CHAPTER 1 #4
She smiled, not from pleasure, but from the old family astonishment of finding Mrs. Bennet always precisely herself.
She had visited Longbourn often enough over the years.
Mrs. Marwood, though not sentimental, had been sociable in her own formidable manner and knew a variety of elderly ladies, cousins, widows, and ancient friends whose houses she visited from principle, habit, or preference.
Longbourn, being the house in which she had once been Miss Bennet herself, had never been permitted wholly to drop out of account.
It had therefore remained in Elizabeth’s life much as several other country houses had remained in it: a place in which she might stay for a fortnight, be fed, observed, contradicted, and then depart without material damage.
It had long since ceased to be home.
Indeed, it had in time become less than that.
Some hurts are too small to govern daily life and too lasting to disappear from it; and Elizabeth had never forgotten that she had once left Longbourn in Mrs. Marwood’s carriage without seeing any sign that the house could not manage perfectly well without her.
She did not think often of the wrong of it. She thought, when she thought at all, of its convenience. One does not, after all, continue to consult those who have handed one away.
Yet the heart is not a ledger, however often Mrs. Marwood had tried to improve hers by that comparison.
Elizabeth could know, with perfect justice, that Longbourn had surrendered her; she could know that Mrs. Bennet’s tenderness was mostly noise, that Mr. Bennet’s affection preferred wit to exertion, that Jane’s sweetness had never been strong enough to detain anybody; and still there remained some foolish, half-starved part of her which wondered whether absence might have taught them the shape of what they had lost.
She despised this hope.
She did not find herself able to kill it.
Three months of mourning in Portman Square had done what years of principle had not.
They had made the prospect of any scene, even a Bennet one, less intolerable than another afternoon spent being quiet beneath Mrs. Marwood’s curtains while Mrs. Doddridge invented weather-appropriate collars for Pom-Pom, Mrs. Albright governed the house without appearing to move, and the square persisted in its respectable indifference.
Elizabeth folded the letter and tapped it once against her palm.
Mrs. Doddridge, who had that particular gift of the dull for appearing to hear nothing and understand too much, said, “Is there news from Hertfordshire, Miss Bennet?”
“There is always news from Hertfordshire. It is the same news in different gowns.”
“Indeed, ma’am.”
Elizabeth rose and went again toward the window, though she did not look out.
She looked instead at her reflection in the darkening glass: a young woman in restrained mourning, properly housed, mistress in practice, heiress in law, ward of trustees for one more year, unexpectedly rich, competent in all the habits that had once belonged to another woman, and in danger — if she remained much longer in the house — of becoming sensible.
This last possibility was insupportable.
She turned back.
“Mrs. Doddridge,” she said, “I believe I shall go to Longbourn.”
Mrs. Doddridge blinked once.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Not because I am wanted. That would be too flattering. Nor because I have suddenly recollected a filial duty. But because I begin to think Portman Square means to bury me alive beneath upholstery, and Longbourn, whatever its other defects, has never yet been accused of stillness.”
Mrs. Doddridge folded the blue ribbon with calm precision.
“I shall see that your maid is informed, ma’am.”
“Thank you. And pray tell James the carriage shall be ordered for the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Elizabeth looked toward Pom-Pom, who, restored to warmth and consequence, had stretched himself before the fire with all the limp self-satisfaction of a creature who had successfully refused exercise.
“You also will go.”
Pom-Pom opened one eye.
“You will hate it,” said Elizabeth, “which is one of its strongest recommendations.”
He sneezed.
So it was settled.
And Elizabeth, who in many serious matters could deliberate with intelligence and composure, found as usual that in smaller ones — the very ones most likely to alter a life — she preferred to decide first and think afterward.
She would go to Longbourn. She would see what remained there worth seeing.
She would discover whether time had improved the place, or only confirmed her old opinion of it.
She would learn whether family feeling, so ready in letters, could endure the inconvenience of her presence.
And if, at the end of a week, she was tired of family, noise, country air, maternal rights recollected too late, and the uneasy little hope she had been foolish enough to carry with her, she might at least return to London with the comfort of having proved herself correct.
This was not, perhaps, the noblest reason on which a journey had ever been undertaken.
It was, however, enough for Elizabeth.