by Anne Morris
Many of the Meryton neighbors expected their aunt, Mrs. Phillips, to step in and fill the breach. It seemed to many that the two sisters, Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, were peas in a pod. Very similar in characteristics—women who enjoyed society and news—they were well-known in the drawing-rooms of all the principal families in the area. Mrs. Marianne Phillips should step in and coach the Bennet daughters as to what was needed in the getting of husbands. For that had been Mrs. Bennet’s overarching goal in life when she wasn’t visiting with her neighbors and exchanging gossip.
But it seemed that Mrs. Phillips had no such desire to be a substitute mother and take on the responsibility to escort the Bennet daughters around drawing-rooms or assemblies, or to promote their interests. Mrs. Philiips had no children of her own. Perhaps her tolerance for being around people of a younger age was limited, but it turned out that she was not going to step up.
There was other family. Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips had a brother, Mr. Gardiner, who lived in London. Mr. Gardiner was not a gentleman; he was in trade. It was a stain which Mrs. Bennet had often tried to gloss over, though he had married a decent woman and they had several children. There was even another on its way—Mrs. Gardiner had been heavy with child at the time Mrs. Bennet died. But Aunt Gardiner was not a candidate for steering the Bennet daughters into society to help them seek husbands. Their fate in this regard was uncertain.
Mourning period meant that those six Bennets were all hidden away at Longbourn for a time together behind black-draped windows with a black wreath hung upon the door. A wreath which slowly faded over time, though no one bothered to pull it down. They had been a sociable family up until the day Mrs. Bennet’s life had passed from her body because the matriarch of that family had led their social interactions. She had been the leader in everything to do with society and now she was gone. Now, they did not go anywhere.
Mr. Bennet was a languid soul at best, at worst: lazy and selfish. When she was living, Mr. Bennet had been cajoled by his wife to participate when necessary or when society demanded it. Some neighbors wondered if he would step up to fill some void, or if he would retreat entirely to his book room. Would he be a father to his daughters or would he leave them to grow wild and determine their own path?
***
Initially, Elizabeth did not share what she had seen that egregious and painful day. Elizabeth had returned to a house in chaos, vibrant with noise and activity, grief and dismay. She stepped in as the second oldest daughter (and as a responsible young woman) to do what she could for the family and her departed mother. Elizabeth had not been shocked on returning to Longbourn (having been met by Mary) to be told that her mother had passed while she was out walking. There had been a hint of censure that Elizabeth had dawdled and should have been back earlier to help out.
It was over a month before Elizabeth had the time and the wherewithal to set out and physically retrace the steps she had walked that day. So much of her life was in league with her sisters and care-taking to her father that Elizabeth had not had the time to do anything more than a simple circuit of those formal Longbourn gardens when she sought exercise. Her days were ones of pressing tea on her father, slipping an arm around Jane or Mary, or looking for Catherine or Lydia. For those fifteen and thirteen-year-olds, grief took the form of withdrawal, and they disappeared together for long stretches of time, away from the prying eyes of sisters or servants.
There had been much to do that first fortnight—so much that there was no time to sit and ponder what Elizabeth had seen and heard. No time to curl up with a cup of tea and consider what she had experienced, or to retrace her steps as a means of recalling all of the details. To give them some meaning. To recognize the reality of them.
When Elizabeth finally found time to think about her experiences and remembrances of that day, it was more dream than anything else, a fairy story; a story with some fantastic twist she did not expect. But Elizabeth was no hapless heroine; there had been no hero and no villain in the story. Only a small, frail woman who had a reunion with her mother. A reunion after death. Was that not what Reverend White told them to expect from Heaven? Meeting God and all one’s family and friends in a place of sunshine and happiness? But Elizabeth considered that she had not seen Heaven, but some in-between place.
She finally attempted to speak to Jane about the day their mother died, and of her mistaking Grandmother Gardiner and Mrs. Bennet for Catherine and Lydia. But Jane dismissed her story and put it down to a grieved Elizabeth having fallen asleep outside who dreamed the entire thing. Jane could not countenance the idea that Elizabeth had seen Mrs. Bennet’s ghost the day their mother died. Nor that Elizabeth had seen their grandmother pass into a different place.
Perhaps Jane wished to only think of Heaven or the afterlife (and of souls going there) as a bright and happy place. Though probably what disturbed Jane the most was the idea that their mother’s spirit was lingering at Longbourn—a sentry of sorts—waiting there as an escort for whoever Mrs. Bennet was destined to retrieve and speak to once she or he died, just as Grandmother Gardiner had retrieved Mrs. Bennet to impart to her some final words.
Jane was two years older than Elizabeth, and the oldest sister to all of them. She had always been a concerned caretaker to all four of her sisters. A part of Jane’s reluctance to discuss the day of Mrs. Bennet’s passing was also a concern that Elizabeth’s grief affected her more than it did the other Bennet sisters. Jane unquestionably did not wish to discuss what Elizabeth had seen that day.
Elizabeth and her next younger sister, Mary, were only eleven months apart. Until they lost their mother, Elizabeth and Mary had only shared a love of playing the pianoforte, but beyond that, their outlook on life had been quite different. Despite being the two sisters who were closest in age, they seemed the two who were the most different out of the five. Mary had been that one sister who had always been ready for church on a Sunday to sit primly and properly. She listened to Reverend White’s sermons while Lizzy listened to the crows in the graveyard. They both read, but Mary read moralistic texts while Lizzy was more inclined to pleasurable reading. Mary was not one for the outdoors, and Lizzy sought exercise in the gardens, fields, or woods every day.
Yet Mrs. Bennet’s passing brought these two closer together. Jane’s dismissal of Elizabeth’s tale about her twilight journey made Elizabeth introspective, especially since she lost a counselor in her older sister.
But on a rainy December day, when Elizabeth sat going over the details yet again in her mind, she looked up to see that Mary had joined her. There was something that made Elizabeth reach out to this sister and unfold her tale. She thought that Mary’s view of the world would mean rejection of her story, and what she had seen and experienced that day. Elizabeth was prepared for a stinging rebuke at the end—though there was something that compelled her to tell her story. But Mary did no such thing.
Mary’s only reply was, “that is very interesting.” Then Mary sat and sipped her tea in silence as she thought through the details of Elizabeth’s story. It was only when the teacup rattled in the saucer that Mary began to put questions to Elizabeth.
“You say they appeared to be solid and not vaporous as ghosts are so often portrayed?” It was half question, half statement.
“Yes,” confirmed Elizabeth. “I thought it to be Catherine and Lydia, and they had come back to hurry me home.”
“I wonder if they appeared more solid to you because you loved them,” suggested Mary. “Because they were family, blood relatives?”
“I don’t know,” replied Elizabeth. “I have not considered that idea.”
“I suppose,” Mary got up to make herself a new cup of tea, “it is sort of like Purgatory?”
“That is what I thought,” agreed Elizabeth, “and that Grandmamma Gardiner has gone on to Heaven. That she had a task to perform so she remained, waiting to escort our mother, and talk to her.”
Here Mary interrupted her, “but she didn’t escort her, really, i
t was almost as if Mamma escorted Grandmother to her final resting point.”
“I suppose,” Elizabeth allowed. “But there must be something important, some knowledge that kept Grandmother Gardiner in that Purgatory before she went to fetch our mother.”
“I think you’re right,” responded Mary. “I wonder what it was, the knowledge that she passed on. I wonder if it’s about Heaven, and meeting God, and seeing the angels and all the glory.”
“It might be,” said Elizabeth. “But don’t you think that is something you could walk in and discover? It’s like going to London and making your bow before the Queen. There isn’t that much knowledge required that someone should need to hang around for fifteen or twenty years in order to pass on the information.”
“I suppose you’re right,” remarked Mary.
***
On the first sufficiently sunny day (which meant they needed to wait for a number of them in a row for the grounds to dry), Elizabeth took Mary to retrace the steps of that journey. They ended at the Gardiner’s old house which had passed on to other hands and which had an ordinary blue front door now. When they walked back towards Longbourn, they spent a long time at the nameless footbridge. Elizabeth described in detail the arch which had been there. How it had been sharper and more pronounced when she had been on the west side looking east, and how it had beckoned her home to the land of the living. Currently, it was a simply an ordinary footbridge.
There was a lot of discussion back and forth between them about how and when such a portal might appear, and why had it appeared over the footbridge? Such a thing as a portal or archway between their world and the waiting world where the dead waited to escort and inform each other.
It was hard not to be silly at times about it. They were perhaps the two best-read of the five daughters, but it did not mean they had received the most extensive education a person could receive, certainly not the education which a man received. There was some speculation about things magical and extraordinary. The two sisters devolved into giggles thinking of invisible doors which opened between their world and the other, this Purgatory.
They first asked, was this the only portal in the world? But that did not seem likely. People died everywhere, all the time. There had to be other “escorts” for the recently deceased as well. They speculated about whether such a portal only appeared when somebody died, which they thought was probably likely. If someone in London died (and people died every day in London), there must be a London portal. Perhaps the waiting world was far more crowded in cities than in the country, reflecting the population difference. But why had the gateway appeared over the footbridge?
“Perhaps there is something sacred about our little footbridge that we didn’t know about?” Mary suggested.
Elizabeth frowned about that idea at first. But she had no real opinion as to why she had seen, and could pass through, the archway that day. They were not able to paint an adequate picture yet of the purgatorial existence, but it was something which kept their minds occupied despite their loss and their grief.
***
Jane’s manner of dealing with the grief of her mother’s loss was to assume the running of the household. At twenty, some women were already married. Jane had shadowed her mother and already knew what to do. She was busy with daily tasks, managing servants, and their father. It kept her busy and staved off her loss.
Catherine and Lydia were a different story. Kitty and Lydia tried their three older sister’s patience considerably. Their indulgent mother was gone.
That blessed destination, Aunt Phillips’ house, was no longer the haven from Longbourn or from scolding older sisters that it once was. It became clear in the weeks after Mrs. Bennet’s passing that Aunt Phillips did not welcome those gossipy girls to her house. The two youngest sisters did not understand that; they thought that they had all been such friends, and it had been such a delightful place to visit in the past!
But it seemed that their aunt had ideas about propriety and mourning, and when they showed up at her house merely a se’ennight after Mrs. Bennet’s passing, they were taken to task for showing up in their blacks in her drawing-room. They were thoroughly scolded and sent home. Mrs. Phillips even did an improbable thing which was to order her carriage to take them back home (for of course they had walked to Meryton). It was a lesson they did not understand at first.
Over the weeks, they made forays to other neighbor’s houses in their dark and dreary clothing, but they found that their neighbors were never at home, and they were turned away at the doorstep. Most of their Meryton neighbors understood the rules about mourning. There was propriety to be maintained. Daughters must mourn their mothers, thus they must not be making social calls. But to be confined to Longbourn was a bore for these two. They had been formed for society, and it was a blow to them to be confined to the house.
Thus they became very good at disappearing. They had long left the nursery and moved to the first floor to share a room. But they found that haunting the nursery up in the attic was to their liking. Or they took to getting out of doors and walking in the gardens. Or better yet, seeking exercise as their older sister, Elizabeth, had done before they lost their mother, and haunting the Hollybush Woods.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fall passed into winter. And the first winter without Mrs. Bennet moved by them far quicker than anyone considered. It seemed that suddenly spring was blossoming around them.
Longbourn had been a self-sustained castle as the family dutifully observed mourning in the manner that society dictated, but also observed it in the ways that suited most of them, which had been one of withdrawal. Catherine and Lydia came out of hiding finally. Elizabeth felt more of an urge to call on her friend Charlotte Lucas. Mary felt a desire to visit the lending library, and Jane was finally persuaded to allow the Bennet sisters out of the house to make social calls.
While calling on their neighbors was an acceptable practice after about six weeks of being isolated at home, Jane had not allowed the sisters to visit. She wished to do what was right but had also hoped that their father would take the lead in calling on neighbors after the death of his wife. But Mr. Bennet remained as ever to his book room. So Jane kept the sisters home from the end of the fall until the start of winter. Then the winter largely confined them indoors.
The Bennet family had been one which had a strict taskmistress in the form of Mrs. Bennet. But she was gone. As they slowly resumed a small semblance of visiting, still dressed in their blacks (a point the two youngest complained about on a daily basis), the want of Mrs. Bennet to control their calendar was felt. And in thinking about their social obligations, they could not help but think of Mrs. Bennet, so it was often a vicious cycle to review something so simple as kind-hearted Mrs. Goulding sending them a note to invite them to a luncheon, without sitting down and considering what their mother would think about it, and then recalling their loss.
But like little creatures who poke their heads above ground when spring comes, when the hoarfrost no longer covered the grass in the mornings, the Bennet daughters reached out.
While Elizabeth and Mary shared a particular bond over Elizabeth’s experience, they could not, however, be forever speaking about such a topic. It was a subdued one, and Elizabeth was not one formed for melancholy. She felt inclined, at least once a week, to visit her friend Charlotte Lucas.
Charlotte had always been a particular friend. She was older than Elizabeth, twenty-five to Lizzy’s eighteen, but such distance in age had not stopped the two women from being friends. Charlotte had been of immense help in the early days after Mrs. Bennet’s passing. She was almost like family and had been one of the few neighbors who had contacted the family on a regular basis even if it was doing something like writing Elizabeth a note when she felt she could not call (because of propriety).
On this day, Charlotte immediately inquired after Elizabeth’s health and outlook.
Elizabeth’s response was, “I am well.”
Charlo
tte probed further, “truly Eliza; you had this event—losing your mother—it has changed you.”
“I do not see how such an event could not change a person, Charlotte,” was her reply. “But do not let it concern you.”
“I cannot help but be worried,” her friend asserted with quite a forlorn look. “I have loved and valued all of you, Eliza. I cannot help but have a certain motherly concern for all of you.”
“You are hardly old enough to be a mother to any of us,” was Elizabeth’s reply.
“Consider me a concerned big sister,” Charlotte laughed. “There is no help for us in facing the day that we lose a loved one. That is a reality of life, but I see this has changed you the most, and that fact has surprised me.”
“Really? I do not feel all that different. I am sad or melancholy some days, but I carry on. It does not seem to have affected Lydia too much, though she is not so spoiled as when Mamma used to indulge her every whim. Jane seems like you—she has become quite motherly to all of us.”
“That I did expect,” asserted Charlotte.
“Mary is different,” frowned Elizabeth.
“How so?” asked Charlotte.
“We talk more. I have come to understand her better than I ever did for all that we’ve lived so many years in the same house. Perhaps she isn’t different; it is I’ve just…” Elizabeth paused then began again. “This opportunity has allowed me to see her more clearly. But perhaps, back to your point, this isn’t about the fact that Mary has changed, but that I have come to understand her more.”
“That speaks more of a change in you than a change in Mary,” said Charlotte.
“Yes,” agreed Elizabeth. “Then there’s poor Catherine, who seems almost lost. I believe she is grieved more than she is allowed to let on, for Lydia will not allow Kitty time to be grieved or heartbroken that her mother is gone. So many of Kitty’s ideas about Mamma were wrapped up in considering that her birthday was in a few weeks. She shall be sixteen soon and was looking forward to society, assembly balls, and the attentions of young men. None of that is to be available to her because she is now in mourning.”
