An Alternate Perspective

by Wynne Mabry

  He whirled about. She could not see his face, but she could hear the concern in his voice. “Not a window,” he cried. “A portal, you fool.”

  Elizabeth correctly interpreted that he was calling himself a fool, and not her. Evidently, something had occurred which he had not anticipated.

  He spun back to face her again. “My dear Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “I believe I may have put both of us into the most dreadful predicament. I do not think that we belong here.”

  “How could we not belong? We have not gone anywhere.”

  “I am afraid that we have. It is not immediately evident, but we really are in a different place. If you look about, you will see that the room has changed.”

  Elizabeth looked. The only light in the room came from one candle. “It is darker,” she said. “But it is hardly surprising that the candles were blown out by the same force which threw us to the floor. I do not see anything else different. Except for the disappearance of your machine, of course. Where could it have gone?” She started walking toward the door, which was standing open.

  “It should still be just where it was,” he said. “And that is not the only difference to this library. What about that globe?” He pointed toward one which was standing in a corner and said, “That was never there before.”

  Elizabeth stopped her progress across the room and looked at the globe. She could not remember having seen it before, but neither could she say with any certainty that it had not been there. It was a common enough item to find in a library.

  “It might be new,” she suggested, but at the same time she doubted that Mr. Hurst would have been unaware of its presence. He knew this room better than anybody. His insistence that there was something wrong was concerning.

  A growing feeling of foreboding was dispelled by the sound of voices in the hall. It was comforting to hear their friends at only a short distance.

  “We can ask Mr. Bingley about it,” she said more cheerfully, and she strode over to the door.

  “There you are at last, Mr. Hurst,” she heard Mrs. Hurst say, in a less pleasant voice than usual.

  Elizabeth gasped. Coming down the stairs was a gentleman with Mr. Hurst’s face. It was lacking its usual pleasant expression, and the man was a bit stouter, but the face was certainly identical. She quickly stepped back from the door and flattened herself against the wall, feeling instinctively that she did not want to go out into the hall.

  “Did you see Miss Eliza? She should have been down by now,” Elizabeth heard Miss Bingley ask.

  “We need not wait for her,” Mrs. Hurst said in a dreadfully unfeeling way, and then the group moved on.

  Elizabeth detached herself from the wall. “Mr. Hurst,” she asked falteringly, “have you a twin?”

  “No,” he replied grimly. “That was not my twin, but another version of myself. It is as I feared. We are no longer in our own reality.”

  She stared at him in shock and confusion.

  “I only thought to look through to the other side,” he said, “but instead we have been transported there. Or here, I suppose I should say now.”

  “But where is here?”

  “An alternate plane of existence.”

  “An alternate plane of existence?” Elizabeth repeated in great puzzlement. “What can you mean by that?”

  “Another dimension within the universe.” Mr. Hurst looked at her puzzled face and tried again. “Another reality. A place which looks like our world but is not.”

  “Can such a thing exist?” she asked in an incredulous voice.

  “It can. Indeed, I believe I have just proven that it does. That is why my machine is not here. It was not blown away. Nor has it vanished. I expect it is sitting exactly where it was. We are the ones who are now elsewhere.”

  The gravity of his tone persuaded her that he spoke the truth, incredible though it sounded.

  “So, we are actually in a world that is like ours, but not ours?”

  “It is like, but also unlike. In theory, there are both similarities and differences between the many realities.”

  “Many?” Her voice was almost a squeak.

  He nodded. “There is an infinite quantity of alternate realities.”

  “I cannot comprehend how. It is a very strange notion.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Even I was surprised when I was first introduced to this theory.”

  “Can we get back where we belong?” she asked, coming to the all-important question and awaiting the answer in trepidation. Her dear Mr. Darcy might even now be looking for her and wondering where she had gone. It would be unbearable to be separated from him by the impossibility of returning.

  “We should be able to,” Mr. Hurst said, which was not entirely reassuring. “With any luck, the Mr. Hurst of this reality has also built a machine, or is in the process of doing so, and we can use it to transport ourselves back to our own plane.”

  “Well, he has not built one in here.”

  “It might be elsewhere. Perhaps in the attic or a shed.”

  Elizabeth thought of the man she had seen in the hall. “This Mr. Hurst does not exactly look like you. What if he is different in other ways? There might not be any machine.”

  “Then I will build another one. If that is necessary, it will take some time, but we shall get home, I promise you. Before we start thinking of that scenario though, I think we should go upstairs and look in the attic while these people are at dinner. If Mr. Hurst has built a machine there, we might be able to use it and get back to our own dinner only a little bit late.”

  Elizabeth agreed to this plan with hopefulness. Aside from very much wanting to be restored to her own reality, she was also hungry.

  After peering around the door and seeing nobody in the hall, they slipped out of the library and hurried up the stairs to the attics, fortunately without encountering anybody on the way. Of course, the servants would probably have thought nothing of seeing them, but Elizabeth thought it would be quite awkward if she ran into her other self, who would presumably be coming down for dinner at any moment.

  In the attic, they found nothing. No machine, and no evidence that Mr. Hurst was building one.

  “Do not despair,” he said, just as Elizabeth was beginning to do exactly that. “It could be in a shed.”

  He walked over to one of the small attic windows and looked out upon the grounds. “It is a dark night. I think you had better stay here while I go and look outside. Unfortunately, it looks as though we will be very late for dinner.”

  Elizabeth thought of her other self with some envy. She would now be sitting down to a vast array of dishes. Or had she gone downstairs yet? Had something been keeping her from joining the others for dinner? Perhaps Jane was worse again, and that was why she had not appeared.

  What about her own Jane? Elizabeth desperately hoped that there was nothing wrong with her sister. But then, the situations might not be the same. And she had left Jane in satisfactory condition before going downstairs to put her book away. In that moment, her mind made a connection. Behind that image in the vortex, there had been shelves. But there had not been any shelves behind her. She could not have seen a reflection. But a person who had just put away a book might be standing by the shelves.

  “The figure in your portal,” she cried to Mr. Hurst. “We forgot about that.”

  “We did indeed. But there was nobody in the library when we arrived.”

  “Could she have been sent to our library?” Elizabeth said. “She was also standing right in front of the portal.”

  “Good heavens, I think you are right. The poor lady must have been drawn into the portal as well and transported to our plane at the same time as we came here.” His candlelit face was stricken with guilt.

  “She was me,” Elizabeth said. “I remember thinking that I saw my reflection just before we were pulled in. But that was actually the other me, was it not?”

  “I believe it must have been. Oh dear, this is dreadful. She will have no ide
a what happened and nobody to explain it to her. We must try to rescue her as soon as possible. There has to be a machine outside. There must be one for her sake.”

  But from the desperation in his voice, Elizabeth guessed that he was also losing hope of finding their means to get home so easily.

  “Do you think I should go to dinner?” she asked. “Assuming that my other self is not here, it might be best for me to take her place. Otherwise they will eventually realize that she is missing.”

  “That is a good idea,” he agreed. “We do not want them to worry, or to start looking everywhere for her and discover us instead. Or me, I mean. They will not know what to make of a second Mr. Hurst. And if I do have to build a machine, it is probably best for there to be minimal disruption in everybody’s lives in the meantime.”

  Everybody’s lives except their own, Elizabeth thought. Being thrown into another plane of existence was a great deal of disruption.

  “And you will be able to eat,” Mr. Hurst added. “I do not mind making do with foraging in the kitchens later if that becomes necessary, but I will be glad for you to have a proper dinner. Just try not to say anything that might puzzle them. Keep to some general conversation and answer any questions as vaguely as possible. They are probably much like us, but small differences are quite likely. The realities that are very different from our own are also very far removed from it. I can only have accessed a closer one, which makes substantial differences less likely. They are not impossible though. You should be prepared for some surprises.”

  “I am ready for anything,” Elizabeth said, but not in the most confident of voices.

  He patted her on the shoulder. “Do not worry, my dear. I have not given up hope of yet finding a machine. This Mr. Hurst is probably more thoughtful than I am and chose not to build anything in the house.”

  Elizabeth did not think the face she had glimpsed was a thoughtful one, but she said nothing. There was no need to dispel his hopes until they had learned more about this reality.

  So Strange and Yet So Real

  As she left the library still feeling very much confused, Elizabeth had little confidence in her own perception of anything. Even if the purpose of that machine was to make light in some way, the lights of which she had heard were supposed to be something like ordinary lanterns. What she had seen and felt was nothing like that.

  She was still wondering whether or not to say anything about her strange experience. How did one explain spiralling light and a powerful force which emanated from it? They would all look at her as though she were mad. That image was enough to decide her against saying anything. She was not going to open herself up to the mocking of Mr. Bingley’s sisters, the disbelief of Mr. Hurst, or the scorn of Mr. Darcy.

  She would not even ask about the machine either. Presumably it was supposed to be there, and if it was not, then somebody would see it eventually. Perhaps Mr. Darcy might do so since he was the only other person who visited the library. If not him, then one of the servants would come across it. She just hoped that would not give anybody a great shock. Or what if there was another vortex?

  Perhaps it was her obligation to spare some poor unfortunate. Or would it sound critical of Miss Bingley’s housekeeping to announce that there had been a strange occurrence in the library? Elizabeth grinned at that thought, which made her feel a bit more cheerful.

  The drawing room door opened at that moment. Mr. Bingley, his sisters, and Mr. Darcy came into the hall.

  She must have still been smiling, but all the same, it was astonishing that Mr. Darcy was apparently encouraged to smile back at her. Had she ever seen him smile before? She could not recall such a momentous event.

  Miss Bingley seemed to be grimacing, but that was common enough. Astonishingly though, Mrs. Hurst was also smiling. “Did you happen to see Mr. Hurst on your way here?” she asked in a surprisingly pleasant voice.

  “No,” Elizabeth replied, but immediately after saying it, she recalled her idea of having seen him in that strange vortex of light.

  Mrs. Hurst laughed. It was a cheerful sort of laugh, very unlike the spiteful ones which Elizabeth was accustomed to hearing from that lady. Even stranger were her next words.

  “Tinkering with his machine again, no doubt,” she said with remarkable indulgence in her tone. She looked at her brother. “Well, you know that he would not want us to delay dinner on his account. We should go in, and hopefully he will be along in a moment. Or if he is completely engrossed in his work, we shall be lucky to see anything of him for the rest of the evening.”

  Her eyes were sparkling merrily, something which Elizabeth had never seen before. They had sometimes glittered with malice, but never with such cheerful merriment. Nor was she ever so patient and indulgent concerning her husband.

  And what of this tinkering? Mr. Hurst was not the sort of man to expend energy on any activity beyond eating, drinking, and playing cards. Nor did it seem likely that he would have any understanding of machinery. It was incomprehensible that the machine actually belonged to him. What could he be up to? And what did that contraption do? She could only hope that there was nothing dangerous about it since it was in the hands of the most incompetent person.

  At least some of her questions were answered. Mr. Hurst had apparently brought the machine into the library at some time during the day. She must really not have noticed it on entering the room. One candle did not cast a great deal of light, and she had been focused upon putting her book away.

  “More likely, it will be another of those nights when you have to send a tray along to him,” Mr. Darcy replied to Mrs. Hurst with equal merriment.

  She laughed. “It really is a very good thing that I married him. Otherwise he would probably have starved to death by now.”

  Mr. Hurst dine off a tray? Impossible! Starve to death? Never! His wife’s words were as incomprehensible as her cheerful tone of voice.

  As Elizabeth stared at this merry scene in bemusement, Mr. Darcy held his arm out to her. For a second, she looked at it suspiciously, but not liking to offend him, she took it. That was not all. In the dining room, he was excessively attentive to her comfort, which was very peculiar.

  Although the others were apparently unconcerned about Mr. Hurst’s continued absence, she expected him to appear at any moment and frantically make up for missing the beginning of the meal, but he did not. It was remarkable that she was the only person who thought there was something very much amiss.

  That was not the only strangeness which she encountered at dinner either. Miss Bingley said something subtly insulting, which was not unusual, but she was quelled by Mrs. Hurst, which was unusual. The elder sister was also very pleasant and friendly toward Elizabeth, which was very much out of the ordinary.

  And then there was Mr. Darcy. What could have come over him? He was so agreeable. Almost as amiable as Mr. Bingley, whom anybody could take as the standard for amiability. His conversation was light and amusing, and he kept seeking Elizabeth’s opinion. Everything she said met with his approval, and he continued to be solicitous of her comfort all throughout the meal.

  She could almost think of liking him. He was so thoughtful, and she found herself enjoying his company immensely. Even with Miss Bingley doing her best to be unpleasant, Elizabeth was having the best time she had yet experienced at Netherfield. The only hindrance to really enjoying herself was wondering how it was that things could be so strangely different. And that machine was always in the back of her mind.

  She was very glad when dinner was over since she was desperately wanting to go upstairs and make certain that there was nothing amiss with Jane. This bizarre evening had her quite discomposed.

  On her way out of the dining room, she considered the possibility that this was a dream. There was no other explanation. Mr. Hurst would not miss dinner in any circumstances. All this strangeness could only be coming from her imagination. She must have dozed off just before dinner was announced. Now she only needed to wake for everything to be as
it should be, although it was a pity that Mrs. Hurst could not remain so nice.

  Stopping in the middle of the hall, Elizabeth willed herself to wake up. Nothing changed. She pinched herself, thinking that the perception of feeling pain might startle her into waking. Still nothing, and everything felt so real. This was not like any dream she had ever had before.

  She looked about and noticed the brass ornaments. They were exactly where they had been before Mr. Hurst’s clumsiness and Miss Bingley’s sudden desire for a change of decoration. Yet she had seen the servants carry everything away. It was possible that Miss Bingley had afterwards changed her mind, but Elizabeth was struggling to persuade herself that this was the case. Too many strange things were happening.

  She took a few more steps forward, and then her attention was caught by a painting on the wall. It depicted a naval scene, which she could not recall having seen before. In fact, she had a strong feeling that there ought to be a landscape in its place.

  Now she looked toward the library door, which was further along the hall. Was Mr. Hurst in the room? Could he actually be doing some work on that machine which apparently belonged to him?

  Instead of going upstairs, she went to the library and looked inside. The strange contraption was still in the middle of the room. The candles and fire were still burning, but there was no Mr. Hurst. The tray of food, for which Mrs. Hurst had given instructions during dinner, was sitting on a table.

  Elizabeth walked over to it and lifted one of the covers. The meal looked to be untouched. She could smell the aroma of the ragout which was one of Mr. Hurst’s favourite dishes. She could see the steam rising off the food. The underside of the cover was damp from it. A few droplets slid down. She put out her hand and felt the moisture splash into it. The feeling was distinct.

  Every sensation felt real. This was not like a dream.

  She replaced the cover, but with doubt that Mr. Hurst would be eating this meal. It seemed likely that something had happened to him. Something in connection with that vortex. Perhaps an injury from which he had been unable to walk away.