The Other Bennet Sister

by Janice Hadlow

  His departure did nothing to improve Mrs. Bennet’s temper. She was teased, as it was intended she should be, by frequent visits from Lady Lucas, who, in the first flush of her surprise at Charlotte’s news, seemed to have briefly thrown off her usual deference, missing no opportunity to confide to her friend how delightful was the prospect of having her eldest daughter so respectably and imminently married. This could not help but remind Mrs. Bennet of the continued and inexplicable absence of Mr. Bingley, who appeared to be in no hurry to return to Netherfield and make Jane the offer which she had so publicly anticipated. She had even begun to weary of scolding Elizabeth, who could never be brought to show a proper sense of guilt for what had happened, no matter how frequently it was pointed out to her. Humiliated and resentful, Mrs. Bennet sought a new target with which to occupy herself, and soon it was Mary who felt the lash of her displeasure.

  Turning over in her mind every detail of what had taken place in the days before Mr. Collins’s proposal, it did not take Mrs. Bennet long to convince herself that Mary knew more than she had hitherto disclosed about Charlotte’s intentions towards Mr. Collins; and during many an otherwise aimless hour, she sought to extract from her daughter any information that might rebound to Charlotte’s discredit.

  “When I told you I was ready to think of you as a possibility for Mr. Collins, I recall you saying it was too late. I wonder, Mary, what you meant by that. Did you know that Charlotte was already scheming to catch him?”

  “I really couldn’t say, Mama. I merely observed that she was often in his company and that she paid him a lot of attention. I believe we all thought it was a kindness on her part, to distract him away from Lizzy.”

  “She was certainly very successful at that,” declared Mrs. Bennet scornfully. “She distracted him into making her the offer that should have been ours! I can’t imagine why you didn’t mention it to me. I should have put a stop to it very sharply, I can tell you.”

  “I think Mr. Collins had already decided that if he couldn’t have Lizzy or Jane, he would look elsewhere. I don’t think it was entirely Charlotte’s doing. It seems very unfair to blame her for her own good fortune.”

  “How can you be so foolish! One of you should have snapped him up, as I said on numerous occasions. Lizzy was wilful and wicked and would not have him, and you would not exert yourself enough to try. To have been outmanoeuvred by that cunning little minx Charlotte Lucas is unbearable. You and Lizzy are both to blame, and I cannot forgive either of you for it.”

  There seemed no point in reminding Mrs. Bennet of the conversation in which Mary had offered herself up as a prospect for Mr. Collins’s hand, and of her peremptory rejection of it. Mary knew it would only fan the flames of her mother’s anger. As it was, her presence, which had always irritated Mrs. Bennet, now provoked her almost beyond endurance. Her daily practice at the piano was painful to her mother’s ears; her books cluttered up the drawing room. There was ink on her fingers, had she not noticed it? She was to scrub it off this minute. This was not a counting house and she was not a clerk. Was there nothing she could do about her hair? It made her mother itch to find her scissors. Could she not put on a more becoming dress? The colours she wore were as dull as ditchwater. But nothing roused Mrs. Bennet to anger so much as Mary’s spectacles. “I warned that no man would marry you if you wore them, and I’m afraid to say I have been proved right. If I had had my way, perhaps things now would be very different, but that we shall never know.”

  On and on her mother went, the waves of her displeasure breaking over Mary like a rough and unrelenting sea. There was nothing to be said and nowhere to hide. When Mr. Collins returned at the end of a fortnight, Mary was almost relieved, for his presence required Mrs. Bennet to rein in her complaints, in public at least.

  Mary hoped his arrival might encourage Charlotte to visit Longbourn again. Once so regular a guest, she had not been seen there since the announcement of her engagement. Mary believed she absented herself, knowing that her presence was offensive to Mrs. Bennet; but she suspected that she was also avoiding Elizabeth. Their last interview had been painful for them both; and their attachment had cooled as a result. Sometimes, Mary thought she missed her more than Lizzy. She had come to think of Charlotte as her friend and felt the loss of her company very keenly. But with circumstances as they were, she had not thought it wise to risk her mother’s disapproval by calling at Lucas Lodge herself; and it was some time before they met again, when Mr. Collins brought her on his arm one afternoon to tea.

  Mary had looked forward to seeing her again; but when Charlotte sat down at the tea table, it was soon apparent this was not to be the cheerful encounter she had hoped for. Charlotte came very much in the character of Mr. Collins’s fiancée, rather than an old friend of the family; and Mary was given no time at all to talk to her in private. Instead, the little party sat in formal state, making conversation that would never have suggested to a stranger that, with the exception of Mr. Collins, these people had known one another all their lives. Their frosty reception did not encourage Charlotte and Mr. Collins to stay very long. Once they were gone, Jane and Lizzy soon stole away; and Lydia and Kitty quickly followed. As dusk fell, Mary found herself alone in the drawing room with her parents. She picked up her book and tried to lose herself in its arguments, but her mother’s voice, angry and querulous, and her father’s replies, designed to tease and annoy, made it impossible to concentrate.

  “It was inexpressibly distasteful for me to have to receive them and worse still to be obliged to be civil to that odious Charlotte.”

  “As you didn’t seem to exert yourself overmuch in the direction of civility, it is to be hoped you will recover very quickly.”

  “Did you see her looking about the place as if she already owned it? They were speaking very low together in the hall, and I couldn’t hear what they said, but I’m sure they were discussing what they should do with Longbourn when it is theirs. Did you not observe it, Mr. Bennet?”

  Mary’s father replied that he had not; but Mrs. Bennet took no notice, and the recital of her grievances went on. As she sat silently in the corner, it struck Mary with painful force that this was how she would spend the rest of her life. Her sisters would marry, and she would be the only daughter left at home. With no-one to talk to and nothing to do, she would be obliged to listen to her mother’s complaints day after day, month after month, year after year.

  “Indeed, Mr. Bennet, it is very hard to think that Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to make way for her and live to see her take my place in it!”

  “My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.”

  It was as if a great abyss had opened up before Mary, and in it, she saw nothing before her but loneliness. In the space of a moment she understood how fervently she longed for affection. She would not say love, for that seemed too much to ask. A spark of fellow feeling would be enough, a little warmth to make the time pass more pleasurably. Her books alone, she realised, would never entirely suffice. Even her music seemed pointless. No-one cared what she played as long as it drew no adverse attention from others. Her chief purpose in life appeared to be the avoidance of notice. Her heart contracted with pain; it was almost too much to bear.

  “I cannot stand to think that they should have it all. If it was not for the entail I should not mind it.”

  “What should not you mind?”

  “I should not mind anything at all.”

  “Let us be grateful, then, that you are preserved from such a state of insensibility.”

  Perhaps Charlotte had made the right choice. Now she could look forward to a husband and a home, with children perhaps to come. She would have a position in the world and a purpose in life. It was true she had paid for her better prospects by marrying a man she did not love, but she did not seem to regret the bargain she had made. Mary had watched her closely today, o
bserving her already managing Mr. Collins with a smiling deftness, never giving any hint she found his behaviour ridiculous or his presence annoying. Charlotte was all deference to her husband-to-be; though Mary saw too that she revealed nothing of her real self in his company. She would never be truly natural with him; she would never pay him the compliment of letting him know what she really thought or felt. Was that the kind of companionship Mary wanted? A union based on a lie?

  She looked around the room, taking in every familiar detail—the curtains faded at the edges by the sun, the stain on the carpet where her father had once spilt a glass of red wine and which no amount of scrubbing could remove—and it seemed as though the walls closed in around her. She might never escape their confines now. She had done all she could to act as reason dictated and find a way out—but it had not answered. It was Charlotte who carried off the prize; it was she and not Mary who had sat beside Mr. Collins all afternoon, with her mild, guarded smile and air of defiant satisfaction, avoiding the touch of his hand as they discussed the arrangements for their wedding.

  Charlotte had found her release—and Mary could not blame her for it—but she knew she wanted something more. Mary had done all she could to suppress it, but she longed to feel emotions that were honest and true, that were not intended to flatter and deceive. Yes, she could not deny it—she yearned to meet a man who would put an end to her loneliness, who would not think her awkward and plain, who liked the things she liked and did not think them foolish, a man whom she could love and who would love her back in his turn.

  She felt almost light-headed as she admitted the truth of it to herself. But almost as soon as the thought took shape, doubts and fears crowded in upon her. Where would she meet such a man? Not in Longbourn, that was certain. And even supposing she did, why would he look at her? What had she to offer? It was weakness to entertain such imaginings. Allowing yourself to think them only made their absence harder to bear.

  “How anyone can have the conscience to entail away an estate from one’s daughters, I cannot understand. And all for the sake of Mr. Collins too! Why should he have it more than anyone else?”

  “I leave it to yourself to determine.”

  Mrs. Bennet was finally silenced. The clock ticked and the fire crackled. Mary closed the book which sat unread before her. She must resign herself to circumstances that were unlikely to change. She rose from her seat, picked up the poker, and began to stir the coals.

  Part Two

  Chapter 31

  Two Years Later

  Mary had brought a book with her, but the jolting of the carriage made it impossible to read. For a while she tried her best, anxious to have something to occupy her mind; but after an hour or so, she gave up and threw the book aside. She wiped the corner of the dirty window with her handkerchief and watched the countryside pass by. They were not far from Longbourn now. Every house, every cottage, every hedgerow was familiar. There was the orchard where the best plums were to be had. There was the field where the bull had charged the cowman’s son who had distracted it with his hat. And there was the path to Meryton, down which she had so often walked, trailing behind Kitty and Lydia, wondering what she should do with herself whilst they rushed into the milliner’s shop to spend their allowance.

  The landscape looked as it had always done. But for the family who had once lived so quietly in this damp green corner, everything was different. Mary stared at the trees, her inward eye recalling the events which, one after another, had shaken them up and turned them inside out. Lydia’s elopement with Mr. Wickham had been the first of the dramas. Lydia had always been wild and impulsive; but no-one had imagined her thoughtlessness would have quite such far-reaching consequences. When news of her flight first broke upon them, there had seemed nothing to be done. Mary still recalled her father’s defeated look as he trudged into the hall at Longbourn, returning empty-handed from a fruitless search for the couple in London, his eyes bleak, his face grey, his habitual expression of ironic detachment quite extinguished.

  Then, against all expectations, a marriage ceremony had been somehow arranged, the slippery Mr. Wickham bribed or threatened into walking an eager Lydia up the aisle. At first, it was not known how it had been contrived. The revelation that it was Mr. Darcy to whom the Bennets owed their youngest daughter’s hurried nuptials was received with as much, if not perhaps more astonishment than Lydia’s actual running away. It was hardly to be wondered at that the family prejudice against him ebbed away somewhat as a result; but, with the possible exception of Jane, none of the Bennets foresaw what was to happen next. No-one could quite believe it when Elizabeth confessed that Mr. Darcy had made her a proposal of marriage; and they were even more astounded when she announced she had accepted him. Mary was incredulous. How could she marry a man she had always declared to be proud, cold, and disdainful? Lizzy insisted he was not like that at all—she had misjudged him—pride had blinded her to his true nature. She argued the case for his virtues with all the warmth with which she had once denounced his vices, and gradually her passion turned the tide of family opinion. Once the fact of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy’s love for each other had been acknowledged—for no-one who saw them together could believe it was not so—their union seemed as inevitable and as right as that of Jane and Mr. Bingley, which took place with similar haste, none of those involved seeing any reason for delay.

  The weddings had rendered Mrs. Bennet almost speechless with joy. Three daughters married in the course of a year, the two eldest to men of consequence and standing. It was everything she had always hoped for. Neither she nor her remaining daughters would starve or be thrown upon the parish; she could hold up her head once more amongst her friends and enjoy the superiority she felt was her due. In no time at all, her manner towards Lady Lucas was again one of condescension, for the mother of the mistress of Pemberley had nothing to fear from the parent of mere Mrs. Collins. When Kitty was claimed the following year, by a respectable clergyman with a handsome living, her satisfaction was complete. The triumph of her eldest daughters’ marriages enabled her to turn her head away from the irregularities of that of her youngest. Mrs. Bennet never spoke of the way Lydia’s marriage had been brought about, nor of the rackety existence which Mr. and Mrs. Wickham subsequently led, moving from place to place, never settling and always in need of funds. Sometimes she sent Lydia small gifts of money to help her in any immediate difficulty, but she always made sure Mr. Bennet knew nothing of it. His sympathy for the misfortunes of their youngest daughter was never as extensive as her own, especially when he was called upon to express it in pecuniary form.

  With her sisters gone, Mary soon felt herself sinking into the existence she had so long dreaded. Her days went by with little variety. She studied, and she practised at the piano, her music echoing through the empty house. But she quickly discovered she had less time for her pursuits than before, for Mrs. Bennet could not bear to sit alone for long and found even Mary’s company preferable to her own. These were the hours Mary found hardest, for her mother had nothing to say to her, and in the absence of any affectionate kindness, readily fell back into querulous complaint. It was a relief to them both when Mrs. Phillips called, for then Mary was permitted to retreat to the library. Her aunt’s voice, however, was loud and carried far beyond the drawing room; and it was by this means Mary discovered how her situation was viewed by those who considered it at all.

  “What a blessing it is for you to have Mary still at home,” observed Mrs. Phillips one airless afternoon. “I’m sure you would be quite solitary without her.”

  “Perhaps,” replied Mrs. Bennet, unconvinced. “Although she has no conversation of the kind I enjoy.”

  “But it must be easier for her now that she’s no longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters’ looks and her own. That cannot have been easy for a young girl. Now she will be judged on her own terms. And who knows where that might lead?”

  “You have always spoken in her favour, sister, and I thank you for it
. But I see no likelihood she will change her situation anytime soon. She and I must rub on together for a few years yet. It is a burden I must learn to bear. Will you have a little more tea?”

  Mary tried not to brood too much on what the future held. She was more of her mother’s opinion than her aunt’s; and considered it a day well spent if she got through it without falling into despair. But then, when it was least expected, an event took place which overturned forever the fragile certainties on which Longbourn had been balanced for so long, shattering the expectations of both mother and daughter. The existence of the entail had made Mr. Bennet’s death the subject of much conversation over the years, but it had been so often talked about that no-one had supposed it would actually occur, or not, at least, for many years. When he died in his sleep, with no warning of his impending end, the shock to his family was as dreadful and as surprising as if its possibility had never been mentioned before.

  The distress of his wife and daughters was severe and sincerely felt. None of them could imagine life without him; but all the sisters except Mary had husbands to comfort them, and new obligations to fill the place he left in their hearts. On the day of his funeral, Mary took from her drawer the little book of extracts she had composed for him with such hopeful affection, held it in her arms, and cried without restraint. She would never now enjoy the satisfaction of having pleased him, of seeing his eyes light up in pride at something she had done. It was true such a possibility had appeared increasingly remote as the years went by; but she had never quite given up on the hope that one day it would happen. The certain knowledge that now it could never do so was perhaps the sharpest pain that grieved her.

  Chapter 32