The Unexpected Miss Bennet (13 page)

Mr Collins walked them all to the door, stuttering over his obsequious apologies to Lady Catherine and Mr Darcy and Georgiana. Lizzy and Mary walked behind as Lady Catherine heaped abuse upon her admirer.

‘Poor Charlotte,’ Mary muttered as they waited for Lady Catherine to be helped into her carriage and give curt orders to the driver to drive on, leaving all of them to walk back to Rosings.

Lizzy gave her a look. ‘How so? The baby? I saw you look at it as if you had a live snake in your hands.’

Mary was startled into a laugh. ‘No, not the baby.’ Her mirth turned into solemnity. ‘Mr Collins is a very foolish man. It’s not that he treats her ill, but . . .’

Lizzy sighed. ‘I know. But I think she’s made her peace with it. And children will give her further reason to . . . stand it better.’

Darcy turned to look back at his wife, who smiled gaily and waved at him, so far separated they were on the walk home. Mary suddenly gave a most unladylike snort. Lizzy looked at her with exaggerated alarm. ‘Good God, Mary, what is it?’

At that point Mary was crying with laughter. ‘Lady Catherine . . .’ she said between gasps. ‘Banging her stick on the floor to make the baby stop.’

The Bennet sisters walked the rest of the way up the grand drive, laughing until the tears came.

THE REST OF the visit went as could be expected. Miss de Bourgh came down to dinner along with her companion, Mrs Jenkinson. Mary found Anne de Bourgh a wan, silent thing. Her complexion was pale and her eyes narrow, and her hair was dry and flat for all that it was curled to the highest fashion. Lady Catherine spent most of the conversation either praising Anne or scolding her, so that her daughter could scarcely say a word. Mrs Jenkinson spent all of her conversation making sure her charge was comfortable. Miss de Bourgh never once looked at any of the party, and Mary could not fathom such gaucheness. To Mary, her lack of attention did not seem to spring from a sense of superiority but rather a lack of wit.

Nor did Lady Catherine pay much attention to Mary. She lavished her demands and conversation on Darcy and his wife and sister. Georgiana held up as best she could, though she was herself not in the habit of talking much in company she did not know. Mary watched and listened and ate little.

Mr Collins came but Charlotte did not, sending her regrets that she was still indisposed. Lady Catherine was most displeased and she took it out on Mr Collins, rendering the hapless man into a quivering lump of apology.

‘I cannot abide a spoiled child,’ Lady Catherine said. ‘Mr Collins, you must take care that your child does not become a greedy petulant thing with airs of superiority, for you will find that such a manner in the lower orders is a sign of depravity.’

Mary wondered how an infant could show signs of depravity and tried to compose her expression so that Lady Catherine would not set upon her. As if by her design, Lady Catherine’s eye swept over the table and settled upon shy Georgiana. Mary felt both relief and guilt.

‘Georgiana!’ snapped Lady Catherine. ‘Do you still play the pianoforte?’

For a moment Georgiana froze. Then she recovered herself. She gave the smallest glance at her brother and he reassured her with a slight nod.

‘Yes, Aunt.’

‘After dinner you shall play for me. I hope that Mrs Darcy has not encouraged you to stop your practice.’

‘No, Aunt, of course not.’

Lady Catherine harrumphed. ‘When surrounded by those who will not improve their study, the weak-minded will often give up.’

‘I continue to play, ma’am, for I do enjoy it.’

‘I suppose, Miss Bennet, that you follow the example of your sister and play ill?’

Mary felt the eyes of her sister, of her brother-in-law, and Mr Collins all upon her. She put her fork down and dabbed at her lips with her napkin, trying to hide her swelling anger and remain calm. How dare she. How
dare
she.

‘I follow my own example, ma’am. But no, I do not play the pianoforte.’

‘Your own example!’ Lady Catherine’s eyes bulged. Mr Collins made small ineffectual motions with his hands. Mary folded her hands on her lap to hide the trembling. ‘Pray tell me, Miss Bennet, what is your own example?’

‘I read sermons to improve my understanding, ma’am. I go to church to improve my soul. I attend upon my parents and my sisters and my friends. I do not play the pianoforte.’

Lady Catherine could not have been more surprised had Mary said she stood on her head and recited drinking songs. All she could say for several minutes was, ‘Well! Well!’

Mary pretended to eat, cutting her meat in the tiniest bites. After a moment everyone returned to their meal. With all her courage Mary looked around. Lizzy glanced at her and the sisters shared a solemn nod. Only Lizzy’s bright eyes indicated that she was hiding her laughter. Mary looked away before she betrayed herself with a laugh. In so doing, she caught Anne’s eye. Despite her righteous anger Mary flushed. Anne regarded her with the same blank expression and looked away as if Miss Bennet ceased to exist.

Understanding pierced her and she felt a great and sudden sorrow. She had been right. Anne de Bourgh was simple, and all of Lady Catherine’s bluster, all of her posturing and praise on behalf of her daughter, was to deny herself the knowledge. How the great lady’s pride must sting her when she was alone at night, alone with herself and her terrible knowledge. There was no sermon that could comfort her, no words that Mr Collins could say that could make this all right.

The old Mary might have intoned to herself self-righteously,
pride goeth before a fall
. The new Mary simply thought, ‘Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.’

The small party of the Darcys and Mary spent the rest of the fortnight with Mr and Mrs Collins and Lady Catherine. The days were filled with simple diversions and those small happinesses that comfort old friends as they visited Charlotte and Mr Collins or ventured into the small village. At night, Mary was thankful that she was staying at the parsonage, for dinners at Rosings were excruciating. They ate at Rosings almost every evening, but on those occasions when they dined at the parsonage, Lady Catherine and Anne never joined them. Even Mr Collins was a breath of fresh air compared to the household at Rosings.

It was not so bad staying with the Collinses. Mary, Lizzy and Georgiana spent time alone with Charlotte and her baby while Mr Darcy and Mr Collins were thrown together by virtue of being men. Mary felt that the women had the better part of the deal. The ladies cooed over small Robert, dandled him, made much of his simple smiles. Mary even got used to carrying him, and his sleepy weight felt right in her arms.

One long afternoon the ladies were all gathered in Charlotte’s parlour, the baby rocking in his cradle and the ladies with their books and embroidery. Mary sat with a book borrowed from Mr Collins’s small library, his old copy of Fordyce’s
Sermons
, for he had little else to choose from, but this time she had not done more than read the lengthy introduction. She looked up at the tableau before her. Lizzy and Charlotte sat in comfortable companionship on the sofa, their heads together in the way Mary remembered them when they both were still in Hertfordshire and were intimate friends. Georgiana plied her needle briskly, perhaps a little too briskly, for she sucked a pricked finger now and again. Mr Collins had agreeably asked Mr Darcy to fish with him, though the quiet of the sport would no doubt be broken by Mr Collins’s constant and incessant speech. If he had ever fished with the great fisherman Isaak Walton, Mary thought, that esteemed gentleman would very probably have drowned him in the first fifteen minutes of the exercise. She trusted that Mr Darcy would have more self-restraint.

There came a knock at the door and they all looked up.

Charlotte’s cook bustled to the door and they heard the low tones of their visitor. Still, they could not make out the voice, and the expressions on all the ladies’ faces were a combination of surprise and alarm. Cook filled the doorway and bobbed an awkward curtsy.

‘Miss de Bourgh,’ she said, her voice wobbling a bit, and then she stepped aside so that Miss de Bourgh could enter the room. She had come alone, without Mrs Jenkinson.

All the ladies rose at once and curtsied. Anne bowed her head.

‘Miss de Bourgh,’ Charlotte said with a gasp. ‘What an honour! Indeed, I did not expect – that is, please do sit down. Cook, bring tea, please.’

Without a word Anne sat down. There came an unhappy silence, the kind, Mary knew, that her mother was wont to fill up with silly chatter. For a powerful moment she wished her mother were there. At least her rattling could not have been anything nearly as embarrassing as sitting in silence with Anne de Bourgh. Charlotte gave Lizzy a desperate look. Lizzy gave the slightest shrug. There was little she could do – she was not the hostess. Charlotte plunged ahead.

‘How is Lady Catherine, Miss de Bourgh?’

Miss de Bourgh ignored her. Instead she fixed her eyes on Mary. Mary felt herself redden. Anne nodded at the volume of sermons in Mary’s hand.

‘It’s Fordyce’s,’ Mary said. ‘Have you read them, Miss de Bourgh?’ Even as she asked the question, she cringed with embarrassment. Surely Anne de Bourgh did not need lessons in how to be a virtuous woman.

‘I have not,’ Anne said, her voice quiet and thin. It was the first time that Mary had heard her say anything. From the looks of Charlotte and Lizzy, it might have been the first time they had heard her speak as well. Mary handed her the book but as Anne did not reach out to take it, she drew back her arm.

‘Do you like to read, Miss Bennet?’ Miss de Bourgh asked. She eyed Mary with an imperious look, quite like her mother’s.

For the second time Mary had been asked that question. She wondered whether Miss de Bourgh thought reading to be as odd a pastime as Mr Aikens had. It was becoming tiresome. When Mary replied, she was short.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I get such a headache when I read, that Mrs Jenkinson has told me I must avoid it at all costs,’ Anne said. She spoke with pride, as if such an ailment was a rare distinction.

The other ladies hastened to agree with her, that reading could bring on a headache if one read for too long or in poor light, and Anne’s expression grew more dubious.

‘But I cannot read anything,’ she said, and her words trumped their sympathy.
They
could read a little until they got a headache.
She
could not read for her headache would come on at once. Chastened, they all fell silent, until Georgiana said rather impertinently,

‘Mary can read to you! Mary, have you read Mrs Radcliffe?’

A laugh went around the room. Even Charlotte laughed, though it was quite clear that she was scandalized. She said, ‘Miss Georgiana, you cannot propose that Mary should read from
The Mysteries of Udolpho
!’

‘Why not? It’s nothing bad, you know. Just a silly little book.’

‘I do not think Mr Collins would approve,’ Charlotte continued doubtfully. Mary glanced obliquely at Lizzy. She merely gazed upon her friend with equanimity. But whatever gaiety Georgiana was feeling was not dampened. She slipped a hand into her reticule and drew out the novel. She lifted it triumphantly.

‘Just the first chapter,’ she said. ‘Please, Mrs Collins. Mr Collins cannot consider it bad if Miss de Bourgh thinks it proper.’

Miss de Bourgh looked flustered but delighted to be asked to take part in the conspiracy. It was probably the first time that she had sat with women of her own age. She was usually surrounded by old women, Mary thought. She had never really been in company with other females. She knew that Lizzy and Charlotte, as married women, lent respectability to their plan. But what could it hurt, really? Fordyce would not approve, she thought, but Fordyce – goodness, what
did
he approve of? She thrust away her small sensation of guilt.