Labyrinth

Charlotte needed a new way to manage her husband. It had been simple enough at first. All she had to do was settle herself in the back parlor that overlooked the chicken coop with her embroidery in her lap; he would join, inevitably, to sit and sermonize at her while she worked, but the smallest sound from the front of the house would draw him back to the front parlor in the hopes of seeing Lady Catherine’s coach in all of its resplendent glory gleaming in the sunlight as it pulled down their lane.

But now Lady Catherine was gone to London for a fortnight. The reason she told all her friends and neighbors, including Mr. and Mrs. Collins, was to survey the bachelors to help Anne select a husband now that Mr. Darcy was no longer an option. “For Anne’s health is too weak for her to travel,” said Lady Catherine to the Collinses as they played whist one evening. “And you know Anne relies on me in everything; I will pick her a proper husband. He must be a man of noble blood as befits her blood on her mother’s side.” In her most recent letter, however, Lizzy had revealed to Charlotte the true purpose of Lady Catherine’s uncharacteristic trip: to meet with Darcy and make peace. I will admit that it was a plan of my own making, Lizzy confided. No matter how much I detest the woman, the rift between them cannot go on, for Anne’s sake if no one else’s. Now that she is come, I do almost regret it as she stomps through the house criticizing everything from the curtains to the food. My only consolation is that you, my dear, are given a fortnight of comparable peace. Though you are not an outdoorswoman by nature, I urge you to wander through the parks at Rosings on a clear day and think of me.

Lizzy was right, of course. Mr. Darcy was Anne’s closest living relative beside her mother and the one who knew the most about the Rosings estate. She would need him when Lady Catherine dies. Inwardly Charlotte marveled at Lizzy’s easy was of managing her severe husband; one word and he was ready to travel to London and humble himself to his aunt for the sake of a cousin he hardly knew.

With Lady Catherine gone, the front parlor held no interest for Mr. Collins. The lady had been resolute that Anne should not venture out of Rosings, even to walk the park with her companion, Mrs. Jenkinson, while she was gone. Bereft of the possibility of meeting with the inhabitants of Rosings Park, Mr. Collins needed an audience and declared that the warm fire in the back parlor was a much more suitable environment for serious thought than the sun-drenched settee in the front parlor.

“I have received a letter, my dear,” Mr. Collins said with a mixture of solemnity and glee. “From my cousin, Mrs. Wickham.” Charlotte almost sighed aloud, still focusing intently on her embroidery. She knew the letter would come eventually; Lizzy herself had warned in a recent letter that the Wickhams were nearing true desperation, but to reach out to Mr. Collins who had wished Lydia dead rather than married to Mr. Wickham after living with him for several months was beyond desperation: it was insanity.

Mr. Collins settled himself comfortably in the armchair closest to the fire, content to have Charlotte as an audience even as she picked irritably at her stitching. It had never interested her before, but she found that once her husband had finished praising her modest, wifely virtues of picking such an suitable occupation, he was content to leave her to her work, finding neither any real interest in it, nor nothing that he could correct. It also allowed Charlotte to keep her eyes down; it was much more difficult to keep her temper in order when she had to meet Mr. Collins’s smug, condescending, arrogant—

“As I think,” Mr. Collins said abruptly after skimming Lydia’s letter. “That this is an excellent example of the improper behavior of a young lady, I think I will read you this letter, my dear. If we have a daughter—though you know Lady Catherine’s desire that we should have a son to start—we can learn from my cousin’s poor choices, and avoid the errors that my cousin so blatantly displays.”

Charlotte did not miss that Mr. Collins had placed the entire burden of raising their child on her head; he would dictate, and she would sit quietly and administer his teachings. Her stomach rolled and not for the first time in her marriage to Mr. Collins, panic gripped her. What had she done? How could she survive a marriage, a lifetime to Mr. Collins? And it would be a lifetime for, though he was a man, and her mother always assuaged that men lived shorter lives, Charlotte was older. The fire roared, baking in the late August warmth, and sweat beaded her brow, slipping down her spine. The ceiling, already sloping and low, seemed to be creeping closer, the walls pushing in on either side. Her husband took up so much space. In their house, in her mind as she placated him and listened to him and crept silently around him.

She stood abruptly and Mr. Collins looked up from the letter that he had just begun to read. “I am sorry, my dear,” she said, voice alarmingly clear. Setting down her work, she clasped her hands behind her back to hide the shaking. “You have caught me at an inopportune time as I must leave for an appointment.”

Mr. Collins sat back and stared blankly at his wife. “An appointment?”

Charlotte nodded, her mind racing. An appointment, yes that was vague enough and probably would’ve worked on another husband, but her husband would want all the details, would want to judge for himself how acceptable such an engagement would be for him and his wife.

Desperation made her say the first person who came to mind. “An appointment with Mrs. Jenkinson.” The blankness in Mr. Collins’s expression seemed to yawn wider and Charlotte quickly filled the silence before he could respond. “I have taken up Lady Catherine’s generous offer that she made when Mrs. Darcy came to visit us in the spring,” she said. “And Mrs. Jenkinson has been so kind as to offer to walk me through some new music sheets she received from London. She has especially promised to teach me some of Miss de Bourgh’s favorite pieces.”

A blink, a pause. “Well,” Mr. Collins praised. “I am delighted that you will be seeing Mrs. Jenkinson, though I do think you should have accepted Lady Catherine’s offer as soon as it was made, my dear; she certainly knows best. And what condescension! Playing in Rosings would be a treat for any young lady in the neighborhood. If you must go, please be off! Mrs. Wickham’s letter can wait.”

He waved her away and Charlotte stepped quickly into the hallway, not pausing as she exchanged her house slippers for sturdier boots and drew a cloak around her shoulders. Her breathing was jagged, and her fingers fumbled over the cloak’s snappings as she walked out the front door. Autumn was cusping at Rosings; while hung in the air, the trees had already begun to shed their leaves, leaving the roads and paths throughout Rosings covered, and without Lady Catherine’s discerning eye, the leaves remained, undisturbed except for the occasional carriage driving up the lane. The road to Rosings was muddy and Charlotte knew that if she had any intention of actually entering Rosings, she would be more concerned about the state of her dress, but she almost delighted in the mud, seeing it splatted and stain the hem of her cream dress. Mr. Collins would never know either; what happened to his clothes after he wore them was beyond even his prevue. She was already planning on how she would get into the house and to her dressing room after her jaunt without her husband seeing when she stepped into the gardens of Rosings Park.

Charlotte was never a lover of the outdoors like Lizzy had been, but she knew enough to recognize how marvelous the gardens at Rosings were. Rather than embark on massive improvement projects, Lady Catherine had allowed her gardens to remain as they were when her husband died, choosing instead to focus improving the house itself. Lizzy had suspected Mr. Darcy’s influence, and though Charlotte had never seen Pemberley herself, she imagined it was similarly positioned. She could almost see Lizzy here, walking through the terraced garden, or leaving the established path to walk closer to the small creek that wound through the grounds, bisected by small footbridges at a couple bends.

When she first moved to Hunsford, Charlotte imagined Lizzy here frequently. Sitting with her in front of the fireplace in her back parlor, meeting eyes over a particularly garish conversation at the dinner table, walking along the creek. There was a willow, too, that Charlotte had always wanted to show Lizzy, who she knew would delight in it. She’d imagined leading Lizzy just here, asking her to close her eyes and taking her hand to lead her; she knew just what that hand would feel like, smooth and warm. Lizzy would squeeze her hand as she laughed and stumbled, and when they reached the willow, Charlotte would tell her to open her eyes and watch the wonder and delight there.

Then she would do something she’d never had the courage to do: she would kiss Elizabeth Bennet under the willow.

That fantasy was becoming more and more distant. When Lizzy visited Charlotte right after her marriage, the collision between her fantasy and reality had been jarring and painful. Lizzy did not want to sit with her in the back parlor; she wanted to explore the wilderness around Hunsford and stay as far away from Mr. Collins as possible. Lizzy did not make eye contact over the dinner table; she made increasingly frequent eye contact with Mr. Darcy over the long, mahogany table in Rosings Park. She walked in the grove with Mr. Darcy in the mornings while Charlotte was beholden to the minutiae of household management

Charlotte did not take Lizzy to the willow in Rosings’s gardens. Instead, she watched Mr. Darcy gazing helplessly at Lizzy and clearly saw the attraction reflected in Lizzy; she hadn’t loved him then, of course, but Charlotte saw that Lizzy could love him and when the letter arrived from her friend months later announcing their engagement, she felt nothing but muted resignation.

When she looked at the willow now, it was just an old wound: it ached, but didn’t truly hurt her. Her heart had, Charlotte thought wryly as she started walking towards the willow, healed the best it could; she would be getting over Lizzy, she felt, her whole life.

So consumed, Charlotte had not noticed anyone else in the gardens.

“Mrs. Collins.” Soft, warm, delighted. Anne de Bourgh stood beneath the willow tree, smiling softly as Charlotte closed the distance between them, unable to simply walk away with such a direct acknowledgment. She cursed herself; Mr. Collins would certainly hear about this, which would mean that she would need to craft her response, blend the reality of Anne de Bourgh smiling under a willow tree with Mrs. Jenkinson’s tuneless piano in her drafty parlor.

“Miss de Bourgh,” Charlotte said, stepping beneath the willow. “I hope you are doing well?”

She could already see that Anne was doing well. Normally wane and sallow, there was a brightness in Anne’s eye and a flush to her cheeks. Charlotte was surprised to note how beautiful Anne’s eyes were: a soft, clear blue. So unlike Lizzy’s brown eyes which were so dark and unfathomable; even at their closest, Charlotte always felt that she knew but a fraction of what was behind those eyes.

Anne’s smile widened and she gestured Charlotte forward. “Please call me Anne,” she said softly. “I’ve always found my own name to be quite the mouthful. I pity the governess who had to teach me how to spell it.”

“That wasn’t Mrs. Jenkinson?” Charlotte asked impulsively.

“No, it was Mrs. Harley who was my first governess,” said Anne wistfully. “I worshipped the ground she walked on as a little girl and trailed behind her with one fist clenched in her skirts. She left when I was sixteen. I’m sad to say I don’t know why she left. She was there one day and the next my mother informed me that I would have a new governess.”

Silence descended, awkward and heavy, as Charlotte realized that she didn’t know how to have a conversation with Anne de Bourgh. All of their interactions had been mediated by the stronger forces of Anne’s mother and Charlotte’s husband. Looking back at the year she had spent at Hunsford since her marriage, Charlotte could not actually recall any moment where she had been alone with Anne.

Anne broke the silence first. “Would you walk with me?” She asked her hesitance softened by a smile. “I had just wanted to come out for a second, but it is so beautiful that I cannot help wanting to wander further.”

Charlotte murmured her agreement and they continued walking silently until Charlotte felt herself cracking under the tension. “I was unaware that you would be out,” Charlotte started apologetically. “If I had known, I should have chosen another path…”

Charlotte trailed off at the sight of Anne’s smile. Had she ever smiled like that before? Widely, radiantly? Charlotte desperately tried to reconcile the healthy, beaming young woman with the sickly woman sitting silently in the drawing room, always half concealed by her companion. “How would you have known?” She asked simply, still smiling. “Since my mother specifically forbade me from wandering outside, but I so rarely have the opportunity that when Mrs. Jenkinsonon told me she had to go into the village for the day to see her niece, I could not believe my luck. I must trust that you will not reveal my secret, even to your husband.”

“Only if you will not tell him of mine.” At Anne’s quizzical look, Charlotte smiled faintly. “I admit that my husband believes me to be ensconced in Mrs. Jenkinson’s parlor learning your favorite pieces on the piano. I just need a moment to…”

Charlotte was not sure what she would have said, but Anne happened to take her arm and draw her closer as they walked. When was the last time someone other than her husband touched her? Lizzy when she visited Rosings? The touch was innocent, but Charlotte faltered and fell back into silence. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Anne said softly, after a moment’s pause. “If Mr. Collins asks, I detained you as soon as you set foot in the house and insisted that you take tea with me. We sat in the drawing room and drank more tea than we ought."

“And what did we talk about while drinking tea? He will need the particulars. Did I compliment your dress?”

Anne adopted Charlotte’s teasing tone. “You were in raptures about the lace trim, naturally, and I regaled you with a story about my mother's seamstress in town. We discussed only the most proper subjects. The tea itself, of course; the relative health of both of our families; and perhaps a debate over the most recent volume of Mrs. Radcliffe’s.”

“I have not read a novel since my marriage,” Charlotte said wistfully as they turned down another walk, which led back towards the willow and the house. “I used to accompany Lizzy to the lending library so frequently that the librarian knew us by name and would set aside volumes she thought would be of particular interest to us, but there is no library near and my husband—” Charlotte caught herself and glanced at her walking companion. This Anne de Bourgh was far from the docile woman languishing in her mother’s shadow, but she was still Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s daughter, upon whom her husband’s future, and therefore her future, depended.

Anne looked at Charlotte steadily, her eyes unreadable. How could this be the same creature who, not a week ago, would meet nobody’s eye in Lady Catherine’s drawing room? “Your husband could not spare you, I am sure, to travel to the nearest lending library,” Anne said neutrally. “Especially for a collection as poor as Mr. Johnson's. You must come to Rosings and borrow from our collection—no, I must insist,” she added when Charlotte opened her mouth to respond. “If you are unengaged, perhaps you would do me the honor of calling tomorrow. I would be happy to show you the library and recommend a novel or two. Mr. Collins will, I'm sure, be busy with his parishioners.”

Charlotte, surprised but not unwilling, agreed. They finished their walk in peaceable silence and, when they separated, Anne gave Charlotte’s arm a gentle squeeze. “I will see you tomorrow,” she said, curtseyed, and walked back into the house. Charlotte was left to walk back to the parsonage in silence, oblivious to the mud and trying not to dwell on her reaction to the sudden loss of Anne de Bourgh’s arm on hers.