Pomp and Circumstance: A Pride and Prejudice Continuation

Chapter 23: The Necessity of Diversion

But what of Mary Bennet, we may wonder? In what frame of mind has she endured this time at Longbourn, so recently returned as she was from Pemberley, with all its triumphs and wounds still freshly vivid in her memories?

Alas, she was in as poor a state as would be expected. Her days were all draped in a stupor of sensibility; and she drifted through them mechanically, indifferent and oblivious to the life which unfurled and continued around her. When she was not recollecting and reexamining, with painful clarity, her last conversation with Mr. Crawford - and how awful the blow to her heart, each time the name was resurrected within her memories - she was occupying herself with her studies, with a miscellany of menial yet grueling tasks. She could waver, it seemed, between only two states: acute pain, and the numbing absence of all emotion entirely; and preferring the latter, she spent her time copying out long sections of extracts, or memorizing, verbatim, certain chapters of classics tomes; tasks which were wholly uninteresting and unnecessary, but which consumed her time, and tired her.

The most punishing moments for her, were, perhaps, those times in which she suffered the admission of doubt, and in which the prudence of her actions was laid bare under her own scrutiny. Her heart would fill suddenly with the terribly certainty that she had made a grave error - that her judgment, usually so rational, so dependable, had cruelly betrayed her. She might this very moment have secured contentment, and security, and companionship - all three, in one simple acquiescence; but instead, she had forfeited her own happiness, her own comfort, for no earthly reason excepting her baseless fears.

But then there would intrude upon her memory a vision of Mr. Crawford from that morning - his unfamiliar demeanor, his agitation... that condemning moment of hesitation. She had not imagined it. No matter how much she wished it to be so, she could not convince herself that she had imagined it; and she would take the little comfort she could, in that she could not have acted any differently, spoken any differently, even had the whole scene been played out before her once more, at this precise moment. But of course, as far as comfort went, it was paltry earnings indeed.

The prospect of her aunt's forthcoming supper party could inspire no excitement in Mary; at best, she could only regard it with distinct apathy; but soon, even this apathy was no longer possible, for ill portents soon began to appear, to warn her that the evening might not be as indifferent as she would wish it to be. All of a sudden, Mrs. Bennet was very particular in what she wished for Mary to wear; and which accessories with which to adorn her dress; and seemed more in despair than usual at Mary's plain face - at her nose being just a touch too long and too narrow, at her cheeks being slightly too angular, and all the other idiosyncrasies of visage which are such blights upon a mother's soul. So pitiful and earnest were all her mother's laments on this end, that Mary almost could not be abashed by it. However, at last even her patience began to wear thin.

"Perhaps a veil will satisfy you, madam," Mary said sharply; and though Mrs. Bennet had already developed, over many years of marriage, a rather willful obliviousness to sardonic reproach, there must have been some particular note in Mary's tone, which had made her unexpectedly cease in her ministrations. For a brief moment, Mrs. Bennet was made to gape at her daughter dumbly, as if she were a child who had just been severely scolded; and Mary, surprised at her words' effect, reflected that perhaps she had never spoken to her mother so directly before.

There were but a few moments of tense silence, however, before Mrs. Bennet recovered herself, and said, busily, "Oh, but of course, you are still quite young, and I daresay you shall grow into your features yet. There are some, indeed, who much prefer a serious countenance over a gay one. And there is nothing at all with which to find fault in your eyes, I must say; a very particular, striking colour, your eyes." And thus, no more was said upon the topic of Mary's appearance that evening.