Elizabeth came back into the room, looking flustered. “We are to look after you,” she said. “Georgiana and I are to keep you from feeling sad. Come, let us remove to my own room, so that Forrest can clear the breakfast things away, and we can take another look at these papers; perhaps there is some way that you can go to law, and get your fortune back. We will go out as soon as the rain stops; I feel I need a walk, to clear my head. Come, my dear, be assured we will always look after you; whatever happens, Pemberley will be your home.”
“I must go out,” Anne said. “Forgive me, I must walk now, I must think, I will walk Minette.”
“But your piano lesson,” Georgiana said. “Mr Lempriere will be here in half an hour, we cannot put the poor man off.”
“I will come back; no, do not put him off, but I need this half hour. I pray you, forgive me… no, do not come with me, you are very good, but I must go alone,” and waiting only for a warm pelisse, for the weather was chilly, Anne hastened from the house, and made, as always when her mind needed repose, for the stream.
She went there in sorrow, in distress. Yet as Anne reflected, walking there, following the sweet curves of the landscape, something like a curtain seemed to fall away, and she saw a new prospect. She was free! She was rich no longer; Rosings was not to be hers. Walls and pediments fell away, expensive chimneypieces crashed in ruin, formal gardens dissolved, as though she saw them collapsing before her eyes. As for rank, what was it? Rank was nothing without money! I will not do for poor Sir Matthew, now, she thought. She had disinherited herself; for she could not for a moment doubt that her letter had helped to influence her mother to such an unexpected decision. She had set herself free!
Running back into the house, she saw Elizabeth. “I will not need Pemberley as a home. I am so happy! Oh, Elizabeth! Do you but persuade my cousin to rent me the little White Cottage, and I will live there and write books!” and she ran off, laughing, to meet her teacher.
Chapter 25
All morning, they could do nothing with her. She would have her piano lesson; she played very loud, and the music rang out through Pemberley like a paean of triumph, however many wrong notes she played, and there were a good number.
She would not budge from her position. She loved them all, but she wanted to live alone, and make money by writing. Elizabeth tried hard to reason with her. It was all very well to talk of living alone, she said, but Anne had spent all her life in a great house; she had no idea of the business of housekeeping in a small one. She did not know what anything cost; she did not know the price of sugar, or of beef. “I can learn,” said Anne. Three hundred and eighty pounds a year was very little, and would she not need a person to cook for her, and someone to do the washing, and someone to clean the little house? she could not do those things for herself. “Yes,” said Anne, “but I should not need a carriage, or a butler, or a footman in livery; think how cheaply I could live! And I ought to be able to earn a little money by writing—some people earn a great deal.”
“You do not know that.”
“Only think, dearest Elizabeth—every guest outstays their welcome in the end, everyone becomes tiresome after a while. You do not want me living at Pemberley for the rest of your lives. I am sure my cousin will still allow me the use of his library, and that is all I should ask—that, and to be an aunt to Lewis.”
“Lewis will be very fortunate to have such an aunt, but I do not see why you should not still go to London. Seven thousand pounds is a very reasonable dowry, you are very pretty, and pretty girls often marry with nothing, or next to nothing.”
“Yes, look at your sister and yourself. But consider, Elizabeth, what a huge sum it would cost me, to equip myself with gowns, and pelisses, hats, gloves, and stockings, and dancing shoes, all the things that girls' families fit them out with, when they go to London! for my mother would give me nothing, now. I must use up a year's income, nay, a great deal more. My cousin has taught me well; I understand what income is, and interest, and capital, and I know that one should never make inroads into one's capital. If it were all for nothing, if I did not find someone I liked for a husband, I should have so much the less to live on. I do not know,” she said musingly, “whether I could sell my jewellery, or whether it belongs to my mother. I think the pearls must be mine, for my father gave them to me, when I was quite small, but for the rest, truly I do not know. The lawyers might well write, and tell me to give them back.”
“But why could she not do it? Why can she not live alone?” Georgiana asked, while Anne was out of hearing. “I would not stop loving her; whatever home I had, she would be welcome there.”
“I know she would,” Elizabeth said, “and she would be welcome here, because we know her; but it would not be well for her to flout society's usages in such a way. She would have no other friends, no society; people would not receive her. Our house would always be open to her, but people would not wish to meet her here. You know eccentrics are only acceptable if they are exceedingly rich. Think of Lady Louisa; what would she say?”
“She would not be pleased; she would say that poor Anne had run mad.”
“Exactly. And Georgiana, it is one thing for a woman to write fiction, for pleasure, and have her stories enjoyed by her immediate family and acquaintance. But if she be known to make money, real money, by it, she immediately loses some of the character of a gentlewoman, and declines into the number of those who must work for a living: governesses, and paid companions, and such. Yes, there are such people as Miss Burney, and Mrs Thrale, but they are very few, a distinguished minority, and even so, not everyone wishes to know them. Unless Anne's writing became equally famous, she would be shunned and slighted, and although we enjoy her stories, we cannot be sure that she ever would achieve such eminence.”
“But,” said Georgiana, “by making her mother disown her, Anne has achieved something she has always wanted, and that is independence; and I do not believe she will give it up.”
“I know, but oh! Georgiana, I do not want to see her wither into an old maid. She should be married, she should have a husband and children to love. I cannot bear the thought of her living alone, with only her dog for company. Think of poor old Mrs Burniside, who talks to her cat, when we go to visit her, as though it were another human being. 'Oh, yes!' she says, 'Tibby and I are feeling the cold very much,' and 'Miss Darcy is a kind young lady, is she not, Tibby? to enquire after us.' And if you ask her a question, she says 'What do you think, Tibby?' Oh! I should not mock her. But poor Mrs Burniside is a little eccentric; surely Anne would not become like that?”
“I hope not, indeed; no! I am sure that she would not. But loneliness is very bad for people. Anne already begins to regard Minette as a friend, almost human, rather than a pet, and if she were to be too much alone…” Georgiana was so much overcome by such a lamentable prospect that she could not keep the tears from her eyes, and had to hide her face, so that Anne, coming into the room at that moment, should not see.