Unexpected Miss Bennet (9781101552780)

by Sarath, Patrice

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Mary said, heat rising into her cheeks. ‘I turned my ankle.’

  ‘Saw that. The shoes you ladies wear are nothing for this ground. I wonder that you came this way. You should stick to the footpaths. Robert, help me here.’

  Roughly but not unkindly they soon had Mary to her feet. They escorted her up the hill, speaking kindly and encouragingly. Mary was relieved that she was not to be carried. That would be much too – too overwhelming, as if she were heroine and the young farmer her handsome hero.

  Mary Bennet, you should stick to your sermons, she told herself. Novels are no good for you.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LADY CATHERINE’S EYES fairly popped out of her head when her daughter recounted Mary’s mishap and told how she had gone for help. She sent for Mary, but her housekeeper told her that Miss Bennet was hard put to manage the stairs, and could they send for the doctor to have a look at her ankle? With due resentment Lady Catherine allowed the doctor to be sent for. The good man came at once, for he thought it was Miss Anne who had been hurt. When he found it was the new companion he breathed a sigh of relief. He bound Mary’s ankle, scolded her loudly for her clumsiness, and told her to stay off her feet for the next few days.

  ‘If you can, that is,’ he said sotto voce, as he packed his satchel. ‘If I know Lady Catherine, she will send you packing. I’ll see what I can do to prevent that. But there’s nothing wrong with you that a bit of rest won’t put right. I must say, Miss Bennet, this wasn’t what I meant when I said you should try to get Miss de Bourgh out and about. What led you to try that path?’

  Mary could hardly tell him that it had been Anne’s choice. After all, she should have been wise enough to counsel a different walk. She apologized and he patted her hand kindly.

  As promised, his manner was more stern when he spoke to Lady Catherine in the hall outside Mary’s room, telling her that if she did not want to be responsible for an amputation, Miss Bennet should be allowed to rest as long as she needed. Lady Catherine’s response was most gratifying, for she told the doctor that she would ensure that Mary rested and had the best care, along with advice for healing a hurt ankle and a discourse on proper shoes and any number of suggestions on how best to wrap her ankle so as to heal it best. The doctor listened gravely, and Mary closed her eyes. She was quite tired from her adventure.

  Lady Catherine’s voice signalled its mistress’s progress down the hallway and Mary was left in silence. Her ankle throbbed and the emotion that had been kept under a tight rein now exposed itself, leaving her weak and tired. She had almost fallen into sleep, when a knock came at the door.

  It was Anne.

  Mary struggled to sit straight. Anne had a most peculiar expression on her face, one that Mary had never before seen her wear. She twisted her hands in her little lacy shawl, and she looked everywhere but at Mary. Eventually she burst out, ‘I should not have said those things. I insulted you and your family and you should not have borne it.’

  ‘I didn’t bear it,’ Mary pointed out. ‘’Twas why I fell.’

  Anne gave a choking little laugh. ‘Miss Bennet, you are strangely forthright with me. I wish – I wish more people would be. Please don’t go.’

  Mary frowned. ‘I don’t know but that your mother will make that decision for me,’ she said. ‘She’s very angry.’

  ‘If you wish to stay, I will talk to my mother.’

  Mary was at a loss for words. Did she want to stay? Miss Anne was a strange girl indeed. She was prickly, like Mary, and she was awkward, and she didn’t seem to have any friends, not that she had the opportunity to make any. Despite their recent falling out, though, Mary thought that she and Anne could come to understand one another. Other people know how to live in society, but we two do not, she thought. Dances, flirting, all the parts we are supposed to play – it’s as if we were thrust on stage with no time to learn our lines, and our whole lives depend on how we play our parts.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ she said.

  Anne nodded. ‘I understand if you wish to go home. But I would like to start again. On another foot, perhaps.’

  It was a very small joke, but it might have been Anne’s first one and it so surprised Mary that she laughed. Anne laughed too. It was a very good thing that Lady Catherine had not yet come back from advising the doctor on his profession, for if she had heard the two of them laughing she would have dismissed Mary outright. Grand ladies do not like laughter, especially in their offspring. It betokened a dangerous ease and carelessness. Anne laughing was Anne unaware of her high position. But Lady Catherine was safely out of earshot and so not able to save her daughter from her downfall, and when Anne spoke to her mother later at dinner, and told her that Mary had apologized thoroughly for her clumsiness and would not be so careless again, and had begged to stay on, Lady Catherine unbent enough to allow it.

  ‘But you must take care, Anne,’ she told her daughter. ‘She is a Bennet, after all, and they are dangerous. They don’t know their place, and they have been given unwarranted freedom to make their own decisions and think for themselves. I allow it only with the greatest of caution, and with the belief that you can teach her much. She must be made humble, you know.’

  Anne agreed with her mother and they supped in silence.

  MARY’S INJURY KEPT her in her room for two days, but she was not left alone. In fact, when Mr Collins came to visit, she rued that she could not flee but had to sit and receive him. He paced in her small room, ducking when he came to the eave at the far end, nervously holding his hat while he berated her.

  First it was her clumsiness, then her temerity, then her carelessness – what if it had been Anne who had fallen? Had she not been aware of the risk? And Anne had to go to fetch help. Was cousin Mary not aware of how beneath her status that was? Was this how she repaid the great attention that was bestowed upon her by Lady Catherine? Did she not see how this reflected upon Mr Collins himself, and his wife and child, by virtue of her relationship to them? And what of her sisters? Mr Darcy was a relative of the de Bourghs – could she not see that her mishap also dishonoured him and, by extension, his wife and so her other sisters?

  As he went on, Mary listened, fascinated. Would Mr Collins even relate her slip to Lydia’s downfall? Indeed he would, with many flowery allusions to a woman’s carelessness and a single slip that could bring her low if she did not place her feet carefully on the path of virtue. Just when she expected that he would warn her that her twisted ankle could bring about the downfall of the kingdom, rather like the want of a nail, he changed tack.

  ‘I told Lady Catherine that it would bring me honour if I could assist her in this terrible task and relieve her of your presence, which must be so odious to her. But she told me in no uncertain terms that you are staying. I do hope, cousin Mary, that you did not beg, but that you are aware of the great honour – nay, the great mercy – that has been shown you.’

  ‘Miss de Bourgh asked me to stay,’ Mary said. He stared at her, thunderstruck.

  ‘Miss de Bourgh!’ he said, his tones excited and reverent. ‘Miss de Bourgh! So she shows as great a forgiveness as her mother. She is a Christian indeed.’ He took on an expression of deep thought. ‘Yes, there is a sermon – I can turn that into a sermon that will be one to reckon with on Sunday!’ He turned to her. ‘You see, from even the most dire calamity can be brought forth the great blessing of a lesson for us all. A sermon indeed!’

  Mary could hardly wait for him to go; she was not disappointed. He swept out with scarcely a farewell, and she was left alone at last.

  HER ANKLE HEALED quickly. She soon was able to put on her little shoes and go out on gentle walks with Anne, and their lives took a regular turn. They never went down the steep hill again but rather walked to the village, or to visit Charlotte, or took the carriage for rides further afield. In the evening, Mary read, while Anne embroidered, for as Anne had avowed, she hated reading. It made her head hurt. And Mary had never had the skill to set stit
ches or net purses. Lady Catherine sat with them often, and when they took the carriage she came as well, facing the two of them with her hands in a muff and well wrapped against the chill. Her conversation was chiefly to the point of making sure that Anne was kept warm and to admonish both girls on many subjects. Mary suspected that Lady Catherine was not so sure about leaving her only daugher in the careless hands of a Bennet. It was only when Lady Catherine managed her accounts, as she called her afternoon naps, that they were left alone.

  During those moments alone, Mary and Anne had a more amiable friendship. It was hard to speak freely with Lady Catherine interrupting every minute, so they saved their conversation for the afternoons when they had time to themselves. On fine days they walked in the garden, achieving that kind of intimacy that like-minded friends fall into. Anne wanted to hear all about Longbourn and Meryton, for she had had even less exposure to varied society than Mary. She became deeply involved in all of the doings in Mary’s little village, and she often ventured an opinion of her own. It was deeply gratifying to have an audience and not have to vie with four other voices for someone’s ear. Anne at least listened when Mary told her things. Everyone else just said, ‘Oh Mary.’

  As the days passed, Anne became less grave, more lighter of spirit. Although she was apt to shrink into herself when her mother was about, she became open and lively with Mary. Little did Mary see it in herself, but she too became more open and lively. It took Mr Collins, of all people, to bring it to everyone’s attention.

  TRUE TO HIS threat, Mr Collins wrote a sermon extolling Anne for her mercy and pity and nobility in forgiving Mary for her fall. He did Mary the courtesy of not mentioning her by name, but the effect was coy rather than mannered, as he kept winking in her direction in church and nodding until everyone turned to look at her. Mary felt the blush rise from her throat to her forehead, and she took a deep breath, wanting the pew to fold into the floor with her and never let her loose. Little did she know, however, that the looks of the parishioners were sympathetic rather than judging, and a few of the young men in the church even thought that Miss Bennet was being treated rather badly by her cousin and that it would have gone better had one of them come to her rescue when she had fallen. When the end of the sermon came and they all filed out of church, Mary thought at first that the young men bowing to her were like the Lucas boys, all teasing and horrid rather than nice.

  As they stood about talking with Mr Collins and Charlotte and doting on Robert, now grown into a lusty little infant, a few of the young men paid her their particular addresses. Now she could see that they were not like the Lucas boys at all, but were vying for her attention. One or two laughed at everything she said until Mary began to blush again.

  But Lady Catherine was longing to go, so Mary made her bow, said goodbye and was helped into the carriage after Anne and Lady Catherine. Mary held her head high, never once guessing that her profile was proud and her figure remarked upon. A village is nothing without gossip; everyone already knew that the young companion was Mr Collins’s cousin, and that her two older sisters had married two fine young men, that she was the daughter of a gentleman and that she was the particular friend of the daughter of the grandest family in the county.

  Even a plain Bennet is a Bennet, and though Mary was used to being overshadowed by her pretty sisters, she was not so plain on her own account.

  Charlotte remarked on the transformation after church as she sat down to dinner with her husband.

  ‘Have you noticed Mary Bennet, Mr Collins?’ she said. ‘She has become rather pretty, I think. I can’t see why I hadn’t noticed it before. Her complexion has become quite rosy and her hair shines so in the sun. It is unfortunate that she has bad sight, but she doesn’t squint so much any more.’

  Mr Collins was astonished that his wife asked his opinion on such a thing as the prettiness of the cousin he spent most of his time overlooking, except when he could expose her to the censure of her society.

  ‘My dear! I cannot imagine what you mean. Mary Bennet is not pretty! She cannot be pretty. She is Anne de Bourgh’s companion. She should not become pretty, and indeed I will warn her against any such notion.’

  Charlotte thought about remonstrating with him, but she knew that it would do no good. Mr Collins had taken into his head one idea, and that idea was that Mary Bennet was plain. It would not do to confuse him with an alternative view.

  The secret of Mary’s transformation was simple. Her life at Rosings, despite Lady Catherine and despite Mr Collins, had become happy, and so her outer person reflected her feelings of contentment.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  TO HER CREDIT, Lady Catherine also marked Miss Bennet’s new demeanour and gave it her approval, for as Miss Bennet changed for the better, so did Anne. She was no longer so silent and backward or so querulous as she once had been. Manner and constitution being intertwined, as Anne grew happier, she became healthier, and as her health improved, so did her happiness. Proud and condescending as Lady Catherine was, she loved her daughter, and she could see the effect Miss Bennet had on her. She congratulated herself on her foresight in engaging Miss Bennet as Anne’s companion, conveniently forgetting that Miss Bennet had agreed only until another such treasure as Mrs Jenkinson could be found. As far as Lady Catherine was concerned, Miss Bennet could stay, and there was little need to look for another treasure.

  With Anne’s health improving so clearly, Lady Catherine also could entertain thoughts of Anne’s future, plans the considerations of which the great lady had found so unbearable not so long ago. Anne was meant to marry Darcy, but when that scheme was foiled, Lady Catherine had to admit to herself that, despite what she and her sister had planned for their children, it could never be. Happiness in marriage was never to be considered, as happiness would come with duty well done, but Anne’s health and temperament were to be thought of, and she could not have been a good wife, to Darcy or to any gentleman.

  Watching the two young women come inside the house from a walk in the park, talking animatedly, with colour in their cheeks, brought up emotions in Lady Catherine that she thought she had long forgotten. Love, tinted by ambition, fuelled her new plans for Anne.

  It was time that Miss de Bourgh was introduced to a larger society than Mr Collins and his wife, or even Miss Bennet. She was not yet ready for London – Lady Catherine would not risk Anne’s new-found health and happiness on a London Season – but the society of Hunsford and _____shire were not so small that Lady Catherine could not bring suitable company to Rosings.

  ALL IN HUNSFORD were agog to hear that Lady Catherine planned a small assembly, with just five tables, for an evening of dinner, cards, and dancing. Mr Collins was aquiver with trepidation until his household received an invitation, and then flushed with triumph to discover that very few from the village had been so blessed. News came from Rosings of meat being ordered for the table and musicians hired for the dancing. The servants dropped bits of gossip and hints about the rare occasion, and some of the more excitable villagers were beside themselves upon hearing that the Prince himself would be dining that night at Rosings.

  ‘Dancing!’ Mr Collins said. ‘Dancing at Rosings! What do you think of that? I do believe that we should dance, my dear. It will not be amiss, I think, for us to join in this entertainment, for it is at Lady Catherine’s invitation, and she would not steer us into anything lacking in propriety.’

  ‘I would love to dance,’ Charlotte said, a little wistfully. Her family had held many assemblies such as the one that had Hunsford so set on its ear. She missed the dancing and the fun for which Lucas Lodge was so well known. Her parents had loved to see young people at their liveliest, and the lodge had been the gathering place of much happiness. She knew better than to expect the party at Rosings to be in any way similar, but it would be nice to dance, even for a matron as settled as herself.

  Then again, Mr Collins was not quite as good a dancer as his enthusiasm would make one expect. Still, Charlotte looked forward
to the assembly, and set about thinking what she could wear. As the wife of a clergyman, she had been used to plain dress, and again she wished she had a bit more finery in which to appear.

  Mr Collins then said something quite unexpected. He took his wife’s hand, and said, ‘I will dress in my sober clothes, my dear, but you must dress in your finest. It has been too long since I have seen you at your most adorned. Lady Catherine will not mind – indeed, I cannot think she will notice you among the illustrious company. But I know that females often miss the opportunity to peacock a little and I will not deny you this if you so wish.’

  Oh Mr Collins, Charlotte thought with rueful amusement. Her heart softened towards her husband. His words were condescending and insulting, and yet she knew with the understanding of a wife that he meant well. When Charlotte had set out to secure Mr Collins and ensure a place for herself, she always knew that she would have to be a very good wife. Mr Collins could never know that she did not love him and could never love him. At that moment, however, she began, just a little, to like him.

  AS THE DAY of the assembly approached, Mary felt a little wistfulness herself. How nice it would have been if Mr Aikens were invited. But she could allow herself no apprehension, for compared to Anne, Mary had been to so many parties as practically to be a lady of highest society. Anne was almost frightened back into ill health at the thought of meeting so many people, and it was up to Mary to calm her nerves and help her face the ordeal with poise and equanimity.

  ‘I don’t know, Miss Bennet,’ Anne repeated as they walked in the gardens at Rosings. They were bundled now against the chill, in thick cloaks and sturdy shoes, their hands in muffs and their faces protected by warm bonnets, for autumn had come. The gardens were withered and the leaves turned brown and lay wet on the muddy ground. The gardeners had cut back all the plants in preparation for their winter sleep, and the garden was sad, as winter gardens always were. ‘I don’t know why my mother thought an assembly was the thing. I am not quite sure that I will like it.’