by Joan Aiken
“Some of your grandmother’s famous lotion, Miss Fairfax. How very kind! I have heard wonders as to its healing properties.”
Emma, it seemed, had come to give the old man the benefit of her assistance in writing a letter about parish relief. She had brought paper and ink, and sat down directly in a businesslike manner to her task.
Jane bade the new arrivals a civil good-day and was taking her leave when, to her surprise, Frank announced that he would accompany her. “My father will be waiting for me at the Crown; we are to ride to Kingston together. The beauty of the day encouraged me to accompany my stepmother on her errand, and we fell in with Miss Woodhouse. But the two of them will be excellent company for one another on the return journey; indeed, they may well prefer my absence.” And he made some joke about ladies’ confidences which Jane, in a slight state of confusion, failed to catch.
“Was this prudent?” she demanded of him nervously, when they were at some distance from the cottage, in the seclusion of a little hollow where the lane ascended a hill between high banks.
For answer he threw his hat in the air, then kissed her gloved hand before she could prevent him.
“I so very seldom catch a glimpse of you without a host of witnesses — all those dear, good dull souls, listening like munching cattle to our every syllable, and not understanding one word in twenty! I am sure that Highbury is populated by folk of sterling virtue, but you must allow that they are not quick-minded. That tedious party at the Coles’! You lost nothing by missing the dinner, I assure you; the dancing was the only tolerable part of the affair; and that was wrecked for me by the frustration of not dancing with you! But it passes comprehension how the people here can value you so low. Oh, yes, Miss Fairfax! they say; a nice pretty young lady who can play the pianoforte! You, who speak so many languages, who have travelled abroad, visited the West Indies, who in a few months read more books than most of them peruse in the whole course of their stupid lives —!”
Jane laughed, and forgave him his parting remark to Emma at the Coles’. “I must confess that I find them dull, too; but they are perfectly well-meaning; they do not mean to slight me by failing to ask for my impressions of the West Indies. Simply, they have so little interest in what occurs outside the confines of the village.”
“It makes me wild with indignation,” said he, “to think of you immured here, in this intellectual desert, month after month. Highbury is all very fine for a visit —”
“The term of my stay is at my own command,” Jane pointed out. “I can always apply for a teaching post —”
“Do not speak of that,” he exclaimed hurriedly. “I cannot bear the notion.”
“But it must be so —”
“Look!” he interrupted. They had reached the top of the short rise; where the lane turned a corner the hedgerow was fortified by a very fine old oak-tree which had spread its massive bulk among the hazel and blackthorn. In the oak’s knobbed and fissured trunk was a deep cavity, not immediately visible from the lane, for it was low down behind a protruding bole. “Look,” said Frank, thrusting his arm in up to the elbow, “it is quite dry; some squirrel’s forgotten larder. The perfect letter-box for us! I have been exercising my mind as to how, while I stay with my father, I can communicate with you privately. Here we have the solution!”
“Oh, but —”
“But me no buts! You will often be calling to inquire how that poor old gentleman goes on down there; and across the meadows this tree is only ten minutes’ run from my father’s house; I can see his chimneys from here. Every day I shall be able to leave a message here, to remind you of my existence!”
Jane could not gainsay the comfort of this arrangement. And his promise was amply fulfilled by many affectionate notes, many tiny gifts.
One morning Frank arrived at Miss Bates’s abode in person, and in high spirits.
“Do come, Miss Bates. And you, too, of course, Miss Fairfax. We need your sage and expert advice.”
“Advice? What in the world can my advice be good for?” fluttered Aunt Hetty. “But still — if you say so Mr Churchill — so kind — so very much obliged for the repair of those spectacles — come, Jane — do not omit to button your pelisse for the wind is in the east —”
They were to go, Frank told Jane as they crossed the street, no farther than the Crown Inn, where Mr and Mrs Weston were already gathered with Emma Woodhouse, debating the possibilities of using the club meeting chamber as a ballroom. It had been decided that the drawing-room at Randalls was not large enough for such a purpose.
Half an hour was most agreeably spent in the large, dusty chamber discussing the essential questions of lights and music, tables and chairs, tea and supper: could the card-room be used as a supper-room or was it too small? Would the older members of the party expect to play cards? Might a second room at the end of a passage be suitable for supper or was it too far distant?
“This wallpaper is dreadfully dirty!” said Mrs Weston distastefully. “And the paint so yellow and forlorn!”
“My dear, who will notice that by candle-light?” exclaimed her husband, exchanging smiles with Frank, and Emma said to Jane,
“The room itself is such a spacious, pleasant size; it would accommodate nine or ten couple very comfortably. I own, I do think this is a charming plan, do you not, Miss Fairfax? Are you not fond of dancing? I am sure you are! Do you not miss it? Here in Highbury we have so few opportunities.”
She spoke with such apparent spontaneity that Jane warmed and felt, for a moment, purely kindly towards her; but these feelings were impaired when, not long after, she heard Frank engaging Miss Woodhouse for the first two dances.
Why does he have to do that? thought Jane resentfully. Is Emma Woodhouse always to be of the first consequence?
A date for the ball was canvassed. “Nothing can possibly be achieved in less than a week, you know,” Mrs Weston was protesting to her husband. “Frank, can you not obtain permission from your aunt and uncle to remain with us for a third week?”
Frank thought that he might; hoped that he would be successful. — Three more days went by in animated planning. Jane saw Frank several times. Music and dances were discussed.
Emma Woodhouse even came to call on Jane, to ask, in the most friendly, unaffected way, if Jane would teach her (or her maid) that particularly elegant fashion of dressing her hair which had been so remarked at the Coles’ evening party. “Your hair is so beautiful, Miss Fairfax. I am sure it must curl naturally. Whereas mine is nothing but a trouble — has to be curled every night —”
Jane, disarmed, provided the necessary instructions, and exclaimed involuntarily, in the charity of the moment: “Oh, Miss Woodhouse, I hope nothing may happen to prevent this ball! What a disappointment it would be. I do look forward to it, I own, with very great pleasure.”
But her heart, accustomed to disappointment, misgave her; and with reason, as matters proved: two days later an express letter from Mr Churchill ordered his nephew’s instant return. Mrs Churchill was very unwell — too ill to trifle — Frank must set off for Enscombe without delay.
He called early at the Bateses’, to announce this melancholy news. Aunt Hetty was out of the house, gone to morning service, as she did on certain days; old Mrs Bates not yet up. Frank and Jane had ten minutes alone together.
She was in a flutter of low spirits. “We have done dreadfully amiss! I would never, never have consented to such a scheme if I had considered what it would entail. Such a course of concealment — of hypocrisy! We are acting clean contrary to our sense of right. It can never lead to good. Do, pray, Mr Churchill, take back your ring —” she was pulling it from its ribbon as she spoke — “do, pray, consider yourself free from this engagement. It is not right. I know it is not right. And what can we ever hope from it, what is the use of it?”
But he would not be persuaded. “What, and leave you free to engage yourself to Knightley? or to young Cox? Never! I cannot endure to lose you! Being obliged to leave you here an
d return to Yorkshire is hard enough, but the thought that I would have no more right to hear from you, no expectation of seeing you again as my dearest and best hope on this earth — no, believe me, that would not be bearable. You forget what a forlorn and lonely life I have of it, up there at Enscombe.”
He actually fell on his knees, clasping her hand, and looking so sincerely miserable that in the end she allowed herself to be persuaded, and tucked the ring back inside her fichu, just before Aunt Hetty walked up the stair.
Chapter 14
The toll exerted upon Jane’s constitution by Frank Churchill’s visit to Highbury had been so severe that, for several days after his departure, she was obliged to take to her bed and lie there with a shawl over her eyes, flinching from the smallest gleam of light, and crying out, when she could not help it, from the atrocious pain of her headache. Nothing Mr Perry prescribed had any success in alleviating the agony. But by degrees it abated and she was able to creep about the house, wan, listless, and lacking appetite. — To her very great relief, by the time she was capable, once again, of meeting neighbours, the topic of Frank Churchill had ceased to be of paramount interest, superseded by the return of Mr Elton with his new bride.
Mrs Elton was first to be seen in church, and then Miss Bates thought it proper to call.
“After all your grandmamma, my dear, was once mistress of that same vicarage. One must not be behindhand in this sort of thing, especially to a new-married lady.”
Jane, though not eager, was persuaded to accompany her aunt. “It will do you good, my dear, to see new faces — ah, I am forgetting, you have met Mr Elton, but not often. It will give a new turn to your thoughts.”
Jane remembered her former hope that Mr Elton’s wife might prove a pleasant companion, a substitute for Rachel. Dispiritedly, she walked with Miss Bates along Vicarage Lane.
Mrs Elton proved to be a short, thin, vivacious lady, not in her first youth. — She might be seven- or eight-and-twenty. Her hair was dark, not very plentiful, most elegantly dressed, her complexion somewhat sallow, her teeth very fine, a little prominent; she displayed them a great deal in laughing and talking. Her gown, too, Aunt Hetty thought remarkably elegant; Jane found it somewhat overtrimmed. — She was very ready to admire Jane and be friends.
“Oh! Miss Jane! Your fame has gone before you!” (laughing affectedly). “While in Bath I have been for ever hearing about you and your talents.”
“In Bath?” said Jane, perplexed. “I do not believe that I have any acquaintance in Bath?” Her thoughts flew wildly to Frank, visiting the town with his aunt in January; but she felt very certain that Mrs Churchill would not move in the same circles as Miss Hawkins.
“Oh, but, Miss Fairfax, you do! A very old friend! And although I do not know the lady herself, I am acquainted, most intimately, with a lady who frequently visits her; a particular friend of mine, a Mrs Partridge; and from her I have been hearing such stories about the talents of Miss Jane Fairfax and her superior performance on the pianoforte, and all her other accomplishments. I assure you, it has been the greatest satisfaction, comfort, and delight to me to know there was the prospect of such an interesting acquaintance in the new society I am got into. You and I, Miss Fairfax, must, I think, establish a musical club here in Highbury; we must have many sweet little concerts here. Do not you think that a good plan?”
Jane was not very favourably impressed by Mrs Elton. She replied with caution: “I may not remain in Highbury very long —”
“Oh! my dear!” cried out her aunt. “You said — you are promised to us for at least three months. Now, did you not?”
“But pray tell me, Mrs Elton, for I am consumed with curiosity,” said Jane, hoping to evade this issue, “who is your connection in Bath who knows me so very well?”
The lady in question turned out to be Mrs Pryor, widow of the former incumbent, now living in reduced circumstances in Westgate Buildings. “She is always busy, I believe,” said Mrs Elton, “she makes a quantity of little thread-papers, pin-cushions and card-cases, which my friend Mrs Partridge is able to dispose of for her.”
Jane’s heart bled for her kind former teacher, reduced to such a pass. Oh, if only I could do something for her, she thought; thank heaven my aunt and grandmother have such thoughtful, attentive neighbours here.
And then, with a cold chill: Might I ever be reduced to such a level?
“But, pray, Miss Fairfax, tell me,” went on Mrs Elton, “are you a great friend of Miss Emma Woodhouse? Seriously now, I wish to know. Everybody here informs me that Miss Emma is the first lady of the village, but — I own — I cannot warm to her! There is a something so very arrogant, so very disdainful about her — and what is she, after all? Hartfield is no bigger than my brother-in-law Mr Suckling’s place at Maple Grove! I find her airs, her pretensions hard to bear, I must acknowledge.”
“Oh, but my dear ma’am!” cried Aunt Hetty in distress, “Miss Woodhouse is so very gracious — so condescending — so kind to all of us — why, I could not enumerate the times that my mother has been up to take tea with old Mr Woodhouse — or a little supper — which is always so nice — and to play backgammon — and then, if they kill a pig, Miss Woodhouse never omits to send us a leg —”
“Mr Woodhouse, I grant you — a dear old gentleman — quite old-fashioned in his courtesies — which I dearly love — my sister Selina often tells me I am absolutely old-fashioned in my own ways — but the daughter, with her cold stiff airs and manners — I must confess she is not to my taste! They say she is affianced to that rich young man, Mrs Weston’s son-in-law?”
“We have not heard that? Is it indeed so?” exclaimed Aunt Hetty with the liveliest interest.
“No? Perhaps I may mistake. But, my dear Jane — (I know we are going to be great friends, you see, so I address you familiarly) — do you know what Miss Emma Woodhouse had the amazing impertinence — the effrontery — to assert? That my husband — that Mr Elton had been paying marked attentions to that little nobody, that Miss Smith, her friend, and that he was in duty bound to offer for her. Needless to say, it was no such thing, as he very soon made her understand! All this, of course —” laughing — “was before it had fallen to Mr E’s lot to encounter little me at the Pump Room —”
“Is that so, indeed?” said Miss Bates. “Now you come to mention it, I do remember it was hinted at one time — Mrs Cole dropped a word to me about little Miss Smith — but I fear I am not quick at such things —”
That accounts, thought Jane, for the looks of decided ill-will that I have seen Mr Elton casting towards Emma Woodhouse. I wondered why he seemed to dislike her so. She expected him to marry her protégée. Perhaps the gentleman himself had higher expectations? Perhaps he hoped to marry Miss Woodhouse herself? Mercy on me! I am becoming as parochial and gossip-minded as the worst old lady in the village.
“Miss Smith!” continued Mrs Elton with fine scorn. “Why — nobody even knows who her parents were!”
Mr Elton came in, glossy with self-satisfaction and the married state.
“I have been telling Miss Jane, Mr E,” cried his wife, “that she and I must join forces and start a musical club. A soirée every Thursday night! Do you not think that a famous plan?”
Jane demurred again that she did not know how long it would be within her power to remain in Highbury. — She had a strong notion that Frank Churchill would detest Mrs Elton.
“I have a letter today from my friends in Ireland — Colonel and Mrs Campbell — this very day — suggesting that I join them, for they are now to remain until midsummer. They are so very pressing —”
“Oh, but my dear,” wailed Aunt Hetty in agitation. “You told me, you did tell me, that you were going to refuse their kind offer?”
“I am certain that your Irish friends can spare you to us for a while longer, dear Jane. No, no! I cannot afford to lose the best musical talent in Highbury until my musical programme is well established. We shall not permit you to leave us yet!” declared Mrs
Elton with an arch smile.
Without at all liking her situation, Jane found herself being manoeuvred into promises of far greater intimacy with the Eltons than she either wished or intended. I am finely served, she thought with some irony, for my dissatisfaction with my lot and feeling the lack of a friend. Now I am supplied with one, and what a friend! Emma Woodhouse would be infinitely superior. And, because the Eltons appeared to be arrayed in enmity against Emma, Jane began to feel more kindly towards her.
“Mrs Elton seems such a clever, kind-hearted lady,” said Aunt Hetty, with simple satisfaction on the walk home. “It will be a fine thing for you, my dear, to be going over to the vicarage for musical evenings and exploring parties, getting away from us old people for a while; you must not be closeted with grandmamma and me all the time, you know, or you will fall into the dismals. And then, Mrs Elton has such great connections! She has promised me that she will look about her, by and by, and find a situation for you. Not that we wish you to leave us — never that! But a situation that was not too far distant from Highbury — with some elegant, respectable family — we could not, in conscience, decline. I am sure Colonel Campbell would agree with me there.”
Oh, Frank! thought Jane. What am I to do?
Willy-nilly, she saw herself being whisked off to some Maple Grove, to the residence of some Mrs Suckling.
Two days later, however, came an exultant letter from Frank himself. “I have persuaded my aunt and uncle that a remove to London will do them both good. We shall soon be in Manchester Street, perhaps in April; certainly in May. What a joy to know that then I shall be only sixteen miles distant from you — that scarcely more than an hour’s ride will bring me the chance of seeing you, of being near you. I think of you continually — dream of you every night — am consumed with longing for that time.”
Jane could not help feeling happier. His letters were so loving, so warm, so spontaneous. They always raised her spirits. She had missed, she must acknowledge to herself, the daily flow of notes, verses, and absurd tiny gifts which he had contrived to deposit in the hollow oak-tree, while he was staying with Mr Weston. And yet, she thought, what real benefit will it bring me to have him close at hand? It entails a continual charade, a lie told to every person I know — which is so odious. I have no gift for pretending, acting a part, disguising my feelings to the people I love best. It is strange that Frank does not seem to object to that part of the affair — in honest fact, I believe he almost enjoys it!