Page 4 of The Marriage Articles

“Mama thinks Lydia looks very well in her new ribbon,” Mrs Bennet said, without turning from Jane. “And so she does. Five daughters, and all of them pretty, though Jane is the beauty of the family, as everyone knows.”

Lydia talked on, her voice rising to fill every corner of the room, and Kitty echoed her, their conversation turning entirely upon bonnets, officers, and grievances that no one had asked to hear. Elizabeth stood by the bed, her hands clasped before her, and felt her heart sink deeper with every moment. The noise was the least of it. Every word her family uttered in this house deepened the impression she had most wished to avoid, and the Bingleys’ forbearance was thinner than Mrs Bennet knew.

Miss Bingley’s voice cut through the chatter from the doorway.

“How does dear Miss Bennet go on today?”

She entered with a smile of practised sympathy, her posture arranged to suggest concern without the least discomposure. Her eyes moved over the room, and Elizabeth watched her catalogue each flaw. They paused on Lydia’s untidy bonnet, on Kitty’s flushed cheeks, on Mary’s rigid posture, before returning to Mrs Bennet with an expression of gentle enquiry.

“I am so glad to find you with her,” Miss Bingley said. “It is a mother’s place, is it not, to attend her child? Though I hope you will allow that we have done our best in your absence.”

“Oh, you have been very kind, I am sure,” Mrs Bennet replied, with a warmth that missed the barb entirely. “But a daughter needs her mother, and I have been quite overcome with anxiety. Jane has been very ill, you know, very ill indeed. The fever was quite high, and the apothecary said it was a wonder she did not take a turn for the worse. I have not slept a wink since she was taken, and my nerves are not what they were.”

Elizabeth felt her own face grow warm. Jane’s fever had been moderate, and Mr Jones had declared her well enough to travel after breakfast, but her note to Longbourn had clearly been received and ignored.

“You have all my sympathy, Mrs Bennet,” Miss Bingley said. Her voice was so smooth, so carefully modulated, that Elizabeth could not tell whether the sympathy was genuine or whether it masked the satisfaction of a woman who has just watched her worst suspicions confirmed. “Miss Bennet is fortunate in such a mother. But you must not fatigue yourself, nor your daughter. I wonder if you and your charming family would do us the honour of taking tea in the drawing room? It is quite ready, and I am sure a change of scene would benefit everyone.”

“How very kind, Miss Bingley!” Mrs Bennet cried, as though the thought of tea had never entered her mind until that moment. “How exceedingly obliging in you. We shall be delighted, I am sure. Girls, we shall take tea in the drawing room!”

Lydia and Kitty assented with enthusiasm. Mary rose from her chair with the slow dignity of one whose principles have been fully justified, though what principles had been justified Elizabeth could not imagine. Mrs Bennet bestowed a bustling kiss upon Jane’s forehead and led her daughters from the room with an air of great consequence.

Elizabeth lingered a moment by the bed. “I am sorry for all this,” she whispered, and though the words fell far short of what she felt, she had no better to give.

Jane smiled, that stubborn smile that refused to acknowledge ill in anyone. “It is only tea, Lizzy. Mama means well.”

“Mama means to secure you a husband, and she will secure you a reputation for desperation in the attempt.”

“Then I must rely on my own conduct to correct the impression.”

Elizabeth squeezed her sister’s hand and followed her family down the stairs. She could hear her mother’s voice already, rising from below, Lydia’s laugh, the lower murmur of masculine tones that must be Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy. The drawing room door stood ajar. As Elizabeth approached she caught, through the opening, the sound of Mr Hurst’s voice, roused at last from his customary idleness on the sofa.

“Who are all these people?”

He asked it of the room at large, loudly enough to be answered. Before Elizabeth could reach the threshold her mother’s voice rose to meet him, bright and unguarded and utterly without deference.

“Why, we are the Bennets of Longbourn, sir, and I am come to see my dear Jane, who is very ill indeed, though I am sure she will do very well now that I am here.”

Elizabeth lingered a moment at the threshold. The drawing room lay before her, bright and warm and full of witnesses. Her family were already within, destroying with every sentence the little credit she and Jane had managed to establish in this house. She took a breath and went in after them.

❧ ❧ ❧

Elizabeth took the garden path at a pace that owed nothing to exercise and everything to escape. The drawing room was behind her, with its tea things and its audience, and her mother’s voice still seemed to carry on the damp air long after the actual sound of it had been left indoors. Lydia had demanded a ball of Mr Bingley before the whole company, demanded it as one claims a debt, and Mr Darcy had stood at the window through all of it and said nothing at all. Elizabeth had walked out to calm her nerves, which was the civil way of describing a retreat, and she meant to use the hour to compose the speech with which she would beg the loan of Mr Bingley’s carriage. The request could not be put off much longer, and it had to be made without seeming ungrateful, a nicety of phrasing that required solitude to perfect.

The bench she found stood at the turn of the walk where a hedge of yew cut off the house entirely. It was the one place in the grounds where no window overlooked her, and she had already begun to think of it as her own. She drew the shawl Jane’s maid had found for her closer against the damp and sat down to rehearse. Mr Bingley was the easiest of men to ask a favour of, which was precisely the difficulty. One did not wish to take advantage of so accommodating a temper, and yet the carriage was wanted now Jane was mending.

Voices came down the wet gravel path. Two voices, female, unhurried, and Elizabeth recognized Miss Bingley’s laugh, which followed ever a moment behind the joke, as insincere laughter always does. She drew back upon the bench and kept still. The hedge was thick and dusk was gathering, so that if she made no sound they must pass without perceiving her.

“Oh, but the country, you know, has every advantage over town,” Miss Bingley said, in an exact imitation, breathless and high-pitched, of Mrs Bennet at her most communicative. “In town one can never be easy, never be sure of one’s neighbours, but in the country one is entirely among friends. I always say so. I always say the country is the only place for people of condition.”

Mrs Hurst laughed at the imitation. “You have it exactly. I should have known her anywhere.”

“And then,” Miss Bingley went on, “the girls. The finest girls in Hertfordshire, she was so good as to inform us. The finest in the county, I believe, though I may have the geography wrong.”

“She was kind enough to leave us in no doubt of it.”

Elizabeth’s hands had gone still on the shawl. Her mother had said those things, and had said them in that drawing room before that audience, and no affection Elizabeth bore her could make the sentences other than what they were. That was the misery of it. The mimicry was accurate.

“And the youngest,” Mrs Hurst said. “The ball. You must give her credit for directness. A ball, at Netherfield, demanded of Charles before the tea was cold, as though he had taken the house for the purpose.”