Page 3 of Not Without Me, Miss Elizabeth

"Well, Aunt, we must be on our way. I shall see you Thursday, for tea."

"Good day, Mrs. Phillips," Charlotte added, with a proper curtsy.

"Very well, girls, good day to you both, and mind you keep to the side of the road. Oh, and Elizabeth, do tell your mother of the militia, won't you? I shan't have time to call before tomorrow, and she must hear it from someone."

"Of course, Aunt." Elizabeth smiled once more, and, taking Charlotte's arm, turned them both toward the seamstress's shop.

"The militia, stationed at Meryton, can you credit it, Eliza?" said Charlotte, once they were beyond her aunt's hearing.

"I can scarcely believe it. I do not recall a militia ever being stationed so near us before."

"No, nor I. I have heard of no such outpost anywhere in the county."

They walked on a little way in companionable silence. Elizabeth found her thoughts turning, not unpleasantly, upon what the militia's arrival mightmean for their small corner of the world, increased custom for the shopkeepers, certainly, and no small stir among the neighbourhood's mothers and daughters, with so many young and unattached men suddenly thrown into their society. But she considered, too, that among their number might be soldiers seasoned by the late wars, men who had seen and done things she had only encountered within the pages of a book, honourable, and otherwise. She caught herself biting her lip in reflection, a habit that did not escape Charlotte's notice, though her friend was too discreet to remark upon it as they came within sight of Mrs. Smith's shop.

Their purchases made, the two set off toward home, speaking first of their new sewing projects, and then, inevitably, returning once more to the puzzle of the militia, and what could possibly have recommended Meryton above every other town in England.

"Perhaps," Charlotte offered, as they neared her own door, "Meryton is thought a convenient place to establish an outpost."

"It might be so, but why come south at all, rather than east or west, nearer the coast, where they might embark more readily? I suppose it may be a matter of resources, but I confess the choice strikes me as an odd one. There must be some strategic reason for it that we cannot guess at."

"I daresay you are right. Thank you for the walk, dear Elizabeth."

"The pleasure was entirely mine, dear Charlotte."

The two women embraced, and Elizabeth continued on alone along the travel-worn road toward Longbourn, considerably less eager to deliver her news to her mother than her aunt had charged her to be.

CHAPTER 3

Elizabeth came at last to the entrance of Longbourn, upon whose grounds stood the modest house that had sheltered five generations of Bennets. The line, unhappily, was to end with the present Mr. Bennet, for his eldest daughter could not inherit the estate; and so, in the manner of such families, it stood entailed away to the nearest male relation, one who bore the name of Bennet by no more than the accident of blood. It was no small irony that the last of the Bennets to hold Longbourn should be, of all his line, the most liberal in his opinion of what a woman might accomplish, a conviction he was fond of illustrating by reference to his second daughter.

Elizabeth paused a moment beneath the modest, faux-Roman columns that framed the door, and considered her home with no small tenderness. Its very aspect filled her with comfort and a sense of safety she could not have put easily into words. For all her mother's nerves, her youngest sisters' high spirits, Mary's earnest solemnity, Jane's unfailing sweetness, and her father's habitual indolence, Elizabeth could not conceive of Longbourn without them, nor endure with any composure the thought of the day it must pass into the hands of a Mr. Collins; she could only hope her father's health would be spared them for many years yet.

Elizabeth opened the wide doors and drew a steadying breath, well aware of what awaited her the moment she set foot, dust and all, into the family's favourite parlour.

She had scarcely crossed the threshold before her mother's voice reached her.

"Why, Elizabeth! Is that you, come back from Meryton at last? Come here, child!" Mrs. Bennet came forward and seized her daughter's hand. "What can have kept you so long? Whom did you see? Did you go to Mrs. Smith's? What have you brought back?"

"Good afternoon, Mama. Yes, we did call at Mrs. Smith's. I have several things to show you presently. Charlotte and I went first to Mr. Miles's, where she purchased a book for John, and from there to Mrs. Smith's. But on our way we met my aunt Phillips, who tells us that a regiment of militia is to be stationed just outside Meryton this summer."

"The militia! Good heavens! This very summer?"

Elizabeth inclined her head, suppressing with some effort the frown that threatened to overtake her countenance. "Yes, Mama. They are already beginning to arrive, and are to be stationed just outside the town."

"Oh, Lizzy! I can scarcely credit it! Arriving already, and no word of warning! What a very fine thing indeed! Our own Meryton, with a militia! Girls, girls! Do you hear? We are to have a militia!" Mrs. Bennet's delight was not to be contained, her mind leaping at once to the pleasing prospect of so many unattached young men descending upon the neighbourhood, and, if fortune favoured her, a colonel among them, which would be a very fine thing indeed.

Being mother to five unmarried daughters, and their father's estate entailed away from them all, Mrs. Bennet had long occupied herself with little else than securing her girls' futures by the only means available to her, a good marriage. She had herself been raised outside the gentry, the daughter of a country attorney, and had recommended herself to a young Mr. Bennet chiefly by a pretty face, so that he had proposed within three days of their acquaintance and married her within the fortnight. He had discovered soon enough, and to his lasting resignation, that his young wife's understanding was as slight as her person was pleasing, and that her nerves were to become the frequent and familiar companions of his domestic hours.

Having delivered her news, Mrs. Bennet turned at once to the surest audience for it, her youngest daughters. Kitty and Lydia received the intelligencewith transports of joy in which their mother was not slow to join. Mary, absorbed in a chapter of Fordyce'sSermons to Young Women, appeared not to hear it, or else declined to be diverted from her reading. Jane alone turned her sweet countenance toward Elizabeth, and Elizabeth answered with the lift of a single eyebrow, a look that passed between the two sisters more eloquently than any words, for none knew Elizabeth's mind so well as Jane, who returned her look with a small, knowing shake of the head, well aware that her sister took no pleasure in their mother's raptures.

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Grateful for once for her mother's distraction, Elizabeth slipped quietly from the parlour and made her way down the oak-panelled hall, hung with the portraits of Bennets long since gone, the carpet beneath her feet worn thin by generations of use the family's means had never quite permitted them to renew. At its end she came to a heavy, finely carved door, upon which she knocked, and was bid to enter.

Within, the room held its familiar scent of worn pages and pipe-smoke, the candles burning low against the gathering dusk. Her father sat near a low fire in his great worn chair, his hair touched with grey, his side-whiskers thick, a book open in his hand and his spectacles perched upon his nose. Elizabeth had always privately called it his scholarly figure, neither stout nor spare, and she smiled to find him so.

"Well, Lizzy, how does Meryton go on?"