This is a little story I made up, oh, a few years ago now. Enjoy. I thought that it was funny when I read over it just a few minutes ago, and wanted to share it.
Afternoons with Austen
By Nelle“Well, I’m glad that it finished like that,” Charlotte said, “after all they have been through. They deserved to be happy.”
“You are such a romantic!” her companion cried, rolling his eyes. “When are you going to grow up? Things don’t happen like they did…two hundred years ago. ‘Persuasion’ is just a novel!” He had seen her grab a couple of tissues when the two main characters had finally got together in the end.
“But it just goes to show that humans haven’t changed over the years,” Charlotte replied.
“Okay, apart from the fact that it’s just a book, and a movie, how?”
“Well, there are still people in the world who are so easily persuaded; so easily stubborn as well,” adding the last bit as an afterthought. “Also, there are still people out there who want other people’s things, no matter what. Coveting…it’s a bad thing.”
“I suppose next you’ll say that people with second chances aren’t so easily persuaded the second time round,” he replied. Glenn couldn’t find anything else to say to Charlotte because it was true, though he hated to admit it.
“It depends on the circumstances, I suppose,” Charlotte said.
“Like what?”
“Well…” She paused, trying to collect a line of argument. “Like in ‘Persuasion’, if you were asked by the…girl you loved (I’m saying this for you, Glenn!) a second time, after eight years of separation, would you be persuaded against marrying her, like you were the first time?”
Glenn sighed. He knew one of Charlotte’s arguments was coming on. “No, I suppose not…If I still loved her. But what other circumstances are there?”
“Okay then. Well…If you had murdered someone,” Charlotte started, receiving a groan from Glenn, “and you got a second chance of undoing that wrong –”
“Okay…enough. You’ve proved your point,” Glenn interrupted. Charlotte always went on and on when she started.
“But I haven’t –”
“Finished. Oh, yes, you have. I know you – I’ve known you for years. Once you start talking, you go round and round in circles, and lose everyone, including yourself,” he retorted.
She glared at him for a moment, then smiled. Really, he wasn’t that bad a friend, and to actually sit through ‘Persuasion’ – one of Charlotte’s favourite Austin films – was a great feat for him, she knew. “Alright,” she said. “Did you enjoy it, anyway?”
“What, seeing those guys dressed up like that,” he answered, thinking that he was going to get her arguing again.
“But they look so stylish,” she said, wondering what his response would be. He looked at her blankly. He had taken in the costumes, and what the people had looked like in them, and never had he thought them stylish. “Oh-kay,” Charlotte said with a laugh in her voice and a broad smile. “I can see plainly by your face you didn’t think them stylish. Well…I can show you stylish. I just have to change disks.” Moving forward off the lounge in her TV room, she reached the DVD player before Glenn could say a word.
Exasperated by the way he was being treated, Glenn threw a cushion at Charlotte. “Don’t you dare put another one of those movies on,” he threatened. “I lost a bet, and watched ‘Persuasion’, but if you think I’m going to watch another one, the answer is emphatically NO!”
“It’s not another one. It’s a series…” – he groaned – “‘Pride and Prejudice’ is the book that was written, and I have to get the disk to the right chapter – to the Netherfield Ball, where Lizzy and Darcy dance for the first time! Now, that is where they wear stylish clothes,” Charlotte announced with something akin to pride in her voice. Glenn rolled his eyes as though to say ‘Heaven help me!’, but Charlotte just ignored his dramatics.
When Charlotte had got the disk ready and to the right chapter, she pressed play, smiling at Glenn as she did so. “This is the perfect spot. Just have a look at their clothes here. They are simply stunning some of them,” she announced. Glenn looked at the screen and sighed, watching the characters as they were ‘arriving’ at the ball. He then glanced towards his friend, and decided, with a glimmer of a smile on his face, to try and bait her again. “Is that the main girl of the story? What’s her name?” he asked.
Charlotte kept watching the screen. “Elizabeth Bennett, if you had been listening in class!” was all the reply he received.
“Oh…,” he said, disappointed with her response so far. The look of devilry, though, hadn’t left his face. “She doesn’t look too bad. Her figure isn’t too bad, either. And her hair, done like that, looks pretty nice.”
“Glenn! You’re supposed to be looking at their clothes! Not their figure!” Charlotte cried out, grabbing the nearest cushion and throwing it at him. She saw that he was smiling like he always did when she had been snared by his comments. “Oh! When will you grow up?” she exclaimed.
“Gotchya’” was the only response she got from him.
