Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  “Haven’t decided yet,” I said.

  “You are cruel.”

  Laughing, I stood and performed a theatrical bow. It was half past one, and I’d just remembered that I was to meet the colonel in the stables at eight o’clock.

  “It’s late,” I said again, stretching my arms.

  “I will let you go for now,” Darcy said, affecting a serious attitude, “but you must promise me, Mary, that you won’t keep me in suspense for too long as to whether Leonora lives or dies.”

  “I won’t,” I assured him before I left. “I promise.”

  I broke my promise. The colonel, who had pledged to teach me a new way of living, proved too fine an instructor, and a whole week passed in which I immersed myself in his tutelage. First, he taught me to ride, and I left Leonora to recover in her royal bed while I took Marmalade through the scattered wildernesses of the estate. My own mind was a muddled but euphoric version of its former self. One cannot, I think, ever be truly intelligent in the first throes of love. I relished every moment of my newfound ignorance, in which all thoughts revolved like the celestial bodies around a single source of glorious light. Though we talked a great deal, there passed between the colonel and myself no conversations which expanded the breadth of our souls or increased the understanding of our minds. We spoke primarily of ourselves and those we knew. Our language was the wandering speech of lovers who spend whole hours examining a wisp of curly hair or the movement of an earwig across a leaf. He called me his “ugly little thing,” and I called him either “Marmalade” or my “womanizing, caper-witted coxcomb.”

  Pemberley became our playground, and we its reckless and unruly children. We fished its waters and caught two trout, which we presented to Darcy’s French-German cook, who prepared them very ill. When we grew tired of riding Marmalade, that short-tempered nag, we tumbled and wrestled in beds of soft grass out of sight of the house; and when this, too, lost its appeal, we crept as gingerly as spiders down forgotten corridors where we entered untenanted rooms, giggling like maniacs. The furniture within loomed in dusty corners like phantoms. I could sometimes feel them breathing beneath their white sheets, impatient for the living to leave so that they could resume their conversations—the mahogany sideboard with the walnut armoire, the Grecian couch with the Chinese cabinet.

  Jane’s condition prevented her from remaining long by Lizzy’s side, and Lizzy continued to recover in complete seclusion, with only Mrs. Reynolds to keep her company. Almost as soon as Jane had gone, rumors began to circulate of screams heard in the dead hours of night from the master bedroom. The sounds frequently roused me from my sleep; I found I could not move when I heard them, and so terrifying was the pitch that every hair on my arms would stand on end and I could not close my eyes for hours. Lizzy had nightmares, violent, cruel nightmares that took possession of her body and gave her claws where she had none. Everyone knew it was the remembrance of the child which tormented her, the discovery that nature did not discriminate, even among supposed favorites; one could give birth not only to life but also to death. I’d heard these nightmares had eventually forced Darcy to move out of their room and into his own chambers.

  I confess it pained me that, following Jane’s departure, Lizzy never once called for me, that the several times I visited her rooms I was gently but firmly rebuffed by Mrs. Reynolds. At Longbourn, Lizzy had never confided in me. I was one of the last to learn of her and Darcy’s engagement and the least involved of my siblings in helping with the arrangements for the double wedding. It might have been wishful thinking to hope that anything had changed permanently during my happy months at Pemberley. The theories I entertained as to why I was no longer welcome ranged from the benevolent to the malicious. It was possible that she did not want to worry me (benevolent). It was also possible that she wanted the guilt I already felt to fester like an untended wound (malicious). I didn’t know what to believe.

  But I was also too distracted to seriously concern myself. Never in my life had I been happier. And it was on a day of clouds and wind, and in a room memorable for its distinctive wallpaper—a lustrous sky blue dappled with gold butterflies and white pansies—that something was taken from me, for I worried there might never be an opportune moment again. From my youth, I’d listened to sermons expounding the priceless worth of female virtue. I’d borne witness to the aftermath of my youngest sister’s disgrace, how her ignominy had nearly ruined us all by association. In the company of other women, I’d listened to tales of daughters who, for a few moments’ pleasure, lived the remainder of their lives in penury, disowned by mortified mothers and fathers. Their names carried a bitter taste; they blackened the reputation of womanhood and reminded us of our original sin. Yet that day these cautionary tales with which I guarded my heart crumpled in a hypocritical heap around my bare ankles. The first attempt was too painful for words, but I gritted my teeth through it, and through the quiet tremors of shame that quickly followed in its wake. After the episode was over, I took a bath. When I was clean and had changed into a new dress, I lay down, but the recumbent position brought back fresh strokes of pain between my legs and the impression that I was bleeding. I could not sleep. I had nothing to read, having run out of books in my room, so I went to the library. I knew that the colonel, who might well have considered sex only another form of exercise, had returned to the stables to groom Marmalade.

  There were days at Pemberley when the house felt too full of faces. One could never be alone in such a place, not even for the span of a brief walk down Pemberley’s shortest corridor, for there was sure to be, waiting at the end of it, a veiled marchioness or a Grecian god seated primly upon his pedestal. There were days when the walls seemed to creak beneath the weight of these faces, when an earl looked ready to finally dismount from his famous thoroughbred and Lady Anne appeared at last to have awoken from her opium-induced trance. Even in an estate as large as Pemberley, one could feel crowded from all this history, especially when the history was not yours to share in. As I passed them—the portraits, the statues, the bronze and obsidian busts—I could sense their eyes boring into the top of my head.

  Look, there she goes, Darcy’s great-uncle called out. The deflowered maiden.

  Harlot, Georgiana’s likeness hissed from her place of honor. Just like Lydia.

  The Bennet girls can’t seem to keep their hands off the officers, can they?, a beloved family greyhound barked.

  The voices ceased once I entered the library, where, fortunately, no life-sized paintings of illustrious ancestors decorated the walls. Yet on this day, I didn’t proceed to the shelves, to the leather-bound classics whose spines were a uniform and most soothing woodland green. Instead, hearing the gentle clop-clop of hooves outdoors, I went to the window.

  The library overlooked one of the side courtyards, from which residents could come and go as they wished without having to pass through the front gates. A phaeton had just arrived, drawn by a large chestnut-colored horse. The driver disembarked from his seat, and three servants came out to meet him and to help him bring several parcels into the house. It was Darcy.

  A few days after our last meeting in his study, he’d left Pemberley to go into town. I’d forgotten all about his trip.

  Presently, the servants emptied the phaeton of its load, and Darcy exchanged some pleasantries with them before they left his side. When he was alone, he took off his hat and, holding it first in one hand, then passing it to the other, he paced the courtyard’s perimeter. His face was grim. He seemed to look at the walls, the shrubbery, the stone beneath his feet without recognition. Then the sound of something—a bird taking flight or the rustle of branches—made him glance up, and he spotted me before I could hide behind the curtains.

  It must have been a trick of the light, for I thought his features brightened, that the gloom which I’d discerned as he’d made his rounds of the courtyard vanished. I noted that he smiled, and though I was gla
d to see him pleased, I admit I despised myself a little. For the whole eventful week, I’d given him no thought, though I’d eaten his food and drunk his wine and traipsed his garden paths. Up until the very moment of his arrival, I hadn’t even considered when he would return, so enthralled had I been with everything the colonel said and did. It was the colonel who now occupied all my thoughts and all my time. And, in truth, it was that gentleman I thought of, not Darcy, as I waved back to my neglected friend from the library window, smiling.

  Darcy came down for dinner that evening, the first meal he’d taken outside of his rooms since the incident. Over servings of white soup, the colonel sang the praises of his favorite horse.

  “Of course, it may have been an accident, but I don’t think it’s likely,” he said, licking the last dregs from his spoon. “I mean, what are the chances that she should bite my sleeve just when I was about to leave? She tore the whole thing off, by the way, and the shirt is ruined. I looked like I’d been attacked by ruffians coming back to the house.”

  “She’s a fine horse,” Darcy conceded, still two spoonfuls into his soup.

  “She’s more than a fine horse, damn it,” the colonel said passionately. “I’m convinced our spirits are bonded in some way. I’ll never find a horse like her again; I’m quite sure of that.”

  “I grant you it will be extremely difficult to replace Marmalade when the day comes,” Darcy said.

  “You should see what a fine figure Mary cuts on Marmalade.” The colonel grinned, winking at me from across the table.

  Darcy looked up sharply. The third spoonful, which had been halfway to his mouth, promptly returned untouched to his plate.

  “The colonel has taught me to ride,” I said bashfully.

  “Mary’s a natural,” my lover gushed. “A horsewoman to rival Queen Elizabeth herself, in my opinion.”

  “Oh,” Darcy replied, wiping his mouth, though he’d barely eaten anything.

  “It’s amazing how Marmalade’s taken to Mary,” the colonel added, oblivious to Darcy’s sudden reticence. “You know from experience, Darcy, that she won’t let anyone ride her, not even our saintly Georgiana.”

  “Yes, all right, Fitzwilliam.”

  At this, the colonel laughed and, turning to me, said, “One thing you’ll learn about our esteemed friend, Mary, is that he won’t suffer any person in the world to speak ill of his sister, not even her own guardian. Deficiencies, even those of the vaguest and most useless variety, are strictly forbidden, as I’ve just demonstrated to you. For that matter, Darcy, I don’t think Georgiana is particularly talented at shuttlecock. There, now you may challenge me to a duel. First to draw blood?”

  I giggled, which seemed to put Darcy in an even worse humor. I assumed his mind was elsewhere, perhaps occupied with Lizzy’s recovery.

  “Don’t be a fool, Fitzwilliam,” he scolded grumpily.

  “Have you seen Lizzy since you’ve come back?” I asked my host.

  “I have not,” he replied, seeming grateful to change the subject, “but Mrs. Reynolds was kind enough to make a detailed report of my wife’s health. She says she still prefers to take all her meals upstairs due to a poor appetite but, in general, appears to be improving.”

  “When shall we see her, Darcy?” the colonel inquired.

  “I don’t know” was the terse reply.

  “A fine-spirited woman,” his friend offered and quickly added, “just like her sister.”

  Blushing, I quietly thanked him.

  For the next several minutes, the colonel was too occupied with consuming the large cut of veal on his plate to speak, and Darcy took advantage of his cousin’s silence to mention something of his recent trip.

  “Mary, I have brought you the Marquis de Grosse’s Horrid Mysteries, which I know you’ve wanted to read,” he announced.

  “Mary,” the colonel piped up, resurfacing from his dish before I could give Darcy my thanks, “I’m thinking of going into Lambton tomorrow to look at a rifle. Will you come with me?”

  “Fitzwilliam, that’s hardly a proper errand to take a young woman on,” Darcy interjected.

  “So? You’re not her guardian, and she’s not, legally speaking, your ward.”

  “She is, while she’s staying under my roof,” Darcy said, biting into a slice of veal.

  While his cousin chewed, the colonel launched his defense: “Well, we shall let Mary decide. That seems the only thing to do.”

  Darcy hurriedly gulped down his meat. “Mary,” he began, while I considered what to say, “I’m still waiting for you to apprise me of Leonora’s fate, as you promised. Have you written anything new while I’ve been gone?”

  “She’s been much too busy to write any more of her novel,” the colonel answered on my behalf, which, I confess, irritated me. I flashed him a look of annoyance, which he either missed or ignored, for he continued much as before: “And, Darcy, you shouldn’t encourage Mary to sit indoors so much. She’s been doing that her whole life and doesn’t need more of it. Only think how pale she looked when I first arrived and how well she looks now. Marmalade has worked wonders on her.”

  “A finely written novel may bring pleasure to thousands, while riding gives pleasure only to oneself.”

  “That is absolute rot, Darcy,” the colonel answered, his mouth full.

  “Well, we shall leave the decision to Mary,” Darcy said. “Mary, what do you think of the matter?”

  The dinner table, which had previously been raucous with the two gentlemen’s repartee, instantly turned quiet. I looked from Darcy to the colonel, then at the uneaten morsel stuck at the end of my fork. A dizzying warmth proliferated across my neck and face, and I blush to think how I must have resembled, in that moment, a burning lantern.

  “I can’t think why I shouldn’t be able to do both,” I said finally, surprised by my own determination. “I will go with the colonel tomorrow morning to Lambton and return in time to write the final chapter of Leonora.”

  This answer seemed to please both men, and the colonel gave a quick hoot of joy. Darcy, allowing himself a small smile, returned to carving another flawless square of meat.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING, I accompanied the colonel to Lambton, and what was meant to be an errand lasting two or, at most, three hours soon turned into an all-day outing. It was eight o’clock when we returned to Pemberley, and the day had already cast its delirious spell. In my happiness, I’d once again forgotten the promise I’d made to Darcy.

  The colonel told me it would get better with practice. He said it was something to be mastered, just like riding horses or playing chess.

  “Think how frightened you were of Marmalade in the beginning,” he urged, “and how comfortable you are with riding her now, even when I’m not there.”

  “Well, you cannot but be there for what we’re talking about, can you?” I replied, snickering.

  He told me to trust him. “It will get better. You’ll see, I promise you,” he said. And he was right. It did get better, explosively better, much to my great surprise and pleasure.

  My latest hobby precipitated a rumor, which originated, as rumors often did, belowstairs, among Pemberley’s staff, before rising to the surface.

  “There’s a ghost. Pemberley is haunted,” Bess said, in place of a greeting, when we happened upon each other one afternoon. As she spoke, her eyes darted suspiciously over my head from one corner of the hall to another. “Have you heard it?” she asked me.

  “Certainly not!” I replied. “What ghost?”

  “In the unoccupied wing,” she said primly, satisfied by my ignorance. “But I don’t suppose you frequent that part of the house, miss.”

  And she proceeded to tell me the story of how Henderson had entered that wing not two days ago and heard a most unsettling and alien sound emanating from one of the rooms
along the corridor. It had turned his hair half-white and sent him running.

  “Like the dead sitting up and moaning from their graves, he said,” Bess continued. “I haven’t heard it myself and am not inclined to, as I’m terrified of all things to do with spirits and apparitions. But Polly, one of the scullery maids, claims to have heard it as well. She said it’s not at all like Henderson described but rather like children crying out in pain. Do you think they’re child-ghosts, miss? Who got lost in the forgotten wing and couldn’t find their way back to their mothers and so starved to death?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Bess,” I said, being unable to conceal my blushing, for I, of course, knew perfectly what the source of the ghosts was.

  The rumors of ghosts reached Darcy’s ears as well, thanks to the garrulous Mrs. Reynolds. At dinner, while attending to a fillet of salmon, he commented that he’d never taken Henderson for a fanciful individual in all his twenty-three years of service.

  “It may have been a wounded animal,” the colonel offered helpfully.

  “That occurred to me as well,” Darcy said between mouthfuls of fish. “A pigeon or something.”

  And after dinner concluded, I raced my wounded animal to the abandoned wing and made more ghosts with him.

  * * *

  —

  DAYS LATER, A carriage arrived, containing Pemberley’s first visitors since the incident. From behind a bank of shrubbery on the front lawn, I spotted it rattling its way up the drive, like a toy being led on invisible string. When it reached its destination, the coachman jumped down and opened the door, and two dolls and a portly gentleman popped out. The ladies ascended to the house together, the smaller and thicker-waisted of the two dressed in agricultural green, the taller and less nourished one draped in luxuriant folds of burnt orange, her small head fashionably turbaned with an oversized plume that arched threateningly forward. Several steps behind them, the gentleman waddled slowly up the stairs at the edge of their combined shadows.