Kintbury Vicarage
24 November 1795
My dear Cassandra,
I know you must be consumed with worry, as are we—oh, the horror of it—so let me tell you at once: we have this minute had news of Tom. My dear Cass, he is safe! And even now on dry land. The household is all jubilation, grateful prayers and relief.
We had heard such stories—of the hurricane hitting the fleet in the Channel, the ships scattering, the bodies washing up on the shore—and we had quite given up all hope that Tom might be delivered back to us. But we—and you, and our Tom of course—are the lucky ones. The Buffs somehow—we know not yet the ways and the wherefores—limped back into Portsmouth and disembarked yesterday. All the men are unharmed—thank the Lord!—though the poor ship has suffered. The voyage is perforce abandoned while she is repaired, and they will set sail again in January.
And so we are doubly blessed! Tom will be home again in Kintbury as early as next week. I have spoken to Mrs. Fowle and it is agreed, if your own family will permit it: we would be so happy if you, Cassy, would be so kind as to join us here for the festive season? To have both you and Tom with us … It would be our own Christmas miracle! Please write and tell me you will.
Your hopeful friend,
E. Fowle.
Cassy was spinning. One week she was in Steventon and the next suddenly in Kintbury, with no sort of notice at all. Never had she known life to move so fast. By the moment of arrival, she was quite beside herself. Was this what they called giddiness? She had never knowingly been giddy before.
It had been decided that her brother James should escort her, and he was delighted to do so. For all the Fowle boys, not just Tom, had been educated in Steventon and played together with the Austens like a litter of puppies. As soon as their coach hit the Kintbury gravel, the Fowles had all swarmed out to greet it. James swung open the door and jumped down even as the horses were slowing. There was a lot of loud welcome, hearty handshaking, and ragging. Cassy watched from within and laughed at them: In each other’s company they at once returned to boyhood, even now they were grown men.
While waiting, she took in her new surroundings and, to her great satisfaction, found them perfectly charming and exactly how she had imagined. Here, to the side, were brick-and-flint cottages; behind them were gentle undulations and before her a parsonage, solid and square.
“Here she is!” James turned back—Cassy could not help but notice the pride in his eyes—and offered his hand to her. “Mr. and Mrs. Fowle, may I present to you my sister, Miss Austen, the next Kintbury bride?”
“My dear.” The older Mrs. Fowle pressed forward and took her hands. A neat, tiny woman to have borne four such strapping sons, she was all warmth and determined on friendship. Mr. Fowle Cassy knew well already—he was a great friend of her father’s from their own days at Oxford—and here he was now, sober as ever, though most correct and polite. They each took her side and guided her in.
The hall was so busy she was almost overwhelmed by it. As well as Tom—hanging behind, shy, at the back—Charles and William were home for the season. The eldest son, Fulwar, and his wife, Eliza, lived there all the time now, with their three children. The two small boys were both attractive and charming; little Mary-Jane, who had—what a shame—taken after her father, now wore a cross look and clung to her mother’s skirts.
The whole household gathered to take a look at Cassy: She was quite the main spectacle. Someone took her claret pelisse, and in all her (modest) glory she was revealed to them. In a wild act of romantic abandon—it was not entirely suitable for traveling and she was nothing if not practical—beneath it, she wore her best blue. Their approval was audible. It was a magnificent moment.
And that was it: the high point of the fortnight. Poor Cassy: This was her first solo visit—a great rite of passage for any young heroine. But she had come to a household in the grip of misery and fear.
The last time she had seen Tom, he had been embarking on a year at sea in a spirit of blithe ignorance. One week in the Channel and he was now gaunt, hollow-eyed, quite haunted by the horrors he had seen. His parents, who had always held reservations about the whole enterprise, were now dismayed at the prospect of his leaving again the following month. Even Fulwar’s wife, Eliza, on whose companionship Cassy had counted, was not quite her happiest self. She was exhausted by her young family and in some suffering with the new child she was carrying.
Christmas at Kintbury was more somber than Cassy had ever known any Christmas to be. After beef and pudding—she wondered, had the pudding at home in Steventon turned out well? And how was the orange wine?—they gathered in the drawing room, a subdued little party. William and Charles set out the chess pieces, the ladies their embroidery; Tom sat with his parents by the fire in silence and studied the flames.
Just one person alone was in festive mood. Like nature—and there was something of the elements about him—Fulwar abhorred a vacuum. He strode into the middle of the silence and pierced it with a loud, cheerful peroration on the one topic in the world about which they did not want to hear.
“I do envy you, Tom.” He lifted his jacket a little to warm his seat further, blocking the fire from the rest of the party. “Oh, how I envy you! Out there on the waves with the men. The camaraderie of a ship—that is second to none. Or so they tell me.” He gazed ahead, misty eyed, at the horizon of the warm yellow wall. “The sea air! The shanties! Fellow in the Hunt was on the Victory, you know. He was saying the japes are quite something. Puts the Meet Supper completely to shame.” He chuckled at this secondhand memory.
What a pity it was, Cassy reflected, that Fulwar himself had made the decision to forgo the thrills of military combat. What a shame that, instead, it was his fate to take over this charming country church from his father.
Mr. Fowle pulled himself out of his musings to remonstrate: “I do not think Tom enjoyed much in way of japes when the ship was near wrecked a few weeks ago. Nor did he much like the waves crashing over his head.”
“Oh, it was not as bad as all that,” retorted Fulwar, who had seen out the disaster marshaling the parishioners of Kintbury through the challenges of Advent. “And the fact that they abandoned ship shows how seriously Lord Craven takes the men’s safety. Errs on the side of caution, I sometimes think.”
Cassy looked over at her fiancé from under her lashes, and studied his calm exterior. Why was Tom himself not protesting at all this? Of course she well knew his temper was remarkably even. It was one of the many ways in which they were well suited. But she had never before noticed that his equilibrium could not be disturbed even when, surely, it should.
Eliza leaned toward her. “Perhaps you find us—the majority of us—a little quiet in the evenings, compared with your own family?”
“Oh, no!” Cassy blushed. Was she wearing her thoughts on her face? “Not at all. It has been most pleasant. Could I perhaps borrow a pin?”
Eliza smiled, passed her workbag, and asked, kindly: “What will they be doing now in Steventon, do you suppose? I hear from my sisters that you are often playing games.”
“Yes,” Cassy could feel her own distress building. She hid herself in her work. “I expect they will be on the charades by now.” Jane was, no doubt, being slightly too clever; her father roaring with laughter at the things she dared say. It was best not to think about it. “Do you not do that here? Of course I quite understand the present difficulties—I mean in happier times?”
“We tend not to,” Eliza replied, dropping her voice further. “My husband does not take kindly to losing. Though some of us do enjoy a hand of patience when we can find the time.”
Mrs. Fowle spoke up. “It is not the sea that worries me as much as the climate and fevers.” She patted Tom’s arm. “One does hear talk of such exotic illnesses out there.”
“Ha! Dear Mother, have you not always worried? And look at us! Look at the four indestructibles you have inflicted on this world.” In fact, Fulwar was of a build completely different from his brothers. He was short and squat and ruddy; the others were taller, yes, but Tom was rather slight. “I would sooner worry about those unruly savages down there before I will worry about our Tom,” Fulwar continued. “And they will not take a moment’s sleep from me in a hurry. I shall tell you for why.”
Cassy steeled herself for what she knew was coming, and tried to focus again on her needle.
“The insurrection that is now upon us, in all four corners of the globe…” He gestured to the corners of the drawing room.
It occurred to Cassy that Fulwar was quite a different person in his own home. Certainly he was not like this with the Austens. Her family had no truck with pomposity or dominance. He would have been teased into submission as soon as he opened his mouth.
“It is of vital importance that our men pick up their weapons…”
Charles and William, quietly hunched over their chessboard, were not quite the men she thought she knew, either. In Steventon they were lively and mischievous; they threw themselves into all games, the louder the better. Here they were permanently subdued.
“The interests of our landowners must be protected…”
And her Tom: Was he not altered in this environment? He must be preoccupied with the voyage. She understood that; they all were. And he was never gregarious, which was clearly a good thing. She looked over at Fulwar. Who would choose a gregarious husband? For the first time, though, she was noticing just how very quiet Tom could be.
“Those rebels must be prevented from getting their hands on that property…”
Cassy did not much care for the direction Fulwar’s argument was taking. Her mind moved to what might be happening back home. Perhaps by now they had started the dancing? Jane playing the piano, the furniture pushed back. She turned again to Eliza. “What about music?” Surely some music was just what was needed. “Do you still get the chance to sing?”
Eliza looked at her with surprise, as if somehow forgetting she was born with a heavenly voice. “Oh, no! I am so tired in the evenings now I have the children. And anyway, we have no instrument here.”
No music. No games. No reading or good conversation! This was the first time that Cassy had ever stayed anywhere without another member of her own family beside her. She had always known that the Austens were remarkable; now it occurred to her that they were simply unique.
“The economy of this great country, the rule of our king, must be defended—yes, to the death, if it comes to it. Death is a small price to pay!”
And she decided that other families must be one of life’s most unfathomable mysteries. It was no use sitting as an outsider and even trying to fathom them. One could have no idea of what it must be like to be in there, on the inside. She would share that thought later in her letter to Jane.
THE HUNT MET THE NEXT MORNING and, as Cassy left her room to go down to breakfast, the house felt abandoned, as if all the men had suddenly been called up to war. Crossing the landing, she saw the door to Tom’s room open and, on the spur of the moment, without a thought to the propriety of her own actions, she went in.
The bed was unmade; a dirty shaving rag lay, tossed, on the washstand; old soap formed a crust on the inside of the bowl. The strange, particular, not altogether pleasant scent of a man still hung on the air. She looked around at his property: a Bible, old Latin primers, not even one novel. No mementos from school nor from Oxford; one print of hunting was the extent of his intimate effects.
She stood alone, looking around her, and was overcome by a sense of Tom’s otherness. This was a man she had known since a boy! At Steventon he was familiar; yet here, here he was … who was he, exactly? Cassy was no longer sure that she knew.
For the first time she found herself looking beyond their engagement—that match they had made to the satisfaction of all—and gazing into the reality of marriage. She thought of them both, alone in their own vicarage, convenient for Ludlow. Miles from everybody; most particularly, far from Jane. Cassy must surrender her rights to the only world she had ever known: the bedroom she shared with her sister. There would be no more laughing or whispering or endless confiding. She might hardly see Jane in person again—their relationship would have to be conducted through letters from then on. Instead Cassy would have only Tom. And, in the place of all that feminine prettiness, she must look upon a shaving rag, an indifferent hunting print …
Her heart tightened. At home in Steventon there was always talking and laughing. And so many jokes! She herself did not make many; though Cassy might be one of the cleverer Austens—her mother was often kind enough to say so—she was not one of the wittiest. But she laughed with them. Oh, how she loved to laugh with them! And Tom had laughed, too, there. Of course he did: Who could not? But just them, alone? She tried to imagine, but her mind could not conjure it. What would they talk about? Would they play games, enjoy music? Whom would they laugh with? At what?
She was homesick already, and her marriage not yet even begun.
“My dear, you seem deep in thought.” Cassy turned to find Eliza—eyes warm with kindness, resplendent in pregnancy, a child at each hand—and felt some reassurance. Her friend had appeared just at the right moment, as if in a vision, an angel come to tell her that here was the essence of it: the construction of a family; the building of a life together. That was the point of us all.
She picked up Mary-Jane, who squirmed and protested, and laughing together the women and children went down to breakfast.
THE VISIT FLEW BY, AS VISITS must do. In Kintbury the young couple enjoyed few intimate moments; no consideration was given to their privacy. The parsonage bustled as a parsonage was wont to, and it was hard for them to find a quiet corner. The climate, too, was against them: It was no sort of weather for walks. And Mrs. Fowle—poor Mrs. Fowle, one could not but feel for her—got more distraught with every day that brought the departure nearer. She was loath to leave her boy’s side.
But in the last light hour of Tom’s final afternoon, they were, finally, alone together. Cassy was trying to capture a likeness of Tom with her colors. It was not as easy as she had found it before. She did not want to include the grim set of his jaw, the dark circles around his eyes, or that fear deep within them, but already could barely remember what he looked like without.
One of life’s dreamers—though who knew what, exactly, he dreamed about?—Tom was always content to sit in an armchair and do nothing, so she was surprised when he suddenly stirred.
“There. You have had long enough to work on my indifferent appearance.” He rose and came round to look. “Oh, yes. So clever. It quite defeats me, my love, how you can be so excessively good at everything to which you turn your hand.” The thought did not seem to make him anything like cheerful. “I do wonder that such an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished young lady would even think of marrying a hopeless case like myself.”
“Oh, Tom!” Cassy started to pack up her brushes. “This really is not one of my better efforts. It is not very clever at all.” She swung round to face him. Their eyes locked for a long moment. Her response—poor, ill judged, inadequate—seemed to echo around them.
With a grim smile, he reached down and took her hand. “Let us walk. We have spent long enough sitting. I have a small piece of last business to attend to. Please. Come with me.”
They dressed up well—Mrs. Fowle fussing around them, insisting they not be too long—and set out into the gloaming. It was a short walk, up a walled path that was glassy with cold, to the church. Tom looked neither left nor right—he could not feel quite comfortable in a graveyard at twilight—and tightened his grip on Cassy’s arm.
“It turns out I made a slight hash of things when I was helping my father. The new curate spotted it. Odd little chap. Eyes like a hawk.” He stepped into the church porch and opened the heavy oak door for her. “Got rather excited about it. Is that all that there is to God’s work? I was minded to ask him. Do a few little dates matter, in the great divine scheme?”
Cassy half listened, but her mind was still in the drawing room: She was consumed with her own reproach. Why had she behaved so, to this man she loved so deeply, whom she had loved for so long? It was so unlike herself she could not explain it. All her life, she had always, instinctively, said the right thing at the right moment. Why would she slip now, on his very last day?
They entered the cold church, lit a candle, and walked over to the register. “I failed to write the year in one of the banns, and a Christian name in a burial, so the new curate told me.” Tom found the right pages, and dipped his pen.
While he did so, Cassy cast a quick eye over the other entries in his familiar handwriting. “This christening here”—she marked the ledger with her finger—“I may be wrong, but should there perhaps—possibly—be a birthdate for the baby?”
Tom looked over. “Ah, yes. Good, Cass—correct as ever. You have sharper eyes even than that curate. How much more competent I will be at these and all other matters when I have you to guide me through every day.”
She smiled, left his side, and moved to the head of the aisle while he did what he had to. It was a pretty church, small and plain, though its windows were stained. She looked up as the last winter light filtered through, sank into the quiet of the moment and communion with her Maker—oh dear Lord, keep him safe; let her be strong—until Tom appeared by her side. They stood quietly together, the betrothed young lovers, in front of the altar. He turned toward her and took her hand.
“My dear Cassandra,” he began, “I know I am not the most eloquent of men. But there are things I must say before I leave you.” His face was grave. “Things I want you to know, in case I never come back.”
In all those weeks of preparation, even in those spacious days of that first farewell visit, they had been careful never to embark on this conversation.
“Oh!” Cassy was not sure she could bear it. “You will come back. I am depending on it. Please let us not have to discuss, to consider … It is too dreadful—”
He gripped her arms. “We must. I want you to know that I have made my will, and left you the bulk of my—well—of what little money I have managed to accumulate.”
“Please do not tell me—” She fought with her tears, but she lost.
“I want you to have it. You are paying me the compliment of constancy in my absence. You should be … reimbursed if I fail to return.”
“But we are betrothed. This is my choice.”
“It will give you a little security, though not much,” Tom continued. “And I want you to promise me that this bequest will not make you beholden to my memory.” He was urgent. “That if you do not marry me, you must feel free to marry still.”
Her face was wet. When she spoke, her voice was broken. “I promise you,” she forced out, “Tom, I promise you…” And, mostly because she had always believed that he was her destiny, and a little because of how she had behaved earlier, she found her strength and declared: “I promise you faithfully, here before God. I will never marry any man other than you.”
AT DINNER THEY COULD HARDLY ignore that this was Tom’s last, but no one knew quite what to say.
Fulwar, favoring distraction, began a recollection of hunting heroics of which, it just happened, there was only one hero. “I was out on Biscay. Do you know why I called him that?”
Everyone knew; no one answered.
“Because he was a great, roaring bay! We had been out front since the setoff”—Fulwar had no regard for the virtue of novelty in anecdote—“hounds in full flight, fella came up on my left as we were taking the hedge—”
Even Cassy knew this story backward.
“Broke m’ left leg and lost half m’ teeth!”
Tom was not even pretending to listen.
“Did I take to my bed?”
The whole table seemed sunken in misery.
“Drank a bumper at supper that very same night!”
Then Eliza—sensitive, intelligent Eliza—introduced the perfect formula with which to discuss the imminent departure: “I wonder how old this new baby will be before Tom meets him?” she pondered, looking down into her lap as she spoke.
Mrs. Fowle immediately brightened at the thought of her new grandchild. “Oh, still in the cradle, I hope.” She was emphatic. “It will not be a long voyage, I am quite certain. Lord Craven will not take you away for much more than a year.”
“I quite agree, Mama. Swift and glorious does it. You will be making short shrift of those natives, I know,” said Fulwar.
As Tom’s sole duty was the guarding of souls, Cassy sincerely hoped and believed, that her future husband would make no sort of shrift of anybody at all.
Fulwar swilled his wineglass. “Back before we notice you have gone.”
“Perhaps we might agree now to, if possible, hold the baptism until Tom can be there for it?” offered Eliza. “And Tom! We would love you to stand as godfather, if you would be so kind?”
“I would be honored,” Tom replied warmly. “And that gives me something to aim for: I need to be home before he is walking.”
“And definitely in time to teach him to fish,” chimed in Mr. Fowle. Cassy was touched to see the father try so hard to be cheerful. It was game of him. He was not naturally at home on the bright side, even at the happiest of times. “No one can cast like our Tom. One more good reason to come back to us!”
“I do have another,” said Tom gently from the other end of the table, glancing over at Cassy and smiling.
Eliza beamed round at them all, pleased with this familiar coze. “What luck for my children to have such a fine uncle.” She squeezed Cassy’s hand under the table. “And soon, of course, aunt.”
JUST BEFORE DAWN CASSY WENT down to say her farewell to Tom for the last possible time. The air was sharp and freezing, the trap being loaded by the light of the moon. Mrs. Fowle was, of course, down before her. They cut three miserable figures: fraught with the tensions inherent in the occasion. This time it seemed to be Cassy’s place to say goodbye in the hall. Mrs. Fowle stood with them, waiting patiently for the lovers to finish, which, in the circumstances, did not take them long.
“I will write,” whispered Tom.
“As will I. And you know I will be following your progress. Be safe.”
“You can rely on it. Look after Eliza, as only you can.”
His lips glanced her hand; then he turned and he left.
Cassy stood for a moment, watching the shapes of mother and son embrace by the trap until she felt as if she were intruding, then dragged herself back up the stairs. She waited for that old sense of optimism, that positive instinct, but could only identify heaviness, misery. Grief.
WORSE WAS TO COME.
A maid met her when she got to the landing and told her that Eliza was in agonies and calling her name. She rushed to the bedside and upon a scene of pure horror.
“I am losing it!” Eliza lay contorted and sobbing. “The baby! It is too early. It is coming too early.”
At once Cassy started her ministry. She had already attended other births, albeit easier ones, and immediately knew what to do. The next hours were terrible, a sequence of rags and hot water, laudanum and fear. The baby—a boy, as so fervently hoped for—came into this world with the distracted air of one who had not yet decided how long he might stay.
It was Cassy’s lot to go out onto the landing where Fulwar was desperately pacing, and impart the news. His terror and tender, loving concern for his wife overpowered him and were quite humbling to witness. She understood then that—however they chose to present to the outside—men, too, were all feelings beneath.
For the remainder of the day Cassy hardly stopped nursing and comforting and working. But at some point, around four in the afternoon, Eliza slept, and she was alone in the nursing chair, the baby, swaddled, in her arms. She held tight and rocked him, desperately willing him to survival. For this small, sad scrap of a being was the baby to whom Tom was to come home. He must live. He had to. Or what sort of omen would that otherwise be?