Chapter 7 Mamma Reviving Papa
Mamma; Reviving Papa
My spirits were lifted immeasurably by Pike’s departure. Not only had I rid myself of a troublesome suitor, but I might soon be possessed of an independence.
It was extremely frustrating. I had no way of knowing exactly what had happened, but I assumed he had gone bust, as so many people do up there, and was either ashamed to show his face here or simply unable to afford the journey.
It made me quite vexed—I was sure the dye would sell!
If only I could have gone up there myself, I knew I could have made every factory owner from Manchester to Liverpool bid for it.
Ladies, of course, do not go peddling dyes, though. My hopes of a fortune evaporated.
I soldiered on, though, as best I could.
I was able to sustain a semblance of my gunpowder business through Miss Figg, the apothecary’s sister—all the county knew about Mamma’s myriad imaginary illnesses, so I never lacked an excuse to visit the apothecary’s shop.
That and my laboratory sustained me, and I began to think I might find my way without Pike’s help.
I even saved up enough to order proper electrostatic equipment at last. But then came the night of the accident.
It was at one of the dreary balls at the home of our neighbors the Lucases.
Everyone hereabout complains about them—too hot, too little food, too many guests of dubious gentility—but everybody goes.
I did not mind. I had been going about for weeks in a haze of happy anticipation.
Soon my electrical rig would arrive. Oh, what might I do then!
What would I soon discover! At last, at last, my life would begin.
Then, when we were leaving, Lady Lucas spoke to Mamma.
“How wonderful to have you all,” she said. “Where is Mr. Bennet? Not indisposed, I hope?”
“No, no,” said Mamma. “You know how he is. It can be fearfully difficult to rouse the dear man from his library. Such a clever scholar he is! He is in there day and night.”
A clever scholar! Ha. It was true that Papa spent most of his time in his library, but much of it passed in front of the fire with his feet up on a stool, snoring.
“I think,” Mamma went on, “that you are almost sure to see him at the next assembly, however. He had a particular reason to stay at home tonight.” She dropped her voice importantly. “You see, he has been sent an electrical .”
I stopped dead. I felt as though a bucket of ice water had been poured down my spine.
The electrostatical machine. It was here at last.
After long years of scrimping and saving and mucking about with quicklime, I had at last saved enough.
As Pike was gone, I ordered it myself. I knew I was taking a risk, but since I was the one who walked out to meet the mail coach each day, I thought it was safe enough.
I planned to store it in the garden shed, and then spirit it up to the laboratory when everyone else was asleep.
Only the afternoon mail had been late today. I thought I’d simply missed it, but evidently it found its way to Papa while I was submitting to having my hair styled.
I tugged on Mamma’s arm. “Come, Mamma. Depriving oneself of sleep is not salutary. My reading on healthful habits says—”
“Yes, yes.” She turned back to Lady Lucas. “Come over tomorrow and we can talk over the whole evening. Come, girls, it’s late.”
In the carriage, my mother snored, and Jane dozed on Lizzy’s shoulder. My younger sisters, whose prattle might have kept us awake, were spending the night at my aunt’s. I was wide awake. My heart pounded. Sweat stood out across my nose. My electrical machine. He had my machine.
My father’s light was still on when we got home.
He pretends to scorn Mamma’s tendency to gossip, but he was just as curious about our neighbors as she was.
Luckily, he soon tired of her chatter about who had danced with whom.
By the time I had put on my nightclothes and braided my hair, the light in the library, visible from my window, had gone out.
I lay awake for another half hour, just to be sure. Then I crept downstairs.
I had long since learned which boards groaned, and my descent was utterly silent. I slipped into Papa’s library, now lit only by the flicker of my candlestick. Dim though it was, I knew it well enough that I instantly discerned the change. On his desk, by the window, there now stood a large box.
My heart was now beating so fast that it felt like a bird’s wings fluttering inside my chest. I crept toward the box. It was around four feet long and three feet wide, and I could just make out the words PHILADELPHIA FINE GLASSWORKS on the lid.
The words shivered as the candle trembled in my hand. This was it.
Carefully, I removed the lid. Inside was a nest of wood shavings, and nestled within it— oh .
It was not the finest or the largest rig in the land.
In fact, it was the cheapest one I could find.
Still, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
The wooden and bronze body shone in neat collapsible segments.
I set them carefully aside—oh, the smooth, competent weight of them!
—and began to dig through the shavings for the pieces of the stand.
I sat back when my fingers found it. I lifted it carefully. A glass globe, heavy and clear, larger than a man’s head. At either end— the poles , I thought giddily—there was a hole for the insertion of a screw.
“Mmph—ahem—why, what the devil do you think you’re doing?”
I whirled around, clutching the globe to my chest. There, snorting and blinking in his chair, was my father.
“What are you doing?” he repeated. “Put that down at once, Mary. Carefully, mind. That’s my new electrical equipment.”
I ought to have done it at once, I know. He was my father. I owed him my obedience. Not only was it right; it was prudent: The moments of freedom I was able to snatch in my laboratory depended upon my activities being kept a secret.
But I had waited years for this. Years. I am afraid I lost my mind.
“It isn’t yours,” I said, pushing a whisper through my tight throat. “It’s mine.”
“Yours?” He laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It is,” I said. “There, my name is on the box.”
He glanced at it. It read TO M. BENNET, LONGBOURN, HERTFORDSHIRE . “Meant to be Mr.,” he said. He tried to take it from me. I stepped back. “I suppose it is a gift from your uncle, or from my old master at Oxford. Really, now, Mary. It isn’t a toy.”
“And I am not a child.”
“You’re acting like one.” He smiled at me kindly. “Come, girl. I know how you love to feel learned. I promise I will set it up one of these days so that you and your sisters may see some sparks. You’d like that, eh?”
The blood was rushing in my ears. “It’s mine!” I said. “It’s mine!” and I yanked it out of his grasp.
His face darkened. “That’s enough. Give it here.”
I couldn’t. My arms refused to pry loose from their desperate embrace of the globe, even when Papa grasped it. There was a ringing in my ears. We were tugging it back and forth between us, my father continuing to scold me in a whisper, and me unable to do anything but repeat that it was mine .
It ended as it must. You know the story of King Solomon and the baby, I assume? My father had not spent years dreaming of this very globe. I had. When his grasp became too rough, I did the only thing I could. I let him have it.
He staggered back a step when I let go. “Good,” he wheezed. My father led a fairly sedentary life. He was red in the face and sweating. “Good girl. I knew you would see reason.”
“You do not know anything about me,” I said. “ Anything. ” I had never looked at my father this way. I thought, I wish you were dead .
He laughed. “Your exhaustion has made you overdramatic, Mary. Go to bed, and tomorrow I— unh .”
My father clutched his chest and staggered forward. I had a split second to decide which of them to save from a hard landing. I am ashamed to say I chose the globe. My father fell to the floor and was still.
With one hand, I clutched the globe close to my bosom. The other I pressed over my mouth in horror. My father wasn’t moving. Even after bending down to examine him, I found no whisper of breath.
Oh, God! What had I done? I’d killed him.
Mentally I cursed the Mary of fifteen seconds before as a fool.
I had wished him dead—well, now he was. And now everything would be lost. Our home.
My laboratory. My sisters’ chances at a match.
What would become of us? We would split up, I supposed, to stay with grudging distant relatives or become governesses. I’d doomed us all.
Panic imbued me with a sort of white-hot clarity.
Before I knew what I was about, I had lifted the lid on the galvanic equipment.
My hands, as cool and steady as my mind was scattered and erratic, lifted the bronze framework, one piece after another after another, fitting them together, hanging the globe, until the complete rig stood before me.
Then I lifted my skirts and ran silently up to my laboratory.
Once more, my hands seemed to know what they needed before my mind did.
I watched as they darted out to pick up various items. Scraps of cloth. Copper wire. A certain salve.
Back downstairs, I laid my father flat beneath the rig. I ripped open his shirt and spread the galvanic salve on his chest and temples and tongue.
I did not think. I did not allow myself to.
I simply went about it as though my father was an unusually large Cariad.
I placed bronze weights on his chest and temples, and turned the globe until the cloth that rubbed against it crackled with electric charge.
I saw a spark jump and fizzle out in his chest hair. He remained still.
Faster and faster I turned the crank. A spark large enough to revive a finch might not be enough to revive a man.
Again and again, I shocked him. His body jerked, but otherwise was still.
At last I stopped. The strength drained from my body as I faced the full horror of what I had done. He was dead. Past reviving.
Then he coughed.
I crashed to my knees beside him. “Papa?”
He blinked and coughed again. One shaky hand came up quizzically to tug at the pad on his chest. “Mary? Is that you? Where am I?”
“Your library, Papa.” I took off the pads and closed his shirt.
“Library?” He blinked more. “Mary? Is that you?”
“Yes, Papa. Come, let’s get off the ground.”
He remained confused as I helped him to his feet, but at least he was no longer dead weight.
I soon perceived that he retained no memory of our fight and only the haziest recollections of the previous day.
I put him back into his chair. He stared up at me in the flickering light of the candlestick I’d left on the desk.
His face looked pale and his eyes were two great black holes.
For a moment, I had the queer idea that I’d failed, and that he was dead after all.
Then, however, he muttered, “Don’t touch my books, Mrs. Bennet,” leaned his head against the chair, and immediately began to snore. I watched him for several hours to make sure he would not collapse again. He slept on peacefully, his snores the welcomest sound I had ever heard.
It is strange, watching a parent sleep. Parents seem so important when one is younger—like giants, or gods. But they’re just people, after all.
When I was satisfied that he was out of danger, I put the globe back in its box. It made me shudder now to look at it. I’d saved money for years to buy it, but the price had almost been much, much higher.
Still, I thought, better not to leave him the reminder. I hauled the crate up to my attic. Afterward, sore, sweaty, covered in sawdust and salve, I did my best to wash in my basin and then crawled into bed.
As soon as I closed my eyes, my father’s blank, staring eyes appeared before me. I’d killed him.
I opened my eyes again. Luckily I’d not yet blown out my candle. On my bedside table lay Reverend Quindley’s Admonishments for Godly Young Ladies . I had always kept Harry’s gift near me, but rarely looked inside it. Now I opened it and began to read.