The Book of Ruth

By Helen Baker

Longbourn House in Hertfordshire remains the home of the Bennet family but, five years after the conclusion of Pride and Prejudice, find Kitty and Mary still unwed and discontent. Then Mary's deep reading leads her to a plan. "it was absolutley delightful , so much so that I couldn't stop reading and I've finished it already!!So the apology is for the amount of time it must have took you but you should feel really pleased to impart that much pleasure - I'm only sorry I've finished it now!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447550327

Helen Baker

Helen Baker is a licensed Australian financial adviser with a Masters in Financial Planning. She is the founder of On Your Own Two Feet and the author of two books: On Your Own Two Feet – Steady Steps to Women's Financial Independence and On Your Own Two Feet Divorce – Your Survive and Thrive Financial Guide.  

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978-1-4475-5032-7

Preface.

When an authoress has penned a novel which has delighted so many that it has been acclaimed in all four corners of this Kingdom, when its fame may spread even further in future, when it may prove a source of pleasure for future generations even, then it requires some audacity for a second authoress to borrow her characters and continue the narrative. If this second authoress is a lady of unknown quality to date, some may say she possesses more than temerity. The word 'effrontery' may not ring too harsh.

The present writer cannot be surpassed in her admiration of Miss Austen's works. Unfortunately for us all, her pen is now laid aside. Yet what became of her characters? In the five years which have elapsed since the closing scenes of Pride and Prejudice, there has been apparently little change in Hertfordshire.

Mr Bennet still reigns at Longbourn House, apart from when he slips away to Derbyshire to visit his favourite daughter. His cousin, Mr Collins must temper his impatience before that promised estate is his and he need no longer bend to every whim of his esteemed Patroness Lady Catherine.

Mrs Bennet is now a grandmother five times over - or perhaps more, because she hears so rarely from her favourite daughter Lydia. She cannot profit from this position as much as her rival Lady Lucas, who has four grandchildren to her credit, because she does not stir from home so must rely on miniature portraits, supplied by their fond mothers, to discern the Bennet or Gardiner features in each infant. Nor is she a zealous enough correspondent - through Mary, the remaining daughter at home - to supply all the advice with which grandmothers normally abound, however much it may be disregarded by distant daughters.

The most shocking event in the period was the sudden demise of uncle Phillips, the attorney in Meryton, with results which the following pages will unfold.

As Elizabeth once remarked to her future husband, people alter continually so that there is always something new to be observed in them. Readers will find this particularly true of both Catherine and Mary, the two single daughters, whose fortunes these pages will describe.

Kitty has spent most of the five years passing from sister Bingley to sister Darcy, with intervals at aunt Gardiner in London. She is now twenty-three and has learnt to add distinction and discretion to her beauty in the company of superior society. Unfortunately, gentlemen admire her person but shake their heads over her inadequate dowry. At least, that is how she explains her lack of proposals to date.

Mary is twenty-four and has always suffered from the stigma of plainness. Five years at home in her parents' company should have erased any girlish dreams of the joy to be found in a matrimonial future - or so one would think. She is on her way to becoming the fount of common sense and parish wisdom which is essential to daughters destined to support their aged parents in reduced circumstances. It is her moral and filial duty to assume such a destiny. The local incumbent sometimes praises her to her face or cites her example to more wayward daughters. How little does he know her.

It is when the two sisters are reunited at home that our story begins - or resumes. If Miss Austen is in some way aware of this modest volume, it is to her wonderful ability to create such perennially recognisable individuals that the present authoress attributes her desire to continue their story.

Chapter 1.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in pursuit of wise guidance will find it in Holy Writ. Whether a single woman in pursuit of a husband will find similar guidance there is not equally certain. So when Miss Bennet decided to propose the idea to her sister Catherine, it was not without hesitation.

Formerly Miss Mary Bennet, until the unprecedented elevation of her two elder sisters by marriage raised her to this superior estate, she was now a young woman of four-and-twenty. She had displayed her accomplishments to an unresponsive world for some seven years. It might have been supposed that having neither beauty nor fortune to further her claims to matrimonial bliss, she would have resigned herself. Clearly fortune, having denied beauty to her alone of a family of five daughters, had designed her as parental succour.

That would be to reckon without force of character. Determination alone had driven Mary to drill herself into a modicum of musical skill and a reputation as a thinker upon deep subjects. Five years of remaining the only daughter at home in the company of Mrs Bennet, had reinforced her resolve for an establishment of her own - be the master of it, whom he would.

The subject was introduced between the two sisters as they strolled disconsolately through Meryton one Monday afternoon, following the enumeration by Kitty of her woes. She had returned the previous Saturday from the North (Sabbath travelling being naturally out of the question) and, after the splendour of her two sisters' estates, could hardly help reflecting adversely on that of her father. Not to mention the small market town, bordering the village where she had been brought up.

'La! How dull everyone looks,' she sighed. 'Not a new face or a smart bonnet in sight.' Kitty's idea of smartness was greatly revised after five years in the superior company of Bingley Lodge, where sister Bingley lived and Pemberley, where sister Darcy lived. Not to mention visits with them to Scarborough for the sea air and to London when in season. The days when her taste was guided by Lydia, her younger sister, and the occasional visits of aunt Gardner from Cheapside seemed as remote as girlhood. That did not prevent her, at three-and-twenty and prettier than ever, from still regretting the lack of red coats in the area.

'I can remember when the Regiment was quartered here,' she brooded, 'Meryton was animated enough then. With balls and dinners all the time.'

'That hardly did our family much service,' retorted Mary who had a clearer appreciation of the unfortunate circumstances of Lydia's marriage and the pecuniary arrangements it entailed. 'Besides, I do not know what you are complaining about Kitty. Your life is one long round of pleasure and extravagance. Take that pelisse for instance.'

'Yes, it is delightful, isn't it? But there is no one worth wearing it for here.' In fact, both sisters were elegantly attired. Jane and Elizabeth proved equally generous. Kitty never returned from any of the protracted trips which had filled most of her last five years without copious garments, bonnets and lengths of fabric. All these, her two elder sisters had somehow found that, after buying, they did not like. Yet they would suit Kitty or Mary perfectly.

'And as for pleasure - you have never visited (Mother could not part with you) but the society at Pemberley is so dull. They talk on endlessly about books and politics. Not to mention agronomy. You have no idea what a vast estate Mr Darcy has or how involved he is in running it. Not to mention the mines and manufactory. If I were Elizabeth, I should feel quite neglected, despite her two tiny sons. And Mr Darcy's sister - well. A paragon. Very gifted, of course, but she could not flirt to save her life.'

'With thirty thousand pounds, she hardly needed to. Didn't you say she is now Lady Beauchamp?'

'Yes, married in her first season too! Life is so unfair.'

'I cannot imagine Mr Bingley's household being so bookish. Jane never was.'

'No, but he is such a domestic creature these days, he has become almost portly. He and Jane are so taken up with their brood - three already! - that one feels an intruder. Besides, they entertain very little really - just their intimate friends.'

'You would not be complaining Kitty, if you spent your time here like I do. Consider us now - walking in the street in the heat and dust of June because my Mother is so taken up with aunt Phillips. She wanted us out of the way. What the pair of them do, I cannot imagine. Nor do I want to. But Hill said she was passing one day and the parlour curtains were pulled shut. In the afternoon! Really, since uncle Phillips died so suddenly last year, aunt has turned quite peculiar.'

At length, and with growing horror, Catherine then learnt what her sister had not put into her rare letters. How her Mother was drawn more and more from home to sit with her sister Phillips. Consequently, the parish and social duties in which Mary had previously seconded her parent, now fell on her entirely. In addition she was frequently obliged to take domestic decisions. Her father would even turn to her in preference to his wife. Mrs Bennet displayed an absence of spirits and indifference to subjects which had formerly formed the mainstay of her life - gossip, fashion and matrimony. At times she seemed incapable of concentration.

Then their mother would brighten, bustle into activity and countermand all the household arrangements her daughter had settled. Such a rally rarely lasted beyond a day. So poor Hill was at her wits end and servants were grumbling in a way never tolerated before.

Mr Bennet in the long course of his marriage had often derided his wife's nerves. He spoke of them as old friends and noted tartly that they coincided with his wife being in some way contradicted. Now, even he was inclined to accept as real, her trembling,  flutterings, spasms in the side, pains in the head and beatings in the heart. He occasionally talked about consulting the new apothecary who had replaced Jones. However, this was a much younger man, with advanced ideas, excessive education for his station in life and - it was rumoured - a less sympathetic manner and far less reliance on the brown mixture. Mrs Bennet herself insisted that she was pursuing her own cure. She did not want to summon either the new apothecary or a doctor from town. Such a reversal of her previous attitude appeared, in itself, a further symptom.

Catherine was shocked but hardly knew what to suggest. She was tempted to add that she herself was doing her best to find a husband and lighten the family burden while Mary was merely assuming, a little earlier than expected, her life's duties. Being an older, more discreet Kitty now, she refrained.

Mary, not receiving the full sympathy she considered her due, pointed out,

'I think my mother is brooding about the Entail. It does not help that Mr Collins is in the neighbourhood, staying with the Lucases of course. She suspects he is trying to assess our father's state of health and prospects of survival.'

'O surely not,' but the two sisters smiled. Their cousin, Mr Collins, was a clergyman, hence above such mercenary considerations as the precise date when he could expect to inherit Mr Bennet's estate which was entailed upon him in the absence of direct male heirs. The smiles were short-lived. Both sisters remembered what a radical change they would suffer when the loss of a father would also involve the loss of Longbourn House. They would be relegated to the confinement of such a cottage as Mrs Bennet's tiny income could support. Then, even the modest dinners and outings among neighbours such as they currently enjoyed, would be curtailed.

'I thought my father looked very pale and shrunk when I returned,' confessed Catherine.

'Our mother's state of health and the domestic upset must be a severe trial for him,' conceded Mary. 'He is a man of very settled habits.'

She was unable to continue because her attention was drawn to a gentleman rider, whose horse was somewhat laden about with saddlebags. He proceeded down the street at a fast pace, hardly skirting the two dawdling young ladies, and merely raising his whip to his hat in salute as he passed. Kitty, divided between annoyance at such an impromptu salutation and admiration for the stranger, could only whisper at his departing back,

'Who is that?'

'The new apothecary. His name is Franklin I believe.'

'What a shame. I quite mistook him for a gentleman. He is a very well-made man at all events. Why did I not see him at church yesterday?'

'Hill said he was called away unexpectedly to administer to a patient some distance off.'

'Is the housekeeper your main confidante these days Mary?'

'As I told you, household duties devolve more and more on me. I find Hill has much common sense. She is, considering her situation, most conversable. But that reminds me - it was at church that the idea came to me.'

Kitty was still looking absently after the departing apothecary and adjusting a plume in the hat which had not been given the opportunity of  captivating him.

'Kitty, are you listening - it is vital we act together in this.' Mary led her sister by the arm to a spot where the village street became open country before continuing,

'As you know, after the first hour, the Vicar's reading of his sermon tends to pall. Luckily our pew is so high-sided that our father does not object if we pursue other activities - of a devotional nature, naturally. So I started reading the Bible, a little at random. I stumbled on the Book of Ruth. Well, obviously, I know the story but, reading it again in detail was a revelation. That Book contains a detailed plan of how a woman, a foreigner with no dowry, no livelihood even, a widow what is more, contrived to secure the richest farmer in the neighbourhood.'

'You're teasing.'

'Not at all Kitty. I've never been more in earnest. Obviously, we shall have to modify it slightly. After all, we are not sure Ruth had such a genteel upbringing as that we have enjoyed. Tomorrow, I propose that we settle down to study it together. I shall make extracts and see what useful lessons can be learnt. Then, we shall plan our campaign.'

Kitty pondered, tossing curls which Mary would have loved to possess but which she had long since ceased to copy.

'Mary - just what is the purpose of this study? To find a husband for me, I suppose?'

'Leaving me to support the household alone? No thank you. I am determined to find a husband for both of us. With the help of Ruth.'

Drumming hoofbeats distracted her and soon a showy chestnut bore down upon the fair couple, ridden by a gentleman who seemed barely to control it.  However, he managed to rein it in, in a swirl of stones and dust which menaced even the ladies' bonnets and did not endear him to them, despite his exaggerated doffing of his hat and bowing.

'Good day to you, fair neighbours. What are you discussing so earnestly? Husband-hunting, I'll be bound.'

This was so close to the truth that Mary wondered for a second whether he could possibly have overheard.

'Good day to you Will Lucas, although it would be a better one if you did not ride us down.' Her words were lost in Catherine's coughing and the gentleman's laugh as he allowed his champing steed its head and departed to terrorize any more fair strollers he could find.

'Odious puppy. If Sir William thought he could buy breeding and good manners by sending his boy to Oxford, he has received poor return for his