Miss Austen - Gill Hornby Page 0,10
suspected she had witnessed its last moments in the filth in the Kintbury backyard, but otherwise took little interest in what she was eating. She had only one concern for the evening, and that was to get to her own room as swiftly as possible, lock herself in, and return to the letters.
“I cannot think why I am so tired.” She placed her cutlery down on a plate as empty as she could manage it. “I have done very little today, compared with you, Isabella. And yet I fear I shall soon have to turn in.”
She did not anticipate any objections. After all, silence and absence passed as politeness in unwanted guests and friendless burdens. Poor Miss Murden spent most of her life pretending to be happy alone in that room. So she was taken aback by Isabella’s reaction.
“Oh, please not yet, Cassandra! I shall not sleep for hours, and that will leave me all alone!” Isabella had returned from her trip to the village flushed and merry, and her new mood had lasted right until that moment. Now she was slumped once more in dejection. “I am very bad on my own with nothing to do.”
“Forgive me, my dear. How thoughtless. Of course I shall sit with you if that is what you would like.” Cassandra would manage it all somehow. One required so much less sleep in old age; she would stay up reading all night if needs must. What worried her more was this new evidence of Isabella’s dependency. Very bad on her own? She was a single woman! Solitude was an inescapable part of her very condition.
They rose from the table and walked through to the drawing room, and tea. “I have been meaning to ask you, dear Isabella. What arrangements have you made for your own future?”
“It is not yet quite decided what is to become of me.” Isabella poured, and passed cup and saucer.
“But you will, of course, be living with one of your sisters.” Cassandra could not help but be irked by this abject self-pity. Not every single woman was blessed with family to rely on. “I merely wondered which one and where?”
“Oh, they will take me in, I suppose, if that is what I decide. I shall squash into Mary-Jane’s cottage, or together Elizabeth and I could take a small house in the village, which I shall keep while she never comes home. That was my father’s last request, most explicit. His feelings were very strong on the matter. His feelings were, as you know, very strong in general, and I have not once, in my history, done anything that might displease him. But in this instance alone, I—well—I, for once, have my own feelings to consider.”
Cassandra was aghast. To deny a father’s dying request? And to what possible end? After all, these women were sisters. There was no closer bond on this earth. “Either appears to me to be the most splendid solution, for which you should be perhaps a little more grateful.”
“‘Grateful’!”
“Indeed. And if you can add to your own comfort the knowledge that you are there in accordance with your dear father’s wish for you, then the outcome can only be a happy one—for everyone concerned.”
“Yes, there is the rub: my dear father’s wish for me. I have no real choice but to comply. But I confess it is not a future to which I can look forward with any enthusiasm. What a pitiful scene we shall make.”
Cassandra sipped at her tea, quite lost for words. It was not the first time that she had heard this assumption: that the divine blessing of a male presence somehow made a household more desirable, superior. But to hear it from a woman who had suffered sticks to the head? Now, that was a novelty indeed! Isabella had clearly not grasped the truth of her own situation: Her sisters were her future; single women have only each other. For many, mutual support was their only means of financial survival, but for most it brought other riches with it: a whole wealth of comfort, companionship, and joy. Isabella must learn this; Cassandra must teach her. It was something else to be accomplished before she left here.
“It will all fall into place, I am sure of it. Now”—Cassandra was bright but firm—“let us read together to take our minds off it all. I am not convinced these long, silent evenings of unemployment are entirely good for you. There are no spirits so low that