The Jane Austen Society(13)

Josephine, the cook, was an arthritic, hunched-over old woman who had been with the family for as long as anyone could remember. Always eager to see visitors, she motioned Dr. Gray and Adeline into the kitchen the minute their boots hit the threshold. Soon they were back outside on a bench in the courtyard with their arms full, balancing plates of hot buns on their knees as their hands cradled warming mugs of milky black tea.

“So what little secrets are you gleaning from Emma this time around?” Adeline asked, curious to hear his reply, wondering if she could possibly be one step ahead of him for once.

“Ah, yes, it was this tiny set of words, thrown into the middle of a rumination by Mr. Knightley on Emma’s lack of discipline. Remember in Pride and Prejudice when Darcy is listening enrapt to Elizabeth playing the piano, and she is mocking his lack of ease with strangers, saying he should practice more—saying she should herself practice the piano more to be better?”

Adeline loved that scene. “Yes, of course! And he so gallantly replies—because he is wooing her—except she has no idea he is wooing her, and neither even does he—that she has employed her time much better than with practice, because ‘no one admitted to the privilege of hearing you could think anything wanting.’ I used to muddle over that phrasing when I was younger—was he saying she is only exactly as good as her limited amount of practicing can achieve? ‘Wanting’ in the sense of something missing, like in an equation, or a puzzle? But eventually I realized he means that she is so smart not to practice very often because no one hearing her would be anything but pleased, and so she is efficiently mastering her time. Darcy is so in over his head at this point.”

“Now, I know Pride and Prejudice is your favourite”—Dr. Gray smiled indulgently—“but back to Emma. So last night I am reading this scene, where Mr. Knightley is thinking the opposite of Darcy—he’s thinking that Emma never reaches her potential, never even thinks about how best to spend her time. And he mentions this list she once composed of great books to read, remember?”

“Yes, and she never finishes any of them! She has the attention span of an eight-year-old boy—and I should know, seeing as I used to teach them. Always distracted by something new. That’s one reason I disagree with you on her heroine status—she’s all about pleasing herself, never about improving.”

Dr. Gray shook his head. “Yet she gets there all the same. She is, after all, only twenty-one when the book begins.”

“That’s not so young. I am only a few years older than that and look at what I’ve endured.”

“Very true, Adeline,” he answered thoughtfully, then paused for so long that she ended up egging him on.

“Anyway, and the little clue is . . . the little secret . . . ?”

“Well, right in the middle of this rumination, Mr. Knightley mentions Emma’s hand-made list of books, and then almost as an afterthought he very briefly adds that he once held on to a copy of her list for a period of time. And I was brought up short by that. Because this is well before even the most astute reader can see that Knightley is in love with Emma. Perhaps Austen thought her readers were even less intelligent than I fear. I know I myself never picked up on that so many times. . . .”

“Oh, I am sure she did!” Adeline was laughing with delight, so happy to disappear into this conversation about unreal people with very real flaws. “I know I never noticed that line before either. My goodness, no—wait—it’s like Harriet and her little collection of ‘most precious treasures’ from Mr. Elton—the bandage he gave her, the pencil she stole, all the stuff that ends up in the fire at the end! Mr. Knightley has acted just like Harriet, holding on to something so trivial to everyone else, and so subconsciously important to him—and yet Jane Austen takes such pains in the book to put Mr. Knightley above everyone else and Harriet so far below them, at least intellectually.”

Dr. Gray put his mug down on top of his now-empty plate. “There. See? I hadn’t even made that connection yet. Imagine, giving Mr. Knightley something in common with Harriet.”

“We are all fools in love, as they say.”

“My Jennie would have loved this.”

“My poor Samuel would have had no patience for it,” Adeline answered with a melancholy smile. “He never got my love for the books. Something about her voice left him cold. He needed characters to be straightforward, the plot like the engine of a runaway train. You were lucky you and your wife could share this.”

“We shared a lot of things.”

“Samuel and I shared our childhood together. We didn’t get the chance for much more than that.”

“There is something to be said for growing up with someone.”

“Yet that’s what Knightley and Emma fight against the entire book. How funny.”

Sitting there on the bench together, with no one else to confide in, Dr. Gray and Adeline felt a strange connection through these books.

During the Great War, shell-shocked soldiers had been encouraged to read Jane Austen in particular—Kipling had coped with the loss of his soldier son by reading her books aloud to his family each night—Winston Churchill had recently used them to get through the Second World War. Adeline and Dr. Gray had always loved Jane Austen’s writing and could talk together for hours about her characters, but her books now eased their own grief, too.