The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

by Colleen McCullough

  “That would fit,” said Jane, nodding. “Mary never had a particle of sense, for all her goodness and piety. I thought her much improved when I saw her at Mama’s funeral, but perhaps the improvement was only skin deep—the festering spots gone, I mean. For surely her lack of good sense won’t have improved. She was a sad case.”

  “No, I believe the improvement went all the way to her core. Certainly Ned Skinner admired her spirit, and he isn’t a susceptible man. She fought back when she was set upon, and she managed to find her way out of a dense forest. The real abduction took place on a bridle-path, not a road, and far from any big town. So Fitz has ruled out footpads or another highwayman. Whereas I begin to think of a madman, Jane.”

  “A Bedlamite, you mean? But the nearest Bedlam is surely the one in Manchester.”

  “Yes. Fitz is making enquiries to see if any inmate has escaped recently. From the Birmingham Bedlam too.”

  They discussed the matter until every possibility had been exhausted, by which time Jane looked exhausted too.

  “I confess that I’m glad Charles will be away for another year. You need time to recuperate,” said Elizabeth.

  “He has a mistress in Jamaica,” said Jane, sounding quite her usual self. “Children by her as well.”

  “Jane! No!”

  “Yes.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Caroline. She was very angry—the girl is a mulatto, which offends Caroline’s sense of fitness. It means the children are also tainted, poor little things.”

  “Oh, I knew I was right to put my foot down about that bitch of a woman!” cried Elizabeth. “Jane, Jane, I beg of you, don’t grieve! Charles loves you, I would stake my life on it!”

  The beautiful honey-coloured face broke into a smile that put dimples in its cheeks. “Yes, Lizzie, I know Charles loves me. I never doubt it for a single moment. Gentlemen are—well, strange in some ways, is all. Charles’s business interests in the West Indies require his presence there every eight or nine years, and he’s always away for months, sometimes a year or more. I would far rather that he had a decent woman as his mistress than flitted from woman to woman. I don’t want to accompany him on these trips, so how can I repine? I simply hope that he provides properly for this woman and their children. When he comes home this time, I’ll talk to him.”

  Elizabeth was staring, amazed. “Jane, you are a saint. Even a mistress doesn’t have the power to shake you or your marriage. What did you say to Caroline when she told you?”

  “Much what I’ve just said to you. You’re too hard on poor Caroline, Lizzie. Some people are so stuffed with malice that it bursts from them like a jet of water from a fountain. Caroline is such a one. I used to think that her poison was reserved for you and me, but it isn’t. It’s for anybody who offends her. Like Charles’s mulatto mistress, like Charlie, Prissy, and quite a few ladies in London.”

  Elizabeth took the opportunity. “Do you happen to know the identity of Fitz’s mistress, Jane?”

  “Lizzie! Not Fitz! He’s far too proud. What’s given you this idea? It isn’t true.”

  “I think it must be. My resolution is crumbling—I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this charade,” Elizabeth said, her throat aching. “Very recently he informed me that he desperately regretted marrying me.”

  “No! I don’t believe that! He was so passionately in love with you, Lizzie. Oh, not like Charles and me. We were cosy and comfy—passion was secondary to love. With Fitz, it was the very opposite. I mean that he had great passion, an overriding and unquiet passion. What have you done to disappoint him? If he said that to you, then you have disappointed him, and dreadfully so. Come, you must have some idea!”

  Eyes closed, Elizabeth got to her feet and made a huge show of putting on her tight kid gloves, one finger at a time. When she opened the eyes, they were dark and stormy. Jane shrank away, terrified.

  “The one person I have always been able to count on, Jane, was you. Yes, I use the past tense, for I see that I was mistaken. My husband treats me disgracefully! And I have done nothing to disappoint him! On the contrary. It is he who disappoints me. Last night I offered to leave him, but he won’t even let me do that! Why? Because he would have to answer questions about the wife who left him! What an obsequious crawler of a wife you must be, Jane! No wonder you can excuse little peccadilloes like mistresses.”

  She peered through the window, ignoring Jane’s fresh bout of tears. “I see my carriage has come. No, don’t bother getting up, finish your snivelling in peace. I can find my own way.”

  And out she stalked, outraged, quivering, to weep all the way home to Pemberley. There she went straight to her rooms and told Hoskins to draw the curtains.

  “Convey a message to Mr. Darcy that I am laid low with the migraine, and will not be able to say farewell to Mrs. Hurst, Miss Bingley, and Miss Hurst.”

  “I don’t wish to pry, Elizabeth, but are you quite well?” Angus asked the next morning when he found his hostess walking her favourite path through the woods behind Pemberley’s river.

  She indicated the dell in which they were standing with one hand. “It’s difficult to be down in spirits, Angus, when there is such beauty within half a mile of the house,” she said, trying to deflect him. “It’s too late for flowers, but this spot is perfect at all times of year. The little brook, the dragonflies, the maidenhair ferns—delicate beyond imagination! Our gardener says that such tiny, lacelike leaves and fronds are peculiarities of the maidenhair that grows in this dell only. I know people who go into ecstasies over peacock feathers, but I would rather a frond of this exquisite fern.”

  But Angus was not to be deflected. “We live in an age when the personal is exceeding private, and no one is more aware than I that ladies don’t confide in gentlemen apart from their husbands. However, I claim the privileges of one who would enter your family. I’m in love with Mary, and hope to marry her.”

  “Angus!” Elizabeth smiled at him in absolute delight. “Oh, that is good news! Does she know you love her?”

  “No. I did not declare my suit when I stayed in Hertford for ten days because I could see that she wasn’t ready for proposals of marriage.” His eyes twinkled. “The local solicitor tried his luck, and was turned down most emphatically, though he is young, affluent and handsome. I took my cue from him, and presented myself to Mary as naught save a good friend. It was the right ploy, in that she held nothing back from me about her ambitions and her ardent devotion to Argus the letter writer. In one way, girlish dreams, yet in another, valid aspirations. I listened, offered what advice I thought she would take, and mostly held my tongue.”

  Elizabeth found a mossy boulder and sat on it. “I would be so happy to welcome you into my family, Angus. If you did not declare your suit, I’m sure your instincts were right. Mary has never had a high opinion of men, but how could she resist a man as personable and intelligent as you?”

  “I hope not forever,” he said, a little wistfully. “I have gained her trust, and hope to gain her love.” Which was all he could say; the identity of Argus had to remain his secret.

  “Why did you choose her to love?” Elizabeth asked.

  His brows flew up. “Choose? That’s a strange word to couple with love! I don’t believe there’s much if any choice about it. I’m rich, I’m not decrepit, and my face is generally thought to be appealing to women. I say these things only to reinforce what is said about me in Society—that I can have my pick of eligible females. So why Mary, who is far from eligible? If it had a visible beginning, I suppose that was her beauty, which not even her dreadful clothes can disguise. But after I scraped an acquaintance with her, I found a prickly, misanthropic, fiercely independent soul who burns with the desire to make her mark on English thought. One cannot call her a philosopher; she hasn’t been grounded in its disciplines or educated in its theories or steeped in its evolution. But I could see that the seventeen years she cared for her mother had allowed her an unparalleled exposure to bo
oks normally kept away from women, and had imbued her with an almost frantic desire to be freed from customary female restraints. Ignorance is the best friend and ally of custom, particularly those customs foisted on lesser beings like women and blackamoors. Well, Mary lost her ignorance, she became educated. And had sufficient sense to understand that without experience, her education was still lacking. It is all of this, I believe, that led her to embark upon her project. When she settles down, I think she will espouse not the cause of alleviating poverty, but the cause of universal education.”

  “But why travel on the stage-coach, why stay at inferior inns?”

  “I don’t quite know, but I suspect it may have been in order to appear an impoverished governess. People don’t talk to their betters, Elizabeth, therefore Mary resolved not to seem a better.”

  “How remarkably well you know this Mary! You tried to tell me that I didn’t know her at all, and I reproved you. But I was the ignorant one, not you,” Elizabeth said, sighing.

  Angus pulled a face. “There’s one factor I failed utterly to take into account,” he said, “and that is her natural attraction for disaster. For that, I can find no logical explanation. The very poorest of governesses travel by public coach and stay at mean inns, but they aren’t set upon or abducted. Even the wee bit we know of her journey from Grantham to Nottingham confirms this tendency—she was harassed by five yokels, who pitched her into the mire of a coach yard and laughed at her plight. Her adventures are appalling! What caused them to be so? Her beauty? The guineas in her purse? That prickly misanthropy? Or simply a combination of everything?”

  Elizabeth frowned. “She never got into trouble as a girl, though my father despised her. He persisted in lumping her with Lydia and Kitty as one of the three silliest girls in England. Which wasn’t really fair. She persisted in singing atrociously at functions, but while everyone, including Papa, complained about it behind her back, no one ever told her to her face. Which indicates that her mind heard the notes as true, rather than demonstrates stupidity. Mary wasn’t the kind of girl who excited admiration, but she wasn’t silly. She was earnest, hardworking and scholarly. Qualities that made her dull, though Lydia would have said, boring.”

  She got up and began to walk, as if suddenly very uncomfortable. “In fact,” she went on, “the worst one could say of Mary then was that she had an inappropriate and unreciprocated passion for our cousin, the Reverend Mr. Collins. The most frightful man I have ever met. But Mary mooned and moped in his presence so obviously that I, for one, decided that our cousin wanted a beautiful wife. Mary’s face was covered in suppurating spots, and her teeth were crooked.” She laughed. “He didn’t get a beautiful wife. He married Charlotte Lucas—a very plain but eminently sensible woman. And when he did, Mary very quickly got over him.”

  “Oh, I imagine that what attracted Mary to your cousin was his calling. She told me that in those days she was very religious.” Unwilling to torment himself to the point of tears, Angus returned to the subject of Elizabeth herself. “Well, there’s nothing we can do for Mary at this moment beyond Fitz’s measures, so let us change the subject. I’m more concerned about you, my dear. I esteem your friendship greatly, just as I do Fitz’s. But only an unobservant man of low intelligence could fail to see that you’re unhappy.”

  “Purely on behalf of Lydia and Mary,” she parried.

  “Rubbish! You have offended Fitz.”

  “I am always offending Fitz,” she said bitterly.

  “Is it to do with Caroline Bingley? I was told what you said.”

  “She’s a secondary issue.”

  “You did offer her an unpardonable insult.”

  “And would be glad to do so again. My friendship with you is a mere ten years old, Angus, but I have had to put up with Caroline Bingley for twenty-one years. Fitz’s friendship with Charles Bingley is of such a nature that he’s prepared to suffer Caroline. So I’ve sat mumchance under her insults for so long that I suppose there came a straw that broke my back. I lashed out. Yet so hypocritical is our English society that veiled insults are tolerated, whereas frankness never is. I was frank.”

  “How much does Charlie have to do with this?” Angus asked, thinking that it would do Elizabeth good to be—frank.

  “A great deal. She sowed the seeds of discord between him and his father by implying that Charlie’s tastes in love are Socratic. And she spread it all over London! Instead of blaming Caroline, Fitz blamed Charlie. It is his face, of course, and the silly effect it has on some men who are indeed Socratic. But he’ll grow out of his youthful beauty—it’s beginning to happen now, in fact. If this business of Mary’s has anything to recommend it, it is that Fitz and Charlie are getting on together at last. Fitz is beginning to see that the reputation Caroline gave Charlie is undeserved.”

  “Yes, you would be better off if Caroline were not a part of your lives,” Angus said. “However, she is Jane’s sister-in-law.”

  Squaring her shoulders, Elizabeth marched on without seeing anything around her. “I may have offended Fitz unforgivably, but at least I have made it impossible for Caroline to be anywhere I am. That is why Fitz is so angry.”

  “Well, Lizzie, a lot of people in London have put up with Miss Caroline Bingley because you and Fitz do—you’re leaders in society far beyond Westminster. When these people notice that Caroline no longer has the entrée to a Darcy function, I predict that invitations to the best houses will cease. In a year’s time, Caroline and poor Louisa will have to retire to Kensington, with all the other tabbies.”

  Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Angus, no!”

  “Angus, yes.”

  “Thank you for cheering me up so splendidly! The thought of Caroline and Louisa relegated to Kensington is delicious.”

  “Yet she isn’t the crux of the matter between you and Fitz?”

  “It’s easy to see that you’re a journalist—pick, poke, pry, chip, hammer, chisel.”

  “That is no answer, Elizabeth.”

  “I think Fitz has a mistress,” she blurted.

  Jane’s response had been instinctive and horrified; his was calm and considered. “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “The Darcy pride. Also, Fitz is in the vanguard of what he calls ‘moral improvement’—a shocking prude, your husband! If he had his way, he would legislate a man’s right to a mistress out of existence. But since he cannot do that—even archbishops have mistresses—he will make the punishment for harlotry more far-ranging as well as more severe. His first order of business will have been to make sure his own life is above any suspicion. No Augean stables for Fitzwilliam Darcy! He intends to crack down on mistresses as well as common prostitutes.” Angus took her arm and tucked it through his own. “As proprietor of the foremost political paper in the kingdom, my dear, I am in a position to know everything about every important man. Whatever is going on between you and Fitz is very much your own business, but I can assure you that there is no third party involved.”

  When they came beneath the small library windows, Fitz emerged to join them.

  “I see you’re feeling better,” he said to Elizabeth.

  “Thank you, yes. Visiting Jane turned out to be rather a wearying ordeal. She was upset about Lydia, but Mary’s plight left her prostrate. I came home with a frightful headache.”

  Angus released Elizabeth’s arm, bowed to her, and walked away in the direction of the stables. The sound of Charlie’s whoop came clearly; both parents smiled.

  “You missed Caroline’s departure,” Fitz said.

  “The headache was quite genuine, if you are implying that it was a ploy.”

  “Actually, no, I was not,” he said in tones of surprise. “I knew where you were going, and what your reception would be. The Bingley ladies understood. They know Jane too.”

  “I hope you don’t think I regret what I said to Caroline,” Elizabeth said, voice hard. “My detestation of that—that sad apology for a woman has reached its zenith, and I
cannot bear to see her. In fact, I don’t know why I didn’t do this years ago.”

  “Because it involved an unforgivable insult.”

  “Sometimes the thickness of a hide makes an unforgivable insult necessary! Her conceit is so monumental that she believes herself to be perfect.”

  “I dread telling Charles Bingley, and won’t spare you.”

  “Do your worst,” she said, sounding unperturbed. “Charles isn’t a fool. The vagaries of family gave him a malignant sister, and he knows it well. When those same vagaries gave you unacceptable relatives by marriage, you removed them from your life. What is so different about my removal of Caroline Bingley? Sauce for the gander, Fitz.” She shot him a minatory look. “Why did you provide so poorly for Mary? You’re immensely rich and could easily have afforded to compensate her properly for the seventeen years of peace she gave you. Instead, you and Charles agreed on a paltry sum.”

  “I had naturally thought that she would come to live with us at Pemberley or Jane at Bingley Hall,” he said stiffly. “Had she, over nine thousand pounds would have yielded her an income well in excess of her needs.”

  “Yes, I do understand your reasoning,” she said. “However, when she refused those alternatives, you should immediately have settled a much larger sum on her. You did not.”

  “How could I?” he asked indignantly. “I insisted that she think about her situation for a month, then come back to me. But she never did come back to me—or inform me of her plans. Just hired an unsuitable house in Hertford and lived without a chaperone. What was I to make of that?”

  “Since Mary is a Bennet, the worst.” Nodding regally—thus depriving him of the opportunity to do so—Elizabeth walked into the house and left him to go wherever he pleased.

  At a loose end after the unsatisfactory conclusion to their investigations, Angus, Charlie and Owen scattered like balls on a billiards table. Angus returned to the company of those in his own age group, Charlie suffered a fit of guilty conscience and went to his books, and Owen decided to explore Pemberley.