Jane and the Barque of Frailty Read Online Free PDF Page B

jewels at her throat and a delightful penchant for shocking conversation. Even our elder brother James, destined for the Church and a prig from infancy, was wild for Eliza. It became a sort of game for Henry and James to vie for my cousin’s favour when they were both up at Oxford, and she living in London far from the protection of her husband; but by the time the self-styled Comte de Feuillide was guillotined, and Eliza free, James had buried his first wife and was the father of a child. He courted Eliza for months, allowed her to toy with his heart and his future, and took her eventual refusal to become a clergyman’s wife in good part. The idea of Eliza—who at five-and-thirty was still the girlish beauty she had ever been, carrying her pug about Town and riding in the Park—as the mistress of James’s parsonage, was not to be thought of. Henry offered himself twice to my cousin, with a heart that had always been her own, and to the relief of the entire family—Eliza at last accepted him.
    It was feared that such a rackety and volatile pair— one with more hair than wit and the other possessed of more charm than is good for him—should be run off their legs by debt. Dire predictions of a frivolous end— desertion or debtor’s prison—my brother’s affections elsewhere engaged as Eliza inevitably aged—were bruited about the family with ruthless disregard for the feelings of this junior son. But the Henry Austens have jogged along steadily in tandem harness for more than a decade now without disaster; and the family must declare Eliza much improved. It cannot be wonderful that a lady so intimate with death—of a mother, a husband, a son—could fail to be sobered by the prospect of eternity; but I must credit my brother with excellent sense, and the uncanny ability to manage his wife by never attempting to manage her at all. It was he who supported my cousin through every loss; he who travelled to France in the wake of revolution to demand recompense for the Comte de Feuillide’s confiscated estates; he who bore with Eliza’s extravagant tastes and exalted acquaintance. As a French countess, she had been much in the habit of attending Court Drawing-Rooms and the exclusive assemblies at Almack’s; she saw no reason to leave off doing so now that she was become the wife of a mere banker. There are still few in London who fail to address Eliza as Comtesse, rather than Mrs. Austen; but it is Henry who franks her style of life.
    “You would tell me the d’Entraigueses are embarrassed in their circumstances?” I enquired now as Eliza emerged from her handkerchief. “But that muff—! Her opera dress of last evening! The furnishings of the house in Surrey!”
    “As to that—it never does to betray one’s poverty to the milliner or modiste. You must know, Jane, that when one is in debt, the only sure course is to order another hat or gown; it keeps such encroaching persons dependant upon one’s custom. My sainted mamma never did any differently; but Henry prefers to be beforehand with the world, and naturally I would not deviate a hair from his wishes.” Eliza, despite her fifty years, looked as conscious as a girl as she uttered this palpable falsehood. “But the d’Entraigueses are quite at a stand. He cut a dashing figure in the early days of revolution, and escaped the guillotine by playing every side false; denounced his friends and turned traitor to the world; but when at last he was obliged to flee the country, his château was burned to the ground and his property seized. He has never entirely come about, and relies upon the kindness of friends—the gratitude of the various governments he has served— and something in the way of a pension from the present forces in France—in short, I do not know how they contrive to live. But that is not the worst, Jane.” Eliza leaned closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “He has lost his heart to a hardened Cyprian—a High Flyer of the most dashing