Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say (23 page)

Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes.

“Neither to wish, nor fear, to die.”

—MARTIAL

I had thought to be finished with Montaigne, but such changes, sudden and unpredictable, have driven me to seek understanding and comfort in one wiser than I.

In the beginning, once Mrs. Bennet had healed from her delivery of little Mary, I had thought to take my pleasure in my wife's bedchamber. At first this was so, and she behaved much as her letter to me had promised. She was a doting mother to all three of our children. She took on the management of the household and even some of the duties. I could hear her humming in the kitchen as she went about preserving fruits and vegetables. I could hear Cook humming with her. She took over the accounts and did so
beautifully; I of course checked her calculations and records, all done in her beautiful hand, and found no fault, no errors. But with the coming of spring she changed. She withdrew from the kitchen. She insisted I hire a wet nurse for Mary and Elizabeth and a governess for Jane, who to my mind is not ready for any such person. And she returned the accounts books to me.

Oh yes, she smiled agreeably enough. She never turned me out of her bedroom. She acquiesced to my husbandly demands, and here, too, I must record a change: heretofore, especially in the early days of our marriage, Mrs. Bennet as good as pushed me from her bed postcoitus; she could not wait for me to depart her room. More recently, my experience has been markedly different: she has insisted that I am to remain aware of the presence of both persons during the time of conjugation; to that end and to prevent an uproar, I am diligent in my attempts to murmur sweet nothings, to be gentle at the time of entrance, and, afterward, to remain abed, to speak affectionately to her—“You are lovely,” she has ordered me to say—and above all, to stay awake; about the latter, she is adamant. Much as it seems that falling asleep is the perfectly natural thing to do after exertion of such magnitude, I have learned that doing so arouses the ire of my wife, that one is obliged to have a bit of a chat; and so I strain to stay awake and chatting until such time as I am excused. I must say, it is difficult to fashion a chat with only one person, in this case yours truly, chatting away until I hear the snuffle of her
sleep. But that has been the situation for some time, and I will do what is required to ensure that her door will remain open to me; I have not the will to break it down. For the most part, in my company, day and night, she is silent and I am thankful for that.

This is not to say that she is silent all the time. On occasion, she will break into laughter, trilling up and down the scale, and for no discernible reason. At these times she will twist her curls and dance wildly about the room. She will seize little Jane and swing her much too high. She will seize Elizabeth and fling her about the room singing a silly song about pretty little maidens and dashing young lads, her eyes wild with excitement. She pays inordinate attention to the girls' appearance, especially Jane's, always fussing with their dresses, their hair, their manners. She herself dresses differently in recent months: she wears the clothes of a young girl; she dresses her hair as if she were a girl—curls and ribbons abound. On the other hand, during her silent periods, she withdraws into drabness: she pays no heed to her appearance whatsoever; she dresses all in grey. Indeed, recently the girls have avoided her; they do not know what to make of their mother's change in moods. Nor do I. Nor does Mrs. Rummidge. Of all people in our household I would have thought that Mrs. Rummidge would have been able to take her in hand. But no, and so Mrs. Rummidge, after all these years, has thrown up her hands and removed herself from Longbourn, wailing loudly as she did about the ingratitude of her little lamb—
that would be Mrs. Bennet—and the loving attentions from her own wee bairns, who I doubt exist. Strange to say, but I will miss her. As do the children.

I have asked Mrs. Bennet's sister, Jane, to visit. I have known her to be in all ways a sensible woman. She is a great favourite of Mrs. Bennet's. My hope is that she can restore to my wife a certain steadiness of mind. I do not expect her to discover the cause of her current rocky state; such would not be advisable. But I will do what I can to help Jane return my wife to a lucid state.

In recent months, then, I have repaired more and more frequently to my library. During the first days of her return I was contented enough in my wife's presence; I was agreeable to her suggestion that we walk about the garden. She seemed to appreciate my attempts at polite gossip when I informed her that Northfield had been closed, that the Millars had left the country and were not expected to return, perhaps ever. “That being the case,” I said a bit triumphantly, “I will not be troubled with his trampling my hedges and treeing my foxes. For a while I feared having to take him to circuit court. He would not have enjoyed the attentions of the village onlookers at such a hearing.” It may have been then, now that I think of it, that Marianne first fell into a silence that was unsettling. I cannot be sure but it was not long after that episode that she ignored my invitations to walk about the property and began spending much of the day in her rooms, that is, when she was not twirling and whirling about in the drawing room. Since
then I have never known what to expect from her except a distancing from me and from the children, no matter her exuberance or her withdrawal from life.

And so to my library. It holds not love or passion, but it does hold solace, and what more can a man wish for in this sorry world?
The Anatomy of Melancholy
will be my constant companion for want of any other.

Still, I remind myself in this my final entry that in this very year Mrs. Bennet will turn nineteen. Perhaps maturity will bring peace to us all.

13 March 1788

Dear Jane,

Please hurry. You are my only hope for salvation. You are the only one who knows of the destruction I have brought upon myself, and yet even you cannot understand the depth of it, the damage of it. I am a husk. I have been scoured out. My flesh is stone and I cannot feel the touch even of my own children. I am no good to anyone nor they to me. At first, upon my return from that wicked city whose name shall never again pass my lips, I took a certain pleasure in assuming my roles as wife, mother, and mistress of the hearth. With the end of the harsh winter, I enjoyed long walks along the paths, dark, green, and cool, overarched with trees, snapdragons rising alongside, roses and hyacinths lovely and reminding me that life in the country has much to recommend it.

My good intentions—helping the poor and needy—have
gone by the wayside, for I have decided that I must avoid the village, for fear of unfriendly whispers. It is well known that servants' main source of pleasure is gossip about their superiors; it is less well known that gossip can travel long distances. I fear that some of Mrs. Littleworth's servants may have returned from Bath with their mistress; if so, news of my ill fortune will have traveled with them. Indeed, I have seen in my own household some of my servants—especially Hildy, the serving wench who seduced our cousin Collins—looking at me in such a way that makes my skin grow cold. Fortunately, that is all—just the looking—and no one has had the courage to charge me outright with whatever their suspicions might be.

However wise my intentions, the time came when duty bound me to go to the village. I had suspicions of my own, one being that the new kitchen maid, charged with securing foodstuffs in the village, was paying out more money than Cook had in her earlier visits to town. And so I followed Thelma—such an unfortunate name—into the village, where, sure enough, I witnessed her pocketing a goodly sum which I knew she would deny if confronted. And so she would have, but because I saw and heard her exchange with the tradesmen—they requested exactly the same as they had of Cook, leaving this wretched girl free to claim to me once we were back at Longbourn that prices had risen, that she had no leftover funds to return to me—I simply discharged her then and there in full view of the farmers and tradesmen. Off she went, shaking her fist at
me and hurling curses into the air. I maintained my composure and ventured on with head held high. I do believe that my action rendered my reputation among the villagers, if sullied by gossip, respectable once more, or at least less odious. Back at Longbourn I did not bother to tell Mr. Bennet of the incident, even though my tale would speak to my ability to run his household in accordance with his wishes and thus open his eyes to my new maturity. His approval, so long withheld, no longer mattered to me.

Something of import did, however, transpire during that visit. As I followed Thelma, darting behind barrels and wagons so as not to be noticed, I saw the loathsome Mrs. Littleworth coming toward me. How could I have thought her sophisticated, well dressed, even chic? Apparently she had taken up her husband's pastime—eating—for she was at least two stone heavier than when last I saw her; indeed, she lumbered as she approached. The closer she came the more I could see that the seams in her gown were close to bursting. Still, there remained about her an aura of the class to which she had been born. No matter that her husband was an idiot, no matter that her dress was an embarrassment, her head was held higher than mine could ever go, so high that she seemed scarcely to see me. She gazed at something over my head, and I prayed that she would pass by without noticing me. If she didn't, if she paused, if she looked down to where I was, what in heaven's name was I to do? What to say?

My prayers went unanswered. She advanced on me
until, had she not paused, she would have run me over. But pause she did and from her great height she addressed not me but her husband. “Ah yes, it is little Mrs. Bennet, mistress of Longbourn, I believe. Say good day, Mr. Littleworth.” He did and reminded Mrs. Littleworth that they were late for tea. She remained rooted to the spot, as if she was sorting out a condemnation to throw at my head, and so Mr. Littleworth was forced to speak again. This time, without his wife's prodding, he spoke directly to me. “My wife and I have settled for the last time. No travel, none; we are at home only to our friends, most of whom have departed this earth for the last time. We—Mrs. L. and I—are content to await our final last time at home.” Mrs. Littleworth looked anything but contented and I felt enormous pleasure at the thought that she would spend the rest of her life a prisoner in her own grand abode with her ridiculous husband her jailer. And yet they tarried so that I was forced to speak. What came to me was, What news have you of the colonel? What I said was, “Good day to you both. I will give Mr. Bennet your good wishes.” With this, they resumed their walk, and I returned to Longbourn. And that's where I stayed, choosing to take my walk on paths nearby, paths that no one would traipse but me, paths where I was safe from discovery and the opprobrium that would surely follow. Mrs. Littleworth would never find me there.

Soon, though, I left off my walking; I found it no longer pleased me. One day in a fit of ill humour, I plucked the
stone from my shoe and hurled it into the wood. And I became nothing.

Duty. That is what is left to me. To do my duty I must destroy the memory of him, bury it deep within; for when I do not, when I cannot, the memory of his touch, his voice, his smile brings to me once more the full surge of passion that comes from deep inside me and floods my whole being. I must not allow memory to surface. I must deny it. I must deny myself. And you must help. I beg of you, else I shall go mad.

In moments of clarity, I believe that, with your help, the life ahead of me promises great rewards should I prove myself worthy of them. How I yearn to be thought worthy in someone's eyes, anyone's eyes. It seems that I am out of favour with everyone and I am exceedingly lonely. Who is at fault, you might ask. Mr. Bennet? Mrs. Littleworth? My colonel? No, it is I. I am to blame for the empty life that is mine and for the unhappiness of my husband and children, though if fate is kind, my little girls are not yet so sorely tainted. To remedy this dreadful situation, I intend to work to ensure that this home becomes free of entailment, that it belongs to my husband in perpetuity; and I shall do this by bringing up my daughters to be splendid wives of stalwart young men in possession of good fortune. Then we shall all live happily ever after.

Yr sister,
Marianne