The Jane Austen Society(60)

She made another face at Yardley, but this time a little less confidently.

“You know he’ll never change, though, right?” Yardley persisted with a sigh. “Tell me that at least, or I will have given up all hope for you.”

“Yardley, this is becoming unfair. We always end up analyzing my relationships, and you get off scot-free.”

“But I don’t have relationships. You know this about me.”

“Not through choice, though.”

He looked at her sitting across from him in the first-class cabin, her brilliant eyes set off by the plush purple velvet covering the high-back bench seat facing his. They had not discussed any of this before—but he hoped and thought that he could trust her.

“It’s a little hard, when you can end up in jail for your efforts.”

“It’s the same in the U.S. I know several actors who live together as roommates in name only, or even as joint tenants. I know one who actually adopted his lover as his son on paper, so that he can leave him his life insurance and his estate one day.”

“That’s a pretty circular argument against all of these laws to begin with, wouldn’t you say? When people have to—and can go to—lengths like that?”

“My father was a judge—did you know that? He always said, trust people to make the best decisions for their bedrooms and leave everything else to the law.”

Her words were such a relief to Yardley that he was uncharacteristically quiet for several seconds before asking, “Mr. Knight’s will, by the way—how is Frances handling it? You’ve seen her a few times since then.”

“She’s a remarkable woman. She has this almost eerie—I don’t know, preternatural?—calm about her. Total acceptance.”

“Resignation you mean.”

“No, I used to think it was that. But I think she has a higher purpose in mind. I think she has a very different moral system from the rest of us.”

“Isn’t that what you’re always trying to argue about good ol’ Fanny Price?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that on some level she believes that everything is happening for a reason, and she just sort of swims in it, like a cork bobbing about in the ocean, not trying to find the current, just being.”

“Wow. Buddha.”

“Oh, look, we’re here!” Mimi jumped up and grabbed her hat and purse. “Yardley, get ready—you are going to love this place.”

Mimi was wearing flat brown riding-style boots for once, and Yardley, who was not particularly tall himself, could now see the top of her head as they walked along together. She had forsaken her usual towering heels so that she and Yardley could make the walk on foot from the Alton to Chawton, with Mimi excitedly crowing “just like Jane Austen would have done!” as they set off up the steep main road through town. But she had also wanted to be a little less physically conspicuous at her first meeting with the society, to the degree that was possible.

When they passed the village common at the triangular perimeter of the Alton town line, they could see ahead the opening up of vast farm fields bordered along the lane-way by holly and blackthorn hedgerows. Sheep could be glimpsed through the greenery, and in the distance several Shropshire horses could be seen pulling at last year’s desiccated fruit still hanging from an orchard grove. On the other side of the lane-way was a long row of single dwellings, some of them little thatched cottages and terrace houses set right on the road, others more substantial homes—the old estates, manses, and farmhouses of the past—set much farther back and preceded by stately long private drives.

“Well, you weren’t kidding,” Yardley was saying as they walked closely together, arms linked. “Some of these cottages are so small and self-contained, I feel like a bunch of munchkins could pop out at any minute.”

“I think quaint is the word you are looking for.” Mimi laughed. “I love it.”

“I can imagine your face now, when Jack told you he’d bought you that cottage. You must have felt like you’d died and gone to heaven.”

She smiled in recalling the memory. “That’s exactly how I felt. So, if you look up ahead at the end of this road, you can see the fields starting up again. The village sits plop in the middle of what feels like one big farm.”

“You know, I never told you this before, but when I was a young lad I actually dreamt of being a farmer.”

Mimi stopped to stare at Yardley. “You are full of surprises.”

“No, seriously, sometimes I still do. A gentleman farmer though. Back-breaking work and way too dependent on the weather for a full-time vocation.”

Up ahead they could see a fairly stocky blond man with a cap on his head leaving one of the little cottages on the right-hand side of the lane. Something about him struck Mimi as so familiar.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “I know that guy! I met him here, years ago, when I was just out of college.”

“Ah, yes, your first pilgrimage.” Yardley watched the man walk slowly up the lane in front of them, his head slightly bowed, two or three books held in the curve of his right arm. “Very earthy looking—very D. H. Lawrence. You do have an eye for these things, I’ll give you that.”

She playfully whacked Yardley’s side with the back of her hand. “It was so sad—he’d lost both his brothers in the Great War. It was one of the reasons I made Home & Glory years later.”