Miss Austen - Gill Hornby Page 0,63
as treats those like ’er without any fairness.” He gave an apologetic smile—“Forgive me, m’m, if you find me sounding too political”—and then a shrug: “You did ask.”
“Indeed. Though I knew the answer already,” Cassandra replied. “Our views are not wildly divergent. Thank you for ministering to her.”
“I’ll not let her go.”
He turned back to his treatment. Cassandra watched him for a while—impressed by this man’s dedication; moved by his kindness—then quietly retreated. She made her way back, emerging into the street in the sunshine directly in front of the Plasterers’ Arms. Was it not in its back room that Elizabeth Fowle ran her nursery? Then here was today’s opportunity to be useful. She had been meaning to visit her.
She crossed and took the alley to the side of the inn. The yard at the back was piled high with old barrels and broken boxes, but there was a small path through it. Pyramus of course knew where to go. Cassandra picked her way along behind him, toward the swelling noise of infants in varying states of extreme emotion, and found the door.
“Miss Austen!” Isabella’s sister, Elizabeth Fowle, stood with a child on each hip. “Look, children, we have a visitor.” The only light in the crowded, dim room seemed to come from her radiance. “Now”—she stroked a few heads and wiped a few tears—“we must remember our manners. What is it we say when people are so kind as to call on us?” She appeared, to Cassandra, as a saint in stained glass: aglow, blessed, redeemed.
A small girl toddled forward and wobbled a curtsy; a baby was placed in Cassandra’s arms and studied her with interest. Pyramus lay down, accepting that he must now be a plaything, and a few older children obliged. The rest—how many were in here? Cassandra counted at least ten—carried on with their day.
“Elizabeth, my dear.” Cassandra moved forward, and the two women kissed. “So this is where you have been hiding yourself.”
“Indeed. And what a pleasure it is for me to be able to show it to you. I am sorry I am never at home now. My days are so busy here, I can never find the time.”
Elizabeth found Cassandra a chair and asked a helper to make tea for them. “My charges arrive from five in the morning, you see. That is when their mothers have to get to the whiting works or the mill, and the women have to do such long hours.” She reached for a hard biscuit and put it into a small hand. “By the time they have all left, I have no energy to do much but crawl up there to bed.” She gestured to a ladder that led to a loft. “Before dawn it all starts again!” The rigor of it all seemed to delight her.
Cassandra listened. She could not help but be impressed, and as a consequence was forced to revise a long-held opinion—a process she never found pleasant. But credit must be given where credit was due, and this previously meek and quiet daughter of the vicarage must be credited for transforming herself so.
“Come now.” Elizabeth picked up a crying baby.
These were not her offspring, and the room was mean and chaotic, yet she appeared now to Cassandra just like any good mother in her own nursery: She had the same patience and devotion, and that infinite well of maternal sympathy.
“There, there, my precious one.”
Somehow, and one had to admire it, Elizabeth had found the solution to the problem that was her situation. She had used her own spinsterhood as an opportunity and put it to public advantage. Her reward was long days filled with purpose—and even love, apparently. Here was living proof of the lesson that Cassandra wanted to teach Isabella: Happy endings are there for us somewhere, woven into the mix of life’s fabric. We just have to search the detail, follow the pattern, to find the one that should be our own.
The thought reminded her why she had come. “I would love to talk to you about Isabella and her future, if you can spare me the time?”
“Ah, of course,” Elizabeth replied, setting clean napkins out on the table. “The great conversation about Isabella and her future that never seems to come to an end. I cannot stop what I am doing, but I can offer at least one of my ears.” She started to strip down a baby.
Cassandra was astonished by her tone. “Then this is something the family has