She had murmured some words of agreement; she hardly knew what. Whatever had been weighing on his mind these last days, it seemed it had nothing to do with any dissatisfaction with the company in Hertfordshire. He could be so frightfully inscrutable at times; would she ever understand him?
And why did it seem so very important that she should?
* * *
With their friends and relations gone, and with Charlotte Lucas naturally caught up in the details of her approaching wedding, the middle part of January passed quietly and slowly for Elizabeth and her sisters. The brightest spot in their lives was the continuing recovery of Lydia, who slowly filled out and increased in energy as the days crept by. However, as her strength grew, so did her frustration with the alteration to her vision. Nothing looked as it should any longer; one eye was as acute as ever, but the vision in the other so blurred as to only distinguish light, shadow, and motion. Her stitchery, which had been her one great accomplishment, was now as a child’s, and when she used the stairs she was required to cling very tightly to the banister to avoid taking a tumble.
“Ugh!” she cried, flinging her work to the floor of the parlour and startling all her family, one afternoon in early January. “I cannot do it!”
Mary stood, picked up the discarded fabric, and put the work into Lydia’s basket. She rummaged through her own, pulling out a shirt with a great rent in the sleeve. Seating herself beside Lydia, she gave her the shirt and explained, “This is from the collection for the poor. Whoever receives this shirt will not notice that your stitches are imperfect, but instead that he or his wife or mother has been spared the labour of fixing it. I know it is not interesting work, but it will give you the practise you need to accustom yourself to stitching again. And, of course, you will be doing a service for our community.”
“Will you thread the needle for me, Mary? I find it very hard.”
Elizabeth watched as Mary acquiesced, and Lydia began placing a line of simple stitches through the edges of the tear. When it was finished, she accounted herself rather pleased with it. When she asked for another piece of mending, Elizabeth was only too happy to find something from the collection for the poor. The change in her sisters, the growth in maturity and patience and kindness for one another was truly the best outcome—the only good result—of what they had suffered. She glanced at Jane, as dear and kind-hearted as ever, and brave as well; her beauty remained, it was not perfect, but it was beauty nonetheless.
Her happiness with Mr Bingley was a wonderful result, as was Charlotte’s with Mr Jones. Her own friendship with Mr Darcy was another unexpected and pleasing consequence of recent events. It was probable, she supposed, that once Louisa and Mr Bingley had less need of Mr Darcy and he was drawn back to his faraway estate, she might meet with him only rarely, especially once he had a family of his own to keep him even more firmly fixed in the north. Ignoring the pangs such a notion created, Elizabeth turned back to her work.
“Oh, bother.” Lydia sighed. “I have dropt my thimble and do not see it.”
“I will look for it,” said Kitty cheerfully, setting her work aside and standing up. “It must have rolled under something, if it is not in the chair with you,” she said, peering underneath the tea-cart and Lydia’s chair. “I think I—oh.”
Kitty reached underneath and handed Lydia her thimble without a word, then stretched her arm beneath the chair again, bringing forth an object they all recognised.
“Mama’s sewing box,” Mary breathed as it emerged into the light of day.
Kitty got her handkerchief out and began wiping the dust off the painted wood as her family gathered around. “Your mother always preferred using a handkerchief to stitching one,” their father joked weakly, his tone more nostalgic than jocular.
“It must have been under there for many months; I do not recall when last I saw it,” Elizabeth remarked, aiding Kitty in her efforts. Soon the box, a sturdy yet pretty thing, its top painted with cabbage roses and its handles wound with faded green silk, looked as it had when last they viewed it.
Kitty reverently raised the lid. The tray which covered the large compartment was filled with a jumble of needles, thimbles, buttons, and twists and tangles of thread which ought to have, but had never, been put on the snowflake-shaped mother of pearl thread winders.
“Look, there are five thimbles,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “Let us each keep one.”
With none of the bickering that would once have characterised such an effort, Mrs Bennet’s thimbles were divided amongst her daughters. The gold one went to Jane, and the silver to Elizabeth while the three porcelain ones found homes with the younger girls.
They picked through the bundle of half-finished and hardly-started handkerchiefs, purses, and reticules. In the bottom of the compartment was a small wooden box fastened with a little brass latch. Inside lay half a dozen carefully folded pieces of plain brown paper which, when opened, each revealed a pressed primrose, browned and fragile with age. Only when they were all revealed and spread out upon the floor did the girls look up to see that tears were streaming down their father’s cheeks. Concerned, Elizabeth stood and went to place her arm around him.
“Papa?”
“It was spring when I began to court her,” he said, as much to himself as to his daughters. “I saw her outside the church one Sunday, just after I returned to Longbourn with my education and a brief tour to my credit. She was wearing a yellow gown and a straw bonnet with white flowers on it. She was so very beautiful, and she was laughing. I was smitten in an instant. Like the brash young fellow I was, I cast about for some means of securing her notice, and found a bunch of primroses growing in the hedgerow. So I plucked them and offered them to her with some nonsense about howthosewild Hertfordshire roses paled in comparison to the one before me.”
“And she kept them all these years,” said Kitty wistfully.
Jane carefully wrapped them all up again and returned them to their box, extending it to their father. “I believe this should be yours, Papa.”
He took the box gingerly, as though afraid he might shatter it, or it might shatter him. Slowly, he rose and without a word disappeared into his book-room, not to return for several hours.
* * *
Only a day later, Mr Bennet’s dry wit seemed returned to him.
“Well, girls,” he said to his family, as they were at breakfast, “I hope you will not mind an addition to our family party.”
“Who do you mean?” asked Elizabeth.
“The person I refer to is a gentleman, and a stranger.” He looked at them all expectantly. “It is my cousin, Mr Collins, who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases.”
Elizabeth quirked an eyebrow at him, Kitty looked rather alarmed, and Lydia turned to Jane and said, “May I come live with you and Mr Bingley?” which made her eldest sister blush to the roots of her hair, and the others laugh.
