Chapter Five The Return of the Prodigal Wallflower #3
"Yes! Exactly! Those things!" Kitty nodded vigorously.
"I have been very dignified, Mary. I have not laughed in three days.
Mamma thinks I am ill. She has threatened to call the apothecary because she says my silence is unnatural and possibly contagious.
But I told her, I am not ill, I am serious. Like Mary."
Mary looked at her younger sister. The bright eyes were carefully dulled, the natural vivacity suppressed beneath a mask of forced solemnity.
Kitty was seventeen, pretty in a way that would blossom into beauty if given sunshine and laughter.
She was also, at this precise moment, performing a very poor imitation of Mary Bennet, complete with furrowed brow and pursed lips.
It was, objectively, the most ridiculous thing Mary had ever witnessed. It was like watching a butterfly trying to be a moth. It was also, inexplicably, rather touching.
"Kitty." Mary sat in the chair opposite, arranging her brown skirts neatly. "How long have you been reading page forty-seven?"
Kitty's composure cracked.
"Two days," she whispered miserably. "The words keep moving, Mary.
I read a sentence and then I forget it immediately because it is so boring.
And the sentences are so long. And there are no pictures.
And Dr Fordyce keeps saying things about female delicacy that make me want to scream, but screaming is not dignified, so I just sit here and feel my soul leaving my body very slowly through my ears. "
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because—" Kitty's voice broke. "Because everyone left.
Jane left. Lizzy left. Even Lydia left, and Lydia never leaves, she just gets louder until you pay attention to her.
And now it is just me and Mamma and Papa.
And Mamma cries all day about her nerves, and Papa hides in here and pretends we do not exist, and I thought—I thought if I was serious, if I was quiet, if I was like you—"
She stopped, her eyes filling with tears.
"I thought maybe I would not feel so alone."
Mary looked at her sister. She thought of the music room at Darcy House. She thought of Georgiana asking to learn how to stand like a mule. She thought of the hollow ache she had carried for twenty years—the desperate desire to be seen, to matter, to be more than furniture in her own family.
She thought of yellow flowers and a man who had thanked her for depth.
"Kitty." Mary leaned forward. "Put down the Fordyce."
"But—"
"Fordyce is a punishment to you, not a solution. I have read him cover to cover seven times, and I can assure you, he does not contain the answer to loneliness. He contains only the answers to questions no sensible woman would ask. Mostly regarding the evils of dancing."
She paused and reached out to squeeze her sister's hand.
"Besides, you have been trying to be the wrong Bennet."
Kitty blinked, confused. "The wrong...?"
"You do not need to be me, Kitty. You need to be you, but a version of you that knows her own worth.
" Mary closed the Fordyce with a sharp snap that made Charles jump.
"I spent my life trying to disappear into books because I thought the world did not want to see me.
I was wrong. The world simply had not learned to look. "
She stood, tucking the book under her arm like a confiscated weapon.
"Come. I will teach you what I learned in London. Not how to be serious—you are terrible at serious, and that is perfectly acceptable. But I will teach you how to stand your ground. How to narrow your eyes at shopkeepers. How to be a mule."
Kitty stared up at her, wiping her eyes. "Mule?"
"It is a compliment. I will explain over tea."
"Very well, sister. I will stop reading Fordyce. Oh! I borrowed ten gothic novels from the circulating library!"
Mary shook her head and picked up Charles, who had been surprisingly well-behaved—mostly because he was plotting a way to claw the spine of Dr Fordyce—and headed to her chamber.
Dinner at Longbourn had always been a physical ordeal. It was a battlefield of competing voices—Mrs Bennet's lamentations, Lydia's shrieks, Kitty's giggles, Elizabeth's wit, Jane's gentle deflections, and Mr Bennet's dry observations shot from behind his newspaper.
Tonight, the table was a tomb.
Four place settings. Four silent figures. The chandelier dripped yellow light over the empty chairs, each one a reproachful ghost of daughters now gone to houses with better menus.
Mrs Bennet sat at the head of the table. She had rearranged the seating twice already, as if shifting the cutlery could fill the void left by Jane, Lizzy, and Lydia. She poked at the roasted chicken on her plate as if it were gruel.
She let out a sigh. It was a masterpiece of a sigh. It started in her diaphragm, went through her ribs, and exited her body with enough force to flicker the candles.
"It is too quiet," Mrs Bennet declared to the room at large.
"I cannot abide the quiet, Mr Bennet. It presses upon my nerves like a corset two sizes too small.
A house should have noise. Laughter. Screaming, even.
I never thought I would say this, but I miss Lydia's screaming. At least it was something."
She looked at her husband.
"My Son would never allow this silence," she added with reverent capitalisation.
"Viscount Keathley understands the importance of conversation.
He would tell me about his horse. He would tell me about the hats.
He would not sit there reading about... about crop rotation while his mother withers away from a lack of stimulating conversation! "
Mr Bennet turned a page of his book, which he had propped against his water glass to form a barricade.
"I find the quiet rather peaceful, my dear," he murmured. "My hearing has improved so dramatically I can now hear the woodworm eating the sideboard. I believe they are discussing politics."
"Woodworm!" Mrs Bennet's fork clattered against her plate. "What use is hearing woodworm when I have no one to tell about them? I am left to rattle around this house like a dried pea in a very large drum!"
"You have Mary. You have Kitty. You have me, though I admit I am poor entertainment compared to a screaming Lydia." Mr Bennet peered over his spectacles. "We are not abandoned, my dear. We are merely rearranged."
Kitty, who was sitting opposite Mary, let out a cough. It was a small, dry, pitiful sound, clearly practised in front of a mirror to convey maximum tragedy.
"I am fading," Kitty whispered, clutching her throat. "The silence is affecting my lungs. I feel quite... consumptive."
"Do not cough, Kitty." Mary sipped her soup calmly. "It is unseemly. And if you were truly consumptive, you would not have asked for a second helping of potatoes."
Mrs Bennet let out another sigh, this one tragic enough for a Greek play. "My poor girls. One fading, one reading, and the others gone. I am a mother without a purpose."
Mary set down her spoon. The clink against the china was sharp.
"I have a proposal."
Three heads swivelled towards her. Mary did not make proposals. Mary made observations, corrections, and the occasional unsolicited lecture on moral fortitude. Proposals required boldness. Boldness required being seen.
Mary was done being wallpaper.
"Tomorrow evening," she announced, "I shall play the pianoforte after dinner. Not Clementi. Not scales. I shall play the Scottish airs I learned in London." She paused, letting the words land. "And Kitty will sing."
Kitty's fork slipped from her fingers. "I cannot sing! I am serious now! Serious people do not sing! They cough."
"Serious people do whatever they please, provided they do it without apology," Mary countered, fixing Kitty with the narrow-eyed stare that had once made a haberdasher weep.
"You have a pleasant voice. It has been wasted on giggles and flirting with officers who cannot afford their bills.
Tomorrow, you will use it for something worthwhile. "
Mrs Bennet gaped at her as if she had just suggested they all take up piracy. "You wish to perform? Voluntarily? Without being bribed or threatened? Mary, are you feverish? Is it the London air?"
"Why not?" Mary met her mother's stunned gaze.
Mr Bennet lowered his book entirely. His expression was one of surprise, perhaps, or the dawning realisation that his middle daughter had returned from London with a spine. "Well," he said at last. "It seems the city has worked a miracle."
Mary picked up her spoon just as Charles leapt onto the table.
He landed amidst the cutlery, his tail flicking back and forth like a pendulum swinging towards inevitable disaster. With a single, deliberate paw—moving slowly, maintaining eye contact with Mrs Bennet the entire time—he batted her plate to the floor.
The crash was magnificent.
Mrs Bennet shrieked. "That cat! He is the devil in fur! He is trying to kill me! He knows my nerves cannot take the breakage!"
Charles blinked up at her, unimpressed, before snatching a piece of roasted chicken. He sauntered off to the centre of the table with the prize in his jaws.
Kitty was still gaping at Mary like she had just suggested they rob the Bank of England.
Mary turned to her sister. "Kitty, do not fret. It is only singing among family. Besides, you have a talent. Do not let it gather dust like Aunt Phillips' best china. You will do it, with conviction."
"But I am serious!" Kitty protested, forgetting to cough.
"You can sing seriously," Mary argued. "Tragic ballads are very dignified."
Mrs Bennet clutched her napkin to her chest, breathing heavily. "Mary, are you quite well? This does not seem like you, child. You never cared to include anyone else in your playing."
"I wish to fill the silence." Mary ignored the way her mother's eyebrows had climbed halfway up her forehead. "This house is too quiet, you are right, Mamma. We are still here. We can make our own noise."
Charles, having finished the chicken, was now perched on the tablecloth, licking his paw with the smugness of a king surveying a conquered province. Then, with a flick of his tail, he knocked over Mr Bennet's water glass.
The liquid pooled ominously near Mary's elbow.
"Charles," Mary said calmly, not moving her arm, "if you are going to be a menace, at least commit to it properly."
The cat responded by leaping onto the sideboard, where the massive yellow bouquet stood in its vase. He sniffed a rose, sneezed violently, and then proceeded to bat the petals.
Yellow confetti rained down onto the carpet.
Kitty dissolved into giggles, her serious mask shattering instantly. "He hates those flowers! Look, Mamma! He is attacking the suitor!"
Mary watched the scene unfold—the spilled water, the scattered food, the ruined petals, her mother's outraged spluttering—and felt something unfamiliar bubble up in her chest.
It took her a moment to recognise it: amusement.
She turned back to her soup. "Tomorrow, then. We shall entertain ourselves."
Mrs Bennet threw her hands up, nearly knocking over her wine. "This family is mad! My Son would never permit such anarchy!"
Mr Bennet chuckled into his napkin. "Your Son would have been the one to start it, my dear."
Mary hid a smile behind her spoon. She was not a spectator in her own home anymore. She was the one holding the match, ready to light the fire.
Charles leapt into her lap, sitting squarely on her napkin. He purred as if the evening had unfolded exactly according to his plan.