Sally O'Rourke: The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

Nevertheless, she turned the drawer over to inspect the bottom, vaguely recalling something about being sure the wood colors matched or didn’t match or something. The pink liner fluttered to the floor, coming to rest upside down on the carpet.

Interested at last, Wickham swatted at the crumbling paper. Eliza shooed him away and then stared in surprise at the liner. For adhering to its underside was another strip of yellowing paper densely covered in cramped black type.

“Look, Wickham, it’s a piece of…old newspaper!” she exclaimed, squinting to read the oddly shaped and embellished letters. “Listen to this,” she breathed, tracing with her index finger a heavier line of print bannered across the top of the sheet: “THE HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE, 7 APRIL, 1810…My God, that was almost two hundred years ago!”

Her attention now riveted by the partial sheet of ancient newsprint, Eliza carefully lifted it onto the top of the vanity and spent the next few minutes curiously poring over several tightly packed columns of ads for “Gentlemen’s best quality silk cravats,” “beneficial beef extracts,” “drayage and forwarding” (whatever they might be), and a host of other mysterious products with names like Gerlich’s Female Potion, calibrated boiling thermometers and India rubber goods.

When finally her eyes tired of squinting at the strange, old-fashioned print she gave the sturdy little table another cursory inspection. Then she knelt beside the mirror and stood it upright, noticing again with some dismay that the silvered surface was, as Jerry had pointed out in the warehouse, badly worn.

Cheerfully dismissing the hazing as enhancing the overall charm of the piece, she experimentally tilted the mirror toward her and was distressed to see that the wood backing on one side was pulling away from the frame. “Oh, great! The backing seems to be warped,” she murmured to the cat. “Now give me some support here, Wickham, I’d hate to have to admit that Jerry might have been right after all.”

Wickham stretched and meowed.

“Thanks,” Eliza grinned. “I needed that.”

She pulled the mirror to her and turned it around to get a better look at the damaged backing. To her relief, though, the visible gap appeared to be no more than six inches long. “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought,” she said. “I think it only needs to be reglued.” With her fingernail she experimentally lifted the edge of the backing from the mirror frame in an attempt to determine how far the separation extended. As she did so, something fell out of the mirror and landed on the carpet with a soft plop.

Attracted by the sudden motion, Wickham leaped onto the fallen object and hissed menacingly. Eliza pushed him away and stared at the thing in surprise. She slowly leaned the mirror back against the wall, then reached down and lifted the fallen object into the light.

She remained frozen on her knees for several seconds, gazing at her hand while she tried to reconstruct what had just happened. For she was holding a slim packet of thick, sepia-toned paper tied together like a Christmas package with a crisscross of bright green ribbon.

“Good Lord,” she whispered, letting her eyes dart back to the mirror and glimpsing her own puzzled expression.

Something swatted against her hand and she looked down to see Wickham resolutely batting at the end of the bright ribbon. Snatching her hand away from him, she got to her feet and examined the packet more closely. Held together by the broad ribbon, she saw, were two rectangles of folded paper. The one on top was smaller than the other and had been written across in reddish brown ink, the words obscured by the ribbon covering them.

“Letters!” she exclaimed.

Eliza turned the packet over and saw that the larger of the two letters had been sealed with a blob of shiny red material that she guessed must be sealing wax, though it looked like no other wax she had ever seen, having more the consistency of brittle plastic. Intrigued, she carefully untied the ribbon securing the packet, so that she could read the address on the top envelope.

“‘Miss Jane Austen, Chawton Cottage’… Jane Austen! ”

Stunned by the name of the famous nineteenth-century author, Eliza paused and took a deep breath before she could read the remainder of the address on the letter. Jane Austen! Again she had to pause as her eyes raced ahead of her trembling lips. “‘Jane Austen ~ Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Chawton Great House,’” she squeaked.

Eliza stood there on her bedroom carpet for several more seconds, silently reading and rereading the words inscribed neatly across the front of the smaller envelope.

The thoughts racing through Eliza’s head at that moment were somewhat difficult to define. For although she would not have classified herself as a voracious reader, she was well-enough read, her tastes running largely to popular fiction with a smattering of respectable old favorites, ranging from the works of Agatha Christie and Damon Runyon to a few major poets and several classical novelists.

And, like many women, one of Eliza’s very favorite novels, numbered among half a dozen well-worn books occupying the small shelf beneath her bedside table, was Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen’s timeless story of Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s uncompromising quest for a perfect love.

Which is only to say that Eliza Knight knew precisely who Jane Austen was, and she certainly knew who Fitzwilliam Darcy, the purported recipient of the letter she now held in her hand, was, or at least who he was supposed to be.

With the letters in her hand she went to the bed and sat down. Gazing at the window, her reflection surrounded by a moonlit halo, Eliza’s imagination swirled with what ifs and could it bes. She smiled to herself. Jerry would be laughing and berating her for such romantic notions and, in truth, as wildly romantic as the idea was, it was ludicrous, patently absurd; because the relationship suggested by the enigmatic address on the letter was flatly impossible. Darcy was, after all, a fictitious character, wasn’t he?

Looking down at Wickham, who had followed her to the bed, she said, “Well, there’s only one way to find out: read the letters.”

In spite of her well-founded skepticism as to the authenticity of the letters, Eliza felt her heart trip-hammer in her chest and her hands tremble as she opened the larger of the two letters: the one that was addressed to Jane Austen from Fitzwilliam Darcy with the broad, scrawled pen strokes of a man’s hand. She read aloud:

12 May, 1810

Dearest Jane,

The Captain has found me out. I am being forced to go into hiding immediately. But if I am able, I shall still be waiting at the same spot tonight. Then you will know everything you wish to know.

F. Darcy

Eliza paused to consider the meaning of those few sparse sentences. And when she began to read it over again there was a slight quaver in her voice. For this was not at all what she had expected. Though, on momentary reflection, she was not quite sure exactly what she had expected to find in Darcy’s letter—some flowery romantic tribute, perhaps, or a poetic declaration of undying love to a lady fair. How odd… being found out, going into hiding. What did that mean? Maybe the other letter was Austen’s reply and so held the answers.

Slipping the first letter behind the other in her hand, she examined it with awe. The lovely feminine handwriting flowed across the page and, turning it over in her hands, she saw that the sealing wax was still intact, a fanciful letter A impressed into it. This one had never been read, maybe never sent. Why? Tracing the curves of the seal with the tip of her finger she curiously experienced a tingling sensation that shot like a jolt of electricity through her body.