The Visit
Lucy read the letter twice, to be certain she had not imagined it. But the bold, sloping hand and clear short sentences remained unaltered.
Dearest Lucy,
You may not know me. I am your mother’s eldest sister, Mary Ellsworth Waters, but have not had the pleasure of meeting you more than once. Our first and only meeting occurred shortly after you were born. I lived in Rillington, then, only a mile from where you live now. Your mother and I were close, but about eighteen years ago we had a falling out of catastrophic dimensions and never spoke again. I moved to Yorkshire to take a situation as a governess, but then married not long after. My husband’s name is Percy Waters, and he is the owner of Mulberry Castle which has been my home for the last two years. It is a grand and beautiful old place, very like what young ladies (yourself included, perhaps?) like to read about.
Now I reach the purpose of my letter. I want to invite you to stay with us. I have always wanted to know you, but felt afraid of asking when you were younger and your mother might easily forbid you going due to her dislike of me. But you are eighteen now, are you not? A good age to have an adventure and to travel a little. Will you honor Percy and I with the addition of your company from August to October of this year? Write quickly. We shall be expecting you!
All my love,
Your Aunt Mary
Lucy held the letter towards the window. Hot white sunlight had broken through the heavy cloud and made the paper glitter, almost too bright to read for a third time. Instead, hands shaking, she slipped it into her apron pocket.
Her heart stuttering, face warm with nerves, she fled downstairs into the parlor. “Mama! Mama! I’ve something quite marvelous to tell you!”
*
All night, Lucy could not sleep for imagining. The castle loomed behind her closed eyes: impossibly tall, silver and turreted, with a thunderous sky above it, a tall black pinewood behind it, and a path winding up a sheer, craggy cliff to reach it.
Aunt Mary had assumed her niece to be a lover of novels, and she had assumed correctly. Lucy not only loved novels, she lived for them. She savored them, swooned over them, collected them. She had a small book shelf in her room for the very purpose. Lucy, despite the remonstrations of her mother and father and the pleadings of her tutor, could not abide “useful books”. History and science bored her, languages were dull, and she would rather escape to a world of mysterious and charming villains, unfortunate ladies, and dark grand houses full of secrets than learn anything of value.
The prospect of staying with a mysterious aunt in a castle of all places was too delightful to endure, and Lucy Mary Ellsworth was too exquisitely happy to sleep. The inclusion of a family secret, an estrangement, only heightened the letter’s appeal.
Her mother and father had consented to the visit, although she’d been sure they wouldn’t. She’d been afraid to even mention her aunt, her mother’s estranged sister whose existence Lucy had been utterly unaware of before the letter slipped through the mail slot.
She’d broken the news to her mother softly, gently, with the greatest discretion she could muster, expecting Mrs Ellsworth to go white with dismay, but her mother only gasped and said in a flustered voice: “Really? Is that true, darling?”
“Yes,” Lucy had said, barely breathing with anticipation.
“Well, in that case you’d better go,” Mrs Ellsworth replied, calming herself with a short sharp sigh.
Details were promptly discussed, and Lucy did try to pry a little into the estrangement between her mother and Aunt Mary but her mother was silent.
“You may visit,” Mrs Ellsworth told her daughter, “but not if you ask me questions. There are some stories which must never see the light of day, and this is one of them.”
“Will Aunt Mary tell me the story, then?” pressed Lucy.
Her mother had given her a long, strange look. “No,” she replied. “No, she most certainly will not.”
*
The day of Lucy’s departure began clear and mild. A perfect traveling day. But by the time the carriage had been packed, goodbyes said and cautions of all manner given, the weather had faltered somewhat, grown wet and heavy, threatening rain. But Mrs Ellsworth’s cautions did not bend to weather: “Don’t sit up too late at night”, “don’t ask impertinent questions”, “if there happen to be young men there, be sure to behalf yourself with utmost propriety”, “be a help to your aunt”, “dress for the chill—it may be summer, but nights in the North are dreadfully cold”, and “whatever you do, you are standing in for our whole family so your actions will speak for ours.”
When at last Lucy’s mother and father, for he was present although silent, deemed it alright for her to leave, it had begun to shower dreadfully and the roof of the carriage was to be kept securely down, disappointing Lucy who had longed to ride in the open air.
The journey was to be sixteen hours at least, but Lucy intended to sleep for as much of it as possible. If she was asleep, then she could limit the time spent in painful anticipation. She closed her eyes and pulled a rug over herself the moment the horses began to move.
*
Lucy opened her eyes, rubbed them, blinked, could see nothing. The sound of rain pummeling the roof of the carriage had woken her, as had the fact that they were no longer moving. She had just lifted the curtain aside to look out when the carriage door fell open and a man holding a swinging lantern emerged. Rain flashed in front of his face, and Lucy watched him approach and offer out a large wet hand to help her down.
Eagerly she searched the darkness behind him for some glimpse of the place. She saw nothing but a steep black wall with a cloud-brown sky above it. The carriage had drawn up to what looked like a flat gravel area directly in front of the house—the castle. Lucy, dizzy with the thrill of it could barely comprehend the man when he spoke.
“Wait here,” he said, kindly, she thought, and traipsed off into the night.
Behind her, somebody had already unloaded her belongings from the carriage, and Lucy moved to stand nearer the piled luggage.
A feeling of cold pounding fear began to fill her, beginning with a pain at the pit of her stomach and spreading upwards until she could barely breathe. And the rain was so awfully loud, and strong, beginning to seep through her cloak and into her skin.
Just as she felt she could not bear it any longer, a door eased open in the wall in front of her. A small shape appeared, and a soft voice threaded through the wet night to her:
“Miss Ellsworth? Is it you?”
Something about the lady’s tone, the feathery sweetness of it, dissolved Lucy’s fear in an instant and she ran forward, right into the woman’s spread arms.
“Oh, it is you, indeed it is,” said the lady. Laughing, she gathered Lucy closer and laid a kiss in her hair. “Did you have a very long journey then? Was it very wearying?”
Lucy stepped away quickly, overwhelmed and unsure why she’d run directly into the strange woman’s arms without even stopping to discern whether or not she was indeed Aunt Mary or merely a servant. “Very wearying,” she said, in a small voice. It struck Lucy that the anticipation of the journey, combined with the journey itself and the strangeness of her arrival had pushed her to a kind of extremity—a state where something as small as a kind voice calling out to her resulted in childlike behavior that she felt quite ashamed of now.
And she was still deathly cold and increasingly wet. “May I come inside ma’am?” she whispered.
“Of course you may,” said the lady, taking Lucy’s shoulders and guiding her over the threshold. “I will ask Peter to fetch your luggage. Now follow me quickly, you look quite dreadful.”
The room they had stepped into was warm and large, an entry hall with a high curved ceiling, stone floors and a wide curving staircase in the center.
Lucy, despite the precariousness of her state, was quite overtaken with awe. There was a tapestry on the opposite wall, paintings shrouded in shadow along the stair wall and on the ceiling itself. The flagstones below her feet were smooth and dipped in places. She was standing in a castle.
And the lady whose hand she held was, surely, her mysterious aunt. A benevolent figure she seemed, with soft gray eyes and dark hair, wearing a long black dress. A simple dress, and there was a sadness about her. Lucy could not tell if she shivered from excitement or as a consequence of having been out in the cold so long.
*
The lady brought Lucy up the stairs and down a long corridor whose floor was carpeted in a dark red. Blood red, thought Lucy, thrilling.
“Your room will be this one, Miss Ellsworth,” said the soft steady voice at her shoulder. The lady, Aunt Mary she must be, leaned past Lucy to open the tall ebony door.
Lucy, speechless with the potion of shivers, extended anticipation and dizzy elation, took in the room. It far exceeded her expectations. High ceilings once again drowned in black shadow, a four poster bed with heavy champagne-colored curtains, a tall intricately carved wardrobe at the foot of the bed and three small diamond-paned windows. The light in the room came from a row of candles on the small white fireplace.
“There now,” said the lady, a hand tracing Lucy’s shoulders. “You get yourself comfortable now, and I’ll fetch your aunt.”
At that, Lucy’s heart nearly gave out. Or she felt it certainly would. She flinched from the lady’s hand and hurried into the room.
“Dear!” said the lady, shaking her sad pale face. “Did I frighten you?”
Lucy’s pulse hammered madly in her neck, her legs trembled as if on the verge of giving out and she fled towards the bed.
“Miss Ellsworth?” prompted the lady, frowning.
“You are not—not—my—” she could scarcely get the words out. “You are not my aunt.”
The lady tilted up her chin and her face crinkled into an intense expression that only served to frighten Lucy further.
The lady laughed, shrill and screeching for a moment, then she choked a little and said: “Dear, dear Miss Ellsworth, whatever made you think I was your aunt?”
Speechless, Lucy stared at the carpet, at its blotchy swollen pattern of blue and yellow roses on a cream background.
“I’m the housekeeper,” said the lady. “My name is Aldira Bennett, and you may call me Miss Bennett.”
And before Lucy could collect herself sufficiently to provide any answer, Miss Bennett pulled the door shut and disappeared.
Lucy, shocked, still much weakened, and left entirely alone, collapsed upon her new bed in a fit of sobs. She sobbed until she could barely breathe, until she could hardly think, and the only thought that did manifest itself was a fevered chanting repetition of the following: barely anything has happened but I already feel like I’m imprisoned in a novel, and I hate it. I thought I should love it, but I hate it. I hate it.
Lucy was on the edge of widening her mouth in a soul-wrenching scream, when the door swung open again.
A low, amused voice said: “Hello, Lucy.”
Lucy, trembling violently, lifted her eyes, and said nothing.
The woman was petite, with black curly hair and a small, careful smile—Lucy’s mother’s smile. “Get up,” she said. “Don’t be so frightened. When I said I imagined you were a lover of novels I never pictured something quite as pathetic or far gone as this.”
“Novels,” repeated Lucy rather blankly, not understanding.
“Novels,” said the woman smiling. “You’ve clearly worked yourself into a frenzy of nerves being here. Why? Because it’s a castle?”
“It’s a castle,” whispered Lucy, “and—and your housekeeper deceived me. She—”
“She deceived you?”
Lucy blushed. “Well, not exactly deceived. But she lead me to believe she was my aunt, and it’s you is it not?”
“Yes,” said the woman. “I’m your Aunt Mary. I wrote you the letter.” She paused, took a step into the room. “What other fancies had you subjected yourself to?”
“The estrangement,” replied Lucy before she could think to stop herself.
“Your mother and I have a long and ridiculous history,” said Aunt Mary. “It’s not a secret because of a horrific, tragic betrayal or feud. Only a long and complicated story that I hope will in time have a happy ending. We fought over a man, but that was just part of it. Now, if you will, come and introduce yourself to me properly. You have not been transported to the scene of one of your beloved dreadful books. You are the niece I have been waiting my whole life to meet. And your mother must not hate me quite so much as she did, for she allowed you to come to me.”
“I suppose so,” whispered Lucy. Shakily but with increasing steadiness, she crossed the room to her Aunt Mary. “My apologies,” she said, and held out her hand. “My name is Lucy. I’m so pleased to meet you.”Reflection:
I’ve always wanted to read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Functioning partly as a satire of the Gothic Romance, and partially as a coming-of-age tale in its own right, Northanger Abbey tells the story of Catherine Morland’s first trip away from home. She goes to Bath with friends of her family and makes a number of connections there. There are the untrustworthy but charming Thorpes, and the kind, steady, although somewhat enigmatic Tilneys. Catherine has to learn who to trust and to follow her own intuition, a process that requires much trial and error but eventually results in a perfectly happy ending. Catherine, a lover of Gothic novels, also has to learn how to see real life dangers instead of focusing so much on imaginary ones that she ceases to pay attention to actual threats. When she goes to visit the Tilneys at their old family home, Northanger Abbey, she fabricates a narrative of Mr Tilney having murdered his wife. Being told off by her love interest, Henry Tilney, is what finally breaks the spell these novels have over Catherine. The conflict between imaginary and real threats, between charming people who cannot be trusted and less charming people who can, is central to Northanger Abbey.
This novel was a joy to read, and I couldn’t wait to experiment with my own small short story that echoed Austen’s parody of the Gothic genre. I wanted to explore a character, similar to Austen’s Catherine, who is similarly swept away by stories to the point that it interferes with her growth as a person. This arc of personal growth is a central part of Austen’s novel, and I wanted to mirror it in my short story. In Northanger Abbey, the same Catherine who was enthralled by Bath and everybody she met is a vastly different person at the novel’s end, when she is turned out of the Abbey by General Tilney for not being wealthy enough to marry his son. Instead of being swept away by romantic fantasies, Catherine faces what are an extremely dire and dangerous set of circumstances with maturity, endurance, and self-possession: “Catherine was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness.” (Austen, 196). The character growth in my short story is very minor compared to this, but still attempts to follow a similar arc.
I was also fascinated by Austen’s ability to critique the novel genre while writing in it. Northanger Abbey. Jane Austen is incredibly present as a narrator, and this almost omniscient third-person perspective is deployed regularly throughout the novel. In Tara Ghoshal’s piece “Northanger Abbey and the Limits of Parody”, she unpacks this: “Austen does more than invite her reader to join in a collaborative effort to debunk the conventions of sentimental novels, more even than to witness the emergence of a new kind of novel based on probabilities and psychological realism. She mocks and undermines her own chosen method of parody and discourse so that both narrative and reader are kept off-balance.” (Ghoshal, 265) Ghoshal’s analysis, and another much lighter piece by Siobhan McDonough: “Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is funny, just like love”, both attempt to capture how the novel functions both as a parody, a self-aware novel, and as an earnest and good novel in its own right. So I wrote my own small story about a girl who goes to stay in a castle with an aunt she’s never met and who perceives her situation as being much more “Gothic” than it really is, in a hopes of conveying this a bit parody (but not!) affect that Austen captures so perfectly.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Arcturus Holdings, 2021.
Wallace, Tara Ghoshal.“Northanger Abbey and the Limits of Parody.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 20, no. 3, 1988, pp. 262–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29532579. Accessed 11 May 2024.
McDonough, Siobhan. “One Good Thing: Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is funny, just like love”. Vox. 4 February 2022. https://www.vox.com/22904475/northanger-abbey-jane-austen-romance
Sprockets and Springes 