Implacable Resentment

by Jann Rowland

  “Should you not have provided for them?” cried Elizabeth. “Perhaps you should live up to your duty as a landowner and stir yourself from your bookroom on occasion. Then perhaps diligence might have helped you set something aside for their eventual care.

  “And as for my mother specifically, you are well aware of the extravagance of her expenses in her zeal to dress her daughters to best advantage. Her every thought is to see them all married off as if they were nothing more than sheep being sold to the highest bidder!”

  “Do you blame her?” demanded Mr. Bennet, his voice rising in response to her own. “As there is no heir to this estate, her future prospects are grim!”

  “They would not be grim if you had done your duty!”

  Mr. Bennet shot to his feet, and he moved around the desk to stand in front of her chair. He was much smaller than Mr. Darcy, and years of indolence appeared to have sapped his strength further. But though he was not an overly large man, Elizabeth was herself a small woman, standing taller only than Mary of all her sisters; as a result, Mr. Bennet’s face, with its wild eyes boring into her mere inches away from her own, induced a feeling of fear in her breast which she had not ever expected to feel in the presence of this man. She did not know of what he was capable, but at that moment, she very much feared that he would strike her.

  “You will listen to me, Miss Elizabeth.” Her name was uttered with as much scorn as she had ever heard from another person. “Mr. Collins is my heir, and he will one day inherit this property. I care not if he is stupid. I care not if he ever bathes, or if he rolls in the muck and fornicates with pigs. I care not if he takes up a rod and beats you every day with it until you beg him for mercy.

  “You will marry him. I have decreed it as your father, and as you are still underage, you will obey me. You will go to the church at a time of my choosing, you will repeat your vows before the priest, you will sign the church register in the presence of witnesses, and you will go to Mr. Collins’s home and become his wife. Once that happens, I will have no more responsibility for you.”

  “You have not taken responsibility for me for many years,” said Elizabeth.

  Mr. Bennet’s hand shot out and slapped Elizabeth. He did not strike her hard enough to leave a mark, but it stung nonetheless. His pitiless eyes told her that it was only the beginning if she did not obey his commands.

  Deciding that it was best not to challenge him further to his face, Elizabeth looked away calmly. Inside, she was a roiling mass of emotions and fears. But one thought rose above the rest: this was not over. She would not submit meekly to his Machiavellian edicts!

  “That is better,” rumbled her father after a moment. He stood straight again and leaned back against his desk. “Mr. Collins is not the most intelligent of men. I suspect that should you wish it, you could rule over him without any effort whatsoever. If the thought of being married to him is so distasteful you may think of that at least. You would not only be mistress of Longbourn, but also its master.”

  Though she was seething, Elizabeth held her tongue. She would not give this man the satisfaction of an answer.

  “Now, we will go out and announce the happy news to the family. I doubt very much that Mr. Collins is intelligent enough to detect your . . . reluctance to marry him. In fact, I believe the man has much too high of an opinion of himself to even begin to fathom such a thing. It would be best, however, if you were to avoid any overt display of displeasure. We would not wish your marriage to begin on a sour note, now would we?”

  Elizabeth glared at him, but Mr. Bennet only watched her with that dark amusement of his. Now Elizabeth could see clearly what his expressions and amusements the previous evening had meant. He was not only fixing his laxity in his own ineffectual way, but he was also offering her up to a man she could not tolerate for revenge! And all at once, Elizabeth recognized her father’s pettiness.

  Silently, Elizabeth vowed that she would not sit still for this injustice. One way or another, she would triumph and avoid the fate her father had decreed for her.

  For now, Elizabeth had no choice but to follow her father back into the parlor, where the rest of the company awaited them. Several curious faces met their arrival, and though Elizabeth could not be certain, the expression of distress on Jane’s face told her that their argument had likely been heard. Mr. Collins, however, was all expectation; he surely understood what was about to happen, though he seemed to have no understanding of what a loud argument between father and daughter before the announcement of an engagement could mean. Elizabeth had never before felt more contempt for another person.

  “Thank you all for waiting so patiently for our return,” said Mr. Bennet, his voiced laced with sardonic amusement and another quality which Elizabeth took to be disdain. “I have an announcement to make.”

  Elizabeth was watching Mr. Collins, and the expression on his face grew all the more beatific while confusion reigned on the faces of everyone else in the room. Elizabeth seethed, but she kept her silence. There was no point in speaking up now.

  “As it happens, Mr. Collins has come to Longbourn with an express purpose. It is therefore my pleasure to announce that Mr. Collins and our Elizabeth have come to an agreement. They are engaged and shall be married at the first opportunity.”

  Bedlam did not ensue as Elizabeth would have expected. Rather, her sisters looked on with confusion and a variety of other emotions—Jane appeared distressed, Mary suspicious, and Catherine and Lydia relieved that they would not need to submit to the attentions of the parson. But it was Mrs. Bennet’s reaction which startled Elizabeth the most.

  “Elizabeth?” asked she, her voice laced with skepticism. “Surely you cannot mean that.” She shook her head to indicate her lack of understanding.

  “Mr. Collins,” said Mrs. Bennet, addressing the clergyman directly, “would not my Mary suit you better as a wife? She is pious and charitable, and I think she would be a better wife than . . .” Mrs. Bennet swallowed and directed a glance at Mr. Bennet nervously. “Well, let us just say that she would be much easier to handle than . . . my second-born.”

  Mary gasped and stared at Mr. Collins with horror, and Elizabeth felt all the satisfaction of knowing that she was not the only who could not abide the thought of being married to the man. But she had no need to worry, as the man himself rose to his feet and bowed to the entire company with aplomb.

  “I assure you, madam,” said he, “that I am fixed on Miss Elizabeth for my wife. I was quite captivated by your good husband’s description of her charms, and the reality has been beyond my expectations. She will be delighted, I am sure, to become the mistress of Hunsford, and I do not doubt she will be exceedingly grateful for the attentions of my most esteemed lady patroness, though I am certain that she will wish to display the humblest deference before her ladyship.”

  He turned to Elizabeth and fixed his eyes upon her, licking his lips in a most loathsome manner. “I take this opportunity now to state without reservation the depths of my regard for you, my lovely fiancée. The violence of my feelings for you is only matched by my eagerness to show you the delights of married life.”

  Elizabeth’s disdain rose to ever greater heights of the ridiculousness of this man. His inelegant comments disgusted her, and if she had been at liberty, she would have broken a vase over his empty head.

  “Your behavior this afternoon shall be discussed in greater detail at a later date,” continued the detestable parson. “For the moment, let us seal our engagement with a kiss, my dear cousin.”

  He moved toward her with arms outstretched, but Elizabeth sidestepped him and went to sit beside Jane without saying a word to him. Mr. Collins appeared confused for a moment at her avoidance, but soon the smarmy smile was etched yet again on his face.

  “Ah, I understand. I assure you that your actions are only increasing my affection through suspense, and I esteem you all the more because of it. Self-denial is indeed a process by which we might all approach godliness, and I commend
you for wishing to wait until we are married.”

  A snicker actually escaped Mr. Bennet, though no one else seemed to notice it. And though Mrs. Bennet appeared to wish to further try to persuade the parson, she cast a hateful glare at Elizabeth before she subsided. The time before dinner passed in an interminable manner, and though Elizabeth tried to avoid looking at anyone, she could not help but see a measure of pity upon the faces of her sisters. It was a far cry from the ridicule she had often endured at the hands of Lydia and Catherine at the very least.

  “Elizabeth,” whispered Jane at one point when Mr. Collins appeared to be engaged with Mr. Bennet, “what is happening? How could you have agreed to marry such a man?”

  “Because she is doing her duty, Jane,” interjected her father. He had been watching the sisters closely, and his voice was filled with censure. “You should be happy for her. She will one day be mistress of this house.”

  Jane fairly wilted under the force of her father’s glare, and she said no more. Elizabeth, who was not intimidated by her father’s show of displeasure, gazed back at him, daring him to censure her, but he did nothing more than stare at her in that cold way of his.

  “Do not worry, Jane,” whispered Elizabeth to her sister. “Everything will be well.”

  The evening was interminable, and between Mr. Collins attempts at courting her good opinion, her mother’s ever-increasing hysteria over a soon-to-be-married daughter, and the youngest girls’ incessant giggling, Elizabeth found it difficult to maintain her even demeanor. But she was determined that she would not willingly go as a lamb to the slaughter. And she had the ghost of an idea of what she might do to avoid the fate her father had planned for her.

  The Gardiners were long departed for Ireland, but they had told her that she could return to their house should anything untoward happen. She would go there if she must, content in the knowledge that the servants left at the house would undoubtedly refuse entrance to Mr. Bennet and declaim all knowledge of her whereabouts should he rouse himself enough to make the attempt to recover her. And even though it meant that she would essentially be a prisoner in the house, it was better than the fate her father had planned for her.

  But more than that, Elizabeth’s thoughts turned to Mr. Darcy. The man had made her an offer of courtship only hours before, and Elizabeth was certain that he would not be happy with her father bartering her off without her consent when his offer—a most advantageous offer!—was still on the table. Elizabeth decided that the first thing she would do was to go to Netherfield and throw herself on Mr. Darcy’s mercy. She thought it possible that she could stay with the Darcys until the Gardiners returned, and as he had a young sister, she could merely act as if she were visiting the sister. Their courtship and ultimate engagement could be announced afterward. Surely her father would not persist when confronted by a man of Mr. Darcy’s influence and wealth.

  The trick was to get to Netherfield. At first, Elizabeth was inclined to wait a few days in order to lull her father into a false sense of security. Then she could simply walk the three miles to the estate, explain everything to Mr. Darcy, and hope that he would be willing to offer her his protection.

  But there were several flaws with that plan. The first was that she would have to spend several days pretending to at least tolerate Mr. Collins’s advances, a thought which caused her to shudder with revulsion. The bigger problem, however, was the way her father watched her all through that night. The man was not stupid—in fact, she suspected that he might even be considered uncommonly intelligent. She suspected that he was aware of the fact that she was not reconciled to this match in the slightest. And she feared that the longer she waited, the more vigilant and watchful he would become. That would necessitate her making her move as soon as possible, thereby catching him by surprise.

  As she looked around the dinner table, Elizabeth avoided looking at the much-despised visage of Mr. Collins. The younger girls were chattering together as was their wont, though Elizabeth could see that Catherine’s heart was not it. Several times, she glanced over at Elizabeth, and from what Elizabeth could see, she appeared to be struggling with the thought that something was amiss. Jane was beside herself with worry, though Elizabeth tried to reassure her with smiles whenever she could, and Mary, while inscrutable, often looked between Elizabeth and Collins with a perplexed air, as if trying to puzzle something out.

  As for the perpetrators of the night’s travesty, Mr. Collins was blathering on about his patroness, his home, and his expected marital felicity in his ponderous tone, and Mrs. Bennet was interjecting comments concerning the wedding arrangements, though she was in no way excited about the prospect. At the head of the table, Mr. Bennet sat watching the proceedings, and if his eyes tightened at some nonsense proceeding forth from the mouth of his wife, he said nothing further.

  Elizabeth was done with the lot of them, she decided, except for dear Jane and any other sisters who might want to reconcile in the future. If she had to choose her path all over again, she would have accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner to Ireland.

  Of course, that thought brought on a pang of its own, for if she had done so, she would not have experienced the pleasure of furthering her acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. His request for a courtship could not have been extended, and though she would be free of her father’s edicts, she would still be a single girl with an uncertain future.

  There was nothing to be done. She would simply have to escape that night and throw herself on Mr. Darcy’s mercy. He would assist her—somehow, Elizabeth knew that he would not allow her to be taken from him so easily.

  When help finally arrived, it was from an unexpected source.

  When dinner was over, Elizabeth excused herself early to retire to her room. As Mr. Bennet had already retreated to his bookroom, her mother simply waved her from the room and continued to speak with Mr. Collins about some nonsense or other. Elizabeth did not care whether her mother was trying to ingratiate herself with her supposed future son-in-law. Elizabeth would never be mistress of Longbourn.

  Once up in her room, Elizabeth looked about and set to work. She threw her most important and sentimental belongings into a case along with a few dresses which she did not wish to leave behind. She left most of her personal effects where they were, not wanting someone to question where her possessions were gone should anyone think to look in on her before she had a chance to escape.

  While she was thus engaged, a soft knock sounded on her door, startling Elizabeth. Quickly, she pushed the case she had been packing under her bed until it was out of sight, and then sitting on the bed, she called out permission to enter.

  The door opened, and Elizabeth peered with astonishment at the person who stood there. It was Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper.

  “Miss Elizabeth,” said the housekeeper hesitantly, glancing over her shoulder.

  Immediately understanding that the woman feared discovery, Elizabeth motioned her forward into the room and closed the door once she had entered. It was obvious that Mrs. Hill was uncomfortable, and Elizabeth smiled, attempting to put her at ease. Then she asked why Mrs. Hill had come.

  In a thoroughly diffident manner, the housekeeper looked down, but she roused enough courage to say, “Miss Elizabeth, I beg your pardon, but it is the understanding of those of us below stairs that you are betrothed to Mr. Collins.”

  Unable to contain her surprise, Elizabeth gasped, which served to draw Mrs. Hill’s attention.

  “Then it is true?”

  Anger flooded through Elizabeth, though she was able to restrain herself from making a caustic remark. This woman was not her enemy, after all.

  “I have consented to nothing,” said Elizabeth stonily. “Mr. Collins may think that he has gained my hand, but he shall soon find out that I do not mean to surrender lightly.”

  It was only after Elizabeth’s feelings had obtained their release that she realized that she should not have spoken so openly to a servant who might report her words back to the master.
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br />   She need not have worried, as an expression of compassion descended over the woman’s face.

  “It is as I suspected. I cannot understand what the master is thinking, to be forcing you to marry such a man.”

  “He is thinking of obtaining an easy solution to his problems,” said Elizabeth in bitterness. “He cannot bestir himself to actually provide for his family, so he forces me to become their salvation.”

  The servant apparently did not know what to say to Elizabeth’s caustic words, so she ignored them.

  “Mr. Gardiner asked me to watch over you, and I have done my best to do so. I am truly sorry that I was not able to divine Mr. Bennet’s purpose in recalling you ere now.”

  “You are not to blame, Mrs. Hill,” said Elizabeth, her anger bleeding away. “My father is the author of this travesty, and I shall not put the blame at the feet of anyone else.”

  “Do you mean to accept your lot?”

  Elizabeth snorted. “Never. I shall leave this house tonight and never return.”

  “Then I shall assist you.”

  “No, you must not!” cried Elizabeth. “If my father found out, you would lose your position.”

  The woman’s answering grin was positively amused. “I doubt it, Miss Elizabeth. The mistress could not do without me, and the master would never hear the end of it should he relieve me of my position. Besides, I would prefer to lose my position than to allow the master to do this. I could not live with myself if I did so.”

  Though Elizabeth tried to protest, Mrs. Hill remained firm, and Elizabeth was forced to give way. They spoke for several more moments before the housekeeper departed to return below stairs before she was missed. Heartened by the plan she had devised with the faithful housekeeper, Elizabeth decided to give the appearance of retiring for the night.

  Not long after the housekeeper left, another knock sounded on the door, and though Elizabeth debated simply ignoring it, the knock was so soft that Elizabeth knew it could not be her father’s.