Posted on Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Dedicated to the lovely Xandra S. Thank you for being such a lovely tour guide and a lovely friend!
“The grounds are so very lovely; now I understand! You were in love – with the place and then the master,” said Charlotte admiringly.
“I could not have married Darcy simply for his grounds!” said Lizzy, stung.
“I never said you did… just what an attraction. And you saw him so wet.”
“It is fortunate that he did not dive into the lake,” said Kitty idly from under her parasol.
“Really?” said Charlotte.
“Yes, for it is only inches deep; he would have broken his neck,” replied Kitty.
“Your love would have been surely been tested,” remarked Charlotte.
“It would have held,” said Lizzy resolutely, “but I was not in love with him then.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.
“Then it is doubly fortunate that he did not,” laughed Charlotte.
“I do not like this talk of ‘testing’ my love…”
The ladies were interrupted by the arrival of a young gentleman of about one and twenty.
“I beg your pardon, but who are you?” he said, confused.
“I beg your pardon. Who are you?” retorted Lizzy.
“Sir Thomas Legh, master of Lyme Park.” He bowed.
“Charmed,” said Lizzy, only slightly sincere.
“As in the master of the grounds in which you sit…”
The ladies stared. Had this madman been let loose from Bedlam?
“This is Pemberley. Mr Darcy’s seat. I am Mrs Darcy,” said Lizzy slowly to ensure the simpleton or madman understood her.
“Frightfully good for you, but I have just returned from my travels abroad to places of antiquity and splendour and will probably go again and bring back much more loot – I mean objets d’art – and possibly in my travels run across the Iron Duke and Lord Byron because I am inherently fascinating. I do not appreciate returning to find myself being told that this is not my land. An Act of Parliament decreed it.”
Lizzy was glad at this point Darcy arrived carrying the picnic but one turned white, the other red.
“Darcy, please show this fellow off!” for Lizzy was unimpressed with his affectations although the other ladies were started to regard him more favourably.
“I can’t,” stuttered Darcy.
“Why not?”
“For if he has told you that this is his land, then he is quite right. I have shamefully masqueraded this beautiful Italian Palatial style home as my own. Did you not do geography at school and realise we are in Chestershire? Nowhere near Derbyshire, my love. Pemberley is rather a hole and, well, I was sure Sir Thomas would be killed by a falling slab of marble…”
The End
I apologise for this horrible, horrible offensive weird thing which has been badly inspired by Vertigo and Scottish History as learnt on bus tours.
Not many people sat in the mausoleum. Lizzy accepted it was not a convivial place for many, surrounded by the dead, but Lizzy found it calming - particularly when Lady Catherine came to stay. It was surely better to surround herself with dead loving Darcys than subject herself to the ‘love’ of the very alive Lady Catherine.
She only presumed they were loved and loving Darcys and they would have to be; the noble family of Darcy would have met no grizzly ends! Except in the honourable pursuit of war on behalf of one’s country. Although Lizzy considered that at varying points of their history the various battles became less honourable the closer one inspected from the vantage point of hindsight. So Lizzy did not choose to do so.
There was one very fine gravestone that Lizzy particularly found restful. Lizzy was resolutely not focusing on the graves of young female death – but those, except the tragic few with two names on the stones, were deaths of life.
This stone, however, was for a lady who reached a fine old age. Lizzy could have nothing in common with such a lady – a Scottish woman of the 17th century. So far removed from Lizzy’s life, which was currently two lives: hers and the baby growing inside her. But there it was – Mary Stuart Darcy drew her in.
Darcy did not know much about this ancestor of his except that she was the second wife of a male relative of his. Something that Lizzy tartly told him she could have discovered for herself from a simple reading of the grave. To occupy herself and distract her mind from the troubling time ahead of her she delved into the records that the Darcys kept stored. Mary Stuart appeared nowhere. Without more information, it could be supposed that Lizzy would lose interest or move onto the fascinating histories of various other Darcys.
She discovered some tragic deaths – she was wrong about those, after all – including one Darcy woman who collected dead husbands like Mrs Bennet collected gossip. Yet she was not swayed by this woman, or the adventuress who accompanied her husband into the deepest jungles of China. It was Mary Stuart who occupied her every waking thought.
Darcy, being an average male, did not notice his wife’s distraction until she started wearing very odd clothing. Even this was not strange, per ce, to him because he was a man and women’s fashion bemused him. It was Georgiana pointing out that Lizzy had raided the attic to find all of the oldest clothes of Great-Grandma Bessie’s grandmothers clothing (the Darcy’s were hoarders) that Darcy took note. But he had been told by Ash that women who were expecting should not be contradicted when acting strangely even if they wanted spinach and chocolate cake. It brought out the Mrs Bennet in them. However even Darcy noticed when Lizzy started affecting a Scottish brogue. It was then he was forced to admit something was amiss and perhaps a doctor should be called.
Yet the doctor was merely impressed with Mrs Darcy’s suddenly intimate knowledge of old herbal remedies. Darcy reprimanded him and asked what was wrong with his wife but the doctor found nothing physically wrong and assured Darcy it must be purely mental.
This did not reassure Darcy. Indeed as the affection continued, everyone became used to Lizzy’s behaviour and assumed Darcy had not noticed the Bennet deficiencies before he married her. Although how he could have overlooked Mrs Bennet, no one knew. Darcy was in despair; he could not lock his wife in Bedlam! He then noticed the way she affected herself was the same as the portrait of Mary Stuart she had unearthed in the attic. Darcy enlisted the help of Colonel Fitzwilliam to discover more about this woman, who, Darcy was becoming increasingly convinced, was inhabiting his wife. He only voiced this to his cousin because everyone else would think him bound for Bedlam himself.
When he found this history of Mary Stuart – only found because he thought to search the muniments tower for secret compartments. Mary Stuart had lived through a terrible massacre in the Scottish Highlands, and was consequently a staunch Jacobite. This was what worried Darcy. Lizzy had taken to spouting some disturbing anti-Hanoverian speeches. Not that Darcy could precisely blame her with regards to the Regent. But still! If people heard her then it might cause some difficulties. Even if it was unlikely anyone could regard a mere Mrs Darcy as a catalyst to destabilise the government and the monarchy.
Colonel Fitzwilliam had listened to Darcy’s worries and understood them. He had even helped in the search for Mary Stuart’s history. After all the behaviour of one’s wife reflected upon oneself. But he almost called for a doctor himself when Darcy suggested Lizzy had been overtaken by this ancestor. Colonel Fitzwilliam had no truck with such nonsense. It was his experience that the supernatural always had a prosaic explanation.
An experience gained by years in the army with impressionable young ensigns. All alone often in a strange country or at least a strange county in an occupation that never lived up to its expectations. Young men dreamt of the uniforms – never the mud or the camp food. Although the colonel could not understand the attraction of himself to these scared young men, who crept towards him in the night talking of ghostly maidens in white coming across the marshes. He had to patiently give them some rum and explain it was probably an actual live woman sneaking into the camp and perhaps they would benefit from going to say hello. A veritable stream of them – ensigns not women, well women too, but the Colonel focused on the ensigns. It was not as though he was even nice to them! But it is not this story’s place to wonder on the attractions mental or physical of the colonel. It merely exists to explain his stance on the supernatural.
So he took his task of examining his cousin’s behaviour very seriously, but he thought a disorder of the mind was far more likely than a possession. It was a pity that Darcy had not remembered at this point the feelings the Colonel had had for Miss Bennet at Hunsford. But we know how blind Darcy had been at that point in his history.
For what was more likely than these feelings to return and for his trailing to become more like stalking. It clouded his judgement and he could not see Lizzy’s faults. He only heard her passionate voice. That she should speak passionately was entirely natural.
Occasionally she seemed to forget Darcy’s first name, but that suited him (although if she forgot Darcy’s name then she invariably would not know his last but the caressing tone on the Richard made up for it.) She did seem unusually concerned about his loyalty to the king. Colonel Fitzwilliam reassured her on this point, and lightly corrected her – he had not thought her education so faulty, though his aunt had so bewailed her lack of governesses – over the king’s Name. It was George, not William.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was so taken with his cousin that when she asked him to accompany her to the top of the mausoleum at midnight he did not demur. Indeed he thought taking her to the site of her fixation would only prove Darcy’s assertions true or false. He had no doubt that Darcy would be proved false, and that Lizzy would also show herself not to have any disorder of the mind.
Except at the top of the mausoleum he looked into her eyes, suddenly so feverish and he realised his mistake. Darcy had not been wrong. And then it dawned on him the error of his ways. He, a staunch military supporter of the King, had come to the top of a building with a Jacobite…
He had plenty of time to contemplate on the way down. Then nothing.
The End
Dedicated to Dwiggies Unchaperoned, particularly Kay and Vals who will get the joke.
Kitty looked at the lift askance. It seemed impossible that it was a lift. She walked the few stairs up that she was able and looked at the central column. She could put her arms around it, she frowned.
A lift could not be contained in such a small space! It was inconceivable. Yet apparently it was so. She opened the door of the lift. It said it fit three people. Kitty privately thought this must be three very anorexic supermodels. She was thinking that it could barely fit her, let alone her case!
Kitty was extremely dubious, but there was nothing for it. The private residences above had claimed the staircase for themselves; to get to her hotel room she had to take the lift. It seemed strange to her; surely she, or other guests, could not cause so much difficulty to the residents by climbing the stairs twice a day. But they were banned and no promise of being like a mouse could induce the crusty concierge to give her the keys. Even now he was watching her, eagled eyed, and it seemed to Kitty with great apprehension as she held the door open. But Kitty could not tell if he feared she would use the lift, or that she would not.
Finally she told herself she had to pull herself together. It was daylight and if the lift became stuck there was an alarm and she had her mobile with her.
So she stepped in – squeezed in, rather – and shut the door behind her. The metal grates closed once she pressed the right floor and the lift began its interminable ascent. It took some time but she did finally reach her floor and her hotel room was far grander than she had expected for the price she was paying; after all this European city was known for its tourist traps of accommodation.
Perhaps they had to lower their rates to compensate travellers for that lift! It was slow and a pain – but the room more than made up for it. A glorious room. The softest pillows and mattress and the most snuggable doona. Even a television showing foreign shows dubbed into another foreign language. It was all unique to Kitty.
Once she had looked around, she settled down to what she loved about hotel rooms. Being able to rifle through the drawers. They were invariably empty but sometimes some former guests’ lives were revealed by what they left behind; after all the maids rarely checked drawers.
Kitty was surprised however when she opened the doors of the wardrobe and found several suitcases at the bottom. The ones not secured in the fashion of suspicious travellers were full of things. Kitty decided that this was just plain off. You could forget toothbrushes, hair ties, other small personal items. You could leave behind books, clothes that no longer fit after all the holiday chocolate, or those abandoned to make room for all the chocolate. People even bought new cases to take home all their souvenirs. What people did not do was leave the perfectly good suitcases full of all their belongings.
Once she had processed this, her first thought was that the hotel had given her the key to an already occupied room. It was the only sane suggestion. Kitty located the phone but found no instructions on it about what number to dial for reception. Usually it was an 0 for an outside line and a 9 for reception, or sometimes it was reversed. But neither option connected her to reception.
Kitty fished out her reservation and located the number for reception – she’d booked online and had no reason to call it before. Doubting her ability to get the phone working, she dialled from her mobile, only to find it telling her the number did not exist.
The only answer was she would have to return to reception, but should she take her case? She reasoned if she didn’t take it she would only have to return to fetch it when they realised their mistake and gave her another room.
So Kitty squeezed herself and her case back into the lift of doom. It took even longer for the metal doors to slide shut and for the lift to make its descent. Kitty just hoped no residents wanted to squeeze in at a lower floor.
The journey made her hands clammy and she was not claustrophobic, only cautious about being trapped in places that could fall from a height – a natural cautiousness. But this lift was creeping her out. Kitty watched as the numbers clicked over, falling towards 0, but the doors didn’t open and the lift didn’t stop.
But there wasn’t a basement, was the thought that crackled into Kitty’s brain. How could they still be going down? Before that thought could reach its next conclusion, the lift jerked to a stop and the lift doors opened, revealing a door much like those on her floor and reception’s.
Kitty nervously pushed open the door. It was dark. Loose wires hung from overhead, sparking occasionally. Kitty let the door swing back shut and frantically pushed the button to make the lift go up. Nothing happened.
After a period, Kitty accepted the fact that the lift wasn’t going to be returning her to reception and unless she wanted to live in the life she had to get out. She abandoned her case beside the lift. It could do her no good. It could only slow her down and create attention. She’d seen the movies. Eyes squinting in the dark and ears pricked, she crept down the dark corridor. She started to hear murmuring. She smothered her first instinct to cry out asking if anyone could hear her – she’d seen those movies, remember, and always rolled her eyes at the stupidity of those finding themselves in a darkened basement.
It seemed best to move towards the sound but she wasn’t going to wander blindly into danger! She crept towards the sound and increasing light, keeping her back to the wall. Finally the corridor seemed to turn to open out into a bright airy cavern. Kitty peered around the corner, bracing herself to run, but froze in horror at the sight.
The horror of what the hotel had been luring unsuspecting tourists into the basement for. Kitty’s blood ran cold. She had to get out of here; she couldn’t be turned into these mindless drones – forced to do the most horrid task day after day. The only feature that distinguished them from one another was the colour of the instrument grafted to their hands.
Kitty stepped backwards to find a means of escape. She should have looked down, as she stepped loudly on some loose stones. The faces turned towards the sound, hands jerking to attention, holding themselves aloft.
Kitty cowered as the army advanced, umbrellas held high and their terrible battle cry known over the world rang in her ears.
“On the left you will find… if you look to the right….”
The End