Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Canterbury Tale

“Julian deserves your fortune!” Mrs. Thane flashed. “He was born to it. Anyone who saw my son and yours, standing side-by-side, should immediately know which ought to be the other’s master! Julian, so noble, so elegant in every aspect, his mind informed and his manners the equal of the Great—to be … usurped in his degree , by a cousin with nothing more to recommend him than an amiable air and the fortunate accident of birth !”

“Augusta,” Old Wildman said warningly. “Don’t say what you’ll regret. Come down from that window like a sensible woman, now.”

A sensible woman? I glanced at Edward, appalled.

And at that moment, Augusta Thane began to laugh.

It was a hideous and chilling peal of merriment, all the more terrible for being utterly free of hysterics. I would swear that Mrs. Thane was not mad, but as sane as I am—and that it was the Devil she saw, advancing across the room in the form of my brother, to lift her down from the window.

As the thought entered my mind in one blazing instant, she stepped forward into air, her gaze fixed upon the sky—and still laughing, was gone.

Thursday, 11 November 1813

And so I am come at last to the close of my two months at Godmersham, and my interesting sojourn among the rich and contented folk of Kent—who have provided unexpected matter for study, and enlivened with their prevarications and poses the essential folly of my fictitious Emma. I have found occasion, during the relative peace of the past fortnight (which encompassed only one concert, one bout of unexpected houseguests, an intimate dinner for fourteen at Chilham Castle, and a third expedition to Canterbury gaol in the Magistrate’s company), to turn once more to that bewitching creature of my own invention—who, tho’ full twenty years of age and the mistress of her father’s establishment, is utterly unlike my own dear Fanny. Emma is happy and vain, secure and carefree, bossy and endearing; while Fanny—Fanny, I fear, has been crossed in love, and in a manner likely to blight her future for some time to come. She is less cheerful, less active, less given to sudden quirks of humour—and more melancholy in her looks when she believes herself unobserved. In short, she recalls to mind another girl of twenty, whose first attachment proved to be less than she had dreamt—myself, in the aftermath of my beloved Tom Lefroy’s abandonment.

If I might have spared Fanny this pain—! I, who know too well the black despair of disappointed hopes—! But I should then have spared her Life, in all its desperate striving; and I would not have Fanny miss a particle of real feeling that comes in her way. She will be a better woman, I daresay, for having endured the heartbreak of Julian Thane.

He left the country with his sister and her husband the morning after our final dinner at Chilham, which—tho’ awkward enough—served as a useful coda to the unhappy events that had bound the two households. No mention was made of the hateful woman whose desperate last act of self-murder, had at least been accompanied by a full letter of confession, signed and dated in her hand. In this, Augusta Thane succeeded in saving both her children—not merely with the sacrifice of her neck, but in the explicit details of each mortal act she had accomplished: the shooting of Curzon Fiske on the side-path near St. Lawrence churchyard, and the brutal slaughter of Martha Kean. Her account was at once so thorough, and so entirely without remorse, as to convince any reader of its veracity, and clear all suspicion of others from the Magistrate’s and coroner’s minds. The happy release of Mrs. MacCallister that very evening, at which I assisted, was the sole episode on which my brother Edward might congratulate himself; and the earnest hand he offered both the lady and her husband, and the manner in which he then expressed all his joy in Adelaide’s deliverance, may be taken as evidence of his previous misery at the progress of the affair.

And so the folk of Godmersham had accepted Old Mr. Wildman’s invitation to dine, as a gesture of thanks and expiation; we had gone to Chilham, and canvassed the hopeful future of the MacCallisters—their expected travels in Cornwall; their brother’s decision to join them on their wedding-journey; the Captain’s hopes of his duties on the Marquis of Wellington’s staff; the likelihood of Buonaparte’s defeat, now that the French were crippled from their exploits in Russia. Fanny endeavoured throughout the whole, to appear as tho’ she had not a care in the world, and knew nothing of the true history of poor Martha Kean. Julian Thane, for his part, was sombre and grave. He was much given to staring earnestly at my niece with his smouldering dark eyes; but she was at pains never to be alone with him—from a kind of cowardice, I imagine, at what might have been said. Fanny has learnt caution, at an age when I should have wished her to study romance—and I cannot help but be sorry for it.

This evening, however, she seems determined to forget her troubles—and is even now under my eye, dancing the waltz with Mr. Finch-Hatton at the final Canterbury ball of the Autumn Season. They make a striking pair as they circle the floor, Fanny glowing in her cream-coloured silk, and Jupiter every inch the Bond Street Beau—his golden locks brushed in fashionable disorder, his silk knee-breeches fine enough for Almack’s. Fanny will never have Jupiter for a husband, I am sure—but he will serve to increase her consequence at such affairs, and silence the chatter of the Impertinent. I do not fear of his heart suffering in the pursuit—or at least, of his betraying it. Jupiter shall lounge to the very end, and no doubt set a Fashion among his intimates.

“You are looking very well tonight, Miss Austen,” observed Mr. Tylden, as he bowed and offered me a glass of lemonade. “I do admire that wine-coloured silk—as I must have told you on a previous occasion.”

I smiled my thanks at the clergyman. For a simple man, Mr. Tylden has performed his duty nobly—in having twice married the same couple without reproach, and having buried in rapid succession the lady’s first husband, and her mother. Mrs. Thane’s rites were unattended, I fear, and her coffin placed in unconsecrated ground—but of this, too little cannot be said.

“You are to leave us, I apprehend?” Mr. Tylden enquired.

“I go to my brother Henry’s, in London, on the Monday,” I replied.

“Then we must hope to see you often again in Kent,” he said. “I wonder—may I have the honour of this dance?”

My gaze was on Edward—who was standing alone, supporting one wall of the Canterbury Assembly Rooms, that perpetual lost look upon his face; and my heart went out to him. So many distinguished ladies circling the floor, with an eye to his handsome countenance and distinguished bearing—so many glittering neighbours who wished him happy—and Edward remained enthralled to his enchanting ghost. Like Fanny, he did not love readily, or give up his heart without a fight. But as I studied my brother, he caught my eye, and his melancholy softened a little.

I turned to Mr. Tylden.