“We had no dowries,” she explained, and I wondered whether she could read my mind.
But still, they were the handsome daughters of a landed gentleman. Their prospects were far from hopeless.
“If you must have it, sir,” she said grimly, and then I knew for certain shecouldhear the thoughts in my head, “my mother was sister to Mrs Philips. She was just as loud as that lady and sometimes shockingly overt in her matrimonial aspirations for us. She was, in fact, quite vulgar about it. She could not see her attempts at matchmaking were off putting. More than one eligible gentleman ran from us, and I blushed to be pushed in front of one man after the other, suitable or not. Isuppose sheer mortification caused me to counter her efforts by refusing to be demure.”
“So that is where you sharpened your claws, is it? On the hides of your poor suitors?”
“Consistently. But I digress. Lydia was caught. My second-youngest sister, Kitty, who is malleable and fretful, was discovered to be her accomplice. For the first time in his life, my father was shocked and remorseful. He was, you see, a hardened cynic by then, having lived with my mother’s hysteria and unable to respect her at all.”
“And he sent them to school?”
“No, no. That would have been too simple. How can I explain such a stupid chain of events?”
“You need not.”
“But I wish you to know, sir. You would understand us better, I hope.” I walked along in anticipation of her explanation while she searched the sky as if for a reprieve from her confession. At last, she glanced apologetically at me and said, “My father turned his self-disgust against my mother. He became even more cold and critical of her. He berated her intelligence, even in company, and he made a point of countermanding her every edict. She became fretful, weepy, and eventually took to her bed. I suppose she sought sympathy or respite from his disgust, but this ploy only earned her more displeasure. All of us, even Jane, regularly spoke toher bracingly, sternly, or even provokingly in an attempt to shake her from her ridiculous notion that she was ill.”
“And then she died.”
“Yes! And a more shocking day I cannot describe because none of us believed she was sick at all.”
“Of what cause did she die, may I ask?”
“Does it matter? In fact, she had a tumour, but that absolves us of nothing.”
“And yet you still believe she willed herself to die?”
“Had she not weakened herself so severely with such tortured thoughts and feelings, I wonder whether she would have fallen prey to her disease.”
“You resent her for having died?” I gently suggested after a long, respectful pause.
“I certainly resent my treatment of her, my lack of sympathy, and my failure to care for her when she suffered. As do we all. You have seen my father. He is humbled. He has become a very old man before our eyes. I abhor how this has changed him. He staggers under the guilt of believing he should have been kinder to her, that he, in fact, killed her with cruelty.Wehold him blameless. We share his guilt, for as I have confessed, we were not always patient with our mother and found her complaints exasperating. Yet, no matter how much we absolve him, he cannot forgive himself.” She swallowed and looked downcast, before murmuring, “And look what all this has done to Jane.”
