“Kitty?” Elizabeth continued, for the time had not yet come to speak of anything but their father.
“He told me to listen to you and to Jane.”
Elizabeth and Jane looked at one another; their father seemed to stand between them, ironic yet wise, loving them all equally, though differently.
“He told me to trust in myself and in life, and not in the books I read.”
“Oh,” said Jane, with tenderness. In a few words, their father had given to each precisely that advice which might guide her towards a better future.
“And to you?” Mary asked. Elizabeth was obliged to consider quickly; she could not repeat his words exactly, they might be understood otherwise than he had intended, though she had fully comprehended them.
“He told me to think before I act, and to follow my own path without fear.”
All eyes turned to Jane, who coloured.
“He told me…” Jane began, hesitating, “he told me in his wisdom not to follow my feelings blindly, to listen to my understanding, and only ask counsel of my heart…at times.”
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 thatquiet 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 theyhad 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.”
