Consequences (14 page)

It took a few moments for her to screw up her courage to open it, and she quickly found her worst fears confirmed. She was shocked and revolted as she read Mr. Collins had “taken pen in hand to renew my offer of marriage to my dear cousin.” Elizabeth was in tears at the sudden overwhelming memory of her dead friend, Charlotte, as well as the language in the letter. Mr. Collins went on to say, even more unfittingly, “I am certain that my suit this time will be successful, both because of the calamitous condition of your family and because it is now beyond certainty that you will never receive another offer of marriage from a respectable man.”

Infuriated by the blind arrogance of this man and by his impropriety in thus making an offer when his own wife was not yet a year in her grave, Elizabeth was roused by a sudden rattling of the door. That was followed by a furious knocking and her mother’s imperious demand for Elizabeth to open the door. She therefore lost no time in crossing to the fireplace and poking at the coals until she exposed several embers that still glowed. She set a corner of the offending note against one of the coals until the paper burst into flames. She made certain it was fully alight before placing it on the grate, watching carefully until it was fully consumed as the knocking and imprecations from the hallway continued. The knocking ceased suddenly just as the last flame from the paper guttered out, and Elizabeth struck at it with the poker until the charcoal crumbled to bits.

Hardly had this been accomplished before the door burst open, forced by the servants at the order of their mistress. As Mrs. Bennet hurried into the room, she screeched as she comprehended her daughter had destroyed the letter—indeed, Elizabeth still held the poker she used to pulverize it. As her mother bent over to search for unburnt remnants, Elizabeth threw down the poker in disgust before grabbing her bonnet and shawl and running out of the house.

She absolutely refused, either when she returned or afterwards, to discuss the contents of the letter with her mother. However, she did take the precaution of writing to her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner in London, as she foresaw clearly the time nearing when she would leave her home at Longbourn forever, and she thought the Gardiner home might be her only sanctuary.

Four weeks later, another letter was delivered from Mr. Collins, this time addressed to Mrs. Bennet. It was hand delivered by a small, shrunken man who introduced himself as Mr. Silas Worthington. He announced himself as the solicitor on behalf of Mr. Collins and bearing a letter to Mrs. Bennet, which he then handed to her and which she opened with shaking fingers. Her face turned grey as she read that Mr. Collins had been in consultation with Mr. Worthington regarding the terms of the inheritance of Longbourn, and all necessary actions had been accomplished so Mr. Collins could claim the estate. Elizabeth looked over her mother’s shoulder, reading that her cousin was planning to arrive on Saturday next to claim and inhabit the estate. He further demanded, in language cold and merciless, that Mrs. Bennet and her daughters be gone from the house no later than the evening before his arrival, when his solicitor would arrive to receive the keys. His solicitor had informed him, he wrote, that according to the terms of the entail, the house and all of its contents, excluding only the wardrobe of the ladies, was part of the estate and was to be left behind. In accordance with those terms, his solicitor would immediately start an inventory of everything in the house to ensure this provision was carried out.

Mr. Collins saved his cruellest stab for the last lines of the letter, in which he wrote, owing to the lack of response from Miss Elizabeth Bennet to his previous letter, he could draw no other conclusion than the remainder of the Bennet family desired no further association with him. That being the case, he wrote, he on his part considered the connection was severed forever.

Mrs. Bennet, while not possessed of the sharpest of wits, had no problem making the connection between this statement from Mr. Collins and the mysterious letter received by her daughter a month earlier.

Rounding on her daughter, Mrs. Bennet demanded, “What was in that letter, Lizzy? The one of which you refused to speak? The one you destroyed in your fireplace! What was in that letter?”

Elizabeth raised her chin in disdain. “Mr. Collins, Mama, is a man so lost to correctness and propriety that he made me another offer of marriage, with Papa dead only two weeks, secure that I could have no other choice than to accept him. And it was only June! His own wife and baby had not been in their graves even six months! He is beyond repulsive, even more so than when he made his first offer, and this unseemly behaviour is such a complete breach of every form of decorum that I, of course, simply destroyed the odious communication.”

Mrs. Bennet’s face had turned red as Elizabeth spoke, and her daughter had hardly finished before she was screaming in her face.

“Selfish, selfish girl! We are to be turned out to live as paupers when you could have saved us all by correcting your previous mistake and marrying Mr. Collins! Ungrateful girl! You will instantly compose a letter to Mr. Collins and tell him that you have made a mistake and that you accept his offer! We will send it immediately by express! Hill! Hill! Send a servant for an express rider at once!”

“I will do no such thing, Mama!” Elizabeth declaimed angrily. “You much mistake my character if you think I would do something so completely unwholesome and foolish!”

The dispute quickly elevated into an altercation more severe than ever before seen at Longbourn. Elizabeth was steadfast in standing up against her mother, and, after some initial reticence, Jane defended her with growing and heretofore unaccustomed steadfastness while Kitty and Mary defended her mother with significantly less vigour.

“If you refuse to obey me in this, you ungrateful girl, then you will leave Longbourn at once!” Mrs. Bennet demanded shrilly. “Do you hear me, at once! I will never see your selfish and traitorous face again!”

“Then I will pack my clothes and depart,” Elizabeth said coldly, though her heart quailed at the sudden breach this argument portended. “My Aunt and Uncle Gardiner have already written that I may live with them for as long as needed.”

“Then go and good riddance to you! Selfish, ungrateful girl! Your father should have taken the rod to you! I told him so at the time!”

“My father should have taken the rod to Lydia,” Elizabeth said coldly. “It was not I who eloped with that scoundrel Wickham and brought ruin down on her own family.”

This statement drove Mrs. Bennet to an inarticulate screech of fury. Clearly, her attachment to her favourite daughter persisted even beyond the disaster she had wrought.

“Go then! Be gone!” Mrs. Bennet screamed shrilly.

“And I will join her,” said Jane quietly. She exhibited more composure than Elizabeth, but anyone who knew her would realize that her agitation was extreme.

“Both of you then! Leave! Ungrateful children! At least Kitty and Mary will loyally stay by me! We shall throw ourselves on the mercy of my sister, even though Mr. Philips may be forced to move to another village, perhaps even another county.”

Elizabeth was well acquainted with this possibility since her Uncle Philips had privately confessed to her his practice had dwindled grievously after Lydia’s elopement. It was clear at least some of the scandal that had tarred his sister’s family had fallen to him, and he was seriously considering taking his practice elsewhere, where the situation would not be so ruinous. That thought roused Elizabeth’s ire, for her mother’s neglect of her responsibilities had even affected her sister.

“For that, Mama, you have only yourself to blame—you and our poor, dead father.” Elizabeth’s voice was filled with such cold, merciless venom that even Jane looked at her in dismay and consternation. “Jane and I both tried to restrain Lydia’s wild foolishness, but with your indulgence and my father’s sloth, nothing could be done; she simply ignored us. And when I argued to both of you that she should not be allowed to go to Brighton, that it was dangerous, my father would not listen because he desired peace and quiet. And you ignored your least favourite daughter, Mama, thinking that it was perfectly proper for a sixteen-year-old girl to go to Brighton with the regiment. If you remember, Mama, you even encouraged her to take every opportunity to enjoy herself! Well, she certainly did that, did she not? Are you not proud of your favourite daughter now, Mama?”

With these spiteful words inspiring their mother to even greater outrage, Elizabeth and Jane retired upstairs to pack their wardrobe. They left Longbourn within two hours, not troubling to request their mother’s permission to use the carriage to drive them to London.

Meanwhile, the silent solicitor observed all, noted all, and quietly began his inventory of the contents of the house, content for now to allow the carriage to depart, since he had made a note to ensure it was properly returned.

Chapter 8

“Footfalls echo in the memory down the
passage which we did not take towards the
door we never opened into the rose-garden.”

—T. S. Elliot, poet, playwright, and critic

September 1813
to March 1814

The journey from Longbourn to London was melancholy in the extreme. Jane and Elizabeth held each other and cried for half the journey, grieved for their dead father, grieved and embarrassed for the angry manner with which they parted from their mother and sisters, and in a state of despair at the manner in which their lives had changed for the worse in little more than a year.

“I am so sorry, Jane,” Elizabeth said finally, so worn from crying she had no more tears left to shed. “I know it might have been the prudent thing to do, but I could not agree to marry that despicable man, with Charlotte and her child not dead a year. I know it would have allowed us to stay at Longbourn, but I simply could not do it. And when Mama started screaming at me . . . well, something inside me just seemed to come apart.”

“Do not spend another thought on it, Lizzy,” said Jane, clutching her sister’s hand. “I only hope I would have been as strong if the situation were reversed. The idea of being married to such a man . . . of bearing his children. No, I agree completely.”

“And you were so brave in coming to my defence! I have never seen you so forceful!”

Jane laughed a little. “I guess something inside me gave way too. I have been thinking for months on the way we were almost neglected as we grew up, with neither our mother supervising our education nor our father inclined to provide guidance. It is hardly surprising that Lydia grew up as she did. What is more surprising is that you and I did not do the same.”

“Lydia,” said Elizabeth gloomily, “poor, stupid Lydia. I hardly dare imagine where she is today.”

“I think Papa was correct, Lizzy, when he told us of his prediction to Uncle Gardiner that her stay in London would be of some duration. I wish I could hope she and Wickham were married after all, but I know that could not be. She would at least have written us if that were the case. No, I am most afraid she is exactly where the neighbourhood believes her to be, lost to us in London and selling herself for the price of a crust of bread.”

Elizabeth looked at her sister in shock and dismay. She had never heard Jane fail to take the most optimistic view possible in every situation, and yet Jane’s opinion matched her own exactly.

Jane’s smile was tinged with an unaccustomed bitterness. “I see you wonder at the gloom of my thoughts. I can only say that the past months have been very . . . edifying . . . for me. I cannot deceive myself any longer that everyone is good—I have become aware there is indeed evil in the world.”

“I should be grieved if you became as cynical and gloomy as I have become!” cried Elizabeth. “Oh, that your good nature should be another casualty of Wickham’s evil and Lydia’s stupidity!”

“It is not as bad as all that, Lizzy,” Jane said with her first true smile of the journey. “It is only that I have learned caution about certain people, especially those I do not know well. I still know I can always depend on you—and on Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, of course.”

Elizabeth smiled tremulously and squeezed her sister’s hand. Her thoughts diverted, as they so often did, to an evening in April more than a year previously.

“I should have accepted Mr. Darcy,” she said, her eyes downcast as she remembered the melancholy months in between. “That was the point at which I could have avoided all this.”

Shocked at this statement, Jane looked incredulously at her sister.

“Lizzy! How could you say that? Why, you felt more strongly about him than you did Mr. Collins!”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I never thought Mr. Darcy was despicable or dishonourable. I was furious with him for the way he interfered between you and Mr. Bingley and also for the way he treated Mr. Wickham. Well, we know how wrong my judgment was with respect to
that
scoundrel. As for you and Mr. Bingley, I am afraid my refusal destroyed any hope that Mr. Bingley might ever have changed his mind.”

“Mr. Darcy interfered between Mr. Bingley and me?” asked Jane in confusion. “You have never spoken of this, Lizzy! How could your refusal have had anything to do with what Mr. Bingley might do?”

“I know that I have never spoken of it,” said Elizabeth miserably. “But when I was visiting Charlotte, I learned that Mr. Darcy had more to do with Mr. Bingley’s failure to return than I had originally thought. I had supposed that Miss Bingley and her sister played the major part in convincing Bingley not to return to Netherfield, but I found out Mr. Darcy had played more of a part than I supposed—and perhaps the major part. I do not really know. All I know is what Mr. Darcy’s cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, told me: Mr. Darcy claimed to have saved his friend from a most imprudent marriage. When Mr. Darcy proposed, one of the things of which I challenged him was that I could never consider accepting a man who had helped destroy all chance of happiness for you. He did not defend himself that evening; I now suspect that Mr. Darcy’s reticence may have as much to do with his difficulty in framing his thoughts into words as to his pride. But he did defend his actions in the letter he gave me the next morning. While I still think he was not justified in his interference, I can now see he thought he was defending his friend, just as I was defending my sister.”