Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth dashed through the garden, calling out to Mary to go faster. Jane had always been the slowest, as she was too concerned about snagging her hem and getting a scolding—not that she ever did anything requiring a scolding—but Mary could almost keep up with Elizabeth most days.
“We have only a half hour to play today, so we must hurry if we are to reach the orchard,” Elizabeth reminded her cousins.
Mary had joined Elizabeth as a ten-year-old the week before, and Jane would be thirteen later this month. All three girls were the best of friends and always helped each other in their studies and played together in their free hours.
Elizabeth halted abruptly when she heard crying behind her. She turned to see Mary on the ground, holding her knee. She and Jane both went to her.
“What happened, Mary?” Jane asked. “Did you trip again?”
“I think I stumbled on a rock in the path. I could not see it.”
“Aunt really should allow you to wear your spectacles!” Elizabeth said in indignation. “It is not safe for you to go about half blind.”
“I should not have run so fast.” Mary let Elizabeth help her stand.
“Forgive me, Mary,” Elizabeth said. “I should have remembered and not urged you to rush.”
“Shall we return to the house and find another pursuit until the drawing master comes?” Jane asked. “Perhaps you would like to play the pianoforte, Mary?”
Elizabeth admired Jane and her compassionate way of finding solutions. She wanted to be more like her older cousin in that way, as she felt she did not always consider other’s feelings as well as Jane did.
“I will help you with the new piece the music master set for you yesterday. I am sorry I did not go over it with you already,” Elizabeth said.
She always helped Mary to learn her songs by ear and by moving Mary’s fingers to the proper keys when needed.
Mary could not see even the sheet music in front of her as she played.
Her vision of far-off sights was better, but the world close around her was blurry.
Jane and Elizabeth both helped her, but Mary more often relied on Elizabeth to read to her, play the pianoforte with her, and do her mending for her.
“Thank you, Lizzy. I know you were working on your own studies with Papa last evening long after Miss Moran released you.”
As they entered the drawing room, Aunt Bennet looked up from her charity basket.
“What have you done to your gown, Mary? Has Lizzy been playing too roughly with you? Lizzy! Mary is not a poor farmer’s daughter like you. She is the daughter of a gentleman, and you must remember it!”
“Yes, Aunt,” Elizabeth murmured.
Aunt Bennet scolded Elizabeth nearly every day no matter what she did, so she had learned to half-listen whenever the woman spoke.
She did not like it when her aunt disparaged her father, but she was not ashamed of him.
Especially now that she knew she was an Asbury, which she thought a powerful name, she stood taller whenever she thought of her father.
She never spoke the name aloud and never spoke of her deceased parents, but she imagined their strength within her when her aunt berated her.
“Lizzy, go help Mary clean up and change into a new gown. You will add this gown to your mending this evening,” Aunt Bennet said.
“Yes, Aunt.” She led Mary out of the room.
“Lizzy,” Jane said when they were on the stairs to their bedchambers. “If you are studying late again, I will mend Mary’s gown. It is only a small tear.”
“Thank you, Jane. If you have the time, I would appreciate it. Uncle has me learning advanced Latin grammar now, and he says I must work especially hard on these declensions. He has almost agreed with me that I am a lost cause when it comes to astronomy, however. I cannot make any sense of where stars are or should be in the sky.”
“If you do not have time to help me with the pianoforte today, I understand, Lizzy,” Mary said, defeated.
“Of course I will help you, Mary. Let us get you changed and cleaned up quickly, and we will go through the new song at least a time or two. And I will work with you again before breakfast tomorrow, if you like.”
“Thank you, Lizzy!” Mary squealed.
Elizabeth knew Mary preferred the pianoforte above all of the other learning and accomplishments the girls were offered.
With her limited vision, it was the one area in which she might excel.
Mary could read and write while wearing her spectacles, but Aunt Bennet did not like her to wear them and actually took them away and hid them for weeks on end when she caught her using them.
Mary therefore kept them in her bedchamber and used them rarely.
Reading at night in her room was difficult by candlelight, so even then Elizabeth would read to her.
Aunt Bennet had planned a large party for Jane’s thirteenth birthday at the end of May, with many of the Meryton families invited for a picnic.
All the girls were excited and helped to make Jane’s day special.
Elizabeth would not have been so excited about the picnic had she known how everything was about to change.
The day after the party, Aunt Bennet informed the girls that Jane would no longer be permitted to play outside with Elizabeth.
She was now a young lady, and as a gentleman’s daughter, it was time to act like one.
Jane made no protest, as usual when her mother gave her a command.
In fact, she basked in the additional attention from her mama and the lessons she was promised in managing a home and servants.
Mary continued to play with Elizabeth occasionally, but after her fall weeks earlier, she would not run and preferred to stay indoors altogether.
They kept studying together, as Mary required Elizabeth’s assistance, but they began to spend their free time apart.
Elizabeth needed to feel the breeze on her skin and smell the flowers in the garden for a short time each day or she would go mad.
Her aunt did not care much what Elizabeth did, so long as she did not cause problems for anyone else, and her uncle encouraged her to continue running and playing outside, although he did caution her that her tree-climbing days could not last forever.
Thus it happened that Elizabeth spent the summer more alone than she ever had before.
Her lessons continued with Miss Moran and Uncle Bennet, but the long daylight hours of the season brought abundant free time.
She knew her uncle had made a point to Miss Moran that Elizabeth was to be granted “a daily hour or two or three for the freedom of childhood exploration.”
Elizabeth was grateful for what Miss Moran called “an indulgence,” and she noticed that she understood her languages and learned her history more easily when her body was refreshed.
Perhaps the most refreshing activity, she found, was riding Rusty across Longbourn’s fields.
She loved to feel the horse’s powerful strides and the wind rushing through her hair.
In the winter, when she could not be outside as long, she found she missed Jane’s company far more. She continued to work with Mary and share confidences with her, but Jane rarely spoke to her anymore as their paths diverged.
Aunt Bennet more than once became angry when Elizabeth performed a task she had asked Mary to do or when she tried to speak to Jane.
“You must allow Mary to learn to do her own embroidery, Lizzy. As a gentleman’s daughter, she will have more need of it than you will. If you must help her, do her mending.”
Mary could not see to thread a needle or make neat stitches, but they acquiesced.
Elizabeth wondered why her aunt thought she should not practice her fancy work, but it would do no good to ask, as it would only lead to more criticisms of her father, who she understood was not a gentleman like Uncle Bennet, with his own estate.
She continued to do her own sewing of all kinds; Aunt Bennet did not care as long as she did not do Mary’s work for her while she watched.
“Allow Mary her time to practice the pianoforte without your chatter in her ear, Lizzy. While you may wish for the skill to become a governess, Mary will need the accomplishment more to find a husband.”
Neither Elizabeth nor her cousin bothered anymore to correct Aunt Bennet’s assumptions about what they did at the instrument.
She also did not understand why her aunt thought she would be a governess.
Uncle Bennet had told her more than once that he looked forward to meeting her children one day and discovering whether they would be as precocious as she was.
She did not think governesses had children, but she intended to marry and have at least one daughter like herself and a son to protect her and remind her to behave.
“Go back to your books, Lizzy. Jane is learning how to plan a dinner party, so she can manage her husband’s household. You will survive as a governess or tenant farmer’s wife, so you have no need for this type of education.”
Elizabeth also did not intend to live on a tenant farm.
As much as she liked the farmers and their children who lived on the Longbourn estate, her uncle had told her she would have a library of her own someday, when she married and moved to whatever estate her husband owned.
Governesses and tenant farmer’s wives did not have libraries or estates.
She planned to manage a household someday, like Jane would.