The silence over the dinner table at Longbourn was startlingly long.
Like a hen, attentive to the minute movement of small bugs and worms in the barnyard dirt, Mrs Bennet cocked her head, her eyes bright with that animal cunning. It drew her daughter's notice, one by one, as if in sequence, her daughters also turned their heads and their scrutiny towards the head of the table.
Mr. Bennet cleared his throat, as if his cough had not just brought the din of dinner conversation to a complete and jarring halt. He sipped at his wine glass, and looked up, as if unaware of the intent stares of six pairs of female eyes. He blinked innocently at the scrutiny.
"Mr. Bennet," accused his lady, brandishing her silverware, "you have a Cough."
Mrs. Bennet's fork and knife flashed upwards from her plate like the sabre of a cavalry officer upon a charge, and the capitals of her pronouncement hovered over the crystal of her dinner like dirge-like recitation of a church roll.
"On the contrary, my dear," Mr. Bennet said, his countenance even and his tone deadpan, "it was the strong effusions of your excellent curried lamb that temporarily astonished me. The cough, if there was such a thing, was a compliment to the freshness of your spices, and their strength. The red of the curry was paprika, was it not, from India?"
And looking about him, he deliberately raised his glass as if in toast and nodded to his wife with genteel politeness.
Mrs. Bennet flushed, as was his intention, and accepted the compliment. Elizabeth watched her father roll his eyes at the remains of his bowl of baked apple and custard and hoped they had gotten away with it.
The next morning, alas, it was clear they had not.
Elizabeth had just turned with a full plate from the breakfast laid on the sideboard when she heard her father cough again. Twice in short succession, Mr. Bennet coughed and this time he could make no effort to disguise it. Mrs. Bennet's mouth fell open, and she puffed up, as if drawing in extra air for her next pronouncement.
"It is a cough. Oh my dear Mr. Bennet, you are ill — gravely sick, it is serious, it is a terrible sign—"
"It is signifying nothing," he declared impatiently, interrupting. "It is only a trifling little cough."
Elizabeth promptly sat down, girding herself with her napkin.
Mrs. Bennet responded to other people's illnesses in two ways: if it furthered her ends and means, it was satisfying to her and she made much of it; but, if it did not, she was much put out and bothered that someone other than herself dared to be ill.
The case of Mr. Bennet was a unique one, for although her most desperate fears would be realized by her husband being ill enough to die, it was one of the pleasures of her life to nursemaid him intently, and to flutter about him incessantly when he was slightly ill but still able to appreciate her suffering on his behalf.
Mrs. Bennet was not a moderate nurse. She called for endless streams of nostrums, brews, concoctions and teas; she tried relentless courses of herbs and steeped tinctures; she would call for six pans of water in an hour and three towels cold and three towels hot, and generally exhaust herself in a show of nursing in the first day or two of any illness in the household, after which she promptly took to her own bed of exhaustion and her nerves.
"I do not like little trifling coughs, Mr. Bennet, and I particularly do not like you to have little trifling coughs," Mrs. Bennet sniffed, "as if I would think anything that should happen to you was to be little or trifling at all. No, I must think of your constitution, my dear, your disposition—"
"All your earthly goods," Lizzy said very quietly, behind her teacup. Her father's lips twitched, and Mrs. Bennet froze, then let out a little shriek,
"You would have coughed again! I must ring for Mrs. Hill," Mrs. Bennet fluttered, "Mr. Bennet, you must go immediately and be still at once! We must ready a thin gruel! A hot mustard! We must have blankets! Beds! Buckets!" And on and on she went, a mounting pile of words that grew thinner and more hysterical and insensible by the moment.
Her handkerchief emerged from somewhere and added to the fray, as she began to ring the bell with great rapidity.
"The affliction of illness—" Mary began, but then Lydia gave a great chortling laugh and Kitty joined her after a moment of uncertainty, and Mary's quotation subsided under the general tumult from the foot of the table.
Elizabeth had risen to refill her father's teacup, and having doctored his tea the way he liked it, with honey and a dash of cream, put the tea cup next to her father's hand.
"Thank you, Lizzy," he said, and his tone was rueful. Mr. Bennet did not like to be ill, or to encourage it, and being a relatively healthy and hearty man of six and forty years, with moderate habits and appetite, was not often ill.
When he was, he went on as if he wasn't, retreating to his room more often and allowing himself an indoor scarf and an afternoon nap. Only once had this strategy ever failed him, after a fortnight's worth of drenching and wrestling with the draining in lower meadows, when he had suddenly lost his wits, and collapsed, insensible, in his study. The ensuing chaotic upheaval had firmly determined him never to let it happen again.
Jane was pale, having abandoned eating completely, and she looked earnestly at her father. "I am afraid that I should have made you ill, Papa, by returning from Netherfield."
"It is not but a mere tickle of a cough, dear Jane," he said, taking her hand affectionately, "and I shall be well soon enough."
""People," Lizzy remarked lightly, "do not die of little trifling colds," and she read the mirth in her father's dark eyes as easily as he did hers.