Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say (12 page)

Edward answered my prayer. He understood the disaster at hand, placed his arm about my waist, and with his entire body shielded me and my gown, soon to be in tatters, from public view. Without a skip, without a bow, without a nod of the head, he propelled me from the floor and onto the balcony outside. “Don't move,” he said, standing me against a pillar. “I'll get your wrap.” At that moment, my husband and my protector became my hero.

I know, dear sister, that I have complained much as to his faults and deficiencies. I know that I have gone to
considerable length to avoid his company and his person, even so far as to plead illness when, as you know, I have had nary a day of sickness in my life, unless one counts the lying-in periods, which no one does, motherhood being what it is. And now? It is not too much to say that I owe him my life or by any measure my reputation, in this case one and the same.

We hurried into the chaise and Mr. Bennet ordered the driver to make haste toward Longbourn. I huddled in the corner, wrapped in my cloak, hoping to make myself invisible. Neither of us spoke until the chaise pulled up to the entrance of our house. Coming round to my side, Edward handed me down and whispered in my ear, “You foolish girl.” I could not but agree.

Yr Marianne

In Which I Am at a Loss and We Have Another Caller

Utatur motu animi, qui uti ratione non potest.

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

—CICERO

Mrs. Bennet has been seen only fleetingly, darting about the hallways, her curls matted to her head, her eyes wild, her skin mottled as if from fever. I fear for her sanity. When I have attempted to restrain her mindless perambulations, she shrieks and runs off. The servants, of course, have taken the opportunity afforded them by their mistress's illness to return to their lazy habits of doing nothing. I had taken heart only weeks earlier when Mrs. Bennet seemed
to take matters in hand and demanded that they perform their duties properly. Now, because Mrs. Bennet does not appear even for meals, they slouch about the lower floor and about the upstairs and present meals to me fit for themselves, I expect, but certainly not for the master of all they survey. My bed linens are a disgrace; my mother tosses about in her grave.

Mrs. Rummidge, for example, wails loud and long throughout the day as she paces back and forth along the hallway outside Mrs. Bennet's bedroom, cradling one infant, then the other, in her bony arms. “God save your dear mother!” she chants. How this entreaty can help her mistress's condition I shall never know. I order her to desist. She does not. I would order her out of the house if it were not she and only she who looks after the children, their mother having chosen madness over motherhood.

Granted, Mrs. Bennet has good reason to excuse herself from society. That damned ball at Northfield threw into relief her excessive vanity, her o'er-weening pride, and her inability to plan ahead. She was a recipe for failure.

To be sure, she looked, at the beginning of the evening, aglow. My heart leapt at the sight of her descending the staircase in that gown for which I paid more than I have ever paid for any animal of my fields or my barns or pens. But so alight with pleasure and pride was she that I forgave all her extravagances. (Though I will admit that I felt relieved to see that she wore no jewels. God help me if she ever decides to collect.) I was my most gentlemanly self. I
held her wrap, she took my arm, and, quite the elegant couple, we stepped up into the chaise (another expense I shall not have to repeat). “You look lovely, my dear,” I complimented her. “Thank you, kind sir,” she replied, smiling up at me. “Shall we go?” I asked. “Indeed,” she answered. There was a lilt in her voice I had not heard since our courting days.

I had not been to Northfield for some years, not since I was a boy. It has stood empty since then until now. The sight of it as we arrived brought back memories of my happy childhood when my mother called on Lady Willoughby there. Lord Willoughby was most often occupied elsewhere, some military excursion I was told, and so, while my mother and Lady Willoughby chatted about children and the events of the day, I had the full run of the estate. I came to know the gamekeeper, the field hands, the Master of the Hounds, and the hounds themselves. Northfield is where I first learned to ride, thanks to the patience of Staunton, the groomsman. Northfield is where I watched the birthing of lambs and of calves and of foals, thanks to the kindness of Bentham, the husbandman. It is from there that I took away the notion of service. How hard, then, it has been to witness in my own home the sloth and the surliness of those in my employ. With the exception of Tom, who cannot be called an actual servant, my household is run by selfish, ignorant, and rudderless nincompoops. In the absence of my wife, she whom I had assumed would put things in order, it will fall upon me to
restore the arrangements known to me in my earlier life, the life in which my mother, so effortlessly, commanded loyalty and industriousness from her household staff.

So I was not altogether resistant to attending the party at Northfield. In addition, it might provide an opportunity to speak further with this Colonel Millar concerning our properties which coincide. I have an uneasy feeling that he means to encroach onto my land and will use the absence of enclosure to do so. I shall have to instruct him in the ways of our county, where custom and tradition remain superior to the indignities of legal wrangling. And, with such a beautiful wife by my side, I almost looked forward to the evening.

I might have known that the dancing would take preeminence over practicality. Colonel Millar had no time for conversation. And Mrs. Bennet, strangely, began to pale as we were introduced. Instantly, she demanded that I dance and so, to keep the peace at least in public, I acceded to her request. Her behaviour then became even more peculiar, and if I didn't know of its impossibility, I would have said that she was flirting with me. She began to flutter her eyelids in my direction, press my arm against her side (a first for that, I will say), and nod her quite adorable chin up and then down so frequently as to make my head spin and perhaps hers, too, for she glanced quickly in the direction of the colonel and his sister, then back, and then again. It was like dancing with a small flag caught in the breeze; indeed, at one point she stumbled into Colonel Millar. Perhaps it
was my own dizziness that caused me to ignore the disaster about to occur. It required her panicked whispering—“Take me away from here”—to awaken me to the separation of seams in her gown, the gown so costly as to have forced my husbandman to reduce his order for feed for the animals. Of course, I hurried her away from the dancing and out onto the veranda nearby. I ordered her wrap and my chaise and took us both away as quickly as I could. At one point Mrs. Bennet seemed as if she would faint and indeed I suspect she would have had I not been there to hold her upright. She was weaving just as she had when she had gotten tiddly during our dinner party, except that tonight no wine had touched her lips. The thought occurs to me now that Mrs. Rummidge, never far from my wife's side, might well have provided an alcoholic reinforcement. She is capable of anything.

I did my best to comfort Mrs. Bennet on our journey homeward. “Now, now,” I murmured, “no one noticed, things can't be that bad, it will all be forgotten by the morrow,” but she would have none of my patting or quiet assurances and remained frozen in silence, all light gone from her, a little sparrow huddled into the corner of the chaise. Since then, she has been as you saw her at the first of this diary entry. With one exception.

Late last week, in the late afternoon, she appeared downstairs in her nightdress but with her curls returned to their natural springiness along with some of the rosy colour in her cheeks. The sight of her filled me with hope. As
I moved toward her, she did not turn and run, she did not cry out; instead, I believed she returned a bit of a smile. It was at that moment that a loud knock came at the door.

Surprised, I hastened to open it (no servant having showed herself). There stood Colonel Millar. “Good day,” he said. “I thought this might be the opportune time to talk about the enclosure laws that could very well—”

Mrs. Bennet's face, drained of all colour, twisted itself into a prune. She screamed once and fell unconscious to the floor. The colonel made an apology and fled. With the help of Mrs. Rummidge, who heard the commotion from above and hastened down, we carried my poor Marianne up to bed, where she remains.

I am left to wonder who this woman is. She is not a wife, she is barely a mother to my children, she is not by any means the mistress of my house; and yet, something in me warms to her and wishes for her warmth in return. She is but a girl. Perhaps time will bring forth the woman. I would that it were sooner than later.

July at Longbourn

Dear Sister,

I have let the whole of June escape and have barely the strength to resume my correspondence now in the sensuous languors of summer. I spend many afternoons, as I spend this one, sitting beneath the linden, listening to the murmurs of innumerable bees, their sound like distant music. Mr. Bennet comes by on occasion to amuse me with tales of farm life, as for instance, those regarding Tom, who delights in the warm weather.

“Well, now, Mrs. Bennet,” my husband said only
minutes ago, attempting Tom's country speech, “I finished my hayrick in most excellent fashion, and was able to cut all my hay in five days.” I would add that Tom is a most able-bodied farmer while my husband is not, and so, try as I will to pretend that I am entertained, my eyes and the downturn of my mouth give me away. I am not amused.

I pity my husband. It is not his fault that I am sad; after all, it is his heroics that saved me from total and complete humiliation before the entire county at the colonel's ball. And he could not know the effect that Colonel Millar's sudden appearance on our doorstep would have on me. But oh, Jane, picture me in my dressing gown, my hair awry, not covered by a cap, my feet unshod. I was barefoot! In the vestibule of my own home, there was I, mistress of Longbourn, looking for all the world like a madwoman unfit for human company, as indeed I was. What recourse did I have then but to faint dead away. Pretense was impossible, oblivion was not.

My contemplation in solitude has brought me to this: I must put away foolish notions of the colonel. I must fasten on my life as a wife and mother. I must set aside my daydreams and attend to my responsibilities. It is no less than my husband deserves. To be sure, he is not and never can be my heart's desire. He can never replace my colonel in my affections. But he seems, for all that, a decent man who means no harm. I have not been worthy of him.

It is my misfortune to end this letter with the news that, once again, I am with child. It is no wonder that my gown split. Pray that I will deliver a son.

Yr sister,
Marianne

Quae venit indigne poena dolenda venit.

“We are entitled to complain of a punishment that we have not deserved.”

—OVID

What is my sin? What wrong have I done, what crime have I committed to deserve the dull stares or, worse, the weeping that seems as if it would consume my wife? I have exhausted myself with searching for a sensible argument that would explain such behaviour, but none comes. I will leave her to her misery. Only she can heal herself. So I earnestly pray.

At the risk of seeming an unfeeling lout, I will add to
my complaints one other: Mrs. Bennet is growing stouter by the day. And no wonder. The only company she seeks out is the cook's and often I find her furtively cramming sweets into her mouth. Means she this balm to soothe her fevered brow? Another damnable perplexity.