Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict (30 page)

I put my hand on the doorknob and turn it; the door opens easily. It is all darkness in the room; I can make out nothing.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

I turn around but can see no opened door; all is blackness in the room. I put my hands before me to feel my way around, but there is nothing to bump into, nothing at all except blackness and emptiness.

“Hello?”

My hands touch a curtain of rough canvas; I fumble till I find an opening, slip through it to the other side, and suddenly all is a white, blinding glare.

I can make out nothing but this bright white light. “Hello? What is this about? Are you here?”

Then the scene slowly resolves itself into fuzzy white shapes moving about, and I begin to smell familiar scents of earth and horses and unwashed clothes, of perfume and ale and gingerbread. And the fuzzy white shapes become sharper until they are people and horses and tents and peddlers’ stalls and gentlemen and ladies and farmers and workingmen and children, all strolling and sauntering and skipping about happily. And I am no longer in that strange world I have been inhabiting, or in that body, or in that future time.

I am myself again, at a fair.
The
fair where I first met the fortune-teller—dear heavens—I am back!

Twenty-six

I
feel Mary’s arm linked through mine, and I turn to her and she smiles at me. And at the edge of everything around us, there is a sort of shimmering quality, as if everything I see is a reflection in a pool. And Mary speaks, and it is as if I am in a dream, for I know every word that her voice, that deep, throaty, well-loved voice, will say before she utters it.

“Shall we try our luck, Jane?” says she. “Oh how delightful to have our fortunes told!”

We are walking towards the brown tent of the fortune-teller, the same tent where I sat that day which seems so long ago. It is all happening again, all happening as it did before.

“Shall I go inside with you?” she says. “Or shall I wait for you here?”

And I say to her now, just as I said then, “Would you mind at all if I went in alone?”

She laughs and taps me playfully with her fan. “Of course not, silly girl.”

I part the flaps of the tent and enter, and the sweet scent of roses fills my nostrils, the same scent as before. And she is there, as she was before, an elderly woman in a simple yet elegantly cut black gown, a fringed shawl over her shoulders, greeting me with a bow and a wave of her hand to the chair which sits before her table.

“What may I do for you today?” says she.

I want to answer, but not in the way I did before, for I do not wish to relive what has already occurred. And though I am back here, in my own time, which is what I realized I wanted most fervently as I sat on my car atop that hill, I do not wish to retrace my steps with every word and breath. I wish to go forward. I open my mouth to say so, but the words will not come out.

I wish to be here
,
in my own time, in my own country,
I say inside my mind to the lady, her wise face impassive.
But I do not wish to repeat what happened before
.

And I hear her voice inside my mind, answering me:
Ah, but this is the price of your wish.

Could I not awaken after my fall, in my own bed in Somerset?

Courtney Stone has done that for you. All you could do is go back to your own time and repeat what you have already lived through.

But knowing what I now know, I would not wish for a different life. I would not ride Belle that day. I would do things differently.

But don’t you see, if you never took the ride, then you would never have had the fall, and so all that you have seen and done and learned in the future world and all whom you have met and known and all to whom you have become attached would fade away like this. . . .

And I am walking through the fair with Mary as before, her arm linked in mine, and it is as if the curtains of my mind are closing, and behind them, fading from view, till they are nothing but blackness and dust and void, are Deepa and Paula and Anna and Frank and the streets of the wondrous city and the tall palm trees and airplanes and movies and all that I have seen and known and Wes, yes, even Wes. All are fading till they are but thin shadows and dust and nothingness and still Mary is by my side, chattering away in her deep, throaty voice, and my own voice inside is crying out
No! No! I want to remember!
But even that fades into the hum and murmur of the fair-going crowd and the lilting tones of the flute and the sound of children laughing until it is only a nagging worry at the back of my mind, like something I know I should remember but have forgotten to do, and even that fades to nothingness. . . .

Which means there can be nothing known differently, nothing remembered. . . .

And once again I am back inside the tent, looking into the kind eyes of the fortune-teller.

But I don’t belong in that strange future world,
I say to her in my mind.

“Now answer me. Even if I did possess such powers as to bring you back to what you call your own time and to do things differently,” she says, and now she is speaking aloud, and the world of the fair has vanished and I am in complete darkness again, “would you leave before you finish what you have started?”

“I do not understand.”

“Shall I explain it to you?”

“May I see you, please?”

“Where would you like to see me?”

“In the little room in Deepa’s club. Please. I wish to talk to you and not be bound by the past.”

And all at once, I am in the room in the club with her again, and she is no longer the elderly fortune-teller from the fair but rather the young woman in the fine muslin gown, brown curls framing her lovely face and her golden-brown eyes regarding me kindly. She is again sitting before her little table, offering me a cup of tea.

“It will do you good, Miss Mansfield,” she says, and a fire burns cheerfully behind her within a marble chimneypiece, and the fact that it is high summer is of no consequence.

“Are we truly back in the club?”

“Does that really matter, my dear? A fire is most comforting, I find.”

“What did you mean by my finishing what I have started?”

“Consider,” she says, “all the good you have done in Courtney’s life. For one, she would probably not have left her situation as David’s assistant, as you have done. For another, it is quite possible that she might have chosen to be so charmed by Frank’s apology and admittance of guilt that she could be packing her things even now to move in with him.”

“But what of my life?” I ask.

“Oh, you left that a perfect mess as well—judging all and sundry as you are wont to do, acting out of self-righteous certainty when you really know nothing at all, riding though you were warned against it, causing untold amounts of grief through your self-destructive actions. And feeding your own delusions about forbearance and fidelity and trust, I might add. Poor Courtney. She does have her work cut out for her.”

At first I cannot even speak, and finally I sputter, “You mean Edgeworth, don’t you. I was the wronged party in this business, not him!”

“Is that so.” She regards me calmly, coolly.

“So you would have Courtney in command of my life. How long do you suppose it will take before she is drawn in by Edgeworth’s charm and address? Especially if she has arrived in my world with as little memory of my life as I have of hers.”

“Would that be such a crime?”

“He does not deserve her good opinion!”

“What right have you to say what he deserves and what he does not?”

“How could he be any less guilty than he looked that day on his estate when I spied him with his own servant?”

“Perhaps the answer will be revealed someday. But for now the past is of little consequence. In the meantime, you might do well to remember the words of your favorite heroine:
It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.
Even if a man who looks like a thief is, indeed, a thief, that is not the whole story. Only by stepping into his shoes can you begin to comprehend what made him a thief, and what else he is besides a thief, for we are not only just one thing, we are many. You of all people should know that.”

And she starts to laugh, a high, clear, musical laugh.

“Now, now,” she says. “Do not look so downcast. And do have some of your tea. It will do you good, I am sure of it.”

I want to refuse. I want to be stubborn, as if giving in would be beneath my dignity. But I cannot resist the kindness in her countenance. And so I sip at my tea, and, sure enough, I do feel calmed. I would like to be angry, but somehow it requires too much effort.

“So, my dear,” says the lady, putting down her teacup. “We both know that it is not Mr. Edgeworth who is behind your sudden wish to revisit the past.”

I want to say something in my defense, but my face burns with shame.

“Best to get it out all at once,” she says kindly.

“The truth is, I am ruined,” I say. “And no respectable man will ever pay his addresses to me.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“I am no longer sure of anything.”

“Now that is the wisest thing I have heard you say yet.” She smiles.

Despite my best efforts, I smile back at her, but the thought of what I must tell her next is sobering indeed. “At first I was able to say that this is what Courtney did, not I, but I can no longer do so. . . . You see, I—”

I cannot even get out the words.

“It’s all right, my dear.”

“I have had these—feelings—in my body. These—memories somehow. And I am mortified by them.”

She knows; I can tell she does. Yet there is no judgment, no revulsion, in her countenance. “Let’s get the worst part over and done with, shall we? Like having a tooth drawn. Best not to hesitate.” She smiles again, radiating kindness.

“The worst part. Well, that these feelings, or memories, or whatever they are, were of Frank, a man for whom I have no respect. And when I had these memories, it felt as if I were not mistress of myself. Such feelings are bad enough, but what is worse is that there is someone else. Someone whom I greatly esteem—or at least I did esteem him until I discovered his . . . intimate connection with another woman. A woman whom he then deserted. And that is not his only offense. He had lied to protect Frank, whom he knew was with another woman while engaged to me. I thought Wes must have had his reasons but—oh dear, I do not know what to think. I thought I knew him. I thought I knew myself. I know that things are supposed to be different in this time, in this place, than they were in my own world. But I do not know that they are different at all.”

She leans across the little table and pats my hand. “There, there, my dear. That was very brave of you. And to reward your courage I shall tell you something that will help you greatly: These, shall we say, impulses of attraction to Frank are merely cellular memories.”

I ponder her words for a moment. “You mean like Cowper’s words in
The Task,
‘It opens all the cells Where Mem’ry slept’? ”

She smiles, delighted. “Very good, my dear. But there is much more to the human body than the cells of which Cowper wrote. For he, and those of his time, had no conception of how truly tiny and numerous those cells are, and not only in the brain, but in the entire body. For your body is made up of trillions of tiny cells. Science has made many discoveries since your time, and the body is indeed a miraculous machine.

“So you see, in addition to the memories stored in your brain, which you experience like the revisiting of scenes of your life—or in this case, of Courtney’s life—there are also the less easily identifiable cellular memories. The cells of the body retain memories of the experiences the body has had—and not just the aches and pains and tastes and smells, but the joys and sorrows, the desires and longings. Which is why one day you might awaken feeling cheerful, while another day you may awaken feeling depressed. Your body remembers that a year ago today or ten years ago today, you felt cheerful or depressed. And it feels that way again.

“The key is to be aware of the fact that cellular memory exists and to know that you have the choice to let those memories retreat into the past or allow them to rule your present. Once you understand what they are, you can choose to focus on the present moment and see what it offers you.”

I try to absorb it all, but I’m not sure. “So you mean I have a choice?”

“Of course you do, my dear. That is the blessing of free will. Just because you may feel a fleeting desire in your body does not mean that your mind must follow it.”

I think again about Wes’s words. “He said that the lady—Morgan is her name—told him she just wanted to have a good time.”

She looks at me carefully. “So did Courtney. And so did you, I might add.”

I feel myself blushing yet again as I think of those memories I had of Frank and of the desire I had for Edgeworth. “But I loved Edgeworth. And Courtney loved Frank.”

“And that makes you better than Morgan? Do not be so quick to judge. You, like she, still wanted pleasure, and why would you not? After all, pleasure is the opposite of pain. And humans will do anything to keep the pain at bay.”

I think of James, our footman, and how I kissed him that one night when I was mad with grief over Edgeworth. And I know that the lady is right. I had no thought for what my recklessness might cost James. Or myself. I only wanted to keep my pain at bay.

The lady sips her tea and regards me kindly. “Today’s women are no less desirous of love, and marrying for love, than they were in your time. But they, like so many women before them, simply fear it is an unattainable goal. And thus they settle for what fleeting pleasures they can find, creating an endless cycle of pleasure, despair, pleasure, despair, ad infinitum. Human nature is the same today as it was in your time. The only difference between today’s world and your world is that people have more choices now than they did then. Do drink your tea, my dear.”