Chapter 34 A Letter
A Letter
From the pen of Miss Georgiana Darcy, Pemberley
Dearest Mar Miss Benn Sir Gregory,
Forgive me for my style of address. I am sure I have lost the right to call you by your Christian name, and I cannot bear to return to the formality of Miss B—, not after all we have been to each other. So if I am to write you—and I find I must—I can only return to the name I first knew you by.
I would leave you alone if I could, really I would.
If it was only that my troubles made you dislike me, I could bear that, I think.
But if the Problem has made you believe that I hate you, well, that I cannot bear.
You have become far too dear to me for that.
You will not thank me for it, but I will tell you all.
The Problem has been upon me these nine months.
A spiteful woman laid it upon me for reasons that I cannot share, for they would mean breaking another’s confidence—but suffice to say, they had nothing whatever to do with me qua me, for I was merely the vessel for another’s attempt at vengeance.
My malefactor had the sort of nonsensical, tortuous path of reasoning that you and I have always despised.
I have found it best to think of the Problem simply as a disease. I did not ask for it and did nothing to deserve it; therefore it serves nothing to be ashamed of it. And yet, of course, I am ashamed of it.
The Problem will be with me all my life. How I despise myself when I think of it! I, a Darcy, one of a proud and noble line, with such parents and such a brother to live up to. I can never be the girl they wanted me to be, and sometimes I am so wretched over it I do not know if I can go on.
I used to transform every night. What a trial that was.
A bit of experimentation has reduced that—now I must merely spend a week a month “indisposed.” But the tonics are unreliable.
One works for a while and then loses its effectiveness.
This is why I pilfered your serums. I hope you can understand.
I suspect I shall always be forced to continually change the formula.
All my life, I shall be chasing whatever scraps of normality I can get, that other people take for granted.
I shall never marry. Never have children.
That is the bad side of it. Some days it seems very bad indeed. But there are other things, too.
There is the feeling of winter wind ruffling my wing feathers. The way the blood sings in my ears when I spot my prey far below.
And there is my mind, which I still have. There was—once—the prospect of a complete cure of the Problem, but it would have hobbled my mind forever and left me a shell of the scientist you know. I chose to remain myself and remain a problem.
When one accepts that one will never be all right, will never be just as a young girl ought—well, there are pleasures in being formed wrong.
This life can be lonely. But it is who I am. Which brings us to you.
I am so, so sorry about the garish way I revealed myself to you. I have not much control when I am deep in the Problem. Still, I regret it more than anything I have ever done in any form. I would not hurt you for the world, my dearest, dearest one.
My Sir Gregory, knight of my heart, lord of my laboratory—your life would in every way be easier without me in it. I do not fit. I violate the rules that govern your existence. Explaining things is your passion—and mine!—and we will never be able to explain the Problem.
Does it undermine you too much? Is it too repugnant to you?
Perhaps so. Perhaps it would be better for us both if I withdrew.
I know it felt miraculous to us both to find a friend in each other—but considered from a logical standpoint, it may actually be sampling error.
If you and I, quite by chance, wrote to each other under male pseudonyms—well, does that not suggest that there may be hundreds of other girls all over Europe doing the same?
Perhaps half the letters in the journals are from lonely girls like us, laboring in isolation, unaware that there are so many others in our sisterhood.
I am sure you could find one to aid your research who does not come with the Problem.
I do not want you to. I want it to be me.
Oh, it is vexing. I am a natural philosopher, and it is against nature.
Consider the problem of mass—I am a well-grown girl, of a mass proportional to my height and width, and yet in the grip of the Problem I am sure I cannot weigh more than thirty pounds.
Where does the rest of me go? It violates the law of thermodynamics!
If Newton’s Principia was a book of etiquette, the universe would cut me dead when it saw me in the street.
So, yes, your life would be easier if you, too, cut me dead.
I like you enough, and care so very much for your happiness, that I almost advise it.
I complicate your story in truly unconscionable ways.
But I am too selfish for that. I want to be in your story.
I want that so very badly. I want to do midnight experiments with you and turn the pages for you at balls.
I want to wake in the morning knowing that you are under the same roof, and that our days will be passed together.
It will not be easy, cleaving to each other in that way. It will severely limit our options.
Many will not like it. I have a large income, but we may find it reduced.
So I do not demand, or beg—I merely ask. Let me be a part of your story. It would make me so happy, and I would do my very, very, very best to make you happy, too.
Yours, yours, yours,
HOLZMANN.
7 December, 18--
After reading Miss Darcy’s last letter, I stuck it in the back of a drawer, under a pile of journals I never open anymore.
Then I climbed into bed, pulled the covers over my head, and stayed there the rest of the day.
When Mamma saw how I shook, she thought I had had an attack of grief. I suppose perhaps I have.
What am I to do? It is absurd. She believes she is a bird . And I… I love her so much that somehow she made me believe it, too.
I will not accept it. I will not reply. If she is to recover from such delusions, it will be with the help of good, sound people. Not a monster like me. Henceforth we shall be strangers to each other.
A life of dependence is all that awaits me now. I fought it for years, but I shall fight no longer. The farthest seat from the fire, Pike called it once. I shall strive to be grateful for it.
I shall get up in a moment. Stop shaking. Move on. Decide what I’d best do.
In a moment.