“What?” Dragged out of my deep thoughts by Wilson’s voice, I shook my head to clear my vision.
“The weather is foul this morning. Should you go out with Mr Yardley?” My maid was looking at me in that proprietary way of hers. She was not precisely affectionate, but she took prodigious care of me.
“Of course I should not, Wilson. Nor am I so deluded I believe I am indispensable to Pemberley. Anyone can take food to the sick in my place and no one would remark upon it. But if I am honest, I go for the purely selfish reason that I will go mad with restlessness if I do not.”
I looked at her in the mirror across the room as I slipped out of my robe. She was looking at me in that same mirror from her position at the dressing table. Our eyes met, and for a moment I thought I might burst into tears.
“Well then,” she said briskly, “I will get out your woollens. Might I send to your dressmaker for a few flannel petticoats, ma’am?”
“A few warmer things would be most welcome. I trust you not to break me?”
She smiled a tight, wry smile. She knew I hoarded my money and she wished I would not. But the idea of running to London had never appealed so much as it did those days of hard winter when Mr Darcy’s cold dislike had been kindled anew. I know not why I could once bear his freezing disdain with a kind of understanding, and now his disgust had me writhing in agony. Where was the ground under my feet? I was lost.
Hecould run away whenever he liked, and I began to resent his freedom as much as I longed for my own. My breath quickened at the notion of escape, and I believed I would go if I had the smallest refuge in the world.
The hard truth remained, however, there was nowhere to go, and so I ran to the only place available—to the sickbeds, tothe children in need, to the spinsters and unfortunate souls clinging to gentility by threads, to my motherless new sister, to the parish poor. I ran anywhere I could to escape being alone with my own motherless, threadbare heart. I worked myself into a state of exhaustion from which I did not rest.
38
Dear Lizzy,
I thank you for your letter and for your gift. We will be allowed to go to the shops at the end of the month, and I will buy a warm nightgown and woollen slippers. Mrs Dolby does not sanction heat in our rooms, and we are not allowed to go to them except to sleep, wash, and dress. She says that comfort encourages sloth. For once in my life, I long to be housed in the same room as my sisters. We would at least warm each other in bed.
We are kept apart because Mrs Dolby says that reliance on one another is a false comfort, that it can be corrupting, and such attachments should be given up with childhood. She prepares us to move away from each other and says to be alone in the world is rational and realistic.
I no longer read doctrine, Lizzy, as I get my fill of it here. In the evenings when we are sitting over needlework,I try to recollect the few novels we read aloud as girls, resurrecting stories in my mind. Alas, when I had the comfort and joy of family, I scorned them in favour of cold philosophy, and now they are lost to me.
I look forward to nothing. My prospects for marriage are poor. Mrs Dolby says the Bennet sisters would be better off seeking positions as companions and governesses than aspiring to motherhood. She regularly expresses her disgust of us, to prepare us, she says, for the disdain of the world when we enter it. We are disgraced and never allowed to forget the fact, and I begin to wonder why I was even born.
Forgive me, Lizzy, for pouring out my heart in this pitiful way. I know you have the worst trial of all of us. Forgive me, too, for I have not loved you as I should.
Your sister,
Mary
P.S. Kitty and Lydia have asked to enclose notes with my letter.
I really should not have reread this letter. I wept for more than one reason when I did. I wept for my sisters’ misery, their bewilderment, the harshness of their punishment. They were still very close to being children.Oh Papa! Could you not take your anger out on me alone?
I wept, too, because I only sought to help Mary by bringing her to Pemberley, and that impulse of protection had been the source of such acute pain for me. Mr Darcy came yesterday, bringing half a dozen hands to work the farms of those unable. He took dinner in his study with Mr Johnson and never once looked at me before leaving again at first light. I wiped my tears and read the twonotes still sitting on my lap.
Dear Lizzy,
I thank you for your gift. If we are ever allowed to go anywhere, I will spend all my money on a shawl or perhaps warm boots. You would be very proud of me. I am learning French, and drawing, and sums, and my back aches from sitting straight the whole day through. They will not let me sit with Lydia or even Mary here, and Mama has not once written to me.
How long does Papa mean to punish us? Could you not write to him and ask him to relent?
Your loving sister,
Kitty
And last I read:
Dear Lizzy,
I thank you for your gift. If I find a way to run away, I will go straight to the bakery and buy a basket of cakes. I am starving! Could you not send some more money right away? I heard Mr Darcy is very rich.
Lydia
