I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend Read Online Free Page B

tears are pouring down my face now.
    ‘Don’t worry, miss, she’ll get better.’ She looked anxious, poor Becky. I was sorry to upset her, but I can’t stop crying. When my mother was very ill a doctor bled her and it did no good at all. I remember how a vein in her arm was opened and how that very red blood dripped out into a white basin. She died two hours later.
    If Jane’s mother doesn’t come soon, I don’t know what to do. Now I will lock up my journal, hide it under my clothes in my trunk and hang the key around my neck. I should go downstairs, but I don’t feel as if I have the strength even to get off the bed. Perhaps I am tired after missing so much sleep last night. I will just get in under the blankets and try to warm up and then go downstairs.

    The voices are like the voices in a dream .
    ‘ She’s asleep … ’
    ‘ No, she’s ill … ’
    ‘ She’s burning with fever … ’
    ‘ Tell Mrs Cawley … ’
    ‘ Mrs Cawley, Jenny is ill now … ’
    ‘ Will I get the doctor, ma’am … ’
    ‘ Mind your own business, girl … get on with your work. Doctors cost money, you know … ’
    * * *
    And then … is it hours later?
    That loud knock, that hammering on the front door …
    Mrs Austen’s voice, high-pitched, confident …
    ‘ I’ll have you know, madam … ’
    A mutter from Mrs Cawley .
    ‘ Never mind how I know … ’
    ‘ Let me see my daughter, madam … ’
    ‘ And where’s Jenny? ’
    Another mutter from Mrs Cawley .
    ‘ Rest assured, madam, that we’ll never allow my daughter or my niece to return to this place again. I am taking them both back to Steventon this very minute. Pray give instructions for hot water bottles and fresh straw to be placed in the coach … ’
    Mrs Cawley’s voice — now loud and angry .
    ‘ Don’t think to delay me with demands for fees, madam … You should be down on your knees praying that these two girls will recover … ’
    Mrs Cawley again .
    ‘ Out of my way, madam! Mr Austen, do you carry Jenny and I’ll take Jane … ’
    ‘ You, girl, don’t try to carry the two trunks … Surely there is someone to help this girl. Where is the manservant …? ’
    ‘ Mr Austen, give the girl a penny. She looks honest, poor thing. It’s not her fault that she works for such a wicked mistress. ’

Friday, 4 March 1791
    This is the first day that I have been able to write. I can’t believe that it is more than three weeks since last I wrote in my journal, more than three weeks since that terrible night when I went out into the night streets of Southampton, more than three weeks since I thought Jane was going to die. I haven’t been as ill as her, but I felt too weak to write in my journal and there was always someone in my room, either Mrs Austen, or else Jane’s sister, Cassandra, or, during the last few days, when they were sure that they would not catch my fever, my brother, Edward-John, and his wife, Augusta.
    And then there was Jane herself.
    Not ill, not muttering in a high fever.
    Just sitting beside my bed chuckling over a novel.

    And I think that made me start to get well again.
    Edward-John and Augusta came to see me this morning. I tried to talk to them, but I felt too weak to say much. I hoped they would leave me alone, but Augustareturned in the afternoon. Jane was reading and I was half asleep when we heard her footsteps on the stairs. I knew it was her immediately as Mrs Austen wears list slippers and the boys all wear boots. Augusta’s shoes clip along in a neat, tidy way, rather like herself.
    I could hear her talking to Mrs Austen about her new gown when they were standing outside my door. ‘How do you like my gown, dear madam?’ she was saying to Mrs Austen. ‘Handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is over-trimmed. I have the greatest dislike to being over-trimmed …’
    ‘I agree with you, ma’am,’ said Jane beside me as the door opened and the two came in. Jane’s face was solemn