CHAPTER 3 #2
“Then your father must be spoken to.”
Elizabeth, who could imagine no better domestic result from the conversation, inclined her head.
It was not, she thought, a complete comfort.
She did not mean that Jane, Mary, Kitty, or Lydia should ever be abandoned to real want if she had power to prevent it.
She was not a monster; Mrs. Marwood had not raised one.
But Mrs. Marwood had also not raised a fool.
Assistance was not the same thing as assuming the whole neglected machinery of another household.
If she stretched out her hand now without limit, Longbourn would put not one burden into it, but all of them, and then wonder she could not also clap.
Help what is yours, if you can. Help what is helpless, if you must. But do not imagine that every confusion asks to be governed by you.
Mrs. Marwood’s voice was so clear in memory that Elizabeth almost looked toward the door.
Jane, who had been standing by the muslin with one hand resting on its fold, said, “It was kind of you to think of us.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “It was Mrs. Marwood’s money.”
“And still kind,” said Jane.
That was Jane’s way: to find the softest possible truth and offer it as if no one could be injured by taking it.
Mary’s hands shifted over the gloves.
Mrs. Bennet’s injury, however, had not yet exhausted itself. “Then what, pray, is this other money for?”
“For instruction. Masters, books, music, drawing, languages, dancing where properly taught, and such materials as belong to those lessons.” Elizabeth kept her voice even.
“My trustees wrote to my father after Mrs. Marwood’s death.
Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker arranged the matter by correspondence with him.
It is not a dowry fund. It is not to be divided out for pin-money. It was meant to be used for education.”
“To your father?” Mrs. Bennet repeated.
“Yes.”
“Then that explains perfectly why I know nothing of it.”
This was so accurate, and so unjustly convenient to Mrs. Bennet, that Elizabeth could not immediately answer.
“Papa knew there was money for masters?” Mary asked.
“He was informed.”
“And has arranged nothing?”
Elizabeth did not answer quickly enough.
Mary looked down at the gloves again.
Mrs. Bennet’s indignation, which had been seeking somewhere to go, found its direction with remarkable speed.
“Well,” she said, “then your father shall hear of it from me. I am sure Mary must have her music master if there is money for it, and Kitty may learn drawing if she chooses, and Lydia — though I do not know that Lydia requires encouragement in any direction — may have dancing properly taught if it keeps her from inventing it herself. Men never consider what girls require until it is too late, and then they wonder they are not accomplished.”
This declaration, though founded on indignation, had more practical force than many calmer speeches Elizabeth had heard at Longbourn.
“Would it pay for the pianoforte to be tuned?” Mary asked.
“Certainly.”
“Or—” Mary stopped.
Elizabeth looked at her more carefully. “Or?”
“Nothing.”
“A better instrument?”
Mary’s face tightened. “Only if it were judged necessary.”
“Then we shall ask someone capable of judging.”
Mary looked down at the gloves. “And a master?”
“A master, yes.”
“I should like a better music master.”
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Lydia said, “I should like a dancing master with black hair.”
“You may have a dancing master with references,” said Elizabeth.
“How dull.”
“That is often the first sign of safety.”
Kitty brightened. “Would it buy drawing?”
“If you wished to learn drawing.”
Kitty looked alarmed by the formality of her own wish. “I might. If Lydia did not laugh.”
“Then Lydia may apply for her own improvement and leave yours alone.”
“Can improvement include coloured chalks?” Lydia asked.
“It can include art supplies.”
“Then I shall improve very handsomely.”
By luncheon, Mrs. Bennet had discovered that the education fund, though criminally useless for portions, might nevertheless be made to disturb Mr. Bennet’s peace; and this, if not comfort, was at least occupation.
She went toward the library with Mary’s music, Kitty’s possible drawing, Lydia’s dancing, and a new pianoforte all collected into one maternal grievance.
Elizabeth, watching the door close behind her mother, decided that the fund had achieved something already.
It had caused a different household disturbance.
The rest of the day passed in fittings, small disputes, and the continual migration of fabric from chair to chair.
Hill came in twice to ask where something should be put and was answered three times by three different people.
Mrs. Doddridge, having at first sat apart with Pom-Pom’s rain-cape, was soon drawn into the question of whether a ribbon might be turned, a cuff narrowed, or Lydia’s bonnet rendered glorious without becoming a public disturbance.
She answered each inquiry with a calm so level that even Lydia began, after an hour, to treat her as an oracle of severe but dependable judgment.
Pom-Pom supervised from the hearth in plum silk and disapproval.
By evening, Jane’s gown had been decided, Lydia’s bonnet had been limited by treaty, Kitty’s ribbons had been divided into what she might wear and what she must not touch until she had proved herself steady, and Mary’s gloves had disappeared upstairs with Mary herself, who claimed she wished to put them away properly.
Elizabeth suspected she wished to try them on where no one could watch her hands tremble.
The next day carried them into Meryton, not for wholesale purchasing — Elizabeth had prevented that campaign before Mrs. Bennet could name it — but to secure Mrs. Haines, the seamstress, before every family within ten miles discovered that a Netherfield ball required new gowns in less time than Christian charity usually allowed.
The road was still damp. The hedges dripped when the wind moved. Lydia declared the air very fine because there were officers in it; Kitty agreed before any officer had appeared.
Mrs. Haines received the fabrics with the expression of a woman being offered both income and punishment.
She praised Jane’s muslin because no one with eyes could do otherwise; measured Lydia with the caution due to a moving target; advised Kitty against three trimmings she had already determined to love; and examined Mary’s sober fabric with visible relief, as if grateful to discover one gown in the room not trying to become an event.
Mrs. Bennet urged haste, elegance, economy, and distinction in a single breath.
Mrs. Haines promised two of those qualities and implied that Providence might manage the others if given enough notice.
Elizabeth settled what must be settled, refused what must be refused, and had the satisfaction of seeing Mrs. Bennet’s spirits improved by the knowledge that urgency, once transferred to a tradeswoman, became almost as pleasurable as hope.
Meryton afterward received them with its usual mixture of shop-bells, wet straw, gossip, and windows full of things no one needed until they were seen.
Elizabeth endured the milliner, the shoemaker, Mrs. Bennet’s whispered calculations, and Lydia’s repeated discoveries that every red coat in the street belonged to a gentleman of remarkable promise when viewed from behind.
Mary walked beside Elizabeth for part of the way, quiet under the brim of her bonnet.
“If I were to apply to Papa,” Mary said abruptly, “would that be the proper way?”
Elizabeth did not pretend not to understand.
“You may apply to Papa. Or I may write to Mr. Hartwood and ask what form the request should take.”
“I do not wish to seem grasping.”
“Asking to be taught is not grasping.”
Mary absorbed this with a seriousness that made the answer matter more than Elizabeth had expected.
“And if I am not improved?”
There it was: the small, cold fear beneath all the solemnity.
Elizabeth looked at her more carefully. Mary’s bonnet was too plain for her face, her manner too old for her years, and her confidence built almost entirely out of things she had read because no one had taken the trouble to teach her otherwise.
“Then you will at least be better instructed in your errors,” Elizabeth said. “That is not nothing.”
Mary considered, then nodded. “No. It is not.”
The conversation might have gone further had Lydia called from ahead that officers were approaching and Kitty pulled Mary by the sleeve with all the urgency of youth discovering scarlet.
Mary went, though with less haste than the others, and Elizabeth was left with the uncomfortable satisfaction of having opened a door without knowing whether anyone would walk through it safely.
That evening Mrs. Philips’s card party brought together enough of Meryton and its vicinity to create the appearance of animation, if not its substance.
Her parlour was over-warm, over-lit, and over-filled.
Damp cloaks steamed faintly in the passage; candles smoked in their sockets; the card tables were arranged with more enthusiasm than space; and several militia officers had been invited, their scarlet coats doing much of the evening’s work before their conversation was called upon to assist.
They were civil, good-humoured, and not oppressive; they laughed where ladies expected laughter, fetched what was dropped, and praised the weather when it had done nothing to deserve praise.
No one among them had the beauty, invention, or consequence enough to become a family event, and Elizabeth, who had no wish for family events beyond those already unavoidable, thought this a recommendation.