The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,44

Adeline inquisitively.

“A present. From Adam Berwick.”

He stopped petting the kitten and looked about himself. “I see you are all set up here,” he remarked as he fluffed up some of the cushions and started turning over some of the books.

“Looking for clues?” She smiled wanly. “My little perch. Where I watch the world go by.”

“Adeline,” he started to admonish her, then tried to soften his tone, “please don’t talk like—please don’t be so hard on yourself. This is an awful time—I know.”

“I know you know.” She stared at him, not coldly like her mother, but resignedly. Finally she motioned again for him to sit down, while she sat primly in a carved wooden rocking chair across from the fireplace, facing him at an angle.

“Thank you for your card,” he offered after a few seconds of silence.

“You came over just to tell me that?”

“Adeline,” he sighed, “please, let’s not do this.”

“It’s just easier this way,” she sighed in return.

“What—being rude to everybody—to your mother—to me?”

“I just don’t have the energy like I used to.”

“You were indeed quite energetic—almost too much so,” he said, attempting to coax a smile onto her pale, tightly drawn face.

She couldn’t help but smile back. Sometimes she forgot how much he knew about her—forgot how long he had known the real her, the person she now only remembered herself to be.

“Well, you’re welcome. For the card, I mean.”

“Ah, that reminds me.” He reached into the pocket of his coat, which he had thrown over the back of the settee. “I brought you something. ’Tis the season and all that.”

He pulled out the small rectangular package and stood up to hand it to her. She gave a slight, self-conscious frown as she said, “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Your card was enough.” He sat back down on the settee. “And anyway, as they say, it’s the thought that counts.”

“I can only think of myself, it seems, of late. How to get through today, this hour. How to distract myself. How to forget.”

“Have you thought about going back to teaching? I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t ask—I know it’s still early days.”

She shook her head as she continued to hold the wrapped package in her hands. “No, I haven’t thought about it, not one little bit.” She raised the package up to her right ear and gently shook it. “Dickens? Too light … Eliot? No, too thin … Hmm … what could it be…?”

She came over and sat down next to him on the small settee. He realized that they hadn’t sat like this since the time last summer when they had taken tea together in the courtyard of the Great House. So much had happened since then, in a year when she had already had to endure more than her fair share. He looked forward to 1945 coming to an end for both of them—there was always something to be said for a new year.

She unwrapped the package slowly—she had enjoyed watching him try to act patient while she had teased him—and realized it was the same edition of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as the one of Emma that he had read to her while sitting in the courtyard together.

“My favourite.” She smiled. “Thank you.”

He smiled back. “It wasn’t hard to guess. You must have other editions—but this one you can carry around if you like. Look, Adeline, you need to start getting out again. You need to start walking, long walks, need to get the fresh, brisk air into your lungs and your head, need to just get out. I am always much better for getting out on my rounds. Always much better for talking to, and helping, others. It’s no magic prescription, but it’s a start. Reading is wonderful, but it does keep us in our heads. It’s why I can’t read certain authors when I am in low spirits.”

“But one can always read Austen.”

“And that’s exactly what Austen gives us. A world so a part of our own, yet so separate, that entering it is like some kind of tonic. Even with so many flawed and even silly characters, it all makes sense in the end. It may be the most sense we’ll ever get to make out of our own messed-up world. That’s why she lasts, like Shakespeare. It’s all in there, all of life, all the stuff that counts, and keeps counting, all the way to here, to you.”

He watched as Adeline kept her head bowed slightly as he talked, not looking at him, just