Chapter 3 Sanctum Sanctorum
Sanctum Sanctorum
Harry was not the only relation who took an interest in us Bennet girls.
My uncle Gardiner, Mamma’s brother, was a wealthy manufacturer in town.
He and my aunt were great favorites with us.
When my elder sisters Jane and Lizzy each turned twelve, the Gardiners began to take special interest in them.
Each was invited to visit the Gardiners in town shortly after her twelfth birthday, and continued to visit frequently after that.
Naturally, when they came to visit shortly after my twelfth birthday, I assumed my turn had come.
They were sophisticated London people; surely, in them, I would find like-minded friends at last.
I had never been to London, and longed to see it, but I think the principal reason for my excitement was simply the prospect of being distinguished for special attention.
Since Harry died, I had never had any to speak of.
At best, I was one of an undifferentiated mass of Bennet sisters.
At worst, my attempts at society provoked blank stares, awkward silences, and even titters behind gloved hands.
There is a trick to being easy in company, and I have never been able to learn it.
I believe that when the Gardiners arrived, they did have the intention I imagined.
They had never spent much time with me, and from the first day of my visit, they did much to distinguish and encourage me: bringing me on carriage rides, asking me to play for them, and doing their best to draw me into conversation.
They even talked to me about science. My uncle’s factories were concerned with the dying of cloth, and as such he was fairly well versed in chemical processes and could converse sensibly about the latest advances.
He seemed impressed by my understanding of them.
His wife, in particular, fascinated me. She was a little younger than he was, and still very beautiful—so beautiful, I felt at the time, that it hurt to look at her.
At twelve, I had a fascination with female elegance.
I often found my gaze lingering on their faces and forms, which I realized must be because of a sort of collegial curiosity.
I was the only one of my sisters who was not pretty, but I had not yet given up hope that I might achieve it.
With study and effort I had left my sisters in the dust at embroidery, music, and mathematics—why should beauty be any different?
So everything my aunt did, I studied, from her laugh to the way she absently brushed back the charming little curl that kept springing forth from her coiffure.
To be singled out by someone so elegant—what lady of twelve can ask for more?
I fear the effect of all this unaccustomed attention upon me was rather overwhelming.
My excitement at spending time with these clever, cosmopolitan people thrilled me like a drop of water in the desert; if no one in Meryton liked me, I decided, it was simply because they were sleepy and stupid, not because I myself was inadequate.
Here at last were people who understood.
I had visions of them adopting me, asking me to stay with them forever.
I longed to hear them say I was their favorite niece.
Unfortunately, my excitement undammed the considerable force of my personality.
It is so hard, don’t you find, not to be too much?
Or perhaps that is a problem only young ladies face.
In any case, I was excessive in every way a twelve-year-old can be.
I followed them about, talking to them of calculus, and demanding that they listen to more and more music.
I studied hard to make my conversation sophisticated and pleasing, using my aunt’s genteel manners as my guide.
I believed I had succeeded until one day I overheard them talking.
“We are agreed then?” my uncle was saying. “We won’t ask little Mary back to town with us?”
My aunt sighed. “Indeed not. It is too bad, for she badly needs the polish, but I declare I cannot spend one more day in her company. Such a profoundly irritating, bragging manner she has! Always putting herself forward! It is most unseemly.”
“Too true,” said my uncle. “And that strange, affected way she talks—my dear, I believe she is imitating you!”
“Good heavens,” she said. “No, I cannot face it. I should like to do something for her, for plain as she is she will need all our help, poor thing. But one has one’s limits. Let us ask Elizabeth again instead.” (The next day they did.)
As I listened to their conversation, my face grew hot and prickled with mortification. I fled to my room, closed the door softly, flung myself on the bed, and cried.
Do not feel sorry for me. My aunt’s careless words were the best thing that could have happened to me.
As I cried, you see, I began to worry that someone would walk in and see my tears.
Perhaps Mamma would even deduce what had happened, and prevail upon them to invite me after all; if that happened I would die of shame. No one must know.
Smothering my sobs, I burrowed to the back of my closet, intending to cry myself out where no one could see.
There I sat, for minutes or hours, my tears cresting and ebbing and returning again.
No one indulges in self-pity like the twelve-year-old female.
At last I had cried myself out and lay there in a weak and exhausted daze, feeling a thousand years older than I had that morning.
Gradually, my fingers began worrying at a crack on the back wall.
Tracing it, I found it was too regular to be a mere flaw. There was no latch or knob, but there was a section about three inches long where the groove ran a little broader and deeper, just the right width for slim little fingers to dig in.
My heart was by now pounding with excitement. What had I found? I told myself sternly that it was nothing, that I had simply found the scars of long-ago renovations, but my sorely bruised heart would not believe it. I needed something, something to be for me.
And He must have heard a miserable child’s prayer, because the next moment, there was a shriek of protest from the wall and the section bounded by the crack swung outward an inch. A breath of musty, ancient air puffed forth. It was a door.
It was by now evening and the sun was down. (Tea must have come and gone without anyone thinking to look for me.) I returned to my room for a moment to take up a candle—how lucky I was that none of my sisters shared my chamber!—and then I pried the door the rest of the way open.
It is a good thing I have no fear of spiders or mice, for quite a few of both made their home in that forgotten chamber.
I could not avoid their webs, which brushed my face and clothing as I fumbled forward.
Raising the candle, I found I was at the foot of a spiral stair, so narrow and steep that it was more like a sort of ladder.
At the top I found another door, stuck as tight as the first, but this one had a knob at least. After managing to pry it open, I took up the candle again and stepped beyond the threshold.
It was a small chamber, but high-ceilinged. A small skylight displayed a few stars, and a pair of grimy windows looked out onto the roof of the kitchen. The room held a sturdy wooden table and a few chairs, and there was another door at the back, but this one was stuck tight.
I do not know what that secret room was for. Perhaps some ancestor of mine had used it to hide priests in, or as a smuggler’s bolt-hole. It was cramped, and musty, and bare. I did not care. I had wanted something that was mine; well, here it was.
Luckily, I do not need as much sleep as most do.
Each night, after the household went to bed, I would steal up to my sanctuary.
Gradually, I cleared the dust and grime of decades, and made the place my own.
(The maids could not understand how my nightclothes got so dirty.
I let them believe I had been sleepwalking.) By spiriting away some old glass jars, and the remains of some chemicals and equipment that my father had ordered and then lost interest in, I soon had the beginnings of a makeshift laboratory.
I was in heaven. My aunt and uncle’s rejection was all but forgotten.
Why had I been trying so hard? My aunt was right; it was intolerable.
I did not like other people any more than they liked me.
I saw that I ought to stop trying to force myself into the mold of a pretty young lady they would approve of, and instead simply abjure company altogether.
My lack of beauty would distress no one if there was no one to see it.
If I did not press my presence upon them, they would be relieved and I would be free.
The shaking in my hand is growing worse. I am getting one of my sick headaches. For some reason they often seem to appear when the subject of my looks arises. I had better lay down my pen for now. I shall take up the tale tomorrow.