Miss Austen - Gill Hornby Page 0,3

she looked around her, searching for the bon mot. “… very … very…” And then, as if by a miracle, it came to her: “long.” She drew breath to continue. Having thus broached the unlikely territory of literary discussion, she was somehow emboldened to journey yet further therein. “There are many, many words in them,” she carried on, with some bitterness. “They seem to take up too much of everybody’s time.”

Cassandra was generally used to a higher level of discourse, but still she could only agree. In other company she might have argued that he was a fine poet and joked that his work as a reviewer was quite unsurpassed, but could sense that this was not quite the forum. “And what about you, Isabella? Do you like novels? What are your particular favorites?”

“Novels? Me?” Isabella was back to being baffled. “Favorites? No. None at all.”

The debate was over. Cassandra surrendered. Dinah bustled in and slapped down a compote, and they supped in a silence broken only by the continued ticking of that clock.

* * *

“DO TAKE MAMA’S PLACE,” said Isabella when dinner was over. Cassandra accepted at once, as the chair happened to be nearest the fire.

The evening in the drawing room yawned before them, the latest challenge in a challenging day. Pyramus padded in and stretched out on the carpet: It had always been one of those houses of which dogs had the freedom. Cassandra did not mind this dog in particular, but did not quite approve of the practice in general. She tucked in her feet, opened her valise, and took out her work. How useful it was to sew, to fuss about with a needle, to keep your eyes on the stitch. It was always her armor in difficult situations, the activity itself a diversion from the awkwardness of the company. She often wondered how men managed, without something similar. Although it did seem that they were so less often stuck for words.

She had only brought her patchwork with her. Her eyes were no longer good enough for anything finer by lamplight. “Do you not have work, Isabella dear?” She slotted the paper behind the shape of sprigged cotton and started to stitch around. “Nothing with which you are busy?”

Isabella, staring into the fire, shook her head. “I was never terribly good at that sort of thing.”

Cassandra, who could patchwork with her eyes closed, looked up with some surprise. What an odd little creature Isabella was. She had known Isabella since birth—how the years blurred and fell away—and yet, she realized, she did not know her at all. She studied the woman before her: Her figure was neat, though ill served by her mourning; her features could pass as delicate, had sorrow not robbed them of prettiness. Isabella had neither the beauty of her mother nor the intellect of her father—though those arresting blue eyes were certainly his. And even after forty years of acquaintance, any sense of character or personality still seemed elusive. Cassandra could hardly stay here in the vicarage without establishing some sort of relationship, but it was as if she were in the dark, feeling around a thick blank wall in search of a secret doorway. It was hard to find a way in.

And then inspiration struck her: “I hope death was kind to your father when it finally came for him?”

For what else do the newly bereaved want to discuss but The End?

Isabella sighed. “It was clear about ten days before that his time was coming. He had a seizure after dinner, and when Dinah went in the next morning, he was too weak to rise…”

The lock had been sprung. The door to conversation now opened.

“The pain that afflicted him, with which he lived so bravely, was finally…”

Cassandra worked on, listening to stories of ice baths and poultices, and suddenly felt much more at home.

“On the fifth day, his spirits were so low that we were able to admit the doctor—”

“The doctor was not consulted before?” This smacked of negligence!

Isabella sighed. “Mr. Lidderdale is a fine surgeon, and we are lucky to have him. He is popular with everyone—everyone, that is, except Papa. My father had doubts on the very idea of a doctor in the village. He worried it could encourage illness in those who could least afford to be ill. But then, when he himself was past objecting…”

Cassandra reflected that dying must indeed have been a torment to the good reverend: to have to lie there mute and have