Chapter 25
November 1807
Four months. Four long months since I covered my looking glass. Jane sat at her dressing table. She did not need to feed her self-loathing; others” reactions to her injuries—Sunday mornings at church services—were enough to shatter her peace.
She gazed at the wildflowers to her left, another gift from John. I have released you. Why do you persist? Have I not lost enough? She cast off her maudlin thoughts.
As she had every day for those months, she applied the soothing oils from the bottles on her table. Her mother and Mrs Hill were adamant the elements within the viscous fluids would hasten the healing process. Jane wanted to believe them and think that her trials had a purpose.
She carefully ran her oiled fingertip down her nose. The action allowed her to feel the crispness of the scar ridge and gauge its tenderness. She was sure it was her imagination, but as time passed, the sharpness of the pain had lessened.
She smoothed the thick liquid on the gouge across her chin with her other forefinger. It was much easier to do so; it had been over a month since that wound had last suppurated.
When she finished, she cleaned her hands and began her breathing exercises. She opened herself up to the day and felt relief. Another day would pass and soon be behind her.
“Jane.”
“Yes, Papa?”
Jane sat across from her father, the hearth clean and unused. Kindling was on the left; the right featured a neat stack of arm-sized logs.
“Jane, how are you spending your time these days?”
She looked down at her hands.
“As I thought,” he said. He handed her a journal. “You must have some occupation beyond mending my shirts and sewing blankets for the tenants. Do you understand?”
She turned the journal over in her hands, examining it. “What am I to do with this?”
He looked down his nose. “Whatever you deem appropriate.”
“And Jane?” He removed his spectacles. “You are much more than your injury. Do not allow it to dictate who you are.”
She sighed. “How can I when it is all that others can see?”
“You will need to change their view.”
Jane listened as Elizabeth pointed at several ribbon samples on Mrs Taylor’s display table. Lydia had given her specific colours to buy; she wanted to dress up Jane’s Easter bonnet, so the veil was not the immediate focus. Darling Lydia!
As they moved to the rear corner, the door’s bell tingled.
“Mama says she looks like a beast. Some hideous creature from the moors,” Miss Harrington said, giggling.
“I would think some relative with an estate in Scotland or Ireland would welcome her as a ward. Think of her sisters. How shall they ever marry well?” replied Miss Long.
Mrs Taylor cleared her throat. “Miss Long, Miss Harrington, come here and let me show you the latest fabrics from town.” She held her arms in the direction opposite of Jane and Elizabeth. As Mrs Taylor diverted the two gossips, she nodded towards the door. Jane and Elizabeth quietly escaped.
Elizabeth grasped Jane’s trembling hand. “They lie. They have always been jealous of you.”
“I thought they were our friends!” Jane whispered. How could they speak of me so viciously?
“You have always seen the good when presented with unkindness.”
Jane remained silent throughout their walk home.
In the small parlour, Elizabeth and Mary practised quiet duets. Several notes in, Elizabeth looked upwards and huffed. “It is not right,” she said as she unconsciously ran her fingers over the instrument keys; scales and arpeggios whispered into the air.
“What is not right?”
“How others speak of Jane. I do not understand why she silently endures others when they are so wretched.”
“Jesus said to love your enemies and to forgive those who have done wrong.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “That is easy for Jesus to say, but it makes little sense when people are cruel.”
“It is not about what makes sense,” Mary said. “It is about following the Almighty’s plan.”
“Jane follows the Lord’s teachings more than anyone we know!” Elizabeth said, her voice rising. “Tell me why should she suffer them?”
Mary stilled her sister’s hands. “Because Jesus said to be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ. God forgave you...”
“It is easy to talk of forgiveness,” countered Elizabeth, who then told her of the morning excursion to Mrs Taylor’s shop.
Mary’s disbelief turned to anger. “How could they?” she gasped.
Together they peered into the parlour across the hall, where Mama sat whispering to Jane, who wore a pale-yellow toque and veil that covered her face as she embroidered.
“You see, forgiveness is easy to talk of, but far harder to grant. Would you not agree?”
That evening, Mary did not volunteer to lead the dinner blessing. Or the next.
A few days later, Mary entered her father’s book-room, a thick tome pressed to her breast. She had thought upon the manner with which both her elder sisters viewed the neighbourhood’s reactions to Jane’s injuries. None of her religious texts had answers; rather, the tomes were insulting.
“Papa, I need to speak to you.”
Her father walked around his desk, gestured to the opposite chair, and sat. Mary joined him. She looked down at the book clasped in her hands, then handed it to him. “I would like to read more of the world, where men do not view women as useless objects.”
His eyebrows rose. “May I enquire why?”
She explained the unfairness of Miss Harrington’s and Miss Long’s glee regarding Jane’s accident.
“Jane strives to find the good in others, even when none exists. Elizabeth is angry on Jane’s behalf, but holds her tongue for some reason.”
“And you, Mary?”
“I am tired of hypocrisy.”
“As well as of Fordyce?” He pointed at the years-old scorch mark on the book’s cover.
She was aghast. “Heavens no! I would never disrespect any piece of literature in such a manner, no matter how world-weary I might feel.”
Her father considered that a moment, then rose and pulled a book from the shelf. He handed it to her.
She ran a hand over the thick binding. “René Descartes?”
“Cogito, ergo sum.” He lowered the finger he had pointed upward. “I charge you to learn its English meaning and discuss the first chapters with me next week.”
“Thank you, Papa.” She rose and kissed his cheek before leaving him.
Elbows on the bed, hands clasped, the space between her forehead and the top of her nose rested on her left mid-forefinger knuckle.
Jane closed her eyes and relaxed her breathing. Her heart opened.
“Lord, I speak not for myself, but for my precious family. Please relieve them the burden of defending me. I accept my fate. My vanity is nothing. Your will is all.
“I thank Thee, my Heavenly Father, through Thy dear Son, that Thou hast kept them this day from all harm and danger. For into Thy hands, I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things.
“Amen.”
Jane slid under the cover pane, adjusted her head pillow, and hugged her second pillow to her person. She fully embraced the peaceful night.
“Tomorrow will be a better day....” she whispered, as she had every night since it happened.
The Bennets had ceased to attend social events and entertained few callers. Lord Lambrook missed his friend. The bits of gossip that his man and his wife’s lady’s maid had related incensed them both. The vicious, cruel lack of sympathy from many Meryton families disgusted him and Lady Lambrook. Where was their charity? Their compassion?
The gist of the tittle-tattle revolved around the advantages those families’ daughters had gained now that Miss Bennet was no longer the jewel of the county. That gossip of her injury, her rumoured release of John from their betrothal, and the absence of the reading of the banns ripped through Meryton society. When Lambrook enquired whether they had seen an increase in invitations to dine with those families with eligible daughters, his wife’s pursed lips provided the distasteful answer. If his family’s political situation were not so treacherous, he would have all the husbands of those despicable women clapped into irons!
He, Lady Lambrook, and John secured a call upon Longbourn on a beautiful summer day. It had been a difficult year for their son, nursing a broken heart while aching for the pain and suffering endured by the woman he loved. After finishing his education, and after Jane had refused his visits, he had travelled to Italy, returning somewhat recovered but just as determined in his love for her. This would be his first visit with Jane in months.
John had done his best to conceal his anger and heartache from his parents and from the letters he wrote to Mr Bennet, asking after Jane’s welfare but careful never to importune. His travels to Italy had given him little comfort, but in some way helped him to put his mind to other tasks, to seeing a world he had hoped to share with Jane. It was when he stood in a garden in Florence and his eye was caught by a statue of the Madonna—her delicate beauty so clear, the marble so perfectly carved, the woman’s face so soft to the touch—that he fell to his knees, whispering Jane’s name. The statue was no match for Jane’s lost beauty, a trait that mattered little to him for he loved what she had within her, the joy and happiness she brought to him with her thoughts and gestures. But to her, that was not enough. Now, her beauty marred in her eyes, she wished only to be free of him.
I shall return,he vowed to himself, and do what I must to fight for her.
Now, months later, while the four adults entertained each other in Longbourn’s parlour, John followed Miss Elizabeth to the stillroom. She walked to a table and began working with a pestle and mortar. In a corner were two chairs; the left was unoccupied; Jane stood before the right.
He paused, taking in the sight of her. She wore a white dress, her hands clasped to her front. He could not see her face as she wore a large-brimmed bonnet with a thick veil. How he wished to see her lovely face, her beautiful eyes!
“Good morning, Miss Bennet. Thank you for consenting to see me.”
“Good morning, Mr Smyth.”
“May we sit?”
Jane gracefully lowered herself into her chair; he joined her in the adjacent one. John stared hard at her through her veil. She lowered her chin.
“I am grieved. Will you not speak to me? How do you fare?”
Jane sniffled, and he bent his head closer to her. “I miss you. If you cannot accept me as a husband, surely you can see me as a friend.”
“I have learnt that friendships which I once believed real are feigned. It distresses me that I must separate the true from the false.” Her shoulders rose in a sigh and she glanced at him. “Sadly, the latter far outnumber the former.”
“I hope you will count me in the former,” he said urgently. “Forever, I will be your friend.”
Jane stared at him for a long time. She removed her hat and veil, and boldly looked at him. Two angry red slashes crossed her face—the one from her temple bridged her nose, the other from her cheek passed below her lips to her chin. John did not blink.
“Jane?” whispered Miss Elizabeth. “What do you do?”
Jane held up her hand. “I am seeking a friend. Is this society’s definition of beauty? Am I even tolerable?”
John grasped her hand with both of his. “You are as beautiful as ever.”
Jane retracted her hand. “I would thank you not to placate my vanity—a trait I no longer possess.”
“I would never be so condescending?—”
Jane interrupted him. “I cannot abide platitudes from one who once claimed his adoration of my perfection.” She replaced her veil. “Please do me the consideration of seeing yourself out.”
She joined Miss Elizabeth at the work table. John rose and left. She never once looked back to him.