Opening one valise, Elizabeth removed the stack of journals, and a sheaf of parchments with her notes. Anne looked startled to see the notebooks, but Elizabeth just stared at her, until Anne finally acquiesced with a nod of her head for Elizabeth to proceed. Elizabeth thought that was the moment of truth, where Anne had to make a hard decision. Absent that decision, Elizabeth thought she would have been wasting her time, but with permission granted, there was some possibility of progress.
With a deep breath, Elizabeth began, "Lady Catherine… Anne… Please keep in mind that Anne asked me to intervene. I feel honor bound to do my best, which requires that I speak clearly and frankly. May I proceed?"
Both ladies nodded, not feeling any need to add anything.
"These are Anne's secret journals. I have no idea if they are actually secret or not, but Anne presented them to me as such and asked me to analyze them mathematically."
Not as shocked as Elizabeth expected, Lady Catherine asked, "Why you, Miss Bennet? Why mathematically?"
Elizabeth sighed, and said, "Let us just say that I have some talent in dealing with other people's… err… difficulties. I use mathematics as a handle to pry into things that should not be my business, so I may attempt to extract some approximation of truth. The 'why me' is because I have a history of successful interventions, although whether that is luck or skill is anybody's guess at this point."
Lady Catherine looked at her carefully, and said, "It sounds like you have been in some awkward conversations, Miss Bennet."
Surprised at how quickly the lady arrived at that conclusion, Elizabeth just nodded.
"And this is yet one more such? I take it you do not particularly enjoy these activities. Or at least I would surmise that by your demeanor."
"No, my lady… I do not enjoy it. I am however honor bound to help as I am asked, whether it is a good idea or not."
Lady Catherine nodded, and said, "Well, duty is not always enjoyable, so I applaud your intentions. Now, might you answer the first question?"
"You mean 'why mathematics'?"
"Yes"
"Well…", and Elizabeth paused for some little while, and said, "…because it is my particular skill, and in many cases, the clarity of the mathematical expressions helps me think. You probably know that mathematics itself is nearly infinitely precise, but its application is all over the map. You can determine with perfect clarity whether an apple is larger or denser than a pear, and given enough information about the markets, you might be able to determine their relative values with some precision. You cannot however tell if one person prefers one over the other; but given enough information you could tell the preferences for the average Englishman or Irishman. The application is something I can do well enough to suit my purposes. The tools of mathematics help bring clarity, though the clarity could just as well be wrong as right."
Lady Catherine nodded, and said, "Well, carry on, Miss Bennet."
Elizabeth opened the first journal, and said, "This journal begins on Anne's fifteenth birthday, when she was absolutely certain she was unlikely to survive another month, let alone another year."
Lady Catherine gasped, and looked at Anne who was decidedly staring at her hands, then asked, "Is this true, Anne?"
Startled, Anne snapped back at her mother, "Yes, it is… and you cannot deny that you thought the same thing."
Ignoring Anne's peevish tone, Lady Catherine leaned forward to take Anne's hands, and said, "I admit that I had such dark thoughts as well, Anne. We all tried to hide them from you, but we were clearly unsuccessful."
Anne sighed, squeezed her mother's hands, and said, "Well, you did your best, Mother. I cannot fault you."
Elizabeth said, "May I continue?"
Elizabeth thought that perhaps she should have let the discussion go on for a longer time, but it seemed unlikely to produce the results she wanted. She continued thumbing through the pages and continued.
"There were 3 times Anne was absolutely certain she would die in the month before she started writing. Four the next month, Five the following month, back to three, and so forth. Each time it was either because the pain was so intense that she was not certain she wanted to survive, the clues from her caregivers were overly pessimistic, or some combination of the two."
Elizabeth took out a chart she had made showing the times in a line-graph, and said, "As you can see, for the first year of the journal, these 'incidents' went up and down, varying between 2 and 5 incidents per month, but finally coming down to zero the last month of the year."
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Both Anne and Lady Catherine looked at it, and said, "Well, that is very interesting, Miss Bennet, but it seems you could have concluded that easily enough without the graph, if I am not mistaken."
"Of course, Lady Catherine. Sometimes mathematics helps to give clarity, and sometimes it does nothing but restate the obvious. Sometimes it is even harmful, as it gives a veneer of respectability to something that is at best a mistake and at worst a deliberate falsehood. In this case, it just let me see the pattern. That was just the beginning though. There is more."
"Pray, continue", Anne said, looking more and more interested in the process.
"Well, as I read through the notes, I noticed that the feelings of despair and fear ebbed and flowed, and sometimes they did not necessarily correlate with her condition. Sometimes Anne felt worse than what little objective evidence she had to report indicated, and sometimes it was better."
Anne asked, "What do you mean by 'objective', Lizzy?"
"Those are scientific terms, though not used as often as you might think. 'Subjective' means things subject to interpretation, while 'objective' means things that are true measures of something. Of course, there is some dispute about what is subject and what is objective."
Anne laughed, and said, "So you are saying that the difference between 'subjective' and 'objective' is subjective?"
Elizabeth laughed along with Anne, and said, "Very clever, Anne."
Lady Catherine said, "Are we to spend your entire 90 minutes discussing vocabulary, Miss Bennet?"
Coming back to the subject, Elizabeth said, "No, my lady. My apologies. The point I was trying to make is that the tools of mathematics are not exactly appropriate to this process, because while mathematics itself is objective, the inputs are subjective. However, I still believe it might be useful, so long as you admit that the actual analysis is considerably less exact than it might appear. I tried to map all of the different feelings I saw in Anne's diaries into a graph independently so I could see the relationships between them, but it became hopelessly muddled."
"And yet, here you are with more notes and graphs."
Elizabeth smiled at the lady, and said, "Yes, here I am. Let me explain what I tried. I made up a new measure, I shall call Quality of Life, where I tried to map a person's life experience. It is obviously terribly imprecise, but I tried to take everything I could read in each month and give it a numeric value. I tried to account for health, wealth, comfort and general feelings of happiness. This scale goes from 0 to 100. 90 would be a loving, happy and healthy person, free from want and strife, surrounded by loving children sitting in front of a warm fire. 10 would be a completely miserable life, someone sick, in pain, desperate. I presumed most people muddle along somewhere around 50 and then tried mapping people's lives into this scale. I find my Aunt and Uncle Gardiner by this measure would spend most of their lives around 80, while my parents would be lucky to break 50. Once I had that down, I tried mapping Anne's life similarly. It is rough, approximate, probably incorrect and in all ways insufficient, but I hope you might find it enlightening."
Lady Catherine leaned forward with some interest, and said, "Fascinating, Miss Bennet. Might you share what you learned."
Elizabeth showed them another line graph something like the first, and said, "As you can see here, the first year of this endeavor, her fifteenth year of life bounced up and down between 10 and 20 on this scale. It is the inverse of the previous graph, with the last month being the one where she did not think herself likely to die even once."
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Lady Catherine looked carefully at it, and said, "Yes, I remember that year. To be honest, the first graph could probably be measured in the volume of my tears. This tells the same story.
Anne looked and said, "Well, this is interesting, Lizzy. To tell the truth, I can hardly remember that year myself, and I have never had the courage to reread the journal. I fear you know my words better than I do now."
Elizabeth nodded, pulled out another graph, and said, "Well, let us look at your sixteenth year. You started at about what I would consider a 20, a considerable improvement, and then you bounced up and down between 20 and 30, similar to the previous year. You ended your sixteenth year at around 30, which I am certain did not seem all that wonderful, but it was a clear improvement over your fifteenth year."
Both ladies examined the graph carefully, and Anne said, "I can remember approaching my seventeenth birthday feeling like things were slightly improved, so that correlates with what you said, but I would have thought it a very minor improvement."
Elizabeth nagged, and said, "Well, let us look at that year. You managed to claw your way up from the low thirties to the upper thirties by the end of the year, and things seemed to be improving. You were not by any stretch of the imagination healthy and happy, but you were improving."
"Out of curiosity, where do you generally fit onto this scale, Miss Bennet. Have you done the exercise on yourself?"
Elizabeth sighed, and said, "Well, to be honest, Lady Catherine, for most of my youth, I would have been in the 30-40 range, but that was mostly because of self‑inflicted wounds. My own behavior drove people away from me, and left me lonely and brittle, even though it was my own actions causing the problems. A good friend helped me overcome my problems, and I feel as I have lived in the 60-80 range the last few years. I am generally healthy and happy."
Anne sighed, probably in admiration, and said, "I envy you that, Lizzy."
Elizabeth looked at her, and rather than replying, said, "Shall we continue?"
"By all means."
Elizabeth uncovered another graph, and said, "Let us look at your twentieth year. As you can see, you were floating around between 30 and 50, but then, you see here a place where it went down dramatically."
Anne said, "Yes, that was the year I got a terrible cold in the winter, and it lasted for months."
"Exactly. Now, I will assert that I have so far not really told you anything a little bit of reasoning would not tell you. What is interesting though is that you were down for a few months, and then you climbed back up to your accustomed level of around 40 or so. You see it here?"
The ladies examined the graph, and Lady Catherine ventured, "Well, Miss Bennet, you have ascertained that if you get sick, and then get well, you will have a better life."
Elizabeth said, "Right, but let us look here a few months later. You had a long mostly flat period, more or less as the previous year, which was the status quo, correct?"
Both ladies nodded.
"Now, look here. You can see that it took a somewhat dramatic turn for the better just here, a few months before your twenty first birthday. It may not have seemed dramatic, but you can see it bouncing up as high as 60 over just 3 months, a score you have never previously achieved."
Anne looked carefully at the graph, and said, "Well, I do not remember that period as being particularly happier than any previous period, but I will take your word for it."
Elizabeth said, "No, you shall not. I am the mirror, remember. You have to do your own thinking."
Anne stared at it and said, "Well, Lizzy, I can remember that period gradually becoming better and better if I put my mind to it. Can your account for it?"
Carefully, Elizabeth said, "I shall not attempt a scientific explanation, but I can do a correlation. The upturn in your fortunes happened immediately after Dr. Choak died."
Anne and her mother gasped at that, and demanded to see the entry, as they had never put the two incidents together, since they both thought of one physician as much like another.
Elizabeth continued, "You can see that he, somewhat conveniently died when you were in a relatively good place. He was still treating you at his death, but… well, let me just ask this outright. Did he have you taking treatments, even though on any objective measure you were not especially unhealthy?"
Both ladies thought about it for a time, and Lady Catherine said, "It seemed prudent, after so many years of illness."
Elizabeth nodded, and said, "But his death corresponded with a time when you were not particularly unhealthy, so I surmise you took your time finding another physician."
Lady Catherine said, "Yes, I suppose so. That was a year we had a flood, which was… diverting. Anne seemed all right, so I did not prioritize it."
Elizabeth nodded, and said, "Well, in fact, you never got a physician until that winter, when Anne once again had a nasty cold, correct?"
"Correct."
Elizabeth said, "Now, this new physician. Anne, was there something different about him?"
Anne looked embarrassed, and said, "I would prefer not to say."
Lady Catherine looked curious, and asked, "Why not?"
Lizzy said, "When you stand in front of a mirror, you may not pick and choose what the mirror sees, Anne. Answer your mother."
Anne looked embarrassed, and said, "Well, by then I was no longer accustomed to holding my nose and taking vile concoctions so…"
She stared at her hands in embarrassment, and her mother gently asked, "So, you?"
"I disposed of most of them. I worked out a way to dump the bulk of them into the chamber pot."
Lady Catherine looked appalled, and Elizabeth jumped in.
"I do not oppose physicians, or at least not all physicians, but if you look at the slope of this line, you will see Anne recovered much more quickly than at any time in the past. She went from around 30 to around 60 in less than two months. Still not the most robust recovery in human history but doing quite well by her standards."
Lady Catherine looked at her and asked, "Say it outright, Miss Bennet."
Elizabeth laughed, and said, "I do not believe the concoctions the physician was prescribing were helpful, and in fact, they may have even been harmful. Or perhaps, Doctor Choak's were helpful and the new physicians were harmful, or vice-versa. We will never know, but I can see that at that particular point in her life, she recovered quite quickly."
Both of the ladies looked at the graphs, and finally Lady Catherine said, "I can see the reason for your style, Miss Bennet. I might never have worked it out just from reading the journals."
Elizabeth nodded, and said, "Perhaps, and perhaps not, Lady Catherine. Sometimes all you need to do is have someone unaffected examine a story to get more meaning from it. In the end, it probably matters little that I use mathematics and graphs. A good storyteller might just lay out the plotline and come to the same conclusion."
Lady Catherine nodded, and Anne said, "Perhaps, Lizzy. It all seems so obvious in retrospect."
Elizabeth said, "Things usually do. That is what mirrors are for… apparently."
