Prologue #3
“It is a large house,” she said. “Well built. Well kept. Very quiet.”
“What do you do there?”
“I keep house. I write letters. I see my men of business. I pay bills. I scold servants. I receive callers when I cannot avoid it. I maintain order wherever Providence has failed to do so. It passes the time.”
Elizabeth leaned against her chair and considered London as if it were a country newly opened to colonisation.
“It sounds better than here,” she said.
“In some respects,” said Mrs. Marwood, “it is.”
The matter was put before Mr. and Mrs. Bennet that evening.
Mrs. Bennet objected first from surprise, then from delicacy, then from maternal propriety, and finally not at all.
She said Elizabeth was a strange child, always asking, always trailing dirt, feathers, ribbons, or alarming objects wherever she ought not.
If Mrs. Marwood thought London might teach her steadiness, she was sure she would not oppose it, though it was very hard upon a mother to have her children desired elsewhere.
Mr. Bennet raised no real objection. Whether from indolence, convenience, or some lingering hope that his aunt’s regard might one day remember him kindly, he acquiesced with alarming ease.
He observed that Lizzy would either improve wonderfully under Mrs. Marwood’s discipline or become so formidable that no gentleman would dare marry her, which might save a great deal in muslin.
Mrs. Marwood looked at him across the parlour and thought, with the cool disapproval of a woman who had spent forty years beside a man capable of work, that cleverness was a poor substitute for care.
The trunks were ordered the next day.
For three mornings, Longbourn existed in a state of preparation.
Drawers were opened; gowns were shaken out; Mrs. Bennet lamented; Jane tucked one of her own ribbons secretly into Elizabeth’s box; Mary offered an improving verse copied badly on a folded paper; Kitty wanted to know whether London cakes were better; and Elizabeth asked so many questions about cellars, attics, squares, sedan chairs, King George, and whether wounded birds could be admitted to a London kitchen that Mrs. Marwood finally told her she had a mind like a turnpike gate and must learn to close it occasionally.
Elizabeth tried. The effort lasted nearly four minutes.
On the morning of departure, the rain had gone and left a washed, pale sky over the drive.
The carriage smelled of leather, cold air, and Mrs. Marwood’s lavender salts.
Elizabeth’s best bonnet pinched behind one ear; Jane’s eyes were red; Kitty hopped from one foot to the other; Mary held her paper verse like a sermon awaiting congregation; Mrs. Bennet called advice from the steps which changed subject three times before reaching the carriage; and Mr. Bennet raised one hand in that negligent fashion which might have served equally for farewell to a daughter or acknowledgment of a tradesman.
Mrs. Marwood watched Elizabeth watch them.
Elizabeth’s eyes went first to Jane, then to her father, and stayed there one instant longer than his farewell deserved.
That, more than anything, kept the decision from becoming easy.
The child was not unloved. Mrs. Marwood was too just to say so.
There was Jane’s ribbon in the box, Mrs. Bennet’s fluttering distress, Kitty’s restless grief, Mary’s solemn offering, even Mr. Bennet’s half-wave with perhaps more feeling in it than he cared to spend visibly.
But the child was not kept. She was enjoyed, scolded, admired, sent away, called back, and surrendered with a readiness that would have been comic if it had not been so telling.
The carriage moved.
Longbourn slipped behind trees, then hedgerow, then the ordinary road.
Elizabeth sat very straight for a little while, small hands clasped tightly in her lap. She did not cry. Mrs. Marwood, who respected pride in all ages when it did not become stupidity, adjusted the travelling rug and looked out at the wet fields.
“You may be sorry,” she said.
Elizabeth swallowed. “May I?”
“Certainly. It is not compulsory to be foolish merely because one has been fortunate.”
The child looked at her then, uncertain and relieved. After a moment, her hands loosened in her lap. She did not lean against Mrs. Marwood, but she ceased leaning away.
Mrs. Marwood felt the odd, sharp pressure of being trusted before she had done very much to deserve it.
The road rose. Longbourn vanished altogether.
Mrs. Marwood settled back, black gloves folded in her lap.
She had not come to Hertfordshire intending to adopt a child, reform a niece by marriage, or become entangled in Bennet domestic policy.
She had no intention now of doing the latter two.
Longbourn had daughters enough, noise enough, disorder enough, and parents enough if either of them ever chose to do the work.
But Elizabeth, beside her, had already turned her wet eyes toward the road ahead, grief and fierce interest fighting for command of her face.
Elizabeth was not Longbourn.
Elizabeth was Mrs. Marwood’s responsibility now.