast her out, without a roof over her head or money in her pockets.”

  “She lied,” Reverend Leigh responded.

  “She did not lie so much as she did not tell. I do not know if she would have lied had her father or her mother asked her if she had wed. But I do know that for years the young lady maintained her silence, as her mother presented before h
er numerous eligible suitors. Always there was a reason found to deny them, with the help of her sister. Of course she could never marry another man.

  “For years her love held, a fixed affection founded only on past youth and future hope—”

  “Did she see him again?” Cassandra urged, trying to rush Mr Butler’s storytelling, he had a wonderful way of setting drama with both his voice and his hesitations.

  “I was coming to it, Miss Austen. She did. He returned years later. No longer a poor soldier of no account, without fortune or family or anything to recommend him, he returned a Captain, a man of rank, name, honour and fortune. A man Elizabeth’s mother might have chosen as a suitor.”

  “Then what did they do?” Mrs Leigh sat farther forward in her chair.

  Mr Butler threw her one of his most charming smiles, recognising her rare break from silence. “Her sister took it upon herself to arrange the thing. She invited her mother, father and the Captain to a dinner at her home, and there she made the introductions. No one but Elizabeth, her sister and her brother-in-law, and of course the Captain, knew the true connection of the family, and he was introduced as any other man. Following the dinner Elizabeth’s sister gently encouraged her parents to consider the Captain as a suitor for Elizabeth, and so her husband was allowed to court her.”

  “Then they married again, with her family’s consent…” Mrs Leigh stated, though it was voiced as a question.

  Jane had never seen Mrs Leigh so animated.

  “She did indeed,” Mr Butler answered.

  “What a charming story,” Jane’s mother answered, “and one I did not know.”

  “I cannot see anything either charming or humorous about it. Why did you laugh Miss Jane?” Lady Saye and Sele stared at Jane.

  Oh my gosh. Jane bit her lip. To say she had laughed at any of the tale would no doubt offend Lady S & S’s sensibilities. “It was the way in which Mr Butler told it,” she answered, deeming that the safest answer, to say she had not laughed at the story but the steward.

  It seemed to suffice. Lady S & S looked away.

  Cassandra set down her sewing, rose and came across the room to join Jane and Mr Butler, her eyes on the painting, as Mrs Leigh’s gaze turned to her husband and then glanced at her mother, with a look that seemed to ask if she had done wrong.

  “It is a truly beautiful tale of love,” Cassandra said.

  It was a story in life which could have been written for fiction. Stoneleigh Abbey was the most blessed treasure trove of inspirations.

  Chapter 12

  Jane awoke in the darkness, her head full.

  Cassandra had come to Jane’s room when they had retired and their conversation had been all Mr Butler and Elizabeth Wentworth as they had lain in bed whispering to one another. Yet it was the thought of Lady Saye and Sele—and Darcy—that had woken Jane.

  If Darcy’s parents had died when he was a young man, and his model in life had become an aunt. An austere aunt of Lady Saye and Sele’s ilk. How might that have affected Darcy, and how would that affect Lizzy if she were to witness a familial scene of equal severity to the ones Jane had experienced here?

  The thought hovered in Jane’s mind with the image of Darcy speaking in Lizzy’s hearing in a way which would offend, without his even knowing because he had become so blind to the façade he hid the real man behind.

  When the darkness in the room turned from deep black to dark grey, and then became lighter still, Jane rose and found out her manuscript.

  There was a scene to amend and another new scene to write. She searched through the pages. Words filled every space, with crossing-outs, and writing squeezed in between lines and about the margins.

  She found the scene of the assembly, where Lizzy met Darcy for the first time. Jane read the scene through. Having met Lady S & S, she saw how she could draw Darcy’s pride out to a greater degree. He must appear as full of his own worth as Lady S & S, just as Lizzy’s mother was full of excitement over his wealth and willing to share the knowledge with everyone in the room. The weight of his fortune must be visible on his shoulders, his manner ought to be beyond proud, as though his shoulders had gilding decorating them.

  Jane picked up the quill.

  She wished to make him more like Lady Saye and Sele on the surface, and yet beneath it, there must be the real Darcy for Elizabeth, and her readers, to discover.

  The tip of the feathered end of the quill tapped against Jane’s lips as she looked at the words on the paper.

  If Darcy spoke to his close friend, to Bingley, and Lizzy were to overhear that. If he spoke to Bingley about not wishing to dance with just any female but only with a partner who he felt at ease with. Bingley would know that his friend rarely joined in anything with gaiety and that it was not a particular insult, and might urge him, but Lizzy would hear it only as a rejection of the society about her.

  Jane’s teeth caught hold of her lip as she drew a line through a sentence, and then she wrote above it. Darcy looked only at his friend, and spoke only to his friend. Bingley’s sisters were dancing. He knew no one else well.

  Another new sentence ran above the next line and twisted into the margin.

  He did not care for dancing anyway. Dancing put a man on display like a peacock. He had never been that. He preferred never to stand out among a crowd. Yet here, where his friend had made his new home, it was impossible not to stand out when society was so small, and those among it seemed to constantly stare.

  Lizzy was one of those who watched him, with an eye that judged him proud in an instant. Then she overheard his disgust for the present lack of dancing partners. The only woman he had praise for was Lizzy’s sister Jane, and that was because she danced with his friend, and he would not insult his friend by disparaging his partner.

  Jane smiled as the tip of the quill scratched across the paper, then she dipped it in the ink to replenish it.

  Fastidious. That would be the word that Bingley used to assault his pernickety friend. A word which struck too deep, and cut a little.

  When charged to look at Lizzy, another of the Bennet sisters, Darcy could do nothing but turn to do so. Then damn it but the woman looked back. He was not in good spirits, he did not feel comfortable, and he was in no mood to spend time with a woman whom other men must judge too difficult to partner. Certainly she was pretty enough. But no woman here would tempt him to dance. He looked away, spurned his friend’s suggestion, and sent Bingley off to dance again.

  That first condemnation was so piercingly arrogant Lizzy celebrated it for hours, ensuring all her confidants knew how cold and objectionable a man Darcy was.

  The quill tapped on Jane’s lip again. When Lizzy and Darcy dance later in the story, then it must be enforced, and by then his interest in Lizzy, on longer acquaintance, would have grown, while Lizzy’s feelings towards him had hardened to cold and complacent.

  Oh then there must be a time for revenge. Of course, to please a female reader there must be revenge, and to please a man there must be a moment of capture. When caught, and trapped into dancing, Lizzy must taunt Darcy, it was what he deserved in return for the arrogant comment she had overheard.

  The top of the quill brushed back and forth against Jane’s cheek as she turned the pages, to the party at Sir William Lucas’s. Here. Revenge.

  In the scene Darcy had admitted to himself that Bingley’s suggestion of Miss Bennet’s sister, Elizabeth Bennet, as being handsome, was true. On greater acquaintance he can see she has extremely fine eyes, but it is more than that, it is her openness and ease, there is never any reserve in Lizzy’s expressions.

  Yet Darcy’s lack of affability and closed nature, make it difficult for him to explore his interest. Confidence cannot simply be summoned. He could not suddenly become a gregarious man because he wished it so. So instead of stepping forward to speak with Lizzy, he stood near her to enable himself to be a part of her conversations, without ever finding the words to take part.

  Lizzy had noticed and mocked
him to her friend.

  Perhaps that was an element the publisher did not care for—a man who might be mocked for a weakness in his nature.

  The male sex as a whole probably preferred to think themselves above a woman’s ridicule. No. Lizzy must be allowed the opportunity for revenge, and then instead of ridicule, she must tease in a flirtatious manner.

  Jane turned a page, found the lines and crossed some out.

  She breathed in and sought Darcy’s emotions. His uncertainty. Vulnerability. She shut her eyes for a moment. Anger. Most of all a man with such a strength of self-awareness would be angry with himself. Tongue-tied like a fool. When he was a man of stature.

  Mr Lucas approached Darcy in a moment he struggled in a battle against himself, and a weakness in character Darcy knew to be an unforgivable, ridiculous fault. But now those gathered at the party had decided to dance, and if he had failed at conversation, he had no hope at trying to dance. Could they at least not exclude conversation which he might listen to, if not partake?

  Every savage can dance. The cutting words sliced through Jane as she wrote them. Words Darcy spoke to himself, though they were spoken aloud. Why was he therefore so incapable of it?

  But Sir Lucas was not to be deterred in his pressure to have Darcy join the dancing. Darcy must oblige the company, and of course it was the moment for Lizzy to pass.

  Darcy’s spirits leapt at the notion, to be thrown such an opportunity without the need to make any effort himself in setting it up. There was no embarrassment from having to approach the woman, when she was to be handed to him. But those eyes, which he had spent recent moments admiring looked at him with immediate denial. It was not her words that rejected him, it was the cold disdain he saw in her gaze. He had never been refused before.

  He was thrown a smile. A smile which would make the butter on the Bennets’ breakfast table melt with its warmth. But that warmth was clearly false. This was an out and out snub. “Mr Darcy is all politeness indeed…” They may be the words her lips and tongue spoke, but they were not the words he saw in her eyes.