Jane and His Lordship's Legacy

“Yes, Papa.”

I saw the magistrate to the door and closed it quietly, so as not to disturb my suffering neighbour; and indeed, tho’ returned to her senses, Catherine looked very ill. Had it been the talk of blood and corpses that had u

“I understand you will be dining at the Great House tomorrow,” she managed as I dipped a cloth into the vinegar-water my mother had provided, and prepared to bathe her temples. “We are all to go as well, and my sister is devoting the better part of the morning to new-dressing her hair.”

“At your sister’s age — a period of high spirits, charm, and natural bloom — one’s appearance is of consuming interest,” I observed.

“Perhaps. There are four years’ difference in age between myself and A

“A tedious business,” I agreed with a laugh, “that must make the disappearance of all bloom a blessing rather than a pity! — As I have reason to know.”

“But you are charming,” Catherine protested.

“I am in my thirty-fourth year, my dear, and must put charm aside at last.”

“I have lived the better part of my life with A

This was bitterness, indeed, let slip so readily to a virtual stranger; but not all sisters are happy in possessing that perfect understanding and cordiality that have always obtained between Cassandra and me. I gazed at Catherine — at the sweetness of expression in her mild dark eyes, and the nut-brown indifference of her hair; and understood that a lifetime of denial and self-effacement had been hers: supported almost unconsciously by the fond indulgence of parents whose collusion in their youngest daughter’s vanity, though perhaps at first unwitting, was now become the sole method of managing her.

“That is enough vinegar,” Catherine said abruptly. “I am very well now, I thank you — indeed, I ca

“We were too frank in our conversation. We should have considered that you were not equal to it.”

“I ought to have been, Miss Austen. I ought to be equal to many things.” She turned towards the window and stretched out her arms, as though she would fly from its casement to a wider world. I had been that way myself, once, in a small vicarage in Hampshire; I had dreamt of crossing the seas — of being an Irishman’s wife — had exulted in hope of adventure and limitless skies, and chafed against the boundaries of glebe and turnpike. A surge of fellow-feeling from my breast to Catherine’s, then; a recognition of hopes blighted and dreams put away.

“Is A

“Elizabeth, my elder, is long since married,” Catherine replied. “We were all so unfortunate as to lose my two brothers to illness and accident; William being carried off while at school in Winchester; and John but a year later at home.”

I had carelessly used the very same names in my request for a manservant; how Mr. Prowting must have felt it, and misunderstood my levity’s cause! I felt a surge of colour to my cheeks.

“You have all my sympathy. Were they very young?”

“William was fifteen, and John but nine.”

“How dreadful!” I thought of Mrs. Prowting — of the blackedged handkerchief that appeared to be wedded to her palm — with a deeper comprehension. Despair and grief may appear to greater advantage when writ on an elegant form; but Mrs. Prowting’s large, comfortable bulk, though better suited to laughter, held as much right to suffering as my own.[8]

I saw Catherine over the stile in the meadow, with profuse thanks for the gift of eggs and cheese; and as she walked slowly into her house — into that orgy of preparation and exhilarated transport in which she was expected to take no part — I went back to the cottage.

If I hurried, I might just have time to read another of Lord Harold’s papers before I journeyed to Alton, and met the coroner. 

Excerpt from the diaries of Lord Harold Trowbridge, dated 12 December 1782, on board the Indiaman Delos, bound for Bombay.

...it is no bad thing to be a young man of two-and-twenty, with the Paradise of the Subcontinent looming off the bow, and all the riches of a sultan’s court waiting to be plucked. There are the women lodged in all the acceptable quarters — no longer young, or lacking in fortune and looks, and in short the very dross of English gentility, sent out as brides to men they have never met and a life in a climate likely to kill them before very long. They are desperate for sport and fun before the voyage should be over — knowing, from the most ignorant of presentiments, that marriage to a stranger ca