Travel No Evil （Exposition Only） #2
Many of these men struggle to sleep, finding their nights plagued by nightmares and visions.
Sometimes these dreams are recollections of the horrors they experienced in war, sometimes visions of a bleak future, and sometimes horrors conjured by the imagination.
The worst is if the man committed some offence for which he believes he cannot ask forgiveness—perhaps an act of violence outside the battlefield, which is quite common, or killing innocent bystanders in battle.
The nightmares keep the man awake, which makes him tired and irritable the next day, which in turn makes his companions irritable and short-tempered, which disturbs their sleep and causes nightmares all over again.
This goes round and round like a dog chasing its tail until either the patient or his caretakers eventually explode.
Be on your guard for this. There is a very good chance the nightmares have occurred for some time, long predating his most recent injury.
Some men need to talk about their experiences, over and over endlessly until they finally work all the poison out of their system, while others need to bundle up the memories and stuff them in the farthest corners of their mind never to be spoken or thought of again.
Many need to talk, but cannot bring themselves to do so, especially since our society and their upbringing strongly discourage it.
If it sounds like the treatments are contradictory and confusing, it is because they are.
You, my dear, must help your patient work his way through these things.
You must be his guide. You must somehow give him the inclination to direct his energies towards healing.
You cannot heal him—he must heal himself—but you must guide him.
I imagine you are surrounded by footmen and maids.
Do not discount them in your attempts to learn what must be done.
Most servants have seen and learned much more than most of the gentry believe, and to be truthful, have often endured enough in their lives to be more resilient as well.
Talk to them and listen to their advice, but then make your own decisions and try your own experiments.
Another Greek word may help you. They speak of a Persona, or mask.
The colonel needs someone to guide him out of the wilderness and back to the light.
You must be that person, and to do so, you must adopt the persona that he needs.
Whether he needs a governess, mistress, sister, confessor, schoolmaster or sergeant; you must be that person when he is at his darkest. You must either lead him to the light through good example, or drive him towards it with a stick.
You must encourage healing while discouraging self-destruction.
If he has already tried to take his own life, there is a good chance he will try again, and a man like that is unlikely to fail twice.
He will be much more careful and subtle the second time.
You are a clever and intelligent woman, Miss Lucas.
You have chosen this task, or fate has chosen it for you, so embrace your role and do what is necessary.
Try a persona, and if that fails, try another.
I am sorry I cannot be more specific, but much more clever women than you or I have failed to determine a proper course, so we all must muddle through.
I have spoken to the general, and neither he nor I expect you to return.
You are to stay with the colonel as long as you have the stomach for the task.
He has earned all the help we can give, and you have already given all that your king and country could ask of you.
The general says that you have fulfilled your part of your bargain, and asks that you continue while you can.
Mrs Agnes Moorhead
~~~
While Charlotte began trying different personas, Jane and Charles Bingley were on a very different educational journey.
Their primary mission was to identify and evaluate every single bed between Rosings and the Lake Country.
As a newly married couple, full of the energy and optimism of young love, they made a serious and diligent effort to be as thorough as possible.
Once they reached the lakeside cabin so graciously provided by Mr Darcy, they managed to slow their frantic pace and simply enjoy their days in peace, harmony, and quietude.
By design, they had only two servants, an old married couple who looked after the cabin.
They lived half a mile from the house and came only to cook meals, deliver coal, light fires, and do light cleaning.
Otherwise, they were on their own the vast majority of their time.
They had to curtail their mattress-testing endeavours, as there were only four in the house—hardly more than a day’s worth of testing.
The rest of their time was spent in a very long-overdue task.
They set out with great diligence, fortitude, and alacrity to do a bit of courting.
They had sacrificed courtship to circumstances, but they were both well aware that they could not just skip along as two bumbling, happy people through the rest of their lives without putting real thought into it.
Mr Bennet suggested they would be cheated by their servants or unable to make decisions, and both had to admit it was a real possibility.
In reality, the couple had spent considerably less than a dozen hours in each other’s company before their precipitous marriage, and had not spoken a single word to each other in over a year.
During that year, Mr Bingley grew from boy to man, while Mrs Bingley grew similarly by leaving the noise of her childhood home to experience a different type of married life and the birth of a niece, along with a deep and lifelong friendship with Mr Darcy.
The Bingleys had both formed deep and hopefully long-lasting feelings of affection, love, and gratitude, but there was little actual experience of life to give them confidence.
Over the course of many hours spent in each other’s company, many quiet walks around the small cabin on the lake, a smaller number of trips into the local village, and even a puppet show and theatre performance, they gradually began to work out the intricacies of how they were to live their lives, how they were to raise their children, and more importantly, how they would allow their hearts to become truly joined.
They both gradually came to the realisation that each of them was in love with an imagined shadow of their spouse.
All in all, they were both very fine shadows.
They were entirely lovable, and worthy of anybody’s consideration—but they were still shadows.
Now that they were as one, it was time for the shadows to become a little more solid.
The shadows were easy enough to disperse by simply spending time together talking with complete honesty, or the best they could do.
Complete honesty was so far beyond the couple’s capabilities that they would have a difficult time even understanding the concept, and as with many couples, there was no guarantee they would ever achieve such a state, or even strive for it.
Both had been raised with the rules of propriety from the first moments of their awkward adolescence, and propriety was really nothing more than thoroughly practised deceit.
All were taught to hide and diminish their true feelings, while giving good consequence to the world, deserving or not.
Both had done a remarkable job of only letting the barest hint of their true feelings show explicitly, and both ended up quite nervous about how they were to live together.
However, as they began the journey of a married and dedicated couple, they spent a little time each day, whether it was lying naked twined together on one of the convenient mattresses, lying naked on the rug by the fire, lying naked on one of the sofas, or lying naked in the coach with the shades drawn; each participant gradually picked away a little piece of the shadow, and saw a little piece of what was hidden behind.
They even managed some of this when they were not naked, though in the first weeks of marriage, that particular skill was not as convenient as one might think.
Gradually, over the period of two months, the couple opened their hearts, opened their minds, and came back from their trip as a unit, a couple, a formidable force.
Both members walked a little straighter, knew a little more about the world and this person they had chained their life to, and carried a certain solidity that had been lacking.
After their interlude at the lake, they travelled to introduce Mrs Bingley to their relations in the North, and then finally returned to their own environs early in the new year.
Being anxious to see Mrs Collins and little Abbie before returning to Netherfield, and being apprised of a rumour that Darcy might be at Rosings as well, they decided a stop in Kent on the way home was in order.
~~~