Page 4 of Hard Home

It is a thing not much spoken of in company, though every woman in Hertfordshire knows it. An Accord runs in the blood, and a woman's blood is spent twice: once in the braiding, and once in every child she bears. Mrs. Bennet had come to Longbourn four-and-twenty years before with a gift that could quiet a room — not compulsion, nothing so grand, only a warmth, a way of making people wish to be agreeable — and she had spent it five times over on five daughters, and what remained of it now was noise. She had been very handsome. She had been, by every account but her own, rather charming.Nobody said so any longer, least of all her husband, who had married her for it and had never once in four-and-twenty years said thank you.

Elizabeth had worked this out at fourteen and had never been able to unwork it.

"Mr. Bennet," said her mother, "how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves."

"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least."

"Ah, you do not know what I suffer."

"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year and a sound line come into the neighborhood."

"It will be of no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them."

"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all."

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Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of four-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters braided; its solace was visiting and news.

And she was, in the one thing that signified, entirely right, and everybody who laughed at her was entirely wrong.

For Longbourn's Accord was entailed upon the male line.

Elizabeth had been shown the deed once, at eleven, when her father was in one of his moods for instructing children in thingsthat would only frighten them. It was not a deed. It was older than deeds. It was a strip of something that was not vellum, folded three times, and the letters on it moved a little if you did not look at them directly, and her father had held it up to the window and read out the operative clause in the tone of a man reading a bill from his wine merchant.

To the heirs male of the body.

Four words. What they meant, in the plain language nobody at Longbourn used, was this: the land had bargained with a man, and would be held by a man, and when Mr. Bennet died without a son the bargain concluded. Not transferred —concluded. The Accord would sever, and Longbourn would pass to the nearest male of the line, a clergyman in Kent none of them had met, and the land would consider his claim and either take him or not.

And the five Miss Bennets, whose gifts came to them through their father's bond and not their own, would find, on the morning after his funeral, that they had none.

Not diminished. Not weakened. Gone, as a fire is gone when the log is taken out from under it.

Jane would lose her steadiness — that quality that made a frightened horse stand and a crying child stop, and which everyone in Meryton called sweetness because they had no better word. Mary would lose whatever small thing she had never been able to do properly anyway and had studied so grimly to deserve. Kitty and Lydia would lose things they had never troubled to name. And Elizabeth would lose her sight.

She did not think about this often. She had a system for not thinking about it, which was to be amusing, and it had served her very well for six years.

Her father was one-and-fifty.

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"You must go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighborhood," said Mrs. Bennet, some hours later, havinggone away and come back with the same subject entirely undiminished, in the manner of the tide.

"I will not."

"But consider your daughters. Only consider what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no new comers. Indeed youmustgo, for it will be impossible forusto visit him, if you do not."

"You are over scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his braiding with whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humored as Lydia. But you are always givingherthe preference."

"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."

"Mr. Bennet, howcanyou abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me."

"You mistake me, my dear."

"I do not," said Mrs. Bennet.