Chapter 5

The miscarriage kept Elizabeth in bed for a few days. The doctor did his best to assuage the fears of her husband and his parents.

“She lost a bit of blood. Keep her in bed. Absolutely no moving from the room for at least three days, but encourage her to rest longer. If she starts to bleed again, send for me, although I don’t know that there would be much I could do in such a case.”

Jane was standing closest to the doctor, her arms crossed over her chest. “Do you think she knew of her condition?” She couldn’t form any other thoughts, however hard she tried.

The doctor paused for a moment but went ahead when he saw Charles’ worried face. “I’m not sure she knew. She may have only suspected but you would need to ask her for a definitive answer. What I’m instructing you to do is keep her off of her feet for a few days. Watch her and send for me if you see any changes in her condition. I’ll call again in a few days’ time to reexamine her.” He picked up his things and left the house.

In the end, Elizabeth’s sudden miscarriage was not discussed openly again. When Jane made the slightest hint about what had happened, Elizabeth flushed so deeply the topic was immediately dropped.

By the time Elizabeth was allowed out of doors again (though the doctor had said it would be alright several days previously, Charles and Jane especially conspired to keep her in bed and restricted to the grounds for an additional week if they could accomplish such a feat), Elizabeth felt desperate to find her mother and sister. But Charles refused to allow her to go out.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you. The last time you came home and became ill. I won’t allow it to happen again. Not when I can prevent it.”

“My becoming ill had nothing to do with my walking about town all day. If anything, my illness was brought on by my worry when I was unable to find my family.” She came up behind Charles, who was looking out the window, and rubbed her hands up and down over his arms and shoulders.  “I can’t come home as ill as I did last time so you have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t want you to go out alone. There’s no telling who might be out there, watching you, waiting to make a move.” Charles couldn’t look into his wife’s eyes. She though he was merely joking.

“You won’t get anywhere by trying to scare me. I’m going to find them today even if it takes all afternoon.” She fixed the collar of his jacket playfully but was puzzled when he shrank back from her hands. “What’s happening? You were serious a moment ago.” She tried to make him turn away from the window to face her. “What have you heard?”

Charles looked to the door but they were completely alone in the room. “I’m worried about what has been happening with my father’s tenants, with the drought and what it’s doing to the land. He’s been turning more and more of them out of their homes as they are able to pay him less and less.”

“But it rained just last week. Don’t those farms have rivers for watering the crops and what about wells? Surely their farms aren’t in such danger.” But Elizabeth thought back to the poor house and the line of people waiting outside for hours for just a bit of bread. She knew the conditions were as bad as Charles said, if not worse.

“One day’s light rain isn’t enough to undo a season of dry weather.”

He wasn’t scolding her exactly, but he believed her to be truly ignorant of the situation rather than simply denying its severity as one in shock is wont to do. Elizabeth wondered if he really thought she was so oblivious to the things around her that he felt the need to speak so condescendingly to his own wife.

As he had stopped talking, Elizabeth moved toward the door. His hand shot out and grabbed the cloth of her sleeve harshly, wrinkling the crisp ironed fabric and sending small waves of pain through the weakened muscle of Elizabeth’s upper arm.

“I said I don’t want you to go out right now,” Charles started rather harshly. The edges of her face betrayed her slight fear and he softened as he went on. “Especially to that part of town. It’s dangerous.” He loosened his grip on the arm and a hurt look fluttered across his face when she tore the injured limb from his grasp.

“I understand your concerns,” Elizabeth told him. The hurt look failed to bring forth the feelings of pity or sympathy she believed he intended it to evoke in her. “But you must also understand that I’m as concerned about my mother and sister as you are about me. I just need to know where they are, if they have food, whether they’re well.”

Charles clenched and unclenched his jaw as he contemplated what she had to say. He tried to appeal to her sense of reason but that didn’t seem to be working. “You saw what happened at the wedding. The situation with my father’s tenants has only gotten worse in the months since then.”

Elizabeth left the room while he was still talking to her. He flushed and followed her out. The shade of red deepened when he saw several of the household servants pausing in their tasks to watch him chase after his wife in apparent defeat. The thought of the servants’ gossiping tongues and those of the neighbors’ servants drooling over the juicy subject of his wife had just turned their marriage into caused his blood to pulse through his veins a little more forcefully. The noise of it in his ears drowned out the sound of his footsteps as he saw Elizabeth alight into the carriage which was waiting out front.

She moved her skirts out of the door’s way and pulled it shut, before he had an opportunity to grab her again. She nodded to the driver that she wanted to leave. Charles rushed out in front of the horses and took hold of the reins. The horses whinnied and stomped in place, frustrated at the confusion.

Charles glared into the carriage at his wife. “I told you, I don’t want you to go out. Go back inside the house now.”

Elizabeth leaned over the half-door of the carriage to address her husband from a better vantage. “The only place I’m going to go is into town. If you wish to come along and watch over every move that I make, then by all means join me. However, I feel it is my duty to inform you that I am determined to find them today and I can do so with your consent or without it; I leave the final decision regarding such to your discretion.” She settled into the seat with her eyes fixed on her husband.

She was challenging him in a way he had never expected from her. He’d always thought he would be able to reason her to his way of thinking. He went up to the driver and whispered something Elizabeth couldn’t hear, though not for lack of trying. He came around to her and put his arms over the open edge. She shrank away from his reach in a way that she thought was imperceptible.

“I’ve instructed the driver to keep an eye out for anything or anyone suspicious,” Charles said harshly. If Elizabeth was going to shy away from him, he would give her a reason to do so. “He is going to let you along with your family for one hour before going in to fetch you, forcibly if need be.”

Charles stepped back from the carriage and nodded to the driver to go. Elizabeth wasn’t given an opportunity to respond. She closed her eyes and sank back against the seat. The carriage rocked and swayed as it made its way toward the conspicuous house that was either the end of her search or another step in a journey of indeterminate length. She hated going against Charles like that and didn’t know if she could force herself to go against him repeatedly if she was still unable to find them. Her time was running out. They were supposed to return to London in two days.

Elizabeth’s mind began to run through the possibilities in rhythm to the horses’ steps.

If she pretended to relapse a little, perhaps she could convince Charles to delay their return trip to London.

Clip, clop, clip, clop.

She had s few pounds with her, perhaps she could pay the driver to forget about Charles’ time constraints and claim they had gotten lost (but Charles would easily see through both those plans and neither guaranteed enough time for her to find them).

Clip, clop, clip, clop, stop. They were at the house and it was, amazingly, worse to look at than Mrs. Garnett had described. She’d left out the crumbling chimney and the hole in the roof that was visible from almost a hundred feet away. There were the vines that had worked their way up the wall and over the window (Elizabeth was convinced she saw broken glass on the same window and that the plants had likely worked their way into the wall, destroying it from the inside out).

The driver descended and held the door open for her own descent, before holding an arm out for her to take. As she stood there before the house taking it in again, she could hear the noises of an intense argument going on. She began to approach what appeared to be a door when a loud crash from inside made her pause for a moment. Elizabeth quickly got over her immobility and she rand forward calling her mother’s name and pounding on the first surface she came into contact with.

The house rapidly quieted and a door opened. In front of Elizabeth stood a clearly intoxicated man holding the broken off leg of a chain in one hand. He barred the doorway with one arm and tried to obscure her view of the interior with his body, though his body was having some trouble cooperating.

After demanding to see her mother, Elizabeth tried to force her way into the ramshackle building but the man blocking her way gave her a forceful shove. Elizabeth’s back made solid contact with the frame of the door. The driver was between his mistress and her adversary in  few seconds and had beat the drunken lout into submission using the chair leg he’d been clutching mindlessly.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” the driver asked as Elizabeth struggled to reach over and rub the offended area of her back. She stepped over the passed out obstacle before her and entered the filth, her eyes darting back and forth through the gloom and grime. The driver remained at the ready by the doorway.

Whimpering came from the room to the right, which must have been the parlor in a very different time. “Harry?” a meek voice asked as Elizabeth’s footsteps approached the corner by the shattered window. Glass fragments sparkled like dusty diamonds on the floor. The rags of the drapes were pulled around Amelia Harris, covering her head along with her badly bruised and, in some places, bleeding arms.

A wave of pity swept over Elizabeth as she knelt beside her mother and reached out to put a supportive hand on the shaking shoulder in front of her. “Mama,” she sighed.

Amelia’s head rose and she stared with defiant tears in her eyes and held her head aloft, daring Elizabeth’s hand to alight on her shoulder.

Crashing on the rocks, Elizabeth’s hand dropped and her heart hardened just a little. “Where’s Anne?”

“Elizabeth?” The weak and muffled voice came from an adjoining room. Her skirts billowed around her as Elizabeth knelt by a tattered bed. The ropes that gave the mattress it’s support were loose, ticking was falling out, and the impression of a body was clearly visible from above. The slightest hint of movement could be seen from above, revealing the whereabouts of the person hiding beneath (though to an intoxicated being, Elizabeth supposed such movement could easily be explained away as the actions of a rodent or some other vermin if the movement could be detected at all).

Huddled against the wall, Anne looked out at Elizabeth who held her hand out for the terrified girl to grab hold of. The agility with which Anne emerged from under the bed made Elizabeth wince. Anne pulled away from her sister at the grimace and rushed to help their mother to her feet back in the other room.

Draping a limp arm over her shoulder, Anne guided the weary woman past their disapproving relative and laid her out on the bed. There was a peaceful silence as Anne hurried about the house gathering a cloth and some dirty water before crouching at the bedside and wiping the blood and dirt around on the pale face. All she succeeded to do was to further smear the filth.

Elizabeth came up behind them and put her clean hand on Anne’s enterprising arm. “Anne, I want you to come back to Rosewood with me now. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to take care of her. It’s not for you to sit here and take it the way that she does. She does it to herself and gets what she deserves.”

Water spilled on the floor creating a puddle of mud from the dirt and dust. The bucket from which the flood emerged rolled on the floor before it knocked into one of the feet of the bed. Anne stood between her sister and their mother who was floating between the realm of sleep and the more dreary reality.

“She’s your mother too,” Anne exclaimed. Her arms moved wildly about with the damp rag still in her hand. “How dare you find yourself so high above us. You went to the city and left us for the streets. You’re the reason we’re in this state, not Mama. You’ve had the ability to help us all along and have done nothing. Mama’s only done what she can to keep a roof over head.”

Water from the rag splashed on Elizabeth’s dress. She tried to wipe it off.

“Better try harder to get that out. Wouldn’t want for you to catch our poverty. You have some nerve to come down here, boasting in your finery and tell us how much better off you are.”

Elizabeth protested. “I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, I’m trying to show you that there’s ore than just this if you want it. You don’t know Amelia the way that I do. You may think that things can’t get much worse than this but I know better. You forget that I’ve been here with her before. He’s been hitting you too, hasn’t he? Just wait. Wait until he’s done with her and you as well. When the drunkards put you out on the street, that’s when you’ll get just as desperate as she was before she met your father. You’ll be the one trying to support her. I’ve seen what that kind of life has done to her and I don’t want to see it happen to you.”

Anne looked down at their mother passed out on the bed and could hear Harry’s snores from the entrance way where the driver continued to watch over him. “If I go, Mama has to come too.”

Her eyes pleaded with her sister’s who began to play with the fold in her skirt and found a spot where the lining of the pocket was separated from the cloth of the skirt and would need repairing.

When Elizabeth finally worked up the courage to look her sister in the eye, Anne had Amelia’s hand clasped in her own. “Anne, I can’t bring the both of you with me to London. The house isn’t large enough for that and despite what you may believe of our situation, Charles and I don’t quite have the means for supporting that many people.”

“Maybe you can abandon our mother but I will do no such thing. “Anne sat at the edge of the bed and looked out over her mother’s peaceful countenance.

“Anne, this isn’t about her. It’s about you. Don’t you want better than this?”

Anne refused to move anymore from the bedside, motioning for Elizabeth to leave.

“Go with your sister, Anne,” Amelia said weakly from beneath the threadbare blanket, surprising both girls.

“But Mama,” Anne began. “What about you? You need me to take care of you.”

The woman shook her head a little and winced from the pain. Anne put the dirty damp cloth up to Amelia’s forehead. A battered hand came up and pressed the younger hand and cloth against her forehead. “Your sister is right. I’m doing what I can for you but it’s not enough. As comforting as you are to have close by, it would only pain me to know that you could be somewhere else, somewhere better. I want better for you than just this. I won’t take no for an answer. Elizabeth, have that driver of your drag her out of here if it’s necessary.”

“Mama,” Anne was unable to say anything beyond those two syllables.

Amelia’s face was hardened and only Elizabeth seemed to perceive the softness in the woman’s eyes. “Really Anne. You can’t be bothered with trying to care for me on your own and I feel I would be able to better care for myself if I weren’t constantly worried about you. Do us both a favor and go with Elizabeth. Be quiet on you way out. I’m tired.” She turned away from the two girls.

Anne stood with silent tears journeying down her stained cheeks. Deliberately, she walked out of the room, her worn shoes making a small scuffling noise on the floor, scraps of leather and loose dirt.

Elizabeth nodded to her mother’s form, though she knew Amelia would be unable to see the respect her daughter was finally showing. “I think that Jacob would have been proud of you for what you just did.”

“Go away, Elizabeth. I don’t need your sarcasm at a time like this.”

“I was being serious, Mother.”

With that, Elizabeth walked out and joined her crying sister in the carriage.

~ ~ ~

When they arrived back at Rosewood, Anne quietly went upstairs to a room that Elizabeth hastily readied. The door closed and Anne refused to see anyone, though she accepted the food that was left for her. Elizabeth knew how hungry Anne must have been and was disappointed when she saw that Anne had left a few bites of food on the plate in an effort to exert a little independence, show her displeasure.

Elizabeth would gladly have spent more time worrying about Anne but there were other demands on her attention.

Samuel couldn’t have cared less whether his daughter-in-law brought her sister home to London with them. If anything, Anne would have distracted Elizabeth, leaving Charles with more time to devote to the business and the education of his own younger brother. Perhaps having Elizabeth dealing with Anne would inspire Charles in his efforts with Robert. Only time would tell.

Jane admired Elizabeth’s resolve in the situation but refused to tell anyone what she really thought. Instead she kept bringing up how this would appear to the neighbors and to their social set, that the talk had finally started to die down since the marriage and what would they say and think. She continued to cast disapproving glances in Elizabeth’s direction.

Elizabeth’s biggest obstacle was, oddly enough, Charles. Closed up in their room, Elizabeth was surprised no one came to the door to see what was going on, but then again, if she was to open the door suddenly and unexpectedly, she was sure there would be several staff members who would have bruises on their foreheads for a few days.

“It’s not that you’re taking care of your sister. I do not see a problem in that. But does she really need to come and live with us? We don’t have the room, the resources, or the tie to deal with her. Where is she to sleep? On the floor in the parlor? With the maid? Or should be make Robert move from his room?”

“What was I supposed to do? Leave her there with that woman, at the mercy of that pathetic excuse for a man my mother has found for the moment. It’s no different than what you’re doing for Robert. I just want to give her a chance at an existence beyond what I had at her age before I met you.”

“I told you, I’m not concerned with the honor of your intentions; I’m only worried with our own situation. Having yet another mouth at the table, and what about when we have children of our own? Anne will be taking up too much of your attention.”

Elizabeth began to laugh. “Do you remember when Robert was born? Babies are a great deal of work and having Anne around will be an added help to me when we have children of our own. If you are really so worried about money, Anne and I should be able to handle the housework that the maid usually does. And do you know how dull my days are when you and Robert are out at the store and the maid shops at market? I’m left with little to occupy my time but going out on calls and waiting for callers to stop by. I need a more predicable and consistent form of society, one which I am more familiar and comfortable with and which accepts me in return.”

Charles scoffed at Elizabeth’s plea.

“Is our life really so terrible as all that? If you found so little comfort aside from the physical safety I can provide, why did you agree to marry me? If you’re so unhappy, why don’t you follow in your mother’s ways and leave? Find something that makes you happy and go. But I doubt that you’ll actually be as happy as you are now.”

“I never said that I regretted marrying you. You’re putting words into my mouth. If I thought that this life was so horrible, why would I have worked so hard to try to pull her up and into our life?”

Simultaneously they became aware of just how loud their voices had grown. Each colored a little. Any servants that had been huddled by the door would have been able to abandon the post to return to work and they would still have been able to hear almost every word of the fight.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to make an apology, but she closed it again when she thought about it for second time. He was ken enough to pick it up and began to block the door so she would not be able to leave before he finished what he had to say.

“I don’t agree with you on this. But I won’t be the one to turn your sister away, not after what you’ve gone through to bring her here.” He paused when she still refused to turn and face him. Coming up behind her, he put a hand on either shoulder. She shrugged at his touch. He thought it was from a thrill she felt when they were close to one another. She knew it was from an effort she was making not to run away now that the door was free.

“I know how you feel and I don’t know what I would do without you.”

He pulled her closer to him. She closed her eyes and bunched her hands up within the folds of her skirts. No one could see, but the knuckles of her fists were white and had it not been for the layers of cloth, her fingernails would have drawn blood from her delicate palms.

“Your sister will stay with us for now. I’ll figure something out as far as our financial situation is concerned. She’ll need to help out in any way that she can and earn her keep. I’ve made my decision.”

Elizabeth clenched her jaw, closed her eyes, and nodded. Charles left the room, careful to close the door behind him. She crossed to the bed and tore the bedding off in a fury, then, calmly, she began to remake the bed. She made it so that every crease was perfect and precise. She lay down on top of the quilt and blankets and attempted to sleep but was restless.

The evening sun streamed in from the westward facing window. Shadows danced and chased after one another on the floor. Dinner was announced and ignored. Jane came to check on her daughter-in-law. Elizabeth feigned sleep and overheard a remark about her childish behavior. Elizabeth turned into a pillow, prepared for the tears she was sure would come but was instead surprised by a resolve that seemed to manifest itself as she grit her teeth and got up when she was again alone.

Alone. She had always felt alone in some way, even among all these people. But she wasn’t completely alone anymore. Anne may not be able to understand why their mother had acted the ways she had, hell, Elizabeth had trouble with most of it. But now she understood how Amelia’s denial had factored in.

Elizabeth stood and silently crept down the hall to Anne’s room. The door was unlocked and Anne was sleeping soundly.

Lifting the blankets, Elizabeth crept under with her sister and draped an arm over the exhausted girl, finally succumbing to sleep herself.