Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas Read Online Free Page A
Author: Stephanie Barron
hands outstretched in welcome; one of them still clutched the burning taper. I slipped it from his fingers as he embraced our parent, and tossed it into the fire.
“Jane! And Cass! Welcome, welcome! I trust you arrived safely before the snowfall?”
“We arrived safely,” Cassandra replied, with a hint of unaccustomed irritation. “Happy Christmas, James. You look very well.”
And naturally she was correct—I have never had a glimpse of my eldest brother when he is not beaming with the most sanguine self-satisfaction. It need not concern us that his pate has suffered a diminution in its luxurious hair, or that his figure has increased beyond what is strictly acceptable in a man of Fashion, or that he is buried in the country with only four-and-twenty families to admire his sermons of a Sunday morning. James is above such worldly concerns. He inhabits the realm of the Spirit; and those of us required to ascend to its heights in his train, may only congratulate ourselves.
If we did not, we might be tempted to seek our beds with as much lassitude as the unfortunate Mary.
“My dear,” he said sternly to his wife the instant my thoughts chanced to light upon her, “do not alarm me with this attitude of dejection. Say not that you have suffered a relapse of your habitual complaint!”
Mary merely sighed, her shoulders drooping. Being lost in contemplation of the grave, she could not lift her head.
James knelt by the sopha and secured her hand. “You must endeavour to overcome your worse self, my dear. You must pray to our Lord to arm you against the Devil—who comes in the form of an oppression of spirits, and wrestles for your soul!”
My eyes met Cassandra’s over our brother’s bowed head. He was murmuring words of scripture into Mary’s palm. It was as I had foreseen: our lighthearted Christmas season was at an end before it had begun.
My mother quitted her chair and gathered us up, linking an arm through each of ours. “I should enjoy spirits of an entirely different order, girls. I am sure that sherry will accompany this Stilton delightfully—and I know exactly where James hides it!”
1 For more information regarding the Austen family accounts at Ring Brothers, see “
Persuasion:
The Jane Austen Consumer’s Guide,” by Edward Copeland, in Persuasions, No. 15, pp.111–123, The Jane Austen Society of North America, 1993.—Editor’s note.
THE FIRST DAY
3
A SUMMONS TO THE VYNE
Sunday, 25th December 1814
Steventon Parsonage
The snow ceased to fall during the night, and it was a sparkling world that greeted us this Christmas morning. The verger had swept the churchyard pavings, despite James’s prohibition against any form of labour on so sacred a day, and thus we were able to walk in a sedate file from the parsonage to St. Nicholas’s. Cassandra’s bonnet feathers were past repair, but Mamma exhibited her reticule with modest pride.
Mary was markedly pale, the consequence of having refused all sustenance in the past four-and-twenty hours. How interesting we may make ourselves, through the conscious mortification of the flesh!
The local farmwives had festooned the stone interior of the old Norman church with green boughs of fir and holly, a ritual dear enough to the villagers that James must have submitted to the practise with grudging grace. I know him to regard such decoration as thoroughly pagan—as he does most of the gaieties of the Christmas season—and would never allow it to be attempted at home. And indeed, as he mounted the rostrum to deliver his Nativity sermon, my brother’s brow was lowering and his aspect melancholic. How strangethis seems! Our dear father was joyous in his offerings of mistletoe to every lady of his acquaintance, however seriously he regarded his duties as a clergyman. James’s repugnance for worldly happiness must be viewed, then, as the determined rebellion of a disaffected son. We Austens were not reared to be cheerless and disdainful; on James’s
“Jane! And Cass! Welcome, welcome! I trust you arrived safely before the snowfall?”
“We arrived safely,” Cassandra replied, with a hint of unaccustomed irritation. “Happy Christmas, James. You look very well.”
And naturally she was correct—I have never had a glimpse of my eldest brother when he is not beaming with the most sanguine self-satisfaction. It need not concern us that his pate has suffered a diminution in its luxurious hair, or that his figure has increased beyond what is strictly acceptable in a man of Fashion, or that he is buried in the country with only four-and-twenty families to admire his sermons of a Sunday morning. James is above such worldly concerns. He inhabits the realm of the Spirit; and those of us required to ascend to its heights in his train, may only congratulate ourselves.
If we did not, we might be tempted to seek our beds with as much lassitude as the unfortunate Mary.
“My dear,” he said sternly to his wife the instant my thoughts chanced to light upon her, “do not alarm me with this attitude of dejection. Say not that you have suffered a relapse of your habitual complaint!”
Mary merely sighed, her shoulders drooping. Being lost in contemplation of the grave, she could not lift her head.
James knelt by the sopha and secured her hand. “You must endeavour to overcome your worse self, my dear. You must pray to our Lord to arm you against the Devil—who comes in the form of an oppression of spirits, and wrestles for your soul!”
My eyes met Cassandra’s over our brother’s bowed head. He was murmuring words of scripture into Mary’s palm. It was as I had foreseen: our lighthearted Christmas season was at an end before it had begun.
My mother quitted her chair and gathered us up, linking an arm through each of ours. “I should enjoy spirits of an entirely different order, girls. I am sure that sherry will accompany this Stilton delightfully—and I know exactly where James hides it!”
1 For more information regarding the Austen family accounts at Ring Brothers, see “
Persuasion:
The Jane Austen Consumer’s Guide,” by Edward Copeland, in Persuasions, No. 15, pp.111–123, The Jane Austen Society of North America, 1993.—Editor’s note.
THE FIRST DAY
3
A SUMMONS TO THE VYNE
Sunday, 25th December 1814
Steventon Parsonage
The snow ceased to fall during the night, and it was a sparkling world that greeted us this Christmas morning. The verger had swept the churchyard pavings, despite James’s prohibition against any form of labour on so sacred a day, and thus we were able to walk in a sedate file from the parsonage to St. Nicholas’s. Cassandra’s bonnet feathers were past repair, but Mamma exhibited her reticule with modest pride.
Mary was markedly pale, the consequence of having refused all sustenance in the past four-and-twenty hours. How interesting we may make ourselves, through the conscious mortification of the flesh!
The local farmwives had festooned the stone interior of the old Norman church with green boughs of fir and holly, a ritual dear enough to the villagers that James must have submitted to the practise with grudging grace. I know him to regard such decoration as thoroughly pagan—as he does most of the gaieties of the Christmas season—and would never allow it to be attempted at home. And indeed, as he mounted the rostrum to deliver his Nativity sermon, my brother’s brow was lowering and his aspect melancholic. How strangethis seems! Our dear father was joyous in his offerings of mistletoe to every lady of his acquaintance, however seriously he regarded his duties as a clergyman. James’s repugnance for worldly happiness must be viewed, then, as the determined rebellion of a disaffected son. We Austens were not reared to be cheerless and disdainful; on James’s
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