by Gill Hornby
Charles and William, quietly hunched over their chessboard, were not quite the men she thought she knew, either. In Steventon they were lively and mischievous; they threw themselves into all games, the louder the better. Here they were permanently subdued.
“The interests of our landowners must be protected…”
And her Tom: Was he not altered in this environment? He must be preoccupied with the voyage. She understood that; they all were. And he was never gregarious, which was clearly a good thing. She looked over at Fulwar. Who would choose a gregarious husband? For the first time, though, she was noticing just how very quiet Tom could be.
“Those rebels must be prevented from getting their hands on that property…”
Cassy did not much care for the direction Fulwar’s argument was taking. Her mind moved to what might be happening back home. Perhaps by now they had started the dancing? Jane playing the piano, the furniture pushed back. She turned again to Eliza. “What about music?” Surely some music was just what was needed. “Do you still get the chance to sing?”
Eliza looked at her with surprise, as if somehow forgetting she was born with a heavenly voice. “Oh, no! I am so tired in the evenings now I have the children. And anyway, we have no instrument here.”
No music. No games. No reading or good conversation! This was the first time that Cassy had ever stayed anywhere without another member of her own family beside her. She had always known that the Austens were remarkable; now it occurred to her that they were simply unique.
“The economy of this great country, the rule of our king, must be defended—yes, to the death, if it comes to it. Death is a small price to pay!”
And she decided that other families must be one of life’s most unfathomable mysteries. It was no use sitting as an outsider and even trying to fathom them. One could have no idea of what it must be like to be in there, on the inside. She would share that thought later in her letter to Jane.
* * *
THE HUNT MET THE NEXT MORNING and, as Cassy left her room to go down to breakfast, the house felt abandoned, as if all the men had suddenly been called up to war. Crossing the landing, she saw the door to Tom’s room open and, on the spur of the moment, without a thought to the propriety of her own actions, she went in.
The bed was unmade; a dirty shaving rag lay, tossed, on the washstand; old soap formed a crust on the inside of the bowl. The strange, particular, not altogether pleasant scent of a man still hung on the air. She looked around at his property: a Bible, old Latin primers, not even one novel. No mementos from school nor from Oxford; one print of hunting was the extent of his intimate effects.
She stood alone, looking around her, and was overcome by a sense of Tom’s otherness. This was a man she had known since a boy! At Steventon he was familiar; yet here, here he was … who was he, exactly? Cassy was no longer sure that she knew.
For the first time she found herself looking beyond their engagement—that match they had made to the satisfaction of all—and gazing into the reality of marriage. She thought of them both, alone in their own vicarage, convenient for Ludlow. Miles from everybody; most particularly, far from Jane. Cassy must surrender her rights to the only world she had ever known: the bedroom she shared with her sister. There would be no more laughing or whispering or endless confiding. She might hardly see Jane in person again—their relationship would have to be conducted through letters from then on. Instead Cassy would have only Tom. And, in the place of all that feminine prettiness, she must look upon a shaving rag, an indifferent hunting print …
Her heart tightened. At home in Steventon there was always talking and laughing. And so many jokes! She herself did not make many; though Cassy might be one of the cleverer Austens—her mother was often kind enough to say so—she was not one of the wittiest. But she laughed with them. Oh, how she loved to laugh with them! And Tom had laughed, too, there. Of course he did: Who could not? But just them, alone? She tried to imagine, but her mind could not conjure it. What would they talk about? Would they play games, enjoy music? Whom would they laugh with? At what?
She was homesick already, and her marriage not yet even begun.
“My dear, you seem deep in thought.” Cassy turned to find Eliza—eyes warm with kindness, resplendent in pregnancy, a child at each hand—and felt some reassurance. Her friend had appeared just at the right moment, as if in a vision, an angel come to tell her that here was the essence of it: the construction of a family; the building of a life together. That was the point of us all.
She picked up Mary-Jane, who squirmed and protested, and laughing together the women and children went down to breakfast.
* * *
THE VISIT FLEW BY, AS VISITS must do. In Kintbury the young couple enjoyed few intimate moments; no consideration was given to their privacy. The parsonage bustled as a parsonage was wont to, and it was hard for them to find a quiet corner. The climate, too, was against them: It was no sort of weather for walks. And Mrs. Fowle—poor Mrs. Fowle, one could not but feel for her—got more distraught with every day that brought the departure nearer. She was loath to leave her boy’s side.
But in the last light hour of Tom’s final afternoon, they were, finally, alone together. Cassy was trying to capture a likeness of Tom with her colors. It was not as easy as she had found it before. She did not want to include the grim set of his jaw, the dark circles around his eyes, or that fear deep within them, but already could barely remember what he looked like without.
One of life’s dreamers—though who knew what, exactly, he dreamed about?—Tom was always content to sit in an armchair and do nothing, so she was surprised when he suddenly stirred.
“There. You have had long enough to work on my indifferent appearance.” He rose and came round to look. “Oh, yes. So clever. It quite defeats me, my love, how you can be so excessively good at everything to which you turn your hand.” The thought did not seem to make him anything like cheerful. “I do wonder that such an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished young lady would even think of marrying a hopeless case like myself.”
“Oh, Tom!” Cassy started to pack up her brushes. “This really is not one of my better efforts. It is not very clever at all.” She swung round to face him. Their eyes locked for a long moment. Her response—poor, ill judged, inadequate—seemed to echo around them.
With a grim smile, he reached down and took her hand. “Let us walk. We have spent long enough sitting. I have a small piece of last business to attend to. Please. Come with me.”
They dressed up well—Mrs. Fowle fussing around them, insisting they not be too long—and set out into the gloaming. It was a short walk, up a walled path that was glassy with cold, to the church. Tom looked neither left nor right—he could not feel quite comfortable in a graveyard at twilight—and tightened his grip on Cassy’s arm.
“It turns out I made a slight hash of things when I was helping my father. The new curate spotted it. Odd little chap. Eyes like a hawk.” He stepped into the church porch and opened the heavy oak door for her. “Got rather excited about it. Is that all that there is to God’s work? I was minded to ask him. Do a few little dates matter, in the great divine scheme?”
Cassy half listened, but her mind was still in the drawing room: She was consumed with her own reproach. Why had she behaved so, to this man she loved so deeply, whom she had loved for so long? It was so unlike herself she could not explain it. All her life, she had always, instinctively, said the right thing at the right moment. Why would she slip now, on his very last day?
They entered the cold church, lit a candle, and walked over to the register. “I failed to write the year in one of the banns, and a Christian name in a burial, so the new curate told me.” Tom found the right pages, and dipped his pen.
While he did so, Cassy cast a quick eye over the other entries in his familiar handwriting. “This christening here”—she marked the ledger with her finger—“I may be wrong, but should there perhaps—possibly—be a birthdate for the ba
by?”
Tom looked over. “Ah, yes. Good, Cass—correct as ever. You have sharper eyes even than that curate. How much more competent I will be at these and all other matters when I have you to guide me through every day.”
She smiled, left his side, and moved to the head of the aisle while he did what he had to. It was a pretty church, small and plain, though its windows were stained. She looked up as the last winter light filtered through, sank into the quiet of the moment and communion with her Maker—oh dear Lord, keep him safe; let her be strong—until Tom appeared by her side. They stood quietly together, the betrothed young lovers, in front of the altar. He turned toward her and took her hand.
“My dear Cassandra,” he began, “I know I am not the most eloquent of men. But there are things I must say before I leave you.” His face was grave. “Things I want you to know, in case I never come back.”
In all those weeks of preparation, even in those spacious days of that first farewell visit, they had been careful never to embark on this conversation.
“Oh!” Cassy was not sure she could bear it. “You will come back. I am depending on it. Please let us not have to discuss, to consider … It is too dreadful—”
He gripped her arms. “We must. I want you to know that I have made my will, and left you the bulk of my—well—of what little money I have managed to accumulate.”
“Please do not tell me—” She fought with her tears, but she lost.
“I want you to have it. You are paying me the compliment of constancy in my absence. You should be … reimbursed if I fail to return.”
“But we are betrothed. This is my choice.”
“It will give you a little security, though not much,” Tom continued. “And I want you to promise me that this bequest will not make you beholden to my memory.” He was urgent. “That if you do not marry me, you must feel free to marry still.”
Her face was wet. When she spoke, her voice was broken. “I promise you,” she forced out, “Tom, I promise you…” And, mostly because she had always believed that he was her destiny, and a little because of how she had behaved earlier, she found her strength and declared: “I promise you faithfully, here before God. I will never marry any man other than you.”
* * *
AT DINNER THEY COULD HARDLY ignore that this was Tom’s last, but no one knew quite what to say.
Fulwar, favoring distraction, began a recollection of hunting heroics of which, it just happened, there was only one hero. “I was out on Biscay. Do you know why I called him that?”
Everyone knew; no one answered.
“Because he was a great, roaring bay! We had been out front since the setoff”—Fulwar had no regard for the virtue of novelty in anecdote—“hounds in full flight, fella came up on my left as we were taking the hedge—”
Even Cassy knew this story backward.
“Broke m’ left leg and lost half m’ teeth!”
Tom was not even pretending to listen.
“Did I take to my bed?”
The whole table seemed sunken in misery.
“Drank a bumper at supper that very same night!”
Then Eliza—sensitive, intelligent Eliza—introduced the perfect formula with which to discuss the imminent departure: “I wonder how old this new baby will be before Tom meets him?” she pondered, looking down into her lap as she spoke.
Mrs. Fowle immediately brightened at the thought of her new grandchild. “Oh, still in the cradle, I hope.” She was emphatic. “It will not be a long voyage, I am quite certain. Lord Craven will not take you away for much more than a year.”
“I quite agree, Mama. Swift and glorious does it. You will be making short shrift of those natives, I know,” said Fulwar.
As Tom’s sole duty was the guarding of souls, Cassy sincerely hoped and believed, that her future husband would make no sort of shrift of anybody at all.
Fulwar swilled his wineglass. “Back before we notice you have gone.”
“Perhaps we might agree now to, if possible, hold the baptism until Tom can be there for it?” offered Eliza. “And Tom! We would love you to stand as godfather, if you would be so kind?”
“I would be honored,” Tom replied warmly. “And that gives me something to aim for: I need to be home before he is walking.”
“And definitely in time to teach him to fish,” chimed in Mr. Fowle. Cassy was touched to see the father try so hard to be cheerful. It was game of him. He was not naturally at home on the bright side, even at the happiest of times. “No one can cast like our Tom. One more good reason to come back to us!”
“I do have another,” said Tom gently from the other end of the table, glancing over at Cassy and smiling.
Eliza beamed round at them all, pleased with this familiar coze. “What luck for my children to have such a fine uncle.” She squeezed Cassy’s hand under the table. “And soon, of course, aunt.”
* * *
JUST BEFORE DAWN CASSY WENT down to say her farewell to Tom for the last possible time. The air was sharp and freezing, the trap being loaded by the light of the moon. Mrs. Fowle was, of course, down before her. They cut three miserable figures: fraught with the tensions inherent in the occasion. This time it seemed to be Cassy’s place to say goodbye in the hall. Mrs. Fowle stood with them, waiting patiently for the lovers to finish, which, in the circumstances, did not take them long.
“I will write,” whispered Tom.
“As will I. And you know I will be following your progress. Be safe.”
“You can rely on it. Look after Eliza, as only you can.”
His lips glanced her hand; then he turned and he left.
Cassy stood for a moment, watching the shapes of mother and son embrace by the trap until she felt as if she were intruding, then dragged herself back up the stairs. She waited for that old sense of optimism, that positive instinct, but could only identify heaviness, misery. Grief.
* * *
WORSE WAS TO COME.
A maid met her when she got to the landing and told her that Eliza was in agonies and calling her name. She rushed to the bedside and upon a scene of pure horror.
“I am losing it!” Eliza lay contorted and sobbing. “The baby! It is too early. It is coming too early.”
At once Cassy started her ministry. She had already attended other births, albeit easier ones, and immediately knew what to do. The next hours were terrible, a sequence of rags and hot water, laudanum and fear. The baby—a boy, as so fervently hoped for—came into this world with the distracted air of one who had not yet decided how long he might stay.
It was Cassy’s lot to go out onto the landing where Fulwar was desperately pacing, and impart the news. His terror and tender, loving concern for his wife overpowered him and were quite humbling to witness. She understood then that—however they chose to present to the outside—men, too, were all feelings beneath.
For the remainder of the day Cassy hardly stopped nursing and comforting and working. But at some point, around four in the afternoon, Eliza slept, and she was alone in the nursing chair, the baby, swaddled, in her arms. She held tight and rocked him, desperately willing him to survival. For this small, sad scrap of a being was the baby to whom Tom was to come home. He must live. He had to. Or what sort of omen would that otherwise be?
5
Kintbury, March 1840
CASSANDRA WOKE EARLY, aching all over, having fallen asleep propped up on her bolster with the letters still on her lap. What had she dreamed of? It was just out of reach, but she knew it to be dark and uncomfortable. She rose, dressed, and, unable to shake the mood—indeed, somehow keen to indulge it—she crossed the landing and opened the door to Tom’s room.
With sudden force she was returned to the turmoil she had felt there that Christmas so long ago, when she had stood on this very spot and quailed at the prospect of marriage, railed at the thought of leaving her family. That moment was a stain on her personal history. Her sense of guilt over it was, even now, enormous, overwhelming; i
t could still quite crush the air out of her. Though—for once trying to be kind, as if she were talking to a niece and not just herself—had she not, all her life, been but the victim of events?
For had they taken the other turn, those dark thoughts she had harbored could have been classified as doubts, pure and simple: the doubts that any soon-to-be-married young woman might respectably have. She would have been able to tell herself then, in that life, that it was perfectly natural. We women worry, all of us, about everything—especially marriage. After all, what was there more important than that? She could have looked back—from the comfort of their fireside with her husband beside her, from a nursery filled by their own, dear children—and seen that moment as a nothing. As one small, private stumble on the rosy path to conjugal felicity.
But life had not done that. It had robbed her and, in so doing, snatched away any presumption of innocence. And whenever she thought of that morning—which was not often; she tried to suppress it—she saw only her own apostasy, could only believe that her doubts had been heard and taken as curses. And was covered in shame.
She walked into the plain, simple bedroom. It had been home to so many Fowle boys since that one; a whole generation had grown there, then flown. There was no trace of Tom now. Although—she moved past the heavy oak bedstead and peered up—yes! The very same indifferent hunting print. Perhaps he never would have brought it with him to their vicarage near Ludlow. She should not, after all, have worried about living with that.
The cheval glass in the alcove by the fireplace was a later addition: a testament to the vanity of the younger generation. Her Tom would certainly never have had need of it. She peered in. Her old face was reflected back at her. And there, over her shoulder, were Dinah’s narrowed, knowing eyes.
Cassandra jumped. “Dinah! Goodness.” She turned round, faced the maid. “You took me quite by surprise!”