Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  Mary B is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Katherine J. Chen

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Chen, Katherine, J., author. | Austen, Jane, 1775–1817. Pride and prejudice.

  Title: Mary B: a novel / Katherine Chen.

  Description: New York: Random House, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017033802 | ISBN 9780399592218 | ISBN 9780399592232 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Austen, Jane, 1775–1817. Pride and prejudice—Adaptations. | Courtship—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | GSAFD: Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3603.H4485 M37 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017033802

  Ebook ISBN 9780399592232

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Victoria Wong, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Caroline Teagle Johnson

  Cover image: Centaurea glastifolia (© Natural History Museum, London, UK/Bridgeman Images)

  v5.3.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part II

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part III

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  She certainly took a kind of parental interest in the beings whom she had created, and did not dismiss them from her thoughts when she had finished her last chapter. We have seen, in one of her letters, her personal affection for Darcy and Elizabeth….In this traditionary way we learned that…Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Philips’s clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meriton.

  —from A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh, chapter X, “Observations on the Novels”

  I was quiet, but I was not blind.

  —Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)

  A child does not grow up with the knowledge that she is plain or dull or a complete simpleton until the accident of some event should reveal these unfortunate truths. My eldest sister, Jane, did not know that she was Hertfordshire’s answer to Helen of Troy until well into her adolescence. Walking out with the rest of her siblings in a new pink frock, she attracted the attention of two young men who had been wrestling and who suddenly stopped to gawp at her, like animals that have for the first time looked skyward and spotted the sun.

  From a young age, Jane had been elevated by our mother to as high a rank of divinity among the common folk of Hertfordshire as false modesty would permit, while Papa never scrupled to show his preference for Lizzy, his second-born. In appearance, it is true Lizzy never possessed the natural elegance and mildness which blessed her sister. She preferred skipping to walking, dirt paths to paved roads, and the scent of wet earth to any fragrance that could be bottled. But what she lacked in conventional beauty was amply compensated for by an open and spirited temperament which rendered any conversation with her highly energetic and amusing.

  It was therefore acknowledged, long before my younger sisters and I had any say in the matter, that beauty, goodness, and intelligence had disproportionately concentrated themselves in the two eldest and gone woefully amiss in the three following; namely, that I had been touched with a plainness in appearance unrivaled throughout the whole country and Kitty and Lydia with a willful propensity to ignorance that exposed them continuously to ridicule without their ever becoming aware of the fact.

  I will tell you the story of how I knew myself to be plain and therefore devoid of the one virtue which it behooves every woman to have above all else, if she possibly can. A plain woman, unless she is titled and independently wealthy, will always find herself in a position of extreme disadvantage to her more attractive peers, and the deficiency will haunt her until she reaches an age by which the condition of being withered and crippled will excuse her from her plainness. I can attest to the numerous petty prejudices she will suffer at the hands of individuals she has never wronged or even met before, like the butcher who, for the same money, would choose to save a better cut of meat for a more attractive patron or the surly housemaid who’d accept abuse from a beautiful mistress while resenting the same treatment from a plain one.

  I discovered my plainness before I was fully a decade on this earth. The incident occurred in a small wilderness that formerly bordered my family’s modest estate and which concealed all sight of the house once you’d fully entered it. Someone—probably Lizzy—proposed a game of chase, and it wasn’t long before the wilderness shook with the peals of our laughter. Out of all of us, Lizzy was by far the best runner, for she had long arms and legs that reached uncannily far, and she could leap through a space no more than two feet wide without tearing any part of her dress. When she ran, her black boots clipped the earth as sharply as the cloven hooves of deer that spring, from birth, with unstudied elegance.

  After the first few minutes of frenzied running, I began to tire of the noise and of the pain in my chest from being unable to catch my breath. Even as a child, I did not often avail myself of opportunities to study my reflection in the mirror, but I can well imagine what a sight I looked stumbling from tree to tree with my mouth hanging open, trailed by an orb of gnats that formed a sort of mock halo around my head. My tongue tasted dry and bitter, like old leather that had begun to flake. I thought of calling Mrs. Hill to fetch me a glass of water. But Mrs. Hill wouldn’t have heard me, not even if she were at that moment hanging the washing out to dry or beating the bedsheets with her stick.

  Those who have tended to children or remember being young themselves will know the far range of a child’s imagination. A mother or gover
ness may leave a room for only a few moments before a child will believe he has been forsaken by all who love him. In silence, he may think he hears ghoulish cries; in innocent furnishings, frightening apparitions transpire to haunt him. At the bottom of a tall shrub, I quietly considered my fate. Should I fail to find my way back to the house, I was sure I would transform into a raving feral child. I envisioned myself kneeling at the mouth of a stream, lapping water like a dog. Soon I would know every tree and bush in this wood by their name and speak fluently the language of the swallow, the house martin, and the nightingale. I would sleep on a bed of moss and dress my wild, unkempt hair with the wings of butterflies and their midnight brethren. I would make rings of beetle shells and swallow eggs whole. Over time, my nails would turn as black as the earth from foraging. I’d mash elderberries with my hands and drink their pulp and sustain myself on turnips, mushrooms, and spider legs, all of which I’d consume on a slab of stone. Then, one morning, I’d discover that I’d forgotten my own name and the names of my sisters and my parents.

  While brooding on these thoughts, I suddenly heard the papery rustle of leaves and spotted a slight figure advancing towards me at an alarming pace. The white dress identified this person as Lizzy. I sat up and straightened but didn’t make any attempt to stand, much less run away.

  As the distance closed between us, I watched her face weave in and out of shadows cast by overhanging foliage. Drops of scattered sunlight glistened across her forehead, illuminating her eyes. I waited for her to look away or to laugh or to appear a little embarrassed at finding me, but her gaze was as concentrated and impassioned as that of the goddess Diana in the ecstasy of the hunt. With a single airy leap over a clump of dead leaves, Lizzy landed in front of me and placed a warm hand on the top of my head. Smiling now and seemingly restored to the cheerful disposition I’d always known, she said, “I’ve got you, Mary. You’ve lost.”

  If the game had ended then, that afternoon would have little to distinguish it in my memory beyond Kitty crying at the discovery of a torn sleeve. But when Lizzy helped me to my feet and we rejoined the others, we found that a sport of a different nature had begun in our absence.

  After cornering Jane in a small hollow, our youngest sisters had commenced to celebrate their hard-won victory by throwing fistfuls of earth at her dress. As it had rained only that morning, the soil was wet and easy to shape, and they stamped and shouted and baited poor Jane, like two rosy-cheeked devils performing a ritualistic dance. Lydia, in particular, enjoyed the activity so much that all speech she uttered seemed an indecipherable jumble of giggles and screams.

  In Lydia’s defense, whatever scandals may now be associated with her name, she never possessed a deliberately malicious character. But years of indulgence from Mama and Aunt Philips, who both happened to find the senseless amiability with which Lydia approached all matters in life endearing, had emboldened her to say and to do whatever happened to take her fancy, with little concern for others’ feelings and no thought to the consequences of her actions. Kitty, the elder by two years, witnessed our mother’s affection for her younger sibling and, in seeking the same, imitated Lydia to the effacement of her own learning and otherwise colorless disposition.

  I mention this because I’ve never doubted that the instigator of this rather savage game was Lydia, who, in all probability, would view this childhood incident and eloping with a well-known rake with the same equanimity. It was also clear that whatever pleasure Jane might originally have derived from the jest had long expired. I’d never seen her face so red. One section of her hair had become loosed from its pinnings and had fallen over her shoulder. Her eyes glistened with unfallen tears. She raised her hands in front of her dress and begged them to stop, but their attacks only escalated. We arrived in time to watch Lydia press a fistful of mud against Jane’s back while screaming to Kitty, who taunted Jane as though she were a bear in an arena: “Look, I got her! I got her!”

  “What on earth?” Lizzy cried. And channeling something of the goddess I’d witnessed earlier, she lunged forward and grabbed Lydia, who was still laughing, by the shoulders and slapped her.

  I took the opportunity to rush over to Jane and ask if she was all right.

  “Mary, it’s only a bit of fun,” Kitty whined before Jane had any chance to answer. “Jane knows it’s only a bit of fun.”

  “Kitty,” I said in my bravest voice, “put that down.” I’d noticed that Kitty had bunched another ball in her hands and was rolling it between her palms. She shook her head, unable to stop chortling, and took a step back.

  “No,” she said.

  “Kitty,” I repeated. I endeavored to speak with some authority, which was difficult as I stood at most an inch or two taller than she did. “This isn’t funny anymore, so I’ll ask you to please put that down at once.” To show my purpose, I advanced and reached for Kitty’s wrist, but before I could stop her, she released the missive she had been holding full into my face. Stunned, I stumbled backwards. Where there should have been only dirt and grass, something hard and sharp cut into me. I heard Jane cry out, her voice turning strangely hollow and distant. Instinctively, I touched the soft pocket of flesh under my right eye, then held my hand in front of myself. The tips of my fingers shone a vibrant, dark red, and twin rivulets of blood oozed down the length of my palm. The ground tilted, and I might have fainted at that moment but for Jane calling my name and squeezing my hand, still moist with blood. In distress, she wiped her own forehead and left three marks above her eyebrow that made it look as though she had been cut herself. “Mary’s hurt!” she shouted to Lizzy, pressing her handkerchief against my wound to stop the blood. “We have to get back to the house and tell Mama to call for the doctor!”

  * * *

  —

  WHEN OUR MOTHER caught sight of Jane and me a few minutes later, she screamed, which sufficed to weaken my knees, and Papa was compelled to carry me into the sitting room. Once I’d been placed on the settee and a cushion lodged behind my back to prop me up, I was able to witness the movements of all the occupants of Longbourn from a vantage point of relative comfort. Mrs. Hill was sent to fetch a pitcher of water and left the room with as much urgency as her advanced age and persistent gout permitted. Lydia and Kitty sulked in a corner they deemed distant enough from the rest of the company to ensure their own security, while Lizzy reported to Papa the whole of what had taken place in the woods.

  It very soon occurred to me, however, that far from being the sole object of pity and the recipient of such familial affection as I considered my due for having braved injury on behalf of an innocent sister, I had been, for the better part, forgotten. As Lizzy captivated Papa with the account of Lydia and Kitty’s unruly behavior, Jane sat some few feet away from me at the table, though it was difficult to see more than a fraction of her face at any time. There were never less than three women around her: our mother; Aunt Philips, who had fortuitously been visiting when we burst through the door; Sarah, the housemaid; and Mrs. Hill, who though wholly responsible for providing the pitcher of water, drank most of it herself in an excited state. I heard, from my seat, snippets of their conversation: Mama’s insistence that we’d been attacked by an unknown assailant in the woods, Aunt Philips admonishing her sister for allowing us to go outdoors at all, Mrs. Hill entreating both women to calm themselves and take a cup of tea (which she wasn’t, of course, prepared to make), and Sarah gently inquiring if Miss Jane’s injuries were serious enough to warrant someone going to fetch the doctor. Jane’s own protests remained unheard, and she was shushed for exerting herself unnecessarily. As for myself, I found the scene before me too diverting to interrupt and continued to press Jane’s handkerchief to my face, both to quell the flow of blood and to stifle my laughter.

  “Heaven help us if this should scar,” Mama cried.

  “But nothing’s the matter with me,” Jane replied. “I’m not hurt. It’s Mary you should—”

/>   “You have blood all over your forehead, my dear,” Aunt Philips noted, clicking her tongue.

  “And if it should scar, then we are all ruined,” Mama said. “For who will want to take a wife whose face has been disfigured? Not even one as beautiful as yours, I daresay, though it pains me to confess it.” Turning to Aunt Philips, she continued: “Am I not to be pitied, sister, for having children who live in such disregard for their mother’s feelings, who would drive me to madness by cutting and scraping and burning themselves every time my back is turned, though my own health has always been exceptionally poor?”

  “Your mother has certainly taken pains to raise you well, Jane. It is unkind to repay her efforts by running barbarically through the woods.”

  “Aunt Philips!” Jane could hardly keep herself from laughing, and, I confess, nor could I, though the pain beneath my eye worsened considerably when I smiled. “I promise you I am not hurt. It is all Kitty’s fault. She threw something at Mary, and Mary started to bleed. I took her hand and must have touched my own face afterwards. That is all.”

  It was Mrs. Hill who, to her credit, finally settled the matter by dipping her own handkerchief in the pitcher of water and dabbing Jane’s forehead with it. In a matter of seconds, Jane’s face had been restored to its original radiance, with not the smallest blemish or scratch to be detected, not even under the hawklike scrutiny of Mama and Aunt Philips, who alternated in inspecting Jane’s face, turning her head left and right, then up and down, with a care more appropriate to handling one’s best china.