Chapter 3
Elizabeth would have wished to run upstairs to her father’s room, but Mrs Phillips directed them firmly towards the drawing room.
The sisters looked at one another, only then aware of the silence that surrounded them—unnatural in their house, which at any hour and in any circumstance was full of voices, laughter, and activity.
“Where is Mama?” Jane asked.
“She awaits you in the drawing room; for the present, the doctor is with Mr Bennet.”
Elizabeth opened the door to that familiar room with apprehension, where they were accustomed to enter laughing—yet only silence reigned—and if they had begun to expect a dramatic scene, knowing their mother’s inclination to it, what they found showed them the extent of the tragedy.
Their mother and their three sisters sat motionless, each upon a chair, without any expression upon their faces, as though grief had drained them, and had left behind a void that nothing could fill.
“Mama,” cried Elizabeth, alarmed, for only in such stillness had Mrs Bennet become truly striking.
Mrs Bennet looked at them and inclined her head, without rising, while Lydia, Kitty, and Mary ran towards them.
At once, the five sisters became as one, shaken by despair and sorrow.
Mrs Phillips attempted to separate them under the same impassive gaze of her sister, and at last succeeded; the girls drew apart, and, in place of that stillness, all began to weep.
They might have set down together upon the same sofa, as they sometimes did when they were children, and Mrs Bennet reproved them, but now there was not space.
Jane took Mary in her arms, and Elizabeth the other two, weeping together, their tears heavy with grief, yet almost without sound.
From time to time, Lydia sobbed, the only one able fully to give way to her fear and grief.
“Make them silent!” Mrs Bennet commanded her sister, who, however, only shook her head helplessly. It would not have been right to deny the girls their tears, to prevent them from easing their sorrow.
“Mama,” said Elizabeth again, freeing herself from Lydia and Kitty to approach her, but Mrs Bennet rose unexpectedly and withdrew, as though unable to bear their presence—so unlike her usual manner in distress, when she wished all to share in it and, in some degree, to comfort her.
In the face of such a calamity, Mrs Bennet desired only to be alone.
“She goes upstairs, to Mr Bennet,” said Mrs Phillips, as if seeking to excuse her, aware that Mrs Bennet was not yet prepared to share the grief she endured.
“And we?” asked Jane, in a murmur like that of a frightened child, suddenly left to face calamity alone.
Elizabeth controlled her distress with great effort and sat beside her aunt. “What has happened?” she asked.
They were accustomed to seeing Mrs Phillips as the faithful shadow of their mother, the two always in such agreement that Mrs Bennet spoke, judged, or questioned.
Their aunt brought the news from the town, though even these, Mrs Bennet made her own.
Yet the affection between them was never in doubt, nor Mrs Phillips’s complete devotion to the family.
And indeed she took Elizabeth’s hand, invited Jane to sit beside them, and then spoke.
“This morning, when Mr Bennet felt a moment of weakness, he believed it would pass, and went down towards the library, but in the hall he fell—”
“Oh!” cried Elizabeth and Jane together, clasping their aunt’s hands, while the other girls began again to weep.
“Jenny called us at once. We brought the doctor, and Mr Phillips wrote to London for you.”
So briefly told, it did not appear so dreadful. Elizabeth, however, suspected that, between the doctor’s arrival and the sending of the urgent message to London, Mr Phillips had perceived the seriousness of their father’s condition, and had understood that they must be summoned without delay.
“And? What did the physician say?” Jane asked, in fear.
But Mrs Phillips only shook her head. She could not repeat the physician’s words, which had been spoken only to her husband, and by him whispered only to her. Mr Bennet’s life now hung by the slenderest thread.
At that moment, a maid entered the room; she too had been weeping, for all loved Mr Bennet.
The servants also knew that something worse was at stake, worse than death itself.
It was not clearly understood, but there was a rumour that the house and estate were not definitively the family’s own, and that their master’s loss might bring ruin upon them all.
“The master wishes to see the young ladies,” she said in a subdued voice, her words carried through the silence of the room, less through the strength of her tone than through the weight of their meaning.
“To see every one of us?” Lydia cried, alarmed.
“Yes, Miss,” the servant answered, and left in haste.
“If that is Mr Bennet’s wish, then it shall be done.
You will go in one by one.” Mrs Phillips spoke calmly, striving with all her might not to betray the tumult within.
But all understood. A parent who summons his children awaits his end.
Thus, the tragedy became real; death stole suddenly upon them, at first as an unimaginable pain, and then as a multitude of questions.
Only a few months before, just prior to Mr Collins’s arrival, their father had explained to them the entail upon Longbourn.
Elizabeth and Jane had already known of it, but the others had listened in wonder, not at all in fear; Mary, curious by nature and eager for particulars, the other two somewhat inattentive, secure, and indeed indifferent, for they had believed their father immortal.
“What is to become of us?” Mary asked the question that had but newly begun to form in their minds.
“Do not think of that now,” said Mrs Phillips, in a firmer tone. “Lydia, you shall go first…then the others.”
Lydia rose with difficulty, plainly against her inclination, yet she did not protest, as was her habit. Then they all stood, and, accompanied by Mrs Phillips, ascended the stairs, but all five waited before their father’s door, from within which a low murmur might be heard.
Mrs Phillips knocked softly, and the door was immediately opened by Mrs Bennet.
“Jenny,” Mrs Phillips whispered, “let the girls go in, and as for us, the gentlemen await us in the library.”
Elizabeth awaited her turn, her heart beating painfully within her breast. In the dimly lit passage, it seemed to her that she was living through some dreadful dream, such as she sometimes experienced, but this time Jane did not wake her—on the contrary, the large tears that slipped down her cheeks rendered the scene yet more real.
The ladies withdrew; yet Lydia, at the open door, still did not dare to enter.
In a sudden impulse, Elizabeth and Jane embraced the others. There, in that trembling closeness, where they almost touched foreheads, Elizabeth murmured, “Do not weep…do not speak anything sorrowful…only listen, if he should say anything.”
It was what they needed. Lydia went in, and then Kitty; and when Kitty came out, the two ran hand in hand down the stairs. Mary watched them for a long time, and they both encouraged her with a faint smile.