Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say (10 page)

“Exactly!” I cried. “You get my point!” I sat down.

Mrs. Bennet sat rigid in her chair. After what seemed like a very long time she stood and, stepping carefully so as to avoid the shards of china and the pool of burgundy seeping into the carpet, said, “Shall we repair to the drawing room for port?”

“Ladies, too?” asked Mrs. Littleworth. Would there be nothing normal about this evening? “I do not smoke
cigars,” she said and made as if to poke her husband. He raised his hand halfway.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bennet. “Any port in a storm.” She giggled and stumbled slightly as she led the way into the drawing room. I looked on in amazement. Collins regained his smile, though, like Mrs. Littleworth's blinking, it no longer seemed to have a target.

Evening's end couldn't come quickly enough for the Littleworths. “Come, my dear,” said a suddenly solicitous Mrs. Littleworth. “We don't want you out after dark now, do we.” Briskly she bundled both of them into greatcoats and hurried to the cart, not at all apprehensive over the jumbling and jolting they would surely suffer on their way home. Mrs. Littleworth, from her perch on the cart, waved farewell and called, “See you next at the ball. And you, dear child”—she pointed to Mrs. Bennet—“be your most beautiful. I shall send you the name of my seamstress.”

Oh yes, the ball. I put my arm around Mrs. Bennet, who, unsteady on her feet, seemed to be listing to the right. “Get hold of yourself,” I commanded. She leaned left. “Straighten up,” I said. She continued to teeter.

Young Collins, for his part, appeared to have enjoyed the entire evening despite the ruination of a small portion of his inheritance. “Now to bed,” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow promises to be long and arduous. I look forward to it. Good night, dear cousins.”

In my bedroom I lay awake far into the night, as I can only assume my wife did in hers. How was it possible for
anyone to get a night's rest with all that ruckus from young Collins's room? The laughter was not just his; a girl's, too, probably Hildy's, I reckoned. I tugged at myself briefly in the forlorn hope of joining the party if only from afar. From her room, I could hear Mrs. Bennet, her headache for the morrow already in full force, as she wept into her pillow.

The dark hours of the night did nothing to console her, and at last, unable to bear the sound of her weeping, I crept into her bedchamber. Seating myself on the edge of the bedstead, I patted her upon her shoulder and murmured, “There, there.”

“There is nothing that is right,” she sobbed. “Our cousin delights himself with what he sees as the bounty of our home, not at all what we had planned for.” A fresh burst of tears beset her. “I disgraced you with my behaviour. I took on too much wine. I grew tipsy. I am so ashamed.”

“There, there.” I patted.

She sobbed anew. “You are my husband. You have a right to my obedience,” she said. “I pray that I can repent of my rebellious spirit.”

Things were going swimmingly right then. I moved my hand to my wife's back, which I stroked with all the gentleness at my command until her weeping subsided. She turned to me and laid her face upon my chest. I drew myself onto the bed. She did not push away my hand when I laid it gently on her breast. She did not flinch when I drew away her nightdress. She did not tense when I found my
way below. Instead, she grew warm and efflorent, like the burgeoning springtime outside her very window, and then I do believe, that because of my efforts, she was lifted beyond anything she had known.

I could not have known it then, but in those moments of tenderness and joy, Edward, Jr., was conceived.

The Cold of Late April

Dearest Jane,

This I swear: I shall never again allow wine or spirits to pass my lips. I shall abstain from that which might cause me to lose my good sense, my good manners, and my resolve to live as a self-respecting wife and mother of two. You may take this as an oath. Should you see me slip from it, I expect your reprimand and even a slight rap upon the knuckles. But I swear to live by my new principles. Come to think of it, I did not have much in the way of old principles. But now I have. And I do believe that the visit from our cousin, the young Mr. Collins, prompted the changes within me. Let me descry that visit as clearly as my memory will allow.

To begin at the beginning, I was taken by surprise by Mr. Collins's manly appearance. I had expected a person of many years, so imagine my surprise when this vibrant, strapping young fellow, appearing to be about the same age as I, stepped over the doorsill. He stood in the vestibule of Longbourn and beamed at me. “So this is Longbourn,” he said. “And you must be its mistress.” He bowed deeply. “Happy is the house lit by such loveliness.”

Unaccustomed to alliteration, I steadied myself on the newel post and stammered a welcome, managed a slight nod of the head, and breathed a sigh of relief when Hildy, the purported downstairs maid, entered, curtsied, and held out her arms for Mr. Collins's greatcoat. Odd that until now Hildy's dimples had remained a secret. I frowned but briefly, then ushered Mr. Collins into the drawing room, where, I assured him, Mr. Bennet would join him shortly. “He is so terribly caught up in the misery of what would seem to be a disastrously shortened growing season,” I said. “He spends all his daylight hours conferring with his tenants over planting and harvesting, with detecting signs of poachers and collecting carcasses of deer and grouse and . . .”

Mr. Collins seemed not to hear me so intent was he in staring at the carpet. “This is quite a fine Aubusson you have here,” he said. “Should last a good long while.”

“Good heavens no,” I lied, “I could show you the worn spots were it not for the embarrassment they would cause me. Oh dear, I am prattling on. Forgive me.”

This was the tack Mr. Bennet and I had settled on when news of Collins's visit reached us. We would make life at Longbourn look like hard work. We would point to the shabbiness of the furniture within; we would lament the hours spent outdoors in the unforgiving fields, the unkempt gardens, the wreckage of paths, the impassable roads, the declining forests, hopeful that in so doing Collins would leave off any interest in owning such a property and go away.

“Ah,” said Mr. Collins, warming himself at the small fire in the grate. “I have spent much of my life in the out-of-doors and revel in hard work.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine mantelpiece this. Good strong oak would be my guess.” He smoothed his hand along its surface.

I allowed my glance to linger a bit on young Collins's upper self, which appeared to be rippling, and on his strong young hand so gentle on my mantelpiece. “Indeed,” I murmured. “Indeed.”

“I would be delighted to give a hand to my dear cousin. And of course”—he bowed ever so gallantly—“to you, dear lady.”

I moved away from the fire, whose warmth had spread to my cheeks. “And of course,” I stammered, “there are the property disputes.” I had no idea whatsoever what property disputes were, only that Mr. Bennet had told me to mention them last, insisting that they would provide good and final reason for a would-be owner to reconsider before
he made a final decision. So far as I knew, which was not very far at all, there were no property disputes, at least not at Longbourn.

Surely you can see, dear sister, how deceitful I have become, how easily I told untruths, how deliberately I arranged for our cousin to draw false conclusions, how, even, I may have flirted a bit with the young man. But that is not all. And that is not the worst.

You have for some years now thought me flighty and even selfish, although your love and patience never flagged. I have come to see the truth of your judgements. For here—and once again I beg your indulgence—I come to confess that in a moment of inebriation I allowed Mr. Bennet to seduce me. Ah! I cannot bear to write the word! I cannot bear to recall that night; in fact, I can
not
recall that night, so hugely had I indulged in wines of all sorts. I know only that when I woke I screamed, for a stranger lay beside me, his face hidden in the pillows so that I could not at first recognize that it was indeed Mr. Bennet, my husband and the man whose embraces I had shunned for the past two years. At my scream he picked his face up from the pillow and grinned. Grinned! “Good morning, my dear,” he said as if his spending the night in my bed was a natural occurrence. Needless to say I screamed again and he bolted. Let us hope that Mrs. Rummidge's vinegar douche prevented any mishap.

Dear sister, I am so ashamed. Whatever transpired during that horrible night lies buried in my memory, where it
will remain forever. I write this now to expunge the fact of it and to promise to regain my virtue by whatsoever means I can discover. Despite all that has happened, I remain faithful to my one true love, my colonel with whom I shall be reunited in only a few short weeks. I am no less a virgin now than when we first met.

It is good that the time for the ball draws near. Preparations are enormous; my dress alone requires the constant attention and talents of seamstresses. Its cost, at first a source of uneasiness for me, so extravagant did even I consider it, is now no more than I earned last night. I am due more than Mr. Bennet can ever repay. I have earned the right to be as extravagant as I wish. I have earned the right to pursue my own happiness without the slightest concern for the well-being of my husband. I have earned the right to protect and defend the futures of my children, to see to it that my daughters marry well and grow strong. I would that I could be a more dutiful wife, but such is not within my power today.

Please be kind.

Yrs truly,
Marianne

P.S. As mistress of this house I have decided to take the servants in hand. They have become disrespectful and unruly. Alas, where to begin? I suppose by learning their names. Only Hildy for some reason stands out.

In Which Melancholy Pays a Visit

His se stimulis dolor ipse lacessit.

“With these incitements grief provokes itself.”

—LUCRETIUS

John Milton's “Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce” spoke to me at this particular moment in a way that the poet's sonnet on youth and time had spoken in years past. I was no longer young. I had recently turned thirty and found myself not as spry as I had been only a few years earlier when I danced my way into marital misery, our recent and most pleasant coupling notwithstanding. All the proof of aging I needed was the memory of trying to keep up with my young cousin as together we dug at making a furrow. Collins, forever exuberant, handled his spade as if he had
been born to it. My back began to hurt with the first turn of earth and to worsen into the third day. My future looked bleak, filled with melancholy most serious and chronic. I was, in Milton's words, “a sad spirit wedded to loneliness.”

“The preservation of life is more worth than the compulsory keeping of marriage.” Milton's words leapt from the page. I slumped lower in the chair, hoping to ease the pain in my back and to hide myself from servants and from the children and Mrs. Bennet. No one was allowed into my library unless invited and so far no one had been invited, certainly not young Collins for whom this library might promise the comfort and contentment I had found for myself for lo these many years. In truth, I had never been as young as Collins. I had never been full to bursting with Collins's animal spirits. I had never looked into the future with optimism, with hope, with enthusiasm. I had been a plodder, not much of this, less of that. It was only here in this library that I found communion and solace and escape from the person I feared myself to be.

Mrs. Bennet has resumed her silence, although this current muteness differs from previous periods in that this one is accompanied by baleful stares and swift retreats whenever I chance to come upon her. She scurries about the house, quick to leave a room in which I am occupied, quicker still to absent herself from a room I enter. She nibbles at her dinner and excuses herself almost as soon as I enter the dining room. She is like a mouse, quiet, swift, and merciless. In the evening she repairs to her bedchamber
and emerges in midmorning when I am sure to be seeing to the estate in the fields beyond.

“When a man is confronted by the sight of his deluded thoughts . . .” wrote Milton. I had deluded myself into believing that marriage, that my marriage in particular, would prove a cure for my loneliness. Yes, I needed an heir and only a wife could give me one. So far she had failed me in this. But I had from an early age known myself to be of a depressive nature, and I had hoped that this delightful slip of a girl would provide surcease from the weight of my thoughts and the solitary life I had led so far. Here, too, she had failed me.

As had Milton. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” In my younger years, that line had served me well, but as I aged, I found myself deluded once again, for I had stood and I had waited, but doing so had not resulted in a service to anyone; in fact, my very presence appeared to be, certainly in the eyes of my wife, a disservice.

From the kitchen rooms below, I can hear the sound of her voice in some sort of remonstrance. Clearly she has no difficulty expressing herself to others, in this instance the servants. “I am mistress here!” I hear. At last. Only good can come from that. Loud noises of discontent. And from someone, “A bit late, ain't you.”

I return John Milton, stiff in black leather, to my bookcase. Outside the window, spring has sprung. The woodbine flowers along the trellis, the primrose edges the paths, the larches have turned from black to green, the songs of
birds are everywhere, and soon the wisteria vine will burst with blossoms. I can hear the rippling of the streams. Ice is gone. Rebirth is everywhere. Except in my own house.

A great sorrow overcame me. Only a few nights previously I had held my wife in my arms. She had been warm and soft and responsive. She returned my caresses and welcomed mine. She hid her face in the crook of my neck and murmured of her love for me and for our daughters. I am filled with shame to admit here on this page that I, Mr. Edward Bennet, had never before made love, nor had love been made to me. I scarcely knew what to do until the sighs and murmurs of my wife as she guided my hands over her breasts and beneath her gown brought me to my natural self and all else followed and was right. We slept entwined until the early hours of the morning when suddenly, just after daybreak, she opened her eyes and screamed. What was that about? I sighed then as I do now because I will never know. Immediately, she exchanged her screams for silence, and now despite the budding of the natural world outside the window, inside is cold and sere. In only seconds she returned me to the loneliness that had been mine before her presence brought me hope. Now hope seems dashed forever.

From below stairs I hear, “My house, my rules. You will do as I say or be replaced by those who will. Is that understood?” Silence.

Take heart, dear reader. All is not lost. For, oblivious to the tribulations of her parents, little Elizabeth, on leave
from her wet nurse's cottage, has scooted into the library. At that age, Jane crawled about on hands and knees. Elizabeth does not crawl. She sits firmly upright and, tiny hands planted on the floor, little heels digging into the carpet, she scutters about the house on her small bottom wherever she pleases. Indeed, I almost tripped over her as I turned away from the window. “Oh now, look who's here!” I exclaimed and swept her up into my arms. Elizabeth gurgled in delight as I, her father, lifted her high up and then down and then up and then down. “Let us have a sit-down, shall we, Elizabeth,” I said and settled us both into my reading chair. Elizabeth curled herself contentedly into my lap and laid her head on my chest. She smelled like the fresh air of spring and her cheeks were pink like the primroses just outside. Her skin was petal-smooth and her tiny body pliant and trusting. I held her tight and murmured into her mop of red curls: “When I consider how my light is spent, / Ere half my days in this dark world and wide . . .” Elizabeth's eyelids drooped and so did mine. Thus did Mrs. Bennet discover us. Anyone looking on would have sworn that the corners of her mouth turned up.