Chapter Seventeen #2
Outside the bedchamber, she was in a hallway upstairs in the Beaumont house.
She knew the general direction of the stairs, and she started off for them.
She was not quite sure what she was going to do now.
Her errand had been to find Lord Byron, but now, perhaps she should simply take her leave and walk home.
She had walked far and wide, what with going out after Mrs. Beaumont and back again. She was a bit tired.
She got to the stairs and descended them.
But upon alighting on the main floor of the house, she thought to herself that she had not come all this way for nothing.
She could not say that she had been walking and not paying attention to how she got here, she supposed, but she could use the excuse with Mrs. Beaumont for her presence.
He might still be awful about it, teasing her for coming after him, but she didn’t care. She was already here, after all.
She went to find a servant and inquire about Lord Byron, and the servant’s face got pinched. “I doubt he’s in any shape to receive visitors.”
“What are you saying?” said Jane. “Is he ill?” To think, she hadn’t even considered that.
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” said the servant. “But only from too much drink and not enough sleep.”
Truly?
“I can take you to him, ma’am, but I can’t account for whether he’ll be amenable to allowing you in.”
They went through the house to a sitting room on the main level, but the sitting room was shut up tight, and when the servant opened the door a crack, Jane could see it was dark in there.
A voice from within. “I have told you not to enter, have I not? I shall ring if I want anyone to come in!”
“You have, my lord,” said the servant, very dry. “But there is someone here who wishes to see you.”
“Tell them to go away,” called Byron’s voice.
The servant shrugged at her.
“My lord?” called Jane.
“Miss Jane.” Suddenly, there was the sound of movement from within the room.
A moment later, Byron appeared, leaning into the open door, pushing it open.
He was not dressed. She could see his shirtsleeves.
His waistcoat was half undone. He was wearing no cravat.
His hair was sticking up in strange ways and his eyes were bloodshot.
He rubbed at the back of his head and looked her over. “What day is it?”
“What day is it?” repeated Jane.
“Did I promise to come to collect you?” he said.
“You, in fact, did not. I don’t know what I was expecting,” she said.
He hung his head. He was sardonic. “You didn’t think the melancholy was all just for show, did you? Just a ruse to get women to swoon?”
“You’ve just been in here, what? Drinking, with the curtains pulled tight, terrorizing the servants? What about Mr. Beaumont?”
“He’s asleep.” Byron nodded into the depths of the sitting room. “We’ve created this room as our… oh, we had a name for it. Gin Keep.” He chuckled. Then, upon seeing her expression, said, “Well, it seemed amusing at the time we thought it up, I suppose.”
“Mr. Beaumont is in there, with you, on some days-long drinking binge, and his wife is wandering in the woods looking for someone or other—I thought it was her babe, but now I don’t know, and—” Abruptly, she broke off.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. You did not promise to see me.
You are… this.” She gestured. “I have always known what you were. I shall go.”
Byron rubbed at the side of his cheek. He needed a shave. His whiskers were dark against his skin. “It just bubbles up sometimes, I’m afraid. I think it’s going to be all right, and then it swallows me.”
“What swallows you?”
“The melancholy,” said Byron. “And then I can’t get out of bed, and I can’t bear the sound of people talking, and I—so… I drink. And the drink solves it all, until it… makes it worse.”
“Everyone feels melancholy, my lord.”
“I don’t know if everyone feels it the way I do,” he said, running his teeth over his bottom lip. “Are you going to hate me now?”
She didn’t know what to say.
“You’d be within your rights, I suppose.” He gave her a faint smile. “If you can manage it, don’t hate me, though, Miss Austen.”
“I…” She shook herself. She looked pointedly at the floor. “Good day, Lord Byron. I do hope you sort yourself out by and by.”
WHEN SHE GOT home, she shut herself in her room, not her room with the manuscript, but in her bedchamber, and she paced back and forth over the rug next to her bed for some time before it overwhelmed her, and then the tears started.
She hated it, though.
There was positively no reason to be crying.
Jane had cried easily her whole life. Well, all children cried, of course, and all authority figures told them to stop it this instant and Jane…
Well, Jane cried more often than the other children and cried longer than the other children and when people told her to stop crying, it only made her cry more.
Only Cassandra could soothe her. Cassandra would gather little Jane up in her arms and stroke her hair and sing songs softly in Jane’s ear until the crying fit passed.
And eventually, when Jane was older, she learned to stop it, because it wasn’t done, of course. One did not cry in front of others, not even people in one’s close family. Crying was weakness. They were civilized people and they controlled themselves.
So, she didn’t know why she was crying now.
Some part of her, shamefully, wanted to fling herself down on the bed and sob into a pillow.
She did not do that.
She did sit down on the bed and curl her shoulders over and let the tears fall while her shoulders shook.
It felt like betrayal, but she knew—she had always known, deep down—that she could not trust him.
It was only that she had thought, before, that this was something he chose, that he was flitting about from pleasurable thing to pleasurable thing because he lacked the depth of character it would take to eschew pleasure. But now she saw him clearly, far too clearly.
It all made sense, especially in light of that awful poem of his.
He was trapped in it, mired in pain and sadness and so, the pleasure-seeking, it was desperate. He sought something, anything at all, that would feel good, because he often didn’t.
And this meant that she truly couldn’t trust him. On some level, Byron was drowning and would always be drowning. He could never get his own head above water. So, he would always be preoccupied with trying to breathe, and that would mean he could never properly care about anything else.
One couldn’t count on a man like that.
She had known this from the beginning.
It should not be some horrible surprise.
It should not make her cry from disappointment.
She scolded herself, her words harsh, the echoes of those long ago nurses and teachers and parental figures. Stop that this instant, Jane. Pull yourself together. Don’t indulge that sniveling.
Eventually, she managed to stop the tears. She sat on the bed for some time, composing herself, for after one has given in to tears in such a way, it is far too easy to succumb to them again, and she must not allow that to happen.
Finally, though, she felt certain of herself enough to leave the room.
Cassandra saw her going into her writing room. “Did you go for a walk?”
“Oh, yes,” said Jane. “Out in the woods. It’s quite lovely weather today.”
“Pity you didn’t ask me to come along. I should have liked a walk today, I think.”
“Sorry,” said Jane.
“I’m glad you’ve gotten out of the house,” said Cassandra. “It’s all right to miss him, Jane. But it’s better now that he’s gone, do you see?”
“Oh, yes,” said Jane. “It’s much better.”