Free Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say by Jane Juska Page A

I needed do now was to make the poultice according to Tom’s instructions, apply it to the affected area, and bind it with Nellie’s snowy white linens. Careful not to spill, I spooned the duck fat (1/2 C.) into Nellie’s wooden bowl and added ash (2 T.) from the hearth. Mixing well with my left hand, I held my nose with my right, for the aroma was not at all pleasant, and looked out the window, for the grey greasy batch which lay reeking in the bowl did not recommend itself to viewing. Neither was it pleasant to dip my fingers into the bowl and apply the mixture to my now snowy lower half, but I did so quickly and as quickly wrapped Nellie’s pastry cloths around and over the poultice. I felt instant relief. I counted myself cured: smelly but cured. All would be well.
    Downstairs there was no poultice for what ailed Mrs. Bennet. “I am a barrel,” she wept. “No one will look at me, let alone ask me to dance.”
    Nellie tried her best. “But, madam, you are only a year past birthing. It takes time, mum, for female parts to fallback into place. And you have such a lovely face,” she added, desperate to provide comfort and save what was left of her kitchen.
    â€œThat’s what they all say about fat women!” she sobbed, and collapsed onto the bread board. “I will starve myself,” she said resolutely. “I will return to my former self. I will have a waist. I will! And then I will dance at the ball. Someone is sure to ask me, if only Mr. Bennet.” Two floors above the ranting, I winced.
    I had no intention whatsoever of attending the ball she was so eager to attend. I had heard of nothing but the ball ever since my return from my unfortuitous journey to London. Mrs. Bennet’s current fatuousness, I supposed, was provoked by thoughts of what I considered one of the most useless gatherings of country society. Nothing was to be gained from attendance at such an event. A ball, it seemed to me, was merely a chance for the ladies of the county to dress in a provocative and foolish manner and either create gossip or gather it. Even for something as simple as an assembly on the village green, ladies would dine on it, have tea over it, dash off notes about it for months following. Imagine, and here I shuddered, the spillage into my daily life of something so grand as this ball to be held on the grand estate of the grand and mysterious Colonel Millar. Long ago I had learned to dance in order to secure a wife. Now I had one. I did not have to dance ever again. Nor would I, no matter how loudly and how long Mrs. Bennet’s protestations continued. I suspected that the keening fromthe kitchen below was just a tune-up. I prepared myself for the worst.
    First, though, I would pay a visit to Tom to thank him for his advice, which had had an immediate effect. I found him standing before his cottage holding his goose, dead of a broken neck. “For shame!” he cried angrily to a heaven as indifferent to him as it was to his goose. “That damnable hunt and look what it brings. This!” He turned to me. “You see what they have done, sir. I have lost six of my chickens and the vegetable plot will not render us our food this summer what with the trampling it has endured. I see no reason for such as they call it, a ritual.”
    I saw no reason for it, either. It had been assumed that, as a member of the landed gentry, I would join the others for the hunt when I reached my majority. But I had begged off, claiming a twisted ankle, then a wrenched thumb, a cold in the head, a misery in the gut, anything that would exempt me from what I considered a barbarity. No one I knew would agree with me, no one would sympathize with my view, but no one would dare call me a liar, either, and so my periodic objections were nodded over in sympathy until finally I was not bothered by invitations to run small animals to ground.
    â€œI beg your pardon, sir,” said Tom. “I