Chapter One
29 November 1811
Longbourn, Hertfordshire
Elizabeth’s Story…
I could not escape the feeling that no good had come of the arrival of the party of gentleman and ladies at Netherfield Park. Admittedly, their coming had generated a great deal of excitement for us, but when they closed the house and went to London, it seemed all Meryton was left bewildered by the disruption they had caused.
The commerce and opportunities that naturally sprang up around the opening of a great house dwindled. The air of general expectation also faded, and we seemed to have sailed into the windless seas of the dreaded doldrums. Even the triumph of Sir William Lucas’s family in seeing their eldest daughter engaged to Mr. Collins had subsided into the humdrum of everyday life once the banns were read and the realization struck home that no reasonable person could brag about such a bridegroom. In any case, the buffoon—also known as my cousin Collins—had been anxious to reunite with his patroness and had left for Kent in the interim. He would return in January to be married, and once he was gone, hardly anyone thought to mention him, perhaps because we were all so dispirited from a different man’s absence.
Mr. Bingley, whose sunny good looks and bright, amiable eyes radiated his wish to please everyone he met, had left our village fairly displeased. And of all the persons and places affected, Longbourn stood out as the worst casualty. Our home, once hectic with the excitement of five daughters on the verge of their future, had been reduced to shambles by the gentleman’s abrupt desertion.
My mother was in a perpetual state of nervous collapse, and my two youngest sisters, who had been rendered stupid by their dreams of rich husbands, were now at each other’s throats like dogs contesting a bone that neither possessed in the first place. This fractiousness assured my father’s retreat farther into the dark corners of his book room, and as a result, he often took his tea there alone.
My middle sister, Mary, whose turn of mind was already too puritanical, had become positively dour in her observations, more than once quoting the sobering verse,“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”And though I longed to stuff a ball of yarn in her mouth when she spoke so piously of our disappointments, I begrudgingly appreciated her accuracy, for life did indeed feel as though it was, under cover of smiles and gay chatter, in a constant state of dissolution.
Why, I wondered,must hope always be followed by disappointment? Why is it that excitement must always end in dullness and laughter so often be followed by tears?
I had always enjoyed a happy disposition and was more apt to laugh than to sigh over the imponderables of such discouraging circumstances, but my dearest Jane’s sorrow over the loss of Mr. Bingley had rendered me no less dour than Mary. Jane sat over her needlework, pale and stoic, striving to smile and looking as though her face would break for the effort, and I inwardly cursed Mr. Bingley, his sisters, and their horrible guest, Mr. Darcy.
I suspected that particulargentlemanof malfeasance in the matter, for he obviously held sway over Mr. Bingley, and he had never once attempted to disguise his disgust of my family. Undoubtedly, he had a hand in his friend’s decision to close Netherfield, and I doubt he once regretted leaving my sister to the gleeful gossips or the specious expressions of pity she now endured.
As for Mr. Bingley’s sisters—those vicious cats who had used my sister’s sweetness against her—the less I thought of them, the better for my soul since the temptation to cast bitter curses upon them was too great to ignore.
In a mood of desperation, I had confided a taste of these reflections in a letter to our aunt Gardiner in London, and God bless her, she immediately issued an invitation for Jane to visit the metropolis. This prospect was met with relief by everyone except my father, who never met any happening with relief. He pretended instead to be skeptical on account of the expense but only because he could not forego an opportunity to tease our mother. In the end, he did not stand in Jane’s way, nor had any of us really believed he would.
However, when my eldest sister approached me with a heartfelt request that I accompany her, claiming Aunt Gardiner had even hinted she might bring me along, my father balked.
“What?” he asked, peering over his spectacles at me. He had his finger firmly planted on the exact spot he had left off reading and made a harrumphing sound when I replied.
“I would like to go, Papa.”
“Of course you would like to go,” he said, “but that does not mean I would like to send you.”
“But what more would it cost, sir? The carriage is not an expense since you will already have secured it for Jane, and there is no cost for lodgings.”
“The cost is that I shall be left alone in this house with Kitty, Lydia, Mary, and your mother,” he said drily.
“But it is my mother who is driving me to beg for this favor, Papa.”
“Because she is peeved you would not have Mr. Collins? My word, child—I thought you were made of sterner stuff. When could you not easily throw off her rebukes?”
He dismissed me then, and I wandered back to Jane in a state of dejection. The thought of leaving home had momentarily struck me as a kind of salvation, and my disappointments of late were compounded by this most recent blow.
Later at dinner, however, my father saw for himself the kind of abuse I endured when my mother began speaking of Jane’s trip to London.
“Now, Jane,” she began, “you must be sure to visit Miss Bingley, and make Mr. Bingley aware you are in town.”
“Yes, Mama,” my sister replied quietly.
“And I shall send some money with you to take to the drapers. You will buy pretty muslins for all your sisters. You must pick something pretty for Mary. I despair of her looks, you know. Perhaps a yellow?”
Mary looks a corpse in yellow, but none of us had the temerity to say so. Thankfully, my youngest sister inadvertently did Mary a service when she cried, “ButIwant yellow, Mama!”
“Very well, my love. You will have the yellow, and Kitty should have pink. Perhaps blue for Mary? But I do so love to see you in blue, Jane.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose Mary will have to have green again, so you can get the blue one.”
“Yes, Mama,” Jane said. And then she lifted her head and dared to ask, “And Lizzy?”
