The Jane Austen Society(16)
“Long enough for romance to bud,” Adeline suggested.
“And still never good enough for the Knights,” he replied light-heartedly. “A lowly country doctor and all.”
“Nonsense,” scolded Adeline with a teasing smile. “I bet you were quite the catch as a bachelor.”
Dr. Gray never enjoyed it when people pressed him about his love life before meeting his late wife, and he quickly changed the subject. “Well, anyway, even then Frances Knight kept pretty much to herself. I do know several of our classmates were after her, but nothing ever came of it. I suppose she eventually gave up on ever finding the right one, stuck as she was in this small village.”
“It’s strange, don’t you think, that I found my right person in this very town where I grew up? But I bet it happens more than one would think.”
Dr. Gray nodded somewhat distractedly as he focused on pulling the umbrella down to shake it off.
They were now standing in front of the open door to the stable and peered inside. In the middle stall, under a single dangling lantern, Tom Edgewaite and Adam Berwick were tending to the mother sheep and her newborn lamb. Both men jumped up from what they were doing when Dr. Gray and Mrs. Grover unexpectedly walked in.
Adam pulled off his cap, even though he was only two years younger than Dr. Gray, but he barely looked at Adeline to say hello. He had known the Lewis family his entire life and yet had never really spoken to their only daughter. Adam saw her as one of the village’s bright young things, highly energetic and friendly to everyone, but her direct manner always brought out his shyness. Even in the relaxed environment of the barn, he could only give her a quick nod.
Tom was much more outgoing and a bit of a scamp, and couldn’t help commenting on how well Mrs. Grover looked given her condition.
Dr. Gray gave him a curt look. “Let’s leave the medical pronouncements to me, Tom, shall we?”
Adeline took her time sitting down in the hay next to the mother sheep and the baby lamb suckling at its side. Tears suddenly started in her eyes. One minute she and Dr. Gray had been laughing in the rain together, and now here was life, new life, no father to be seen, her own husband gone, her own baby about to arrive, and the overwhelming reality of everything was hitting her all at once. She reached out to pet the baby lamb to distract herself, and Adam moved forward quickly.
“I’m sorry, miss, but they’re plenty protective, these ones. Don’t want the baby touched as of yet. Not like people that way.”
With a noticeable struggle, Adeline started to get back up. “Maybe not so different from people after all,” she offered, then smiled obligingly as Dr. Gray came forward faster than the other two men to help her up. “Thank you for letting us see. Your mother is well, Mr. Berwick?”
He nodded.
“And how is young Evie Stone? Is she well, too?”
He nodded again.
“She was my star pupil you know, before she had to leave school and come work at the House. I hope you are all taking good care of her.”
“Tom’s looking to that, ma’am, as always.”
Adeline looked at Adam curiously. Perhaps there was more to the quiet farmer than she had always thought.
“Well”—she smiled at all three men—“the rain looks to have eased up. We should get going.”
The two other men watched as Dr. Gray led Adeline out of the stable and across the fields leading back to the main road.
“He knows what side his bread’s buttered on, don’t he,” remarked Tom.
Adam frowned as he watched the two figures beneath the umbrella head back to town. “He’s a good man, Dr. Gray.”
“I’m not saying he’s not,” laughed Tom. “But he puts us two bachelors to shame.”
Adam scoffed, “You’re full of nonsense, Tom Edgewaite.”
“I’m just saying,” Tom persisted, as he turned back to the nursing lamb. “I knows what I see—I see it all day long.”
Adam left the stable without a word and headed home himself. It was getting close to his supper, and after that he would do some reading. He didn’t care to hang around for Tom’s constant gossip and innuendo—he would read some Jane Austen instead.
Adam had not ended up adoring Emma Woodhouse as he had once been promised by the young American woman.
He loved Elizabeth Bennet instead—loved her in a way he had not thought possible with a fictional character. Loved the way she always spoke her mind but with such humanity and humour. He wished he could be her—wished he always had the perfect, tart remark at the end of his tongue, the ability to draw people to him, and the strength to assert himself with his mother. He saw Elizabeth as the lynchpin to the entire Bennet family, the one whose boldness and emotional intelligence was keeping her own family from the brink. But she never flaunted herself as a saviour—she just loved so thoroughly, and so wisely, that the saving of others was the inevitable result.
Adam felt as if he could hardly save himself, let alone anyone else. Yet on his loneliest of days, he sometimes felt as if he was being saved by Jane Austen. He could only imagine what the villagers would say about him if they suspected any of that. Still, he often wished there were someone with whom he could discuss Austen and her books. The only person he had met so far lived on the other side of the world.
Of course, he had recognized the young woman in blue the very first time he had seen her face at the cinema. He had since become a devoted fan of Mimi Harrison and had watched all of her movies, including Home & Glory three times. He thought of her out in Hollywood, reading the books again and again. It bemused him to have something in common like this with a movie star. He knew it said a lot more about Austen than it did about him, but it also made him feel a little less odd, a little less damaged, all the same.