Chapter 5
Mrs Bennet made a decision which, though it shocked many at first, was ultimately approved by family and friends alike. Her husband would be buried in Meryton rather than at Longbourn.
“I shall not travel three miles merely to place flowers upon his grave when we shall be living in Meryton,” she said by way of explanation.
Yet, deep in her heart, she did not wish him to rest beside the ancestor who had deprived them of Longbourn.
The girls understood at once and readily agreed with her.
Besides, a long friendship had united Mr Bennet with the vicar of Meryton. He had often visited him, and the two gentlemen had spent many hours seated upon the stone bench outside the church. In the end, her decision was received with general approval.
The church of Meryton had become quite insufficient on the day of Mr Bennet’s burial.
His sudden and tragic death, with consequences so severe for those he left behind, had moved the whole neighbourhood.
Though he had not been a very sociable man, he had long been admired for his learning and for that quiet devotion to study which all who had ever passed through his library had remarked.
Elizabeth listened with gratitude to the vicar, whose words, though simple, echoed his true feeling shared by many present in the church.
One of Mr Bennet’s few real friends, he spoke with propriety and just measure of the gentleman now lost. Her father had never liked effusion or pomposity, and his lifelong friend offered instead a just and faithful account of his life and character.
She then glanced about the stone church, which her father had loved for its very austerity, observing the faces assembled there: Lady Lucas, in deep mourning, and evidently affected, Sir William, scarcely master of himself, and his son James, who seemed, in that moment, to have assumed a steadiness beyond his usual cheerfulness, as though to support his parents.
Many of their parents’ friends were present, and she was moved that all had wished to pay their respects.
The girls sat close together in the pew appointed for the family.
They had not had time to procure proper mourning in darker colours.
Instead, they wore black shawls, and when they stepped into the churchyard, their usual appearance was little altered—only their countenances betraying the occasion.
For their father, each had worn her best gown, and this, perhaps, was what he would have wished.
When the coffin appeared, borne by their kinsmen, Sir William, and James Lucas, each of the girls placed upon it a small posy of spring flowers from the garden their father had awaited, each year, to see in bloom.
Elizabeth laid a sprig of lilac—the flower he had loved most—its scent faint but lingering, as though it might still attend him.
The ladies set out towards the house, whilst the gentlemen continued to the burial ground behind the church, scarcely fifty yards distant.
Mrs Bennet, with her sister and her sister-in-law, took the carriage, while the girls chose to walk.
It was the path their father had taken at least once a week to meet the vicar; their cheerful conversations were well known in the neighbourhood, as laughter or raised voices had often carried beyond the hedges.
“Can it be so?” Lydia said at last, and none could answer her.
Each felt, though none could yet express it, how little they understood of what their life must now become, what their mornings at breakfast, or their evenings, would be without him.
Elizabeth closed her eyes to command her tears, knowing she would never again hasten to his room to speak with him, to listen, to question, to attempt to understand her own difficulties and seek his counsel…
though she had not always agreed with him.
Their lives had been suddenly divided into before and after. If before there had been sunshine and ease, what was to follow none could yet discern, but all felt the weight of it.
As they drew nearer to Longbourn, a turn in the road brought into view the bench where their father sometimes rested when returning from his walks.
By a strange play of light and shadow, Elizabeth almost believed she saw him there, as she had so often found him, waiting, and when they passed the empty seat, something within her gently altered.
She understood that it would depend upon her to find him again, whenever she should have need of him.
From all he had said, from all his counsel, from the many earnest conversations they had shared, she would draw, if not always a clear direction, at least that confidence he had planted in her mind and heart.
“Papa is here,” Jane whispered, her eyes fixed upon the bench, and the sisters walked on together, closely entwined.
They entered the house with a kind of apprehension because all at once Longbourn was no longer the familiar and comforting place in which they had grown up, and to which they had always returned with pleasure.
They were afraid, too, of their mother, who in the past days had seemed scarcely to live, shut up in a silence and a grief no one could relieve.
They did not know how things would be henceforward, but to their surprise, the house appeared to have awakened to life.
The door of the dining parlour stood wide open, and the servants were carrying in dishes.
Hearing the front door, their mother came into the hall and, in silence, took each of them in her arms—the first time since the tragedy struck, yet with a dignity that her gestures had rarely, if ever, possessed before.
She was not the woman they had known, but she seemed ready to return to life.
They looked in amazement at the elegant table, laid with the best china, which was seldom brought out in their house.
Mrs Phillips and Mrs Gardiner came forward as well, whilst Lady Lucas and the vicar’s wife, Mrs Jones, rose from the table and approached to embrace them.
The Lucas family, together with the vicar and his wife, appeared to be the only guests beyond the immediate family, which gave Elizabeth some comfort to be among relations and yet supported by such friends.
Without their father, there could be no true normality.
Still, at least the Bennet family was attempting to form some new order.
Yet what astonished her most was the evident change in her mother; even her countenance and her manner seemed altered.
She moved more slowly, more composedly; only her eyes were the same.
Even her directions were given in a more measured tone.
Elizabeth could not help thinking that her husband must certainly have said something of importance to her.
Perhaps it had been this—to take upon herself both roles, to become at once mother and father to her daughters. And it seemed that she succeeded.
“Yes, it is a miracle,” Mrs Gardiner whispered to Elizabeth, catching her look of surprise.
“I feared we had somehow lost her as well.”
But her aunt’s gaze, full of confidence, reassured her.
Until the gentlemen returned, Elizabeth still allowed herself a moment of expectation for her father. She could still persuade herself that he might appear, smiling, and take his place at the head of the table, from which he had always looked upon them.
But as soon as the gentlemen were seated, the small illusion dissolved. Never again would he be there, and their lives must go on.
“And they shall go on, Papa. This is my promise. Our family shall endure,” she told herself, for each, in her own way, had made the same vow.
∞∞∞
When, at the end of breakfast, Mrs Bennet consented to retire to rest, attended by Jane, everyone breathed more freely. It was precisely what she required—the sad but gentle presence of her eldest daughter, and Jane, in her turn, needed her mother.
After the guests had withdrawn, Mrs Gardiner and Elizabeth, almost with a single thought, set out for a walk. It was a fine, warm day, but the wood, now in leaf about Longbourn, sheltered them from the already powerful sun.
“How shall our lives be without Longbourn?” Elizabeth asked, and she allowed the distress that seized her whenever her thoughts turned from Mr Bennet to be plainly seen.
It was a grave question, which Mrs Gardiner avoided answering; there were no words that could ease the void left by the loss of their home.
“It is hard to imagine,” she said at last. “But I do know that we are beside you, and that we shall take care of you all.”
Elizabeth leaned upon her aunt, as though the weight in her heart had spread through her whole being.
“At five o’clock, your uncles will wish to speak with you all.”
“Today?” Elizabeth asked, in surprise, and with some alarm.
“Yes. You must know that, in the days to come, Mr Collins will be here. Sir William has mentioned it to Mr Phillips, with great reluctance. He would have preferred that at least a week should pass, but his son-in-law has been firm. He is determined to come.”
There was no use in attempting to spare her. Mr Collins’s arrival was already known, and nothing good could come of it. However, Sir William might wish to soften matters; it was a misfortune that would, unhappily, arrive too soon after they had scarcely laid Mr Bennet in the ground.
“Lizzy, I know you must summon all your strength to receive him…but it cannot be avoided.”
“What can we do?”
“Sir William has several ideas. He would wish you to remain here another year, but even he has his doubts. Mr Phillips believes that some correspondence has already passed between them. Sir William’s situation is far from enviable; he would do anything for you, but Mr Collins will likely prove as unyielding as is his nature.
We must wait and see what he will say. For the present, your uncles will tell you what plan we have formed for you. ”
“Oh!” cried Elizabeth, brushing away her tears with something like impatience. “It is my fault. Mine! If I had accepted Mr Darcy.”
“Lizzy, do not speak so and above all, do not think in such terms. Did you not tell me what your father asked of you? Do you imagine he would wish you to be married and unhappy, merely to secure your family’s comfort?”
“With Papa gone, I may judge myself as I please.”
“And to no purpose.”
“Perhaps I should not have been unhappy with him,” Elizabeth murmured, not looking at her aunt, and idly playing with a twig she had broken from a hedge.
“What do you say?” The curiosity in Mrs Gardiner’s voice was the first note of ordinary life since that morning when they had learnt of her father’s illness.
“I scarcely know what I say. Only that, had I now been engaged to Mr Darcy, things would have been simpler—clearer.”
Mrs Gardiner refrained from remark. It might have been simpler for Elizabeth, but it was by no means certain that Mr Darcy would have been pleased to find himself burdened at once with the very family whose circumstances had made him hesitate.
“You are mistaken,” Elizabeth said, perceiving the meaning of her silence.
“He is proud and sometimes pompous, but he is an honourable man, devoted to his family. Had I married him, I should have been part of it…he might not have wished my mother and sisters always about us, but I am certain he would not have hesitated to assist them.”
Again, there was silence, but this time it was Mrs Gardiner who was deeply surprised.
“It is strange to hear you speak so of him. I had believed you disliked him.”
“No!” she cried, and checked herself immediately. “Good heavens, what are we saying? My father has just been buried. How easily we forget. This morning, I thought I should scarcely be able to rise, and now we speak of—”
“Of life, Lizzy. We speak of life, as Mr Bennet would have wished. Mourning is kept in the heart, not by burying oneself along with him.”
“Nor by discussing Mr Darcy within hours of the burial.”
“We are not, in truth, speaking of Mr Darcy. I believe you are trying to form some notion of your future. That is what must be done now. You will carry flowers to Mr Bennet’s grave, and consider what you are to make of your life.”
Mrs Gardiner paused, and, turning her back towards the house, made a sign for them to return; the hour of meeting with the gentlemen was near. But there was still something she wished to know.
“If he were to ask you today, would you accept him?”
Elizabeth sighed deeply. “I do not know, but I am certain I should not speak to him as I did before. I should be silent, reflect, perhaps even question him.”
“London is but twenty miles away. You might question him still.”
Elizabeth shook her head with firmness. “No. I hope he does not hear of my father. I could not endure, in addition to his disapproval of my family, his pity for our situation.”
“When one loves, concern is not pity.”
Elizabeth looked at her aunt, endeavouring to understand the full meaning of her words.
Then, taking her arm, she whispered, “Thank you.” The conversation was not, in truth, about Mr Darcy.
It was rather the question whether she had changed enough to accept a man she did not love, but respected; her father’s death had altered the very meaning of that question. But it was too soon for an answer.