Jane Bennet arrived in the carriage which Mrs. Bennet owned, despite what Elizabeth considered the absurdity of taking a carriage for a trip of barely more than a mile on a day which, while cloudy, showed little sign of turning to rain, and which was perfectly warm for December.
Or at least perfectly average for December.
Elizabeth confessed to herself, as she watched Jane climb out of the carriage and walk up to knock upon their door, that she searched for cause to dislike Jane. It was actually entirely reasonable for anyone not so obsessed with fresh air and nature as her and Mr. Bennet to take a carriage for a fairly short distance on a cold day.
Before Jane knocked on the door, Mrs. Hill opened the door for her and smilingly greeted what the old woman insisted was a lost daughter of the house. Mrs. Hill had been present as a maid in the days of Mr. Bennet's father, and she had dangled, she told Elizabeth the previous night, the little Jane from her arms in those days before that terrible Mr. Yates came to Meryton and ruined the until then happy marriage of the master and mistress.
It was, according to the servant's view of matters entirely reasonable now that Mr. Yates was dead for Mrs. Yates to make some attempt to reconcile with Elizabeth, and she hoped Elizabeth would find her family very much friends.
Elizabeth observed Jane from the window of their seldom used drawing room, Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth had decided, without directly speaking upon it, that the symbolic heart of their domain, of Longbourn, was the study with all of its books, and thus they would greet Jane Bennet, since that was the name she had kept — according to Charlotte's cynical view, no doubt out of a hope that Mr. Bennet would someday do something for her — in the drawing room and not their study.
The drawing room showed both the comparative frugalness of Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth and their near complete neglect of the room. A few repairs had been executed over the years, and the wallpaper had been replaced in the sequel to a leak that sprung during a serious thunderstorm six years prior which led to the plaster molding. But the furniture was the same furniture that had been bought by Mrs. Bennet in the year of her honeymoon, before Jane was born, and Mrs. Bennet became Mrs. Yates.
This morning Charlotte had called on Elizabeth, desperate to share all the gossip of the Yates arriving.
She wanted, of course, with a burning curiosity to know everything which Elizabeth could say about this shocking matter of Mrs. Yates appearing suddenly. Charlotte related her vague memories of Mrs. Yates from many years before, when she was just a young child, and Mrs. Yates had been one of her mother's friends.
The last day Mrs. Yates had spent speaking with her sister, Mrs. Phillips, who Elizabeth as a matter of practice almost never spoke to, due to her relation to Mrs. Yates.
For Elizabeth's part, she vaguely remembered her grandfather visiting on occasion, but Mr. Bennet had been determined that Elizabeth was to never speak with Mrs. Yates's mother. Papa had done no further business with Mr. Gardiner, who sold out his position cheap to Mr. Phillips with the agreement that Mr. Phillips would marry his other daughter, who was viewed rather askance by most of the gentlemen of the town at this time.
At that time Elizabeth's grandfather had moved to London with his young son, her uncle who she had never met, but who she understood from the general gossip was now well established in a respectable line of business.
That Mrs. Phillips was the sister of that woman was a fact which Elizabeth had always been aware of, and which made her avoid the woman, who she in any case considered to be vulgar, garishly dressed, and lacking even the normal course of cleverness. Elizabeth had only kept up a nodding acquaintance with her aunt, despite seeing her in the street at least a half a dozen times in any month.
Politeness demanded no more, and perhaps even this politeness was too much.
Elizabeth had always believed that Mr. Phillips had decreed that his wife would follow her parents' decree to have no communication with the former Mrs. Bennet. Apparently though at some date this determination had fallen away as now that Mrs. Yates was in Meryton, Mrs. Phillips eagerly talked and laughed, and showed off to her older sister, who was flush with at least ample money to keep this carriage, to rent the biggest suite of rooms in the best inn, and to have the use of an ample company of servants, and to be expensively — by the standards of a modest market town — dressed. Though she was also provincially dressed by the sophisticated standards of such a market town located within thirty miles of London.
Charlotte had conjectured at length on why Mrs. Yates had chosen to make her return. There were no reliable rumors she could report, but as Charlotte said, "Depend upon it. I say, depend upon it. She wants your money for that Jane of hers. And she'll importune Mr. Bennet until she realizes that he'll not be moved. And then she'll importune you, and you'd best harden your heart against this girl now. No matter how agreeable Miss Jane seems, do not trust her. And she'll make effort to burgle Mr. Bingley from under you."
"Mr. Bingley was never under me to be stolen from there," Elizabeth replied acerbically.
And now Jane was here.
The woman entered the drawing room, wearing a pretty yellow dress that fit her perfectly, with slippers that were both elegant and lovely, and with hair that curled perfectly and made her appear as if she had a yellow halo. She also had a sweet face, and a wide, if uncertain and shy, smile.
Elizabeth rather would have preferred to hate her, but she could not.
All three of them looked at each other. Papa stepped forward and pressed his hand on the arm of one of the old couches. "Please sit down. Please."
"I am so delighted you let me be here." She smiled at Papa and sat down. Then she looked at Elizabeth. "Thank you for inviting me, even if you do refuse to speak to Mama."
"I am very glad to have you here." Papa said when Elizabeth made no reply. "I have been like to think Lizzy is the sole good that came from my association with Mrs. Yates, but perhaps…" Papa smiled at the girl. "I do wish to know you. To know you much better. I am glad that there is some way that I can share you, at least a little with your mother."
"Oh yes! I am delighted to see you as well. And…"
Jane turned to Elizabeth with a tentative manner, like a little girl afraid of a big dog. "It has been a dear wish to know my other sister. Mama always told me how I had another sister, and I remembered you every night in my prayers."
Elizabeth resisted the ill mannered urge to roll her eyes. A girl raised by one of such immoral character, who yet made a particular effort to pray every day.
"You will not… shout at me again, I hope?" Jane pressed her hands stiffly together. "Elizabeth, I have so wished to —"
"I would prefer that you do not use my Christian name. We are not yet on such terms of intimacy that I have invited such liberties." Elizabeth's voice echoed coldly in her own ears.
Papa placed a hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. "Lizzy, you are sisters."
"We are not intimates. Miss Jane, what is the nature of intimacy? If a close relationship sufficed to permit one to speak on such intimate terms to another, children would always be rude to their parents, to their aunts and uncles, to their grandparents. So it is clear that the relation between us does not require you to Elizabeth me, and —"
"Lizzy, do not be disagreeable without good occasion," Papa said with an amused voice. "The relation of the older to the younger is what is at question in your example. In families where the father remarries late, an 'aunt' on occasion is younger than a 'niece', and in those cases the older does not deliver the slightest respect to their aunt — but, Jane, I wish to hear you speak, I have ample opportunity to hear myself. How have you been raised?"
"Oh…" The girl's eyes had bounced between Elizabeth and Papa as they amiably quarrelled. "You are both so learned. I barely understood a word you said."
"It was very simple," Elizabeth made a rather harsh reply.
Papa frowned at her, and Elizabeth felt that guilt again.
Elizabeth took a deep breath.
She had promised Papa and herself to subject Jane to a careful and unbiased examination. There would be little to like, she was sure. That was the core hope, the only way Elizabeth's character could be completely uninfluenced by that woman was if education mattered enormously more than blood. Thus Elizabeth and Jane, sharing the same blood, would be similar and easily find a point of connection if the blood relationship mattered, but if the influence of education was paramount, she would find little to like in Jane.
Papa placed his hand cautiously on Jane's shoulder and said. "Do speak to us, about anything that seems of interest to you."
"Oh, about anything?" Jane smiled sweetly. "And given such a command, I can hardly know where to start. I always remembered you both in my prayers. Papa Yates was insistent —"
"Papa Yates?" Mr. Bennet had a pained expression, whose source Elizabeth could grasp easily enough: It was not pleasant to him that his daughter had named another man 'Papa'.
A stab of green jealousy ate at Elizabeth's stomach. Papa ought not care in any respect about Jane, after all, he only really needed her.
"Oh yes, Papa Yates always ensured we prayed, and went to church each Sunday, and we never were to take the Lord's name in vain or act in a manner we would not happily continue in front of Mr. Edwards — he was the vicar. Such a sweet old man. We were dear friends. Papa Yates would invited him to eat with us at least once a month, and —"
Jane babbled on about Papa Yates and all the religious services they went to. Elizabeth caught Papa's eyes as Jane spoke with an expressive curl of her lip. Papa had that sort of half smile that showed he agreed with her, but would not condemn Jane for the strange excess of fanaticism that guilt had motivated in Mr. Yates.
Absurd for an adulterer who took a woman away from her husband to be so religiously minded.
Papa smiled at Jane when her nervous prattle ran out of breath, "Fascinating, my dear, but what about your education? Did you learn any languages? Read poetry, learn to draw, what can you do?"
"Oh well," Jane blushed. "I fear my accomplishments are quite modest. We did not have much money, not till the last five years or so. There was nothing when I was young for the hiring of masters, and even in these past years, Newcastle is so remote from London — and a little cold, though it still is cold here in the south. I quite always thought it would be much warmer in the south. But it isn't so much warmer."
"It is winter," Elizabeth said, "And I dare say if you went so far to the south as Naples you would be warm enough. Do you often have snow in Newcastle?"
"Not so often — it is so very pretty it snows." Jane smiled happily. "I remember two years past, Papa Yates was already a little ill, but he was well that day, and it had snowed heavily the previous three days, and we'd been perfectly warm in our house — we had a new Rumford stove installed that year, and as we are so close to the coal seams, we can burn as much coal as we want. Papa Yates always said that the coal was a tenth part as expensive in the North as it was in London, and that the bulk of the expense in burning coal was carting it from the mine to where it was burnt, and not the difficulty of digging it out of the ground."
Mr. Bennet encouragingly agreed with Jane, "I had read quite the same in the paper one time."
"Oh you have? — So we were very cozy, even on the coldest days of winter. And that day, when we went out, the sun was shining, sparkling against perfectly flat fields of snow, and we were all bundled up, me, Lydia and Mama and me, in muffs and so many wraps, and we drank mulled wine from one of the stands in the market square, and we watched the skaters on a pond, and then there was roast turkey, and drippings, and so much food. It was a very fine day."
Jane sighed and shook her head, "But I must be boring you both."
"Not at all," Papa replied. "But did you go to a grammar school?"
"Oh yes, I went to one of the charity schools — it was supported by Papa Yates, even before his business did so very well. And I had so many friends there. I remember them all. We would walk fifteen minutes from the house to school. The first house that is. When we moved we were even closer. That was when Papa Yates bought a big five story house in the center of town. We lived on the bottom and rented the upper three stories to some clerks from the business of Papa Yates's brother. They would be quite noisy at night, but Mama went up one night, when Papa Yates was quite badly, and told them fiercely to be quiet or else, and ever after that we never had any trouble from them at all."
Elizabeth found herself oddly beginning to warm to Jane. There was something completely artless about her. And Elizabeth was quite sure that if she was trying to put something over on them, she would never mention 'Papa Yates' so often.
Each time Jane referred to him with that affectionate tone, Papa flinched a little. He made a tolerably skilled effort to hide that pain, but Elizabeth knew him too well. And each time he flinched Elizabeth hurt a little too.
There was some odd unexpected voice in Elizabeth's head which casually asked if Papa would have been happier if it was Jane, who was so pretty and so sweet, who had been the daughter who stayed and Elizabeth had been the one with Mrs. Yates.
Elizabeth knew that was ridiculous, but she knew well enough to not expect her feelings to be rational.
After they had spoken for some time, Papa said to Jane with a voice that was more hesitant than his usual incisive questioning, "You are yet to refer to me directly, not once yet in the course of conversation."
"Oh…" Jane blinked disconcerted by Papa's shift in subject. "Well…"
"Well what? It does not matter over much what you call me. After all a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
"That's from Shakespeare!" Jane smiled happily. "I know that."
"Very good, dear." Mr. Bennet said, "But what name do you use for me in your head, since Lizzy is Elizabeth in your mind, when you kept me in your prayers, what did you call me?"
"Well you see… I can't call you Mr. Bennet!" Jane looked aghast at the very idea. "Even though Mama always calls you Mr. Bennet. But I also can't just call you Papa like… like…" She pointed at Elizabeth and finished. "Well I can't refer to you as intimately as her. You raised her."
Elizabeth felt rather guilty. "I will not insist upon that formality. I should not have begun that way. Call me Elizabeth. Or Lizzy. We are sisters, much as I might… wish refuse to admit a connection with your mother, we share the same father."
"You are certain? I do not want to push anything upon anyone unwilling."
"You recognized a line from Shakespeare, you cannot be wholly bad."
"Oh! Thank you! Thank you, Lizzy." For a moment Elizabeth thought that Jane was going to hug her in her pretty enthusiasm for being admitted as a sister.
And then Jane actually did hug Elizabeth.
It felt nice. Elizabeth embraced Charlotte occasionally, or her father. But it wasn't a common thing. They were usually too reserved for that.
Elizabeth looked at Papa. He smiled upon them, with a sort of odd tilted look, like he was surprised but happily so.
Papa said, "Then, Jane, what do you want to call me?"
"Oh, I always have referred to you in my mind as Papa Bennet."
"Ah, to match Mr. Yates being Papa Yates."
"Yes!" Jane replied with a clear eyed prettiness. "He was always such a kind man to me. And he tried to treat me as his own."
"Did he?" Papa looked at his daughter with a strange frown. He tugged at his sideburns and then picked up a book off his desk and started to flip it open before he put it down firmly. "So Mr. Yates had you call him Papa."
"You need not be jealous. You both are my father. A girl can have two fathers. But do say — shall I please you if I call you Papa Bennet?"
Jane leaned towards Papa again, her eyes shining widely.
"Yes," Papa's voice was thick. "You would please me very much."
Elizabeth felt the odd squeak of jealousy again. Jane seemed too sweet, and Elizabeth did not fully like sharing her father's attention with anyone else.
But they were sisters. That was supposed to mean something.