Page 27 of Some Natural Importance (Pride, Prejudice and Romance #3)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Three...four...

Longbourn was so quiet, the chimes ringing from the clock in the parlour could be heard upstairs and down the corridor in Mr Bennet’s chambers.

It was less than a week ago that she and Jane had rushed to Longbourn from London, only to find their mother weeping in the parlour with Lydia and Kitty, Mary on her knees praying, and terrified servants running to and fro.

Mr Bennet was abed, his skin grey, his breathing rough and laboured.

Jane gasped and began to weep; Elizabeth’s frustration with her mother’s display of helplessness kept her own tears at bay.

Her father lifted his hand when they entered.

“My sensible girls,” he croaked. “I have ruined your holiday.”

Sobbing, her serene countenance marked by deep distress, Jane pulled her father’s hand to her cheek.

“Why? How long have you been ill? Mary’s note said you collapsed.”

“My chest...hurts,” he murmured. “For some time. ”

Jane looked up, bewildered. “You will be well,” she asked, more as an affirmation than a question.

“Papa? What does Mr Jones say?”

“I wished to see you girls again. To assure you, your mother, all is well...”

“Papa!”

“Forgive me, Lizzy. Your felicity...I assumed...” He closed his eyes and appeared to drift into sleep.

Jane had laid her hand on his chest to assure herself that although shallow and rattling, his breaths were even. Then she turned to look at Elizabeth with an expression of such despair that Elizabeth knew she would never forget it.

...Five, six..

“He is gone.” Jane spoke softly, her words both a relief and a shock.

Mrs Bennet turned pale. She stood from her chair and turned to her other daughters. “Tell no one,” she said in a tremulous voice. “We must wait for my brothers.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, protecting herself from seeing her mother’s fearful expression and holding onto her own emotions.

She thought herself prepared for this moment, but this was not supposed to happen.

She was not supposed to leave her home and family and barely a se’nnight later, return to a house in chaos and dread, her father—her droll, intelligent and indulgent father—pale and rasping in his bed.

She had sat at his bedside the past two days and recognised his condition was not improving.

She had followed his wishes, doing her best to play happy to him and to their neighbours, whom he wished to stay ignorant of their circumstances.

But now her father was gone, and all her mother could offer was the bitter, tearful lament that Mr Collins would come collect his due: Longbourn and a wife.

“One of us,” she whispered. Jane or me.

Taking a deep breath, she turned and let her gaze rest on her sisters.

Jane held her mother. Mary’s eyes were closed; her lips moved as she prayed.

Kitty’s eyes were red- rimmed and she clutched Lydia’s hand.

Elizabeth was struck by how young and innocent they looked; gone were their silly insouciant manners. Fatherless children.

Elizabeth had tried to reserve her tears for the privacy of her own chambers, sharing her deepest grief only with Jane.

Her beloved father was dead, suddenly and irrevocably gone from this earth.

Less than a fortnight earlier, he had reassured her of his good health, handed her a list of books to procure for him, and sent her off to London.

Now he was dead. A cough far more dire than she had suspected, a weak heart, and what Mr Jones called an unexpected burst in his lungs.

She called it a tragedy she should have foreseen, if only she had not trusted her father’s reassurances about his health.

She had known he was more fatigued, his complexion paler.

But in her anger and frustration with him, she had ignored it.

If a man paid so little attention to his family and his business, why would he pay heed to his health, or pay heed to his wife or daughter’s worries over it?

She swallowed back a sob. Nothing could avert their loss now. He was gone. The security provided by her father’s life through his dominion over Longbourn was at an end.

Mr Collins would come. In spite of their grief, their need to mourn, to collect their memories and settle their futures, he would come and claim what was his by law: Longbourn.

He likely would take what was his by choice as well; marriage to Mr Collins was not what Elizabeth wished for herself or for any of her sisters, but it would be her family’s salvation.

She had witnessed her father’s indolence and lack of planning; she had seen the ledgers. There was little else.

She filled her role as Mrs Bennet’s least obedient daughter and penned a letter to Aunt Gardiner.

Her father had no known family beyond Mr Collins.

But her mother’s family had become her father’s, and her favourite aunt and uncle must hear the dreadful news.

They would know how best to handle her mother.

They would write to her; her uncle would come to Hertfordshire. There was nowhere else to turn.

Elizabeth knew that ‘tell no one’ spoke to her mother’s fears of Mr Collins and his oft-stated desire to visit and take stock of what was due him.

No letter would be sent notifying him of Mr Bennet’s death nor of the services nor of the house, entailed to him, that awaited his arrival.

Keeping word from her father’s relation went against all that was proper, yet Elizabeth was in sympathy, if not accord, on her mother’s break with societal expectations.

On more than one occasion, she wondered whether their silence might subvert some legal expectation as well.

Mr Collins does not deserve my concern, she insisted to herself, painfully aware that he would indeed become head of household and master of Longbourn. He was, in fact, already holder of those titles. He simply did not yet know it.

The vicar’s visit more than a year prior had occurred when the eldest two Bennets were at Gracechurch Street, assisting their aunt with two sick children.

Upon their return, Lydia and Kitty had been generous in sharing their opinion of their cousin from Kent: “He smells of stale linen, and talks far too much about nothing anyone cares to know.” Mary had been kinder in her estimation but shared her family’s relief that their cousin’s stay at Longbourn had been cut short by his fear of the whooping cough afflicting the families at two farms. A letter arrived for Mr Bennet a fortnight later, avowing Mr Collins’s desire to return and urging that the elder Bennet sisters be kept at home so that he could make their ‘much-needed acquaintance’.

And now they would meet. Elizabeth knew that she was not the lady who would charm a man of the cloth, especially one who—according to Mr Bennet—was more inclined to follow a dish of creamed turnips than he was to follow the imperative of common sense.

Yet she could not sacrifice Jane to such a fate.

Not Jane, who still awaited the return of Mr Bingley.

Already she had been wrongfully wooed at fifteen by a ne’er do-well poet and had her heart bruised last year by the attentions of the Widow Townsend’s visiting nephew.

Elizabeth knew her sister eagerly awaited Mr Bingley’s return.

If someone was compelled to enter a marriage to ensure the security of her family, it would be the strong sister, the one who could ensure her sisters’ futures, her mother’s felicity, and Longbourn’s perpetuity as a profitable estate.

It will be me. How awful can Mr Collins be?

The following day, Mrs Philips sat with her sister and listened to her woes and wails.

The five Bennet sisters, all clad in their mourning clothes, read their Bibles, sewed black ribbon on their bonnets, or stared at the closed door to their father’s library.

It was quieter than Elizabeth could recall in many years.

It was, she thought sadly, just as her father had often claimed he wished for Longbourn: a houseful of quiet, sober-minded girls. He would enjoy the irony of it.

“Lizzy,” her mother cried, “how can you smile? Are you thinking of his books, or what you wish to claim before we are thrown from this house?”

“Mama, we shall not be thrown from Longbourn,” she replied in a gentle, almost maternal voice. “I am thinking of happier times when Papa would wish for peace because he was surrounded by so many silly, giggling girls.”

Mrs Bennet gasped, and cried out, “It was my liveliness he loved.” Her weeping intensified until Elizabeth and Jane rose and walked her to her chambers.

And so it continued for two days. Sisters curled on the other’s beds, plaiting hair and sharing thoughts and complaints.

Mrs Bennet sat quietly, weeping and sighing.

The days, which had blurred when their father laid abed, suffering and moaning, crept by slowly.

Then, they had waited in dread, knowing they were in the before , when their father lived quietly and disengaged from their conversations but still there, as part of them and their story.

Now they were in the after , the beginnings of a new story, a life different from the months and years past and a wholly unknown future.

For a rare moment, her worries weighing upon her, Elizabeth found herself in concert with her mother in recognising how ill Mr Bennet had prepared for his demise.

He had been too weak to hand them any wisdom or guidance, he had not confided to her or to Jane about his plans or investments.

All they had been advised to do was to wait.

Late in the day, as the light faded from the sky, Uncle Gardiner arrived.

He did what he could to reassure his sister, listening to her complaints and fears, telling her all would be well.

Clearly, his worries for his older sister were secondary to those for his own wife, at home with a colicky infant and three young children.

He spent two days at Longbourn, looking through Mr Bennet’s books, his legal papers, and his few notes on his estate.

It was a small affair, but planning the shoulder feast provided Mrs Bennet with some occupation—besides the dyeing of their clothing—and diversion from her worries. Her brother’s departure after the funeral, reinforcing the lack of a male in the household, sparked renewed despair.

“I cannot be in two places, here and on Gracechurch Street. My wife and children need me, as your daughters need you.” Mr Gardiner patted his sister’s hand gently.

“Who will protect us? Mr Bennet told me nothing.”

“It will be well,” he added. “Thomas spoke to a solicitor. He wrote to me and said he was certain you would be pleased with his plan.”

“His plan?” Mrs Bennet stared doubtfully at him. “Thomas made a plan?”

“What of our cousin?” Mary spoke up. “A letter must be sent, and he will come. He will turn us out and marry Jane.”

“He will come, but he will not marry Jane unless she truly wishes it.” Mr Gardiner smiled at Jane before his gaze settled on Elizabeth.

“Remember, you all are in mourning, and unless your father had already consented to an engagement, there can be no wedding. Later, there will be choices and decisions to make.”

Mr Gardiner made his goodbyes to his nieces, reserving the most heartfelt for Elizabeth.

“All will be well, Lizzy. Your father told me to look in Swift, for ‘the irony of it all would be delicious’. I did not see a letter in Gulliver’s Travels and found no other of Swift’s books on the shelves.

Have a look yourself, and write to your aunt and tell her how you fare.

She will be glad to share her wisdom with you.

” He squeezed her hand and gave her a significant look before walking to his carriage and climbing in.

Elizabeth’s bemusement over her uncle’s parting words lasted only until her mother required further attention. With her brother gone, the lady’s fears of losing her home, or of Mr Bennet’s possessions being picked over and distributed, were only heightened.

Her fears worsened two days later, when Mr Collins’s letter arrived.

It was bursting with effusions of sympathy, misunderstood verses of Ecclesiastes, and thoughts on Longbourn’s needed improvements.

That night her mother needed laudanum. He was coming, and his sense of mourning seemed quite peculiar.

The next afternoon, a black horse and its rider trotted into Longbourn’s drive. Six faces pressed up against its front windows, watching as a tall man dismounted, handed off his reins, and strode towards the house.

“Is it Mr Collins?”

“Lizzy?” Jane said.

Lydia and Kitty voiced the same question: “Why is Mr Darcy here?”