CHAPTER 3
Gowns, Gloves, and Other Improvements
The morning after the Netherfield visit rose, as mornings at Longbourn generally did, not with tranquillity but with continuation.
Rain had retreated during the night and left the windows filmed, the garden sodden, and the gravel outside the house dark as tea leaves.
The air in the breakfast parlour was warm, smoky at the edges, and already crowded with consequences.
Mrs. Bennet had gone to bed full of Mr. Bingley’s attentions and awakened with no loss of substance in the night.
Kitty and Lydia disputed the probable number of couples at the promised ball before the toast had been properly browned.
Mary sat with a book beside her plate and the expression of a person prepared to disapprove of pleasure on grounds she had not yet arranged.
Jane coloured whenever Mr. Bingley’s name was mentioned, which was unfortunately often, and attempted with little success to reduce her mother’s expectations by looking as if she had none of her own.
Elizabeth, who had slept tolerably and woken with the same inward sensation that Longbourn was a house perpetually half an hour too loud, sat at one end of the table with coffee before her and Lord Pomington in her lap.
He wore, for the morning, a waistcoat of dark plum-coloured silk which had been constructed by Mrs. Doddridge from some retired trimming and which he bore with the injured majesty of a sovereign forced to appear before an inadequate court.
Mrs. Doddridge sat a little behind Elizabeth with her basket beside her chair, eating toast and saying nothing. Her silence, after one full day at Longbourn, had acquired a quality very near eloquence.
“I declare,” cried Mrs. Bennet for perhaps the fifth time, “I never saw a man so plainly gone. Never in my life. His eyes, his manner, the way he would have the first two dances! Jane, my love, if you do not marry him, I shall think all female modesty a wicked invention.”
“Mama,” said Jane, smiling and suffering.
“Well, my dear, what would you have me do? Pretend blindness? I am not a fool, whatever your father may sometimes imply, and when a man fixes his whole countenance upon one girl from the moment he enters the room till the moment he leaves it, there is only one sensible construction to be put upon such conduct.”
“There are often several constructions,” said Mary, “though they are not all encouraging.”
“Mary, for once in your life, do not reason your sister out of a rich husband.”
Mary looked offended by the charge, but not wholly innocent of the inclination.
“I only mean that expectation unsettles the mind.”
“Then do not expect,” cried Lydia, “but dance. That is much safer.”
“Safer for whom?” asked Mary.
“For everyone except the wallflowers.”
Kitty laughed because Lydia had laughed first, and then seemed pleased with herself for having done so.
Jane protested. Mrs. Bennet declared that if her daughters could not be serious where their own establishment was concerned, she knew not what women were made for.
Mr. Bennet, who had entered long enough to collect toast, looked at the table as one might look at a travelling exhibition of natural absurdities and returned to his library before any of them could demand an opinion.
Elizabeth watched his retreat with more attention than amusement.
The parcels were opened after breakfast with a ceremony Longbourn had not bestowed upon any event since Jane’s return from Netherfield, and perhaps not even then; for a daughter’s recovery was a blessing, but London paper, London string, London ribbons, and London fabrics enough to make a respectable disturbance possessed advantages more easily perceived by the younger members of the family.
Mrs. Bennet had the drawing room arranged for the operation with all the solemnity of a general preparing for campaign.
Hill was summoned, scissors were demanded, chairs were cleared, and the parcels were placed upon the table in a quantity that made Kitty clasp her hands and Lydia declare that Lizzy had at last remembered what sisters were for.
Elizabeth, who had not come empty-handed and had no wish to pretend otherwise, allowed the disorder to proceed.
Brown paper was untied; string was saved by instinct or habit; tissue was lifted; and Longbourn, which had met misfortune, marriages, illness, and visitors with confusion, received London goods with something near reverence.
Mrs. Bennet accepted the abundance with a satisfaction too natural to trouble itself with gratitude.
If Mrs. Marwood had chosen to leave everything to Lizzy, then Lizzy’s bringing muslin, ribbons, gloves, lace, stockings, handkerchiefs, reticule clasps, and little parcels from London shops for her sisters was not generosity so much as evidence that Providence, though eccentric, had not entirely lost its way.
Jane’s muslin was first, pale and fine, with a blue ribbon so soft in colour that even Mrs. Bennet was briefly satisfied. Jane touched it with the modest pleasure of a woman who would never ask for such a thing and could therefore receive it beautifully.
“Lizzy,” Jane said softly, when the others had already begun dividing futures out of fabric, “you have done too much.”
“I have done what was easy.”
“That is not the same as doing little.”
Elizabeth looked away first.
Kitty gasped over a length of sprigged cotton before Lydia declared it too quiet and then claimed the brighter wool for herself on grounds of destiny. Mary took up the gloves Elizabeth had chosen for her, turned them over once, and looked down so quickly that Elizabeth nearly missed the expression.
Nearly, but not quite.
They were only gloves. Good kid, sober, well cut, without ornament beyond excellent making. Mary held them as if they accused every shabby thing she had ever worn in the name of seriousness.
“They will do very well,” Mary said.
“That is the highest praise gloves can hope for,” Elizabeth replied.
Mary coloured.
Lydia had by then discovered the pink ribbon and cried out in triumph.
Kitty, who had been admiring green until pink became the centre of glory, immediately decided she had always preferred pink.
Mrs. Bennet called them both ungrateful, then began holding various fabrics against Jane’s shoulder, against Lydia’s hair, against the light, against her own hopes, and finally against reason.
For once, however, even Mrs. Bennet could find little to improve by wishing.
There was lace enough, ribbon enough, gloves enough, and fabric enough to clothe all four girls more handsomely than Longbourn had lately managed.
Her pleasure in the abundance was therefore forced to seek some larger grievance, and being Mrs. Bennet’s pleasure, found one almost immediately.
“It is very handsome of you, Lizzy,” she said, in the tone of a woman who had accepted a great deal and was now prepared to be injured by the remainder.
“Very handsome indeed. Though when one thinks of all your poor aunt possessed, and four sisters with such prospects as must depend upon their own establishment, one cannot help feeling that gowns are very well in their way, but portions would be better.”
The room altered.
Jane looked pained. Kitty paused with a ribbon half-unrolled. Lydia said, “I should rather have both,” and was ignored. Mary, still holding her gloves, looked down.
Elizabeth folded the pale blue ribbon back into its paper.
“Mrs. Marwood did not leave portion money for my sisters.”
“No,” said Mrs. Bennet, with feeling. “She remembered that very well when she made her will.”
“Nor was she their parent.”
Mrs. Bennet drew herself up. “I am sure I know that.”
Elizabeth looked at the table: the muslins, the ribbons, the lace, the little practical luxuries that would soon be dispersed into drawers, gowns, bonnets, and claims. She had meant them kindly.
She had even meant them generously. But generosity, at Longbourn, had a dreadful tendency to be mistaken for precedent.
“Nor am I, Mama.”
The sentence settled badly in the room.
Jane looked pained. Mary looked down. Kitty’s ribbon had stopped moving between her fingers. Lydia, who had been prepared to laugh at almost anything, appeared to decide that this was not quite the thing.
Elizabeth disliked the sentence almost as soon as she had said it.
“I do not mean,” she added, more quietly, “that I would refuse my sisters every assistance. If they are ever sent to London to my aunt Gardiner, when they are of an age to be seen and can be trusted to behave with propriety, I shall be very happy to help them. I cannot pretend to be a mother or a married chaperon, and Mrs. Marwood’s house is not a school for young ladies; but I may receive them, accompany them where it is proper, take them to exhibitions, music, shops, and such calls as are suitable, and make their stay more pleasant than it might otherwise be. ”
Lydia’s eyes brightened at the word London and darkened immediately at the word propriety.
“What age,” she demanded, “is an age to be seen?”
“One at which the question need not be asked quite so loudly.”
Kitty giggled. Lydia looked injured. Mrs. Bennet, however, had heard only London, Gardiner, carriage, and shops.
“There, you see! London! I always said my girls ought to be seen in London. Jane, my love, only think of it — your aunt Gardiner, and Lizzy’s carriage, and all the shops. It is not a portion, to be sure, but it is something.”
“It is something only if you and my father choose it,” said Elizabeth. “I cannot send them to London. I can only receive them when they are there. And I cannot make town serve any girl determined to make herself ridiculous in it.”
“Girls will be lively,” Mrs. Bennet said, rallying.
“Then they must learn to be lively without becoming public property.”
Mary looked up sharply, as if this struck her as nearly stern enough to be true.
Mrs. Bennet’s brightness dimmed by precisely the amount required to remember Mr. Bennet.