Chapter Two #2
When Elizabeth reached the door to the drawing room, she heard Mr. Phillips loudly saying, “Would have been better if she died. Jane would be a small heiress. With Mrs. Bennet’s fortune and what was left in Mr. Bennet’s accounts she would have six thousand, and maybe a little more. But half that is nothing.”
“Do not say that,” Mr. Gardiner sharply said. “She is—”
“Lizzy is no use to any of us now,” Mr. Phillips insisted. “She’ll never marry, and she’ll be an expense to everyone. She won’t add to our connections, just our expenses.”
“With the income from her three thousand,” Mr. Gardiner said, “I can hardly imagine that Elizabeth will ever be a burden.”
“She is a burden on Jane,” Mr. Phillips replied.
“With Jane’s beauty—you should have seen her before she went north to visit with Mr. Darcy again.
Only fourteen, but a girl like that will be one of the prettiest in the world.
She could have married very well with six thousand.
Maybe not a Lord, but very well indeed.”
“And Elizabeth should have died for her ability to marry a rich man? You would hurt our dear niece so that our other niece might make a somewhat better marriage?”
“Do not say it would be only somewhat better.” Mrs. Phillips took the side of her husband on this issue, though in general the two of them far preferred to disagree than agree. “With six thousand she might attract an entirely better sort of suitor.”
“Hear, hear,” Mr. Phillips added. “A pity that she lived. Poor girl, blind, scarred, there can’t be any joy in a life like that. I hope that I would die first,” Mr. Phillips said.
“I rather hope that as well,” Mr. Gardiner replied acidly.
Then there was quietness. After a time, Mr. Gardiner rose to walk about the room.
Footsteps had begun to tell a clear story of people’s motion to Elizabeth.
“I should not have said so much. We should not argue. Everything about the case is deeply unfortunate. But if Elizabeth ever needs to live amongst us, let us agree now that she shall live with me rather than with you.”
Overhearing this conversation had no impact on Elizabeth’s general spirits—as already noted, she put no great store at this stage of her life in the achievement of matrimony, and otherwise she did not think much of her mother’s sister, that sister’s husband, or their opinions.
She thought, incorrectly, that she did not actually care much about the opinion of anyone but herself now that her father was dead.
However, the strength of the gratitude and warm feeling that Elizabeth felt towards Mr. Gardiner when she slipped smiling back to the bedroom (now recalling her promise to him to not make too much trouble for Mrs. Phillips), suggests that perhaps she did care for his opinion.
When I say that Elizabeth’s chief emotion at this time was boredom, I ought to be clear: She desperately grieved her father, her sisters, and even her mother—though said mother had often insisted that she was the least favorite, and most difficult of her daughters—her dreams were filled with conversations with her father in which he laughingly explained how it had all been a silly mistake, and of course he was not dead.
She was not blind in those dreams.
Every third night she woke from a nightmare as the beam fell to crush Lydia.
Many times, Elizabeth was crushed by the collapsing house, and the dream ended with a sensation of great pain in her chest as Lydia escaped, screaming as she ran.
Her sister’s face was always clear and so desperate in the dream.
When it had happened, Elizabeth had not been able to see Lydia’s expression at all due to the smoke and dark, just a vague outline of her sister’s body.
Still, Miss Elizabeth Bennet did not possess the sort of spirit which a girl ought to have after they had lost nearly their entire family in a single harsh blow of fate.
Despite sobbing or fighting the desperate need to sob for twenty minutes every day, she mostly craved attention, interest, things to do, strange textures to feel, the chance to learn additional facts, and the opportunity to observe the characters of those around her, and to laugh at their foibles as she had been taught to by her father.
One day she tore apart with her fingers the threading that kept the pieces of her quilt together, after which she was yelled at by both Mrs. Phillips and the housekeeper.
The housekeeper wanted to have her birched—something Papa never did—saying, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”
However, while Mrs. Phillips was quite angry with Elizabeth for the (only in a small area, and the repair was easy enough!) destruction of one of her quilts, Elizabeth’s laughing declaration that if she was healthy enough to be whipped, she was healthy enough to walk about outside, convinced Mrs. Phillips that it would not be in accordance with the doctor’s instructions to punish Elizabeth at present.
Instead, Mrs. Phillips contented herself with a lecture upon the girl’s wickedness, ingratitude, and general lack of propriety.
Ingratitude was a fault worse than any other in womankind, and now that she was forever to be a burden upon her family, she must strive to always cultivate gratitude, or else confess herself to be the vilest sort of creature.
Elizabeth did not say so much, but she was of the view that one owed very little gratitude to a person who wished they were dead.
However, the speech did have some effect on Elizabeth’s spirits for the remainder of the day.
She asked herself half seriously if the deaths of all her family was a way of God punishing her for something that she had done wrongly.
But then Elizabeth reasoned it out: The fire had been wholly accidental.
It had been one of those things that simply happened from time to time.
Second, if she believed scripture, God loved her sisters and parents as much as her, and so he would not have killed them simply to teach Elizabeth a lesson.
Omnipotence could have found ample other means to make her suffer without harming the innocent.
And, finally—I know that this speaks very poorly of Miss Elizabeth’s character—she was conscious of no serious defects in herself that deserved either punishment or correction.
The boredom that made her wish to destroy things simply because she was inactive did get a little relief when Mr. Gardiner gave her a variety of things that he’d thought of on his own account, and that a blind acquaintance of his had suggested might entertain her.
These included a jew’s harp, a cup and ball toy, a pack of cards that she could shuffle, fan, or stack, and an expensive dissected wooden map of Europe that Elizabeth could take apart and put back together by feel.
Mrs. Phillips thought it was ridiculous, as Elizabeth could not see any of the markings on the map, but she loved Mr. Gardiner for buying it for her.
It was a week after Mr. Gardiner returned to London when at very, very, very, very long last Mr. Darcy’s son arrived to prevent her death from ennui and take her to her new home in Derbyshire.
Elizabeth was in no easily pleased mood when Fitzwilliam Darcy called at Mrs. Phillip’s house with the family carriage, his valet, and two female servants from Pemberley to attend on her while they were on the road.
By happenstance, this was also the first day that the doctor’s orders permitted Elizabeth to walk about, and it rather enraged Elizabeth that she would not be allowed to make an effort to figure out the most effective way to safely walk about outside without being able to see anything.
Instead, she would be stuffed for the whole of the day into a carriage.
It was not fair.
Elizabeth was dressed by her aunt in a frock that was a little too small for her—rather than laying in any substantial money for mourning clothes for Elizabeth, Mrs. Phillips had taken advantage of the cheapness of the outgrown clothes that the daughter of a Mrs. Goulding had been made to wear after her son died.
The sleeves pulled up to her wrist, the whole strained around Elizabeth’s neck, and the cloth roughly rubbed the barely healed scars on her neck.
Elizabeth despised the dress.
She could not see the dress, but it must be dead black, and she hated that too. She hated that she no longer seemed to have any say about what color she would be dressed in. Mrs. Phillips had declared that since she could not see what she was wearing, she could have no opinion.
That was not true.
She knew what pink looked like. She knew what blue looked like. She knew what yellow looked like. She even knew what dead black looked like. Bleak.
When Elizabeth asked for them to put a red silk ribbon in her hair, the shocked reactions of Mrs. Phillips, the housekeeper, and the maid were deeply gratifying. Especially when the maid exclaimed, “This is why the evil eye looked upon you!”
It was impossible for Elizabeth to not laugh.
Mrs. Phillips angrily pulled at her hair and tied a, presumably black, ribbon into it, while scolding Elizabeth, and asking her if she had cared nothing for her family, and if she had no love for their memory.
Elizabeth did not see why wearing black for her father or Lydia, or Kitty, did anything for their memory. Lydia had loved bright colors. Lydia would have wanted her to wear pink or red for her. And the dress was sufficiently black to respect Mama and Mary, even with a bright ribbon in her hair.
After this, Mrs. Phillips tied a light scarf over Elizabeth’s eyes, and when she protested that it was uncomfortable, Mrs. Phillips replied angrily, “They are hideous and unsettling. Do you wish for him to see?”
Then Elizabeth was brought across to the drawing room and made to sit instead of walking. And then they waited for Fitzwilliam.