Page 23 of Reckless, Headstrong Girl (Pride and Prejudice Variations #5)
Their father arrived before the tea was poured, and when he asked how they got on with their mother, Jane only shook her head sadly. Mr Bennet took off his hat and put down his riding crop with a snap. “Lizzy, Jane, Kitty and Mary,” he said sternly, “you will come with me to your mother’s room.”
Once there, he stood at the foot of the bed and began to speak to their mother with a cold authority none of them had ever heard from him .
“Mrs Bennet,” he said. “You had better attend to me. You see before you four of your daughters. The last of them, by the grace of God, was not found in a brothel or a bone yard. For the sake of their continuation as ladies of consequence in this neighbourhood, you had better take hold of your tongue. You shall never speak a word of Wickham, of Brighton, or of Lydia’s connexion to either subject ever again. Do you understand me?”
“What? Why are you being so rough Mr Bennet? You know I am not well?—”
“If you do not do as I say, and if I hear one word I do not like on this subject, I shall make it widely known you are out of your head, and I will take you to the mad doctor in Yorkshire.”
Mrs Bennet was in one of her prolonged fits of nerves.
Her understanding was muddled, her hearing vague, and her grasp of facts was spotty and changeable.
Her husband’s threat, however, delivered in a severe, uncompromising accent of foreordination, caused her to fall back on her pillow in shocked silence.
Mr Bennet then turned and addressed his daughters in much the same tone.
“I have not done well by any of you, but I have just now, I hope, taken a step towards making amends.”
After tea, Elizabeth suffered such a mixture of complicated feelings that she begged Jane to go out with her for a walk, in spite of a spitting drizzle.
They had invited Mr Bingley and Mr Darcy for dinner later and were each lost in their thoughts for half a mile until Jane finally spoke.
“Will Mama come down for dinner, do you think, Lizzy?”
“I hope not, Jane. If she were to see two rich, eligible men at her table, she would forget herself and begin to jabber about weddings, and then she would demand to know why nobody made Wickham marry Lydia, and before we could snap our fingers, Papa will have sent her to the mad doctor.”
“Oh, Lizzy. I felt so sorry for her. I have never heard our father speak so harshly.”
“I believe he had to.” Elizabeth slowed her pace until they were both standing still, under their umbrellas, facing one another.
“I also believe Papa feels very strongly that he should protect our reputations because Mr Darcy has offered for me. I do not think he wants to give him any reason to break the contract.”
“Offered for you! Mr Darcy?” gasped Jane. “And has he spoken to you? What shall you say to him? He has been very good to us with finding Lydia, but I know you do not like him at all! Oh, poor Mr Darcy!”
Elizabeth took her sister’s hands and squeezed them.
“I like Mr Darcy very well, Jane, and have for some time. Only I did not tell you for lack of opportunity. I shall marry him, and as you have already said, ‘poor Mr Darcy,’ you may feel as sorry for him as you like. What a troublesome wife he is getting!”
For some unaccountable reason, Jane then burst into tears. “Oh, Lizzy! I have wanted to tell you, but I did not have the courage! But now, perhaps I can say it.”
“Say what? What are you talking of?”
“You will think very poorly of me. But while Lydia was lost and in danger, and I should have been properly grieving, I was falling in love with Mr Bingley. Again!” she sobbed.
“Oh, dearest,” Elizabeth said tenderly, thinking Jane’s heart was to be broken all over again.
“But that is not the worst,” she said, wiping her nose with her hand kerchief. “I entered into an understanding with him that we would marry as soon as was seemly after we had word of Lydia.”
“You will marry Mr Bingley? But how wonderful! Is that why he spoke to Papa today? But I did not suspect a thing. You have been very sly.”
“Tease me all you like. I have been so ashamed. To be feeling joy at such a time?—”
“You are overtired and a very good candidate for the mad doctor in Yorkshire just now. What nonsense! Your feelings were proper, every one of them! I know because I shared them—in my own case, for Mr Darcy. A woman’s heart is large enough to have a room in it for joy, and a room for sorrow, vexation, jealousy, and every other feeling.
A woman’s heart is a mansion with at least a hundred rooms You have felt nothing improper, I assure you. ”
“Do you think so, Lizzy?”
“Well, I have just made that up, but I like the sound of it. I am feeling on the edge of a nervous collapse myself if I am honest. If I hear one more shocking thing today, I believe I shall have to go to my bed to moan and weep and fail to understand the simplest fact. Listen, Jane. We had better go back and do something with our looks if we are to meet our beaus for dinner. You look a little grey and careworn, truth be told.”
This pulled a smile from Jane at last, and as they turned towards the house, she said, “And you look like a bird has made a nest of your hair. Did you even brush it out this morning?”
Elizabeth’s hands flew up to her head. “I am not sure I did! Oh lord, how mortifying. Mr Darcy asked me to marry him while I looked like—like what? You must tell me!”
“You look a little like our aunt Philips when she first wakes up.”
“You horrid girl! How can you say so?”
In the morning when the family awoke, Jane and Elizabeth finished their packing and went below for a light breakfast. Mr Bennet came to them and said, “I have spoken to Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley, and we have decided that no good could possibly come from telling Lydia of George Wickham’s fate.
No one is to know of it besides the Gardiners, myself, your gentlemen and the two of you.
I am afraid, my dears, you must take that secret to your graves. ”
“Yes, Papa,” they murmured, suddenly sober. He was right of course. Lydia should not be told she had accidentally murdered her seducer, for indeed, the man had likely been dead a week already.
“Bring back your sister, then,” he said gravely, “and when you do, we shall tell your mother she has two weddings to plan. Let us hope that she is soon too much consumed with lace and finery to remember our recent troubles.”