Chapter Eleven #3
Mrs. Bennet’s greatest lament, however, concerned Longbourn itself.
Charlotte Lucas had married Mr. William Collins, Mr. Bennet’s heir, the previous year, and though the match had astonished no one who knew Charlotte’s practical mind, it had struck Mrs. Bennet as a personal betrayal of the most grievous kind.
To think of it! she had exclaimed in one of her letters to Jane, a letter latterly passed round to every sister in turn.
Charlotte Lucas, who was never half so handsome as any of my girls and always too plain to attract a man of true consequence, now to be mistress of Longbourn one day!
Mr. Collins wrote the most insufferable letter upon the subject, full of gratitude to Lady Catherine and condescension to your father.
Mr. Bennet pretends not to care, but I know he feels it.
How can I be expected to endure seeing Charlotte installed there after me?
And all because Lizzy would not have him when she had the chance!
Elizabeth had laughed at that passage, though without much merriment.
There was no sting left in the notion of having refused Mr. Collins.
Her mother’s grief on that point had become so habitual that it had lost all power to wound.
If anything, it stood now as one more example of how entirely their values differed.
Mr. Bennet’s letters provided a different kind of comfort.
He wrote when he had something to say, and though his wit remained as dry as ever, age and domestic life had, perhaps, rendered him more observant in the expression of affection.
He sent Elizabeth books when he thought she might like them, sometimes with brief notes folded into the title page, and he reported upon the state of Longbourn, upon the tenants, upon the changing habits of the neighborhood, and upon her mother’s annual campaigns of anxiety.
In one letter, written in his most compact hand, he observed: Your mother has this week declared herself equally ruined by Charlotte Collins’s future consequence and by your refusal of Sir Arthur.
I cannot decide which affliction weighs more heavily upon her nerves, though I suspect the one nearest at hand always prevails.
Mary has sent me three pages on the moral benefits of regular domestic habits; Kitty writes happily, which is an improvement upon coughing unhappily; Lydia insists she is quite the most envied wife in her circle, which may be true if the circle is chosen with sufficient care.
I trust you continue to disappoint your mother with serenity and to comfort Jane by being exactly what her children require.
Elizabeth reread that letter many times.
There were others. In one, he confessed that Longbourn seemed unaccountably subdued now that only he remained there year-round.
In another, he admitted, with evident reluctance, that Mrs. Bennet’s yearly tours among her daughters did some good, if only because she returned from each one refreshed by the opportunity to compare households and extol her own maternal success.
She has now, he wrote, the satisfaction of believing herself the architect of four advantageous marriages and one inexplicable failure, by which I mean you.
She speaks of this last as though you were a pudding that refused to set.
That, too, had made Elizabeth laugh.
There was tenderness in those letters, however slyly cloaked, and she treasured them.
They connected her not only to Longbourn, but to the father who understood her best, even when he did not fully understand the fixed nature of her grief.
He had ceased, at least, to urge her toward new attachments.
Whether from resignation or respect, she did not know, but she was grateful for it.
That afternoon had been uneventful until then.
Jane had gone upstairs to settle the youngest child, and Bramley had been called away for some brief consultation with his solicitor.
Elizabeth sat alone in the parlor at Matlock House with a letter from her father open upon her lap, smiling faintly over one of his observations on Mrs. Bennet’s most recent pilgrimage through her daughters’ homes, when the peace was shattered by the unmistakable rush of small feet in the corridor.
The door burst open with all the force of determined childhood, and two little boys tumbled in, one immediately behind the other.
“Aunt Lizzy!” cried Drew, the elder, his dark curls disordered from exertion and his face bright with excitement. “You must come.”
“Yes, come now,” pleaded the younger, Marcus, already climbing half onto the sofa beside her with no regard for ceremony. “Mama says we are not to trouble you, but we are not troubling if you wish it.”
Elizabeth folded the letter and set it aside before either child might crease it beyond redemption.
“And what is it,” she asked, gathering the younger boy into her lap as naturally as if he belonged there, “that is of such urgent importance?”
“We want a story,” said Drew at once.
“And then a battle,” added Marcus enthusiastically.
“And a walk in the park,” Drew cried, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “With Bruno.”
“Because you tell the best stories,” Marcus finished, leaning confidingly against her shoulder, the matter was entirely settled in his opinion.
Elizabeth looked from one earnest face to the other and felt, as she so often did with Jane’s children, that curious mixture of amusement and tenderness which never failed to ease the edges of even her most melancholy days.
“Do I?” she said. “And what has become of your father, who tells very fine stories about knights and hunting parties and things exploding in Parliament?”
“He says too many things about taxes,” said the elder gravely.
“And uncles in the Lords,” said the younger, who understood very little of either but objected on principle.
Elizabeth laughed outright then, and both boys beamed as if they had accomplished something substantial.
“Very well,” she said, rising at last and setting the smaller boy back upon his feet. “We shall have a walk and then a story, provided you both agree to wear your coats and not race into the square without me.”
“We agree,” they chorused.
This agreement, being the sort children make with immediate sincerity and no intention of remembering, required supervision in its fulfillment.
Coats were fetched, hats located after a brief hunt beneath chairs and behind curtains, and a nursemaid informed—none too happily—that Miss Elizabeth was taking the young gentlemen out herself.
Bruno, who had long since become a fixture of their household just as his mistress, rose from his place near the hearth the moment he understood that a walk was intended.
Though older now, he retained enough of his enormous puppyish enthusiasm to fill any room he entered, and his tail, sweeping back and forth, posed an immediate danger to furniture and shins alike.
“Bruno comes too!” shouted Marcus, pleased their scheme had been so readily accepted.
“Bruno always comes,” agreed Drew with the authority of experience.
Thus equipped, they set out for the park, the afternoon air bright and cool, the season balanced delicately between softness and chill.
The boys ran ahead and circled back in turns, Bruno loping after them with patient good humor, while Elizabeth walked at a pace that allowed her to keep them all within sight.
Before long, the promised story was demanded, and because no ordinary tale would satisfy, she was obliged to improvise one involving a brave boy, his valiant brother, and a great brindled beast who rescued a princess from bandits by sitting on them until the magistrate arrived.
The nephews delighted in it.
“Again,” said Marcus, though they had not reached the end.
“No, now we are the rescuers,” Drew argued, seizing upon the narrative and making it instantly his own.
Bruno, unsuspecting, became the appointed steed.
The attempt to mount him was not, in itself, successful.
The elder boy managed to drape himself halfway across the dog’s back before Bruno turned his great head with a look of patient bewilderment, as if uncertain why such indignities were repeatedly inflicted upon him by those he most loved.
The younger boy clapped and begged for his turn, while Elizabeth, laughing so hard she could scarcely speak, was forced to intervene before Bruno’s forbearance was stretched beyond reason.
“You may not ride him,” she said, disentangling one child and forestalling the advance of the other. “He is a dog, not a pony, and a very dignified dog at that.”
Bruno sneezed, which did little to support the claim of dignity.
The boys were redirected into a game of pursuit instead, with Bruno at the center of it, charging after sticks and children alike with a joyousness that transformed the whole expedition into noisy delight.
Elizabeth joined them where she could, allowing herself to be chased, to be captured, to be declared the imprisoned queen who must be rescued again from imaginary peril.
For that hour, and perhaps a little longer, she was not the woman who carried loss like a hidden wound. She was only Aunt Lizzy, teller of stories, arbiter of games, companion of children, with Bruno at her side and the springing laughter of boys ringing through the park.
And if, in the midst of it, she felt the faint ache of wishing that another might have seen her there—might have smiled to witness her in such a scene—she bore it patiently, as she bore all things now.
With love and memory, and with a heart that had never truly learned to belong anywhere else.