Chapter 9 Relative Transition
Relative Transition
When not otherwise preoccupied entertaining their handsome fiancés, the brides-to-be had begun incrementally sorting through their possessions in preparation for relocating to their new homes.
Jane would be moving a mere three miles away, making the job easier for her on several counts.
Lizzy, conversely, would be at Pemberley in Derbyshire, a nearly two-day journey to traverse the one-hundred-fifty miles.
Not an impossible distance to send anything she might forget, but assuredly life would transition smoother if her belongings were readily available from the start.
Jane and Lizzy had shared a bedroom for the bulk of their lives.
According to their mother, she and the girls’ old nurse had tried to make them sleep in their respective beds, going so far as to punish them in various ways.
Jane remembered refusals of late-night snacks and water, while Lizzy recalled employment of the switch a time or two.
Nothing worked. Inevitably, the siblings, born a bare year apart, would tiptoe through the dark, always ending up in the room assigned to Lizzy.
Mr. Bennet had, in a rare episode of inserting his will into a childrearing matter, finally called a firm halt to the separate-bedchamber endeavor.
It helped that Lydia was born at about that same time, giving Mrs. Bennet and the nurse something better to occupy their minds.
From then on, Jane’s bedroom, while technically still belonging to her, was set aside for guests.
Though rarely slept in, the bedroom had become an overflow for the amassed belongings of both Jane and Lizzy, which now meant that despite sharing a sleeping space, the oldest Bennets had more to sift through than initially believed.
Over the weeks, some headway had been made in discarding old garments and other items deemed no longer necessary.
After twenty plus years living in the same house, both had accumulated an outlandish quantity of what was, if honest, primarily junk.
To a degree, it was relieving to have a concrete reason to dig through stored boxes and crammed trunks.
Lizzy gave up counting after the tenth time she examined some object with a deeply significant meaning to her and asked, “Does anyone remember where I got this or who gave it to me?” All of those ended in the pile thrown out with the refuse or the one for charity, depending upon its condition.
So far, the pile for the garbage was winning the game.
It was a plodding process. In part, this was due to handsome fiancés consuming their time and thoughts. Laxity in a chore as boring and labor intensive as cleaning closets was understandable when the alternative was so much pleasanter.
Primarily, as they admitted to each other when alone, dawdling at the job was a way to postpone facing the inevitable.
The sisters were overjoyed to be married, naturally.
At times they were unable to think of anything else but the future with the men they loved.
They were also cognizant of the fast-approaching day when their lives would irrevocably change.
Their emotions were an odd combination of nostalgia for their childhood home and hesitation to relinquish their familiar lives.
Nevertheless, one cannot procrastinate forever. Two days after Mr. Darcy’s birthday celebration, the opportunity to put a large dent into the project came along.
Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley had ridden north before daybreak that morning for a two-day shooting party at a university friend of Darcy’s.
As explained in animated tones to the politely listening females, the man owned an estate renowned for large quantities of pheasant, grouse, and mainly, migrating woodcock.
As Lizzy and Jane now knew in more depth than ever dreamed of, the woodcock was a highly prized bird not readily found during the shooting season.
“They rarely remain in Derbyshire,” Darcy had explained with genuine vexation, “even with Mr. Burr trying to entice them.” Clearly, the invitation to hunt the elusive woodcock was too compelling to resist.
The gentlemen would return before dinner the following night. Seizing the occasion as much to sidetrack themselves from missing them, they rose early and set to it.
For close to three hours, they managed to maintain an organized process with delineated, tidy stacks.
If left to their own devices, the lofty goal of completing the task that day might have been attained.
That dream perished when Mary, Kitty, and their mother arrived to help, using the word in the loosest meaning possible.
By noon, the shared bedroom looked as if the wardrobes and bureaus had violently regurgitated their contents!
Strewn across every available surface were gowns, undergarments, stockings, hats, gloves, shawls, coats, and more.
It was a sea of lace and fabric verily surging as a tide, heaped upon the boxes filled with books, treasured possessions, wall hangings, needle crafts, and the like.
Initially vexed at the assistance and ensuing chaos, Jane and Lizzy soon recognized the underlying motivation.
While struggling to reconcile their own mixed emotions over the radical changes happening in their lives, neither of them had paused to consider how their younger sisters and mother would be feeling.
Lydia’s marriage and departure had occurred unexpectedly, allowing no time to prepare.
The strained circumstances inhibited talking openly about her situation, the loss of a beloved sister keenly felt but unable to reconcile.
With only one correspondence received, it was as if Lydia had disappeared or never existed.
Then, barely a month after that fiasco and still reeling from the effects, Jane and Lizzy had become engaged days apart.
Two more gulfs in the Bennet family loomed in front of them.
Evidently, the unspoken consensus was to embrace the weeks they had together.
Doing so turned a straightforward operation into an opportunity for female camaraderie.
“Oh! I’ve just had the most marvelous idea. Lizzy and Jane should put on their wedding dresses.”
“Kitty, it is bad luck to wear one’s wedding gown before the day.” Lizzy snatched her gown out of Kitty’s hand.
“Pooh!” Kitty snorted. “Such nonsense. You of all people would never believe that.”
“Not normally, true. But when it comes to my marriage and future, I am not about to tempt the temperamental fates. Besides, it is too risky. I inevitably muss my garments ten minutes after donning them.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. Turning to Jane, she set her face into a pleading expression. Jane’s firm shake forestalled a whined entreaty. “Don’t ask, Kitty. Customs are to be respected, no matter how silly, nor do I want to risk a tear or stain.”
“Ha!” Lizzy exclaimed from deep inside the wardrobe. “When have you ever torn or stained a dress?”
“I have…a few times…I am sure of it…” Jane stammered to a halt, rosiness highlighting her cheeks as three pairs of dubious eyes swiveled her way. “Well, if you didn’t run across dirt fields and help feed the barn animals, your clothes might stay cleaner and in better repair, Lizzy.”
Content that her wedding gown was stowed safely, Lizzy backed away from the wardrobe.
“Guilty as charged,” she sang. “I suspect the Pemberley gardeners and groomsmen would frown at their mistress treading into their designated areas, so shall necessarily forego digging in the dirt or helping care for the rabbits, if they even have rabbits.”
“Who cares what the outdoor staff thinks, Lizzy? Mr. Darcy enjoys your outside activities, that is for sure. He stares at you with an intense expression when your cheeks flush from the brisk air. And if tendrils of hair have escaped your bonnet, well, he becomes especially animated!”
“Kitty! My word!”
“Well, he does, Mama. I’m not an idiot. I know what he is thinking. So does Mary.”
Mary pressed her lips primly together and continued to fold Jane’s shawls into precise squares, but her cheeks pinked and eyes faintly twinkled.
Lizzy had again busied herself inside the wardrobe, hiding her dreamy smile and trembling hands.
If any of them knew just how animated and intense Mr. Darcy truly was…
“Men are always thinking about…that.” Mrs. Bennet stumbled on the last word and fluttered her hand nervously in the air. “This is part of the problem with the male gender if you ask me.”
“Doesn’t seem like a problem to me,” Kitty objected.
“Oh! How innocent you are, my Kitty. Jane and Lizzy will soon learn how it is—”
“Mama, could you help me with these stockings? Your method of rolling saves space, and you always manage a tighter bundle than me.” Jane’s casual interruption had the immediate desired effect. Whether Mrs. Bennet giving her opinion was terminated altogether or merely delayed was another question.
Muffling her groan within the folds of hanging garments, Lizzy fervently beseeched the heavens for help.
With increasing frequency, she and Jane were subjected to oblique insinuations of the “discomforts of the marriage bed” with the inevitable advice of clever ways to avoid “a man’s persistent urges. ”
Is it too much to ask, she prayed to any listening angels, for the topic to pass and not spark another annoying diatribe?
Unfortunately, the angels must have been busy elsewhere.
“Why are your new shifts and other undergarment made of such thin fabrics and adorned with lace and ribbon accents?” Mrs. Bennet held up one of Lizzy’s new shifts, the supple cotton so finely woven as to be semi-sheer, and sewn with pale-blue ribbons in a braided pattern under the bodice.
In her other hand, she brandished a corselet made of silk taffeta.
“Why, this stay is barely boned at all! And it is pink!”