Page 9 of Till Death Us Do Part
Elizabeth turned and stomped from the room, unwilling to listen to her mother’s ranting anymore.
Mary stopped Elizabeth as she entered her room. “Lizzy, may I speak with you?”
Unwilling to abandon all civility, Elizabeth gestured to the door, walked in, and turned expectantly to her sister.
Mary had always been a bit of an odd duck. The poor girl was stuck between two tight groups of siblings trying to find her own way. Elizabeth respected her as a sister and usually thought Mary to be a slightly different sort of silly from her two youngest siblings, but she hoped she would grow out of it… eventually.
“Lizzy, I wish you to understand something Fordyce says: ‘Remember how tender a thing a woman’s reputation is, how hard to preserve and when lost how impossible to recover; how frail many, and how dangerous most of the gifts you have received; what misery and what shame have been often occasioned by abusing them!’”
She looked at Elizabeth as if expecting some sort of reaction, but Elizabeth just waited for her to get it over with.
“I do not think you understand how precarious our position is. It is not our place to pick and choose. God has given man dominion over women for a good reason. If your father has decided that Mr Darcy is to be your husband, it is your place to go meekly and make a good home. It is not for Mr Darcy to get over his anger at how things came about. It is for you to ease his suffering through careful application of the womanly arts. Men are made for decision and action, women for comfort.”
“I retract my earlier assertion, Mary. At this moment, I believe you could give Mother and Lydia competition for the role of the stupidest woman in England. You really believe God has created me in his image to have me owned and degraded for life because my parents arelazy?”
“You are just looking on the worst side of things. They say some people see a glass half-empty and others see it half-full. You see it as half-empty, with dirty water, that you would not drink anyway, even if you were dying of thirst, just out of spite.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Mary, Mary, Mary… that was… that was… well, to tell the truth, it was an amusing turn of phrase, and I commend you. I recommend you spend more time with amusing anecdotes, and less with your Reverend Fordyce. The man is a blithering idiot, and if you want to do something for me, you can refrain from mentioning his name ever again within my hearing.”
Mary gasped. “You are being entirely selfish, Elizabeth,” and in the first bit of true spirit Elizabeth had seen in years, she continued stridently. “Why should you pick and choose, and make the rest of us suffer for your mistakes?”
Angry herself, Elizabeth walked closer and hissed menacingly. “They were not my mistakes. Let us review, shall we.Idanced with a man at a ball.Iasked him a question about a mutual acquaintance.Hedragged me into a corner to shout at me, andour motherengineered a vile compromise. Where is my culpability in that sequence?”
“You are always so sure of yourself and impertinent, I am surprised he did not drag you off for some discipline sooner.”
Elizabeth’s eyes shot open at the blatant stupidity of the assertion, and wondered if somehow Mary, Kitty, and Lydia only had one functioning brain between them.
Taking another tack, she asked, “So then, if Father decides you will marry Mr Collins, you will meekly acquiesce, quoting Fordyce as you go?”
Mary shuddered at the question. While everyone thought Mr Collins might be a good match, she took a terrible aversion to him right from the start, and it got worse over time. Elizabeth had been trying to protect her sister from the greasy little rector for days, mostly by distracting his attention, since she had no qualms about denying his proposal if he had the poor sense to make one.
Elizabeth saw Mary struggling with the hypocrisy of her position, as she would almost rather die than marry Mr Collins, but then she saw the moment her sister resolved the ambiguity by simply rephrasing it in a way that would allow her to ignore the contradiction.
“There is an enormous difference between marrying a handsome, rich, and educated man of the first circles, and marrying a pompous, smelly, and ignorant clergyman. Mr Darcynever asked anyone else in the neighbourhood to dance, so you must have employed some sort of arts and allurements to entice him. You are just mad because you have a disagreeable man for a husband, instead of the mooncalf you no doubt hoped to attract.”
Elizabeth gasped in surprise at the sheer audacity of the assertion. “You think Ienticedthe man?”
“Absolutely!” Mary replied forcefully, unwilling to back down. “You teased, argued, and cajoled. Your behaviour since he came into the county could not be seen as anything but flirting. You are just angry because it did not end the way you wanted it to.”
Elizabeth just stared at her sister. “I have no idea how your mind works, Mary. I really do not. If you think I wasflirtingwith that cretin, well I just… I just… I… well… I mean…” then she just shook her head in confusion. “I cannot continue this conversation because we are not even speaking the same language.”
Mary, standing up straighter than she ever had, got right in Elizabeth’s face. “Do your duty, Elizabeth! You sayyoudo not want to pay for Mother’s actions—wellIdo not want to pay for yours.None of us do!”
“So, you are sanguine with the idea of a sacrificial lamb, as long as it is not you?”
“Do your duty and quit whining!” Mary snapped, then turned and stomped out of the room, while Elizabeth slammed and locked the door behind her.
5.The Windmills of Her Mind
It took all of Elizabeth’s discipline, plus a few hours behind locked doors to get through Wednesday. Everywhere she went, someone had an opinion about her upcoming nuptials.
Mrs Bennet could hardly shut up about it and wanted to drag her daughter through the neighbourhood all day. The only thing that saved her was the fact that in a stubbornness contest, she could easily best a mule and make a good showing against a stone. Elizabeth eventually told her mother that if she was to be dragged through the neighbourhood like a prize heifer, she would say somethingtrulymortifying just to get the miserable experience over with. She would publicly say something bad enough to shame even Lydia.
Half an hour of shouted argument finally caused Mr Bennet to come down on the side of his daughter. Of course, he did so for his own comfort, as he would at least have some peace and quiet while most of his gaggle of wives and daughters were out visiting.
When Mrs Bennet left, Jane stayed behind and waylaid Elizabeth on the way to her room.
“Lizzy, may I speak with you?”
