Six Weeks by the Sea, page 3
Jane glanced down at her fingers with some surprise and then looked up with a mischievous air: ‘Clandestine, sir? I assure you, I am not in the habit of indulging in secrets, nor am I much given to the composition of novels, unless one can call scribbling upon scraps of paper in idle moments a novel. My hands, I believe, are merely an unfortunate consequence of that most distressing of habits – writing letters.’
‘Ah, letters! Of course. But I must ask, Captain Austen, does your sister’s penchant for letters suggest a habit of writing often? You see, I have been told that writers are sometimes so absorbed in their pens that they forget the very marks they leave upon themselves.’
Frank folded his newspaper and stood up, avoiding his sister’s penetrating glance.
‘Well, you know, Captain Parker, we must all confess to certain habits that become ingrained over time. My sister is not unacquainted with the use of her pen, though whether that constitutes the making of a writer is another matter entirely.’
‘Aha! Now it is apparent. The captain’s cautious wording betrays more than he would have us believe. Tell me, Miss Jane, if you are indeed a writer, what might one find in your manuscript? A love story, perchance, or a keen satire of society?’
‘I daresay, Captain, you would be most disappointed by anything of the sort.’
‘Ah, the modesty of a true writer. I see how it is. No doubt you are working on something quite grand, Miss Jane, which will soon be the talk of the town. I shall watch for it with great anticipation!’
‘Do not listen to him, sister,’ said Frank, blushing. ‘He has a most extraordinary talent for extracting secrets, though I assure you he will find none here but the gall ink upon your fingers.’
‘Oh, Captain Austen,’ Parker declared with a saucy smile, ‘I never yet cast my line over a fish that rose more readily to the fly than you do.’
Parker walked over to the table upon which there was a leather drawing case.
‘May I?’ he enquired and before waiting for a reply, he opened the folder. ‘Why, these are exquisite! Might I surmise that if one sister is a letter writer, the other is an artist? How charming, Miss Austen – one would think you had the very essence of nature at your command. The delicate strokes, the soft blending of colours! But tell me, what do they represent?’
‘Thank you, Captain Parker.’ Cassie joined him at the table. ‘These are but humble attempts at capturing the landscapes I have known, places I have seen in my travels, and others which remain only in the memory. This one, for instance,’ said she, gesturing to a scene of soft hills and a distant horizon, ‘represents a view I once admired in Hampshire, the quiet beauty of the hills on a summer evening.’
‘Ah, Hampshire! But your brushwork, Miss Austen – how it speaks to one’s heart. The light, the shadows, it is as if they reflect something deeper than mere scenery. Could it be that these landscapes are more than a simple homage to nature? Perhaps they are windows to your very soul?’
Cassie inclined her head in a polite but distant gesture, her fingers lightly tracing the edge of the table: ‘You are too kind, Captain Parker. I assure you, these are but attempts at capturing a fleeting moment – a passing scene. There is little to be found in them beyond what is seen with the eye.’
‘But the eye, Miss Cassandra, is often the most unreliable of judges, is it not? I would hazard that the hand which painted such gentle landscapes must have a heart that shares in their quiet grace. Surely there is more to these paintings than meets the eye.’
‘Perhaps, Captain, but if there is more, it is not for me to say. I paint, as one would walk or breathe, without expectation of anything other than the act itself. The landscapes you see are a reflection of my own memories and musings, not of anything more fanciful or dramatic.’ Her voice softened. ‘But I thank you for your words. It is a kindness to receive such compliments, though I must confess, I find little joy in them at present.’
Jane, meanwhile, had taken up her needle. She had been working handkerchiefs for Frank, and Parker looked with envy at the delicacy of the satin stitching. He took a great interest in muslin, especially Indian white work.
‘I never tire of discussing the merit of cambric versus muslin, or the price per yard, though I have no sisters. Are you acquainted with Mrs. Mussel of Bath?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Jane. ‘She makes our summer gowns and cloaks.’
‘Do you not feel that she is better with dark colours and does not succeed with lighter colours?’ Parker asked with great animation. He particularly admired Miss Jane’s new yellow and white cloud dress, though adding that on the whole he disliked coloured gowns, preferring plain or spotted white. He was interested in how much it cost to send out their laundry. No detail escaped his notice, though he was never indecorous, merely curious.
Jane, shy in company other than her own family circle, found him most congenial. Herself occasionally sharp-tongued, she detected an ally in his own satirical bent. She prudently kept her thoughts to herself, and to her sister, yet could not help laughing when he described the outlandish modes of the wealthy but vulgar Miss Tavistocks, who had descended upon the town. Their bright gowns of coloured satin bedecked with layers of expensive lace horrified him, and he compared them unfavourably with the tropical birds of paradise that once adorned his garden: ‘The Miss Tavistocks’ shiny purple gowns do not become their complexions, nor their figures. Indeed, they resemble nothing less than a brace of aubergines.’
‘Captain Parker, you must not speak so,’ said Jane, trying to conceal her laughter. It really was his tone of affected indifference that made it so difficult to reprimand him.
‘And as for the mother with the fat neck, now there’s a madam who’s broad at the beam, as we seadogs say.’
They begged him to desist. Delightful as it was, such excess of indecorum was not to be borne. They turned instead to the invitation just received from Reverend Swete to visit his seat, Oxton House, which, he had assured them, was one of the gems of the West Country. He had begged the family to come the following week, so a pleasure trip was to be arranged. Captain Parker took his leave and on being shown out passed a gentleman on his way to pay a morning call. It was the young lawyer, Mr. Rose. Parker bowed, but could scarcely contain his irritation. His scheme was progressing well, and he cared for no obstacles to block his path. Falling back on his naval training, he muttered to himself: ‘Don’t give up the ship, Parker. He who has planted will preserve.’
* * *
Mrs. Austen had no desire to be thought a catch-match maker. Nevertheless, she regarded the visit as a great success.
‘Well, my dear girls,’ said she, with a teasing smile, ‘now that Captain Parker has departed, I must ask – how do you find him? He certainly seems a gentleman of wit and spirit, does he not? And such attentions! I must admit, I am curious to know which of you has caught his eye.’
‘Yes, Mama,’ replied Jane. ‘He has been… most attentive, though I believe Captain Parker’s charm is such that it is difficult to discern where it is truly directed. What think you, Cassie?’
‘Indeed, he is very… engaging. But I suspect he flirts with all ladies in the same manner, as he seems to take great delight in it.’
‘Yes, I do not imagine he would have any preference for either of us, beyond the novelty of our conversation or our company. He is a man of good humour, and I think that is enough for him.’
Mildly crestfallen, Mrs. Austen looked from one daughter to the other. ‘Well, I do not know… But you must allow, he does seem very taken with you both. I wonder which of you he will call upon again first.’
Jane shook her head. ‘I daresay Captain Parker has no intention of choosing between us. His flirtations, it seems, are meant to be distributed equally. I cannot imagine his affections being anything but as transient as a passing breeze. I would hazard that tomorrow he may turn his attention elsewhere.’
Gazing out of the window, Cassie nodded her agreement. ‘I think the captain’s heart may be fixed on matters far beyond our reach, Mama.’
Mrs. Austen sighed. She knew that Cassie’s heart was devoted to the man she had loved and lost, but she felt it her duty to inform her younger daughter that time was of the essence.
‘You must be sensible, Jane, my dear, that you are not very young. You have to consider very calmly whether you would be contented to find yourself at fifty an old maid like Sophy Johnson on a scanty income, which would scarcely afford you a bone of mutton and potatoes.’
Jane responded tartly that she had never yet seen a gentleman worthy of her affection. And yet, for all her protestations, she had been impressed not only by Captain Parker’s affection for her brother, but also by his powers of observation and the liveliness of his discourse.
* * *
Mr. Rose fixed his eyes on a green parasol heading up the beach, advancing briskly. Miss Jane had been dipped early that Thursday morning and was returning for her warming dish of chocolate. She was without her veil and as she approached, he observed her quick and bright eyes and the way she had of turning them swiftly on an object and holding them there. Her eyebrows, like musical slurs, were a shade darker than her hair. Her face was utterly captivating, with a frankness of expression he had not seen before in a woman.
He held out the morning paper and bade her to give it to her father with his compliments. She could not refuse his civility and, accepting, took her leave. Such impertinence! was her initial thought. Yet she could not fail to notice the elegance of his person and the sweetness of the smile he had bestowed upon her when she had accepted his offering to her father. He truly was provokingly handsome, his eyes as cerulean as the sea beyond. When he had paid his morning call yesterday, her parents had been impressed by his graceful mien and his kind consideration of trusting that the Misses Austen had not been too fatigued by the dancing.
‘My Jenny is vitality itself,’ her father had replied. ‘Indeed, she intends to rise early on the morrow to be dipped in the ocean.’ Jane had shot her father a reproving glance. She did not care to share her sea-bathing plans with a stranger. And now, this… this lawyer had taken advantage (there was no other expression) of her father’s intelligence and had set out to discompose and cause embarrassment. She was also mortifyingly aware that she was wearing her old brown cambric gown, that her petticoat was drenched by the sea and her pink shoes sand-soiled. Her straw bonnet strings were untied and flapping furiously in the salty sea breeze. It was too agitating for him to catch her in so unguarded a manner and she had no patience with herself or him.
Once again, he looked amused and made his elegant bow, after which she bobbed and almost ran to Dove Lane. She threw her bonnet and the newspaper onto the chaise and kicked off her damp slippers. Cassie was at her easel, a crumpled ball of paper beside her, but was her usual calm and reassuring self, rising momentarily to rub her sister’s feet with a napkin. ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’ Jane intoned with a groan.
‘But why have you taken such an instant dislike to the poor creature?’ Cassie said reprovingly, though in her customary gentle tone.
‘Saves time,’ Jane retorted.
‘He is just what a young man ought to be,’ said Cassie. ‘Sensible, good-humoured and lively. And remarkably handsome.’
‘You never see a fault in anyone, all the world is agreeable in your eyes.’
‘I speak what I think, but I would never wish to be hasty in censuring anybody.’
Jane glanced at her sister’s easel. Cassie was putting the finishing touches to a half-length of Frank in his captain’s uniform. There was no want of likeness; she had captured his intensity and vigour, and produced a charming sail ship in the background. With every effort, Cassie improved. The style was so spirited. The expression of the eye so correct. It was a rebuke to take more labours with her own endeavours.
Jane entered her bedchamber and began to set the toilet stand to rights, gathering stray garments hanging on the backs of chairs. She changed her cambric for a more comfortable and commodious wrapper and rearranged her coil of long hair, combing it with unusual energy. Sea bathing was tiring, and she felt quite vexed and out of sorts. She remembered the invitation for the family to tour the grounds of Reverend Swete’s seat, Oxton. She was also soothed by thoughts of the arrival of her bosom friend, Martha Lloyd, who was to join the family in Dove Lane within the fortnight. Martha was the person with whom she shared her most intimate thoughts. She alone, outside the family circle, knew of Jane’s desire to be a published author and had been privy to the intimate readings of her novels. Martha had encouraged Jane, laughed at all the right places and longed to hear more about the adventures of her intrepid heroines.
Though Jane loved her sister, the death from yellow fever of Tom Fowle, whose poor body had been cast into the sea, had placed an imperceptible barrier between them. How could she comprehend Cassie’s loss? And not even a grave to visit. Her sister’s fortitude was admirable, perhaps too much so, she wondered privately. If she were ever to truly love, which she very much doubted, she would be incapable of showing composure in the face of the death of a betrothed. Cassie was convinced that she could never love again, that first love was immutable. Well, that was no creed of hers, and a romantic notion that Jane scorned. With all her heart.
* * *
In the small hours of a hot and humid Friday night, she awoke from a nightmare in which she was standing in the park of Scarlets with her aunt. She knew it was Scarlets because she could see the large white mansion house with its twin rounded towers. Then she found herself in the wood walk of Steventon, winding through clumps of underwood, overhung by elm trees. She could see the well between the vicarage and the wood walk, and then the cucumber garden, the strawberry beds and her mother’s pot herbs, marigolds and the weathercock sur-mounting the white pole.
The next morning, she relayed her dream to Cassie, with the admission that all dreams were dull as ditchwater for the listener.
‘We all of us miss our home, my dearest Jane,’ said Cassie softly. ‘But we will soon take possession of another, and with our plate, linen, books and china, we shall be content.’ She omitted any mention of Jane’s pianoforte, which had been sold, and her father’s library bequeathed to James.
‘But we are now degraded to the condition of visitors,’ replied Jane sharply. Seeing her sister’s dismay at the violence of her emotion, she began to sing a ditty, drumming her fingers on the table as if playing a piano:
‘Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver bells, and Cockle shells,
Sing Cuckoos all in a row.’
Jane’s feelings of animosity towards her brother’s second wife, once her bosom friend, had increased following the latter’s ill treatment of her niece, Anna. After James’s first wife had died when Anna was just two, she had been sent to Steventon to be consoled by her aunts, who raised her with all the love and concern due a motherless child. The sisters, close companions to Mary and her sister, Martha, had been only too delighted when their brother proposed to their friend, but Mary’s indifference to her stepdaughter, and her vulgar delight in becoming mistress of Steventon, had cooled the friendship. It was Jane’s opinion that Mary had persuaded James to expedite her father’s retirement. She could not forgive her.
Cassie turned the distressing talk to their aunt Perrot and Scarlets, which as well as inheriting Steventon, James was heir to, along with a vast fortune, courtesy of their aunt and uncle.
‘Frank and Charles must make their own way in the world, seek their own fortune, while James and Edward are lords of the manor,’ said Jane, in no mood to be conciliatory.
‘Hush, dear. Surely the good fortune of one in the family is the fortune of all?’
‘Perhaps. That remains to be seen.’
With this, she terminated the conversation, fearful of losing even a precious minute more of the early morning, while the household slept, which was the time she gave to her scribbling. To return to the adventures of Elinor and Marianne, and Elizabeth and Jane, was the greatest of all pleasures. That both sets of sisters faced the turmoil of being turned out of their family home did not occur to her, and there was no reason why it should; after all, there was nothing unusual in such an event.
* * *
Leah was playing close to the water’s edge, scooping up the wet sand and letting it trickle through her fingers. It was Saturday, so there were no lessons that morning. Her father watched her closely, fearing real or imaginary harm. The child was his prized pearl, six years of age, with dark curly hair and limpid green-brown eyes, and belonged to him completely, irrevocably. He would never let anyone take her from him. Until he had held her in his arms, William had not known love – now he had brought her to England to be educated and to meet her English family. He required only a propitious moment to make the relevant introductions and another to assuage the self-righteous indignation with which his mother would certainly greet the unwanted arrival. For the time being the precious child was lodged safely with her governess in the boarding house. Close to the sea, where she felt at home. She would begin to speak again soon. It was excessive shyness that was the cause, and the loss of her mother.
The mild weather would help to accustom her to the harsh English climate, and once the awkward matter of his mother’s attitude was resolved she would be removed to Oxton. William’s plan was meticulous and water-tight. His parents had welcomed his renunciation of his errant ways since leaving Antigua. They did not know, however, that it was entirely due to him becoming a father, and not to his moral reformation or a belated sense of filial duty. Leah was a Miss Swete. It was merely a matter of time before she took her rightful place.
In the distance, he saw a gentleman, elegantly dressed, heading across the Mall towards the circulating library. William scooped up his daughter and entrusted her to the waiting arms of her governess, Miss Sharpe. It was essential not to be seen with the girl until the time was ripe. ‘Let her play a little longer,’ he instructed Miss Sharpe, ‘and then ensure she has a rest.’ He would take his morning coffee at the Yorke. Best to avoid the London, where there were far too many of his mother’s neighbourhood spies.
