It was true.
Byron would go, and the world would become dimmer again, nothing to look forward to, nothing but this same endless march of days, one after the other.
She shook herself. No, it did not do to think that way. After all, it would be summer soon, and that would be its owndiversion, just the warmth itself would make everything a bit cheerier.
Hopefully, it would not be a frightfully hot summer, however. She mused on that for a while, and then determined she must not spend all her time on these depressing daydreams. She should distract herself.
She worked diligently onFirst Impressions. The work today wasn’t as exciting as it had been on other days. Essentially, she was just copying over what had been in letters from the sister Elizabeth to the sister Jane. She was having to change all the “I”s to “she”s and the like, but otherwise, it was just copy work. It was a bit of drudgery.
Thrice, she got so caught up in thinking about something else that she skipped a line. Thrice, she had to begin her copying over again.
The fourth time it happened, she crumpled up the piece of paper and got up from her desk, stretching. She went to the window and peered out at the blossoms on the trees. She sighed.
He was not going to come.
She could not very well go after him.
Well, could she?
She thought through the idea of a walk. It was nearly three miles to the Beaumont house, which was not an impossible distance to walk, she supposed. It would take some time, however, and she didn’t know what she would say when she got there. Would it sound remotely believable if she said she’d been walking and not paying attention to where she walked and ended up there?
No, not for Byron. He would know she had come after him. He would get amused and say that he enjoyed that she missed him, and it would be abominable.
If it were someone other than Byron, perhaps she could manage to be convincing.
But she wouldn’t dare with Byron. She couldn’t bear it.
She let out another sigh and went back to her manuscript. She must copy this. She must sell this novel. She must provide a bit of income for her family. She must dosomething.
She took the pen out of the inkwell and let it drip as she gazed off at the far wall.
She pondered what it would be like to be a savage in some far country where it was always warm and where no one wore stays or stockings. Did a person who lived in that fashion feel this same gnawing feeling of needing to do something?
She put the pen down in the inkwell.
They must.
In fact, perhaps the reason a person felt it at all was for survival purposes. If Jane herself were a wild woman living in the jungle, she would have to go out and catch things and stab them to death and then slit them open with some primitive knife, dress them and put them on a spit over the fire. She would have no servants to see to her. She would have to see to herself.
Jane thought about it, and she thought that the sorts of people who felt driven to do something were the sort who probably didn’t die out.
Of course, there were a number of people who seemed quite willing to sit about doing absolutely nothing.
It must be that there were only enough doers in every savage tribe to keep the tribe alive, and that everyone else was a sitter-about-er.
“Why couldn’t I have been a sitter-about-er?” Jane inquired of the far wall. “I am certain I should be ever so much more content with my life if I were. I don’t wish to be constantly dissatisfied, constantly craving some diversion, craving it so badly I feel I must make up some fictional story to entertain myself.”
Yes, if she were just like everyone else, easily amused, she’d be much happier.
She grimaced.
Byron did not come.
He was not there in the morning.
He did not appear in the afternoon.
She grew, by degrees, more dejected as the day went on.
