Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart (24 page)

I remembered from the
Joining Notes
that one of our privileges as seminar participants was access to the reading rooms at the Bodleian Library. I made my way to Broad Street and found the entrance. From there I found several helpful librarians who submitted a request for the books I needed and then helped me settle into the Lower Camera Reading Room.

While I waited for the books to be pulled from the stacks and sent up, I gazed around the circular room and looked wistfully at the packed shelves, the students bent over their work, the atmosphere of academic pursuit. I’d never known that kind of life and always felt I was missing something.

But an hour and several Jane Austen biographies later, I wasn’t sure I was cut out for scholarly efforts. My head swam with dates and descriptions and differing accounts. I’d scribbled notes on the tiny pieces of paper provided, and as I looked back
through them, I thought they seemed like pieces of a puzzle that was eluding me.

Martin was right. A lot had occurred in Austen’s life in the years after
First Impressions
. Tom Lefroy’s return to the neighborhood and his failure to pay a call on the Austens. Her father’s retirement and their removal to Bath. Then her father’s death and a long, unsettled period when Austen and her sisters lived with various of the brothers or occasionally in rented lodgings. Years without any new writing. And finally, happily, a more permanent home in a cottage near their brother Edward’s home at Chawton. It was there that she began to revise her earlier work.

But did any of what I’d read really have to do with the differences between
First Impressions
and
Pride and Prejudice?
Could it account for the very different Darcys?

And then as I moved the little slips of paper around on the desk in front of me, arranging them and rearranging them in hopes of making sense of it all, I caught a glimmer of an answer. A small window into another woman’s soul. And perhaps a peek into my own as well. I saw the truth about Fitzwilliam Darcy, and the effect of loss and the passage of time on a woman’s ability to love. I saw why Jane Austen had changed her mind, and I respected her all the more for it.

I
fled the Bodleian Library, clutching those slips of paper, and raced down the river path to Harriet’s cottage. The rain the night before had broken the grip of the punishing heat wave, and now Oxford lay in warm, but not stifling, summer stillness.

Harriet was as glad to see me as always, and I felt a pang as I followed her into the sitting room.

“No tea today,” she said and waved a hand at the tray on the low table in front of the sofa. It contained a bottle of sherry and two glasses. “Today, we celebrate.”

“Yes, we can, but I needed to—”

“Catch your breath, dear. Really, we’ve all the time in the world.”

“Yes, but Harriet—”

“One thing at a time, Claire. One thing at a time.”

My smile must have been pretty weak, because she leaned over to pat my arm. “Cheer up, dear. I have a very good feeling about today.”

I was glad that one of us did.

“I don’t want to say good-bye to you,” I said, my throat tight. “You’ve been the best part of the week.”

She laughed and reached to pour the sherry. “That’s not what Eleanor tells me.”

So Harriet did know about my romantic drama. She handed me a glass, the amber liquid catching the light from the window like a jewel.

“How are you? Really?” she asked, before taking a sip from her own glass.

I hadn’t planned on telling her everything that had happened, but as it turned out, I did. She cooed and sympathized and poured me more sherry. Half an hour later, I was feeling decidedly better, if a little woozy.

“So your young man has gone home, and now you’re seeing this James more like the original Mr. Darcy.” She made a clucking noise like a mother hen. “You’ve had quite a trying week, haven’t you? And I suppose I haven’t really helped.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she ignored me and rose from the sofa. I wanted to make sense of it all. I wanted to keep talking about it until an answer became clear.

“I spent some time at the Bodleian. I wanted to know more about Jane Austen. To try and understand her.”

Harriet looked at me with pleasure. “An excellent idea. A lovely place, too, for finding answers. Almost as good as
my cottage,” she said with a teasing smile. “Tell me what you learned.”

“I’m sure you already know what happened,” I said.

“Yes, but tell me your interpretation.”

I drew a deep breath. “She learned the full effects of being a woman with no financial means. I always thought she must have been quite wealthy from her writing, but she barely made any money at all.”

“Yes. Very different from what would have happened if she ’d been alive today.”

“And she and Cassandra were so dependent on their brothers’ whims. As was their mother. Of course, it probably never occurred to the men in the family that their female relations would have liked a home of their own. A permanent home.” I paused, considering the thought. “It was only when Jane had finally settled down that she could really do the work she was meant to do.”

“The place was important, yes,” Harriet said, “but I think she must have finally decided that she would work on her writing no matter what happened.”

“Have you been there? To Chawton?”

“A long time ago.” Harriet’s eyes grew misty. “I remember being quite moved. I could just picture her at her little writing table by the window, pulling
First Impressions
out from some hiding place and beginning to rework it.”

“I do think she started the book because of Tom Lefroy. Originally, I mean.”

“Her most famous flirtation,” Harriet said with a smile.

“Yes. I can’t tell that she really loved him, but he certainly seems to have inspired Mr. Darcy.”

Harriet nodded. “What else did you learn?”

I thought about what I’d read at the library. “I would imagine that ten years later, her perspective on Mr. Lefroy might have undergone some changes. I think she became a little more understanding of his family’s concern over the affair and why he never came to see her again.”

“Do you think he was the love of her life?” Harriet asked.

I shook my head. “No. I think he could have been, if circumstances had been different.”

“If one of them had been rich, you mean,” Harriet said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Among other things.”

I sipped my sherry and Harriet leaned forward. “Is finding the right person just a matter of luck, then?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Perhaps. But I think there’s something sort of…divine going on as well.”

“Divine?”

“A purpose. Some unseen hand. That sort of thing.” I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say exactly.

“Do you think that’s what Austen was doing when she rewrote the book? Playing God?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know that she was playing God. Maybe she was more inclined to hope, after she had grown up. To see the possibility of redemption in a hero who’d fallen short.”

Harriet smiled. “I have something else for you to read.”

She crossed to her usual chair, the one in front of the
window. I hadn’t noticed before, but there was something in it. Something flat, tied with a red ribbon.

“I’d forgotten about the old trunks in the attic, you see. Spent most of yesterday going through them, one by one, but it was worth it in the end.”

She returned and laid the bundle in my lap.

By now I had no trouble recognizing Jane Austen’s handwriting. And even if I hadn’t, the familiar aged look of the paper would have told me everything I needed to know.

She smiled at me. “This is definitely the last bit. But I think you’ll find it was worth the wait.”

My heartbeat picked up its pace. “May I read it right now?”

Harriet chuckled. “Of course, dear. Of course.”