“So very sad.” Cassandra reached down for her sewing. “And her papers? Could I help you with those? It would not be an intrusion. We were such friends, and for so many years.”
“Thank you, but no. Aunt Mary has expressly requested that she do all that. Her son, James-Edward, is developing a keen interest in the family history, I gather. He talks even of one day writing a book on the subject!” She raised her eyes to the ceiling at such folly. “As if the world does not already have too many books in it.” She smiled, confident of finding total agreement. “And as if anyone would want to learn about Austens, indeed.”
Cassandra smiled back. “My dear, I could not agree more. As you know, I could not be more devoted to my family and its memories, but even I must admit we are a quite splendidly dull bunch, to whom nothing of interest occurred.” This was just as she feared. It was imperative that Mary did not get to those letters first.
Isabella continued: “My aunt feels very strongly that it should be her responsibility to go through the family papers and decide what to keep—her responsibility alone. She still grieves for my mother most deeply. She says it is infinitely more painful to lose a sister than a parent, but I would not know.”
Cassandra stabbed at her patchwork to release her irritation. No matter whose body lay in the coffin, Mary Austen would always appoint Mary Austen chief mourner. “And has she yet begun?”
“Not quite yet, no. She certainly means to, but is, of course, horribly busy. Somehow she has so much more to do than the rest of us. Something seems always to get in her way.”
With a renewed energy, Cassandra suggested that Isabella set out into the village: a reward for her hard morning’s work. There was the briefest attempt at resistance—Dinah was already out running errands; it would be so rude to leave their guest all alone—but one easily conquered. Isabella was soon off in search of her cloak and her bonnet. And at last it seemed that Cassandra might just have the house to herself.
She packed away her things, picked up her valise, and went out into the hall. All was quiet. Halfway up the stairs she stopped to look out of the window. There was nobody in the garden or down at the riverbank. Up on the landing she listened again—was there a daily maid who had not yet been made visible? Someone at work in the upstairs rooms? Cassandra could not feel an extra presence, though there was clearly much to be done. She crossed over and into the old day nursery; then she peered out of the back window. There was Fred, in a sheltered corner of the once-glorious poultry yard. Scrawny birds pecked in the dirt, while he chewed on tobacco and whittled a stick.
Cassandra had long admired this vicarage as the very model of domestic efficiency. It had always been run just as she herself would have run it, had her life worked out in that way. So she was quite shocked by the new sloth and general indifference of everyone left here, the ease with which the household had simply fallen apart. She itched to get control of it: For the sake of Eliza’s reputation, it could not be handed on to the next incumbent in this sorry state. And she would do so—but later. For now, this chaos suited her purpose. With a more confident step, she set off for the mistress’s room.
The door was open, as if Eliza had just left it. The bed was still made with her patchwork quilt; her nightcap waited for her by the lamp on the drawers. Brushes and combs were laid out on the dressing table by the window; ribbons trailed down from the pedestal glass; a nightgown hung over the back of the chair. Cassandra sat down heavily on the ornate oak settle against the wall, quite affected by the tableau around her: of living life paralyzed; a frozen, suspended moment in time.
She studied the samplers on the walls that Eliza had chosen to wake up to each morning: simple prayers and mottoes stitched by childish hands. “There is no place like home,” she read, and shook her head: so trite, and really, very poorly sewn. How very odd of Eliza to first mount and then live with them. But then these were the indignities that motherhood entailed: women of taste forced to cherish that which did not deserve to be tolerated. One of the many blessings of the spinster state was that at least one’s walls were one’s own. The thought quite revived her. She rose and continued her search.
There was nothing under the bed but dust balls. Nothing in the wardrobe but moths and clothes. Though the ottoman held promise, it contained only bed linen. She looked around, and her eye was caught by that settle. What an old, ugly piece it was. It was surely brought into the house by the first generation of Fowles, but a big, heavy bench made from such a coarse dark wood was quite out of place in the bedchamber of a cultured, modern lady—and with a flash, Cassandra understood at once why it was there.
She crossed the room, took the long flat cushion from the seat, put it on the floor, and, with some awkwardness, knelt on it. The strain of lifting the lid was almost too much for her. She had to pull hard, harder than she once believed herself capable. Her pulses throbbed. Then, suddenly, her struggle was rewarded. With a loud creak, it surrendered and revealed to her its contents. The search was over. She gripped the wood and looked down.
Laid out before her were the letters of a lifetime.
* * *
DINNER THAT NIGHT WAS hard to identify—uniformly pale and not at all pleasant. Cassandra 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.”