Work Text:
Louise wonders if all writers are extremely romantic, or if it’s just a quirk of the few she’s read. Of Jane Austen or Emily Bronte or Daphne Luckenbill. Though, maybe Austen or Bronte aren’t like that outside of their stories.
Daphne, though, definitely is. Louise should know. They’ve been exchanging unsigned correspondence (Louise’s request) for months on end, and the recent topic of love, Louise asking specifically about her and Silas, has been…illuminating. It’s become obvious that Daphne has an abundance of love, and an ease and bravery with which she gives it. Louise is trying to understand that ease, trying to look at it with something other than wistfulness, and with a fear that she physically cannot conquer.
Louise cannot imagine herself loving in the same way Daphne loves. No matter how wonderful Daphne makes that love sound, how painless she makes it seem.
You wanted to know what I love about Silas? I admit, I am confused on why you would ask me this, though I will answer. Truly, it’s impossible to envision anyone else who understands my heart as much as he does. He’s the first person who saw me, and I, him. I will never forget the first time our eyes met. It was rather gruesome, an impromptu surgery was involved, but I saw him, and I loved him. It was impossible not to. I felt like I was alight, impossibly alight, staring at a star in the sky who’d come down and told me “you are not alone because I am here, and I am like you.” It also helped that he was impossibly handsome to me, I loved the way his face scrunches when he’s focused, and how incredibly intentional he was with his hands. As a surgeon. The knowledge and intentionality is impressive. Obviously. Any other meaning would be salacious and I’d be forced to deny it, Miss Hare. But surgeons. I would recommend, if this was a question as to who could make an ideal suitor. But I am biased. If not a surgeon, consider a poet.
–Daphne
P.S. Some poets are better than others, I would not recommend a Byron, for one. His writing is good but I’ve heard he’s actually quite a rake.
It’s not a bad thing, per se. Not necessarily. The idea of love had been thrown in Louise’s face as a tool for control, it was touted as love when Roderick Hare locked up Melinda Hare in an asylum, because a man who loves his wife would not want her to be unwell. Even if unwell is defined by men, defined by the Speakers, and being unwell can be something as simple as laughing too loudly or not wanting to please a man in the exact way he wishes to be pleased.
It’s that sort of thing, too, that is touted as love. You must smile and be happy to be touched, to be grabbed and even when the sensation of hands on your skin, slipping under your clothes–even when it’s soft–even when he whispers and caresses, makes Louise feel like her skin is on too tightly.
You asked if my love for Silas ever felt like something I wanted because the world says women must love men, or if it felt, almost, Austentanian. Like this world of romance that could exist outside the Speakers, something incredible like a Mr. Darcy (I admit I found Bingley more charming albeit gullible). I think it’s neither. Love just is, it’s something that settles you. My love for Silas is something that makes me feel like I can put down roots. The type of love I have for Silas also comes with a lot of touch, a lot of time together–as I am sure you can imagine. It is something that is not always easy for either of us, but we listen to each other, and respect each other’s wishes day by day. I think love is a lot like the changing of seasons, in that way. The world can turn, things can change, yet you breathe the same air and wake to appreciate different things about each day, which is a constant in the world. Love’s ability to change by the second is marvelous. Some days I’m all giddy and want Silas in any way he’d have me, others I want to just sit side by side, watching sunset. I suppose I’m eager to be near him all the time regardless. He has that sort of effect on me. Even watching him examine several organs in formaldehyde last week and explain their functions to a young study of his was rather riveting. I love the way his eyes light up when he knows things, which is often. Of course I had the girls with me and we were waiting for him to wrap up, but this just led to Emily asking if she could touch these organs. Silas lifted her in his arms to look at all of the jars, and explained things in a way that admittedly was dense to me, but Emily seemed to understand. They think very alike. I do not know how she and Silas do it, I could barely keep my appetite. And to think, she will barely let me read Austen to her at night, and THAT is unambiguously delightful. Elizabeth telling Darcy what’s what is a scene I could read until the end of time.
-Daphne
P.S. Emily was wearing the outfit you made, it is a battle to get her to take it off.
Love was just one of many things Louise was afraid of.
Is afraid of. Even with all of Daphne’s flowery words, some contained in a small, bound book of poems Louise saw by a Daphne in the window of a shop–no last name–she still was afraid. She had not bought Daphne’s book, for even without the last name, Louise was scared of the Speakers attaching the person she’d worked so hard to become, this anonymous, nameless girl, with Daphne. Daphne, who didn’t put a last name on her work to protect her children, because little barbs and condemnations of the Speakers, of men, were littered throughout poems about a tree whose leaves shed and regrow, about women emerging from chrysalises.
Louise hadn’t meant to read the whole book. She’d found it on Mrs. Ingram’s work station, amidst a flurry of fabric, dog-earred by the page. Louise hadn’t realized Mrs. Ingram was such an admirer of poetry, she was normally much more into something intense and vaguely unsettling, like Wuthering Heights. Louise had to put that book down because she could not stand the idea of Heathcliff in any way, and did not understand how Mrs. Ingram could swoon over a man so completely barbaric, one whose love was so violent it ricocheted through generations with the havoc it wrought.
Yet, Mrs. Ingram also had Evergreen by Daphne in a growing collection she lent out to the girls in the shoppe, citing that she wanted her girls to be read. She was a strange bird, that one. Stranger so to swoon equally so over the poems of Daphne Luckenbill and the moody heroes of Emily Bronte.
If Louise were bolder, she’d ask Mrs. Ingram about why she’d read Daphne’s poetry, and folded the pages, writing things about walks down a pier with Thomas in the margins. Instead, Louise had read a few poems, shakily thumbing through the pages, though only one had been about love.
Even that one, had been about the different shades of violet contained in a single eye, and Daphne wondering if she could name all the violets in her beloved’s eye, how she’d never tire of looking for newness in his eye. It was only because Louise knew Silas and that Silas had the same violet eyes as her, that she knew that was a love poem.
She’d written to Daphne, citing the poetry and writing, with the knowledge of a tailor that violet and red-violet are the only shades of violet there are. Other types would be different purples. Louise couldn’t see the beauty in violet eyes. They all looked the same to her. She’d looked at so many of them, from the soft, deep eyes of Isabella to the flinty, almost-lavender eyes of Mary, to her own, almost brown with how deep and dark the violet was.
None had made her want to look closer, or at all. Violet eyes are what gets a girl sent to Braxton’s and what got her the sort of love that gets you declared unwell for not performing said love correctly. The sort of eyes that narrow in revulsion as one looks at oneself in the mirror in the aftermath of a sort of love a woman was supposed to like but cannot no matter how hard she tries.
Of course violet is a single shade, in the context of fabric. Poems are all about the ABSTRACT, you person who does not want me to name them but has apparently read my book, and has seen that at least one person has bought a copy. Thank you, by the way. And thank your boss. Up until publication, I was worried Silas and Mary would be my only two buyers. Anyhow, about the purple. There are many different kinds of it, so many things to discover about a person. I just, also, happen to find my husband to be the most handsome man I’ve ever looked at. I’ve looked at him before I sleep and right when I wake and I keep finding things like freckles, smile lines, the way his hair can curl, his lips can turn, what each hour of sunlight does to his eyes. Is there something about someone you notice that you like? Even with others–like my daughters–I love to notice new things. I like seeing them grow. Isabella (the younger) took her first steps yesterday, and her hair is long enough to tie back with ribbon. It makes me unreasonably giddy just to see her stumbling toward me. If you ever do come to visit, you must see her. Children walk like newborn deer and it is thrilling to watch.
-Daphne
Louise didn’t know how one could look at someone like that. How it felt to have someone feel so encompassing. She wishes she wasn’t so scared, because going home every day to silence is terrifying in itself. The dormitories of Braxton’s, the halls of her home, did not prepare her for the fear that comes in quiet moments. The sort that makes her jump at the creaks in floorboards, the muffled chatter from tenants above and below her in the building. The way her own breathing can vibrate in her ear. The way Isabella’s reassuring weight, sitting by her bedside to bid her goodnight, is no longer there. The way she cannot look outside and see Mary and Frances sneakily bending over a smuggled cigarette together, forbidden smiles peeling across both their faces.
She cannot even hear her mother’s distant laughter, as she took up the space of every room, wearing her bright gowns and gaudy jewelry her father hated. She could not hear the newborn wails of her little brother Peter, or the way his wails gave way to a voice almost as soft as hers, a slightness of frame, and a smallness that was pronounced, even for his age.
Louise hadn’t thought of Peter much, as she was in Braxton’s. Being with so many new, frightening people–all the lessons, the men, the spirits–Louise was in full isolation. Her head was too crammed with fear to make way for any thought of home. Every step forward was done on shaking legs, every ounce of movement took her entire mind and entire heart, even when it felt like the little organ was going to immolate in her chest.
She did not have time to dwell, because she had too much fear already, in a place like Braxton’s. When she’d gotten Daphne’s letters to Silas, initially, she hadn’t ever imagined herself here, now getting letters of her own. Having the space in her brain for thoughts, queries, other than please don’t let me die here.
Yet, now, Louise exhales, and the distance of noise is terrifying in itself. The distance of warmth, whether it be from a smile from her mother or Peter, or the hands of Isabella carding through her hair to braid it, always so careful not to pull too hard on tangles. Isabella always asked about how she was doing, even though it was a rhetorical question. Even if there was nothing to say other than a muted, “fine,” because Louise was too afraid to start crying, screaming about never being able to have her heart settle in her chest.
That love was always laced with fear, for her. She couldn’t love anyone or anything without being afraid of the love she knew would return. A love that involved touch, expectation, that Louise could let someone that close to her. That someone could accept that Louise’s love would not be a sweeping poem, these grand words that Daphne always seems to have. The intensity, the violence of Speakers, the idea of love as possession.
There are so many loves Louise has seen, all centering around the idea of being someone’s, of your body and soul being theirs.
Did you ask me this because you are perchance wanting to court, Louise? I know it is not easy to bare your heart after having it unjustly stomped on time and time and time again. It feels, so often, like the world is not meant for love. Because love is something that changes, something that grows, and something everyone has. I think if you’re thinking of it, you must want love, right? Do you want your Mr. Bingley, Louise? I should hope you wouldn't want a Heathcliff, like your boss seems to. He is quite interesting as a character, but would be an absolute nightmare as a partner. As I'm sure you know.
-Daphne
Love is something Louise wonders about, because the letters from Daphne, the ones she keeps in a hole in her mattress to reread every night, Daphne makes love sound wondrous. The letters have all blended together into an impossible query. Louise misses Isabella, she misses the warmth behind her, of someone who she knows now always was truly kind. She missed seeing it, even from a distance, with Mary and Frances’s hurried embraces and shared smiles when they thought no one was looking.
The way Daphne helped to rescue Silas from Braxton’s. The letters, the words from Silas, they made Daphne brave. They gave Silas a champion, and that was love. It’s love that has them together now, brave enough to live as themselves and have this family and life for themselves, all while even creating this incendiary material against the Speakers. Love made them bold, it made them invincible, it made them whole.
So, then, why does it still terrify Louise? Why can’t she bring herself to imagine a clasp of the hands for herself, or a chaste kiss, without a shudder? Even reading Daphne’s poems, her letters, about how much she loves being with Silas and being near him and how easy it is–Louise cannot even imagine that without feeling sick.
She feels awful. Daphne would not want her to be sick. Daphne may even think her unwell, the true sort of unwell for being still so scared of something she’s seen can be beautiful. That she thinks of from a distance, and misses. Just in terms of–having someone. Anyone.
Louise Hare is unbearably lonely and she doesn’t know how it isn’t anyone’s fault but her own, for being like this. For even now, being barely able to pen her letters back. Her hand trembles with even the effort of writing Dear Daphne, as she imagines Daphne’s pensive, serene-looking face. It’s nearly been a year since Daphne came in Mrs. Ingram’s house with Mary and her child and those spirits sitting so close to her back.
Isabella had been there, so close, her touch now cool, but still as gentle and featherlight as Louise had been comfortable with. Louise had never wanted the touch of someone–just someone being near. Someone she could trust.
She–she loved Isabella. No. Not quite love. Love was for people you wanted to hold or have and Louise didn’t want either of those with Isabella. She didn’t feel anything in her belly other than nerves, only the quieting of said nerves when Isabella was near. It was just that Isabella made Louise calmer, was someone whose words held weight and whom Louise wanted near just to know someone who cared was near.
It didn’t feel right to compare her fondness to Daphne’s love, to the consuming loves written about in Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights that had Mrs. Ingram smiling into her books whenever she reads them.
She’d had that same wide, blushing smile when reading Daphne’s book, too.
Louise had felt that same calm fondness she could summon up for Isabella, right then, for Daphne. She’d felt happy to see someone connecting so deeply with Daphne’s work. She felt happy because she found she cared strongly for Daphne getting this recognition, for someone seeing how much of her heart she put out for the world to see. It was almost thrilling, to see Daphne’s bravery pay off, to see someone else see the beauty in Daphne like Louise did.
Daphne, who’d gently encouraged Louise to write to her, even about things like changing her route home to avoid a newly opened bar or just the stress from filling an order from an aristocratic French girl who’d come to visit and hadn’t stopped singling Louise out to ask about the Widow’s Weeds she wore. Even when Daphne wrote about things like Silas obtaining a medical education, his practice, or her journey toward publishing her poems, her fights with censors in publishing, those with Speaker ties. She even helped write Mary’s speeches at rallies against the Speakers. It was all so big, compared to her. So daunting.
Yet, Daphne didn’t pressure Louise to come anywhere she did not want to go, or go to revolutionary meetings she was too scared to even consider. Daphne wrote to Louise about everything she’d ask for, and asked Louise about a life that was barely a life at all. It was Louise watching other people, feeling like somewhere, she was left behind. Somehow, she could never conjure up a love strong enough to conquer the trepidation and fear that sank into her bones.
You did ask me a lot about Silas, and I keep getting the feeling I should tell you something else too. I think this sort of closeness you bring up, in the context of me and Silas, I feel with so many people. Not JUST like me and Silas mind you, but there are a lot of others. Mary is my dearest friend and I will feel quite put out if she doesn’t come by at least once a month. I have a cafe I frequent with young writers whose stories I love listening to. I adore my daughters, I love seeing them grow into who they are. Isabella’s hair is long enough to tie back into ribbon, and she never wants it in her eyes and likes to be neat, while Emily is already becoming quite rough-and-tumble, very much like her Aunt Mary, if Aunt Mary liked taking things apart as much as Silas. She seems to love drawing and doctoring and I cannot wait to see what else she loves next. It feels so easy to have this fondness for my daughters, knowing it will change as they do, but never ultimately leave. I will love whomever they are. I like to imagine my own mother was like me, giddy in every little change she saw, every little bit of me she got to know. Even if–she did not ever meet me. Not as I am. But I would’ve liked to think she would’ve loved me the same. And that love is just as all-consuming, just as pure, as the sort of love Silas and I share. It’s just as wonderful.
-Daphne
Louise imagined, at times, her mother’s smile, back when she was very young. Back when Melinda Hare was free, bounding down the halls of their home, chatting with anyone who’d stop to speak to her. She’d introduce herself and little Louise, humoring Louise when she’d press into her mother’s skirts, hating the way men stepped forward to appraise her at so young, or even talk to her like they expected certain answers back. Answers about serving a future husband, how excited she must be, yet the words never left Louise’s throat. Yet, her mother’s endless chatter drew attention from her, with a small wink from Melinda Hare, and that was enough for that little fondness to first make itself known in Louise. A fondness that came back, a bit smaller, when Peter would silently crawl to hide beside her in the study when their father got waspish.
This idea of love. A love Louise couldn’t push past that final block. Her mind went too many places. Her mother probably was long-gone, rotted in the dirt of an asylum, as skeletal and cold as a spirit. Peter is probably like father now, going through the transformation most Speaker boys go through when the allure of power and control and a love that takes consumes them whole.
Louise never did initiate with them, never could. She grew afraid of Peter quickly, seeing what he could be. And Melinda Hare became a dangerous ally to have when Roderick Hare’s ire was focused on her outspoken nature, her bouts of near-mania as she ran around the house. Louise was too afraid to love either her brother and mother, too focused on keeping her heart beating.
And her eyes were that horrible shade of violet that never let her completely fade away. A shade of violet that brought her to Braxton’s.
Isabella is gone. Even as a spirit, she will never be alive to do Louise’s hair, to sit beside her just to do so. To be that kind face Louise would just look at each day to make sure her heart still found the will to beat, her legs found the courage to move to classes and meals.
Daphne is–
Well, her, Silas, Mary, and even Agnes on occasion, are all in communication, all alive, all actively living their lives and starting to bring the Speakers’ to light. Mary through incendiary talks, Daphne through her writing, Silas–
Silas, according to Daphne’s letters, has begun his own sort of medical business. The sort that helps those like Daphne and Silas, whose souls do not reflect their bodies.
Louise’s body, if anything, does not reflect her soul. She wishes she were smaller. She wishes her soul could just love as easily, as freely, as everyone else’s did. She wanted–
Louise picks up the pen, taking a deep breath, forcing her hand to write the thoughts she can barely look at as they materialize on paper.
Thank you for your letters. I have not told my boss I know you because I am afraid some of your more condemnatory poems about the Speakers will make her finally realize– I just wanted to say thank you. For letting me write. And telling me about love, how easy it seems. I wish I could say it was something I could have, but I am so afraid of it and I do not know why. Even a love like yours and Silas’s that you write about makes me anxious. It makes me uneasy to share my body, to have someone near me in the way a lover is. I do not even–even courtship makes me uneasy. But having someone nearby, just as a companion, someone to talk to and trust myself near, it sounds wonderful.
But I am still afraid. I just want to be enough. I do not think I am. I get scared of what will happen when I am not enough. I am scared now that my minimal letters do not compare to yours. I still do not–I cannot meet you. Or your family. I cannot sign this.
But I want to say I love you for talking to me. No that’s not right. I do not–I do not know what I feel. It’s not love like you say it. But maybe
Tell Silas and your girls I say hello. I am glad Emily is wearing the clothes I made. It makes me happy.
Louise
P.S. If you ever come into contact with a Melinda and/or a Peter Hare
P.P.S. Nevermind, I’m sorry.
Louise takes a breath, putting her pen aside. She scratched out the signature pretty handily. She takes her latest letter and puts it in an envelope, already pre-written with Silas and Daphne’s address on it. She runs her hands across the cursive of their address, for a second, picturing herself at their door. Daphne, opening the door, seeing her, and smiling. She sees Silas, Agnes, and Mary sitting in the parlor, while those growing Luckenbell girls run around their chairs and play with Agnes’s son.
She imagines Isabella and Frances, lingering in the room via a gentle chill, just brushing by her.
Louise imagines them happy to see her, like they love her. For once, the thought makes her stomach settle instead of flip.