The Second Time Travel Megapack: 23 Modern and Classic Stories Read online

  Log Entry #1: Jake Lawson

  As planned, I downtemped to 5:00 a.m. local time on 15 May 1801, the target being the middle of the basin of Weldon’s abandoned caisson outside of Bath, England, the isolated site mentioned in Austen’s letter. Shorter and Long were already waiting there with clothing and transportation. My arrival went unobserved, as did Ms. Wardon’s jump several minutes later. We conducted a thorough search of the area with our infrared scanners, but located no one.

  Our carriage took us to the prearranged quarters in Green Park. There we again reviewed the mission parameters in the safe room. Team Leader Shorter emphasized the necessity of making regular field reports, and of closely maintaining our assumed identities. I am now the wealthy American aristocrat, Jacob Lawson, Esq., a native of Rhode Island, and Patricia Wardon has become my sister and ward, Miss Patsy Lawson.

  Despite our extensive training, our clothes still seem somewhat stiff and formal to me, as does the language and culture we must now employ. Still, most of the natives here will interpret any gaffes on our part as deriving from cultural or language differences; after all, we’re semi-foreigners. If they only knew how much!

  Log Entry #2: Patricia Wardon

  This is the fourth tempstep I’ve made, and I can never quite get used to arriving downtime with nary a stitch in place. I know the engineers have explained the scientific reasons why this must be so, something about biostatic energy not being transferable to inert objects, but if that’s the case, why don’t we also lose our teeth, nails, and hair at the same time? I’ve never gotten a straight answer to that one! At any rate, the English countryside in the wee hours of the morning is decidedly cold, even in late spring, and I was glad to find our two helpmates ready and able to assist us.

  Unlike Jake Lawson, I really enjoy dressing up in the fashions of other eras, and the pre-Regency period clothing is so different in style and fit from our period that it’s always a challenge for a big-busted girl. A pleasant challenge, I might add. Shorter and Long will become our servants, Rangel our coachman, and Ewbank the footman. The other servants will be hired from the local populace, as we need them.

  Log Entry #3: Jake Lawson

  I’ve now made contact with the target subject. I headed toward the Combhay Road after Long reported that Austen and her uncle had started on their slow walk to the “Cassoon” (as they call it) or caisson. All of Jane’s usual haunts have been bugged. I was strolling back toward town when James Leigh Parrot, Austen’s uncle, buttonholed me and requested my assistance. It seems that his niece, as we already knew, had sprained her ankle slightly at the bottom of Weldon’s Hill. I was only too happy to assist.

  Austen is plainer than I expected, a bit of a mouse, really, with narrow, pursed lips, and a slight frame which is not particularly complimented by gowns that emphasize the bodice, standard wear for the period. She also seems somewhat shy and withdrawn, but perhaps that’s just the nature of the beast. I find her in no way distinctive. Where’s the spark of creativity and intelligence that we were led to expect?

  Letter #2: Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen

  Paragon, Bath

  Saturday 16-Monday 18 May 1801

  My dear Cassandra,

  …The gentleman of whom I spoke yesterday, Mr Lawson, call’d upon us this morning, & presented his very good wishes for my recovery. I now think him quite charming. He has read many of the same books as you, & I am certain you will enjoy his company as much as I, when you come here in a fortnight. He intends to remain in Bath for the better part of the next month. My complaint is now very minor, & my ankle should be fit again by the time you arrive here.…

  Log Entry #4: Jake Lawson

  I remain distinctly unimpressed by this lady writer. I keep expecting flashes of brilliance, and instead all I get are rather mundane comments about the weather and polite society. Is this twenty-five-year-old woman really the individual who had written, by this stage in her life, the as yet unpublished Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility? I just can’t believe it.

  I mentioned to her several of the better-known books of the period, just to spur her interest, and she hadn’t read a one. “My sister Cassandra has a prevailing interest…” she would say, in this, that, or the other. I didn’t want to talk about Miss C., who is supposed to join Jane at Bath around the first of June, but was repeatedly forced by the author back to the topic. “Plain Jane,” as she is so aptly named, is so self-effacing as to display almost no personality of her own. What a letdown!

  Later

  Shorter tells me that I should curb my impatience, lest it slop over inadvertently into my public persona. “Shorter” is better, I guess!

  Letter #3: Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen

  No 1, Paragon, Bath

  Saturday 16-Monday 18 May 1801

  …My ankle is really very much improved today. This afternoon I walked with my uncle by the Canal, & there met Mr Lawson coming in the opposite direction, together with a fashionable young lady whom he introduced to us as his younger sister, Miss Patsy. She is very presentable, with a long nose & wide mouth & much exposed bosom, but her manner of speaking seems somewhat halting & even odd. I invited her to call upon us at Paragon on Tuesday….

  Log Entry #5: Patricia Wardon

  I finally met Jane Austen this afternoon. What an exhilarating experience! This petite young woman, looking somewhat older than her years, had obviously already sized up Jake and dismissed him as a nonentity. We had a perfectly delightful conversation, and I found her insights into the local society to be both pithy and extremely penetrating. I’m afraid poor Jake was quite put out by my hogging the conversation.

  In my excitement I slipped out of character a couple of times, I’m afraid. I used the word interface as a verb, which was just not done during this era, and failed to catch a passing reference to Cumberland, thinking it the county rather than the Prince of Wales’s younger brother, Prince Ernest Augustus, who had recently been ennobled by his father, King George III. My response left my audience somewhat befuddled, I fear. I hope she doesn’t think me too strange.

  Letter #4: Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen

  Paragon, Bath

  Tuesday 19-Wednesday 20 May 1801

  My dearest Cassandra,

  Miss Lawson called upon us in the morning, & I found her a most agreeable companion, but very forward for a young lady.—Later we went for a walk together in the Crescent fields, & she admitted she was writing a novel in the style of Mrs Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. I was amaz’d & excited at her sharing of my interest in stories of adventure & high romance, & so I told her of your own attempts to write down stories of country life, & she seem’d much interested in this. I long to see you again, & to introduce you to these new visitors from the Americas, who are proving most stimulating.…

  Log Entry #6: Patricia Wardon

  The most astonishing thing happened today. I paid my respects to Miss Austen, as I had previously promised, and she suggested that we take a walk outside of town. It was a lovely day, warm and clear, and I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to open up several avenues of communication. Before this mission began, I had already thought of telling her that I myself was a nascent writer, and had cleared the idea with Shorter before downtemping.

  Gothics were all the rage during the pre-Regency period, so I suggested to Jane that I was writing one in the style of Ann Radcliffe, one of the most popular purveyors of those wretchedly overwrought popular fictions. To my great surprise, Austen confessed that they were her favorite reading, when she read books at all. She also enjoys reciting the worst possible sentimental claptrap that passes for poetry in this period, and can’t stand any serious novels of quality, finding them so, so “tedious.”

  But this wasn’t the greatest revelation I was to receive this afternoon. Austen mentioned that her older sister, Cassandra Elizabeth, had also p
enned three “rather dull” novels of society, but had had no success thus far in getting any publisher to read them, and so had given up her literary career for the time being. Jane had even offered to recopy them in her much superior hand, since Cassandra’s penmanship was, she admitted with a smile that was almost a smirk, “utterly wretched,” and Jane suspected that her sister’s poor reception had probably been due to the inability of anyone else to read them. But Cassandra had refused Jane’s offer, and so the manuscripts had only been perused by a few family members.

  You could have blown me away, Theo! This was completely unexpected. However, the lady herself (Miss C.) will apparently be coming here in less than a fortnight, to employ the local vernacular, and so we shall see for ourselves, I suspect.

  Letter #5: Cassandra Austen to Jane Austen

  Kintbury, Newbury

  Friday 22-Saturday 23 May 1801

  My dear Sister,

  I was pleasd & very thankful to have received your latest letter, & do look forward so very much to seeing you again, & to being introducd to your new friends. Perhaps we can even draw a certain entertainment out of them, as we did at Pudding Hill. I will leave this unto your usual discrecion.

  I must relate that I saw Mr J.D. (who is visiting here) taking his customary walk on the Down this morning, & hastend to meet with him. He tells me the fanciful Mr W.S. is back to potching again, & that the Prince finds his scribbles most eminently amusing. I do wonder at the wisdom of this new forwardness, however, & dard to tell him so, by sending him a note thro’ Mr D.’s capable agency. We shall see what comes again of my interference in mine Elder’s business.

  Miss Wickizr wants me to assure you that her mother sends her most gracious thanks & best wishes for the half-cheese, which is now all consumd & eaten with the greatest pleasure, & promises to return the favour to you very soon.

  Tomorrow, I shall take a carriage to Conyngsdale Farm, where Mrs Appleby resides with her daughters, & there shall again attempt to make contact with our Freinds. I shall give you the precise details in a more personal forum, when next I see you at Bath.

  But, I must tell you now of the delicious news of the Miss Applebys & how one of them became engagd this past Thursday. It seems that Miss Euphemia had been meeting unexpectedly with Mr Buccleigh Everede, whilst pretending to be infatuated with the Revd Mr Bolitho, of St Camber’s Parish in Hornswoggle, who made a great to-do of coming & going to Maybarlee almost every day, & paying his respects to the young lady.

  Well, Mrs Appleby knew only what she forthrightly observd, that her second-born daughter was destind to become the bride of a well-constituted cleric, rather than of a gentleman of exceedingly good blood but lamentably poor finance, who scarcely had two guineas to enrich his most noble & excellent name.

  Now, the manner in which the truth was reveald was this, that Miss Leopoldine Appleby observd her younger sister secretly leaving the manor house one afternoon after tea, & followd her into the garden where, in a copse of trees, she spied the pair in intimate conversacion & etc. This tête-à-tête she immediately reported to dear Mama, who, I am told, collapsd in a fit of anger right then & there on the sofa, & had to be revivd by threatening to call a physician.

  Then, Mrs Appleby demanded of her daughter the entire truth, & Miss Euphemia admitted of the acquaintance without any further delay, & also stated, to wit, that she would not marry the Revd Bolitho even should her very life depend on it, whereupon her Mama swoond a second time, to the great consternacion of all.

  Now, I witnessd the events myself, since I was visiting there during the latter event. You will be pleasd to hear, however, that I did not interfere with the proceedings, but let them run their due course. As silly Mr S. is fond of saying, the course of love never did run true, but that is another story.

  But, to bring my tale to a close before this paper runs out, Miss E. is now engaged to Mr E., with the wedding to take place very soon, I am told. Everyone here talks of nothing else, & Mrs A. is still prostrated with the lamentacions.

  Yr Eldr Sister, C.E.A.

  Log Entry #7: Patricia Wardon

  Shorter insisted upon a meeting of the entire team this a.m., following the little bombshell that I dropped into my last report. Everyone was present: myself, Lawson, Shorter, Long, Elliott, Kintore, Rangel, Ewbank, and the techies, Newton and Kalvan.

  Shorter began the meeting with his usual practice of denigrating the two primary investigators, myself and Jake.

  “I certainly understand your impatience with the slow pace of events that one often experiences in the field,” he said, “but I must emphasize to all of you again that you should not begin drawing conclusions based upon so little evidence. I’ve been associated with eighteen of these drops over the years, and I’ve learned to curb my investigative zeal with a well-tempered distancing of oneself from the individuals involved.

  “To assume that Cassandra Austen is the author of Jane Austen’s novels flies in the face of all the scholarly and critical evidence of the last two centuries. It also, I might add, runs contrary to the multitudinous contemporaneous testimony of numerous members of the Austen family, who surely were in a position to know the correct identity of the rapidly-becoming-famous author rising in their midst.

  “The trouble is, you risk the entire mission (and your careers) through such impetuousness. Do not make the erroneous assumption that these two ladies are naïve or stupid or unobservant. Everything that we know about them speaks to the contrary. If you appear to be too far dislocated from this particular time and place, they will notice, I assure you, and this could have a disastrous effect on our history. Remember the case of Joseph Wardmere and his interference with the Diamond Jubilee, and how much effort it took for us to re-establish the correct timeline. We are here to visit and observe, not to interact.

  “Very well,” he concluded. “I expect you to respond like the highly-trained professionals you purport to be, and to perform the tasks established in our master plan, in the order given and at the times indicated. Then we will unobtrusively withdraw, all of us, never returning to this era again. Any questions?”

  I foolishly stuck up my hand.

  “Sir,” I said, “I really believe that we’ve chanced upon something here that could revolutionize the literary history of this era. If we don’t follow up now, if we can’t ask the appropriate questions, how will we determine whether or not our ideas possess some validity?”

  “Well, I guess we won’t,” Shorter said. “That’s not our purpose, Pat. We just record what happens, while other folks draw the conclusions.”

  Then Jake spoke up. “But Jane isn’t anything like she’s pictured in the existing histories and biographies,” he said. “I expected someone who was insightful, intelligent, and, well, interesting, and she’s none of these.”

  “That’s not for us to judge,” Shorter said. “Folks, either we do this the right way, or I’ll issue the recall order immediately. Do you understand?”

  We reluctantly nodded. But we weren’t very happy about it, no indeed, and I promised to myself that I would pursue any leads necessary to resolve this mystery.

  Letter #6: Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen

  Paragon, Bath

  Saturday 23-Monday 25 May 1801

  My dearest Cassandra,

  I return you my best thanks for your letter from Kintbury, & the account therein of the Miss Applebys’ adventures. Truly we abide in interesting times.—Our Mother remains abed with a cough, but it seems nothing for which anyone should have to worry. She was to accompany me to the Lawsons this morning, but instead Mrs Chamberlayne graciously agreed to stand in for her. The Lawsons have taken up residence in a fine little place in Green Park. You will remember that it was one of those houses that we ourselves had examin’d upon settling in Bath, but decided was too small for our needs.

  Miss Patsy was per
fectly hospitable, & her brother was ever the gentleman. I do believe Mrs Chamberlayne was impress’d by the way in which they received us. I inquir’d of Mr Lawson about their itinerary, & he stated that they would be returning to the Americas sometime later in June. He then spoke about the town of Providence & their home there & how much they miss’d their friends & acquaintances. Miss Patsy his sister wanted to know if I had myself ever taken up the pen, & so I told her about my one exercise in literature, whilst Mrs Chamberlayne mention’d my skill with another kind of implement, the brush. The hours pass’d very quickly & enjoyably, & we promis’d to meet once again as soon as you have arriv’d here.…