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

do not mean to trouble you with my woes. You have caught me at an unfortunate time.”
    â€œTom,” I said, “I share your anger at the sporting life. Our new neighbor, this Colonel Somebody, is no doubtresponsible for this latest insult. But there’s nothing to be done. The hunt will go on long after you and I are gone.” Still, I thought to myself, I can see to it that he does his damn hunting elsewhere, not on my land.
    Tom nodded and stood quietly, wondering as to the cause of this unusual visit from me, at the same time eager to make the best of the goose that lay lifeless on the ground. He would have to bleed her and pluck her soon else she would turn unfit for supper.
    I felt oddly embarrassed and did not meet his eye. “Tom,” I said, “you have had this wife of yours for a goodly number of years, have you not?” Tom looked at me curiously. I persisted, “Have you found her to be, to be . . . companionable?”
    â€œIn what way, sir?” Tom answered.
    I caught his smile and realized that I was providing him amusement rarely available on such a grand scale. Undaunted, I proceeded. “Has she been . . .” I paused, looking past Tom into the fields, which seemed so orderly, so productive, so unlike anything in my domestic life. “Has she been a good wife?”
    â€œAye, sir, she has.” Apparently, Tom decided to fill in the space of my discomfort until I could bring myself to say what was truly on my mind. “She looks after the children, she is a passable cook, and now that our eldest is fifteen and able to look after the young ones, my wife is able to help me in the fields.”
    I could not hide my envy. Tom continued nonetheless. “I am pleased with her in every way. She is of course not the pretty little thing she was in the early years. Five children have had their way with both her face and her figure.” I stared at Tom. Here at last was a man who understood me.
    â€œYour boys came late, I believe,” I said.
    â€œTo be sure,” answered Tom. “We had quite given up on the notion of ever having sons. We were content with our two daughters and believed our time of begetting to be over.” I nodded vigourously. “But then, nature being what it is,” said Tom, “she grew big again and delivered one son and not long after another son and finally the babe you see there in the cradle. Three sons.” Tom said this proudly. I forgave him his little preening. I must have appeared once more downcast. Tom seemed to know now what was troubling his landlord. “So I guess my advice to anyone, if of course it were asked for, would be to just keep trying. You never know with women. They surprise you from sunrise on.” Then, taking a deep breath, he ventured: “If I may, sir, up there at the house”—he pointed to my domicile—“is what we down here in the cottages call a yeller.”
    â€œA what?”
    â€œA yeller.”
    I considered what sort of reprimand was in order. “Explain yourself,” I said.
    Tom took a deep breath. “Well, sir, a yeller is someone, most always a woman, who yells.” Tom looked as if hewished he had kept still but realized that it was too late now for silence. “The night air, in clear weather—sir, I mean no harm—carries sound that bad weather keeps at home.” He hurried. “Down here, for instance, we hear the high-pitchedness of especially a woman’s voice and when it has in it an urgency we are bound to listen.”
    I felt my face redden. “And what do you hear?”
    Encouraged, Tom continued. “Well, sir, coming at night as it did, once we decided among us that this woman was not in danger, that the yelling was likely the accompaniment to an act of marriage, we judged it be a . . . a sort of protest.”
    â€œA protest?” I pretended, unsuccessfully, to