Chapter 9 #2
Elizabeth almost answered sharply, but stopped herself. Anger would only harden Mary further. “No,” she said instead. “I believe it would be selfish to marry him knowing I could never truly honour him as a wife ought.”
Mary frowned again, finally looking troubled rather than merely disapproving. “You could learn.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You speak as though respect is something that may be willed into existence through effort and duty. It is not.”
“And yet duty must matter.”
“It does matter.”
Mary looked almost relieved to hear it. “Then how can you justify this?” she asked. “You would leave Mama humiliated. You would place the family in difficulty. You would openly defy parental authority.”
Elizabeth lowered her voice further as footsteps sounded somewhere below stairs, then faded again. “I know exactly what I am doing,” she whispered. “Do you imagine this is easy for me?”
“No,” Mary admitted.
Elizabeth looked toward the dark stairwell before continuing. “If Papa were here, none of this would be happening. He would never permit it.”
“But Papa is not here.”
The words echoed Mrs Bennet’s too closely. Even as they were spoken, Mary’s expression altered. Her mouth trembled slightly, and tears came to her eyes, only to be firmly blinked back.
Elizabeth answered more gently than before. “No. He is not.”
For a moment, the tension between them eased into something sadder.
Then Mary spoke again. “You still have obligations.”
“And so does Mr Collins.”
Mary blinked. “He wishes to marry you honourably.”
“Honourably?” Elizabeth repeated softly. “He intends to marry a woman whose refusal he has already dismissed as meaningless.”
Mary’s gaze shifted downward. “He believes you will change your mind.”
“And if I do not?”
Mary did not answer.
Elizabeth stepped nearer. “That is the part no one wishes to consider. Everyone speaks as though my consent is inevitable simply because it would be convenient.”
Mary looked genuinely unsettled. “But marriage requires sacrifice.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “From both people.”
Silence settled again between them. The house remained quiet, but not safely so. At any moment a servant might appear. Mrs Bennet might wake early. Mr Collins might descend full of cheerful determination.
She softened her voice further. “Mary, if I stood beside Mr Collins in church and promised before God to respect and obey him, knowing I could never do either honestly, would that truly be moral?”
Mary did not answer immediately. At last she said slowly, “No false vow can be entirely moral.”
Relief moved through Elizabeth so suddenly that she nearly closed her eyes.
“But disobedience is also wrong,” Mary added quickly, as if afraid she had yielded too much.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “It is.”
Mary looked up at her then with real uncertainty. “What, then, is the right thing?”
Elizabeth looked at her sister for a long moment before answering.
“I do not know,” she said honestly. “Perhaps there is no choice here that is entirely right. Perhaps someone must be hurt, whatever I do.”
Mary’s expression softened slightly at that.
“But I know this much,” Elizabeth continued. “If I remain, everyone will persuade themselves that my silence means consent. They will hurry me toward a marriage they already consider settled, and every hour will make escape more difficult.”
Mary lowered her eyes. “You truly fear him that much?”
“Not him,” Elizabeth said. “The life that would follow.”
The distinction seemed to affect Mary more deeply than anything else had.
Elizabeth went on quickly, half from the desperate need to persuade her sister, and half from a sudden wish to say what she felt when it might be heard, even if only once.
“I could endure foolishness. I could endure boredom. I could even endure unhappiness, if it were honestly chosen. But I cannot promise reverence where I feel none. I cannot surrender my judgment to a man I do not respect simply because everyone else finds it practical.”
Mary’s fingers clutched at her book, as though it could anchor her in a suddenly uncertain world. “You make marriage sound very grave.”
“It is grave,” Elizabeth told her sister. “Once spoken, those vows cannot simply be withdrawn because one discovers oneself to be miserable. Everyone speaks of this marriage as though it were a temporary discomfort. It is not. It would shape the whole of my life.”
Mary was silent.
“And if I yield now,” Elizabeth said, “not because I believe it right, but because I am pressured, frightened, and exhausted, then what exactly have I preserved? Duty without honesty is not virtue, Mary. It is only surrender.”
The candle trembled faintly in Mary’s hand. Not complete agreement, perhaps. Mary would always value obedience more than Elizabeth did. But for the first time, she truly seemed to see the moral danger Elizabeth saw.
At last Mary spoke, hardly above a whisper. “I had not considered it in that way.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened unexpectedly. Neither had anyone else.
Somewhere downstairs, a door opened heavily.
Both sisters startled. The house was waking.
Mary looked toward the stairs, then back at Elizabeth. For one suspended moment, Elizabeth could not tell what decision she would make. A single shout, and escape would become impossible.
Then Mary drew a slow breath. “If you go,” she whispered, “Mama will be furious.”
“Yes.”
“She may not forgive you easily.”
“I know.”
Mary stopped once more. Then, with visible effort, she stepped aside from the staircase.
Elizabeth stared at her. “You mean to let me pass?”
Mary’s expression remained troubled, but steady. “I do not think you are entirely wrong.” She paused. “And I think it would be more sinful to make vows you believe false than to leave without permission.”
Relief moved through Elizabeth so sharply that she could not speak at once. “Mary —”
“You must go quickly,” Mary said, her practical tone returning. “If Mama wakes before you are gone, there will be no possibility of leaving.”
Elizabeth gave a breathless, hushed laugh that bordered unexpectedly on tears. Then, without thinking, she stepped forward and embraced her sister.
Mary stiffened in complete surprise. After one startled moment, however, she awkwardly returned the embrace with her free arm.
When they separated, Mary looked almost embarrassed by the exchange. “You had better go,” she said again, more softly this time.
Elizabeth nodded. Then, clutching her travelling bag tightly in one hand, she turned and hurried down the stairs toward the uncertain morning waiting beyond Longbourn.
Mary still looked unsettled as Elizabeth moved toward the stairs. “Lizzy.”
Elizabeth turned back.
Mary took a moment, her candlelight wavering between them. “I had always supposed,” she said slowly, “that duty made difficult things easier to bear.”