The Other Bennet Sister

by Janice Hadlow

  When he spoke her name, she thought she must capitulate, give in to the desire rising up in her to let him talk and explain as much as he wished; but she made herself resist such a surrender. There were things she was resolved to say, and she would not be prevented from doing so, even by her own unruly feelings.

  “I know it is not usual,” she said, surprised at the steadiness of her voice, “for a woman to put herself forward in this way, but I hope on this occasion you will allow me to speak first. I have had a great deal of time to think about what I would say if this moment were to come to pass. And now that it has, I want very much to make no mistakes. Shall we sit down?”

  She moved to the sofa, and arranged herself there, back straight, head held high. He took his place opposite her in the chair he had so often occupied in that room, and looked at her, serious, expectant.

  “I hope you will excuse me if I begin with a personal observation.” Mary knew her words were stiff and formal; but she had chosen them carefully. She was determined not to lose her composure, and the chilly exactness of her words helped her preserve it.

  “For as long as I can remember, I have tried to use my intellect to understand the world. I have been teased and laughed at for it, as it is not thought a very attractive quality in a woman; but when I was lonely and unhappy, as I was for much of my life, it served me well enough.”

  She shifted in her seat. She was nervous; but she had begun, and knew now she could continue.

  “Then I met you, and everything changed. You introduced me to poetry. You showed me the beauty of the natural world. You made me laugh. You gave me warmth and kindness and affection. In short, you taught me to feel, as I had never done before.”

  He sat absolutely still, making no further attempt to speak.

  “And I did feel, Mr. Hayward. I experienced every kind of emotion in your company. It began as friendship—but soon I began to think—I allowed myself to hope—that you felt—that you intended something more.”

  She cast her eyes down. She wanted to continue, but was not sure she could look at him as she did so.

  “That made me very happy. In fact, I don’t think I have ever been happier. But then, up in the Lakes, everything went wrong. I felt I had lost your affection—but I did not know why. The sensible thing, the rational thing, would have been to ask how I had offended you, and not to have given up until I had discovered the cause of your change of heart. But my emotions got the better of me. I was angry, confused, unhappy—and in the end, I said nothing. And neither did you.”

  Down in the hall, Mr. Gardiner’s prized gilt clock began to strike the half hour. Its chime was very carrying; and Mary paused until it was done.

  “I cannot say what kept you silent. I only know I quickly began to regret my own stupid failure to speak. But by then you had gone away. And I could do nothing to put right my mistake. I was told that as a woman, it was not my place to act. All I could do was wait. That is what I have been doing until this very afternoon.”

  Mary looked up, and their eyes met.

  “But I think I have done enough waiting now.”

  She leant forward, and the words began to spill out of her.

  “For I must tell you, sir, that some weeks ago I made a promise to myself that if we ever saw one another again, I would hold back no longer, but would speak, would act, no matter what the world thought of it. If you lacked the courage to declare yourself candidly, I did not. I swore I would confess my feelings to you regardless of the consequences. I would rather tell the truth and risk humiliation than pass up the chance of happiness because I was not brave enough to say honestly what I felt.”

  Now that she had come to the point, Mary’s spirits almost failed her. She could not stay where she was, but rose and stood behind the sofa, grasping its chintz back tightly with both hands, willing herself to break every rule of propriety, modesty, and good behaviour and continue.

  “So this is what I wish to say. I love you, Mr. Hayward. I have loved you for a very long time and know I will never love anyone as much as I love you. You are the only man who could ever make me happy, and I have missed you—oh, I have missed you so very, very much.”

  Then her self-possession finally deserted her—her voice broke and a sob escaped her. And before she knew it, he was beside her, had taken her in his arms, and was holding her tight against him.

  “Mary, my own dearest Mary—everything you say—it is exactly what I feel—I love you, Mary, so very deeply—I am so very sorry if I hurt you—I shall never do so again—all I want is to love you as you deserve—for the rest of my life, if you will allow it.”

  He released her a little, just enough to look earnestly into her eyes.

  “I love you even more for the courage of your words, for your having found the bravery to say them. There is no-one like you—so serious, so severe, so true—how could I not love you?”

  He stroked her hair; she lifted up her face to smile at him, and he kissed her very tenderly. For a moment, they did not move, but stood together in a triumphant embrace, utterly content. She laid her head against his heart, certain it was where she belonged.

  “Shall we be married, then?” he whispered in her ear. “As soon as ever we can? Will you have me as your husband, Mary?”

  She thought she might die of happiness. But that is a very rare event, even when the dearest wish of one’s heart has been so thoroughly and unexpectedly gratified. So for all the delight that coursed through her, she was able to make a tolerably sensible reply.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Hayward. I should be proud to be your wife—there is nothing I want more.”

  They gazed at each other, suffused with pleasure, as if it were impossible to imagine anything as fascinating, as magical, and as entirely and utterly satisfying as themselves and their love for each other.

  “You must learn to call me Tom, you know. If we are to be married, it is entirely proper!”

  “Tom,” she repeated quietly. It was exciting to say it—but intimate too. When she thought what it suggested—how things would be between them now—she caught her breath. “It feels a little strange at first. But I’m sure I shall come to it.”

  “I hope so. I’m not sure I can endure being Mr. Hayward any longer to a woman I have kissed.”

  “Really, for shame!”

  He leant over and kissed her again, very gently, on her cheek and on her brow, before leading her to the sofa, where they sat down together. Then his arm was around her, and she noticed for the first time the way his hair curled over his collar. She liked that very much, she thought. Eventually, she might find the courage to run her fingers through it—but not yet.

  “Oh, Tom”—she felt she could say his name now—“my heart is so full—I don’t know what to say—or how to describe what I feel.”

  “There is nothing you need to say. It is I, not you, who should be explaining myself.”

  He removed his encircling arm and sat up, a little apart from her.

  “Mary, I am so grateful—so very, very thankful—that you have returned my love. But I am not sure I deserve it. Nothing in my behaviour over the last months would suggest that I do. I can only imagine the pain I must have caused you. I don’t know how I could have been such a fool.”

  He stood up and began to pace about the room.

  “I should like to try to account for my actions, if you are prepared to listen. I can neither excuse nor justify them—I know they do not do me much credit—but I cannot leave you in ignorance as to why I acted as I did.”

  “I must admit,” she replied, “that I long to know the truth of it.”

  Relieved, he returned to the sofa and took up his place beside her once more. Then he began, describing the origins of his fondness for her—how he had enjoyed her company from the very beginning—how their conversations on poetry had delighted him—how her presence had gradually become essential to him, the source of more and more of his happiness. He had looked forward to their meetings with ever-increasing
pleasure—thought their tastes agreed perfectly—found himself happier in her company than in that of anyone else—and in short, soon knew himself to be very seriously attached.

  “In truth, I knew I loved you,” he confessed. “But I did not know what to do about it. I was uncertain. I worried I was not grand enough to make you an offer. That I was—well, let us say, too undistinguished for you.”

  Mary was astonished. It was a moment before she found her voice.

  “But why should you think such an extraordinary thing? Our circumstances—the circumstances of our families—they do not seem so dissimilar.”

  “No, perhaps not. But your elder sisters—their situations are very different. Both have married very wealthy men. Powerful too, in the case of Mr. Darcy. My prospects, whilst respectable, cannot compete with his. I knew I should never be able to offer you Pemberley, Mary. Or even what Mrs. Bingley enjoys.”

  “And do you seriously think I would have cared?” Mary exclaimed. “I am not my sisters! I have been compared to them for as long as I can remember, but I am not them, and have no wish to be! My expectations are very different. And if you had only asked me, I could have willingly—readily—eagerly told you so!”

  Her vehemence made Mr. Hayward smile. “If I did not understand that before, I know it now.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “It is true I did not speak when I might have done. But I had a plan I was convinced would answer. I did not consider I had abandoned the idea of making you an offer. I imagined I had merely postponed it.”

  From the remoter regions of the house, the voices of the Gardiner children were suddenly to be heard, loud, confident, excited. They must have finished their morning lessons, thought Mary. Mr. Hayward paused until they had thundered past the drawing-room door, then went on.

  “I had reason to believe that I stood on the brink of making a great advance in my profession. You remember those two cases over which I laboured so long and hard before we went to the Lakes? I knew if I won them, they would involve a great step up for me. I told myself I should wait and see how they turned out. If I was successful, I should be in a better position to speak to you as I wished. I thought I had all the time in the world. But then my old friend Will Ryder and his entourage arrived in our little circle.”

  “Yes,” replied Mary. “Nothing was quite the same after that.”

  “I thought at first Will was entirely taken up with Miss Bingley,” continued Mr. Hayward. “She certainly made her preference for him very plain. And sometimes it appeared as if her admiration was not unwelcome. I suppose it is difficult for any man to remain entirely indifferent to such an obvious liking. But then I began to notice how he sought you out and took pains to talk to you. He told me he often called on you here. Something about you intrigued him, and I began to wonder if you did not—well, I shan’t say returned his feelings, exactly—but I know he can be very winning. I did not know whether he had charmed you as he has so many others.”

  “And again, I must ask—you did not think to speak to me directly?”

  “I wish more than anything that I had. But I suppose I was afraid of what you might answer. I think many men lack confidence in this respect. In truth, we are not all as bold or as confident as we are supposed to be in these matters. Diffidence is far more common amongst us than is generally admitted.”

  He looked a little shame-faced.

  “Although I was sometimes uneasy, I did not feel able yet to act. Instead, I applied myself to my work and did all in my power to banish uncharitable ideas. My feelings for you proved far stronger than my doubts. And by the time we began our excursion to the Lakes, I was in a far happier state. I had won both my cases and had been given my promotion as a result. My expectations were considerably improved. I was sufficiently confident now to make you an offer and was fully resolved to ask you. There were a number of occasions when I nearly began upon it—I almost did so that day when we were drawing together. But before I settled on the right time and the right place to speak—out of the blue, Will Ryder and his party appeared once more in our company. I confess I did not know what to make of it.”

  “I thought you blamed me for his arrival, that you imagined I had encouraged it in some way.”

  “I could not rid myself of the unworthy suspicion that even if you had not actually invited him, you had hinted that his presence might not be unwelcome. It was unjust to you, I know. But I was unhappy and not thinking clearly. Then, after dinner one night at the inn, you may recall that Ryder asked to speak to me privately about his affairs. As a result of what he told me, I convinced myself I must not think about you anymore.”

  As he spoke, Mary discovered that on the night when she had leant over the bannisters, obscurely troubled as she watched the two men in intense conversation, Mr. Ryder had confided to his friend the entire story of what had passed at Rosings, describing Miss Anne de Bourgh’s unsanctioned marriage, Lady Catherine’s fury, her subsequent determination to disinherit her daughter and bestow instead her personal fortune upon his own surprised but grateful head. He had sought the advice of Mr. Hayward, not just as a friend, but also as a lawyer; and had begged him to act on his behalf in managing the business involved in such a delicate transaction.

  “I felt I could not refuse such an urgent request. Ryder was anxious to find someone in whom he could place absolute trust, and on whose discretion he could entirely rely. Lady Catherine had informed him that if the least hint of her situation were to leak out, she should reconsider her decision; I was sworn to the completest secrecy. Naturally, he described to me the contracts drawn up by her lawyers; and as a result, I knew exactly how very generously he would one day be provided for. It was an amount considerably in excess of my most optimistic expectations for myself, even after my victories at the Bar. And I knew Ryder thought well of you. I decided there and then that it would be dishonourable in the extreme for me to speak to you as I had intended. If you said yes—as I very much hoped you would—I would be denying you the chance to accept any proposal Ryder might make to you, which would have placed you in a situation far more advantageous than anything I could offer.”

  “Oh, Tom, you could not have been more mistaken! If you had offered me the choice—I would have told you how much I cared for you, that I would always choose you over any other man, no matter what their expectations.”

  “I know that now. But then I was not so sure.”

  “How was I to make clear to you what I felt? I did my best to show you how I felt by all the petty hints and signals permitted to us poor females. But it seemed to me as if you did not or would not see what I was trying to tell you. I began to think I had misunderstood your feelings for me, that you only wished to push me away.”

  “I told myself that I must harden my heart against my feelings for you, that although it looked cruel, I was acting in your best interests. I argued that any hurt I caused you would not last long once Ryder had made his offer. But it was one thing to tell myself I must withdraw. It was quite another to see the confusion and disappointment on your face as I tried to do so. And it was all but unbearable to watch Ryder, as I thought, step so eagerly into the breach. That day on Scafell was almost insupportable for me. It seemed he was doing his utmost to make himself agreeable to you—and that you had begun to take notice of his efforts.”

  “I admit I was angry with you and he was kind and appreciative. He did not seem confused about his feelings—and I will confess there was a moment when I found that consoling.”

  “I cannot blame you. But when Ryder refused to take the advice of the guide and leave before the rain arrived—when he looked to you for support and you gave it—I was so deeply wounded that I thought I could not endure it.”

  “I know, I saw—and am sorry for it.”

  “You need not be. I had many opportunities to make things right; I did not seize them. I was blinded by my own reticence—by a misplaced sense of pride and honour. And then I made matters even worse. I thought I had the strength to giv
e you up if I convinced myself it was for your benefit. But after Scafell, I knew I could not actually witness what in practice that must mean. It was impossible for me to stand and watch what I thought would happen next, as Ryder recommended himself to you with ever greater success. That was why I left. I wrote that letter to Mrs. Gardiner and I fled, as quickly and as desperately as I could. It was probably the most impulsive act I have ever committed—and the most stupid.”

  He stood up again and began to walk around the room once more.

  “As soon as I reached Hampshire, I knew I had made the most dreadful mistake. I had given up the woman I loved best in the world—and for what? For some perverse idea of honour? What was I to do? I did not know, and so I did nothing—the very worst thing of all. I was paralysed. I dreaded each day that a letter would arrive, announcing your engagement to Ryder. And when this became a torture to me, I fled again. I sought out a place where no message could find me, where I could find a little peace to put my thoughts in order and think what I must do next. I went to the Wye Valley in Hertfordshire, and I walked for a week above Tintern Abbey.”

  At this, Mary could not help but smile.

  “You consoled yourself amongst Mr. Wordworth’s ‘steep and lofty cliffs’?”

  “I am predictable, am I not? But the walk settled my mind and bolstered my courage. I understood I must come back into the world—I must return to London and discover what had happened—and here I am.”

  “I could not be more glad of it,” replied Mary softly. She held out her hand, inviting him to sit again beside her. This time, it was he who leant his head on her shoulder.

  “I am so very sorry, Mary. I acted wrongly. I hope you will forgive me.”

  “There were moments when both of us behaved irrationally, it is true. But I think we may safely say all is well now.”

  “One last observation occurs to me, though. You said earlier I had taught you how to feel. That is very generous, but I’m not sure it is correct. I think feelings always ran very deep in you. If I did anything at all, it was merely to encourage you to reveal those feelings and not to deny them.”