Chapter Five The Return of the Prodigal Wallflower #3
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."