Writerly Ambitions by Timothy Underwood

Author:Timothy Underwood [Underwood, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

The inevitable day came when Jane Hawdry returned hopeless and husbandless to that home in whose four brick walls she was born. The day was cloudy, windy, and cold, with splashing showers that lashed the frosty windows and turned the roads soft.

Elizabeth bestirred herself out into the wild cold with Papa and Mama in a warm violet pelisse perfect for this late autumn, when the trees were almost entirely, but not yet wholly, bare. Sister. She would greet her sister and her unknown nieces. The sound of the bright Bennet carriage, returned from retrieving Jane, ground up the way.

The ample chaise pulled in front of the house, and the driver with a pull on the reins and a clicking sound brought the two horses to a stop. The grooms and the Bennet footman came around to open the gaily painted carriage door. Elizabeth noted that the back of the carriage was piled high with trunks. The detritus of a life in Downling ended now.

And Jane.

Yellow haired, pale, not the slightest color in her face, and something distant in her eyes.

She looked awful.

Elizabeth’s heart went out to Jane, seizing up. Jane. Oh poor Jane.

Jane looked as beautiful and young as she ever had: black dress, fringed with black lace, and a dyed black hat. Elizabeth had fallen out of being used to how beautiful her sister was, and she knew that she had lost far more of her youthful bloom than Jane had.

Our heroine considered it unfair that Jane could still be so beautiful when she’d betrayed her own sister.

The one girl was of five, and she jumped out of the carriage to be caught by the footman, and she ran up to Mr. Bennet. “Grandpapa! Grandpapa!”

“Tiny little Lavinia.” Papa smiled sweetly at her and picked the small creature up, swinging her into his arms and around.

The girl then exclaimed, while held high in the air, “Papa died!” And she gripped Papa’s cravat and cried into his chest.

Jane stepped down from the carriage, letting the footman support her with his hand. She held in her arms her younger daughter, a girl of almost two years, who was sleeping. However the girl woke up from the movement of the descent and begged to be put down.

Instead Mrs. Bennet took her from Jane’s arms. “My little Frances! How is my littlest girl?” Mama cooed at the child.

The little girl struggled with her grandmother and started to cry. Mrs. Bennet smothered her with kisses and promised cake.

“Lizzy!” Jane turned to Elizabeth. “Lizzy! Lord! You — you look… you look so well. Oh, my dear Lizzy, how I have missed you!”

Jane threw her arms around Elizabeth.

Elizabeth found she could not. She simply could not, no matter how much Jane grieved, she could not pretend to be happy to see her sister. She could not bring herself to embrace her back, and Elizabeth knew that as a forgiving Christian woman, she was shamed by this inability to act as she ought. As a good Christian would.

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