by Don Jacobson
He, himself, had penned a monograph in which he had employed the findings from excavations of the ruins atop Oakham.[xliii] His colleagues at Cambridge had been perplexed to find old strongholds or watchtowers using even older stockades as foundations; stacking fortifications like so many pancakes.[xliv] Bennet had demonstrated, through the use of recovered artifacts, that the Romans as well as certain predecessor Celts had taken advantage of the full-circle field of vision afforded from the crest, effectively pushing the history of the Meryton region back by 2,000 years.
Thus, Fanny had the right of it, almost as if she had read his essay. Not only had the dainty booted feet of Elizabeth Rose Bennet trod this path, but also those sporting medieval English clogs and imperial Roman sandals. Perhaps the leathery bare feet of Wessex warriors were the first to ascend the chalky slopes. Oakham’s prominence above Longbourn’s rolling fields gave its owner control of the reaches of the Mimram Valley as it coursed through the alluvial deposits between the shire and the Thames.
Bennet stopped for a moment—as much to catch his breath as to respond to his wife—and asked, “Have you been listening at the door as Lizzy and I talked about archaeology?”
At his wife’s look of reproof, he raised his hands in defense and quickly added, “I was simply teasing, my dear. I was offering what turned out to be, I am afraid, a backhanded compliment. I am afraid, Fanny, that I will have to relearn proper behavior. I have been lax, and you have been the victim.
“Let me try a ‘forehand’ compliment.
“As you said, you have never climbed Oakham through all the years of your life. Yet, you just offered a sophisticated reading of the apparent antiquity of the path beneath our feet.
“You may recall my journey up to Cambridge in ’03. T’was then that I delivered my paper Considerations on the History and Pre-History of the Mimram Valley in Roman and Celtic Hertford to the fellows at Trinity.[xlv] You may have heard me mention the late Professor Gibbons. I thought to revise his assessment of the historiography of the scholars of the last century…”
His voice tailed off when he almost heard an audible
She asked coquettishly, “And the compliment?”
Bennet stammered, having lost his ability to speak when she had speared him with those sparkling beams emanating from her orbs, “Uh…I meant to say…that…you sounded just like Elizabeth. Oh, no, not that…rather that Lizzy sounded like you! No…uuuh.”
He stopped talking, and, using his long legs, loped up the hill a few paces, leaving Mrs. Bennet standing where she had halted. He then arrested his flight, and froze in place, his back to the lady, one fisted hand planted in the small of his back, the thumb worrying the forefinger as he sought to regain his composure. Mrs. Bennet, using the wisdom earned through a quarter century of managing her husband, waited for his assured return.
After two or three minutes, during which she closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of the birds calling to one another across the forest, he rejoined her.
At first, a solemn Bennet faced his wife. Then the façade cracked to allow the wry Thomas to escape. He had begun to smile before long. Finally, he spoke to her.
“I thought I had become immune to your arts and allurements, so long has it been since I have appreciated you as an object of desire. Yet, when you turn those lighthouses of your soul…your incredible eyes…my way, I nearly forget how to breathe.
“Miss Frances, for now I address you as such because you sparkle much like the girl who poured me tea in her mother’s parlor facing out onto Meryton’s High Street, you are nonpareil. You are an original. You are the woman without whom I would not have become half the man I am today.
“Wait, that statement is not well put for you may believe I am implying that I became the indolent man I am because of you.
“On the contrary, I would have only become more lackadaisical and more withdrawn in my own anguish and pain if you had not found your way Home from whatever ring of Hades where you had found yourself after that horrible day in the Year Zero. Only the good Lord knows what would have happened to our girls if you had withered like a bloom way past its prime.
“Even though you were distracted, you found the path back to becoming the Mistress of my house and the truest, fiercest, and, might I suggest, only defender of our daughters.”
He paused, grief coloring his hazel eyes as he recalled all those years he had closed his heart to the woman he had loved for nearly a dozen before.
In a voice thick with emotion, Bennet continued, “As you so aptly noted earlier, I have the ability to convince myself of the veracity of my acts. And, upon reflection, that is what I did with you.
“T’was easier to ascribe your uneven moods to nerves or silliness. That allowed me to ignore my responsibility to you—for did I not vow to protect you that day you changed your surname to mine? However, what did I do to help you ride the waves of loss? Nothing…absolutely nothing!”
He shook himself like a sheepdog as if doing so would rearrange his turbulent feelings around his longish frame.
“Frances Lorinda, you are the soul that makes my life meaningful. I had forgotten that singular fact and, instead, began to find all the ways I could moderate and diminish my respect for you because I had lost my own self-respect. And convincing myself that you had a second-rate mind was the worst of my transgressions!
“True, you are unschooled as are almost all women in England. And, unlike Madame de Staël, you never had the advantage of a parent who would see to your informal education.[xlvi] That you bravely entered Longbourn, the estate of a Cambridge don, as the younger daughter of a country solicitor, and meekly submitted to instruction from first Sally Hill and then our current Mrs. Hill, speaks volumes about your modesty and self-effacement.
“Every step of the way you never asked what was best for you, only your family and Longbourn. I could not be prouder of you or your list of accomplishments that, I assure you, would put any female of the ton to shame. I imagine they would succumb to fits of vapors if they had to undertake half of what you have done since ’89!
“Now, all that remains is for me to beg your forgiveness and pray that I will live long enough to earn it.”
There amongst the softly swaying blades growing in the shade of Oakham’s boughs, Mrs. Bennet forgave Mr. Bennet in the tenderness of her wifely embrace.
Chapter XIV
Bennet propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at the diminutive figure of his lady who adorably dozed, her energies spent after they had wrestled as one.[xlvii] Mrs. Bennet’s cheek was snuggled into the nap of the lamb’s wool throw. Her left arm was casually extended above her head; the hand’s fingers still entwined with the leaves of grass as they had been when she cried out her love for him. Her gown had been put to rights, although the lace on the bodice cried out, in its turn, for urgent repair. But, in its dishevelment, the violated modesty shield revealed the mottled love stain still suffusing Mrs. Bennet’s chest and throat, even after fifteen minutes.
The warm Hertfordshire summer air flowed across his body, finding various patches of exposed skin, cooling his passion only in its aging immediacy, not its recalled fervor. T’was as if they had left twenty years behind them, so intense was their coupling and shared climaxes.
I do wonder if all descendants of the Gardiner line find such heat in their hearts? I have seen that same carmine glow grace Madelyn’s neck after Edward’s apparent attentions. Likewise, both Jane and Lizzy’s cheeks have shined with a fever’s light after a walk afield with their husbands. I wonder…no…no…t’is not fitting for a father to speculate about such matters!
For her part, once her husband had stopped spo
oning her and had shifted his position, Fanny began to return from her love-fueled lassitude. She felt the sun dappling across her form as a soft breeze swayed the branches overhead, opening and closing minute portholes through which that closest star’s yellow rays flowed. From time-to-time those beams filtered through the filigreed scrim of her eyelids, imbuing her elevating consciousness with a rose-tinged hue that matched the blush filling her soul.
Softly, quietly, without any other movement to betray her return to Oakham’s slopes, Mrs. Bennet quietly catalogued her husband. Her nose brought his scent rising from her skin, its muskiness empowered by her body’s radiated heat. T’was of antique leather...not that of harness and saddle hide but rather that of soft calf used in binding. Then there was also an acrid back tone taking on a tinge of ink moderated by a bit of linen aged with dust; no, not dust, but rather the fragrance of Longbourn’s loamy soil dried in the Hertford sun.[xlviii] Even with her wide eyes shut, Fanny knew that his aroma shouted that his estate was not only his patrimony, but also his blood.
As she scanned his form through feathery lashes framing lids barely opened, she could appreciate the many little details that made Tom Bennet the man who had drawn her like filings to a lodestone so long ago. The gentle creases scoring his neck, fully exposed now that he had thrown off his cravat, were broken by an ancient wen rising to anchor his character. His closely cropped greyish brown hair, recently shortened in response to some unknowable whim, sported a curiously attractive cowlick that had been invisible since his adolescent years. Even the duskiness of his shadowy late afternoon jowls bespoke of his personality: always tending toward a genteel dishevelment rather than a marbled perfection.
Yet, for Mrs. Bennet, t’was Mr. Bennet’s eyes—uniquely shaped and hazel hued—that captivated her. Usually owlishly staring at her from behind wire-rimmed spectacles, they were naked to her world and now slowly sweeping along her relaxed form, so softly were her boneless limbs splayed atop Kitty’s blanket.
The mood was so soft, so close, that Fanny was loath to break it. Neither Bennet had shared such a unique intimacy as that of minutes ago since shortly after Mary’s birth in ’92…now over twenty years past. Oh, her husband had not abandoned her marriage bed entirely; Kitty, Lydia, and the lost babe were evidence of that. Sadly, in Fanny’s eyes, their ardor had been confined to infrequent joinings, usually around an anniversary or birthday when each had had enough, but not too much, wine, sherry, and port. Of all the losses in her life, this counted to her amongst the greatest.
She had not considered that Thomas might have been laid low by the same distancing. Yet, his changes in behavior since the Longbourn nest had emptied now led her to reassess the contours of his heart. He had come to her willingly, with a joy in those fine eyes and an ecstasy that could not be disguised, as she signaled her own desire to be loved by him.
Mayhap Tom was plagued by self-doubt. Did he fear that I would reject him? I will admit that my nerves made me a bit of a cold fish for all those years. Maybe he only needed a signal?
I know that was Darcy’s great fear with Lizzy; as if even that impertinent girl would reject a man bringing 10,000-a-year to the altar! Men are such fragile creatures. And they say that the ladies are too delicate for the public sphere? Pfagh!
Frances Bennet pushed aside thoughts of her second eldest…in fact any of her girls…and focused on the immediate. After all, she and Tom, in their quieter moments when he was most attentive to her, had speculated on what their lives would be like without the pitter-patter of slipper-shod feet descending from above stairs that presaged any of a number of girlish complaints or accusations. Would they journey to Bath or Ramsgate or Lyme Regis? Would she finally be able to find entertainment in sea bathing? Would they travel to Brittany once the Beast had been pacified so that Tom could study the megaliths near Carnac?[xlix] Perhaps they would ask Lizzy and Darcy if they could stay at Darcy House in Town and enjoy the theater while seeing some of the sights.
Perhaps today was the first day of their shared life after children! If so, she wondered why they had waited so long.
With that pleasant thought still echoing in her mind, she fully opened her eyes and stretched like a languid cat, a deep purr of pleasure rumbling behind her stays. As the ululation continued, it rose in timbre, synchronized with a hyper-extension of her limbs. Wriggling her fingers and pointing her toes, she smiled up at her husband who had shifted into a legs-crossed seated position making him look akin to an Indian fakir. He looked down at her, a bemused expression transforming his face, driving her to begin giggling.
Bennet attempted to assay an outraged look. He tried to admonish her, but a chuckle kept interrupting his best efforts.
“I am outraged…outraged, I tell you, madam…that you would find such great humor in my most serious efforts to utterly worship you. T’is unbearable…and I fear that I must admonish you for your uncomely display. You remind me of our youngest who manages to find pleasure in every undertaking,” he grumped through smiling lips.
Fanny was having none of it and shot back, “Tom Bennet…you are as transparent as a piece of wet muslin. If I recall, you seemed to be as involved as I was in our exercise. As for finding pleasure, I would imagine that you would agree that we have not found this sort of happiness for a considerable period.”
Bennet made to preen outrageously using exaggerated movements before saying, “Are you suggesting, Mrs. Bennet, that this old dog can still rouse your excitement? I may become insufferable.”
“Become insufferable?” she riposted back in a playfully mocking voice, “You are the most difficult man I have ever meet. You make Darcy look the model of tolerability. Even good-natured Bingley and sweet Janie have been known to roll their eyes at your awful puns and painful fascination with human foibles.”
“And still I love you. Why I do not know. My mother must have dropped me when I was little. Infuriating man!” she huffed.
Bennet reached down and wiggled his fingers. First, she looked askance, as if considering whether to accept his help. She eventually took his hands and allowed him to lift her to a seated position across from him.
“After all these years, Mrs. Bennet, you say that you love me? After all my neglect? All my mocking of your famous nerves?
“Why I cannot imagine. But, if you speak the truth, my dear, then all is not lost. In fact, I will count myself one of the luckiest men alive if you see something hidden underneath this bluff exterior.
“T’is improper for a lady to reveal her affections, but we men need some signal to let us know that the ground has been prepared.
“Thusly, I told you once back in our youth that I loved you. Then those words fell into disuse.
“Now, today, before all these great trees on our Oakham Mount, I shout into their branches…I Love You, Frances Lorinda Bennet!” The Founder loudly averred.
After another, much briefer exploration of each other’s person, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet silently agreed to abandon all thoughts of climbing to the top of Oakham.
Chapter XV
The shadows thrown by the great trunks of Oakham Forest began to lengthen and spin clockwise like the gigantic hands of some arboreal clock as the afternoon waned. Although there were nearly five hours before the sun would dip behind the Chiltern Hills which arced around to Meryton’s west-northwest, creating the great bowl through which the Mimram meandered,[l] the heat of the day had begun to moderate as the angle of the sunlight declined. Husband and wife noted these changes, but the couple had continued to find a more important occupation for their attention than to become concerned about the time spent with one another.
Both Bennets eventually had risen from the blanket and had stationed themselves side-by-side atop a verdantly covered fallen oak that had been but a sapling when their child, Mary, had last tramped past on her way to the cleared summit.[li] Neither adult was concerned about the effect that the mossy cushion would have upon their posteriors.
Thomas Bennet looked at his wife�
�s swollen lips, softly bruised from several deeply loving kisses, and her flushed complexion, as alluring when gracing the countenance of a woman of four-and-forty as that of a girl of nine-and-ten. He counted himself amongst the lucky few to have fallen in love with the same woman at both ages. The elder had, after all, learned all that the younger could only begin to imagine.
However pleasant his romantic musings, Bennet realized that there was a very real reason why they had not resumed their interrupted trek up the hill. And, t’was not to lose themselves in making love in the green grass.[lii] Rather, Bennet now had to return to the cold truth that surrounded the Wardrobe and all that this reality meant to their family.
Yet, he feared losing her in the cloud of revelations that shortly must be voiced. Bennet worried that her new-found inner strength, even buttressed as it was by his validation of her mental faculties, would fracture under the Universe-altering certainty that she had time-traveled. He had seen her crumble more than once before as life intruded upon her world so rationally organized.
Terrible as was a miscarriage, its emotional dislocation likely was less than comprehending the implications of stepping from one moment to another over 130 years later. The loss of a pregnancy and a babe was awful, but at least mortals could accept it as an unpleasant possibility tied to the trials of increasing.
However, who amongst us ever casually imagined the idea of traveling through time? In fact, except for Mr. Madden’s book, written after he met my Great Grandfather Benjamin, I have never encountered any speculation about man traveling to the future.[liii]