long-awaited pleasure trip to Lyme is thrown utterly to the winds.
But I write entirely of outcomes, and am quite heedless of causes; a testament to the discomposure of my mind. I shall step back, the better to govern the tumult of my reason, and endure again the horror of those moments that left my dear one insensible in a stranger's bed.
BATH BEING UNBEARABLY HOT THIS AUGUST, AND MY FATHER'S health indifferent, we determined to exchange our rooms in Town for more salubrious ones along the coast. We had little inclination to try the bustle and vulgarity of Rams-gate,1 though my brother Edward would take a large establishment there; Brighton was not even to be spoken of; and so to Dorsetshire we would go, and to Lyme Regis in particular, having made a several-weeks’ trial of its delights the previous autumn. No coaching inn should be good enough accommodation on the present occasion, however; none of your Three Cups or Golden Lions would do for us—no, the Austens of Bath should travel in style, and take furnished lodgings. A cottage on the water, where my mother might gaze at the sea, and consider her Naval sons, and my father might indulge his passion for botany in walks along the shingle, should do very well. Cassandra and I meant to be happy with frequent turns about the Cobb,2 and even more frequent dances in the town's pretty little Assembly Rooms; our memories of the place were so cheerful, in fact, that the plan met with immediate approval. Bath was forgotten; Ramsgate consigned to those of little sense or taste; and Lyme became the object of all our fondest hopes.
Being possessed of a fortune that no longer admits of a private carriage, but finding ourselves above the meaner conveyance of mail coach and stage—the former being adjudged too swift and precarious for my father's temper, and the latter too crowded and vulgar for my mother's— we were forced to adopt the only alternative, a post chaise initiating in Bath, with horses changed daily en route. Having descended towards the southern coast by way of Shepton Mallet, Somerton, and Crewkerne, as recommended by Paterson's3 we were even yet embarked today upon the final stage of our journey, with a new postboy, hailing from Lyme, mounted before; when the appearance of a murkiness upon the horizon gave rise to general alarm. Our fears were rewarded, as such fears generally are, with the sudden convergence of a gale above our heads; and the fierceness of the wind and rain that then ensued was indescribable.
Though it was not much beyond six o'clock, the light had failed utterly, leaving the interior of our coach in a grey dimness through which the faces of my sister and mother, seated opposite, shone palely. Cassandra, who is ever indisposed by the motion of a carriage, and who, after long days of travel, was at the last extremity of her endurance, was in very ill looks; and her temper could hardly be improved by the proximity of my mother, whose general alarm at the fearful neighs of the horses as the storm built wrathfully above our heads, and the postboy's resultant curses, had taught her to seek comfort in a fierce pinching of Cassandra's hand within her own. I observed the whitened knuckles of her grip, and silently thanked the force of chance that had placed me beside my father.
“We shall be overturned! I am sure of it! Overturned, Mr. Austen!” my mother cried.
“Now, my dearest,” my father said, in a tone ofgende reproof, “you must not give way to womanly fears. The Lord looks after His own.”
“Then He must be looking after them in Town,” my mother replied, in some exasperation, “for He is assuredly not along the Lyme road at present. We shall be overturned, and all of us killed, and I should like to know what you will say then, Mr. Austen. I am sure you shall be very sorry you did not listen to your wife!”
“Now, my dear,” my father said again, and took up once more his book.
A fearsome jolt then occurring, I was thrown abruptly against the coach window, and seized my chance to gaze out upon a storm-tossed world. The pitted road, but poorly maintained in the best of times, was awash in muddy water; the adjacent trees lashed into silvery indistinctness by the combined effects of wind and rain; and no relief apparent in the lowering density of cloud. I drew back to the