The Jane Austen Society(85)
“In fact, there wasn’t just the professor,” Liberty was droning on. “Adeline has apparently always had a weakness for older men, throwing herself at lonely widowers and the like, confessed as much to me at college once. Said she—”
Liberty stopped talking. Dr. Gray had stopped in his tracks, staring at her. Adeline’s words in the garden that night—“push me away all these years”—kept ringing through his head, like a long-suppressed clarion call.
“What did you just say?”
Liberty bit her lip. She was usually two steps ahead of Dr. Gray, but today for once he was catching up, and way too fast at that.
“Well, look at me, talking your head off and we’re already here. Let me go in and get Adeline, and you stay right there and relax, hmm?”
Liberty ran up the garden path to Adeline’s house while Dr. Gray tested the hinges on the front gate, swinging it easily to and fro. Adam Berwick had been by after all.
Just then he heard a honk and looked behind to see Adam himself at the wheel of the Knight family Rolls-Royce, Yardley Sinclair sitting in the front seat next to him.
“Dr. Gray!” exclaimed Yardley, leaning over Adam to get closer to the driver’s side window.
Dr. Gray walked into the road to greet both men as the car slowed down, tipping his hat with a smile. “Pleasant journey?” he called out over the noise of the engine as it sputtered to a stop.
“Adam here’s a great driver,” Yardley called back.
Approaching the car, Dr. Gray heard a strange noise coming from the backseat. Peering inside, he discovered a Border Collie puppy sitting upright and panting. “And who’s this?”
“Dixon.” Yardley looked over at his driver with a smile. “A gift for Adam, to cheer up the old chap.”
Adam, however, was positively beaming today, which was gratifying to Dr. Gray as his doctor and friend, given all the stress the poor man had been through of late. It was wonderful to finally see the man comfortable in his own skin. But Dr. Gray also wondered if the arrival of spring was turning Adam’s thoughts to more than mere fancy, and who in their tiny village could be the object of that.
“Looking forward to the weekend,” Yardley was saying. “I’ve been itching to get my hands on those books all week.”
Dr. Gray cocked his head back at the upstairs windows of Adeline’s house just behind them. “They’re all up there. Two spare bedrooms filled to the rafters with crates and crates of books.”
“We’re convening the society on Monday morning, before I return to town, correct?” Yardley smiled over at Adam behind the wheel. “Hopefully that gives me enough time to make some headway with the physical appraisal. Wedding weekends can be full of distractions.”
“Well, I’m not busy,” said Dr. Gray as Adeline and Liberty emerged down the garden path together.
Yardley gave a loud whistle. “Come now, Benjamin, surely you can find a thing—or two—to get your hands on in between all the celebrations.”
Adam honked the horn again and Yardley gave a laugh as they sped off. Dr. Gray took off his hat to rub at his temples—he was getting a serious migraine from all the doublespeak around him. How he was going to get through the wedding, he had no idea.
A half-hour before her noon wedding, Mimi sat in the guest bedroom wing of the Great House, where Frances had put her and Jack in separate rooms the night before. She was applying her make-up carefully, missing the days when she had just sat back in the chair and relaxed while a studio artist did all the work, and realizing that she wasn’t missing much else. She loved it here in Chawton—loved the talks at night with Evie and Frances by the fire in the Great Hall, loved the wagon rides with Adam Berwick and the long walks through the neighbouring fields towards Upper and Lower Farringdon, loved sitting in the little pub with Yardley on his visits down, laughing with the other villagers at all of her friend’s snappy remarks.
Jack did not seem to love it quite so much. He could not get used to many things: the separate taps in the basin for hot and cold water (“I just want warm!” he would whine, as he scalded his hands), the rationing (Jack needed a certain daily supply of sugar and caffeine to keep him going), the drizzle that masked as rain, the pessimistic malaise that masked as dry wit. Jack could never reconcile himself to that latter aspect of the English character. He was a piston of energy and self-confidence himself, all go-go-go, and he needed a world that responded to what he was selling. Because he was always selling something.
Mimi knew that staying several months a year in England would be hard on Jack and was glad that Chawton was close enough to London to give him his occasional fill of luxury there. They had not yet found a little house to rent, supply and demand being pretty evenly matched in a town of only four hundred (“At this point,” Frances had warned her, “you are literally waiting for someone to die”). But Mimi had not yet given up hope and was willing to be patient until a piece of real estate became available. In the meantime, Jack had started hankering after the south of France instead—he had heard that in a few months over twenty countries would be presenting films at the Casino of Cannes for an inaugural world film festival to rival that of Venice. Jack was convinced that this was the time to buy real estate in Cannes, before it hit the world map, and his commercial instincts, at least, had yet to be proven wrong.