*Sigh* So, it's finally happened. My schedule has caught up to me, and I'm posting my last finished chapter.
Because of that, I will be going on a brief hiatus with my posting to catch up on writing (somewhere around a month) after which (hopefully) I can resume my weekly posting as usual.
I also wanted to say that your guys' support so far has truly meant to much to me, and I appreciate your patience and understanding with this. I look forward to seeing you all again soon :)
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It was, Mary thought to herself the next day as the rains began to come down on Pemberley, quite easy for one to confuse the notions of the beautiful and of the sublime.
The one was delicate, graceful; it inspired pleasure in the senses, but little else. The other was great, and terrible in its greatness, in that it inspired equal parts delight and terror, equal parts awe and pain. To look upon fine art was to look upon beauty; but to look upon the great, stretching horizon, upon the towering alps, upon the cavernous abyss – this was to look on the sublime.
Stormy weather was always wont to put Mary in a pensive, brooding mood; and though the rains were not particularly strong, and the winds neither howling nor fierce, she felt the heavy weight of wistful contemplation settling upon her; the raindrops beating a cadent pattern upon the windows, soothing her into a languor; she recalled, as she looked out onto the grayness of the morning, a memory, one of her earliest – it was of a violent, whipping storm which had lashed terribly against Longbourn, thunder echoing in its halls, winds howling plaintively in the distance, so fierce it seemed that the very house was but moments from ruin. That, Mary supposed, was the sublime – for even as she had huddled beneath her sheets, awake and frightened, but too apprehensive to wake either of her older sisters, she had remembered a sense of reverence and awe at this display of force. It was a strange sensation – to be stirred by something, and yet also fearful of it, in equal parts.
Georgiana was in a subdued, abstracted mood herself; though Mary suspected this did not stem so much from the weather. Whatever ill feeling had plagued Georgiana at the dinner had not yet entirely passed; an air of melancholy seemed to hang over her these few days, and there was a distraction about her as well; and every so often she sighed, but there was no artifice or pretension in it; it spoke of an earnest affliction, a faint malaise of the soul.
When they did have chance to speak this morning, they spoke only of trivial, meaningless things; of the weather, of music, of their studies; but Mary soon found that Georgiana seemed to be steeling herself, preparing for some solemn and grave pronouncement; and she could not help but suspect that perhaps Georgiana intended to at last unburden herself to her friend.
She was indeed correct in her conjecture; for at last Georgiana stood, and came to sit directly beside her. "I suppose you have noticed that Edmund Benson had chance to upset me last night, more so than in his usual way."
"You should pay him no mind, Georgiana; it is only that he cannot bear to have attention wrested away from him, or for his poor, unclever jibes to not gain reaction; you handled him quite splendidly last night."
"Oh, it is not him, Mary," Georgiana said quietly, though a slight color rose to her cheeks. "...Or, it is him, but he could not have possibly known the whole effect of his words, it is only... they conjured in me unpleasant remembrances, a moment in my life which I do not like to recollect." Here she paused, and turned her gaze down to her hands, which twisted unconsciously in her lap; but Mary sensed she had not yet finished her speech, and remained silent, waiting for her to continue. At last, she sighed, and looked up at Mary once more, and in her eyes, there was a new, quiet determination.
"There was a time when I vowed I should never speak of it to anyone; and I have held that vow quite faithfully; my brother and Lizzy are the only two earthly beings who know of this, aside from the gentleman in question. But it does not feel right to keep it from you any longer; you, who have been so dear, and steadfast a friend to me; and who has so staunchly kept every confidence."
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Pomp and Circumstance: A Pride and Prejudice Continuation
Fanfiction"In the character of Mary Bennet there existed a profound irony which was as follows: the only quality that saved her from being wholly ordinary was the extraordinary degree of ordinariness which she possessed." A Mary Bennet romance and Pride and P...
