Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas Read Online Free Page B

part, this is a conscious choice. I must assume, therefore, that having been treated to a childhood of strictest sobriety, young James-Edward shall take the shortest road to ruin—through a gaming hell and a brothel—and that little Caroline will be a heedless madcap, wanton in every material display, when once she attains her freedom.
    Caroline is approaching her tenth year, a slip of a girl with waves of chestnut hair pulled painfully into a knot at her neck. Clear grey eyes—Austen eyes—and a rose complexion bode well for her looks; she requires only time and care to bloom. I should like to carry her off to Godmersham, my brother Edward’s estate in Kent, where young ladies are allowed to be foolish and silly, and to dance in the nursery wing long before they are permitted to waltz in publick. But lacking all authority, I must content myself with the early presentation of Caroline’s Christmas gift—which by rights should wait for Twelfth Night, when all our presents, trivial though they may be, are exchanged. I believe I shall steal into Caroline’s room and leave my token on her pillow without a word, as tho’ some good faerie had bestowed it. Caroline will delight in the game of discovering her benefactress, which will increase the gift’s value threefold.
    She was sitting between The Aunts, as she calls Cassandra and me, profiting from our collective warmth. James abhors the waste of fuel in a church stove, believing that discomfort is conducive to spiritual fervour. Caroline’s eyes were fixed steadily upon her father as he spoke, but her fingers beat the faintest of patterns upon her knee.She was, I collected, humming a secret song in her head. With very little encouragement her toes should soon be tapping too.
    James was delighting us on this splendid Christmas morn with a grave reminder that the Christ Child’s birth was but a Prelude—Necessary, and therefore Joyous—to the Solemn Mystery of the Cross. The Virgin Birth in the stable must end with the Sacred Sacrifice at Calvary; the veneration of the angels, with the violent pounding of nails through flesh.
    It occurred to me that this trend in James’s speech, being riddled with both Mysticism and Gore, was very nearly as pagan as the festooning of the church with holly boughs; and that perhaps I might twit him on couching his spiritual instruction in such crude and vivid terms as his villagers must relish.
    But why bait a bull, Jane? He would only chide me for having missed the sacred point.
    I glanced aside at Caroline; her eyelids drooped. She, too, had heard this sombre profession of Crucifix-in-the-Cradle from the time she could speak. Beyond her head, James-Edward was frankly nodding. He had been late abed after a stolen night of revels among his cronies at Ashe Park. He is a handsome lad, at just the age to reject his boyish pursuits and ape his elder heroes. The points of his collar are ridiculously high, his mop of brown hair is fashionably tousled, his cravat exceedingly ill-tied. From what little conversation we shared this morning, I should judge him to be torn between two modes of life: that of the Byronic Aesthete and that of the Corinthian Set. He wastes what free hours he may claim in scribbling poetry, or riding a borrowed hunter to hounds.
    His father intends him for Oxford, and Holy Orders; I wonder very much what James-Edward intends?
    I was recalled to virtue by the uncertain lifting of voices under thestone architraves. James had concluded his edifying words, and the congregation was on its feet. There might be no more than fifty parishioners in St. Nicholas church, but on this cold, clear Christmas morn they were united in wavering song.
    Blessed be that lady bright
,
    That bare a child of great might
,
    Withouten pain, as it was right
,
    Maid mother Mary
.
    A N HOUR LATER, WE had endured the well-wishes of the villagers and tramped home, chilled to the bone, to partake of an indifferent breakfast. I consumed a modest portion