The Jane Austen Society(74)

Adeline laughed, too. “He sounds like a real charmer.”

“Oh, he is that. He’s this fascinating mix of little-boy vulnerability and fearless energy. He really makes me up my game. And I am no wallflower, as you could probably guess from my choice of career. But back to Dr. Gray and you—you said the word respect . . .”

Adeline looked down at the amber liquid in her sherry glass and swirled it about. “I think he is disappointed in me. In how I’ve been coping with everything.”

“Oh, Adeline, really, I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine he would judge—a widower of all people.”

“But that’s just it—he, too, has suffered, and yet he keeps on going and listens to everyone else’s much smaller problems, and does it all with such wisdom and calm, almost too much calm if you ask me.”

“Not all the problems are smaller. And one never really knows what others do to cope—you’d be surprised. There’s coping and then there’s just getting through the night.” She saw Adeline look up quickly at this last remark, as if something was dawning on her, but Mimi now knew better than to press when it came to Adeline and Benjamin Gray. “And anyway, as far as I can tell, I think Dr. Gray feels nothing but the utmost respect for you. Even, perhaps, a little too much. Well, except for maybe your note keeping.”

Adeline laughed again. “He’s just much more thorough. He and Andrew both. Thank goodness for them or our meetings would devolve into hours-long comparisons of who is the bigger cad: Henry Crawford or Willoughby.”

“With Adam taking up the charge. You know, it’s funny, I’ve never really thought about it, but I’m not sure that respect is what attracts Jack to me. Or me to him, for that matter.”

“Respect in friendship is critical—and of course in marriage, too. But perhaps you share other qualities or attractions that are simply much more intense. Certainly you are both so successful in your work, and you would respect that.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s so,” Mimi agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “I mean, Darcy and Elizabeth surely respect each other, even though they are so different. And Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth of course. Knightley with Emma, on the other hand, I am not so sure. Yet they share a deep affection and attraction to each other all the same.”

Adeline sipped her sherry contemplatively. “Maybe Knightley would respect Emma more if he didn’t see her so clearly—maybe what bonds them together is that very willingness to love her so clear-eyed. He can help her that way, help her steer towards the truth, and do the right thing, whenever her overindulged spirits start to get in the way.”

“Wow, you really don’t care for Emma, do you? I have to admit, she’s my favourite.”

“Oh, I know—Adam told me.”

“He did?” Mimi laughed. “How on earth does he know that?”

“You told him. Years ago. When you were first here. He really wanted to like her, too. But Adam and I are all about Lizzie. Dr. Gray on the other hand is a huge fan of Emma, like you—he loves how she just owns what she wants, no apologies, and sustains strong relationships without any compromise. He finds her so charismatic, how others just bend to her will.”

Mimi was watching Adeline carefully. “My dear, that sounds a little bit like you.”

“Oh, no, not at all. I might be direct, but I have no problem with compromising when it’s called for.”

Like Evie, Mimi had been watching Adeline and Dr. Gray with her professionally honed powers of observation, and compromise seemed to be the last thing these two were capable of.

“I compromised with Samuel all the time,” Adeline was saying. “We weren’t married long at all, but we grew up together, and so many times he had wanted to get married, and I wasn’t ready—I’m still not even sure why—it just all felt too comfortable, you know? But then he got drafted, and suddenly certain things no longer seemed that important.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Adeline, but agreeing to marry someone should never feel like a compromise.”

Adeline nodded. “I know. I think I was just too weighted down by our history together to ever feel like I was actually making a choice. Maybe compromise was the wrong word. Maybe it was just—”

“—resignation? Oh, believe me, my dear, we have all been there.”

“All I know is that I really loved him, I really did, deeply. And now I have no one. And everyone wants me to just go on. It’s been a year, they’ll say, it’s time to get out. Take walks. Long walks. Go to the movies. Just get out there again and live.”

Mimi shook her head sadly at the young widow. “Adeline, my father killed himself when I was very young, and it impacts me even as we sit here. It is a part of me, that awful, irrevocable act. And I am never going to be quite whole again because of it. You are not the problem: the loss is.”

Adeline looked up at Mimi with tears streaming down her cheeks. It was the first time she had let herself cry since that awful night outside in the garden with Dr. Gray.

“And, yes, sadly, no one else can ever understand your loss. It belongs to you. It impacts only you. And guess what? They don’t need to understand.” Mimi paused. “But you do. You need to fully appreciate how this has changed you, so that you can indeed move on and live, but as this changed person, who might now want different things. Who might now want different people about them. And, yes, God forbid, different people to love again. You are still so young—you’ve been given all those decades to come for a reason. And it’s not to waste them.”