Page 28 of The Widower of Pemberley

Elizabeth shook her head. “I simply have been thinking about matters. But what is done is done. Speaking about such things will not change them.”

“Which things?” His frown deepened.

Elizabeth shrugged. She was not used to feeling such harsh judgment towards her father, and she did not much like the sensation. Instead of speaking about it, she kissed him on the cheek and went to the drawing room to sit with Jane and her other sisters.

While Elizabeth did not wholly let go of the anger that she had held towards her mother for the past five years, what Mr. Darcy had said about how her behaviour had been motivated by proper concern and correct feelings stuck in Elizabeth’s head. She looked at her mother with more kindness and acceptance—that was good.

Mrs. Bennet was like a character in a Greek tragedy, whose desperate efforts to avoid a terrible fate brought that fate about in the end.

Her father’s ill mood remained for the whole of the evening, and several times he complained about particular tiredness. Whenhe went to leave the drawing room, he tripped over his own feet and smiled at Elizabeth when she helped him up. “Nothing, just a little dizzy. It will pass soon.”

The next day when they sat for breakfast, he still appeared tired, though he had a cheerful manner and tried to offer a joke that he thought would be delightful.

But Elizabeth fancied that his face drooped on one side. She tried to convince herself that was not the case as a stab of terrible anxiety surged through her.

“Well,” her father said, “I hope Mrs. Bennet that you have, that is, dinner. I have thing, place, um, reason to expect a guest for dinner today.”

“Mr. Bingley!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. She looked at Elizabeth with delight. “You told me nothing of him coming to dine.”

“No, not Mr. Bingley. It is a person I have never met in my life.” Mr. Bennet smiled. Then he frowned. He gripped one arm with the other. “So odd. Leg, no, no. Good—I mean bad. Person death. I mean place. I mean—my bottom, top. I need the butcher.”

He tried to stand, failed, and collapsed back into his chair, his eyes wild and unseeing.

Mrs. Bennet screamed, which made Lydia and Kitty scream as well. Mary gasped and stared white-faced at their father. Jane had a confused and quizzical look as she turned her head towards him.

Elizabeth stood with a sense of the deepest horror. She had no notion of what to do but to call for the physician.

She rang the bell and hurried to her father to loosen his cravat and splash his face with water.

He stared blankly at her and opened his mouth, but only an inarticulate sound came out, no words.

The whole side of his face was fallen in. He tried to push her off with his arm, but it was too weak to have any effect.

Mrs. Hill came in and screamed to see the mistress and two of the young ladies screaming as well.

Mary had gone to Jane and was telling her what had happened.

With a sharp command to the housekeeper, Elizabeth ordered her to send a boy for the physician. “We must have Doctor Cliff. Mr. Jones will not be enough. But ask him to come as well if he might. Then bring the men to carry Papa to the sofa in the drawing room. That is a better place for him than this chair.”

“Oh my, oh my,” Mrs. Hill said. “He looks just like my old father the day he died.”

This brought a piteous moan from Mrs. Bennet. “Oh, oh, oh! And we shall be thrown out into the hedgerows!”

“Silence, madam,” Elizabeth hissed at her mother. “Do you wish to make matters worse for Papa?”

The screaming women fell silent, their faces solemn.

Mr. Bennet’s eyes were open, and at times it seemed as though he wished to speak, but no sound came out. His breathing was heavy and laboured. After an eternity, though likely it was not an entire minute, the manservants who had not been sent for the physician gathered in the room, and then with an anxious “one, two, three” they picked up her father and followed Elizabeth’s instructions to carry him to the drawing room.

In the horror of the situation, as they carried her papa’s almost limp body across the hall, Elizabeth had a moment of terror for the future.

Every time that her mother had spoken of her fear of her father dying, he had declared himself to be in the best of health andlikely to outlive her, even though he was nearly ten years her elder.

Elizabeth had simply believed him.

He was not much past fifty, and he never seemed old to her. The experience of Jane’s illness had not prepared Elizabeth for the possibility that her father might suddenly die, with all that would follow after his death.

He was laid out on the sofa and breathed with a snoring sound. His eyes were now closed, and the pulse in his throat was visible. Smelling salts were brought by Mrs. Hill and applied to his nose by Elizabeth, but while he drew his head away from the scent and opened his eyes briefly, they made no other impression and did not rouse him.