Free A Walk with Jane Austen by Lori Smith Page A

matching long skirt and blouse. She works her hands together and looks at the ground and sort of hunches along. I wanted to know what she talks about and if anyone ever listens to her. I wondered, does she have children, and do they know this is how she spends her evenings? Does she have friends? Our loud group passed her on the way to the Head of the River pub, after our farewell banquet in Wadham College's four-hundred-year-old dining hall. I was in my favorite red Ann Taylor dress that's sleeveless, cut in to bare all of my shoulders, and falls to midcalf, grazing my minimal curves. I got to see that instant look of the best kind of surprise on Jack's face when I walked out on the lawn.
    As we walked to dinner—together in the crowd, as always—he said, “I was thinking, we should get pictures together.” So there we are, looking couplish, standing on the manicured lawn of the Wadham quad.
    I laughed that night like I hadn't laughed in ages, healing laughter. Lily got a Long Island Iced Tea, and they doubled the alcohol by mistake. The rest of us didn't need much motivation; our hearts were limber.
    I had spent an hour that afternoon back at the spot by the river, lying in the sun. I drifted in and out of sleep, afraid that I could actually sleep soundly there in the middle of the afternoon and not wake up until the sky was gray and I had missed everything. When you live like this—awake and exhausted almost all the time—you can never tell when sleep will come. You sort of have to obey it whenever it wants to make an appearance, but here I was denying it again. I paid for it later, as the unending laughter had me fighting off dry heaves, which have been making regular appearances every morning.
    In England they shut down all the pubs at 11:00 p.m. for some reason, as the result of some horrible law (which I understand they have now changed). When they kicked us out, we split up into smaller groups and wandered slowly back through town. We passed Christ Church again, curtains blowing by an open pane, passed lines of people on Cornmarket waiting for the midnight release of the new Harry Potter book, walked up St. Giles, always the quiet heaviness of the Oxford college buildings playing the counterpoint to our lightness. I walked next to Jack, close and connected somehow in spite of the fact that we did not touch—him with his arms crossed, me occasionally letting my hand hang free by my side. We didn't stop laughing, nor did I try to conceal the occasional dry heaves, until we got back to Wycliffe, and then with the sad realization that this was the end of our party.Everyone leaves tomorrow. Spencer goes back home to a job he wants to leave, Paul to a busy practice. Lily is going on a missions trip to work with disadvantaged youth in London, Jack to Jordan for research for his masters degree, me to a quiet Benedictine monastery in Hampshire, near Jane's home.
    have no idea what to expect, but I long for the peace of the monks.



Seven
Alton Abbey: Incense and Blooms
    A lady's imagination is very rapid;

it jumps from admiration to love, from love

to matrimony in a moment.
    —M R. D ARCY ,
P RIDE AND P REJUDICE
    I felt soft and light as I left Oxford the next afternoon. The whole world was beautiful, or my mind was just in a state to see beauty everywhere, like poet James Wright said: “If I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.” 1 The sun shone on the trees and on the vines that grew over the train tracks, and four trains—first to Reading, then to Ash, Aldershot, and Alton—took me from commercial Oxford into the hills and wheat fields of the green countryside. I was thrilled to be on my own—gloriously alone—me and my sixty pounds of luggage and my rail pass.
    My mind was full of goodness, of a tremendous confidence I cannot articulate—of Jacks regard, of my respect for him and his worthiness of it. I am sure I love him, though I'm afraid of using that word. I've never felt so sure of