So thought Elizabeth as she finally descended from the carriage to walk into the assembly hall.
No, no. Do not think like that. You must always be grateful. You should feel guilty for thinking ill of Mrs. Bennet.
Mrs. Bennet looked around at the girls before they entered the assembly hall. “Jane to the front, and Lydia after. Kitty, and Mary behind. And Lizzy, next to me.” She turned a critical eye on Elizabeth’s ink-stained Quakerish ensemble.
Severe hair parted at the middle with no curls falling about to frame her face. Not a touch of rouge or powder. No necklace, the only ornament Elizabeth owned in any sense was a locket with a miniature of her mother that Mr. Bennet kept under lock and key. It would only be hers to freely wear when she turned twenty-one.
Her dress was an old faded bluish gray muslin that Mrs. Bennet had abandoned as unfashionable the better part of a decade ago. The bosom was too large, the waist not at the right location on her torso, the sleeves too long, and the hemswere visibly pinned up. The heavy bombazine fabric reflected the origin of this dress as a mourning piece from when Mrs. Bennet’s father died.
Elizabeth’s own addition to the unattractiveness of the dress was an untidy ink stain on the left arm.
Most observers, Elizabeth hoped, would consider even Mary her superior in looks. It was a pity that Mary was not prettier, for she was Elizabeth’s favorite among Mr. Bennet’s daughters. Poor Mary also made a point of not dressing well, so she would not appear to compete with her prettier sisters.
Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth had maintained a silent conspiracy to make Elizabeth dress in the manner least likely to draw attention to her since Jane had come out.
After her long examination of Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennet said with a slightly dissatisfied air, “Be particularly sure tonight to not put yourself forward. Do not indulge in that satirical air you have learned from Mr. Bennet. Remember, you must not run on in such a way in company.”
“I know.”
Mrs. Bennet pinched her cheek with something that mixed affection with command and ownership. “You are never any trouble.”
Elizabeth often wished to be trouble.
There was a thing in her mind which would suggest ways that she might be trouble.
That was Mr. Bennet’s fault.
When they sat together in the library, Mr. Bennet always encouraged Elizabeth to say whatever ridiculous, perhaps unkind, and often silly thing that came to her mind. That was the only place when she felt as though she belonged and that she was acting out her true self.
Sometimes in her heart, though never aloud, Elizabeth thought of him as her “Papa”.
With Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth always played the role of “Elizabeth Bennet, poor, unwanted relation, who is interesting in absolutely no way.” And even though part of her deeply feared Mrs. Bennet for reasons she could not explain to herself, there was something about the role that seemed false to her.
Some of her was convinced, probably by how Mr. Bennet treated her, that she was not really poor and unwanted.
Mr. Bingley had not yet arrived, and Elizabeth contemplated how Papa would be delighted with the irony if after the speculation, anxiety, and careful pains that the young maidens fair of their neighborhood had taken to appear their best, that wealthy gentleman did not in fact appear.
Fortunately for the many young females of gentle descent—Elizabeth liked to distract herself by inventing different ways to say something when bored—Mr. Bingley did arrive with a far smaller crowd of friends than the tale had made them all hope for. Just two other gentlemen, one of them unfortunately married, and two ladies, one of them unfortunately unmarried and with a large dowry.
The fine tall appearance of the other unmarried gentleman at first promised to compensate for the fact that there was butoneunmarried gentleman.
Within minutes the tale had spread around the ballroom that he was the possessor of a very large estate in Derbyshire, and worth at least ten thousand a year.
Elizabeth was not a participant in the hopes that his presence in the ballroom raised in the beating breasts of all the brightest jewels of the country. However, she liked the look of Mr. Darcy.
Likewise, Elizabeth could not agree with the distaste which arose in every breast at Mr. Darcy’s high manners and refusal to dance. Oh certainly, it made him to be less the perfect gentleman, but as someone who felt outside of the community,and who had no close friends except for Mr. Bennet and Mary, Elizabeth did not think enough of them all to be offended on their behalf.
One time she caught Mr. Darcy looking towardsherwith a half frown. But upon noticing that she had noticed him, he immediately looked away. Elizabeth assumed that he had merely made a critical study of the many flaws that she had layered her appearance with. Elizabeth was, for reasons she did not wish to think about, unhappy to see his disapproval…
Elizabeth did not expect to ever marry.
She could not try to attach a gentleman when she was presented to the world as the poor relation of Mr. Bennet. Even though Mr. Bennet tried to hide it from her, she knew what her true birth was.
She was a bastard.
One of Elizabeth’s earliest memories was a man beating her as he called her a bastard again and again. “Bastard, bastard, I should kill the bastard child.”
Mrs. Bennet had slapped her and demanded to know where she had heard that word. This was much later when Elizabeth asked what it meant.
