CHAPTER 6 #3
The whole scene altered at once. Anger remained, but action replaced it. She crossed to the bell-pull and rang with a hand now perfectly steady.
Mrs. Bennet stopped speaking only because the sound contradicted her.
When the maid appeared, startled by the atmosphere but trained too well to show it, Elizabeth said, “Tell my woman to come to me immediately. James is to have the carriage made ready within the hour. My trunks are to be packed at once.”
Mrs. Bennet gave a fresh exclamation.
“You cannot mean to go!”
“I mean precisely that.”
“Because of one little disagreement?”
“Because I have at last seen the whole arrangement clearly.”
Jane, drawn by the noise and the open door, had now come near enough to hear the last of it. Her face changed at once.
“Lizzy—”
Elizabeth looked at her and softened for one second only.
“My dear Jane, this has nothing to do with you.”
“Do not leave angry.”
“I leave instructed.”
Mrs. Bennet began again, pleading now, then commanding, then lamenting, then accusing.
Mr. Bennet said little, and little, Elizabeth thought with a bitterness older than the morning, was exactly what he had said when it mattered all her life.
He did not force Mr. Collins on her. He did not save her from him either.
He stood aside and let the scene burn itself out around her, as if a daughter’s fury were a weather he might observe without putting on a coat.
“Come, Lizzy,” he said at last. “Do not take the matter too far.”
Elizabeth turned to him.
“Too far?”
“Your mother speaks in agitation. Mr. Collins has been disappointed. Let us not make a family rupture out of an unpleasant morning.”
“Then send him away.”
Mr. Bennet’s expression changed.
Mr. Collins exclaimed, “Sir!”
Elizabeth did not look at him.
“Either Mr. Collins leaves this house, or I do.”
The room went very still.
For once, Mr. Bennet had no jest ready. He looked from Elizabeth to Mr. Collins, and in that hesitation Elizabeth saw everything.
Mr. Collins was absurd, offensive, and unwelcome; but he was also the heir of Longbourn.
To quarrel with him might injure Mrs. Bennet’s future security, and perhaps the girls’ comfort after Mr. Bennet’s death.
Mr. Bennet, who could laugh at almost any folly while it remained theoretical, found himself at a loss when action might cost him something.
Mr. Collins recovered first, because outrage required less courage than decision.
“I cannot remain in a house,” he said, “where my honourable intentions are met with insult, mockery, and threats of expulsion.”
“Then we are agreed at last,” said Elizabeth.
But Mr. Bennet said nothing.
And that silence settled her.
“Madam,” Elizabeth said, turning to Mrs. Bennet, “you have made it very clear that I am neither protected nor welcome here unless I am convenient on terms of your choosing. You may therefore rely no longer upon my visits.”
Mrs. Bennet gasped. “You wicked girl.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “Only a departing one.”
Elizabeth had come to Longbourn because grief had made Portman Square too quiet and family, however foolish, had seemed a claim she might answer without surrender.
She had brought gifts, opened an education fund, offered London visits under proper terms, defended Mary, watched Kitty, laughed at Lydia, protected Jane where she could, and made herself, by degrees, easier for Longbourn to claim.
Mrs. Marwood’s rule returned to her then with the force of a door opening behind her: if you interfere in a household, you must be prepared to be responsible for it.
Longbourn did not want her responsible in that sense. It wanted her purse, her carriage, her competence, her obedience, and her silence. It wanted her judgment only after it had been reduced to compliance.
No.
Elizabeth went upstairs.
Packing, in a household used to Mrs. Marwood’s standards, required less time than hysteria.
Mrs. Doddridge folded, directed, and closed drawers with grave efficiency.
Pom-Pom supervised from the bed in a state of righteous excitement, wearing by then his travelling wrapper and all the importance of a creature who understood migration as an event of consequence.
Within the hour Elizabeth was dressed for the road. Her maid tied her bonnet. Mrs. Doddridge shut the last trunk. The carriage was heard below.
On her way down again, she passed through the morning room.
Mr. Collins’s coat, discarded over the back of a chair in one of those little acts of self-assurance by which men indicate their intention of remaining where they are not wanted, hung there in vulnerable stillness.
Pom-Pom saw it too.
Elizabeth stopped.
Pom-Pom slipped from her arms, approached the chair with solemn purpose, and, after one concentrated moment of consideration, relieved himself upon the coat-skirt with a precision that might have argued design, had design in him ever been in doubt.
Elizabeth watched this in silence.
Mrs. Doddridge, standing beside the door with her basket and the profound neutrality of law, said only, “That will be difficult to mend, miss.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I believe it will.”
Then she took Pom-Pom up again.
The hall below was full of interruption.
Mrs. Bennet in tears and indignation; Jane pale with concern; Kitty and Lydia suspended between alarm and amazement; Mary looking as if she wished to derive something edifying from catastrophe and found catastrophe unwilling to oblige; Mr. Collins drawn up into injured blackness; Mr. Bennet detached and tired.
Elizabeth paused only long enough to kiss Jane.
“Write to me.”
Jane caught at her hand. “Forgive us.”
Elizabeth’s expression altered.
“My dear Jane, I forgive you everything. It is the rest who must do without it.”
She looked once at Mary, and then at Kitty, who had the uncertain face of a girl seeing a door close and not knowing whether it had been shut against her or for her instruction.
She looked once at Lydia, whose defiance had begun to falter now that departure was no longer an exciting consequence but an actual carriage at the door.
“Do not marry a face you cannot bear to look at over breakfast,” Elizabeth said.
Lydia’s eyes widened; then, astonishingly, filled.
“I shan’t.”
Elizabeth looked next at Kitty.
“And do not hide every drawing because someone laughs too quickly.”
Kitty nodded, pressing her lips together.
Mary stood very straight, still pale, still struggling with the painful discovery that right conduct did not always preserve peace.
“You spoke well,” said Elizabeth.
Mary blinked. “Did I?”
“Yes. Remember it.”
Mary swallowed and gave one stiff, awkward nod.
“Your lessons may continue,” Elizabeth said. “If you wish them. Write through Papa, or to me directly if that fails.”
Mary’s lips parted. Kitty nodded once, quickly. Lydia looked as if she had discovered that catastrophes might contain practical information after all.
Mrs. Bennet began, “Lizzy, you cannot—”
“I can,” said Elizabeth.
She turned then, and as the servant opened the carriage door, said to the dog in her arms, with a tenderness that made the absurdity better rather than less:
“Come, my dear Pom-Pom. You are the best gentleman in Hertfordshire, and have supported me throughout.”
Pom-Pom sneezed once, with complete approval.
Elizabeth got into the carriage.
Mrs. Doddridge followed.
The door shut. The wet morning air entered for one cold second and was gone. Longbourn stood beyond the glass with its bright windows, its anxious faces, its old claims, and its familiar failure to understand what it had asked of her until she removed it.
As the carriage moved, Elizabeth did not look back.