There was no response. Nothing but the sound of a muffled sob from inside. I felt truly dreadful, then. That is twice in three days that Mary the Complacent has been reduced to tears.
“Mary, please come out.” I knocked again. “Everyone knows it was just an accident. No one will laugh at you. Besides, it was my fault. I ought to have made sure that you weren’t a complete disaster on the dance floor before I sent you out there tonight.”
In hindsight, it was not the most tactful way I could have phrased it. But I was just feeling both guilty and irritated at the same time, and it simply slipped out.
Renewed sobs sounded from behind the locked cloakroom door.
I tried several more times, without any better results. And then finally I gave up, leaning against the panel, uncertain of what to do. Clearly I was making no headway with trying to apologise or reason with Mary. And yet I did not feel, either, as though I could simply go and rejoin the party and leave my sister weeping in a cloakroom.
I was debating whether to try knocking again, when I felt a touch on my elbow and turned to find a young man standing beside me. A very handsome young man—really, one of the handsomest men I have ever seen, with wheat-blond hair that fell across his brow, a lean, chiselled face, and eyes of a vivid blue.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Bennet, I wonder if you would—”
My temper abruptly snapped. I had been refusing offers from young men like him all night—and for weeks before this, too. Scores and scores of handsome young men incapable of absorbing through their thick skulls the meaning of the words ‘no, thank you’. Now this particular man had followed me out here to pester me while I was already feeling wretched about Mary.
I cut him off. “No. I would not care to dance. I would not care to have you turn pages for me at the piano. I would not like to step outside with you to see the moonrise.” I looked him up and down. “As you are no doubt already aware, sir, you have very pretty blue eyes. But then so does Lady Dorwich’s expensive new Persian cat. I pray you, go and turn your lovelorn attentions on some other girl than me, because there is no invitation you could issue, no request you could make that could lead me to say yes. Do you understand?”
The man took a step backwards at the vehemence of my tone. And then he said, one eyebrow raised, “Not even if I requested you to convey my regrets to your aunt that I must leave at once? I have just received an urgent message that I am needed by a sick friend—well, a parishioner of mine, really.”
He held up a scrap of folded paper in one hand—the message, presumably. And I noticed what I had overlooked before: that above his black evening jacket, he wore the white collar of a clergyman.
It was, I suppose, proof of whatever that quotation is about the mills of God and Divine Justice and all that sort of thing. It was my fault that Mary had been so mortified. And now the celestial mills had obligingly provided me with an opportunity to feel completely, toe-curlingly embarrassed, as well.
After what seemed an eternity, the young man said, “I do not believe we have been formally introduced. My name is Lancelot Dalton.”
I heard myself say, “Good Heaven. Lancelot? Surely not.”
Mr. Dalton’s eyebrows lifted again. And I felt my toes re-curling themselves.
Anyone would think, would they not, that I would by now have managed to govern the habit of speaking without pause for thought? But apparently not. It just seemed too much, that a man could look quite so much like the illustration of the noble knight in a book of fairy tales—and have a name like Lancelot, besides.
After another beat of silence, Mr. Dalton said, gravely, “My mother had an unfortunate fondness for the old medieval romances. I also have a sister called Gwenevere.”
I looked at him, uncertain of whether he was serious or joking. I thought there was a faint gleam of humour about his eyes, but I could not be sure.
I recollected myself enough to offer him my hand and say, “And I am Kitty—Catherine Bennet.”
“Yes, I know.” Mr. Dalton made me a bow. “I am acquainted with you by reputation, Miss Bennet.”
Which meant that I had definitely been wrong about the momentary look of humour in his gaze. One of the other advantages of coming to London this winter was that no one here does know my reputation. But if Mr. Dalton has heard anything of me, it is certain to have been nothing to my advantage.
I suppose I should have been mortified all over again, but strangely enough I found myself angry instead. I am not actually the girl I was a year ago. And yet this stiff, pompous prig of a clergyman had evidently decided to try and convict me on the evidence of hearsay alone.
I drew myself up and said, “Isn’t there a verse in the Bible about not fussing about the splinter in your neighbour’s eye when you have a great enormous beam in your own?”
Mr. Dalton looked taken aback all over again. And then once more I would have sworn there was a flicker of amusement in his blue gaze. Though in this case it only made me angrier still.
But then he said—still gravely—“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”
I might have known I would only garble the quote; Biblical references have never been my strong suit, either.
Mr. Dalton cleared his throat again and said, “All quotations from Scripture aside, Miss Bennet, I’m afraid that we seem to have somehow misunderstood each other, or—”
He got no further. A blonde-ringleted figure in rose-pink satin came bouncing out of the parlour at that moment and launched herself at him.
“Oh, Lance, you’re surely not leaving already?” She twined her arm possessively through his and pouted up at him. You promised to dance with me, and you’ve not yet kept your promise, you know.”
I recognised the girl as Miss Miranda Pettigrew. She is a young protégé of my sister-in-law Mrs. Hurst—a daughter of one of Mrs. Hurst’s school friends, I think. Miranda is plump and pink cheeked and blue eyed, dresses in more ruffles than even my sister Lydia, and wears her hair in a riot of bouncing blonde ringlets that must take her maid a small age to arrange every day with the curling tongs.
Mrs. Hurst has undertaken to launch her into London society this winter. And though I have met Miranda only a handful of times, I confess that I have already formed the opinion that I like her about as well as I do my sister-in-law.
Miranda wriggled like a new puppy and tugged at Mr. Dalton’s coat sleeve, alternately smiling, batting her lashes, and pouting as she reminded him of his promise to dance.
If I am strictly honest, I suspect that the real reason I dislike Miranda so much is that she reminds me of my own past behaviour. And really I ought at this point to quote my own Scriptural verse about beams and eyes back at myself.
Mr. Dalton showed remarkable patience in the face of Miranda’s assault. He only held up the message he had shown me and repeated that he had been called away by an old friend who was ill and had need of him.
And then he looked at me over the top of Miranda’s head and said, “If you wouldn’t mind conveying my message to your aunt? My friend was in dire straits when I left this evening to come here. And I’m afraid this message means that he must have taken a turn for the worse. I left your aunt’s address so that I might be summoned if there was any change.”
He raised his hand to push the hair back from his brow, looking weary—and truly grieved over his friend’s condition.
Which was extremely annoying of him, since it left me unable to continue in good conscience to be rude.
I said that of course I would give Aunt Gardiner his regrets. Mr. Dalton thanked me and took his leave of Miranda—who continued to pout. And then he bowed to me and said it had been a pleasure to meet me.
Thus proving that even clergymen must occasionally tell lies.
Saturday 6 January 1816
Rhys Williams sent a bouquet of pink baby roses and a note to Mary first thing this morning. Or rather, he
sent them to Aunt Gardiner, with a request that they be given to Mary. Mr. Williams is far too much of a gentleman to do anything so improper as correspond with—or give gifts to—an unmarried girl whom he has only just met.
Aunt Gardiner gave them to me to take to Mary, since Mary was refusing to leave our room.
I half expected to find Mary in bed with the covers over her head again when I went up, but she was dressed—in the plainest, ugliest gown in her possession, with her hair pulled back in its old severe way—sitting in a chair before the bedroom fire. She was reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and her spine was so straight it made my own back ache just to look at her.
“Mary, Mr. Williams sent you these,” I began. “I think he wants you to know how sorry he is about last night.”
Mary glanced up from her book at the flowers—with the expression one of Fox’s martyrs might have shown in looking at Julius Caesar. Or is it Nero? At any rate, whichever emperor it was who was always feeding the early Christians to the lions.
“I suppose the generality of female minds might find a floral tribute an acceptable form of apology, but I should very much have preferred a book.”
“Oh, Mary, don’t say that,” I protested. I was not quite ready to give up on Mr. Williams yet. After all, before the dancing he had—apparently voluntarily—spent more time in Mary’s company last night than I have ever seen any young man spend before. “The two of you seemed to be getting on so well together. What were you talking about?”
Mary sniffed. “Nothing that you would be interested in. Or indeed be capable of comprehending,” she added with a pointed glance at me.
Ordinarily, that would be the kind of remark that would tempt me to pour tea over her head again, but in the harsh winter sunlight filtering through the bedroom window, I could see that Mary’s eyes looked as though she had been crying.
So I said, “You might at least read his note.” I offered her the folded paper, addressed with her name in a spiky, rather untidy man’s hand.
Mary snatched the paper from me and without opening or looking at it, tore it into two pieces, and then into two more. Her chin quivering, she threw the scraps of paper into the fire. “I am never as long as I live going to see or speak to Mr. Williams ever again!”
Which I suppose—unless I can think of a miraculous way of changing Mary’s mind—settles that.
Monday 8 January 1816
I should have thought that the mills of God might have finished with me by this time. I may have caused Mary to dance with Mr. Williams and make a spectacle of herself, but she appears perfectly recovered now.
She even informed me this morning that although she prefers to spend her time in reading and study, she considers it no sacrifice to occasionally participate in gatherings of a social nature. This being the preface to her announcing that she would accompany me to the dance our sister-in-law Georgiana is hosting this Saturday evening.
That means that not only will I have to attend, I will—somehow—have to teach Mary to dance, as well, in the next five days.
Which, to be honest, I would have thought might be considered by any sort of Divine Justice to be punishment enough.
However. This morning I was playing in the drawing room with baby Susanna. The boys were having lessons with their tutor, and Anna and Charlotte were at a dancing lesson. Ordinarily, Aunt Gardiner would be with Susanna, but Susanna is six months old and teething, and kept my aunt up half the night last night with her crying.
Aunt Gardiner looked so exhausted this morning that I offered to play with the baby for a while so that my aunt could have a few hours’ uninterrupted rest. And really, it is no hardship to play with Susanna. She is such a dumpling.
I brought her downstairs with me so that my aunt would not hear her if she cried, and we sat on the drawing room floor, playing with a set of carved wooden animals that Susanna loves. Susanna loves it especially when I make the animals talk to each other and to her. Today she was a bit fussier than usual—the teeth still troubling her, I suppose—so I put on an especially zealous performance, complete with different voices for the animals.
The bear spoke in deep, growling tones with the accent of a London cab driver. The pig snorted between every word. The duck had an outrageously dreadful French accent …
I will not go on.
I will say that Susanna adored it all. She chuckled and clapped her dimpled little hands—a new skill for her—and uttered delighted, high-pitched baby shrieks.
I had just made the duck waddle over to the horse and quack out an invitation to a dîner gastronomique, when someone cleared his throat from the doorway.
It was Mr. Lancelot Dalton.
Of course it was.
Because Fate has apparently decreed that I will appear as great an idiot as possible every time I encounter the man.
I dropped the duck and scrambled up off the floor. Which made Susanna let out another shriek—an indignant one, this time—so that I had to scoop her up into my arms.
I had resolved the other night that if I ever did encounter Mr. Dalton again, I would be calm, and cool, and very, very dignified. Now, it is practically impossible to be dignified when one has just been discovered talking like a French-speaking duck. Or for that matter while an indignant baby shrieks and tangles her sticky little fingers in your hair.
Still, I (gently) detached Susanna’s fingers and said, as coolly as I could manage, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Dalton. I did not see you there.”
I would not have thought he could possibly be as handsome as I was remembering him from the other night. But he is. Even in a black clerical coat and white collar.
He bowed slightly and said, “I should be the one to apologise, Miss Bennet, for startling you. Your parlourmaid said that I would find Mrs. Gardiner here.”
Rose, Aunt Gardiner’s parlourmaid, is very sweet. But also rather simple. And incapable of understanding that in addition to answering the front door, she is supposed to make sure that my aunt is ‘at home’ to visitors before she shows the visitors in. And that a proper parlourmaid does not simply point the visitors in the right general direction and tell them to show themselves in.
Ordinarily, I could care less for such formalities. But just at that moment, I found myself wishing that Aunt Gardiner employed an elderly, supremely correct butler with a name like Worthington or Snell.
“My aunt is resting,” I said. “Is there something I might—” I had been bouncing Susanna on my hip, but she was still shrieking and angrily stretching out her hands to the wooden toys on the floor. Loud enough that it was growing hard to hear my own voice.
I gave up, stooped, and retrieved the wooden duck and the wooden pig, made the pig pretend to kiss her chubby little cheeks (I had already thoroughly embarrassed myself in front of Mr. Dalton, and decided that I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb) and then handed the animals to her.
Susanna’s shrieks changed to a gurgle of a laugh. And then she put the pig into her mouth and started to gnaw on it, an expression of fierce concentration on her chubby face.
“Is there something I might do for you instead?” I finished.
Mr. Dalton was watching me. I could not tell whether it was with disapproval in his gaze or no. Though I suppose it very likely was. Perhaps as a clergyman he disapproves on principle of play acting—even with wooden animals? Or perhaps he was merely chagrined at having to deal with me—the girl he ‘knows by reputation’—instead of my aunt.
At any rate—just as his study of me was beginning to make me feel thoroughly self-conscious, and thus irritated—he finally cleared his throat and said, “I called to give Mrs. Gardiner the approximate number of gift boxes that will be required for the children’s ward at London Hospital. I volunteer my time there as chaplain. And Mrs. Gardiner has very kindly offered to put together some small gifts of food and warm clothes for the children who were obliged to spend the Christmas holidays as hospital patients.”
I cannot decide which is the
more annoying: Mr. Dalton’s disapproval or his continued undermining of my every excuse to be impolite. I took firm hold on my temper, drew a breath, and said, “That is a very worthy cause, Mr.—”
And then before I could finish, the parlour door opened again, and Mark Chamberlayne came staggering into the room.
Have I mentioned Captain Chamberlayne before? I suppose I have not. He was a captain in the militia regiment stationed in Meryton two years ago. And as such, part of all of Lydia’s and my madcap fun and schemes back then. I suspect those days must seem as distant to him now as they do to me.
At any rate, he came reeling into the parlour this morning and crashed into a small table, upsetting a vase, a statue of a shepherdess, and a jar of potpourri onto the floor. And I moved on from a wish that I could teach Rose the meaning of the phrase ‘at home’ to a momentary wish that I could boil her in oil.
Of course, Mark’s gait is never terribly steady—one of his legs having been replaced by a wooden peg—but in this case, the staggering was a result of his being extremely drunk.
Not that that was so very great a surprise; he is very nearly always drunk these days. Yet I cannot bring myself to turn him away when he calls to see me—which is usually at least once a week. Besides liking Mark for the sake of our old friendship, I always seem to see John at the sight of him—and wonder in what state John would have been if he had come back from Waterloo alive.
Mark has round brown eyes and a round face and a crest of very fair hair that stands up all over his head—rather like Susanna’s. Or rather, he used to. The fair hair is the same, but his eyes are now all but lost in pockets of flesh, and his face has the puffy, ravaged look of one who habitually drinks to excess.
He stared dazedly down at the wreckage of broken china and potpourri he had caused, shook his head as though trying to clear it—and then he lurched towards me and seized my hand, breathing gusts of gin into my face.
“Miss Bennet—you’ve got to help me—for old times’ sake, please.”
Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) Page 3
