“Evening, miss,” it said, tipping its grimy cap at her. The figure was no hellish ghost; it was a chimneysweep, his shoulders laden with long-armed brushes, blackened with soot, walking home from the day’s trade.
Another man wheeled past with a stinking barrow of eels laid out in a slimy heap. “Move yourself, silly tart!” the man yelled at Jane. The glistening sleeves of scales slipped and slithered as the cart bounced over the cobblestones.
“I have business here, sir,” said Jane.
“You do not.” The man laughed as he bustled past her. “You are another lovesick girl. They come day and night to that door,” he said.
“What for?” said Jane.
“To be taken in,” he said. “She’s a charlatan. She preys on the softheads and hysterics.” He chuckled again and shook his head, then rolled his reeking vehicle down the lane.
Jane shut her eyes. What a fool she was. The hilarity and strangeness of the day evaporated into the soot-laden Cheapside air and reality returned. Her desperation and humiliation had transformed her into a gullible woman, willing to travel by herself to London, and now she stood alone in one of its filthiest, seamiest sections. She commanded her silly heart to stop beating, to stop making a spectacle of itself.
She turned for St. Paul’s and trudged back along the north bank, not bothering to cover her nose at the Thames. She boarded her return post at Piccadilly, the only passenger this time, and began the fourteen-hour journey home.
JANE RETURNED TO an assembly gathered in Sydney Place. The entire population of Sydney House, most of Sutton Street, and some of Great Pulteney Street were standing about the front of the building. From the concerned looks and nods, there appeared to be some great event taking place that everyone was happy to delay their lunch to observe. Jane proceeded toward the group to inquire as to what unfortunate incident had befallen some unlucky family, but then froze and hid behind a hedge on the corner when her own mother emerged from the building, her cheeks stained with tears. A constable stood beside her who nodded as she spoke and jotted notes in his notebook. Her mother’s hair, usually pulled back in an elegant cultivation of curls, hung limp and wet under her riding bonnet. Jane furrowed her brow. Why was her mama dressed so? She never saw her with wet hair.
Jane shuddered. She realized she had been gone almost two days. She had left no word of where she was going, no plan of visiting friends or travelling with an organized party. She studied her mother. Mrs. Austen’s favorite blue gown, always pristine and starched, was muddied and blackened, with the right sleeve torn. A thin line of red ran down her soft cheek, the type of scratch a branch might make. Her mother had gone out looking for her.
Jane peered more closely at the neighbors gathered. Lady Johnstone stood at the front, corralling guests and chatting to everyone. She bounced around the crowd in celebration. They would remember this for years: the great Austen scandal. There was one reason a parson’s daughter might exit her home unannounced, and it was not a chaste one. Anticipation seemed to ripple through the crowd at what new crimes of Jane’s might soon be confirmed. No one seemed to mind it was raining; they huddled happily under parasols and awnings, training their ears for any updates.
Jane looked back at her mother. Mrs. Austen did not seem to share the crowd’s happy emotions. She paid no attention to them but turned to the constable with his notebook. In her hand was a portrait of Jane, one Cassandra had drawn. It was a poor likeness, too beaky, and in truth Cassandra had rushed it, but it was enough like Jane to do the trick. Her mother must have scoured the house for it. She had not realized her mother even knew of the portrait’s existence. It was a pitiable little picture, but her mother cradled it in her hands and brushed a drop of water off it that had fallen from the policeman’s hat. Jane had never seen her mother hold a picture of her. She contemplated walking to her mother then, perhaps touching her arm and smiling. They could say things they had never said before. But her mother’s act of novel incineration still burned in Jane’s mind, so she stood back and witnessed her mother’s suffering instead. How we delight in punishing those we love. Besides, she could muster no energy for the spectacle to follow as she reunited with her family before every matron, fishwife, parishioner, and concerned citizen in town.
She ran instead to the Fairy Wood and took shelter in an abandoned woodsman’s cottage. She’d hide until nightfall, when the gathered townsfolk abandoned hope of Jane’s return, their hunger for supper overtaking their hunger for scandal. Jane would go home and deal with her parents then. She sat in the stone cottage and waited.
She removed the scrap of First Impressions from her pocket and turned it over in her hand. Mrs. Sinclair had written a single line of text on the back. Jane scowled. Not only was Mrs. Sinclair a swindler, her handwriting was impossible. Jane knew shocking penmanship. Her brother Henry’s, for example, with his excited, cheerful scribbles that looked more like drunken ants had beached themselves on the page, or her brother Frank, who, when writing to Jane from the sea to thank her for his new shirt, smeared most of the Atlantic Ocean on the page as if wanting to truly show her what sea life
