Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say by Jane Juska Page A

plunged. So great was my exertion and so pleasurable that I forgot that only the darkness obscuredme from public view, I forgot that I had forgotten my sheath, I forgot that my most precious possession was about to fall from my waistcoat. But fall it did. “Ow!” cried Alice, and I looked down to see her foot crushed beneath all 732 pages of my
Anatomy.
At once I withdrew, but not soon enough, for alas, all that I had stored within came rushing forth and spent itself onto
Melancholy
. I fell to my knees, clutching my breeches about my naked haunches, and with my coat sleeve swiped at the cover of my beloved book. “Could have been worse,” called Alice as she limped away. “Might’ve dropped into the water. I’d say you had a bit of luck there, dearie.”
    I had desecrated a sacred object and it wasn’t Alice. It was time to leave this bridge, this city, and return to the country where I and my book might be restored to cleanliness and perhaps even a touch of godliness. The journey looked to be a long one.
    And I, the present-day Mr. Bennet, am relieved that this tale is ended and that the moral therein will be heeded by those who come after.

Ch. 6

    January at Longbourn
    My dear sister!
    How fierce this winter! The driving rain makes roads impassable and we are locked inside most of the day. I do so wish the weather had allowed a visit from you and Mr. Phillips; your company would have made Christmas here less dreary. The children are still too young to take part; Mr. Bennet is even more peevish on holidays if you can imagine and spends most of every day in his library with his recent acquisition, an enormous book with
Melancholy
etched upon its spine. He emerged only to tell me be sure and plant some hellebore, whatever that is. I was happy to see the end of the season.
    But not all my news is doleful, for there is to be a ball!At the grandest house in the county and perhaps all of England! And the host and the man who has leased this fine establishment is none other than Colonel Millar! I hear he is retired from the guard and is to become a man of leisure, lord of Northfield in all its glory. The gardens alone make it a paradise! What shall I wear? I have nothing. I shall have to sew something. Thank goodness Mama stood over us all those years ensuring that our skill with the needle matched the manners she was equally insistent upon. And thank goodness the ball is not so near at hand. I shall have ample time to order fine silk and to turn it into something beautiful. Or perhaps I will seek Mr. Bennet’s permission to engage the talents of Mrs. Salther, the seamstress in the village, whose reputation quite precedes her. He will of course refuse me as he does all my little requests. No matter. I shall not wear a cap at the ball even though married women do. I shall seek to appear as fresh and lovely as I was the day Colonel Millar made me his. I shall go capless and show a proper amount of my breasts, which are as creamy and pert as ever despite little Jane, who would tug them downward at every opportunity. Elizabeth of course apparently sees them not as the fount of life but as weapons against which she fights with her little fists and her surprisingly bellicose jaw. I would swear she was born with teeth.
    And so, to save her from starving and me from throttling her, Elizabeth now lives with a wet nurse at the far end of the village. I visit her every week and often Mr.Bennet joins me; he seems amused at his tiny red-headed vixen who tightens her little fists into balls of fury every time I come near. Truth be told, Mr. Bennet visits her more than once a week and without me. Clearly he favours the impossible Elizabeth over the sweetness of Jane. Perhaps he senses in her rage something akin to his own feelings. I shall never know because he does not confide in me any more than does Elizabeth. Both of them insist on going their own way, preferably without the one who is their wife and