I left the supper room early—Elizabeth’s liveliness was becoming oppressive—and when I returned to the assembly room I found only Peter Bushell present. He was standing by the fire with his back to me, drinking from a tankard, but upon my entering the room he looked around and greeted me in a most respectful way, calling me “Miss Mary” and asking if I was enjoying the ball.
“Oh,” said I, uncertain whether to go or stay and wondering how he had found out my name. “I suppose so—that is, not overmuch, I suppose.” And because he was looking at me with so much apparent sympathy: “I confess I do not enjoy balls. I have never been taught to dance, you see.”
“What, never?” He was drawing up a chair for me so I felt obliged to sit in it. “How did that happen?”
“Well.” (I was already regretting having been so frank with him.) “When my elder sisters had lessons, I was considered too young, I suppose. And when my younger sisters were taught—”
I stopped, not wanting to tell him of my long absence from home, whereupon he prompted: “What? You were considered too old?”
I smiled then and he laughed, a loud and extremely ungenteel laugh. He had resumed his place by the fire and was looking down on me complacently. “It was you who my mother nursed, wasn’t it?” And upon my admitting that it was, he gave a satisfied nod: “I knew it was you. That makes us almost brother and sister, don’t it?”
I took fright at this. “I hardly think—”
“In a manner of speaking.” He smiled down at me. “Do you want to learn how to dance then?”
Again, I was moved to confide in him. “It is not so much a case of wanting, it is more that I feel I should—as an accomplishment. No woman can be deemed truly accomplished if she has not been taught to dance, you know. It does not come naturally.”
I saw then that he looked disappointed, even a little bored, and I realized that I must have sounded condescending. In my confusion I made things worse by resorting to the Commonplace Book: “One is reminded of Pope’s lines: “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance /As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t know about the Pope.” He drank from his tankard again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nothing like a good tune to get your toes tapping though. Are you fond of music?”
“Yes, very, but I can play only the pianoforte. And everybody can play the pianoforte.”
He laughed. “But not everybody can play it well.”
He had placed his arm along the mantelpiece, and I saw suddenly that his shirt cuff was frayed. And for some reason that frayed shirt cuff made me forget myself. I felt that I could talk to it without reserve. I told it how I had had a childhood friend who had played the pianoforte extremely well, how the two of us had played duets together, and how we had once given a concert, a performance of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major.
He then told me how he had come to play the fiddle. He had had an uncle who played—a ship’s carpenter who had made him a fiddle when he was six years old. “It was pretty rough and ready, but it had four strings and a bow and it suited me down to the ground. A fiddle’s a good instrument for a youngster—you can pick it up and put it down easy. Not like a pianoforte—you cannot put your arms around a pianoforte.”
“I should like to learn how to play another instrument,” I said, whereupon he picked up his fiddle and handed it to me.
People were now beginning to return to the assembly room but I paid them no heed. Peter Bushell bade me tuck the fiddle under my chin and handed me his bow, telling me to hold it “light and gentle” as if it were a baby bird. “If the hand is but light enough, you can feel the bow hair on the strings. Soon as you stiffen up though, you lose it—’tis gone—you feel nothing.”
I was holding the bow thus when Mr. Darcy entered the room. He gave me an amazed stare and walked over to the window, there to stand with his back to the room. And just as Peter Bushell was showing me how to roll the bow between my thumb and fingers Mrs. Long walked in. It was impossible to ignore her shocked look and I hastily handed Peter back his bow and fiddle and went to her.
“Mary! Good heavens, child, what on earth do you think you were doing?”
She continued to scold in little bursts: “Men of that sort, my dear Mary—gypsies and musicians and the like—very encroaching—if one gives them the least little bit of encouragement, they become familiar—almost impossible to shake off—a young girl cannot be too careful—”
I listened to her without protest, thankful that Peter was out of earshot—he had gone to join the other musicians at the far end of the room. I had heard the same thing many times from Mama and Aunt Philips and even (although more subtly expressed) from Aunt Gardiner. It had never occurred to me to question such sentiments, but now it struck me that they were hardly consistent with Christ’s teachings. They could all be countered by quotations from the scriptures: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” “The rich and poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all.”
For a while I amused myself by assembling such texts, although I forbore to quote them. A ballroom is not the place for disputation and in any case I was fond of Mrs. Long and did not wish to set up my opinion against hers. I understood too that her own position in society was dependent on Mama’s patronage, and that this might well make her anxious about associating with so-called inferiors. But her lecture was long (if I may be pardoned the pun) and provoked contradictory feelings—embarrassment as well as a desire to speak out—and I was also conscious that Mr. Darcy had moved nearby and must have overheard the chief of it.
And what happened next was mortifying, for Mrs. Long had finally noticed Mr. Darcy and addressed him with all the familiarity she had so deplored in Peter Bushell. She asked him whether he was enjoying himself. Mr. Darcy responded merely by a slight inclination of the head, but a few minutes later Mrs. Long again spoke to him—this time asking him how he liked Netherfield. He replied that he liked it well enough but afterwards walked off to another part of the room.
“Well! What a very ill-mannered young man. He seems to think we are all quite beneath him—seems to think he is the Lord of Creation. Your Mama was right, my dear Mary—she told me what he was—the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world.”
Mama and Aunt Philips came in then and after Mrs. Long related her encounter with Mr. Darcy, the three of them settled down to abuse him in earnest. I did not pay them much mind. The dancing had begun again, the orchestra was playing “Bonny Bonny Broom,” and I rejoiced that I was now at liberty to think my own thoughts.
The extraordinary thing was that what previously had been of such pressing concern—what I would say to Cassandra when we met and what she would say to me—now seemed so unimportant. My thoughts were all of Peter Bushell. I was unable to see him properly from my present seat, as the dancers were in the way. I wanted to be sure that I had not offended him by running off so rudely. I told myself I would not be happy unless I could exchange with him a friendly look before the end of the evening.
In the event, I was to go away unhappy. Every time I tried for a glimpse of him, he had his back to me, and I did not dare move closer to the orchestra for Mrs. Long saw me looking and whispered: “I will say nothing to your Mama, Mary, about what happened earlier, out of consideration for her nerves, but you must promise me to have nothing more to do with that young man.”
For the rest, Maria Lucas returned to sit by me. And the encounter with Cassandra, while anticlimactic, was entirely amicable. We shook hands and she invited me to accompany her to Netherfield, where she was engaged to begin painting the portrait of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley in two days’ time. “You must read to them during the sitting, Mary—that way, we shall not be obliged to talk to them. They are such fine ladies that I confess I am a little afraid of them.”
Maria Lucas said: “I am afraid of them too, Cassy. They are not near so nice as their brother, are they? He is quite the nicest young m
an I have ever met—and the handsomest. Do you not think?”
Cassandra agreed, laughing, and then aware perhaps that I was watching her, added: “But Mr. Bingley clearly thinks that the nicest young lady he has ever met is the eldest Miss Bennet.” She looked towards Bingley and Jane, who were now dancing together for the second time. “And there would be few who would disagree with him, I imagine.”
So saying, she continued to look at Bingley, quite unblushingly and in the style of her old staring, as if having conceded his preference she now felt free to indulge her own.
10.
I am convinced that on the scale of human emotions fear and fascination cannot be far apart, for after the assembly I lay awake half the night wondering about Peter Bushell. I imagined him living in one of the mean little cottages on the heath occupied by farm laborers—living all alone with nobody to take care of him (the frayed shirt cuff)—and the one bright spot in his otherwise cheerless existence would be music—the business of making music. But without money or connections, how could he hope to prosper?
I determined to find out his circumstances, and to that end conceived a bold plan. I would call at the Red Lion on the pretext of having lost a glove. Mrs. Curry was always disposed to chat—I could talk to her about last night’s ball, and (quite naturally) bring up the subject of the musicians. I determined also to ask Mama about the Bushell family, rehearsing several artless-sounding questions. But as soon as I sat down at the breakfast table, I could not utter a single one. I could not have pronounced the name Bushell without blushing. I did, however, manage to settle it with Lydia and Kitty that I would walk with them into Meryton after breakfast.
We were obliged to defer our departure, however, when Charlotte and Maria Lucas and their little brother Tom walked into the breakfast room. I knew that the conversation would again be about Mr. Bingley and his partners—the subject which so engrossed my mother—and sure as check, as soon as Master Tom had taken Papa’s vacant chair and Charlotte and Maria had seated themselves, Mama said: “You began the evening well, Charlotte. You were Mr. Bingley’s first choice.”
“Yes.” (Here, Charlotte smiled across the table at Jane.) “But he seemed to like his second better.”
“Oh! you mean Jane, I suppose, because he danced with her twice. To be sure that did seem as if he admired her—indeed, I rather believe he did—I heard something about it—but I hardly know what—something about Mr. Robinson.”
Charlotte obligingly repeated what she had overheard Mr. Bingley say to Mr. Robinson in praise of Jane’s beauty, and having satisfied Mama, turned to Elizabeth: “My overhearings were more to the purpose than yours, Eliza. Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as his friend, is he?—Poor Eliza!—to be only just tolerable.”
Mama burst out at the mention of Mr. Darcy: “I beg you would not put it into Lizzy’s head to be vexed by his ill-treatment, for he is such a disagreeable man that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.”
There was more, but I was no longer listening. I was looking at Elizabeth, and I saw, or fancied I saw, the putting on of a smiling front. And of a sudden I felt for her. I knew the humiliation of being adjudged plain—had known it all my life—and I longed to offer comfort from the Commonplace Book. She would scorn it of course, and me for offering it, but I would not let that deter me.
Before I could decide on a text, however, both Jane and Charlotte spoke, the former characteristically seeking to excuse Darcy’s conduct while Charlotte attempted to excuse the inexcusable—his pride. “One cannot wonder,” said she, “that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favor, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.”
“That is very true,” Elizabeth replied, “and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
And now I could no longer refrain from speaking. I had thought long and hard last night about the sin of pride—how one’s view of one’s fellow-creatures could be warped by utterly false (not to say unchristian) notions of superiority.
“Pride,” said I, trying to speak calmly, “is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or the other—real or imaginary.”
My voice may have betrayed the strength of my feelings—I saw Charlotte give me an odd look—for I was not of course thinking of the pride of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, but of the pride of every single person seated around that table—myself included—how we would all see someone like (for instance) Peter Bushell as being quite beneath us.
I tried then to speak more temperately, making a point of distinguishing pride from vanity, but nobody seemed to be attending. Kitty and Lydia were teasing Tom, heaping food upon his plate. He was a greedy little fellow, forever boasting of how much he could eat and drink, crying out through a great mouthful of egg: “If I were as rich as Mr. Darcy, I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine every day.”
“Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,” said my mother, “and if I were to see you at it, I should take away your bottle directly.”
An argument followed with Tom protesting that she should not and Mama maintaining that she should, and under cover of this foolery, Maria Lucas said: “Shall you be going to Netherfield with the others, Mary, to wait on Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley?”
And upon my saying that I planned instead to walk into Meryton, she sighed and said: “I confess I would much rather not go. When people are very grand and fashionable, I never know what to say to them.”
Charlotte had overheard this last: “You will feel less shy when you are better acquainted with them, Maria.”
Maria looking unconvinced, I whispered to her: “I was used to be shy in company, Maria. Until I went to Bath.” And as Tom and my mother’s silly argument showed no sign of flagging, I began softly to quote from Wordsworth’s “The Affliction of Margaret”—a poem that Mrs. Knowles had had me commit to memory in the first anxious days of my stay:
My apprehensions come in crowds;
I dread the rustling of the grass;
The very shadows of the clouds
Have power to shake me as they pass;
I question things and do not find
One that will answer to my mind;
And all the world appears unkind.
11.
By the time Lydia and Kitty and I finally set off, the morning was well advanced and Lydia in a fever of impatience. “Lord, I am so sick of Mr. Bingley. I wish to heaven he would go back to wherever he came from—hell or Halifax, I care not—him and his stupid sisters and his stupid friend.”
Kitty said: “If he had asked you to dance, you would not be so sick of him.”
This sparked a quarrel that lasted most of the way into Meryton, and very glad I was to leave them both at the Philipses’ front door (with Kitty now in tears) and to make my way to the Red Lion at the other end of the street.
I found Mrs. Curry turning out the inn’s best bedchamber. The militia regiment was expected at the week’s end and several of the officers were to lodge at the Red Lion. Mrs. Curry could talk of little else. She shook her head over my imaginary lost glove, saying archly: “It has been known for a gentleman to possess himself of a young lady’s glove. Can it be that you have a secret admirer, my dear Miss Mary?” And when I denied it, blushing, she laughed in my face. “Well, I make no doubt there will be plenty of that when the regiment is come—our little assemblies are going to be a whole lot livelier, that’s certain.”
“I should be sorry if the character of our assemblies were to change merely because there were officers present.” I took a steadying breath just as Mrs. Knowles had taught me before adding: “I must say I found last night’s ball most enjoyable—the music, especially.”
“I am glad it met with your approval, my dear.”
“I thought that the musicians played extremely well.”
“Aye, they’re fine players. And did you enjoy the supper? Curry insisted on adding more negus to the white soup—a mistake, I thought.”
To my relief she returned to the subject of the musicians: “Curry talks of inviting the regimental band to play at our next assembly—but I think our little quartet should be given the preference. They’re all Hertfordshire lads, and very highly thought of, especially young Bushell.”
She then informed me that Peter had run away from home at a young age to play in a London street band. “Ran away on account of his brute of a father. And well for him that he did—considering that his father had taken to poaching and I don’t know what else besides—”
“Poaching!”
“Aye.” She laughed. “Curry once bought a dozen hares from him at half a crown apiece. But they caught him in the end. He was transported.”
“Transported!” I was even more shocked.
“Packed off to that dreadful place—New South Wales, is it? And now poor Peter has his mother and sister on his hands. Not that he ever complains.”
She stood back to view the results of her housewifery, adding (with a last tweak of the bed hangings): “He’s a good lad, Peter—ambitious too. The joke is that he owes his place at the Great House to his father’s disgrace.”
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice Page 11
