The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice

by Jennifer Paynter

  My sisters’ lives I saw had gone on in the same old pattern. Kitty and Lydia had both become shockingly idle. Lydia had gained complete ascendancy over Nan Pender, and if Jane or Elizabeth tried to intervene our mother invariably sided with Lydia. Mama had never been interested in our education but now she positively encouraged her daughters to fritter away their time—to walk into Meryton and dawdle about the shops or visit Aunt Philips and play at lottery tickets.

  I missed Mrs. Knowles and my Bath life grievously, and I secretly wrote to her, begging her to write to hurry my return. She would not consent to this, but her reply was so full of wise advice that I immediately copied it into my Commonplace Book. Unfortunately, it would be this passage that I chose to quote to Jane and Elizabeth and to Charlotte Lucas.

  We were all sewing together in the breakfast room, making clothes for the youngest Gardiner infant, a boy born two days after Christmas—Aunt’s confinement having prevented the usual family visit. (And here I should record two earlier additions to the Gardiner family: a girl born one year after Susan’s death, and another boy, Edward, born the following year.) A favorable report on the progress of mother and son had reached Longbourn that morning and we now remarked on the good fortune of the four little Gardiners, blessed as they were with such amiable and sensible parents.

  A silence followed during which we all sewed very intently, conscious no doubt of the shortcomings of our own parents (for I suspect Charlotte was as embarrassed by Sir William as ever we were of Mama) and it was then that Mrs. Knowles’s words came to me. She had written to remind me of my duties as a daughter, citing Exodus 20:12, the Fifth Commandment, but as soon as I started to quote the passage, Elizabeth said: “Mary, you are among family and friends, and to be preaching to us in this way—it is too absurd.”

  A moment later she cast aside her sewing and came and kissed me. “Forgive me, I spoke hastily. Do not mind me.”

  From then on, Elizabeth never spoke to me without seeming to weigh her words. And she and Jane also did their best to make Kitty and Lydia mind me. But this merely had the effect of further distancing me from them all, and when the time came for me to return to Bath they none of them seemed especially sorry.

  2.

  My second year in Bath was every bit as happy and fulfilling as the first. And I might have spent many more happy years there had not a certain retired army officer, one Colonel Philip Pitt, come to live in Edgar Buildings shortly after my seventeenth birthday.

  A widower in his fifties, incongruously merry-looking with long dimples fissuring his cheeks, Colonel Pitt so successfully invaded our lives that within a month he was accompanying us everywhere, taking most of his meals with us, even joining us for our nightly Shakespeare and scripture readings. Until his arrival, I had believed myself to be indispensable to Mrs. Knowles. Certainly I had heard her say as much to all her acquaintance. “I simply could not manage without Mary,” she would assure them. “Mary is my rock.”

  But it was soon clear that Colonel Pitt had become her rock. She came to my room late one night to acknowledge the fact, her long white hair hanging down her back and wearing a dressing gown of purple velvet (which I had never before seen, such was her dislike of sloth).

  “You must think me the greatest fool alive, Mary, I do myself. And do not think I haven’t prayed for guidance—I seem to have done little else these past weeks. But there is no help for it. Philip loves me, and we are to be married.”

  She seated herself on my bed, her arms folded inside the sleeves of her gown, and it struck me that she had become somehow ordinary, that passion had diminished her, rendering her less certain, less queenly.

  Perhaps she divined my thoughts, for she said: “When people fall in love, my dear, they are apt to go a little mad, you know.”

  Somebody had said the same thing to me a long time ago, but I could not immediately recall who, and then I remembered George on the night of our concert talking so of Elizabeth and Mr. Coates.

  “Especially at my age.” Mrs. Knowles reached for my hand. “You are the first to know, and you must help me break it to my boy.” (She always referred to Mr. Knowles thus.) “He will not like it—he and Philip are very different sorts of men—but I trust in time he will be reconciled. And I will need your help in composing a letter to my brother Galbraith.”

  Here, she made a wry face, an acknowledgment that reconciling her brother to the match would be next to impossible (Mr. Galbraith was a reclusive old bachelor, a prosperous gentleman-farmer who lived not far from Longbourn near the village of Stoke).

  She talked on but I barely listened. I was feeling hollowed-out and sick and furious with both her and Colonel Pitt. They had obviously been carrying on behind my back for weeks. And they were both so very old—it was disgusting merely to think of it.

  But here again Mrs. Knowles seemed to guess some part of what I was feeling. “Now if we were in the other room, you could read me the lecture that Hamlet gives his poor misguided mother. You could tell me that at my advanced age ‘the heyday in the blood is tame… and waits upon the judgment.’”

  I forced myself to smile and she patted my hand. “These last two years have been very happy ones, have they not? We have been able to help each other in so many ways. Certainly you have helped me. But I could not have kept you here with me forever, my dear. You must have returned to Longbourn sooner or later. Your family has claims on you.”

  I reflected that it was only now, when it suited her, that my family could be supposed to have claims on me. She had never before talked of my returning home.

  “But I hope you will consent to stay with me until I am married. Indeed, you must, for I shall need a chaperone.” (laughing) “Try not to think too badly of me, my dear. I never dreamt that I could be prevailed upon to marry again. But Philip is so—oh! at the risk of sounding ridiculous, he makes me feel so young.”

  My own distress was as nothing compared to that of Mr. Knowles, however. The news was broken to him by Colonel Pitt without the least preparation over Sunday dinner: “I find I must trouble you for your congratulations, my boy. Your mother and I have decided to make a match of it. What do you say to that, eh? Have we your blessing?”

  And when poor Mr. Knowles could not say anything, so shocked was he and looking to his mother for confirmation, Colonel Pitt had slapped him on the shoulder. “Come now, look me in the eye, sir! I swear I shall do everything in my power to make your mother happy. For God’s sake give us your blessing.”

  Having no wish to witness Mr. Knowles being bullied into giving his blessing, I would have quit the room but Mrs. Knowles now went to her son, offering to postpone the wedding if he liked. Whereupon Colonel Pitt was obliged to effect a strategic withdrawal. (“I’m sure I never meant to upset the boy. If he don’t wish to give us his blessing, that’s entirely a matter for him.”)

  3.

  Mrs. Knowles and Colonel Pitt were married in Bath Abbey on the 26th of November (which was later to be a noteworthy date for me and my two elder sisters), and directly after the breakfast the bride and groom left for London and I left for Longbourn, escorted by Mr. Knowles.

  Loyalty to his mother had hitherto prevented Mr. Knowles from confiding his disapproval of the match, but when the maidservant accompanying me had asked to ride on the box for one stage, he was at last able to talk to me without reserve. He confessed he had grave misgivings as to Colonel Pitt’s character. “And I am not alone in my fears, Mary. My uncle Galbraith is convinced he’s a fortune-hunter. The fellow has a reputation, you know.”

  But when I inquired as to the nature of Colonel Pitt’s reputation, he turned away: “’Tis not a fit subject for your ears.”

  A little later he again burst forth, speaking as from an overcharged heart: “I shall certainly never be able to think of him as a father.” And then in more trembling accents: “I cannot bear to think that people are laughing at Mother, Mary. He has made her a laughingstock. And in a place where she was used to be held in high e
steem.”

  I was shocked to see him so overset. By dint of prayer and reflection, I had managed to conquer much of my own resentment, and Mrs. Knowles had herself helped me in this. She had repeated her evening visit to my room, so that a nocturnal tête-à-tête had become part of our routine—it was the only time I could count on Colonel Pitt not being present. And she had come even on the eve of her wedding—wearing her purple dressing gown—come, as she put it, to play Polonius, to give me advice at parting.

  “You must never forget that you have a gift, my dear. Our Lord in his wisdom has endowed you with real musical talent. But gifts entail obligations, Mary. Promise me that when you return home, you will keep to your timetable of early rising and regular activities.”

  I duly promised and she continued: “Much as my boy respected your father’s abilities, it grieved him that Mr. Bennet did not value you as he ought. I know it is improper to be speaking of your father in this way, but I have thought about it—prayed about it—and I believe I am right in counseling you. Your father may never change towards you but if you can bring yourself to forgive him, ’twill be your salvation.”

  I made her no answer; my feelings were too confused, and she went on: “Your sisters too. Jane and Elizabeth will probably always be first with each other—until one or other of them marries. As will Catherine and Lydia. If you can find it in your heart to forgive them, you will be the happier for it.

  “One thing more. Find a like-minded friend, someone your own age who shares your interests. It is wonderful how two sympathetic minds can sustain each other.”

  She had paused, smiling, but at a spot directly above my head, and I saw that she was no longer thinking of me but of Colonel Pitt. I was able to pardon the lapse, however, and even afterwards to wish her happy. As soon as she left, I wrote the chief of her advice in the Commonplace Book.

  I longed now to impart its spirit of forgiveness to her son. But as I looked at him leaning back in his corner of the carriage, I realized that it was much too early to speak of such things. He had worshipped his mother only a degree or two less than his God. It would take time before he could be brought to view her marriage as other than a sacrilege.

  4.

  My family was not at home when I arrived. A long-standing dinner engagement at the Great House of Stoke was the excuse given by Nan Pender, who, together with the housekeeper Mrs. Hill, had been on the watch for me. And now these two loyal servants fairly laid themselves out to make up for my family’s neglect.

  They had been charged, they said, with any number of kind messages and there was a great wreath awaiting me in the vestibule, which Lydia and Kitty had been working on all week, entirely made of holly and with WELCOME woven through with red ribbon. My mother had also directed that my favorite dishes be served for my supper—buttered lobster and a muffin pudding.

  But all this could not do away with the fact that not a single member of my family had seen fit to welcome me home. And they had known for months, ever since Mrs. Knowles had fixed on a date for her wedding, that I would return to Longbourn the following day.

  I was determined not to give way to self-pity, however, and after eating my splendid solitary supper, I walked about the house—taper in hand—looking into all the principal rooms to see what changes had taken place. There seemed to be quite a number—new hangings in the drawing room and a Turkey carpet in the dining room and I noticed an oil painting over the chimney-piece that had not been there before.

  It was a portrait of three women seated around a table drinking tea. I held up the taper the better to see, and at once recognized the trio—excellent likenesses of Aunt Philips and my mother and Mrs. Long—and the room in which they were sitting was clearly Mrs. Long’s front parlor, for there in the background was the oak-leaf wallpaper and the portrait of the late Mr. Long. I looked for the artist’s signature then and found it in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas in neat little angular letters: Cassandra Long.

  My interest was fairly caught. I remembered Cassandra—the elder of Mrs. Long’s two nieces—as an intimidating girl, lanky and silent and given to staring intently. I had not the least idea of her having artistic talent. I tried to recall the last time I had seen her. She and her younger sister Helen had certainly stayed with Mrs. Long after the death of their mother and that had happened when I was about ten. But they could also have lived there later when I was ill. If so, I had no recollection of it. And while I knew it was dangerous to dwell on those lost years, I could not help wondering whether Cassandra had observed me then with the pitiless eyes of the artist. It was not a pleasant thought.

  My family’s welcome next morning was extraordinarily effusive—protesting too much that they had missed me. None of them was much changed except for Lydia. She had grown like a weed and was now at the age of fourteen almost as tall as our father—her figure fully formed, her face fat-cheeked and high-colored.

  They were all of them eager to hear about the wedding, questioning me over breakfast; my mother wanting to know about the bride’s clothes while Elizabeth and Jane asked about the bridegroom’s character and Lydia and Kitty about his appearance. My father wished to know how Mr. Knowles had comported himself. “How did he bear his mother’s defection? Did he cry?”

  After breakfast, Lydia was eager for everyone to walk into Meryton to visit Aunt Philips. Jane and Elizabeth declined and, mindful of Mrs. Knowles’s advice to use my time profitably, I was also about to excuse myself when it occurred to me that I might call on Cassandra—Mrs. Long’s house being opposite that of the Philipses.

  I went upstairs to put on my cloak and bonnet, and on making my way down again, I stopped outside the old nursery, still the apartment of Lydia and Kitty. The door was open and I could hear their voices within.

  “Sure, Mary is much changed,” Kitty was saying. “She never used to walk with us to Meryton before.”

  “Her appearance certainly has not changed. She is so little and pale—she has not grown an inch in the past year. But did you notice her at breakfast? I could hardly keep from laughing—when she picked up her coffee cup, her spectacles steamed over!” (laughing) “She was obliged to take them off, and then when Papa was asking her about Mr. Knowles she would not answer him—she kept wiping her spectacles and blinking like a frightened rabbit.”

  “You were used to be frightened of Papa yourself,” Kitty reminded her.

  “Yes, but I do not mean to be made unhappy by him any more. He is so horrid and sarcastic, there is no pleasing him. Shall we go down then?”

  I hastily left my listening post. I was not near so mortified by Lydia’s remarks as once I might have been. My recent experience with the Bath Harmonic Society—its politics and petty jealousies—had taught me that opinions are invariably colored by personal circumstance. Small wonder that Lydia, strapping and red-cheeked herself, should consider me little and pale. In any case, I knew I had grown over the past year, for Mrs. Knowles had kept a record of my height and weight the whole time I was with her.

  As for being a frightened rabbit, the collective glare of everybody’s attention at breakfast had indeed discomposed me, and I had longed to resort to the Commonplace Book. Only the fear of incurring Elizabeth’s displeasure had held me back.

  For most of the mile walk into Meryton I had to endure a monologue from Lydia. “Oh Mary! I am so glad you are come back, I can’t tell you. You must play all the country dances so that Kitty and me can practice our steps. Lizzy will never play for us—she and Jane are so stuffy nowadays—always wanting us to be learning something. But Mama says I may attend the assemblies when I am turned fifteen. Oh! how I wish I was fifteen! And I have still six months to wait—how shall I ever bear it? Well, but now tell me what happened while you were in Bath. You surely did not spend all your time going about with old Mrs. Knowles? And now she has got herself a husband and you have nobody. I call that most unfair.” (laughing heartily) “But I am glad you are come back. I was beginning to think that you would be in
Bath forever.”

  When eventually I was able to make myself heard, I asked after Mrs. Long and her nieces.

  “Oh! they are all well. You may call on them later if you like. Only do not expect me to go with you—Cassandra stares one out of countenance and gives herself such airs, there is no bearing it.”

  Kitty said: “She thinks herself so accomplished. She draws and paints the whole time and takes no interest in anything else.”

  “But Helen Long is a nice little thing,” said Lydia fair-mindedly. “When first they came to live with their aunt after their father died, she would scarce open her mouth, but now she chatters away like anything.”

  “She has become rather a flirt in fact,” said Kitty. “Lizzy said so the other day—that Helen Long was become rather a flirt.”

  “Dear me, since when was flirting considered a crime, Miss? And why must you always quote what Lizzy says? As if her opinion mattered more than other people’s.”

  They began to squabble then and afterwards Lydia applied to Aunt Philips for her views on flirting. And upon Aunt saying that she saw no harm in it—that she liked to see young people enjoying themselves—Lydia rounded on Kitty: “There’s for you, Miss!” Whereupon Kitty burst into tears.

  When I called on the Longs later, unaccompanied by Kitty and Lydia, Helen Long—a not unpretty but rather bold-eyed girl a bit older than myself—came directly to welcome me. Cassandra, however, took her time. As soon as I saw her though, I felt we should be friends (and she later told me that she had felt exactly the same).

  I cannot readily explain the attraction. Cassandra’s appearance was unprepossessing and her manner direct almost to the point of rudeness. A large girl, larger than Lydia, she dressed plainly and wore her hair pulled back so that not a tendril escaped, and her light-colored eyes with their small pupils were extremely hard to meet. And yet for all her size and severity, I sensed in her a sweetness—as if an excess of feeling were bottled up within. She was also extraordinarily graceful for so big a girl, quick and deft in all her movements. It was a pleasure, for instance, to watch her make the tea.