“That is the worst tuned pianoforte in the county, and possibly the country.”
Anne answered with a good-natured giggle. “That is because you are playing it wrong.You are supposed to use your fingers!Not your head!”
“I did!”
That brought Anne up short, as the import of the words sank in.
“You played.”
“Yes! I played… extremely ill indeed, but I played.”
Elizabeth looked like a naughty schoolgirl staring at her shoes, or someone just plain embarrassed by a revelation; though Anne could not for the life of her fathom why Elizabeth needed to be embarrassed.
“And?”
“It was awful! It was wonderful! It was nothing! It was everything! It was easy! It was hard!It was a start.”
Anne forgot the wound on her friend’s head, then immediately, ran over and hugged her. “So, you have decided to reclaim one of your senses.”
“I have.”
Anne squeezed Elizabeth’s hand in a signal they had unconsciously adopted over the year to show happiness, since Elizabeth could not see a smile on her face, but then decided it was too subtle and grabbed her friend in an impromptu embrace—yet another mannerism her mother would either loathe or celebrate depending on her mood.
“I presume we need to get it tuned?”
“Please!I sound worse than my six-year-old niece after a half-hour of instruction, but at least I played. I need an excuse-free household if I am to reclaim something and perhaps even improve. We shall have music again… eventually.”
Anne smiled and ran out of the breakfast room to find a servant to attend to the pianoforte. Elizabeth had played on a stool that would have been inadequate for an elf, so she decided to get a new stool while she was at it, or possibly just a new pianoforte. And of course, a master must be engaged immediately… well, perhaps after giving Elizabeth a chance to establish herself… well, nonsense… a master immediately.Elizabeth Bennet would play again!Anne would happily submit herself to the auditory torture the next month or two was likely to bring. Who knew, perhaps she might subject herself to some instruction as well.
It would be wonderful to have music in the house again.
~~~
After all the excitement of the examination of head wounds, the ladies’ little row over said head wounds, and the start of the project to tune the pianoforte, they went to breakfast somewhat delayed. As was their custom, Anne prepared Lizzy’s plate. The servants would have been quite happy to do so, but Anne preferred to take care of it herself for her own reasons.
Before leaving England, they had worked out several strategies to address Elizabeth’s blindness without acknowledging it constantly, even to themselves. Anne had a set of plates custom-made which had small indentations on the bottom of the rim, splitting the plate into thirds. Anne always put Elizabeth’s food in an exact spot in the middle of each third, and then oriented the plate in a particular way so Elizabeth could know where everything was. Lizzy could simply run her finger along the base of the plate to find one of the corners, and then locate the targeted item using her fork. It was surprisingly effective for such a simple system. They had even experimentedwith having a silversmith make a plate with three separate compartments, but Elizabeth baulked at the aesthetics of the arrangement. Just because she could not see how the table was set did not mean she did not know what it would look like. In practical terms, the invented plate was perfect, but the new system worked just about as well without the ugliness.
Elizabeth, like many others in her situation, became a creature of habit. If she had eggs, they were always hard to avoid any kind of mess. If she had sausage or bacon, it was always cut small enough to eat neatly. She and Anne kept a relatively constant schedule so their fare on any Monday was likely to be the same thing they ate the previous Monday. All of this just made the ordinary business of life proceed with less ambiguity, and less need for Anne to describe the fare. Anne would not have minded more variety in the least, but they both found this solution more comfortable, and Anne was a creature of habit herself anyway.
Elizabeth’s drink was always placed in an exact spot and prepared an exact way. When Elizabeth sat to eat, she could be confident she could reach her drink easily by laying her right elbow exactly on the table’s edge, with her plate as a guide; the cup would be in just the right spot with the handle exactly where her finger needed it. Naturally, it was prepared just to her liking, and had the exact amount of liquid she was accustomed to.
Anne marvelled at the system they had put together; it was so good they could probably entertain guests, and it would be half the night before they realised anything was amiss. She had to laugh thatevery dishwas placed in a precise location for every meal of every day at Rosings, but Elizabeth was the only person she knew who actually had a practical reason for such exactitude. The precision of Rosings was either vanity, or part of Lady Catherine’s strategy to employ a half-dozen more servants at Rosings than were really needed. Anne had always suspectedthe former, but recent letters had led her to believe her mother may have hidden depths, and the latter might actually be the case, though her mother wouldneveradmit it. Perhaps she was being kind-hearted in her own way. It was not her way to give charity beyond what others in her station gave, but having extra footmen or maids was good management, was it not?
Like nearly anybody who lived in close quarters with a blind person they loved, the ladies had worked out hundreds of little adjustments to their daily lives to make Lizzy’s blindness less of an issue. Elizabeth’s tumble over the step stool the previous night had been quite the anomaly because the ladies kept their houses almost entirely free of dangerous furniture. One could not completely do without footstools, but there was not a single piece of furniture that did not serve a useful purpose; nor was a single piece of furniture ever allowed to deviate from the place where it belonged, even temporarily. Elizabeth would memorise the positions of everything and avoid them quite automatically, and it had been some time since her last stumble. Her inattentiveness the previous evening had been her downfall, not a failure of their system.
In yet another break from her mother’s custom, Anne had long ago invited Mr Hopkinson to take meals with them. Naturally, this was not mentioned to her mother either. This was not a terribly big break from tradition, as Mr Hopkinson’s status was somewhere between servant and family. He was probably more analogous to a companion than anything else. Anne invited him initially just to be available to read things to Elizabeth if necessary, or take down any words of wisdom she wished to speak of over meals. After a while, the ladies began to feel he was akin to a missing grandfather, and began to invite him just to have his company, until it became a longstanding custom.
As the three sat to their meal, a footman brought in the day’s post. Glancing over the letters, Anne seized one immediately and broke the seal with trembling hands.
“Lizzy, this is a letter from Captain Jamison!”
“What does it say?”
Anne scanned the note, her frown deepening as she read, while Elizabeth did her best not to bounce in her seat in an accurate impersonation of Lydia. Knowing how impatient Lizzy was, Anne stopped partway through and started reading from the beginning.
~~~
12 Aug 1812
