Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  “You!” he cried out in a tone reminiscent of our unfortunate earlier encounter. “You!” he repeated, aghast, as though I were an apparition that refused to disappear.

  I coughed and tore off a piece of dry crust. “Yes, me,” I said dispassionately. “I told you I was visiting my sister.”

  “But you didn’t say who your sister was. I asked you what post she had in the house, and you didn’t give me a straight answer….” he peevishly added.

  “Excuse me,” Darcy interjected. “Am I missing something here? Don’t tell me you two are already acquainted.”

  “Yes, the colonel and I met almost as soon as he arrived,” I said. “He behaved like any gentleman would.”

  “Fitzwilliam?” Darcy asked, turning to his cousin.

  “How was I supposed to know she was your wife’s sister?” the colonel grumbled, looking more and more like a bloodhound that had just been kicked in the teeth.

  Darcy’s eyes lit up. A boyish grin spread over his face. “Oh, I see now!” Then, turning to me, he cried, “You were the surly servant.”

  “I’m sure I wasn’t made to feel like one,” I replied magnanimously. “The colonel paid me many fine compliments upon our introduction. He said, and I quote, ‘An ugly little thing, aren’t you?’ ”

  At this, the colonel banged his fist on the table. The cups rattled fanatically in their saucers. “That’s not fair,” he barked. He seemed prone to boorish shouting. “You were purposely elusive in your answers!”

  “Fitzwilliam!” Darcy cried out, appalled at the savagery which threatened to ruin his morning repast.

  “How can I be expected to know…” The colonel trailed off. “Why didn’t she say something, I ask you? There was ample time for her to have said something when we went upstairs….”

  “I’m sitting right here. You may ask me now, if you like,” I retorted.

  “Fitzwilliam, do apologize to Mary,” Darcy declared from his throne.

  “What?” the colonel gasped.

  “Apologize to Mary, please,” Darcy repeated.

  The colonel grabbed a bread roll, tore a piece off, and offered a desultory “sorry” through his full mouth.

  “I suppose that’s the best he can do,” Darcy said, shrugging at me.

  “Did you say you’re writing a book?” the colonel suddenly asked, perhaps desperate to change the subject.

  Darcy jumped in before I could: “A brilliant work tentatively titled Leonora’s Adventures: Chronicles of a Tragic and Deeply Unhappy Queen. I may send a speculative letter to a publisher I know in London when she’s finished with it.”

  “Not another woman’s novel!” he grunted. Then, in a halfhearted attempt at friendliness, he added, “What is it about?”

  “Oh, you know, just another woman’s novel,” I spat, twisting the knife deep into the jar of strawberry preserves and slathering blood-red gobs onto my bread with more than usual delight. “One can’t expect a mere servant to write well, you see.”

  “Fitzwilliam’s apologized, Mary,” Darcy reminded me with a nervous laugh.

  “Which isn’t to say I’ve accepted his apology,” I mumbled.

  “But since you pretend to take an interest,” I continued, speaking up, “it’s about the Queen of the Danes, Leonora, daughter of Albert the Good King, and all the awful things that happen to her at the hands of uncouth and vicious men who, despite their titles, have little learning and little breeding and absolutely no manners at all.”

  “Mary,” Darcy jumped in. “I must insist that you refrain—”

  “No such person as Leonora, Queen of the Danes,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said calmly, sliding the jar of preserves over to himself. “I’ve never heard of Albert the Good King, either. It must be fiction you’re writing.”

  “Yes, it must be, mustn’t it?” I mocked and watched as that gentleman coarsely ate his meat and several bread rolls, washing down everything with cup after cup of black coffee. His appetite was enormous.

  An ugly little thing, aren’t you? he had said, holding the candle so close to my face I could feel the danger of its heat. And what if he had grazed my cheek with its flame and burned me? Would it have mattered?

  I mean, will it make any difference whether it scars or not on my face, as opposed to…Jane’s?

  “Mary?”

  I looked from the coffee stains on the tablecloth absently into Darcy’s face.

  “Mary?” he repeated. There was genuine concern in his voice. “You seem depressed.”

  “I’m fine,” I just managed to say, tossing my napkin onto the table. “But I’m not very hungry anymore. Will you please excuse me?” Rising quickly, I headed straight for the library, for my desk and chair, and the stack of blank paper I knew would be waiting for me. By the time I sat down, I’d decided that Leonora would escape the grand duke’s prison of her own accord. She’d bash his skull in with her own fists, if she needed to.

  For hours, I had written furiously, and it was dark by the time I emerged from the house to walk the grounds. The colonel had been frequently on my mind, and it had happened quite naturally that as I’d related the harrowing details of Leonora’s escape from the dungeon, the villainous grand duke had begun to bear an increasing resemblance to that boorish man. I would, however, exact what little revenge I could by executing the scoundrel, if not in the next chapter, then in the following one.

  The night air afforded no sanctuary from the cruelty of my thoughts. Did I really look like a servant? And, for that matter, what do servants look like? Wouldn’t a duchess pass just as well for a scullery maid if she were stripped of her gowns, her furs, and her resplendent jewelry? Or was there some physical feature which distinguished a butler from a baronet, a cook from a countess? The scorn with which he had looked upon me, both in our first meeting and at breakfast, was not an intangible thing; it was as real and as solid as my own limbs, and I knew the impression of our unhappy encounter would last for days before time gradually dulled its sting.

  My feet had grown tired from circling the gardens, and I finally settled on a stone bench beside a urinating Eros. There was so much I wanted—books I hadn’t yet read, dishes I’d heard tell of but never sampled. I wanted, for once, to indulge my vanity and purchase a whole wardrobe of new dresses, stockings, and shawls, all of the latest fashion. Or if I could learn something surprising and useful—how differently others would perceive me upon finding that I could speak German or draw a nightingale so that it appeared it might sing from the page at any moment. Perhaps my weak learning showed, if not in my face, then in my manner of walking or even in my speech. Perhaps this was why the colonel had mistaken me for a servant. Mention of my novel had made no discernible impression on him. He had shrugged it aside, even belittled it.

  I must have sat for a long time lost in my thoughts, so much so that I mistook my visitor’s polite cough for the rustle of trees being disturbed by a gentle wind. But then a human voice addressed me, and I met the eye of Mr. Darcy. Endeavoring to smile, my mouth only flinched.

  “How are you, Mary?” he asked.

  The novelty of the question startled me. I hadn’t ever considered how infrequently this query had been directed towards my own person. I assured him I was well, grateful, at least, that he did not despise me in the manner of his cousin.

  “I used to come here as a child,” he began.

  Perhaps it was the night which enabled him to talk as he did. We could barely see each other, though we were then sitting practically shoulder to shoulder. The dark gave us a comforting anonymity, and he continued to speak in a nostalgic whisper.

  “I loved my parents. But after my mother died, my father discovered greater solace in his work than in my company, and so I was often alone. It’s strange, isn’t it, the memories children take with them into adulthood. I remember coming to this bench and crying because I could not
bear the solitude of this house. And even when I ran out of tears, I still howled with all the strength I had, because I hoped—no, I believed, I truly believed—my cries could make the heavens pity me and that they would then deliver a companion to my side, as Pegasus was delivered to Bellerophon in his hour of need.” He paused to laugh at himself, and despite my mood, I managed to chuckle a bit as well.

  “Mrs. Reynolds attempted to fill the void by engaging me frequently in conversation, not as an adult would communicate with a child, mind, but as if I were one of her peers come to commiserate after a long day’s work. How that woman could talk! And on any subject you could possibly think of—blisters, the best poultices for burns, the general mischief of the underservants. I absorbed everything like a pupil shown for the first time the inner workings of the world, and it was wonderful. For as long as I live, I’ll never forget those conversations. Do you know—she found me many times in this place, pitying myself and rubbing my eyes, and she would take me up by the shoulders and say, ‘Sir, what’s this? What’s this? Well, we can’t have this. We can’t have this at all.’ ”

  The sound of Mr. Darcy imitating his ornery housekeeper got the better of me, and I began to laugh in earnest. When I’d recovered, I said, “I can guess why you’re telling me this. You think I am sitting here, as you once did, pitying myself because I am alone.”

  “I admit it crossed my mind,” he replied.

  “To that I can only say you are fortunate you have never lived in a household with four sisters, an abominably loud mother, a sheepdog who rejoices at the sound of his own bark, and several noisy livestock living practically outside one’s bedroom window. Only listen! Listen very hard, and tell me what you hear!”

  In the dark, he tipped his head and craned his neck. “Nothing,” he responded eventually. “I hear nothing.”

  “Yes, it is silence, Mr. Darcy, and for the better part of my life I have been deprived of it. Only consider how many glorious dreams I have had to surrender to the constant bickering of Kitty and Lydia…or the countless erudite thoughts that have been unjustly ended before the hour of their flowering…only think of how much in our day-to-day lives is lost in noise and what can be gained in its opposite—in the depths of silence, which, thus far, only Pemberley has been able to afford me. It is a luxury, and I am so grateful for it.”

  I sensed that he was smiling, and I wondered if I had inadvertently said something foolish. A fragrant, cool wind had begun to blow the scent of turned soil and composted leaves, and I had the fleeting, irrational sensation that in that moment, I could have wished for anything and it would have come true, that the hollow of God’s ear was angled perfectly to listen to my thoughts and my thoughts alone in this whole vast world. I would have been happy for the silence to linger between us a few moments longer, but Darcy spoke, and when he did, it was on a subject most unpleasant to my ears.

  “When I met my cousin for the first time, I was five years old, and he had just turned seven. Our parents left Fitzwilliam and me in the garden to play, and I remember he said, in the most innocent voice, ‘Let’s go look at the ducks, Darcy!’ I followed him to the pond, and he promptly pushed me in.”

  “Sounds like something he would do,” I said bitterly.

  “He bullied me for years. Every time we met, it was like reliving the same nightmare over and over again. He would wrestle me to the ground and pin my hands behind my back so I couldn’t move.”

  “Well, I hope you told his father and that he gave the young colonel a sound whipping.”

  “That’s not what boys do, Mary,” he said, “at least not the honorable ones. We have an unspoken pact never to tell on each other.”

  “So what did you do?”

  Darcy shrugged. “I put up with it, though I admit I hated him, and I assumed he hated me. Then I grew up, and he grew up. And one evening, when we were at a party and had gotten pretty legless from drinking, one arrogant fool—I can’t even remember who it was—made a remark about Georgiana and how motherless daughters, particularly rich ones, were ripe for picking, something crude like that. And before I knew what was what, Fitzwilliam had pinned that laughing idiot against the wall. His feet were clean off the ground, and he was kicking the air like a strangled rabbit. That’s when I knew.” He paused. “I knew then he would be a great friend to me, which is why I made him my sister’s guardian.”

  “And all those years of unrelenting torture at his hands?” I inquired. “Did those just fly out the window?”

  “Funny you should ask. I did mention to him later that he was one of many contributing factors which made my childhood a living hell, and do you know what he said to me? After he’d gotten over the initial shock, he said, ‘But I thought we had such fun together as children! You were the only friend I had!’ ”

  Darcy fell quiet again.

  “Were you really a lonely child, or were you saying all of that for my benefit?” I finally asked.

  “I promise you I was the most miserable child I knew—highly introverted, couldn’t even stomach mounting a horse until I was nearly ten or eleven, for fear of heights. My old tutor will tell you I wasn’t naturally inclined in any subject—‘a mediocre reader with a mild talent for mental arithmetic,’ I think he once reported to my father.”

  “But you grew out of it. No one could accuse you of being any of these things now.”

  “Lizzy will tell you I’m still awkward around people.”

  “Never as awkward as I am around people,” I said, feeling competitive about it.

  “You’ll appreciate that I had no friends when I was much younger. The colonel didn’t count.”

  “Well, neither do I really, and I’m already twenty.”

  “And I hated balls with a vengeance. I still do, if I’m to be completely honest.”

  The night air, I think, rendered me garrulous, and I began to enumerate all the miserable times I had ever had at balls since “coming out” in society. I told him about the time I’d hid in my room, already dressed, while the rest of my family went downstairs. And when at last I emerged from the interior of my wardrobe, I found that the carriage had left without me. What a fright I’d given poor Sarah and Mrs. Hill! They’d heard footsteps upstairs in an empty house, and when I came out of the sitting room, they nearly leapt at me with a frying pan and a copper pot, shouting, “Thief!” But it all ended very amiably, and that evening, I had a delicious supper of leftover pheasant and cold pie in my best dress and white leather gloves belowstairs.

  “Was your mother angry with you when she discovered you hadn’t gone?” Mr. Darcy asked.

  “Oh no, not at all. That was the best bit, you see, for when my family came home, my mother was so busy exclaiming Jane’s virtues that she paid no heed to me. And even Lydia said later, ‘Mary, I don’t recall seeing you stand up even once to dance!’ And Kitty immediately replied, ‘Of course not, silly! Didn’t you see her sulking the whole time by the piano, waiting her turn?’ ”

  The telling of the story rendered the account more humorous than I had remembered it, and we laughed until the contagion of our laughter shook the tops of the hedges. But this moment couldn’t last, and when our merriment finally subsided, Darcy rose from his seat and offered me his arm.

  “I hope you won’t stay angry at the colonel, Mary,” he said.

  “Ah, so that is why you brought him up tonight,” I replied, scoffing, though I still smiled. “Well, it has all been for naught. Your cousin thinks I’m a fool.”

  “No one who knows you could think that…unless, of course, he is a fool himself,” he said.

  “Well, I shall always be open to flattery, receiving it so little,” I answered, feeling much better about myself.

  Restored to good humor, we went back the way I had come, along the invisible lane so dark one didn’t dare look down at one’s feet for fear the ground beneath would give way. Wh
en we reached the house, we bid each other good night and parted ways.

  For several days following Colonel Fitzwilliam’s arrival at Pemberley, Lizzy felt well enough to leave her bed, sit on a cushioned seat at her table, and read some letters. On a low stool positioned some few feet away, I provided friendly but unobtrusive company, occupied as I was with the instruments of my writing. Alas, at a feast celebrating her safe return, Leonora had drunk a poisoned goblet of wine and was now teetering on the cusp of death, shaking in her fevered sleep with “lips the bluish tint of incurable venom.” But if the grand duke had been arrested and indicted for treason, and if Leonora herself had presided over his execution by rack and fire and forced him to consume several live rats in order to better avenge her own tortured imprisonment, then who should replace him as chief villain of my most splendid novel? Her younger and hitherto faithful half sister, Agnes? Wilhelm the German prince, whom I’d originally intended as her one true love? Or would it be the grand duke himself, who had, after all, evaded death by substituting a look-alike slave for his own person and swapping his tailored robes for dirty rags? What possibilities! What control I exerted over these pitiful characters’ fates! A love that had professed itself pure not ten paragraphs past could crumble into a traitorous scheme for power at a single stroke of my pen. Waving my quill in the air, I proceeded to raise Leonora’s temperature a few degrees higher, and she descended into blissful unconsciousness.

  “I’ve received a letter from Lydia,” Lizzy called out. My pen ceased its scratching.

  “What does she want? Been kicked out of her rooms again?” I wrinkled my nose.