Elizabeth was not easy to intimidate. As shaken as she was by her discovery in the music room, she was determined to return. While Mr. Darcy was away, she had a brief window to make a difference. There would be no excuses. There would be no days where she felt herself too tired or heartsore to venture into that awful room. For the sake of the sweet girl in the darkness, she was prepared to walk through fire.
At first, to her shame, it felt like a duty. She dreaded creeping down the hallway, pretending that she was going into other rooms if the servants saw her. Sometimes it took over an hour to get through the door. Until she learned Miss Crocker’s routine, she had to wander up and down the hallways waiting for the woman to leave. It was humiliating to be reduced to such subterfuge in her own home, but it was the only way. Darcy had forbidden her to go into the music room. While she had no intention of obeying her husband, she certainly didn’t want to make him angry.
After her slow advance down the hallways, once the creaking doorhandle was under her fingertips, Lizzie had to will herself to go in. The dark room with its deathly silence and stench of dust and sickness was a waking nightmare to someone who lovedbeing outside. How she longed to open the windows and let the fresh air stream in!
Miss Crocker made sure that the room was always dark. Perhaps it was part of the doctor’s treatment. Elizabeth could not ask Mrs. Reynolds what the doctor had recommended, but nobody in the house seemed to have any objections to the dark room and the dusty instruments. Miss Crocker only let the other servants in there to clean, and she did not let them come near to Miss Darcy at all. Indeed, she held up a shawl so that her young charge was completely hidden from view.
It must be to protect Georgiana’s dignity,Elizabeth thought.
She discovered a great deal about the servants by crouching beneath the piano when Miss Crocker came into the room. The nurse took great pleasure in ordering around the other maids but did very little herself. Everything she told them to do was due to some doctor’s order or another.
The windows were to stay closed all the time, for Miss Darcy’s lungs are so very delicate. Do not replace the candles; her eyes are weak, and it will hurt her dear little head. Oh no, the musical instruments must not be touched! They are Miss Darcy’s, not yours. She must give the orders for them herself.
It was baffling. Miss Crocker spoke with absolute authority and was obeyed, but many of her orders made no sense. She spoke about Georgiana needing constant care, yet she disappeared for long stretches at a time and never seemed in any particular hurry to return. The foods she ordered were rich and nourishing, and yet Georgiana was so thin! Elizabeth watched a few times when Miss Crocker fed her - the woman sometimes only offered her a few spoonfuls before getting bored and leaving the room again.
Elizabeth could not talk to Mrs. Reynolds about any of this. She tried, tactfully, to ask the housekeeper if she ever observed Miss Crocker about her duties. Mrs. Reynolds had gone stiff, and her voice sounded as if she had a mouthful of sand.
“She has her orders from the doctor, not from me. I tried once, and she called me an interfering old biddy. Me, a biddy! Mind you, that was back when the master was away. She watches her tongue a little more now, for she knows not to cross him.”
“Did you tell Mr. Darcy what she’s like?”
Mrs. Reynolds hesitated, “Madam, it satisfies Mr. Darcy to know that his sister is being cared for. He knows he cannot do it himself, and none of the servants are trained to work with… with young ladies, ma’am. He follows the doctor’s advice, and Miss Crocker is the one who was sent to us. I suppose she can be as rude as she likes, ma’am, as long as she keeps Miss Darcy well.”
Does she?Elizabeth thought.Does she, really?
Elizabeth decided that, for now, it was better to keep watch unnoticed. She could neither admit that she had been in the music room, nor prove that anything underhanded was happening. So, she was very cautious and made sure that she disturbed nothing in the room. Miss Crocker would never find so much as a cup out of place in her domain.
Every day, when she finally made it through the hallways, Elizabeth sat on the floor at Georgiana’s knees and gently held her hand. That was all. She would close her eyes to block out the dust and the darkness and breathe steadily and quietly.
After an hour, she would stand up, whisper a goodbye, and then start her cautious journey into the garden. Once she was outside, she would find a hidden tree, wrap her arms around the trunk, and let herself cry.
The only thing that made her smile during those few bleak days was thinking of her husband. Unaware of her deception, he became the keystone she built her new life around. He wrote letters to her every day, and she kept them on her bedside table so she could see them when she woke up. At least that way they still had their mornings together.
With every letter she wrote, it became more difficult to lie to him. Elizabeth dearly wanted to tell Darcy the truth, but she knew that he would be angry. Furious, even. Now that she had finally met Miss Darcy, she understood what he wanted to protect her from. She had been irritated by him before, resenting her loss of purpose and his apparent distrust in her abilities. With Georgiana’s blank eyes and her sobbing spirit came horrible understanding.
Elizabeth’s heart ached. She could not begin to imagine how Darcy felt. He had been the one to find his sister after the ‘accident’. Elizabeth used to think he meant he had found Georgiana retching from whatever she drank, but it was far worse. Darcy would have seen the blood on her nails, and the gouges on her arms and throat and cheeks and heard her last few screams before she locked herself away from the world forever.
When Elizabeth hugged the tree in the garden, she pretended it was Darcy. It was hard to make herself let go.
After a week of gentle silence, Elizabeth started speaking to Georgiana. She did not say anything important, nor did she pretend that the silent girl was speaking back. She told her that the heavy frosts had made the lake eerily still. She spoke about the way the clouds were yellow and heavy with snow. She described the new dress that she was to wear at Christmas, and the luscious smell of the heavy beeswax candles which had replaced the tallow ones in the house.
“Except from in here, it seems.” she added, looking around the room, “You see by firelight alone.”
She peeked up at that. It was the first time she had said anything about the sorry state of the room. Surely Georgiana would have some reaction to it. She was a Darcy, used to the finest things.
There was nothing.
Elizabeth was not discouraged. She kept speaking, choosing topics at random, and found that she was starting to enjoy herself.
Darcy disliked wasting time on frivolous chatter. Elizabeth had shared his opinion at first, but recently had begun to miss the inane way she used to speak with Lydia and Kitty. They would say the first things that came into their minds. Sometimes they were silly, sometimes serious, but Elizabeth always walked away from their company feeling as if she had been relieved of the weight of sensible thought… at least, for an hour or so.
Thus it was with Georgiana: silly stories, logical thoughts, idle musings and even barbed complaints. The silent girl became her confidante.
But Lizzie never pretended she was speaking back.
One day, struggling for a topic, Lizzie’s eye drifted over to the harp. She was no great musician, but the sight of such a majestic instrument gathering dust made her melancholy.
“I would dearly like to pluck a string and shake off the dust, but I cannot. If they hear me, I will not be allowed to see you again.” she said, stroking Georgiana’s hand idly. “It must sound beautiful. I have only heard the harp being played a few times, and those were very ill. Most of the people I know learned the pianoforte, and of course we sing. I am more like a sparrow thana songbird, but at least I am not like my sister. She is like a crow! I wish I could have learned the harp. I do not think I would have needed to be forced into my lessons. I would have played scales from sunrise to sunset.”
