“He works at the Great House of Stoke, does he?”
“Aye.” (giving me a look) “He’s keeper there.”
I felt myself blushing again. “Well, he certainly is a fine player—all four of them are fine players.”
I was now eager to escape Mrs. Curry’s knowing looks. The picture of Peter as a caring brother and son delighted me, and it was reassuring to know he was in the employ of one of the country’s foremost families, but I wondered at his being thought ambitious. I wondered whether he might be on the lookout for a rich wife. (To a young man in his situation, I must appear rich.) If so, an assembly would be an ideal hunting ground, and girls who had been slighted by other men—girls such as myself—easy prey.
The suspicion once having entered my mind, I could not rid myself of it. And soon afterwards I had cause to be equally suspicious of Lydia and Kitty and of Helen Long. They were all three waiting for me in the Philipses’ parlor, and when I entered Lydia said: “So. Did you find your glove?” And upon my replying red-faced that I had not, she nudged Kitty and the two of them started sniggering. Helen Long then jumped up, exclaiming: “Lord! I had no idea it was so late. Aunt will be wondering what has become of me.” (bestowing a Judas-kiss upon me) “You look très jolie, Mary—such roses in your cheeks.”
I guessed what had happened. Mrs. Long must have told her nieces how she had caught Mary Bennet hobnobbing with one of the musicians, and Helen had in turn told Lydia and Kitty. All the way back to Longbourn they went on sniggering, and later I came upon the two of them in the breakfast room with Elizabeth, and from their downcast eyes and quivering lips, I guessed they had now told her the story.
The sight of Elizabeth sitting with her mouth primmed to prevent herself from smiling—sitting and sewing a smock for the poor—suddenly enraged me. I asked her what it was that she found so amusing, whereupon Kitty said that Helen had told them all about “my beau.”
“Your beau with the bow.” (Lydia here mimed the bowing of a fiddle.)
Elizabeth did laugh then, and though she at once checked it, such was my anger that I burst out: “Oh! go on. Laugh if you like. I know how Elizabeth Bennet loves to laugh. Nothing gives her greater pleasure.”
Even in my anger I saw that the smile had quite gone from her face, but I was now in full flight: “But if she or anybody else imagines that I—a gentleman’s daughter—would so far forget myself as to consort with a common fiddler—”
I could not continue. Elizabeth was on her feet, pale-faced; the other two were observing me much as they had done during my illness—Kitty blinking apprehensively and Lydia looking wary. I took a breath and then with as much dignity as I could muster, walked from the room.
One of them called after me—I believe it was Elizabeth—but I did not stop. I could scarce credit what I had said. I had betrayed Peter—denied him just as the disciple Peter had denied our Lord before the crowing of the cock. And for what? Did I care so much what people might think? People of the likes of Lydia and Kitty?
I went up to my bedchamber and locked the door and wept. And when Elizabeth—and later Lydia and Kitty—came and knocked and said that they were sorry, I refused to speak with them.
12.
I spent the afternoon on my bed, quite unable to get the better of my anger at Elizabeth. I wondered that my feelings towards her should fluctuate so wildly—how I could have felt, at breakfast, so sorry for her and now some five hours later, want nothing more to do with her.
I was confused too about my feelings for Peter, not unaware that I was behaving foolishly—feeding an infatuation for a young man whom I hardly knew—but seemingly unable to help myself, not wanting to help myself. It was not as though he was the first young man to pay me attention—not quite. There had been a boy in the Bath Harmonic Society who had wanted always to sit by me and turn the pages when I played. I had not cared the point of a pin for him, however—Mrs. Knowles had thought him a coxcomb—and when he had left Bath I had not been sorry.
But Peter was different. He interested me. And his being a gamekeeper and manifestly uneducated—none of that now seemed to matter. Had I first seen him out with his gun, killing pheasants, it might have mattered. But I had seen him first with his fiddle, had heard him play like an angel, and afterwards, talking to him, he had been kind to me. He had charmed me. I could account for it in no other way.
When people fall in love they are apt to go a little mad. I recalled Mrs. Knowles’s words, and the recollection steadied me. If I had gone a little mad, it was surely nothing abnormal—nothing to do with my melancholia. Undoubtedly people did behave strangely when they fell in love. I thought of how recklessly Elizabeth had conducted herself with Mr. Coates, and of Cassandra’s tongue-tied embarrassment in the presence of Mr. Bingley. And I thought of how Shakespeare’s lovers had carried on—falling in love at first sight and languishing:
My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words
Of that tongue’s utterance, yet I know the sound:
Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?
The housemaid knocking on my door with the hot water woke me. I told her to go away, but soon afterwards there was more knocking and then Jane’s voice, asking (so mildly) that I unlock my door and let poor Sarah in, reminding me that we were to dine at Haye Park—that the Gouldings had invited us to meet the Netherfield party: “Once you have bathed and dressed, my dear Mary, you will feel much more the thing. And I have brought you some tea, dear. You will feel much better when you have drunk some tea.”
And so I let myself be persuaded—not least because I could hear my mother crying out on the stairs that if I did not unlock my door directly I would be sorry.
Jane and Elizabeth were both in the drawing room when I went down, and Elizabeth at once came to me and took my hand: “Oh, Mary! I did not mean to offend you. And what you said was very true—Jane sees it just as you do—she deplores my levity—thinks me far too apt in general to laugh.” She kissed me then, saying: “Come, are we friends then?”
It was impossible to resist such a show of affection, but I would have felt happier if Jane had not been there to witness it. There was between them a kind of collusion—a smiling exchange of glances—Elizabeth’s seeming to say, “There. Are you satisfied?” and Jane’s look of beaming approval. It was a painful reminder of the bond between them—a bond never more evident than when they sought to include me.
I was conscious too of an air of suppressed excitement about them both. They were wearing their new gowns—Jane a white sarcenet trimmed with glass beads and Elizabeth a white muslin shot through with primrose—and in the combined light of candles and a newly lit fire, their every movement went winking and glinting. We talked on safe subjects meanwhile—about the morning call paid on Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and how Jane had found both sisters “extremely pleasant and conversable” (Elizabeth got up to poke the fire as this was said) and then about their visit to the wife of one of the tenant-farmers who was badly in need of baby linen (hence the smock Elizabeth had been sewing earlier).
My father came in then. He seemed in a most benign humor, and after pouring himself a glass of Malaga actually complimented my sisters on their new gowns. (“Mr. Bingley will admire them prodigiously.”) He also—belatedly—complimented me on mine. (“But of course you are quite above that sort of thing, Mary, are you not?”) And upon my mother’s entering the room dressed in lilac satin: “My dear Mrs. Bennet, you outshine them all.”
The party at Haye Park proved a disappointment, however. While the dinner was excellent and the company select (my younger sisters had not been invited), the conversation was dull. The Gouldings were a middle-aged couple who doted on their only son, William, a wild youth who spent most of his time in the taproom of the Spotted Dog or racing about the countryside in his curricle. In his absence, the parents had little to say for themselves and despite the efforts of Elizabeth and Charlotte Lucas, Mama monopolized the table-talk. My father, consequently, said very little and M
r. Darcy even less, whilst Jane and Bingley, seated side by side, had eyes and ears only for each other. And after dinner, when we were in the drawing room awaiting the gentlemen, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley talked at length about their grand London acquaintance.
There was a little coldness too on Elizabeth’s part towards Mr. Darcy—and a most awkward incident after she finished singing her set-piece, Cherubino’s aria from The Marriage of Figaro. Mr. Darcy had approached while Elizabeth was still seated at the instrument and had started to look over the selection of music. Taking up a song by Robert Burns, he turned to her, saying (with a most pleasant smile) that it was his sister’s favorite air. Whereupon Elizabeth stood, saying: “Indeed? You must ask my sister to play it for you then.” She softened the snub with only the smallest of smiles before walking away.
I did not know what to do. I had been waiting to take her place at the instrument but I had my own music, “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” to perform. After a moment’s hesitation, however, I offered to play the Burns song but Mr. Darcy politely declined and walked away. I had the impression, though, that Elizabeth’s rudeness had not offended him. Indeed, he seemed to like her the better for it. He kept looking at her while Miss Bingley was singing “The Lincolnshire Poacher.”
But shortly after that lady finished her song, a conversation took place between Mr. Goulding and the three Netherfield gentlemen that seriously alarmed me. Upon Mr. Bingley asking whether we were much troubled by poachers in Hertfordshire, Mr. Goulding replied: “I am not a sportsman, sir, but as a magistrate I could a tale to you unfold.”
He then related several instances of gamekeepers being shot at by poachers and the alarming increase in such offences.
Mrs. Goulding called him to order, telling him that he was frightening the ladies, but a little while later I heard him say: “Only last week the keeper up at the Great House was shot at—he and the watch were giving chase to a couple of fellows—called on them to stop and they fired on him. Shot whistled right past his head—lucky he didn’t lose an eye.”
And upon Mrs. Goulding again checking him: “Well, well. There’s no hiding these things, my dear. And these gentlemen have a right to know.”
“We do indeed!” Mr. Hurst, having slept through the singing, was now wide awake, observing that if he had his way, every last idler of a poacher would be lined up and shot.
At which point Mr. Darcy remarked that the Game Laws themselves were undoubtedly at fault, being far too punitive.
“Too punitive—!” (This from Mr. Hurst.)
“Their administration too leaves much to be desired.” (a nod towards Mr. Goulding) “I mean no reflection on your office, sir. I am a magistrate myself. But the rural justices are often grossly partial in their decisions. They make insufficient allowance for the plight of the poor.”
After a short pause, he went on: “A poor man with a large family, living on lands where the game is preserved and under a bad landlord—such a man might well resort to poaching simply to feed his family.”
An uncomfortable silence followed: Mr. Goulding blew out his cheeks and Mr. Hurst sniffed, but neither dared dispute with Mr. Darcy. It was left to Mr. Bingley to smooth things over. “I must confess,” said he with his engaging smile, “that if I were a poor half-starved fellow and a plump young hare were to cross my path, I could well be tempted. I am extremely partial to jugged hare.”
Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley then rejoined the rest of the party around the pianoforte while Mr. Hurst talked on in an aggrieved voice to Mr. Goulding about a certain river in Derbyshire that he had been used to fish for trout in as a lad, but which now had been all but destroyed by “the basest sort of people.” “In broad daylight, Goulding, have I seen them dam and grope the fish—aye, and bandy words with the keeper when he tried to warn them off.”
Our carriage was announced then, and very glad was I to go. I had not the least idea of a gamekeeper’s occupation being so dangerous—there had never been such a person employed on the Longbourn estate—and just as I had spent half the previous night wondering about Peter, I spent half the next one worrying about him.
13.
All the neighborhood families were now eager to entertain Netherfield’s grand inhabitants and scarcely a day passed without a dinner or an evening party. I attended most of these—my mother would not suffer me to stay home—but I shall not devote space to them here. They were of more concern to my elder sisters.
My mornings were taken up with the Bingley sisters’ portrait sittings. I regularly accompanied Cassandra to Netherfield, where it was my duty to either play the pianoforte or read aloud—just as the sisters might wish. Afterwards, Cassandra and I would return to Meryton in Mr. Bingley’s chaise.
At first, I resented this claim on my time—I had become used to having my mornings to myself—but I soon learned to be grateful for the distraction. When left too much to myself my thoughts inevitably turned to Peter. I had not seen him since the assembly and had begun building foolish castles in the air—daydreaming about when we would meet again. But I knew it to be a dangerous pastime, and after experiencing one or two unpleasant sensations reminiscent of my illness, I resolved to be sensible, to limit the time spent alone in my room and to take a more active interest in my neighbors.
As a consequence, I made some interesting discoveries.
I had many opportunities to observe Mr. Darcy, for instance. The portrait sittings always took place in the library (Cassandra had posed the sisters side by side on a sofa in the window embrasure) and Mr. Darcy was often present. He rarely said much, but once he had assured himself that Cassandra was no dauber but a serious artist, he unbent towards her sufficiently to describe his own experience in having his portrait painted.
“My late father commissioned George Dawe shortly after I came of age,” said he. “But the sittings became a punishment to me—Dawe having persuaded me to smile.”
Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst laughed heartily at this, but Cassandra said: “I trust it was not too great an ordeal. I believe Mr. Dawe paints extremely fast.”
“Yes.” (He was smiling properly now.) “Broad brush strokes and the paint very thinly applied. To my mind, the picture looks more like a drawing than a painting.”
“’Tis an excellent likeness nonetheless,” said Mrs. Hurst.
“Oh! ’tis the most charming picture in the world,” said Miss Bingley.
Despite his reserve and occasional rudeness, I saw that Mr. Darcy had the sort of presence that compelled others to perform, and whenever he was not occupied with a book or newspaper, Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst laid themselves out to entertain him. Mr. Bingley too devoted himself to his friend’s amusement, and could even make Mr. Darcy laugh—no easy task. He frequently sought Darcy’s advice on matters of business, speaking in low tones so as not to offend the sensibilities of his sisters, who preferred to think that their family fortune was entirely unconnected with trade.
It became increasingly clear to me that however proud and repulsive his manners, Mr. Darcy was a man of principle. One morning, I overheard a most interesting conversation between the two men. Mr. Bingley had asked Mr. Darcy what he should do about a certain lace factory he owned in Nottingham: “My man of business writes that a quarter of our machines are lying idle on account of this damnable fashion for pantaloons. He says there is simply not the market now for fancy knee-stockings—”
And upon Darcy pointing out that Bingley himself favored pantaloons: “Oh! I am the most unconscionable hypocrite, but seriously now, what is to be done? Harris tells me that a new wide-frame machine has been patented that decreases the need for labor—”
“You are surely not thinking of putting people off work?”
“I do not see how we are to stay in business else—”
“But you cannot turn people off at such a time, Bingley. Half the families in Nottingham have been reduced to Poor Law aid. ’Tis not to be thought of.”
“With the best will in the world, my friend, I
am not running a charity. Unless some of the frame-workers are turned off, we will have to close the factory. I wish you would read Harris’s letter. He sets out the case most persuasively.”
So saying, he handed Darcy the letter, and there followed a rapid exchange of questions and answers that I could not easily follow until Bingley burst out: “Upon my word, I would sell the place tomorrow if I could get a fair price—but Harris says nobody but a madman would buy a lace factory now—”
“And what,” said Darcy, “would be your idea—what would be Harris’s idea of a fair price?”
“What a fellow you are!” (laughing) “I see what you are about—you would buy it yourself and retain all the workers and run it at a loss merely to shame me.”
“Certainly I would—at least until the overseas trade revives. Cannot you afford to do so?”
“I daresay I could—of course I could. But ’tis no way to run a business. My poor father would turn in his grave.”
Miss Bingley now cried out: “What are you saying about Papa, Charles? What are you talking about?”
“We are talking of business, my dear Caroline.”
“Oh! business. How tedious.” And then before Bingley could address Darcy once more: “By the bye, Charles, Louisa and I mean to invite Jane Bennet to dinner today. What say you to that now?”
“Today?” Bingley looked absurdly disappointed. “But Darcy and I and Hurst are to dine with the officers.”
“Let that be a lesson to you not to accept invitations that do not include your sisters.” Miss Bingley now rose from the sofa (thereby destroying Cassandra’s careful arrangement of the folds of her gown) and moved to the nearby writing table: “Dear Jane. It will be delightful to see her. I shall have Sims ride over with an invitation right away.”
She then proceeded to dash off a note on a little sheet of hot-pressed paper, remarking to me as she sealed it: “Jane has no prior engagement, I trust?”
I shook my head, knowing that even if Jane had had such an engagement, Mama would have made her break it.
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice Page 12
