Jane Fairfax

by Joan Aiken

  “And were there f-friends that you were s-sorry to part from when you came to us?”

  “Dear Aunt Hetty and Grannie I was very sorry to leave — but you will be meeting them by and by, I hope.”

  “F-friends of my own age, I really m-meant?”

  “No; not precisely,” Jane answered after a moment’s hesitation. “The only one of that sort was Emma; but she was not a friend.”

  “Who is Emma?”

  Jane endeavoured to give an account of her relation with Emma; the made-over clothes, “I am still wearing them now”; the music lessons, the imaginary wedding game, the horse-riding fiasco.

  “Emma, you see, is the one who has to lead, she feels obliged to be first in any company. If she may not lead, then she does not choose to be part of it at all.”

  “How very s-strange!” cried Rachel. Then, after some thought, “How d-does she occupy herself all day? If they are s-so rich?”

  “I hardly know,” answered Jane, who had often asked herself the same question. “She learns her lessons with Miss Taylor, of course; and talks to her sister. But Miss Isabella is a great deal older; indeed it is said that Mr John Knightley has begun paying her attentions, and will marry her. If Isabella were to marry him, and go to live in London, Emma would be very lonely, I think.”

  “It is delightful that you can ride so well,” Rachel said, harking back to the days on Ginger with Mr Knightley, “for we can go riding in the park. P-Papa has promised that. And we are to have m-music lessons, of course.”

  This part of the programme, which had been a source of some inquietude to Jane, was ratified next day. Not only were the music lessons to be continued: her dear Signor Negretti was to continue giving them. He had written in dismay to Mr Woodhouse when he heard of the plan for Jane’s removal from Highbury; Mr Woodhouse had shown the letter to Mr Knightley, who spoke of it to the Bateses, who had mentioned it to Colonel Campbell, and the upshot was that Signor Negretti, who lived in Wimbledon, would travel to London once a week, so as to remain in touch with his favourite pupil.

  “Oh, I am so glad!” Jane cried out joyfully when this news was communicated to her. “I am so very much obliged to you, Colonel Campbell.”

  “Well, well, we shall expect a plentiful reward of fine music to delight our ears — so soon as Broadwoods have seen fit to send up the new instrument — hey, miss?” He looked down at Jane, smiling and indulgent. Oh, why cannot he ever look at Rachel like that? she wondered. Rachel’s face lights up so when she smiles, but her papa never sees her smile; whenever his eye is upon her, she looks more as if she might at any moment burst out crying.

  Mrs Campbell had taken advantage of a time when Rachel was paying an essential visit to a dentist, under the escort of a maid, to open her heart rather more to Jane on the subject of the Colonel’s relations with his daughter.

  “I am treating you, my dear Jane, almost as a grown-up person, for I can see that, no doubt because of having lived always in the company of grown-ups, you are sage and sensible far beyond your years. And I rely on you to help us as much as you are able; indeed I have high hopes that your being all day long in company with Rachel will greatly help to remedy matters which have come to such a sorry pass. My husband, you see, was greatly displeased at Rachel’s birth; firstly, he thought I should have returned to England before the event (but transport was very difficult and uncertain just at that time; also I did not, at all, wish to leave him); and secondly he was, I fear, greatly disappointed that Rachel was of the female sex. He would so much have preferred a son. Especially as, in the sorrowful event, she was not to be followed by sisters or brothers. And then, it was most unfortunate that she learned to speak from so many foreign nurses; first some Italian dialect — and then a kind of peasant Spanish; and, when her father reprimanded her, and obliged her always to speak English, it was found that she had this stammer —”

  “Did she not, then, ma’am, speak with the stammer in the other languages?”

  “Not near so bad; a friend of ours — your own father, in fact, my dear — wondered if it was the being compelled to change languages when she was only three that brought on the impediment. Your dear papa was used to be endlessly kind and patient with Rachel, my dear — he was such a good young man — of course she cannot remember him now, she was only a baby then —”

  Jane felt a queer pang of envy that this other child should, even if so fleetingly, have known her own father whom she herself had never met.

  “So you see, what I am hoping you can do, my dear Jane, is to encourage Rachel, by your own excellent example, not to be so timid with the Colonel, for he, though in general quite a reasonable man — and truly benevolent and kind-hearted — cannot be brought to understand that Rachel is unable, simply by making an effort, to surmount her speech impediment. And, of course, the more impatient he grows, the more apprehensive she becomes.”

  “Yes, I can see that, ma’am.”

  Jane thought that she was being set a most difficult, an almost impossible task. For the Colonel, when in a state of exasperation, could be an alarming spectacle: his eyes flashed, his voice rose to parade-ground pitch, he was not a man to suffer opposition or frustration easily. If he were to turn the battery of his anger on herself, she did not think she would be able to behave any more courageously than Rachel.

  However she of course promised to do her best.

  “That’s my good child. Never be afraid of the Colonel, my dear,” urged Mrs Campbell. “If your cause is good — stand up for yourself! He will like you all the better for it!”

  Jane was presented with an opportunity to do this more quickly than she would have wished when, two days later, the longed-for piano was delivered.

  Colonel Campbell called for her to come downstairs from the schoolroom, where she was sitting with Rachel and the new governess, in order to try out the instrument.

  “For, if you don’t approve it, miss, back it goes! You are the musical expert in this house.”

  A little abashed at such a responsibility being laid on her — yet reasonably confident — Jane played a few exercises and small pieces, and soon pronounced the piano to be of superior quality, as, indeed, it was. Signor Negretti would, she was sure, approve.

  “Very good,” said the master of the house. “Then it shall stay! Place it over there, by the fireplace, if you please,” he told the carriers who had brought it.

  The family were at that time assembled in the main drawing-room of the house: a large, front-facing apartment.

  “Oh, sir!” cried Jane in dismay, “you will surely not have it in here?”

  “I certainly shall, miss! How, otherwise, can you delight us and our company every evening after tea?”

  “Oh, but sir, pray consider! Rachel and I will be needing to learn our lessons on this piano; and to practise, each of us, for several hours daily; Rachel has never learned before, she will need to practise a great deal. So, indeed, do I; the more one learns, the more hours of exercise are required; Signor Negretti, when he comes, will tell you the same. You and Mrs Campbell will not, for sure, wish to have all those scales and exercises rattling in your ears, hour after hour, while Mrs Campbell is at her work and you are reading the newspaper!”

  “What? What?” he said, half smiling, half annoyed. “Why, where the plague is it to go, then? In there?” — gesturing to the rear half of the apartment, which was cut off by a pair of folding doors.

  “No sir; for the sound would travel through those doors much more than you would think — step in there a moment, and I will play, and you shall see for yourself.”

  She obliged him to do so.

  “Well then, what do you suggest?” said he, returning. “Here we have a musical prodigy in the house — and a new instrument of tip-top quality — how are we to delight our friends, of an evening, if the piano is to be hidden away in some attic — hey? Or do you expect me to acquire two instruments — one for the schoolroom, one for the parlour? Well, I can assure you, I am not ind
ulging in any such expense!”

  Jane had been devoting rapid, intensive thought to the matter.

  “Sir, why should it not go into the conservatory? I have heard Mrs Campbell say that is the one room in the house she has no use for — as she does not care for hot-house blooms — and the conservatory is not so far distant from here but that, if all the doors are opened, the sound could be heard — it is only down a few steps, after all — and then, I believe, if a large screen — such as that one, there — were to be placed between the piano and the conservatory door — the sound of our lessons and practising would be greatly diminished — perhaps hardly heard at all. While, at other times, when you wished to enjoy the music, the screen could be taken away and the piano, perhaps, advanced a little closer to the doorway —”

  Colonel Campbell, who at the outset of this speech had begun by scowling in a highly unreceptive manner, glanced at his wife and burst out laughing at her nod of approval.

  “She has it all planned, has she — hey? The quiet little mouse is not so quiet as we thought — has a head on her shoulders, indeed! Major General Moore should have had you on his campaign staff, madam minx! So Mrs Campbell has to forego her orchids and lilies —”

  “Indeed, Colonel Campbell, Jane is quite right,” quickly put in his wife. “I was saying, only this morning, that, with all my charitable committees, I have better things to occupy my time than watering a quantity of sickly flowers which nobody ever looks at.”

  “Oh, very well, very well! Take the instrument down those steps,” he told the delivery men. “Though the black gentleman himself only knows how you will persuade it to go round that corner. — Well, my dear Jane, I shall expect some particularly heartbreaking music this evening as a reward for depriving our drawing-room of its new asset.” It was a lucky circumstance that the Colonel’s partial deafness did not impair his enjoyment of music, to which he was very partial; a melody was for him easier to catch than the variable tones of the human voice. “I had particularly intended that corner for the piano,” he added. “Now it is going to look decidedly bare.”

  “You could place a tub of orchids and lilies there,” ventured Jane. The Colonel made a mock-threatening gesture, and pinched her cheek; then he ran down the stairs to the front door, calling back to his wife that he was off to his club and would not be back until dinner-time.

  Rachel, who had been listening, huge-eyed, to this dialogue from a distant corner, said to Jane afterwards, “How you dared speak to Papa in s-such a way —!”

  “Oh, but it was necessary,” said Jane seriously. “He would have been much more inconvenienced — and — and put out — if he had been obliged to hear us playing our scales all day long. That would really have overset him and put him in a bad skin.”

  The governess, Miss Winstable, pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “Pray, Jane, my dear child, do not let me hear such expressions on your lips! They are not at all the thing when you are referring to your kind guardian and benefactor — or, indeed, at any time.”

  Miss Winstable had been Mrs Campbell’s own governess and mentor in time gone by, and had then, for many years, looked after the education and morals of Mrs Campbell’s sister, Lady Selsea’s, children, until that family removed to Lisbon, when, by pure good luck, Miss Winstable was free to offer her services to the Campbells.

  Or by pure bad luck, Rachel said.

  Miss Winstable was like a wisp of cobweb. She seemed to slow down, hamper, and hinder Rachel and Jane at every turn, without herself being precisely visible or tangible.

  “Dear old thing,” said Mrs Campbell vaguely, “how Sophy and I used to laugh at her when we were young. The only product of all her teaching that I can remember was a landscape picture, worked in silk, which took me seven years to complete … I have a notion that it is still in Grandmamma’s house in Bath somewhere —” And Mrs Campbell took herself off to preside over one of the various committees framed to promote public feeling and action on penal reform, prevention of the slave trade, abolition of flogging in the armed forces, and extension of the franchise, which, with other charitable and benevolent activities were, now that she was returned to England, her principal interest and concern. Having supplied her child with a governess and an intelligent companion, she felt that she had sufficiently disposed of her parental responsibilities for the time.

  Jane, in desperation after a few days, nerved herself to face Colonel Campbell in his library, which at the moment was furnished sparsely enough with two armchairs, a table, and a pile of bound issues of The Rambler.

  “Sir — may I trouble you?”

  His tone of reply was brisk. “Well — what is it?” — lowering the newspaper an inch to look at her over the top.

  “Sir — we are learning nothing from Miss Winstable — except carpet-work. I am sure she means to be very kind — but — but if I am to be trained as a governess — and, and Rachel wishes to know all manner of things —”

  “Did not Mrs Campbell engage masters for you, then?” Jane shook her head. “Cecelia is so engrossed in her own concerns, now we are back where she can get at them,” he said indulgently. “Well, well, this must be seen to. You were very right to come to me. What then — astronomy? history? languages? geography? literature?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, if you please, all those,” Jane said, greatly relieved to have her request so reasonably received. “And drawing. And mathematics too, I should think; Rachel has a great wish to learn mathematics.”

  “Has she indeed?” He seemed startled. “Very well, your educational programme shall be attended to without delay. When does your music teacher resume his duties?”

  “Today, sir.”

  “Excellent.” And he crackled his newspaper as a sign of dismissal.

  Signor Negretti was enchanted to find his star pupil established so prosperously in London (where he gave many lessons) with benevolent patrons and a brand-new piano. And he was, of course, not averse to a new pupil, even one who, at the advanced age of nine, had received as yet no keyboard instruction. He soon discovered in Rachel a fair ability, along with a high degree of quickness and intelligence which made her eager to make up for lost time as fast as she could.

  “Mees Rachel will not too soon equal you, Mees Jane,” he said privily to Jane, “for you are indeed the best pupil I ever have, but she has a nice small talent and we shall make the best use of it. Also she shall have a pretty contralto voice. Together you shall sing some charming duets.”

  “What about the stammer?” Jane asked anxiously.

  He made a gesture of extreme impatience.

  “Idiocy! this can all have been avoided, if it were not for stupid parents.”

  Jane sighed. Many parents, she thought, might be a great deal worse than Colonel and Mrs Campbell who, after all, did not seem so very stupid.

  “But singing lessons will help her, will they not, Signor Negretti? I recall you told me once that somebody who could hardly speak at all learned to sing very well —”

  “Yes, yes, yes, singing shall much help her; and also you, Mees Jane, shall perform with her each day some throat and face exercises which I show you.”

  Miss Winstable came fluttering back into the room, very agitated at having left her second charge alone with the music master for so long lacking the presence of a chaperon. Jane had in fact seized the opportunity of poor Rachel’s being afflicted with a nosebleed — a not infrequent misfortune with her, sometimes the result of excitement, or, more frequently, a consequence of having been spoken to harshly by her father. She had been hurried away to lie down on her bed with cold compresses and hartshorn.

  “Poor little dear! — Such a tiresome, unladylike affliction! How I hope she soon grows out of it!”

  “Signor Negretti,” said Jane, at the conclusion of the first lesson, “you still go to give Emma Woodhouse her lessons at Highbury twice a week?”

  “To be sure I do, Mees Jane, and what a sad change! To veesit that house where I have pas
sed such profitable hours of joy, and have only naughty Mees Emma to teach, who never practises as she ought! Do you wish me to take some message to her? I shall be very happy to do so.”

  “Oh, no, thank you,” quickly answered Jane, thinking how very relieved Emma must be to have Jane wholly removed from her proximity. A reminder in the shape of a message would probably be the last thing she would want. “No, but, I was thinking, as you ride, on your way there, right past my grandmother’s house — might I entrust you sometimes with a letter for her and my aunt?”

  “Of course, of course!” beamed the Signor. “As often as you please! And I shall have the happiness of telling them that you grow well, and learn well, and become every week more beautiful! And I can bring back letters to you, also.”

  “Oh, gracious me, my dear, I do not know if that is a very wise or proper thing to do — sending letters by a music teacher —” worried Miss Winstable, whose first impulse, on hearing about any course of action proposed by her charges, was to forbid it, on grounds of impropriety, or rashness, or unladylikeness, or any slightest tincture of those dread possibilities. — Or, simply, on the principle that the young should be continually thwarted and chastened.