Chapter 21
“Fanny Bennet, you will cease your caterwauling this instant,” Madeline commanded. “Are you an adult or a young child?”
Since her sister-in-law interrupted Mr Collins, who she was sure was about to offer for Lizzy, Fanny Bennet wanted to tell Maddie how high-handed she had been. Instead, she followed the latter to her private sitting room.
The instant she had entered and the door was closed; Fanny began to wail.
The Bennet matron hiccupped as she attempted to bring herself under regulation.
She was not used to being taken to task about her behaviour like Maddie had just done.
“I was about to be saved by Mr Collins offering for Lizzy, but you interrupted him! What gives you the right to do that?” Fanny demanded.
“In what world do you believe that Lizzy would ever accept that unctuous buffoon?” Maddie shot back. “By recommending that he choose Lizzy, all you have achieved is to anger him when Lizzy, as she surely will, rejects his proposal.”
“But she MUST accept him!” Fanny screamed the last. “She must save me from the hedgerows!”
“I ask again, who is the parent and who is the child? The last time I checked, it is not the child’s role to save parents from their spendthrift ways and inability to live within a budget,” Maddie returned.
“Tell me, Fanny, why is it Lizzy’s lot to save you when over the last twenty plus years with just a little sensible economy you and Thomas would have been able to set aside more than enough for both your future and the futures of any unmarried daughters?
Did your mother and father demand that you save them from their own imprudence?
” Seeing that Fanny was about to speak, Maddie raised her hand.
It had the desired effect. “You know that Lizzy is Thomas’s favourite, do you not? ”
Begrudgingly, Fanny allowed it was so.
“When Lizzy refuses Mr Collins, and she will as certainly as you draw breath, you will go to Thomas and demand he force her to marry the parson. Who do you think he will support? Further, you well know how stubborn Lizzy can be. Even if Thomas ordered her to marry Mr Collins, she would refuse. You could drag her to the church, and she would not recite her vows nor would she sign the register. As you know, no clergyman will solemnise a wedding without both members of the couple agreeing and saying their vows. Let us for argument’s sake say that you and Thomas somehow forced Lizzy to marry that man.
What do you think the first thing she would do the instant she became the mistress of Longbourn? ”
“B-but I-I w-would s-still b-be m-m-mistress.”
“No, Fanny, you would most certainly not still be mistress. The instant Mr Bennet passes from this world into the next, you will no longer be the mistress here. Again I ask you, if you force Lizzy, what will she do as soon as she takes over the role?”
“She will throw me from my house.” The realisation hit Fanny like a kick from a horse. Why had she never thought of that before?
Maddie chose not to address the ‘my house’ part of Fanny’s statement.
She was happy her sister-in-law had finally seen some truth for herself.
“That is exactly correct. Can you not see that by setting Mr Collins on a path for humiliation, for humiliated he will be when Lizzy refuses him, you would make certain that when Thomas is called home that the heir presumptive will never allow you or any unmarried daughters to remain in this house. So what will you have achieved by pointing him at Lizzy?”
“Nothing,” Fanny admitted as she hung her head.” Then she considered something. “What of Mr Collins? Will he not be angry about Lizzy refusing him?”
“Leave that man to Edward and me,” Maddie said firmly.
Then a thought struck Fanny. “Why did Lizzy chase Mr Bingley away? He would have offered for Jane. However, Lizzy was always rude to Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley.”
“You, Sister, are the one who helped chase Mr Bingley from the neighbourhood like you have other men before him! Using Lizzy as a scapegoat is so you do not need to look at your own behaviour and culpability.” Again Maddie held up her hand.
“Caterwauling that I am wrong will not change the facts.
Tell me, Fanny, who was not only foxed at the ball, but also was loudly, and in a vulgar fashion, claiming at supper for all to hear that Mr Bingley was as good as engaged to Jane and that your other daughters would be ‘thrown in the path of rich men?’ That was you, Fanny, not Lizzy.
Mr Darcy and the Bingley sisters, who I understand were already against the match, heard every word.
When Lizzy attempted to get you to lower your voice, did you?
“Do you think that when you visited while Jane was ill and spoke of the costs of everything in the room, which by the by does not belong to Mr Bingley, and denigrated Lizzy and Charlotte Lucas, and behaved like a fishwife, did you any favours?”
“I was helping Jane…”
“No, Fanny, you were doing anything but,” Maddie interpolated.
“Other than trying to effect an introduction, a mother should be seen and not heard. Then she should step back and allow a couple to come together on their own. It happens many times every day without anyone pushing one at the other. Why is it you think your girls are unable to find the partner of their future life without your help?”
Fanny had no reply. Had she been a bad mother? She remembered Lydia. “Look how lively and pretty Lydia is. If Mr Bennet was not so hard on her, she could come out…” She stopped talking when she saw the disgust on Maddie’s face.
“You want your daughter of thirteen to be out?”
“She will be fourteen in December, and she has a womanly body already. What would be so bad if she was the first of her sisters to marry, especially a man in a redcoat! I was so very sorry when Colonel Millar’s regiment left Meryton when I was fifteen…”
“Why did you not marry a soldier?”
“My late papa refused to give permission for a lieutenant to court me. I was so in love…”
“What did your late father give as a reason to deny you?”
“He said…” Fanny paused as the recollections came flooding back to her.
It was not just her father, but her late mother as well.
“He and Mama both told me that unless the officer was a major or above, he would not be able to afford a wife. Papa told me that Lieutenant Brown was only interested in my dowry. He related to me that as soon as he informed Mr Brown it would be secured until I passed away, and it would be split among my daughters, that the Lieutenant lost interest in me. Mama told me I was not meant for a lowly officer, but rather a landed gentleman. That is why I made myself agreeable to Mr Bennet.”
“And what kind of marriage do you have with Thomas?”
“I am married to him and the mistress of Longbourn,” Fanny replied proudly. “Everything my mama taught me worked.”
“But are you happy, Fanny? How is it being the butt of all of Thomas’s jokes?
Not being able to understand what he is saying much of the time?
Not spending any time together except, mainly at meals?
Being completely incompatible? Tell me, Sister, what did your catching Thomas purchase you?
You are living in a house which one day will not be yours, and your biggest fear is what will be after he is called home.
Edward told me you wanted to know as little about Thomas as possible before you wed him.
Knowing everything about the entail you do today, would you have wanted to marry him?
As you have seen, there is no guarantee He will grant any of us children, and the sex of the children is at His Grace. ”
“If I had allowed my late papa to tell me about the entail and Mr Bennet’s character before we wed, I may have cried off,” Fanny admitted.
As Fanny had calmed significantly, Maddie judged it was time for her to hear about Lydia’s almost folly. “You need to try and remain calm as I tell you what I need to next. It will not be easy to hear, but you must do so if you want to make sure something like this never occurs again.”
“Oh, Sister, what is it? I have a sense of foreboding,” Fanny fretted as she twisted her silk handkerchief with her hands.
“The reason Edward and I are here today is…” Maddie related all they knew of Lydia’s almost assignation with Mr Wickham. “If Edward and I had not had some of our footmen watch this house and that seducer, then Lydia, and all of her sisters, would be irrevocably ruined already.”
“But how did that vile Mr Wickham force my Lydia to try and meet him?” Fanny wailed.
“Lydia went of her own free will, and from what we have learnt, she initiated contact with him when she escaped her bedchamber the first time. She left through her window and climbed down the ivy on the side of the house. As far as we know, there were at least two occasions on which she escaped. Once when they first met in private and the other when both of them were caught before anything untoward occurred.”
“It is my husband’s fault! He was too strict with my girl,” Fanny screeched.
“Do you truly want to see the one who is responsible for the way Lydia behaves, including her wrongheaded ideas regarding men in scarlet coats?”
“Of course, bring Mr Bennet to me so I may set him down!”
“Stand, Fanny,” Maddie commanded. She took her sister-in-law’s hand and led her to stand in front of the full length mirror on one wall. She left Fanny standing and staring at her reflection in the mirror.
It took Fanny some minutes before what Maddie was saying struck her. “NOOOO!” Fanny screamed. “I never taught Lydia that she should surrender her virtue!”