Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  “Marmalade,” I called out. The horse neighed. The man whose head was currently in my lap looked up questioningly, annoyed that I’d interrupted his afternoon nap. “Look, Marmalade,” I continued, “we have guests, and I do believe I know who they are, if the color of their frocks is anything to go by. I think it must be Miss Caroline Bingley, her sister, Mrs. Hurst, and Mr. Hurst.”

  “More ladies?” the colonel said lasciviously, and I rumpled his hair. He cried out in protest: “Now I won’t be presentable, thanks to you.”

  “I forget sometimes that you are no better than a vain peacock,” I sighed. This was the sort of aimless conversation we were able to make last for hours between us. “And a womanizing coxcomb,” I added cheerfully, rumpling his hair again before he caught my arm and kissed the back of it.

  “I have no need for ladies now,” he said with a hint of sadness. “I am practically a married man.”

  “That could not be,” I commented gently, pretending to laugh, though the subject made me nervous, “for you have extended no offer of marriage.”

  From my lap, he reached up to stroke my warm, sunlit face. “You ugly little thing,” he said affectionately, “would you be happy married to me, the poorest and most feeble-minded son of an earl? Tell me the truth.”

  “Have you any money?” I asked.

  “No, dearest, only a few measly pounds to rub together. James will get the bulk of everything, being the eldest, though I can get money enough so long as I ask nicely for it and remain my charming self to all the members of my extremely wealthy family.”

  “Have you any terrible vices?” I questioned in mock judgment.

  “Drink,” he admitted, “and I do like the odd flutter on horses when I can afford it. Though the worst of it is…”

  “Yes?”

  Sitting up, he kissed me. “The worst of my vices is that I spoil young, respectable women and deprive them of their maidenhoods.”

  “And how will you repent for this greatest of sins, my lovely, impoverished Marmalade?” I returned his kiss.

  “I will marry the maiden, though I warn her that we shall both be penniless and become quite desperate from exceeding our incomes so regularly.” He kissed me before I could answer, as though to prevent my forming words.

  “Then speaking on behalf of the maidenhood-less maiden,” I said, once I had the opportunity, “I accept the womanizing coxcomb’s offer of marriage and thank him for his trouble.”

  “So you really do love me then, my ugly little thing?” he asked.

  Gathering his hands to my face, I pressed the wrist he’d once sprained to my mouth. “I do,” I replied.

  In other parts of the world, one hears tell of miracles that have occurred—the parting of seas, the rising of the dead, the raining of bread from heaven to feed the starving masses. But this day in England, in the county of Derbyshire, on the gently sloping green lawn of Pemberley, an even greater miracle had taken place, though it remained for the time being a secret between two lovers. I, Mary Bennet, had become engaged to be married.

  * * *

  —

  THAT NIGHT WAS a restless one. I could not sleep for all the exuberance I felt, tossing and turning until my bed became too hot and unkempt to lie in. In the third hour of my wakefulness, I put on a dressing gown and went downstairs. My tour took me past the terrace, where I thought I saw someone standing at the end of it, illumined by moonlight, like a sailor poised at the prow of a ghostly ship. I had determined to return to my room, but the figure suddenly turned and caught sight of me tiptoeing back in the direction of the staircase.

  “Mary!” Darcy called out, and I begrudgingly retraced my steps.

  A few moments later, I stood at his side, midshipman to his lieutenant. The night was so dark, I did not dare lean over the ledge to peer into the void below.

  “So, you could not sleep, either,” Darcy said, seeming pleased at the discovery of a fellow insomniac.

  “No, not tonight,” I admitted.

  “Would you be scandalized, Mary, if I told you that I had my very first kiss here as a hot-blooded youth?” he asked.

  “That would depend entirely upon how old you were and who the kiss was with,” I replied practically.

  “Five, and my second cousin, the Honorable Miss Lucy Carrington, was eight.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, and Darcy, too, smiled. I asked him why he was not in bed.

  “I was thinking,” he answered, looking down at his hands, “of fatherhood and its difficulties. After all, it cannot be only wealth and property which a parent imparts to his children. Morality and law may be studied. But how is goodness attained? How is a noble and charitable temperament cultivated? Only consider what must go into the upbringing of an innocent infant; is it not momentous that, one day, his character, whether honorable or otherwise, should serve as a reflection of his parents, though he will always be his own person?” He paused, and then bowing his head so that his face was hidden from me, he continued: “Two nights ago, I thought I dreamed of him. I was riding—I passed a post, which told me how many miles I still needed to travel before I would reach my destination, and he was sitting on a large rock at the base of the sign. I assumed he was a vagrant, a gypsy, so I kept riding; at the next post, he was there again, calling out to me. ‘Stop the horse!’ he cried, waving his arms, but I couldn’t. Over and over, I missed him, and as the miles counted down, he grew more desperate. At the last post, I reached out my hand, but his fingers were too short to catch mine. He said, weeping, ‘Father, bring me with you,’ and I shook my head. It was impossible; there was nothing I could do. The horse took me past him, and his shape grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Then I awoke.”

  His words had emboldened me sufficiently that I touched his sleeve. “It was only a dream. Please do not think too much of it.”

  “Do you think fatherhood would have suited me, Mary?” he asked.

  “How could it not suit you?” I said with feeling. “You are the embodiment of everything that is good and honorable in the world and the best person I know—superior certainly to anyone of my limited acquaintance.”

  “Do not tease me.”

  I pressed my hand harder against his arm, and to my surprise, Darcy caught it in his own and held it. He must have sensed my astonishment, however, because he instantly released it and, in a changed tone, said he’d grown tired. He would finish a letter and go to bed. So we parted on the terrace, and when I returned to my room, I found I still could not sleep.

  At last, Lizzy sent for me. Mrs. Reynolds, in her usual prompt manner, asked me to close my book and come upstairs. “You’ll go half-blind from so much reading,” she chided as I followed her to my sister’s room.

  When we’d nearly reached our destination, she put her hand on my arm and turned towards me. “A letter’s come,” Mrs. Reynolds whispered, “in the early hours of the morning.”

  “From who?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Wickham” was the brusque reply before her bony fist rapped the door.

  I hadn’t seen Lizzy for nearly three weeks, not since the first days following the incident, when she still permitted me to sit on her bed and hold her hand.

  I expected to find her much improved, and she was. Some color had returned to her face. The swelling of her countenance and the dark circles beneath her eyes had vanished. When I entered, she looked at me thoughtfully, and I could detect in her expression no trace of the weakness or uncertainty which had plagued her in all the days she’d been with child. I was happy to find her so recovered—happy but angry, too, that I’d been intentionally deprived of her company not because she was truly ill and unable to sit up in bed, as I’d been told up till the previous day, but simply because I was unwanted. As soon as Mrs. Reynolds departed, Lizzy gestured to the seat beside her.

  “You look much better,” I said quietly
, though I didn’t move.

  “Oh, Mary, don’t sulk,” Lizzy exclaimed. She motioned again to the empty chair. “Sit by me,” she instructed.

  “You asked for Jane….” I said, remaining where I was. “And when Jane had gone, you asked for Mrs. Reynolds. Why did you never ask for me, Lizzy?”

  “Surely it is my prerogative, Mary,” she replied, “to choose who should sit by me when I am ill and bedridden. I am very sorry you are hurt. But if we are to throw off politeness and be honest with each other, I’m obliged to tell you the real reason I did not ask for you. You know you have no sympathy for these matters.”

  “That is both unkind and untrue,” I interjected.

  “Of course, you are very intelligent,” she continued, ignoring me. “I sometimes wonder how your insatiable mind would have benefited from the instruction of a tutor, had Papa been sensible and rich enough to hire one. But you cannot claim to know anything about marriage or about pregnancy, much less motherhood. You are not married. You have never cared for the things that most women attend to in their lives. And except for a passing interest in our ridiculous cousin, you have always shown yourself to be indifferent to subjects of, how shall I put it, a non-academic nature.” Lizzy looked away. She frowned, and when she spoke again, her voice involuntarily trembled. “I…I was in the throes of grief; to have asked you to sit with me would have been akin to asking a five-year-old girl to tend to her dying mother. It would be a trial to both parties—an impractical arrangement. You can see what I mean, can’t you, Mary?”

  The force of her words nearly knocked me to my knees. I took a deep breath before venturing to speak again. “In the days after you lost your child and before Jane had come, I sat with you….” I stopped, for all the warmth and color had drained out of her face at the mere utterance of that forbidden word. She shivered. Her hands pulled a richly woven shawl tighter about her thin shoulders.

  “But we are talking in circles,” she continued. “As I have explained, the problem is one of sympathy. You cannot ask a philosopher to appreciate a poet’s torments. We’re so different from each other, Mary. There are things you are simply prevented from knowing until you’ve experienced them, and it is useless to try to make you understand.”

  “You think I’ve never loved? That I’ve never felt pain?”

  “That is too extreme. But you must admit that you have always been harder to relate to. Don’t you recall Mrs. Hill’s cat?”

  I made a face. “Mrs. Hill’s cat? She never had a cat.” Then I remembered. A stray. Female. Black, Mrs. Hill used to joke, for good luck. It was blind in one eye, a dry, dusty socket where an eye should have been. No one knew what had happened, except the air was suddenly filled with screams coming from somewhere outside the house. It was Papa who found Mrs. Hill’s cat near the pigpen, sprawled on its side in the mud. And it was Sarah who pointed out that the animal’s hind legs were broken. I was sixteen. For three months, I had consumed nothing except heroic literature. I took the shovel, which was normally used to muck out the shed, and put an end to the din, while my sisters stood behind me and wept.

  “The animal was in pain. I did the right thing,” I said, sitting down.

  “But you cannot deny that it takes a certain hardness of character to do such a thing.”

  “It takes a certain strength of character to do such a thing,” I answered. Lizzy stiffened and, turning away, brushed a loose thread from her shawl.

  An extended silence settled between us. At last, I said, “Possibly you are right to think I would have been unhelpful had I kept you company. We will not speak of it anymore. It is insensitive of me to press the point when you are the one who has suffered so much.”

  At this, Lizzy produced a few sheets of paper and held them out to me. “I have a letter from Lydia to share with you,” she said. “It arrived a few hours ago.”

  Taking the papers from her, I began to read.

  Dear Lizzy,

  I am seriously ill. Could you please come down to London at your earliest convenience? I have written to our parents but still receive no reply from them. Wickham has been missing for ten days, and his creditors grow impatient. I have told them that he is dealing with urgent matters of business in the country, but they know as well as I do that this is improbable, the truth being that I really have no idea where my husband is at all.

  I called on our Uncle and Aunt Gardiner at Gracechurch Street three days ago and was informed by their maid that they are currently away from home and en route to Pemberley. If this is true, perhaps you and the Gardiners can come down to London together to visit. And Mary, too, if she is still your guest. We will make such a merry party, even in these rotten rooms, and there is no piano here for Mary to make us all grimace and cover our ears.

  I hope you and Baby are doing all right. If due to Baby you cannot travel in person to London, please be so kind as to give Mary or the Gardiners any amount of money you can easily spare. Twenty or thirty pounds would stave off the creditors for a little while longer and enable me to visit an apothecary and attain some medicine.

  Yours ever,

  Lydia Wickham

  P.S. I do not think I shall recover so easily this time from my fever, which is very high indeed. Sometimes I can hardly stand and faint right back onto my bed again after rising.

  P.S.S. Thank you for the forty pounds, which I have used to settle a portion of Wickham’s debts so that we may keep these rooms and also the furniture. I would promise to pay it all back one day, but our prospects seem very bleak.

  “Will you visit her, Mary?” Lizzy asked. “I’d like you to go with the Gardiners and visit our sister in London.”

  “Oh…I see. Of course I shall go,” I said.

  “I would make the journey myself, if I were fully recovered,” Lizzy added by way of explanation. “Also, the city air…”

  “No, I understand. I will make your apologies to Lydia when I see her.”

  I stood and moved to the nearest window. “You know, Caroline Bingley didn’t recognize me at first,” I said absently. Looking out, I spotted the woman in question taking tea with her sister and my lover in the south garden. “Or she just pretended not to recognize me. She called me Kitty, and I had to explain that my younger sister was still at Longbourn. ‘My name is Mary,’ I told her. And then she made a strange noise and cried out, ‘Oh! How thoughtless of me! Of course, your name is Molly.’ ”

  “Come away from the window,” Lizzy said. “There’s something else I’d like to speak to you about.”

  “Did you know, Lizzy—there’s a little tea party taking place right now near the rosebushes, which, I’m sorry to say, neither of us has been invited to.”

  “Is there? Who’s in attendance?”

  “Just the colonel, Miss Bingley, and Mrs. Hurst.” I turned my back to the window. The picture of Caroline Bingley eating jam tartlets while laughing with her mouth open held no appeal for me.

  “What is the other matter you wanted to speak to me about?” I asked, returning to Lizzy’s side.

  She paused and glanced at me before turning away and fiddling with a corner of her shawl. She seemed embarrassed. “It’s a sensitive subject,” she said, clearing her throat, “but the question must be asked. Do you believe, Mary, that the colonel has taken an interest—a romantic interest—in you? Mrs. Reynolds has remarked that the two of you are rarely out of each other’s company these days.”

  I wish I could have told her the truth, but I’d been sworn to secrecy. “It’s to our advantage, our long-term advantage,” he had explained, “that Father and Mother find out first before anyone else does, and this is something I must tell them in person. It won’t be much longer—I promise.” Then he’d patted his pockets, and I’d understood what he meant, though it saddened me, sickened me also, that we were still so dependent on the fortunes of others in order to secure our own
.

  I replied as generally as I could. “Yes, Lizzy, I think he has. I believe he is extremely fond of me.”

  Lizzy caught my smile. She bent forward from her seat and took one of my hands, surprising me with the strength of her grip. “I hope I will not offend you by speaking plainly. I know it must be very flattering….I know it is a new experience for you to be able to walk and converse with a man of his estimation, and I will thank him myself when I am fully recovered for being so kind as to divert you from your books and other hobbies. But for your own sake, Mary, I hope you will not take any of this to heart. You see how he turns his attentions to Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst just as soon as they arrive. The conclusion we must inevitably draw from his behavior is that your company suited him only when he had no others at Pemberley with whom to socialize. Everyone knows he is a very lively and personable young man who loves to dance, ride horses, and attend parties.”

  “And I am, of course, unlively and unpersonable,” I replied.

  “That is a childish remark, Mary. You see, you are angry with me.”

  When I offered no reply, my sister’s expression softened. “I will admit to some fault in allowing this to happen. Darcy and I should have had the foresight to invite a third party to keep the colonel company as soon as he arrived. But, Mary, you must be mature and not make a scene over him. If you were to claim that he loved you or anything of the kind, I’m afraid it would be very embarrassing for you.”

  I extracted my hand and did not sit down again. “How much money will you give me to take to Lydia in London?” I asked.

  “Oh.” Lizzy shrugged. It was easy for her to be generous. “Another thirty pounds?”

  “Then I shall look forward to seeing the Gardiners tomorrow,” I said, preparing to take my leave. “I daresay I like the Gardiners better than they like me, but they are good people.”