Jane the Authoress

by Jane Lark

  Mr Butler had said Lady S & S had some level of respect for the clergy. What if her pawn was a clergyman? A minister appointed by Darcy’s aunt, and as she was a widow, then she might seek the company of a minister more regularly than she might otherwise have done and that man was Lizzy’s cousin. Oh it was perfect. Darcy’s aunt would be willing to ask a clergyman to dine.

  Yet how was Lizzy to visit him? She could not visit a male cousin alone, and it was important for the scene to serve its purpose that Darcy would see her without any negative influence from her family. Jane did not wish Lizzy to travel with her mother, it would not work, and at this time her sister Jane must have gone to London with the hope of seeing Bingley.

  When the trees came to an end Jane continued walking out into the meadow of long grass, the wet strands swiping at her skirt.

  Well of course. The Reverend must have a wife!

  If Lizzy’s cousin had a wife, then Lizzy may visit as she wished!

  Yet where was the jeopardy? There was still no true strength of jeopardy.

  The wetness from the rain-dampened grass seeped through Jane’s short boots and into the skirt of her dress, but it did not deter her as she kept walking along the river bank.

  A young coot called from the water as a bee was disturbed from a head of clover near Jane’s feet and rose into the air along with the sweet scent of the flower.

  A long ago walk in a field full of clover came to mind. A walk full of hushed conversation, and excited lilts in words. A good friend had shared with Jane the moment of a proposal.

  Jeopardy.

  What if Darcy’s proposal was not Lizzy’s only choice? What if when she refused him, she had already refused the cousin who would be in that awkward drawing room with them both? Yes.

  Then—oh the ideas came to her now in a rush—if the woman Lizzy’s cousin had married was a friend of Lizzy’s it would add another dimension to the associations and atmosphere in the room and give Lizzy every reason to visit her cousin and his wife.

  The story unravelled like a thread once more, parts of it playing out in Jane’s mind’s eye.

  Jane stopped walking and turned.

  She was a long way from the house. Perhaps three miles out. She had walked much further than she’d realised.

  Her fingers itched to hold a quill when she walked back, and yet it would be hours before she would have the chance. By the time she returned to the house, it would be time to prepare for dinner.

  Chapter 14

  There was so much to be changed. A whole character to be added in. Jane turned the pages.

  Where might this clergyman cousin be introduced?

  Jane had excused herself and retired early, before the men had even joined the women after drinking their port. The last light of evening shone about the edges of the shutters covering the tall windows in her room.

  The quill remained tightly gripped between Jane’s ink-stained forefinger and thumb, even as she turned the pages with her free hand.

  Darcy must already be entirely intrigued by Lizzy.

  Jane continued turning pages.

  This new man must give Lizzy an incentive to look towards Darcy.

  Here. After Jane’s enforced stay at Bingley’s home, and Darcy’s introduction to Lizzy’s brisk manner and skill in evading the taunting of Bingley’s sisters.

  Yes. It would make a perfect comma in Lizzy’s and Darcy’s story too, adding an element of suspense to their romantic evolution.

  Jane pulled forward a blank sheet. Pride clasping in her chest as the idea of the clergyman cousin solidified.

  A further twist to the role of the cousin fell into Jane’s hand as the tip of the quill touched the paper. If the clergyman were Mr Bennet’s cousin… Mr Bennet’s heir… With five daughters and an entailed property, Mrs Bennet’s family would become like Jane’s. If Mr Bennet died, they would be homeless, alone and the Bennet women had no brother they might turn to.

  The ink began to flow across the paper. Mrs Bennett would hear of a man coming, her husband’s heir, and immediately foresee hope for one of her daughters. If he married within the family she could retain the life she knew in Mr Bennet’s house no matter what. Should the clergyman be a man of a godly and generous ilk then he would also wish such an obvious conclusion as to take one of his cousins as his wife.

  It was perfect.

  “Of course!” The tip of the quill swept across the page, with a scurrying sound. Darcy’s aunt… Lady Catherine … The surname must be thought of yet. But she would order the clergyman to marry. She would wish her clergyman to have a wife to undertake the charitable duties towards her staff and villagers, and she would have told him exactly the type of pious woman she expected him to bring back.

  He thought of his cousins, deeming himself exceedingly kind in doing so.

  Jane laughed aloud, as the image of the man formed in her mind.

  The clergyman, Mr Collins, took a hold of his character both in Jane’s mind and through her hand. He would have a pompousness which might echo Darcy’s, but in Mr Collins that arrogance would be pretentious and adopted from his elevation in society through the recognition of such a patron as Darcy’s aunt.

  Jane saw him. Tall, formal and stately. Yet even in the letter he wrote to the Bennets to introduce himself and request permission to stay with them, through the flow of the words there was something that inspired a doubt about his personality.

  Jane and Lizzy would be the ones who queried it.

  When their clergyman cousin arrived—he was gallant, polite, looked well-kept in appearance and was generous in his compliments, of a young age, five-and-twenty, and yet every part of his character had an exaggeration which aggravated. When he mentioned the entail it was with a show of respect for Mrs Bennet’s situation, yet it stirred resentment that he might mention it at all, because he spoke of his concern as though Mrs Bennet and her daughters were in need of his charity.

  At the first family dinner with Mr Collins among the Bennets, Lizzy watched him grow in belief of his own consequence as her father asked him to speak of his patroness. Praise flowed from his lips. It appeared Lady Catherine was the most perfect Lady to have ever lived. Jane laughed aloud once more as she kept writing. Inspiration had become a vibrant living thing inside her.

  He spoke much of Lady Catherine’s particular interest in his welfare, and of her kindness to him and the generosity in her recognition, and he talked of her daughter. At this point no one within the Bennet family would know them to be related to Darcy. But Mr Collins used words to describe Darcy’s aunt, that were the same words used to describe Darcy, “Lady Catherine was reckoned proud by many people he knew, but he had never seen anything but affability in her.”

  Lizzy would later discover for herself how true the words others spoke of Lady Catherine were and how false they were of Darcy. It was another wonderful shift of perceptions.

  A smile curved Jane’s lips as she carried on.

  Mr Collins added an element of absurdity to Lizzy’s and Darcy’s tale.

  Jane bit on her lower lip against another laugh when Mr Collins selected Fordyce’s Sermons to read after dinner as an instruction for the Bennet sisters. They were long past any instruction being able to modify their behaviours. Mr Bennet had been too lenient and Mrs Bennet too self-absorbed; after their first two daughters the level of their instruction and discipline had fallen aside.

  Lydia made a point of interrupting, proving Lizzy’s view of her ill-behaved and at times embarrassing family entirely true.

  Lydia’s conversation revolved about Captain Denny, the soldier with whom she would elope later in the story. That was to be the moment when Lizzy would discover Darcy’s true worth.

  Mr Collins, in his self-centred world, did not even notice Lydia’s slight as she talked over him while he read on.

  Jane turned over pages.

  Mr Collins must join them in many situations.

  He was courting all five of the Bennet daughters.

>   He would walk to Meryton with them and decide that clearly Lydia and Kitty were unsuitable for a clergyman when they exuberantly waved Denny over from across the street. Then Jane’s mother ensured he knew that he could not consider Lizzy’s sister, Jane, as she expected an offer from Mr Bingley any day.

  So when Mr Collins later escorted all five of his female cousins to dine with their maternal aunt and uncle in Meryton, it was with a view to acquainting himself more with Lizzy and watching her manner particularly. It was not until a few days after this, though, that Lizzy recognised the danger she was in.

  When Bingley’s sisters came to call upon the Bennets with an invitation to a ball at Netherfield, Lizzy made the error of teasing Mr Collins. She was under the ill-conceived impression that Mr Collins would think it ungodly to dance, or even attend such affairs. She believed he would think a ball frivolous. She proved herself to be the fool in that affair. It turned out Mr Collins was perfectly inclined to enjoy the event and to dance, and immediately solicited her hand for two dances.

  Two dances Lizzy could not politely refuse, and so she accepted, feeling trapped.

  He did not ask any of her sisters to dance.

  Lizzy’s heartbeat pulsed as a suspicion formed. “It now first struck her, that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings…”

  That suspicion turned into conviction. He was more civil to her than any of her sisters. He paid her too many compliments, on both her “wit” and “vivacity”.

  Jane’s quill scurried across the paper.

  Lizzy reassured herself that no matter her mother’s whispered approval of Mr Collins’s courtship, there was nothing to be concerned over as he had made no offer, and unless he made an offer then she had no cause to fear. But if he did… Then there would be discord.

  Jane looked up as she turned a page. The flame of the candle on the table near her flickered. It had burned down to a stub, only a little more than an inch long. She looked at the closed shutters which covered the windows, there was no light seeping around them, it was entirely black outside, and the room had filled with shadows cast by the candlelight.

  “T-woo.” An owl called outside.

  “T-wit.” Another answered.

  “T-woo.”

  A smile pulled at Jane’s lips, her inspiration was too loud to be silenced. She could not stop writing. There was more Mr Collins wished to say.

  The Netherfield ball.

  Lizzy would endure two of the most painful and embarrassing dances of her life, and smile throughout them, because she was a woman of excellent character despite her tendency to be forthright. Then there would be the comparison between Mr Darcy’s stiff nature during the dance Lizzy deemed him forced into, and that she had certainly been forced into, and suffering Mr Collins’s exuberant self-obsession.

  Then…

  “Oh.” The sound escaped Jane’s lips with excitement. The introduction of Lizzy’s clergyman cousin to the grand Mr Darcy. That moment in the scene related itself to Jane like a play on the stage of a theatre. Mr Collins would overhear Mr Darcy’s connection to Lady Catherine. At such a gathering of course it would come out. Then he would consider himself, with his personal consequence in the eyes of Lady Catherine, duty bound to introduce himself to her nephew.

  Horror gripped Jane on Lizzy’s behalf. Lizzy had endured enough embarrassment that evening She did not wish to be embarrassed by a cousin before a man who had previously cut her horribly. Yet Mr Collins would not be deterred.

  “My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world of your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of clergy; for, give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom—provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained.”

  Lizzy, as one among the laity, was then left to wallow amongst her complaints and mortification as Mr Collins walked away in the direction of Mr Darcy.

  Darcy looked at the strange man who approached him. He had been mid conversation. The stranger bowed, as though he ought to already be known, but Darcy could not place the man at all, and certainly it would be unlikely that anyone in this society was a person he knew.

  Darcy’s lips parted, prepared to speak, but before he could utter a word, the stranger burst into unrelenting speech. He was apparently Mr Collins, the recently appointed clergyman at Rosings… The name slipped into Jane’s mind as the tip of the quill hovered… The property of Darcy’s maternal aunt Catherine. For some reason, the silly, rude and objectionable man then thought it appropriate to consider himself already acquainted with her nephew. Which he was not.

  Unprepared for such a bombardment, Darcy’s response and expressions were unguarded.

  Mr Collins broke into another long speech, on the good health and contentment of Darcy’s aunt and cousin, and then there was the extolling of his aunt’s generosity and kindness, and her general wise and good judgment in all things. Darcy had heard enough. With succinct comments he sent the man away.

  Then he took a breath.

  Good grief.

  Before Darcy turned away he noticed Elizabeth Bennet’s observation as the queer clergyman walked across the room to stand beside her. He would swear he had felt her watching him while he had talked to her cousin, studying him. He wished she did not have such observant eyes.

  Jane sighed out, and sat back in the chair. The silk-softness of the cut feathers at the top of the quill brushed over her lower lip. There was still the scene to add where Mr Collins proposed, and then a scene where he took his proposal to Jane’s friend, as Jane would not be his wife.

  But then there was the opportunity Mr Collins’s character had been introduced to provide, for Lizzy to meet Darcy among his family, beside two of his cousins and his aunt. People who had known Darcy from his birth.

  Chapter 15

  Lizzy was uncertain about the whole notion of visiting the Hunsford Parsonage. Yet she had made a promise to Charlotte, her closest friend beyond her sister Jane, and she would not renege. But it was with a sense of trepidation that she travelled to the Rosings estate.

  Jane was so attuned to Lizzy’s character she felt that trepidation too as she began the new chapter in Lizzy’s life. The carriage rocked over the uneven roads.

  Each stop at the toll houses to pay their way through so they might travel onward marked a step closer to a visit Lizzy dreaded.

  Maria (Charlotte’s sister) and Mr Lucas (Charlotte’s father) travelled with Jane in the carriage. They were looking forward to the visit with great excitement, discussing their expectations and the descriptions of Hunsford Parsonage, and Rosings in Charlotte’s letters.

  The Parsonage was charming, with a pleasant garden. Jane could see it in her mind’s eye as she wrote; smaller than Steventon, though.

  Charlotte was as pleased to see Lizzy as she was to see her sister and her father, while Mr Collins preened at the prospect of showing the woman who had turned him down all that his wife was mistress of.

  On the first morning of their arrival Charlotte was honoured by a visit from Darcy’s cousin, Miss…. de… The family name should be an old name with a preface like that; she deserved a very impressive sounding name. One Jane could still not think of yet.

  This illustrious visit brought them an invitation to dine with their patroness. Yet Miss de… whatever she would be called, being weak in constitution, and quiet in nature, did not come in to the house, in fact she did not step out of her carriage, but spoke to Charlotte in the street. It was a measure of Mrs Collins’s and Mr Collins’s relationship with their patroness and her daughter.

  They spent numerous hours of the day pleasing Lady Catherine, walking up and down to pay calls on Rosings.

  Mr Lucas and Maria were very appre
ciative of the honour paid to Charlotte, and to them, and their visit to Lady Catherine’s home made them the perfect pawns; it struck them with awe, tumbling them into humbleness. Lizzy, being far more discerning and less impressionable was not so affected.

  The top of the quill brushed Jane’s lower lip.

  Mr Lucas remained only for a few days, until he was content that his daughter was happy; so then the party was reduced to the three woman at the Parsonage, the two more stately women at Rosings, and Mr Collins who revelled in the ability to entertain and impress them all. He would run into Charlotte’s parlour at the back of the house if a carriage passed containing either Miss de… or Lady Catherine, and equally, run to Rosings if there were anything of interest occurring in the village and inform Lady Catherine.

  Yet as Mr Collins mostly stayed out of their way until dinner, Lizzy enjoyed each day, working on her sewing beside her friend.

  Lizzy had known from a moment soon after her arrival that Mr Darcy was expected at some point, and it would quite likely be during the period of her stay. She rarely thought about the likelihood, however. She had no interest in Mr Darcy other than that she had previously found him proud, rude and officious, and so she had dismissed all thoughts of him as soon as he had left Netherfield.

  Darcy had no idea that Elizabeth was in residence near the home of his aunt. It had been some months since he had seen her, and yet she had refused to be forgotten. Little did Bingley know it, but perhaps Darcy was suffering with a foolish infatuation as much as his friend.

  Jane turned the paper, and looked at the candle when the flame flickered. It had burned almost to a pool of wax. She did not have much longer to write.

  When Darcy saw Mr Collins bowing by the gate leading into Rosings Park, he was immediately struck with memories of bright challenging eyes and swift, fleeting, teasing smiles—Elizabeth Bennet.