Chances Come, Ney Mitch [snow like ashes series TXT] 📗

“Some things ought to be overseen and influenced,” I allowed, “and we ought to bring our intellect to them. However, with other things, we perhaps should not be trying to be overbearing with our influence. Sometimes fate has a way of punishing such pride. I know that I seem hypocritical now. Yet, perhaps, it would be best to let things unfold for the moment. Maybe, without our interference, and without the aggravation that we both could suffer from said interference, we should let all of them sort out their own lives. We both have arranged for Jane to meet with Mr. Bingley soon. Therefore, we have done enough. It is up to them now.”

“You advise that we wash our hands of it all?”

I shrugged. “A mere suggestion. What do you think? I will value your advice. But mind you, I will never let it erase my own.”

“For the moment, I will accept your plan.”

“Do you do it because it is the right thing to do,” I teased, “or do you do it because you are scared of me in this moment?”

“Scared of you?” he echoed, his left eyebrow raising.

“Yes. I must ask. For I do so much want you to make this decision because you think it the right thing to do, and not because you feel pressured to agree with me.”

“Come now?” He asked, lightly. “When have I ever been afraid of getting into a disagreement with you?”

“True. Just making sure that you did not feel your self-will be pulled away from you. So, we leave them alone and let them decide as they wish?”

“It will give me peace.”

“I like peace.”

“As do I.”

It was time for dinner.

And to dinner, Colonel Fitzwilliam came once more to give us his company!

Jane and I asked him about serving in his majesty’s military service, and it was the right question to ask. Colonel Fitzwilliam was a delightful storyteller, and every now and again, he narrated a tale of woe. For, by going into battle, he had inherited a few battle scars. Being women who were kept among all the comforts of safety, Jane and I gasped at hearing some of his stories.

“For,” Jane commented, “we are not ignorant women, and we are aware that men of course suffer terribly on the battlefield. Yet, no matter how one is aware of a situation…”

“Nothing can prepare you for the real scene,” Colonel Fitzwilliam finished her sentence. “Nothing can prepare you for the horror.”

“Precisely. How do you bear it?”

“In truth?”

“Yes?”

“I drink the night before.”

Jane and I laughed at this.

“Yet, it shall always be wondrous,” I interjected, “for often, be it in literature or art, battle is often depicted as a glorious thing. A noble thing. But, when amidst the moment, it probably feels like living a simple and obscure life is infinitely more preferable than the pain and loneliness of being wounded on the battlefield.”

“Lizzy, that is too horrible a picture that you painted,” Jane chided me.

“Oh, but she is correct,” Colonel Fitzwilliam supported me. “For there is nothing glorious about dying or seeing the men die around you. It is painful. It is lonely. And, despite the ever-demanding belief that you should die with grace and elegance, you cannot. You are scared. As much as it makes you look the coward, you wish to weep. You wish that you had run away, to a distant land where men never had to face such horror and sadness. And only if you can be delivered to that place, all would be well. You could remain there, gladdened at the peace around you. Next, you can find a place to live, and perhaps you find a glorious woman who can survive the harsh life of you being a man of profession, and you both can live. You can easily just live. Then you recall that it is a dream, and nothing more. So, you wake up and feel the coldness of reality around you return. And the dream slips further and further away, into the oblivion that it had sprung from. Such a tease of a thing. Such a heartwarming and heartbreaking thing it is, all at the same time.”

While he had spoken, the Colonel’s voice had become mellow, and somehow had a magical effect on us all. We all watched him and did not even know we had breathed the entire time. His narration was mesmerizing—hypnotic.

“Real or false,” Jane summed up, gently, “it is still a good dream.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, it is.”

After dinner, Jane and I had separated from the men so that they could go into the billiards room. Once we were alone, Jane sighed and sat down by the fire.

“I shall never understand the practice of men and women separating after dinner,” she said.

“You never mentioned that to me before,” I pointed out.

“I suppose I never thought it was my place to question it. Yet now, I am thinking on it. And I wonder why it is such a necessity of dining? Why must men and women separate from each other afterwards? For, it is not as if we women will not see each other later on in the week and could discuss other more sensitive topics to each other then.”

“Ah, you now have noticed the senselessness of something that I have thought of for so long now.”

She gave me a look of surprise. “You never liked the separation either?”

“I always thought it was a stupid thing.”

“True, it just might be pointless.”

“But, I wonder,” I began to consider more into the heart of the matter, “why did you not notice the frivolity of this practice until now?”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked me.

I sat down beside her on the sofa.

“Well, you have never spoken about this being a nuisance before. So, I am wondering what has happened this evening that has made you desirous to not leave the men’s side?”

Jane blushed and looked down at her hands.

“Do not be afraid,” I encouraged her.

She shook her head and