The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen

by Lindsay Ashford

  “I’m fine, really,” she replied. “It was a stone or a wet leaf or something; my foot just slipped.” To show me my fears were misplaced, she strode out ahead of me, past the east porch and around the side of the house to the terrace. “I want to show you the Wilderness,” she called over her shoulder. “I used it in Mansfield Park.”

  Martha waved to us across the lawn as we emerged from the dark, silent copse with its hidden pathways cut through groves of ancient ash and beech. “Fanny is waiting for you at the Great House,” she said when she caught up with us. “She thought you might like some lunch after your walk.” She was looking at Jane with an expression of undisguised concern, reinforcing my suspicion that Jane was underplaying the seriousness of whatever it was that ailed her.

  “Is it that time already?” Jane pulled out her gold watch and consulted it. “We were going to see the deer park and the kitchen garden.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for those another day.” Martha took her by the arm and steered her toward the house with an apologetic glance at me. I got the impression that she and Cassandra had a sort of pact between them; Martha, it seemed, took on the role of mothering Jane in Cass’s absence. There was no word of protest at this treatment. Once again, Jane silently complied, surrendering her body to the will of others like a bird with a broken wing.

  Fanny was all smiles when she came to greet us, hardly recognizable as the girl who had flounced out of the ladies’ withdrawing room the night before last. “Would you like to see the children?” she asked me. “They’re with Caky in the nursery. Marianne has been asking after you. I didn’t think she would remember—she was only about five when you left, wasn’t she? But she said: ‘Was Miss Sharp the one with the big hands, who used to hide hazelnuts behind her back and make us guess which one they were in?’”

  I laughed at this. Yes, I thought, my hands really are the only remarkable things about me. But I felt unaccountably nervous as I climbed the stairs in Fanny’s wake. Marianne would be fourteen now and baby Louisa a girl of twelve; Cassandra Jane would be nine and Brook-John on the brink of his sixth birthday. As the nursery door opened the source of my unease hit me: I feared seeing Henry in their faces.

  The person I saw first, though, was not one of the children. It was Sackree, bent over some mending, sitting by the window to catch the light. Well into her fifties now, she had hardly changed at all. Still in mourning black for the husband she had lost twenty years since, and still with that hawkish look in her eyes, even though it was a piece of muslin she was attacking.

  “Oh, you’ve come then,” she said, without looking up. She might as well have said: Good day to you, Lady Muck: I suppose you think you’ve grown too fine for the likes of us?

  Fanny’s face fell. Then she saw that I was smiling. I marched across the room and planted a kiss on Sackree’s forehead. “There, you old battle-ax,” I said. “Am I forgiven now?”

  Sackree rolled her eyes. “Pull that up,” she said, gesturing to a child’s stool standing near the fireplace. “Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you?”

  “Where are the children?” Fanny was puzzled by our performance, never having been party to the banter we exchanged in my Godmersham days.

  “Gone to the kitchen garden to pick flowers for madam here,” Sackree replied. “A nice little bunch of Deadly Nightshade and Old Man’s Beard.”

  With a little gasp of exasperation Fanny turned on her heel. “I’ll go and find them. Try to be civil to each other while I’m away.”

  Sackree gave me a sly look when the door closed. “Well, Sharp, I see that your nose hasn’t gotten any smaller and your bosom hasn’t gotten any bigger.”

  “And I notice that you are as fat as ever, my dear Sackree.” I leaned forward to pinch her arm and fell off the stool, landing in a heap on the carpet. She was shaking with laughter by the time I picked myself up. We both took deep breaths then in a bid to subdue the hysterics that overtook us each time one of us tried to say something.

  “I’m glad to see you looking happy,” she managed at last. “I always thought you seemed so lost in that great big house.”

  “I was,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’m quite content in my new situation although I miss the company of children.”

  She nodded and her face clouded. I asked her if she still missed her husband.

  “Not really.” She tugged at the black collar of her gown. “I wear this for her, not him.” Catching my blank look she said: “It’s for the mistress. I loved her like she was my own child.” I had never seen such a look as she gave then; I swear her eyes changed color, from pale blue to gray-green, like the sea on a showery summer day. “She was only two years old when I first had the care of her: I was thirteen and come to Lady Bridges as under nursery maid. I remember the first time I ever set eyes on her: such a beauty she was, like a little fairy, that’s what I thought.”

  “She was very beautiful.” This I could say honestly, knowing I could not bring myself to utter any other compliment.

  “When she married and young Fanny was born, she begged Lady Bridges to let me come to her.” She let out a deep sigh and a single tear escaped her left eye, trickling down the side of her nose to land with a splash on the black bombazine bodice. “I never thought to lose her at six-and-thirty. She might have looked like a fairy princess, but she was as strong as an ox in her confinements; I never saw such a brave one as she.”

  I was framing some response about the awfulness of Elizabeth’s death when the door flew open and a little boy marched into the room with a huge bunch of chrysanthemums held out in front of him like a shield. I could not see much of his face, for the flowers obscured it.

  “Go on, Brook-John, give them to Miss Sharp!” A pretty blond-haired child, the very image of Elizabeth Austen, stepped around the door behind her little brother. She looked about eleven or twelve and I guessed that this must be Louisa. Following behind her was another, older girl, whom I recognized from her dark curls as Marianne, and an impish little redhead who could only be Cassandra Jane. Louisa, I noticed, had the distinctive Austen mouth—small and rosebud-like—and an aquiline nose. The other girls had wider lips and smaller noses. Brook-John, when he lowered the flowers, revealed a chubby face with eyes just like Jane’s. When he loses that little-boy softness, I thought, he will be another Henry.

  “These are for you, miss,” he said and with a little bow he handed the chrysanthemums to me. The others stood awkwardly in the doorway until Fanny shooed them forward. I reached for my reticule and, to my relief, saw that there was a shilling amongst the coppers that weighed it down.

  “Are you big enough to walk all the way to Alton, yet?” I asked him.

  “Oh yes, miss.” The hazel eyes widened. “I went to the fair last week with Aunt Cass and Aunt Jane.”

  “Then you can buy some sweets for your sisters, can’t you?” I pressed the silver coin into his hand and was rewarded with a smile that made my heart lurch in my chest.

  ***

  We left the Great House in high spirits, for the children had Fanny and me racing each other around the courtyard with hoops and sticks. I was quite touched to hear them cheering so loudly as I took the lead, until I realized that the racket was made on purpose to provoke Sackree into tipping a jug of water from the nursery window.

  “Is your gown very wet?” Jane was trying not to smile as we walked down the drive. “I should have warned you about them; they’re little devils. Edward’s decided to take them off to Paris tomorrow. He says he’s tired of all the rain and the mud.” She reached for my arm and linked hers through it. “I don’t know why he thinks Paris will be any better; Madame Bigeon says the weather there is hardly any different to London.”

  As we reached the end of the drive I saw someone waving over a garden wall. It was a man who looked about Edward’s age, but much thinner and longer in the face. He didn’t call out or come any closer but carried on doing whatever he was engaged in, which, from the way his mouth opened
and closed, appeared to be talking to his laurel bushes.

  “That’s Reverend Papillon,” Jane hissed as we passed by. “He likes to rehearse his sermons in the garden. I am to marry him, you know.” I turned to her, horrified. Seeing my face she snorted into her handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s been a joke in the family ever since we moved to Chawton. He lives with his maiden sister and I don’t think he would marry me if I was the last woman on earth.” She winked at me over the white lace of the handkerchief. “I shouldn’t be mean about him: he actually went out and bought his own copy of Sense and Sensibility. After church the other day, he asked me if he was the inspiration for Edward Ferrars. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wrote it fifteen years before we came to live here.”

  The cottage was just a few yards away now and I could see Mrs. Austen walking up the path with a basket of carrots. I couldn’t help imagining how happy she would have been to see her daughter married to a parson, however laughable Jane made it sound. And to my shame I realized that I was jealous of the Reverend Papillon, for no other reason than that he was a man and I was not.

  Twenty-Three

  To my surprise and delight Jane was sitting beside me when the mail coach carried me away from Chawton at the end of the week. Her publisher had written to ask for a meeting to discuss the changes she had been making to Emma. We spent the evening before our departure planning all the things we could do together in London.

  “Do you think dear old Mrs. Raike will let you out?” Jane was propped up on her elbows on the bed watching me undress in front of the fire.

  “I’m sure she will, as long as Miss Gowerton is there to keep her company.” I hesitated a moment. Her color had not improved during my stay and I was worried about the stiffness in her limbs that she complained of. I longed to have her with me in London, but I feared the trip might be too much for her. Eventually I said: “Are you sure you won’t be too fagged? The roads are very bad at this time of the year and London is such a frantic place.”

  She laughed as if I had said something quite insane. “I’m not an invalid! If my legs are a little weak it’s because they are far too idle; walking about London will do me no end of good!”

  “Well, if you are certain…” I slipped into bed beside her, all too ready to accept this assurance. I rubbed her cold feet while she read the final chapter of Emma aloud to me. We had been reading it together during the week and now she wanted my comments on it before the meeting with her publisher.

  “Well,” she said, leaning back on the pillows, “I want your honest opinion. You are the only one I really trust, you know. My family is far too afraid of my bad temper.”

  “And you think that I am not?” I poked her gently in the ribs.

  “No,” she laughed, wriggling away, “but you do not have to live with me—that is the difference.”

  I fell silent then, for I would have given the world to live with her, temper or no temper.

  “Come on,” she coaxed, “what did you think of it? Does it match up to P&P? Is it better or worse than Mansfield Park?”

  I took a deep breath. “I like it better than Mansfield Park, but not so well as Pride and Prejudice. Emma is a very original heroine and Mr. Knightley is really delightful; Mrs. Elton is wonderfully wicked and Mr. Woodhouse endearingly silly. My only real dissatisfaction is with Jane Fairfax: she doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who would have the courage and boldness for a secret engagement to a man like Frank Churchill.”

  To my relief, Jane laughed at this. “I knew it! I felt it in my bones as I was writing, but nobody would tell me: no one else is courageous or bold enough, you see! And you, above all others, know what a governess should be like.”

  After much heated discussion about how Jane Fairfax could be altered, we agreed to await the comments of Mr. Murray, Jane’s publisher.

  The next day, as the mail coach neared London, she told me of her plans for the next novel.

  “I’m going to begin writing it as soon as I get back,” she said. “I shall set it in Bath and Lyme Regis and you will be in it, but I shan’t tell you who you will be; you’ll just have to wait until it’s finished!” Of course, I couldn’t let her get away with that. I quizzed her all the rest of the way to London, although it did me no good. I was none the wiser about my role in the new book when she took her leave of me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She squeezed me tight and planted a kiss on my cheek. “Come to Hans Place at about six. I’ll ask Henry what’s worth seeing at the theater.”

  It was nearly dark when I arrived the next evening. Henry’s new house was in Chelsea, not far from Miss Gowerton’s in Cheyne Walk. Jane had not said why he had moved; I suppose it was because his old home held too many memories of Eliza. Number twenty-three Hans Place looked even grander than the house in Brompton.

  Madame Bigeon flung her arms around me when she opened the door. “Mademoiselle Sharp! Vous nous avons bien manqué!” Marie Marguerite came running down the hall after her. She was just as affectionate to me as her mother, but I could see from the glances they exchanged that something was wrong.

  “It is Monsieur Henry,” the daughter said when I pressed her. “He came home from the bank yesterday feeling unwell—and now he is much worse. The doctor is here and Jane is with him.” She told me that it had started as nothing more than a cough, but now it had developed into a fever. I asked if she thought I ought to leave, but she urged me to stay. “Jane wants to see you very much. Please, let me take your cloak.”

  I waited in the parlor until the doctor had gone. When Jane walked into the room, she looked more tired than I had ever seen her. Her face was chalk-white and she leaned on the handle of the door for support as she closed it. I jumped out of my chair and ran to her, gathering her up and half-carrying her to the fireside.

  “The doctor says he might die,” she whispered. “What am I going to do?”

  “Does Cass know?” I asked. “Or any of the others?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to worry them.”

  “We must write to her immediately. You can’t bear this burden alone; she wouldn’t want you to. Martha can look after your mother for a while longer, can’t she?”

  “I suppose so.” She looked like a frightened child.

  “What has the doctor given him?”

  “Not much. He bled him this morning and told me to feed him nothing but water.” She closed her eyes. “I’m afraid to leave him; he cries out and says things I can’t understand. Madame Bigeon and Marie Marguerite are angels, I know, but I feel I should be with him all the time.”

  “Then I will stay with you,” I said. “I’ll send a note to Mrs. Raike—she won’t mind, I’m sure, when she hears the reason.”

  “But you—”

  I held up my hand. “Don’t say anything. I’ll stay until Cass gets here. We’ll sit in his room together and if you need to sleep a little I’ll watch him.”

  ***

  The next two days reminded me of the dreadful vigil at my mother’s deathbed. Seeing Jane so distraught I relived all the anguish, all the helplessness I endured the night before she passed away. It was deeply disturbing to see Henry so altered: the handsome, urbane charmer had been replaced by a disheveled, tossing creature beaded with sweat who moaned like an animal in pain as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

  After the first night had passed and dawn was breaking, I roused myself from the doze I had fallen into to see Jane uncorking a bottle and pouring a measure into a glass. I thought it was something the doctor had prescribed for Henry, but to my surprise, she drank it down herself.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “Fortifying myself.” She gave me a weak smile. “It’s Martha’s tonic wine. I never travel without it these days. Would you like some?”

  I shook my head, relieved that she was not so dazed with lack of sleep that she had drunk her brother’s medicine by accident. Henry looked quite peaceful
at that moment, but a few minutes later, he let out a blood-curdling cry that brought Madame Bigeon and Marie Marguerite rushing into the room in their nightgowns. Between us, we quieted Henry and made him a little more comfortable. I don’t think he had any idea who was in the room, but Jane’s voice seemed to have some power over him. When he was lying still, we held a hasty conference outside the chamber.

  “There must be something more we can do for him!” Jane wrung her hands. She looked absolutely wretched, her skin transparent and her eyes red and puffy. “Do you think we should call in another doctor?”

  “Don’t you have faith in the one that came last night?”

  “If I am honest, no. He was so unfeeling in the way he behaved. You should have seen him pulling off the leeches; there was blood everywhere, and he spoke of the risk to Henry’s life with no more compassion than a farmer losing a chicken to a fox.”

  Her fingers had flown to her cap and she was pulling at her curls, twisting them around and around till they stuck out like horsehair from a mattress. I reached out for her hands and drew her to me, saying: “Is there any other doctor that you know of?”

  I felt her head move against my shoulder. “There is someone,” she replied. “He’s very expensive, but Henry can afford it. His name is Doctor Baillie; he is one of the court physicians.”

  We waited three tense hours for the arrival of this new doctor. Henry had begun raving again, throwing out his arm as if he was pointing to some evildoer who was about to attack him. We could not tell what he was saying, although I thought I heard the word “notes” at one point and an oft-repeated phrase that sounded like “mustn’t tell him.” Doctor Baillie managed to get some sort of sleeping draught down him and he advised both of us to get some rest while we could. He said that until the fever broke there was no way of telling which way Henry would go, and it could be another twenty-four hours before the crisis came.