Jane Fairfax

by Joan Aiken

  The lawsuit proved, as legal matters invariably do, far more difficult and slower to settle than had been apprehended; nearly five years passed before the family were able to return to London, the Colonel having, finally, sold the estate for less than he had hoped, for a sum, indeed, which did little more than cover the expenses of the double journey. To add to his chagrin, the Colonel, just before his return, contracted a severe case of Yellow Fever and was taken on board in a lamentable condition, his eyes suffused with blood and, after a frightful bout of Black Vomit, his faculties almost suspended. Only his invincible obstinacy made him succeed in forcing his womenfolk to have him carried on to the ship and embark as planned. In fact the sea voyage was probably instrumental in saving his life: an excellent surgeon on board and treatment with Eau Vulneraire, a medicine made by infusing a quantity of herbs in alcohol, in the end pulled him through. Jane and Rachel nursed him devotedly, but if he felt gratitude for this he did not show it; his temper was greatly impaired by the disease, and the good relations which had begun to obtain between him and his daughter had worsened again. With all the impatience of a convalescent he grumbled about Rachel’s tanned skin, her freckles, her sun-bleached hair — “Why in the world could she not wear a straw hat like sensible Jane, there, who kept her pretty pale skin unblemished through the tropical heat?” It was greatly to the credit of both girls that none of this made the least difference to their affectionate relationship, each being perfectly aware that the only reason Jane wore her hat all day had nothing to do with her complexion but was to avoid the severe headaches which still, at times, came to plague her, occurring for no ascertainable cause, and obliging her to take to her bed for two, or even three days when they came, for no remedy was of the least use.

  They arrived back in England to news of the old King’s collapse into complete insanity, and expectations of his death. The Prince of Wales had been appointed Regent, and the war still continued in Europe.

  A dispute on a smaller scale, but waged with equal vigour, now arose in Manchester Square, where Mrs Fitzroy was still ensconced, much to the Colonel’s unspoken disappointment.

  She had taken one look at her granddaughter and let out a wail of horror.

  “That girl’s hair! Her teeth! Her complexion! How in the world is she ever to be brought out?” the old lady demanded of her daughter.

  “Brought out?” vaguely inquired Cecelia, abstracting her attention momentarily from a memorandum on the slave trade by Wilberforce, which she had been eagerly perusing.

  “Brought out in society, Cecelia! Presented! How will she ever acquire a husband if she does not make her debut?”

  “Oh, my dear mother! Surely you do not believe that my poor Rachel should be put through that antiquated charade? It is like entering a beribboned cart-horse in the May Day parade! I am sure that Rachel would detest it, would you not, Rachel?”

  “D-detest what, M-mamma?” inquired Rachel, who entered the room at that moment.

  “Why, being presented at court, going to Almack’s, court breakfasts, balls, all that flummery.”

  “You are n-not g-going to m-make us d-do that?” gasped Rachel, huge-eyed. “I sh-should hate it of all th-things! And I am sure Jane f-feels the s-same.”

  “There would be no question of Miss Fairfax being presented,” interposed Mrs Fitzroy coldly. “She is a nobody, and has no future. But you, my granddaughter, must certainly take your place in proper society, and to that end I have saved up a thousand pounds, to cover your wardrobe and expenses.”

  So, to Mrs Fitzroy’s credit, she had, but only, the Colonel grumbled, out of the very comfortable annual allowance she received from him.

  “But I will not d-dream of d-doing anything that Jane can’t d-do!” said Rachel, “and in any case I d-do not at all wish to be p-presented, thank you, Grandmamma.”

  Outraged, Mrs Fitzroy carried her grievance to the Colonel. “Something must be done about that girl, James! She needs — she needs intensive grooming,” she declared, using the words with distaste, but aware that they might have an impact on her son-in-law. “Otherwise she will remain an old maid.”

  For once, although it went against the pluck with him, the Colonel was inclined to take Mrs Fitzroy’s part. Impatiently, for he would have preferred peace and congenial company at his club, he entered the lists on his mother-in-law’s side. It was true, he said to Cecelia, that Rachel needed polishing up. She was now nineteen, nearly twenty, time she looked about her for a husband, and how could she attract the notice of any sensible male when she had such freckles, such a gap in her teeth, such a stammer, above all, such complete lack of confidence when in polite society?

  “She must begin going to parties; at least a few small, select parties.”

  Rachel, whose only wish was to attend art classes at the Royal Academy, was appalled.

  “What about J-Jane? Will she come too?”

  “Certainly not!” snapped Mrs Fitzroy. (Rachel’s mother, soon tiring of the subject, had gone off to prosecute a copious correspondence with Samuel Whitbread.) “Jane has no need to learn the ways of society; in fact it would be quite improper. Jane must now find a position as a governess. Whereas you, my love, when you are twenty-one, will have twelve thousand of your own.”

  “I sh-shall sh-share my f-fortune with Jane!” declared Rachel.

  Mrs Fitzroy left the room in a fury.

  Deeply perturbed, Rachel took counsel with Jane.

  Of course they had known, both of them, vaguely, always, that in time to come their ways of life must diverge, must part; but now, suddenly, the future was here, was on top of them, long before they were prepared to accept it.

  Jane, secretly, had been to a registry office in Wigmore Street to discover the terms and conditions under which governesses were hired, and had come away deeply depressed, not only by the scantiness of the salaries, but by the downtrodden, dejected air of the applicants for positions, and the contemptuous, disregardful manner in which they were used by the people who ran the office. Because of her elegant clothes and manner she had been taken for a prospective employer, and she had not enlightened anybody; after watching and listening for a while she had walked away, castigating herself for a coward, while she made excuses: “Colonel Campbell said I need not commence my career until I am twenty-one; or until Rachel is married. Which will happen first?”

  “If — if only we had s-some friend to take our p-part!” said Rachel.

  Jane thought longingly of Mr Knightley; but he did not, and never would, stand towards her in that kind of relation; he was only the subject of her wistful, childish dreams.

  Jane had, of course, visited Highbury immediately upon the return from the West Indies; had been happy and relieved to find Aunt Hetty and her grandmother enjoying their habitual good health and spirits, embarked securely on that long, tranquil span, between age fifty and seventy, during which persons of untroubled moral and physical conformation exhibit hardly any change from one decade to the next. — With Jane, of course, it was wholly different and her elders could not have done exclaiming over her growth, her beauty, her widely increased range of knowledge and accomplishments, her musical brilliancy. The entire village must meet their returned darling. Unfortunately the entire village on this occasion did not include Mr Knightley, who had gone to a sheep-shearing festival at Holkham to study modern theories on leguminous crops and feeding oil-cake to cattle: “Doddy new-fangled ways,” grumbled his man William Larkins, meeting Jane in the street, “no good will come of any of ’em you mark my words,” and Jane could only shake her head in melancholy agreement, bitterly regretting the absence of the one person, outside of her family, whom she had really wanted to see.

  At last, after many anxious and fruitless hours and days of family argument about Rachel’s come-out, it was Rachel herself who hit upon the solution that satisfied all parties.

  “I have had a very good idea,” she announced one morning to Jane.

  “What is it?” the latter inquir
ed with considerable caution. Some of Rachel’s plans in the past had included such schemes as Jane’s becoming an author and writing novels, which would be illustrated by Rachel; Jane, strictly a realist, knew they might as well expect to make a living from piracy.

  “I had a letter from Matt Dixon —” Rachel, to the extreme disapproval of her grandmother had never lost touch with the two Dixon brothers, maintaining a sporadic, intermittent, but lively and friendly correspondence with them. “Matt tells me that Sam has been ill again, but now they propose visiting Weymouth in hopes that the air will do him good. Let us suggest to Papa that we go to Weymouth also!”

  Jane did not precisely see how a visit to Weymouth was to solve their problems. Did Rachel expect the Dixons to rescue her?

  “Well, no — not precisely — b-but — they m-may have some helpful ideas. And — and Weymouth is s-such a f-friendly, easy place. Remember what a good time we had there — even without M-Matt and Sam. I sh-shall feel more c-comfortable there, if we m-must go to p-parties. Even G-Grandmamma might agree that it would b-be b-better to b-begin at Weymouth.”

  Surprisingly, Mrs Fitzroy did agree. The London season was, in any case, almost over, people of the ton were leaving town for their country estates. Her grandchild might as well acquire a little polish in the more relaxed, less formal atmosphere of the watering place; while at the same time an intensive campaign was waged on her complexion with Gowland’s Lotion, on her hair with eggs and rosemary-water, on her hands with salts of lemon, and on her lips with resin and spermaceti.

  Miss Winstable had accompanied the family to the West Indies (“and had been a dead bore,” said the Colonel, “always screaming at the sight of a centipede, terrified of the natives, invariably falling sick when she might have been of some use”); on the return to England it had been decided, to everybody’s joy but her own, that her time of usefulness was past, so she was handsomely pensioned off by the Colonel, and the girls drew a breath of relief. Prematurely: for a new female chaperon, Mrs Consett, was hired, whose duty was to instil in them those ladylike qualities which, for one reason or another, Mrs Campbell had never inculcated.

  “I had rather have kept Miss Winstable,” said Rachel ungratefully, after a few days.

  The journey from London to Dorset took them three days, for Mrs Fitzroy would not be hurried. She always travelled with her own sheets, and insisted upon inn bedrooms being aired for half a day before she would set foot in them.

  Jane had hoped, humbly, that the route to Weymouth might lie close enough by Highbury to afford the chance of a visit there, but this suggestion was instantly vetoed by Mrs Fitzroy. “Absurd, to waste several hours of valuable travelling time! And for what? To visit a set of unimportant persons with whom no one but Jane was acquainted. Quite unnecessary.”

  Jane had longed for Rachel to meet dear Grandmamma and Aunt Hetty; also, just possibly, to catch a glimpse of dear Mr Knightley; but when the refusal was made she began at once to feel that she had been unreasonable in entertaining such a hope.

  “Never mind,” said Rachel, squeezing her hand, “perhaps we may contrive to stop there on the way back. All kinds of things may have happened by then!” She gave Jane a conspiratorial grin; it had already been agreed between them how very convenient it would be if only Mrs Fitzroy were to fall overboard from some sailing vessel.

  Weymouth, when they reached it, was still thin of company, but there were enough respectable names entered in the book of the Assembly Rooms to make Mrs Fitzroy feel quite comfortable.

  “Hmn, Ponsonby, yes — Abercrombie — Ross, Acton, Drummond — hmn, hmn — ah, Lady Pytchley, she has two girls of Rachel’s age, very good — Wheeler — that’s no name — Dalrymple, ah, Felix, that will be the Viscount’s younger son, he has not a feather to fly with — Baring, Windham; yes, yes, we are assured of very tolerable society. Windham inherits his great-aunt’s estate.”

  If the name Dixon were there, she did not announce it.

  As had been the family’s habit on former visits, they stayed a few days at the Royal Hotel in the north part of the town (once known as Melcombe Regis, but now more frequently referred to as New Weymouth). Meanwhile they looked about for a comfortable house to hire, and found one in York Buildings, facing the sea, and the great curving swoop of bay, which had given Weymouth its nickname “the Naples of Dorset”.

  “Ah, you couldn’t have got a house like this so easily ten years ago,” declared the landlord sadly. “When His Majesty was used to come here, you’d be lucky to hire so much as an attic, this time of year. They say his poor Majesty’s altogether confined now — shut up by his London doctors. Tis a sad shame, I say. He was the pleasantest, affablest old gentleman you could wish to meet; used to take his dip every morning in the sea, right over there. And there’s his bathing machine still, to prove if I lie.”

  There it was; in fact there were two, kept carefully painted, as they later discovered; an octagonal one on wheels, and a large floating structure, like a houseboat, moored in the river below the Nothe headland. The machines were coloured red, white and blue, and had gilt crowns on them. After His Majesty’s daily dip, the landlord told them, the crowds on the sea-front had been used to halloo and huzza, and the band of the Royal Dragoons played “God Save the King”.

  It was sad that those stirring times were over; and yet, Jane thought, Weymouth seemed still a very cheerful, lively town. There might be no more royal receptions in the Assembly Rooms, these days, but weekly balls were still held there, a variety of plays and entertainments were to be seen at the Theatre Royal on the Esplanade, there were the New Rooms, and the Old Rooms, there was Harvey’s Library and Card Assembly, not to mention other minor libraries, where newspapers might be read and books borrowed. The old town, with its picturesque narrow little streets, had fascinating shops, where fishermen’s nets and glass balls, or fossils from Lyme might be bought by the tourists; and there was Ryall’s Toyshop, next to the theatre, where Queen Charlotte and her daughters had purchased sponge cakes and sugar-sticks. Besides those delights, the Radipole barracks beyond the Narrows were seething with troops and officers, and the harbour was bristling with naval craft, still heedfully keeping watch for a possible French invasion.

  Mrs Fitzroy might turn up her nose and say that Weymouth was a paltry little place compared to Bath, but Matt Dixon, who had been to school there, said that Bath was the dismallest black hole on earth, situated in a dank dell, where it never stopped raining. Weymouth, Matt said, was infinitely preferable, for besides the advantage of the sea it had all kinds of agreeable excursions: to Sandsfoot Castle, and the island of Portland, Radipole Lake, the wishing-well at Upwey, Lulworth Cove, the Durdle Door Rock, and Corfe Castle.

  “We can be exploring for ever,” he told Rachel. “Oh, what fun it is that you are here at last! What larks we shall have! And what a lucky thing that you young ladies are such excellent horsewomen!”

  “It is only too bad that poor Sam cannot accompany us,” sighed Rachel.

  The Dixons, already installed at Weymouth, had a pleasant bow-fronted house in Trinity Road, on the older side of town, overlooking the harbour. They or their friends in York Place could cross the harbour by ferry when they wished to visit one another, go for a dip in the sea, or walk on the Esplanade.

  Mrs Fitzroy made no secret of the fact that she did not think at all highly of the Dixons. She had met them just once before, at the time of her first descent on Manchester Square, and could concede, only, that the boys were not quite so uncouth as they had been at that time.

  “But, Dixon! I ask you! What kind of a name is that?”

  Colonel Campbell, ignoring his mother-in-law’s animadversions, continued to like the Dixons very well. The Major had been an old friend, carried off, most regrettably, by a ball at the battle of Vimeiro. But both the Colonel and Mrs Campbell were sincerely attached to Mrs Dixon, a kind, untidy, cheerful lady, who hoped by much sea-bathing to become a little less plump. “For I am too round, my dears, inde
ed I am!” But as, after every dip from her bathing-machine, she insisted on keeping out the cold by munching several little queen-cakes, bought at Ryall’s, before a luncheon of lobster patty and pickled pears, it seemed unlikely that her ambition would be realised.

  Jane, from the start, was most favourably impressed by the Dixon brothers, and could readily understand why Rachel had always remembered, always corresponded with them. They were not precisely handsome; no, one could not say that of them, especially, for instance, when compared with the memory of Mr Knightley. But their looks, particularly those of Matt, were striking and poetic to a degree. And that was as it should be, for Matt, he confessed, had taken to writing poetry; he had completed several odes already, kept a daily notebook, which he termed his “skeleton diary” and hoped to follow the profession of letters.

  They were Anglo-Irish — “Ancestors went over with Cromwell, you see, vulgarly recent; the Normans and the true Irish think nothing of us, we are merely the scaff and raff of the country,” Sam explained to Jane with a grin. But, she guessed, there had been considerable intermarriage with the true Irish since Cromwell’s day; both boys had black Celtic hair, Matt’s indeed was a positive mane, rough, shaggy and curling, reaching to his shoulders; they had high cheekbones and large dark grey Celtic eyes. They were fluent and brilliant talkers; they could, said Rachel “chat a dormouse out of its winter sleep,” using a wealth of lively gesture and dramatic declamation, besides effervescent jokes and wit. Their manners, once so uncouth, were now as polished as anybody — except Mrs Fitzroy — could wish. Even Mrs Consett, the chaperon, found them delightful.