Cassandra's Sister (4 page)

The company conversed smoothly – Martha was good at managing these tea parties – but Jenny heard none of their words. An idea had come to her. It was an idea so vivid that it blotted out the garden, the tea table, the muslin dresses, the dog, and replaced them with the scene in her imagination. Eliza … of course,
Eliza
! Eliza with her wealth and her tragedy, her social graces, her kindness and beauty and intelligence, and her connections to the highest society of both Britain and France. Why had Jenny not seen something so obvious before?

“Jenny!” Martha's voice entered Jenny's reverie. “We are speaking of you, and you are not even aware.”

“Speaking of me?” repeated Jenny in surprise.

“Madame la Comtesse was saying how much she thinks you have grown since she last saw you. You are taller than Cass now, are you not?”

“A little, I think.” Jenny felt her colour rise. Everyone except Henry, who was playing with the dog, was looking at her.

“And we all admire your graceful bearing, you know,” went on Martha.

Jenny was bewildered. “Why … why did this subject arise?”

“I am guilty, I confess,” explained Eliza, smiling. “I happened to observe to Martha how lovely you look in that white bonnet. And Martha replied that she would give anything to have curly hair like yours. So I mentioned the clear colour of your eyes – such a true brown! – and the grace of your figure.”

“I have inherited Mama's nose!” protested Jenny.

This caused general laughter, and increased Jenny's embarrassment. But Cass came gently to her rescue. “Your modesty becomes you better than any bonnet, Jenny.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs Lloyd, nodding energetically. “And now, Miss Cassandra, it is
your
turn to be admired. How many months will pass before we can follow you and Mr Fowle to church? You have been engaged these two years, have you not?”

Cassandra hated such questions. Jenny watched her sister, aware that under the classical-sculpture exterior beat a heart no less passionate than it was patient. She knew that Cass awaited only the signal from Tom to put the first stitch to her wedding dress.

“You will wait more than months, I fear, ma'am,” she told Mrs Lloyd. “Tom is the incumbent of a parish which does not provide him with enough money to put anything by for his future. If he cannot get a better living it will be several years before we can be wed.”

“You are very sanguine about it, Cass,” observed Martha sympathetically. “I should have run out of patience long before two years had passed.”

Cassandra paused before she answered. “I
am
sanguine. People tell me it is my nature, but it does not mean I do not long to be Tom's wife. I do, very much. But it is God's will to keep us apart at present. We are young, and can wait a long time.”

Jenny felt proud of her sister. Mrs Lloyd was impatient for a wedding, but Cassandra wanted a
marriage
. It was the prospect of the happiness of that marriage which enabled her to wait at Steventon, sewing her trousseau gradually as funds would allow, passing her days quietly among friends and relatives, and writing letters to Tom by candlelight when she thought Jenny was asleep.

“And when shall we see Tom again?” asked Mary.

Cass hesitated, then decided to speak anyway. “You will not see him at Steventon for a long time, but I believe Mama and Papa have some notion of our meeting at my brother Edward's estate in Kent this summer.”

Jenny understood why Cass had hesitated. Serious plans
were
afoot, then, to bring Cass and Tom together at Godmersham. Did Jenny's exclusion from these discussions signal her exclusion from the party? If so, it would not be for the first time. Three years' difference in age
did
matter sometimes, however often people commented on how inseparable the sisters were. Cass was regarded as a woman – twenty-one, calm and practical, blissfully engaged to an equally level-headed man – while Jenny was still seen as a fledgling woman, half-formed, without her sister's polished manners, and her head always full of questions no one seemed able to answer.

“Well, I agree with my daughter, Miss Cassandra,” Mrs Lloyd was saying. “You are very patient for one so young. And now, Mr Henry, may we enquire if there is any young lady you are paying your addresses to? I suppose the fair creatures of Petersfield have been introduced to you and your fellow officers?”

Henry bowed politely, but would not be drawn on the subject. Jenny was not surprised. Henry was attractive to young ladies, certainly, but like Tom Fowle he had no fortune. He could not contemplate marrying until he had made money from the army or some other source. She also knew, better than Mrs Lloyd, that he was sensible of the fact that in time of war, any serving militia officer could be required by the regular army at short notice. He was not prepared to inflict the cruelty of daily anxiety upon those he left behind.

They left the Lloyds late, Hastings and his nurse having gone back to the Rectory after tea. All four were fatigued as they trundled homeward in Mrs Lloyd's trap, pulled by her slow old pony, driven by her slow old coachman.

“How dull our country life must seem to you,” said Henry to Eliza ruefully. “And Mrs Lloyd is extremely interested in other people's marriages, is she not?”

“Mrs Lloyd is a dear lady without malice towards anyone,” said Eliza. “But her habit is to speak her mind.”

“And she has two daughters past marrying age,” observed Jenny.

“I flatly refuse to marry either Martha or Mary Lloyd!” cried Henry.

“You see?” said Eliza. “Country life is not dull at all. Engagements and weddings and – what did she call them? – the fair creatures of Petersfield?”

Henry answered with a contemptuous look.

“I know you despise such things, Henry,” said Eliza, “but your parents' hospitality is the very best medicine for me at present. Why else do you think I made my way straight here? I could have all the wailing and tearing of hair I might wish for among my London friends, but I crave the peace of Steventon. The harmless inquisitiveness of your neighbours is far preferable to the speculation about
my
situation which is doubtless taking place at this very minute in Mayfair.”

Jenny was unable to discern what expression lay on Eliza's face, shadowed as it was by her hat brim and the dusk. She knew Eliza was resilient by nature, and that her long separation from her husband must ease the pain of his passing. She knew her cousin would face her widowhood boldly, and not dwell on horrors like Jenny herself was wont to do. But it was true that Eliza's “situation” was interesting. She was very rich, very beautiful, and quite alone. Moving in high society as she did, her smallest action would excite speculation. Who would blame her for hiding herself in Hampshire for a while, until the London gossips had whispered their last about the unspeakable manner of her husband's death, and the unknowable nature of her future?

Jenny's thoughts returned to the idea which had presented itself so irresistibly in the Lloyds' garden. Tomorrow, she would start to put it into practice. Once her household duties were done and Cassandra was conversing with Eliza downstairs, she would slip up to the sitting-room and begin. And if people asked where she was, Cass could employ the excuse that she and Jenny used whenever one of them preferred to be undisturbed: their humble servant, the Sick Headache.

“Lady
Susan
?” Cassandra looked up from her work. “Is her name not Lady
Catherine
?”

“No, that was another story, a long time ago. This is a new one, about a wealthy woman with her own house in a fashionable part of London, and several suitors.”

Henry and Eliza had left that morning in Eliza's carriage for Winchester, where Eliza had business at the bank. The carriage was to take Henry back to his regiment before bringing Eliza home to the Rectory in the evening.

The sisters were content to have no reason to go downstairs. Jenny took her place at the writing desk, while Cass sat on her own side of the window seat, sewing a velvet cap for Tom to wear while he wrote his sermons in his draughty rooms.

“I am persuaded that Eliza has some hand in the creation of Lady Susan,” said Cass, holding her needle up to the light and re-threading it. “Do not deny it.”

Jenny was sharpening a pen. “I cannot help it,” she admitted. “Eliza's life has always been more like that of a fictional heroine than a real person. Few real people have the Governor General of India for their godfather, do they?”

“True,” agreed Cassandra.

“And few Governors General, real or otherwise, have settled quite so much on their goddaughter,” continued Jenny. “Henry says she has five thousand pounds a year. Do you think that is true?”

“It is not my habit to believe anything our brother says until it can be proved,” said Cassandra, smiling. “And you should not repeat gossip, you know.”

“Even to you?”

“Well…”

“To be serious, Cass,” said Jenny. “As if Eliza's situation in life were not unusual enough, are you not also struck by her conduct? She remains calm, and kind, and as delightful company as ever.”

“She bears her misfortunes nobly,” said Cassandra, taking up her work again.

“She is truly inspirational. But I am not thinking of writing her biography, you know. Lady Susan is a fictional character whose experiences may have
something
of Eliza's in them.”

“Of course,” said Cass reasonably.

“I beg you, Cass, do not speak of this to her, or anyone.”

“Speak of what, dearest?”

Jenny dipped the pen in the ink and returned to her writing. She could make Lady Susan do whatever she chose. She was not going to look like Eliza; she would make her fair-haired, with flashing sapphire eyes. And she was going to be wicked, which Eliza most decidedly was not. What was the point of a heroine who was good? Heroines, in Jenny's estimation, had to be beautiful, unscrupulous, rich and unencumbered by parents. Heroes, meanwhile, were handsome,
very
rich and almost, but not quite, a match for their lady's quick wit.

Jenny chewed the end of the pen, a habit condemned by Mama as unacceptable even in the least hygienic of schoolboys. She thought hard. Of course, women like Lady Susan were not to be emulated: women must remain truly, not merely
apparently
good, or the world would end in chaos. Everyone knew that. But without writing an actually
immoral
story – imagine what Papa would say if she did! – Jenny longed to produce something which examined the
world
. Each day that passed convinced her that if a woman was rich enough, she could appear to be ruled by modesty and inferiority on the outside, while privately doing exactly as she pleased.

Late that evening Jenny left Cassandra by the drawing-room fire reading Fordyce's Sermons with Papa, and retired to bed. Her exertions in the adventurous society of Lady Susan had exhausted her. But soon after she had snuffed out her reading candle she heard carriage wheels, and footsteps on the stairs. Then someone gently opened her bedroom door. “Are you awake?”

Jenny opened her eyes to see her cousin, still in her outdoor clothes. The candle she carried spread a flickering halo under her bonnet brim.

“Why, Eliza!” Jenny sat up. “Yes, I am perfectly awake. What is the matter?”

“Nothing of importance.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, Eliza set the candle down. “I merely wanted to talk. I do not wish to go to bed, though I told them downstairs that I did. Will you humour my mood and listen to my nonsense?”

“I am glad to,” said Jenny, thrilled that Eliza had elected to speak to
her
.

Eliza's tone of resignation was clear. “I must return to London tomorrow. Pressing affairs in town take me away, and who can say when they will free me to return again?”

“Is it the bank?” guessed Jenny.

“It
is
the bank, you clever thing.” Eliza picked up the candle and held it between her face and Jenny's, illuminating both. There was surprise, but indulgent surprise, in Eliza's eyes. “Why, I daresay you know more of my business than I do myself!”

“I watch people,” confessed Jenny. “I look at the expressions on their faces, and I listen to their voices. When you said ‘pressing affairs' I knew you were really saying ‘money'.”

“Oh, how right you are!” sighed Eliza. “Money rules us all. It turns perfectly reasonable people into criminals, and misers, and sinners.”

“Yet if we do not possess it, we are equally ruled by its absence,” observed Jenny.

Eliza contemplated her in the candlelight. “Are you disappointed that your father can give you no fortune?”

“I have long ago resigned myself to it.”

“Cass may be prepared to wait for Tom, but when you fall in love, will you be as patient, my little Jenny?”

“I doubt it,” said Jenny solemnly. Then she added, more brightly, “But who is to say I
shall
fall in love? No one in the least eligible ever seems to cross my path.”

“That is not true,” Eliza asserted. “Why, at the Lloyds' yesterday I heard three or four young men mentioned. Who is Mr Blackall? And Mr Portal? Are they not eligible?”

“Samuel Blackall!” Jenny was scornful. “The older ladies of this neighbourhood have long suspected me of an attachment to Mr Blackall, who has been in and out of the district these five years, and always calls on all the young ladies. But, Eliza, I do not have an attachment to him, nor ever will have. And John Portal is not interested in girls like me. He has higher standards.”

“Oh, Jenny,” sighed Eliza, “you are prettier than you know. You will soon attract suitors without having to exert yourself at all.”

“Will they be suitors I like, though?”

“I am confident of it. If Mr Blackall and Mr Portal will not do, you may be sure that another Samuel or another John, or an Edward or a Robert will.”