Chapter 28 #4
Everyone looked at Mary then. For once, she did not seem eager to fill the room with a moral observation.
She looked overwhelmed, almost frightened, and deeply touched in a way Elizabeth had rarely seen in her.
Mary was accustomed to being corrected, endured, or gently ignored. She was not accustomed to being chosen.
“I would wish it,” Mary said at last. Her voice trembled only slightly.
“If it were thought proper. I know I am not lively, and I am not charming, and I have often made myself ridiculous by trying to be wiser than I am. But I do love Longbourn. I know the estate is not grand, but it is ours, and I think I could learn to be useful to it.”
Mrs Bennet looked bewildered. “But Mary, you do not even like parties.”
“I do not think parties are required for land management, Mama.”
Bingley coughed. Jane pressed her lips together.
Mary seemed to gather courage from that. “I would not pretend to know everything at once. I would need guidance. Papa’s, and my uncle’s, and perhaps Mr Darcy’s if he would be willing. But I would try very hard to do justice to the responsibility.”
Darcy bowed his head slightly. “I would be glad to assist in any way useful to you.”
Mary looked startled by the courtesy. “Thank you.”
Jane smiled at Elizabeth then, proud and warm and bright through the remains of her tears.
Mr Bennet was quiet for longer than Elizabeth expected.
She knew him well enough to see surprise in him, but something else too.
Shame, perhaps. Recognition. Their father had nearly given Longbourn to Elizabeth because she was the daughter he trusted to understand him.
He had not considered that Mary might have spent years longing to be trusted with anything at all.
At last he said, “Mary, come here.”
Mary crossed the room slowly.
Mr Bennet took her hand. “My dear, I have been a poor steward in many respects. Of Longbourn, of my time, of my duties, and too often of my daughters. If you are willing to take on what I have neglected, then I shall be proud to see Longbourn settled upon you.”
Mary’s composure broke. Not dramatically. She simply pressed her lips together, nodded once, and looked down at their joined hands. “I will do my best, Papa.”
“I believe you will,” he said.
Mrs Bennet stared at them, still trying to arrange the matter in her mind. “Mary is to have Longbourn.”
“If the lawyers do not discover some new absurdity, yes,” Mr Bennet said.
Mrs Bennet considered this. “Well. Mary has always been very steady.”
Lydia made a disbelieving sound.
“And dependable,” Mrs Bennet added, gaining confidence as the idea became more useful.
“And though she does play too many solemn pieces, I have often said there is no one more suited to accounts and tenants and such gloomy things. Of course Mary must have Longbourn. It is very proper. Very proper indeed. And now none of us shall be turned into the hedgerows by Mr Collins.”
“No, Mama,” Jane said softly. “We shall not.”
The truth of it seemed finally to settle over the room.
Longbourn was safe. Not perfectly, not legally finished in every particular, but safe enough that fear no longer had command of every breath.
Mr Collins was gone. Mr Bennet was alive.
Jane stood beside Mr Bingley. Elizabeth stood beside Darcy.
Mary stood with her father’s hand still holding hers, looking as if the world had opened a door she had never expected anyone to notice.
Darcy squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. She looked up at him and found in his face the same quiet approval she had felt in his touch. He did not need to say that she had chosen rightly. He knew it, and so did she.
Mr Bennet leaned back in his chair with a tired sigh. “Now, if no one objects, I should like a meal, a physician, a solicitor, and perhaps three uninterrupted days in my library.”
Mrs Bennet gasped. “Your library? Mr Bennet, if you think I am allowing you out of my sight after you have been dead for months, you are much mistaken. You shall sit where I may see you. You may read in the drawing room.”
Mr Bennet looked pained. “Then I have escaped one prison only to find another.”
“This one has tea,” Elizabeth said.
“And daughters,” Jane added.
“And no Mr Collins,” Mary said quietly.
Mr Bennet looked at her, then at all of them, and for once did not answer with a joke.
“No,” he said. “No Mr Collins. I believe that is the best part of all.”
Elizabeth stood between her husband and her family, exhausted beyond measure and steadier than she had been in weeks.
The future was not settled in every detail.
There would be solicitors, explanations, apologies, and consequences.
Her father still owed them answers that could not be softened by wit.
But Longbourn had been pulled back from the edge, and Mary, dear overlooked Mary, had been given a place within it that no one could dismiss.
For the first time since Jane’s letter had reached her at Pemberley, Elizabeth allowed herself to believe that they might truly come through this.
They would come through it changed, but they would come through it together. They were home.