The Jane Austen Society(39)
“Sun’s setting fast enough, must be close to tea. Say, listen, can I hold on to that book a little longer?”
“Miss Knight says she’s thrilled if we’re any of us reading, so I’m sure she won’t miss it yet.”
Evie headed down the lime grove back towards the house, letting Tom straggle along behind her. She suspected that he had not even bothered to pick up the book and wondered whether this reflected either a limit to his interest in her, or just an antipathy to sitting still. Either way, she was not overly impressed—nor did she think Jane Austen would have been.
Evie entered the Great House and placed her pile of greenery on a side table to the inside left of the huge wooden front door. Tom did the same, then headed off down the centre hallway to the kitchen to grab tea from Josephine. Evie took the longer, more circuitous way, through the drawing room that the family called the Great Hall, which opened up onto the main-floor library, and then along a small gallery until reaching Evie’s other favourite room, the dining room.
In the centre of that room sat the immensely long mahogany table at which Jane and Cassandra and their brother, his eleven children, and an evolving assortment of other guests, would all have dined. Part of a three-story extension that protruded from the western face of the house, the dining room contained two huge window seats with thick brocaded curtain covers, which one could pull closed along a high brass rod for total privacy. Sitting in the southern window, you could also watch, unobserved, the approach up the long drive of any of the infrequent visitors to the house.
There, as Evie had suspected, sat Miss Knight.
“Excuse me, miss,” she started, and Miss Knight turned to look at her.
Evie was concerned about her employer. Miss Knight had a pervasive greyness about her, a lack of life in her face and posture, that made it seem as if she had one foot in this world and one foot somewhere else. She was a woman essentially alone and increasingly without friends, as she began to spend all her time indoors. Although still young, Evie already understood that true friendship was not earned without hard work and vigilance. Having left school and the easy camaraderie of classmates, Evie could see how working inside a big, empty house with minimal staff was keeping her from more typical social pursuits. Going to the movies in Alton with girlfriends was her only outside form of recreation—reading and cataloguing the books late into the night took up the rest of her leisure time.
“Tom and I were wondering, miss, if you’ll be attending the service this Christmas Eve. Many of the villagers have been asking on my rounds.”
Frances shook her head. She was already not up to seeing too many people, and now half the village was about to descend on her very home.
“No, but you and Charlotte and Tom should all go. Josephine is going to stay back to get things ready and keep me company. And, of course, I should spend some time visiting with my father.”
Evie walked farther into the room. Above the fireplace was a beautiful, almost life-size portrait of Edward Austen Knight, Jane’s brother, shortly after his grand tour of Europe as a young man. He had inherited several well-known estates from the Knights, and two of Jane’s other brothers had been successful naval commanders, sailing to places as far away as the Caribbean and the China seas. Evie thought about the Austen women being circumscribed by the four corners of England instead, venturing perhaps as far north as the Peak District and as far south as Southampton, but in the main staying in villages such as Chawton. Evie wondered if she, too, would be stuck here forever. Wondered what on earth would ever be her ticket out.
“Miss Knight, I hope you know how much everyone looks forward to this to-do. It’s awful kind of you and your father to welcome everyone into your home like this.”
“Thank you, Evie. It’s a family tradition after all—and family tradition is important. Will your own parents be able to come?”
“Dad is still having trouble walking with the canes, but Adam Berwick is going to pick him up at the house and pull his wagon right up to the church to let him off.”
“Oh, Evie, how wonderful for you. Two years is a very long time to be confined to bed.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, Frances realized that she had, in her own way, been voluntarily doing much the same thing. In that moment something dawned on her, the sense of spiting the little good fortune she’d been left with, and she was religious—and superstitious—enough to pay attention.
“Evie”—Frances stood up from the window seat—“I think I will go to the service this year after all. I should like to add my prayers to your father’s. He is a very strong man. But I’m sure you know that.”
At rare moments such as this, when Miss Knight seemed up for conversation, Evie was dying to say something to her about the late-night cataloguing. She truly cared about Miss Knight and wanted her to be less depressed and fretful, and part of Evie’s hope with the secret project was to uncover enough indisputable treasures to help keep the Knight family legacy alive and thriving. But her instincts told her that the longer she could go unimpeded by anybody else’s concerns or priorities, the greater the chance she might trip over something of import. The idea that she could ask her own questions and decide where to look for answers was intoxicating to her.
Evie was a born academic; she just didn’t know it yet.
So instead the girl nodded and headed off to the kitchen for her tea, and Frances looked up at the oversized oil painting of her ancestor above the mantel. She accepted, for the first time, that she was doing, in her own small way, the best that she could. She wasn’t sure that Jane and Cassandra Austen would have expected anything more than that.