Count No Evil （Incremental）
After one month of treating Colonel Fitzwilliam, Charlotte Lucas was reasonably satisfied with his recovery from his physical injuries, but less so with the injuries to his soul.
The man vacillated between any number of moods; he woke Charlotte and at least one of the servants with nightmares nearly every night, and he possessed a number of personas.
He could be the amiable, charming, well-spoken man one moment, and a taciturn, morose, wild-tempered man the next.
During that month, Charlotte wrote to the matron at the hospital in London and received advice on how to drag the man out of the black pit of despair in which he was locked.
Charlotte considered all the counsel she had received and remained in nearly daily contact with Mr Darcy.
She eventually determined that the general’s hope that the colonel would recover in one month was wildly optimistic.
The man vacillated between the personalities of Mr Wickham and Mr Darcy on an hourly basis.
After two months of treating Colonel Fitzwilliam, Charlotte Lucas was well on her way to trying every tactic that had ever been suggested by anybody, and was not at all satisfied with the results.
In fact, the phrase not at all satisfied understated the case vastly.
She was extremely frustrated, yet she soldiered on.
After three months of treating Colonel Fitzwilliam, Charlotte Lucas was becoming ever more vexed with her lack of progress.
On a bright, unseasonably warm and dry morning, she sat on a veranda just outside the hunting lodge to write yet another letter to the matron.
Charlotte worried she used too much of her superior’s time with one lone patient when she had many other duties to attend, but the two women had grown to esteem and respect each other greatly.
They enjoyed a vigorous exchange of ideas, treatments, and tactics to take with her patient.
The matron assured she enjoyed the correspondence, and that it was no trouble whatsoever, so they continued.
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s physical wounds had long healed, and save that he could no longer bellow like a drill sergeant, he was mostly recovered.
He would always bear a scar on his neck, so he would never again venture in public without a well-tied cravat.
The gentleman would never talk quite properly either, but Charlotte reflected that, should his worst problem in life be a quiet and reserved nature, it would be quite an improvement over being a dead man.
She had only made a good start on her letter when she was interrupted by the object of her study.
~~~
Pemberley, Derbyshire
My Dear Agnes,
For three months now, I have tried every persona I have been able to think of, and I have attempted every treatment we discussed. At the moment, my most common personas include Rage, Frustration, Vexation, Annoyance, Exasperation, and primarily Dissatisfaction.
I have tried being the friend, the lover, the taskmaster, all to no avail.
Nothing I do seems to shake my patient. He vacillates between very gentlemanly behaviour, disdain, anger, staring through me as though I were absent, and many other reactions.
If I thought any of these were the true man buried underneath all of his hurt and injury, I would >
~~~
Charlotte nearly screamed in frustration as the letter was yanked out of her hand by none other than the subject of her discussion… or at least, the closest to a scream of frustration one was likely to elicit from the ever dependable and steady Charlotte Lucas.
“What do we have here, Miss Lucas? Writing your favourite little matron back in the hospital? Trying to work out what to do with your recalcitrant soldier? Think you are somehow going to repair me? Do you think you have any chance? Your conceit knows no bounds!”
Charlotte ground her teeth in frustration. “That letter is private! Though it concerns you, that does not mean it is yours to read. I will have my letter back, sir.”
“No-no-no! What have we here? This I must see. How do you and your little band of spinsters look at us men who actually risk our lives to give you your comfortable existence? You who will never face the slightest bit of danger in your entire lives are not the ones who will determine my fate.”
Charlotte regarded the man before her with even more frustration than usual, but managed to rein in her temper—though it required significant effort.
“No danger! No danger, you say! It is easy enough for you to say, having obviously not the slightest idea of what you speak. A few of you men go off to play at war on the continent, while most of you are content to simply risk your lives at games of horsemanship and chance. Sooner or later, however, you all want children and your wives often die in the doing. A tiny portion of you men risk your lives for either the betterment of our society or the greed of our empire; while every single woman risks her life every time she goes to the marriage bed. I will not stand for this disparagement of my sex, Colonel. We do all that you men ask of us, and frequently more… and we do so while enduring both men and children, who, by the by, seem mostly indistinguishable. You have no right to your opinion, sir.”
The colonel started at her outburst, apparently completely convinced of her placid nature, but then recovered himself and merely sneered in disdain. Apparently, she faced the Arrogant Colonel today.
“I think you need not worry about childbirth, Miss Lucas. Spinsters rarely have that sort of problem, and you are a spinster in the making if I have ever seen one.”
The exchange continued in this vein for perhaps five minutes, each remark more alarming than the last. Charlotte Lucas was perhaps the most even-tempered woman alive, yet even she had her limits.
The colonel vacillated between frustration and downright cruelty, but despite all evidence to the contrary, she believed that somewhere deep inside—so deep as to be impossible to detect—remained the honourable gentleman who had gone to war so many years before to protect home and hearth.
Whether he would ever emerge again was another question, but she could not believe him so bad a man as he appeared. However, she had her limits.
For a moment during their repartee, she wondered if she felt a sense of honour and duty towards the gentleman who had sacrificed so much, or whether she was simply a victim of her own pride, vanity, and stubbornness, unwilling to leave the task unfinished.
In the end, results were the only thing that truly mattered.
Yet, in the same way that results on the battlefield might stem from good impulses, bad impulses, skill, planning, or mere luck, Charlotte had spent three months striving to do her best. She would think success lay just around the corner, close enough to taste, only for it to slide farther away with every word.
“You may say hurtful things all you want, but you shall not affect the rest of my life. You will certainly have little effect on it once I am done with you. I will finish my duty just as you have, then I fully intend to never see you again. But make no mistake—I will finish my duty.”
The colonel sneered his most scathing reply.
“You might as well leave now, since you have already failed in your endeavour… whatever it was. I will either live or die, but it will not be through your intervention.”
There was something about the way the man said those words, something about his tone, something about how he knew exactly what to say to vex her most and did not scruple to use the knowledge.
He seemed to enjoy provoking her. That last arrogant statement, much like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, was one thing too many.
Nearly anybody in Meryton, or anybody in the London hospital, or just about anybody who knew Charlotte would assure you that she did have a temper; though rarely exercised,
“AAAAYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEE!!!”
With a frustrated cry of rage—a scream that echoed through the house and sent every servant within half a mile running—Charlotte seized her favourite workbox from the table.
It was the box her mother had given her when she was five, carried all the days of her life, and likely her favourite possession in the world.
Unfortunately, it lay right at hand. She smashed it against the side of the colonel’s head with all the force of every bit of pain, rage, vexation, and frustration the insufferable man had built up inside her over three exceedingly long months.
The wooden box splintered, driving shards into the side of the colonel’s head while others fell to the ground.
The colonel collapsed to the porch like a sack of grain, while Charlotte stomped away from the house, practically ruining the soles of her boots, cursing, and screaming like a drunken sailor.
Barrow ran out the front door just in time to see the colonel lying unconscious on the porch, bleeding profusely, if not fatally, from the head.
Two needles stuck in his ear, and a splinter had driven all the way through his cheek.
The remnants of the poor box lay underneath him, and only Miss Lucas's back remained visible as she stomped away, screaming words that even he, in his vast experience, had never heard.
After one mile, Charlotte calmed enough to cease her attempts to destroy her boots, and she even moderated her foul language, which she had learned from the best at the hospital.
She reached the point where she sounded only like a fishmonger’s wife, rather than a prostitute.
During that mile, she caught her dress on a tree branch and simply ripped it away, leaving a surprisingly large tear in her skirt.
Now she not only sounded disreputable, she looked it; but at least she was calm enough to talk to herself instead of screaming.