Where old grudges and tragedies are revealed..

Chapter 47: Pemberley Reconciliation

Derbyshire, Pemberley, Thursday the thirteenth August. Ninth day

"Could I speak to you, Mama?"

Mrs. Bennet looked up from the plan for the wedding breakfast Mrs. Reynolds had proposed and determined it was, as usual with efficient Mrs. Reynolds, quite perfect.

"Of course, dear, you can. Why would I refuse such a demand?"

Elizabeth inhaled and tried a small smile.

This was not going to be easy...

"Perhaps because you have no desire to speak with one who for the last days has been utterly unpleasant and has shown an absolute lack of respect for her mother?"

Mrs. Bennet looked her in the eyes and smiled at her before standing up and taking her daughter's hands in hers.

"Dear, I know I have not been the mother you wished for..."

Elizabeth tried to protest but a glance from her mother shut her up.

"...And I know very well that in numerous social situations you have cursed the circumstances which gave you a mother such as me..."

Her smile became a very tired one.

"...I'm not totally silly, dear, I have seen the way you sometimes looked at me. I have never taken pride in being the disgrace of the family..."

"Mama!"

Mrs. Bennet shook her head.

"Please let me speak, dear, for once we are both of one mind to speak the truth and be honest with each other, please don't be just polite. I need more than just polite, I need honesty and trust."

Elizabeth could do nothing but nod her head. She really didn't know what to say. She had come to make an apology, share an embrace with her mother and put an end to all that tension which had been souring their relationship.

But she never intended to humiliate her mother.

"Of course, Mama, but couldn't we just..."

"Tsk, tsk, dear. That would not be enough. We both need to say the truth. We both need to be absolutely truthful with each other."

A smile Elizabeth had never seen blossomed on Mrs. Bennet's face. She looked twenty-years younger and Elizabeth was very surprised how handsome her mother could be when she was not pulled down by grief and anguish.

"I really would like to have the opportunity to be a guest in my Darcy grandchildren's house. And I am quite sure that, in your current mood, you'll be more than happy to see that silly old woman disappear from you and your family's life..."

Elizabeth shook her head with vehemence.

"Mama, nev..."

"Trust and honesty?"

That shut up Elizabeth better than any other argument.

Of course her mother was right. She had longed for her departure, she had wished her in London and her father at Pemberley.

"Let's find a spot where we can speak, dear," said her mother while pulling her toward the little guest study where she and Mrs. Reynolds and aunt Gardiner spent most of their wedding-preparation time.

The French doors were open and they had a perfect view of Pemberley's lake. Elizabeth had often seen her mother sitting there and dreaming while looking at the sparkling waters.

But never had she found the desire to sit with her.

Mrs. Bennet chose the little sofa and they sat side by side, her mother's hands still holding hers.

After a moment of stiff silence, Mrs. Bennet began to speak.

"First of all, dear, I must apologize."

"What for? You..."

Her mother stopped her sentence with a glance. Full of –unsuspected-- love and a very disturbing strong will.

"I must apologize because I did neglect you when you were young..."

Since that was clearly something Elizabeth had always blamed her mother for, she said nothing.

Mrs. Bennet shook her head and went on.

"I swear I am not going to hide behind excuses, but to understand why I did neglect you and Jane, you must know something only your father and Aunt Philips and Aunt Gardiner know."

She sighed.

"Are you ready to listen?"

Elizabeth could only nod unable as she was to utter a word.

Mrs. Bennet looked at the waters of Pemberley Lake.

It reminded her of the lake where a young and dashing Eddy Bennet had proposed to her.

Where her life had been altered forever.

"I am not, and I never was, the most clever of women." She stopped Lizzie's attempt to protest with a raised eyebrow. "But from the beginning I was aware that your father did not marry me out of a mad feeling for me but out of a deception that he suffered prior to encountering me."

She smiled at her daughter.

"I loved him madly. He was so..." she hesitated. "So clever, so handsome and he had that way with words to convince me at once that I would give everything to hear him whisper poems into my ears..."

She looked at their hands and nodded once more.

"But he didn't love me. Not in the way I loved him. He liked me, liked me very much and he was quite smitten with my beauty but it was never the love I wished for."

She sighed.

"But I felt that he would stay with me if I could convince him that the tragedy he suffered would never be really healed but with another woman. And being very near to him, I had the best chances to be the chosen one."

She smiled at old memories.

"He was not so difficult to convince and soon, with Jane's birth, our relationship changed for the better. He was a proud father and a solicitous husband and since the Gardiner women are known for their ability to bear lots of children, we had a second daughter on which my Eddy doted even more than on the first..."

She looked at Elizabeth.

"Not that he ever neglected Jane but you were so lively, so full of mischief and energy that he probably recognized himself in you. And soon he was aware that you had also inherited his wit and his cleverness. From that day on, you were his favorite."

There was a moment of silence.

"And than came Mary and Kitty..."

She sighed again.

"And there we made our greatest mistake. I knew he was not very easy with babies around him. He had always shunned the trivial and menial tasks of feeding and cleaning the little ones. He was much more confident with toddlers and young children. So I took the burden of the babies and he accepted the task of educating you..."

She shook her head as if she was acknowledging the old mistake.

"I was sure that after the first two years, when we would be sure that the babies were out of that dangerous period where they could die, I'd be with you again..."

She sighed.

"Than came Lydia and two other years were necessary. And she was so like I would have wished all of you to be that I took great pleasure in tending to her. And so, little by little, I lost you..."

She took a deep breath and gulped down as if something was shocking her.

"And then came the tragedy which divided us, your father and me..."

She looked her daughter directly in the eyes.

"It happened the day following your brother's demise."

She could even smile at her daughter's huge and surprised eyes.

"Indeed, you had a brother. He was my seventh and my first son. He lived a night before dying..."

She shook her head and tears came to her eyes and she couldn't swallow.

Elizabeth took her into her embrace and helped soothe her.

"He looked so healthy, dear. We were quite sure he would live."

She looked at Elizabeth with tearful eyes.

"I know they don't do it so soon but I'm sure he smiled to me just before gliding into his first sleep. The sleep he would never awake from..."

There she broke into tears for a very long time but Elizabeth was lost in a sort of haze where she tried to put together her own memories. Her mother had said that her brother had been the seventh that could only mean that she had had another sister who died before she had even known of her existence.

After a certain time her mother was able to come out of her sadness.

"You should have seen the happy face of your father while holding little Edward. All the fears of the last years had dissolved into the pure bliss of the baby's blue eyes. For the first time in years we could consider the future without anguish and fear. You had a brother and Longbourn would never become the Collins' home..."

Soon new tears came and shattered Mrs. Bennet's composure.

"I drifted into sleep and it was your father's howl that tore me out of it... I opened my eyes and I saw him with the baby in his arms and he was desperate and crying. I knew immediately what had happened. He cried a few more seconds than he stopped, gave me my son and went out of our bedroom..."

She shook her head and new tears rolled on her cheeks.

"He never said a word to me. He just handed me Edward's little corpse and then he went out... He didn't even say a word to me..."

She repeated and repeated this sentence over and over again.

Then she opened her eyes and looked into Elizabeth's eyes.

"And the next two months he never came back to our room and never spoke a word with me."

She bit her lips.

"These two months were pure hell and these two months robbed me of what was left of my sanity..."

After very long minutes she took a deep breath and shook her head.

"The only thing that kept me alive was my duty to the girls. I couldn't let them, I had to continue. I did what I could but I was never again the same. Kitty and Lydia being very young they never really grasped what had happened to me. But Mary, Mary..."

Mrs. Bennet looked at her daughter.

"Mary took it all on her. She was every minute at my side and did everything in her power to alleviate my sorrow. It was then that she became so dull and serious... It's all my fault..."

Once more Elizabeth took her mother in her arms and they cried together for a long time.

Then Mrs. Bennet came, once more, out of her depression.

"I felt guilty, Elizabeth and since my husband would no more speak with me, I went to the reverend to get what solace he could give me. And Mary was always at my side when old Pastor Brewster who was a man full of easy judgments and prompt condemnations, gave us his biblical advice. Mary took the full brunt of his sermons and she came out of that crisis as she is now..." She shook her head. "The most horrible thing with my visits to Brewster was that he was never ever able to give me an explanation why my little Eddy had to die. He could only stammer of God's Will but he was always unable to explain why God could be so unforgiving as to let die an innocent child..."

She took another deep breath and cleaned her wet face.

"And so I lost in the same year, my son, my husband and my faith..."

She took her daughter's head into her hands and kissed her.

"And you, too, dear... I was too cowardly to find the courage to go to your father in order to sort out our mess and so the Bennets were no longer a real family. He would take care of you and Jane and I would take care of the youngest. He wouldn't look at them and I wouldn't care about you... They were without a father and you were without a mother..."

She sniffed.

"Not that it handicapped you in the least, dear. You're so perfect. You and Jane you have found the perfect husbands and you'll be rich and famous. My girls, because I deprived them of their father, will forever be the silliest girls in all England and without your help will probably never find a husband..."

At that very moment, grudges, guilt, pride and arrogance dissolved themselves in Lizzie to come out as tears and for the second time in a few hours and in twenty-two years, Elizabeth Bennet wept into her mother's shoulder.

While weeping Elizabeth had time to think. And her thoughts were not happy ones.

Here was proud and haughty Elizabeth Bennet, full of arrogance and so sure that she was perfect.

And she had done nothing but misjudge and condemn without even searching at the reasons behind the facts.

Clever, superior Elizabeth Bennet who was, in the end, nothing more than a haughty egoistical haridan.

Jane, who clearly was a Saint had never judged her mother as she had done all her life. While she was condemning the –most untoward-- behavior of her mother Jane had always looked for reasons to excuse her, defending her, helping her.

Elizabeth Bennet, on the other hand, had never even tried to understand what were the reasons behind her mother's foolish behavior.

It had been so easy to judge and condemn and reject that silly old woman who she was never able to accept as her mother.

She felt shame and guilt taking hold of her.

She could not not remember her childhood fantasies where she saw herself not as Mrs. Bennet daughter but as a child her father had found and educated against the avaricious and unkind opinion of his wife. And those fantasies always ended with her real family coming and getting her. And she would be released of her odious step mother to find a real and loving family...

Here and there she felt she could die of shame.

How could she have been so heartless, so insensitive?

What would happen to her if her husband treated her like her mother has been treated?

Would she even be able to survive a two-months' silence?

Would she had found in herself the strength to go on, to care for the little ones?

She doubted it.

And her mother was guilt ridden because of, if she could, for once, be honest, what was her father's doing.

She could understand what had happened.
She knew him well and she had, a long time ago, fathomed that his sadness was solitary. When hurting he had the tendency to hide and seclude himself from the world, to remain silent for days.

She could only imagine how he must have hurt to remain hidden two long months.

But understanding it was in no way a reason to excuse him for what he had done to her mother.

She knew that, had she been in her mother's place, she would have been in need of two strong arms hugging her and a patient ear listening to her...

And she would have died if she had had that horrible impression that he was condemning her, that he was implying that she was responsible...

And so one more of these truths Elizabeth Bennet was worshiping is shattered and proven false.

Mighty, clever, all-understanding Elizabeth Bennet has just spent twenty years of her life side by side with a woman she was not only unable to understand but too cold-hearted to even attempt to find an excuse for her behavior.

It was so much easier to believe that she was of another lineage and that she and that crazy little bunch of hysteric humanity had nothing in common.

She hugged her mother with a force she had not found in her for years.

"Mama, it's not true. You've done everything for us you could. Even when we were young you did what you could. Neither Jane nor I were ever alone with only Papa. You were always there. Always."

She went back to an argument her mother has used.

"And don't forget it's your decision that brought me and Fitzwilliam together. You did what had to be done. You did it with your sensitivity and my happiness is not only Papa's doing but also yours... You're not as silly as you think. You're just different and you just do things differently."

She sniffed loudly.

"Mama, please forgive me..."

"Nothing... to forgive, dear... Parent's fault... Never spoke... Children too young... To understand..."

Elizabeth could only shook her head.

How could this woman she had so often spurned defend her and take upon herself all the guilt?

"Not true, Mama... Much to be forgiven... I love you... Please... Always did, just forgot it..."

Kitty smiled at Georgiana and they both climbed from behind the shutters. They hushed their way toward the garden.

"You have an idea where we could find your brother?"

Georgiana thought about it.

"At this time he is probably at the stables..."

Kitty took her hand.

"Well, let us go and get him. I know a certain sister who will be in dire need of two strong arms and a welcoming shoulder..."

"Did you know the truth?"

"Yes, Mary told us when we were little girls. She's a bore but she believes that siblings must know what happened in the family. I never would have believed that Lizzie and Jane had no idea about what we call the 'Bennet tragedy' when we speak of it. We were just thinking that they, like the parents, didn't want to refer to it..."

"It's a sad story..."

"Not sadder than growing up without a mother or a father, dear. Life is rarely easy and very rarely fair."

She smiled at her friend.

"But then, there are those love stories with happy endings who, from time to time, sweeten the sad existences of us poor maids..."

They both laughed and hurried to get Fitzwilliam.

Next chapter: Pemberley Pas de deux