Page 2 of The Fee Entail

Elizabeth sounded as though she was preparing to walk away from the confrontation, but her father was apparently not yet finished.

“It is not that simple, Elizabeth.”

The rustle of skirts and stomping of booted feet suggested she turned sharply back towards him. I wished beyond reason I could move to where I could see her, but I dared not.

“I told you, do not call me that! I will not remind you again,” she said in obvious seething anger.

Apparently trying to rein in his own temper, Mr Bennet continued.

“Very well, Mrs Collins! You say your husband will not survive more than two years. I must inform you that I will not survive much longer than that.”

For several moments, she made no reply, while I waited, wondering what answer she could possibly give.

“Good.”

“Have you no concern for your parents or sisters?” For the first time, there was unmistakable pain in his voice.

“How dare you!” she seethed. “My sisters are all I care about in this world! You and your wife forced me into this marriage, ostensibly to save them, but never had enough honesty to admit you sacrificed my life to make up for your deficiencies as parents. Five and twenty years you had to save, and yet not a single daughter has a dowry. Five and twenty years of your wife spending money like water, and you spending your share on books. Not a single dowry. You raised one sweet and genteel lady and four hoydens. Only one of your daughters has ever fallen in love, and you and your wife drove away the only decent suitor any of us ever had with her ill-breeding, bad manners, and mercenary ways. All the while, you stood aside laughing like Nero at your own family while it destroyed itself. So again, I say, how dare you! As for parents, I have none! I am finished with both of you.”

She laid the blame entirely at their feet, though I could no longer be certain it belonged there alone.

Her father seemed both defeated and resolute in the face of her fury. Who would not be?

“I will accept my due censure, but do you truly believe all your sisters’ problems will be over when Mr Collins and I are dead and buried?”

“Perhaps not, but I shall be rid of both of you, much to my satisfaction.”

“Perhaps to your satisfaction, but not to the benefit of your sisters.”

Elizabeth paused, while I held my breath in anticipation.

“The entail ends with this generation,” she finally said. “Even I know that, so simply will Longbourn to Jane.”

“There are two problems with your thinking,” he sighed resignedly. “The first is that, even if Mr Collins died before me and there was no other man entitled under the settlement, Longbourn would pass in equal shares to all five of my daughters. I could not leave it to Jane alone. If the estate were broken up, none would be sufficient to support its mistress, let alone your other sisters. Do you truly believe your sisters will all, or even mostly, be married well within the next year or two, considering Lydia’s shame?”

“Only if you strangle your wife in her sleep.”

I could almost hear Mr Bennet grinding his teeth at the heartlessness of the reply.

“There is an even worse problem. It turns out that Mr Collins is not the very last living distant male relative. There is one even more distant cousin who descends through my great-grandfather. Since the entail ends with this generation, the next master could not only throw the Bennets out into the hedgerows without a thought, but he could sell the estate and gamble all the proceeds away if he so chose. Your sisters would have nothing at all. I am only a life tenant and very constrained in what I may do. The next master will be an owner in fee simple and may do just as he pleases.”

The old man was obviously playing mercilessly on her sympathies for her sisters, and I was sorely tempted to call the man out myself; but I had to admit he seemed correct on the points of law, as far as I understood.

She gave a resigned sigh. “Who is this mysterious heir that you will no doubt chain one of your other daughters to?”

“He is not a man willing to marry a Bennet, I fear.”

“His name?”

“George Wickham.”

Desperation

Mr Bennet

Elizabeth gasped in shock, as I mostly expected, but schooled herself into a mask of iron in amazingly short order. At that moment, she seemed prepared to murder me on the spot. My Lizzy had never been so vindictive, and she was the cleverest of my daughters, so she surely must have worked out that this was the only way to save the family.

How could she hold this marriage against me with such venom? Certainly, I could have done better by my girls, but I at least gave her a good education and a good living. She was to be mistress of Longbourn and well secured for life. Given the confined and unvarying society we lived in, how could she expect better?