* * *
The next morning dawned clear and bright but bitterly cold. Mary watched Mr Jones shake off his chill as he entered Longbourn, where Mrs Bennet was nearly insensible with pain and fever, despite the caring efforts of Kitty and her father.
Mr Bennet stifled a yawn and looked blearily at the apothecary. “She seems to be declining, sir. What is your prognosis?”
“She is declining,” Mr Jones admitted frankly, “but it is not hopeless. I have never seen a pneumonia of any kind which did not appear very dangerous at some point.”
Mr Bennet nodded wearily. “Then we shall continue to hope, and to work towards a happy resolution. Go and see my Lydia now, sir.”
When Mr Jones entered Lydia’s room, he asked Mary to draw the drapes before he removed the day-old covering from her sister’s eye. Calling for warm water, he soaked the flannel in it and laid it again over the eye while examining her rash and listening to her lungs, which he pronounced entirely clear.
Mary watched as he again removed the flannel, gently pried open the eye, and frowned again, more deeply, at what he saw. It was Lydia who spoke first.
“It is very foggy, is that expected?”
The apothecary sighed. “I am afraid that the ulceration has spread despite my efforts. Your sight has been damaged; how far, we shall not know until it has healed. I am very sorry.”
Lydia began to cry, and Mary blinked away tears before saying, “Mr Jones, how likely is it to spread to the other eye?”
“I cannot say.” He shook his head as he replaced the covering on Lydia’s eye. “I will return in a day or two.”
“Lord, I am going to be uglyandblind!” Lydia wailed when the door closed.
“Only half-blind,” Mary replied without thinking, and then clapped a hand to her mouth in horror. But after a moment of shocked silence, Lydia giggled.
“Yes, only half,” she agreed through laughter that was borne as much from hysteria as humour. “And perhaps only half-ugly, too.”
Mary sat on the bed beside Lydia and pulled her into an embrace, maintaining a patient silence as sobs and laughter alternated and her shoulder grew progressively more damp. When the storm had passed, she brushed tumbled curls off of Lydia’s face as the younger girl gave a great yawn.
“Sufficient unto the day, my dear,” Mary murmured. “Sleep, sister, and I shall think on how we are to get through this. Leave it all with me.”
* * *
Having responded to Mary’s frantic plea for advice on raising Lydia’s spirits as best she could, Elizabeth unfolded her other letter, from Charlotte, with no notion of the astonishing news it would contain.
Dearest Lizzy,
You shall never guess what has happened. Indeed, I can hardly account for it myself.
Mr Jones has asked if he may call upon me ‘when all of this is behind us’, and I have consented. Oh, I wish I might have seen your face as you read that. I know I am older than he, and he is poor, but I believe I may be in a fair way to falling in love with him. I have never been romantic, you know this. I have long said that I would marry any man who asked, so long as he was respectable, but now I cannot countenance the thought of spending my life with anyone I like less than I do Mr Jones. If that is not love, then what is it? Perhaps you, my dearest friend, can tell me.
Charlotte
Elizabeth stared at the page for some moments. Then she let out a peal of joyous laughter and cried, “Jane! Charlotte is in love!”
Jane raised her head from the pillow and smiled. “You cannot simply leave it at that. Come and tell me all.”
“I shall do better,” Elizabeth said, removing herself to her sister’s side, letter in hand. “I shall read you her own words on the matter.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” Jane sighed, hands clasped together at her breast, once the happy recitation had concluded. “I know of none—save my dearest sister, of course—more deserving of such happiness.”
“And Mr Jones is an excellent man. Though he has little enough, I am confident Charlotte would want for nothing of significance as his wife,” added Elizabeth with satisfaction. “I hope very much that he will ask her!”
Jane took her sister’s hand and squeezed it, beaming with joy for their friend. “And how lovely, Lizzy, that two worthy people should find each other in the midst of such sorrow and hardship.”
The warmth of Jane’s hand in her own recalled that of another, only days ago. The image of Mr Darcy’s concerned, earnest gaze appeared in her mind’s eye.Charlotte has found a suitor among her trials, and I have found a friend among mine.If there was an inexplicable sense of dissatisfaction lingering at the edges of that thought, she disregarded it.
As they canvassed the many ways in which they felt Charlotte and Mr Jones suited to each other, Elizabeth found her thoughts straying more and more often to the subject of Jane’s heart, and Mr Bingley’s. Would he—could he—maintain that inclination, so promising before her illness, now that her beauty was gone? For gone it was, at present, as much as Elizabeth ventured to hope that time would restore some of it. The scars would slowly fade from their current livid pink; if she were very fortunate, only a hint of the pitting would remain after the passage of many months. How much of Mr Bingley’s affection was bound up in her appearance? And how much of Jane’s heart was bound up in his affection? She fervently hoped that the answer to neither question would prove to be ‘too much’.
