“What a horrid thing!” Elizabeth exclaimed. Poor woman to have been raised by a woman who could say such a thing about her.
“You cannot imagine how many pains I took over Anne’s education. But she always resisted me. She would say that she would do a thing, but then she would sit at it and stare. She was scared to ride. She would not stand straight, and she claimed that she could not. She did not learn the piano, nor the harpsichord, nor any other instrument. She did not have the lungs to sing. Her knitting and embroidery were imprecise and too tight or loose by turns. No matter how I castigated her, she refused to become better. She showed no energy, she became more lethargic. We bled her to take the excess off, but even that exigency improved nothing. And then as she became a woman,she was an ugly little thing. I am a tall, strong woman. She was… insignificant, quiet, a mouse. No spirit. No will. Nothing.”
“Did she ever speak back to you? Show any spirit when she was younger?”
That spasm of pain came over Lady Catherine’s face. “Never in any real way. We were terrors for our parents, all of us in my generation. And she… just sat there. Never a word back.”
The two sat quiet.
“Only once. When she was a little older. She’d had a doll she doted on, kept as her friend, talked to, kissed on the forehead. This was seemly when she was a young child, but she kept the doll about her, even when she had already reached twelve years of age. It was too old. I could not bear the shame of it. I knew those amongst my acquaintance who laughed at me for permitting my daughter to so openly dote upon a doll, when she ought to be full of accomplishments.”
“How odd,” Elizabeth said, pale with a sense of horrified expectation for where Lady Catherine’s story would go.
“Miss Bennet, if you have girls, I beg you to never let them become used to any childish possession, whether a blanket, a doll or a toy. Be like Rousseau recommends, taking away anything they value so that the only habit they can form is the habit of having no habits.”
“I promise,” Elizabeth replied quietly, “to not soon forget your words.”
“So, I took it from her.” Lady Catherine swirled the wine in her glass again. She drank the rest back, and continued, “Anne screamed, and cried, and hissed like a woman possessed. I thought she’d burst a vein. I had some hope afterwards that she would show a like spirit on a matter of importance, but never nothing else.”
There was a lapse into silence.
“What happened to the doll?” Elizabeth asked, when it became clear that Lady Catherine did not mean to include that information in the story.
“Oh, what? Oh, yes. We had it burned. In that fireplace across from us now. We stirred up the ashes so there would be nothing to be found, and made Anne watch so she would not pine in hope that I may one day relent and return it. Only sensible course.”
Elizabeth had a sudden desperate urge to write to Mama and make sure that a little rag doll she’d been very fond of as a child was still packed away safely in the attic. She would certainly retrieve it when she visited Longbourn again, and take it with her, as a small, meaningless way of spiting Lady Catherine.
Her Ladyship added, “Darcy did not mean to marry her. He’d told me as much, that he was determined against it. I could not have that, so as my sister was dying, I convinced her to beg him to marry Anne, as the last favour to a dying woman. He is a good boy. He was. Since Anne’s death, he has proven wholly ungovernable. At least he has sworn, or so I have heard, to not marry again. He should not. He should make his whole life a temple to Anne’s memory.”
Elizabeth sipped her own wine. She made a half nod, which might have been taken as approbation by Lady Catherine. It was odd, this mix of loss and grief. The way that Lady Catherine clearly had despised her own daughter.
Some mixed feelings, such as what Elizabeth felt towards her mother, seemed to be within the ordinary course of nature, but this was not.
For a while neither spoke, and in her contemplative mood, Elizabeth was not inclined to bother her Ladyship. From the state of drunken melancholy that was evident in her Ladyship’s every lineament, it was not likely that any attemptat conversation would be welcome. Elizabeth by no means held Lady Catherine in the sort of affection that might lead her to attempt to tease the woman out of her poor moods.
Quite the opposite.
“Another glass of wine. Pour.” Lady Catherine imperiously ordered. “My hand is unsteady.”
Elizabeth followed the order and gave the glass to Lady Catherine, who eagerly drank.
“And after that greatest triumph, when the blood of Fitzwilliam was to be mingled again, she disappointed me once more. Every time the girl became with child she miscarried. Again, and again. What an… ungrateful daughter.”
“It was not a matter in her own control!” Elizabeth exclaimed, unable to stop herself.
“And then she died! When shefinallycarried a child to term, she only gave us a girl. Agirl. Darcy says he will not marry again, but he might. And he might have ason. And then Rosings and Pemberley will be split again. My daughterfailedin the end. Damn her memory.”
Elizabeth stayed silent.
Lady Catherine was volatile in this dank mood. The light was dying outside, the evening was far advanced, and the conversation on the far side of the room was subdued. Everyone studiously did not look towards them. They must fear catching Lady Catherine’s eye when she was in this present state.
Sad, pathetic old woman.
“Anne, or Catherine. She should have named the girl after me or my beloved sister. Darcy would not have objected,” Lady Catherine said. “But that is not what she asked. With nearly her last voice she spat on me.”
“Emily is not a family name?”
“It was the name of that bedamned doll!”
