The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet Read online

  “Well, her ladyship’s long dead, and her daughter with her,” said Mary on a sigh.

  “And that is more evidence of God’s mysteriousness!”

  “What are you wittering about, Kitty?”

  “The attack of influenza that carried off both de Bourghs so quickly after Colonel Fitzwilliam’s marriage to Anne! Or should I say, General Fitzwilliam? He fell heir to Rosings and that huge fortune in time to be respectably widowed before someone else took dear Georgiana’s fancy.”

  “Huh!” Mary emitted a snort of amusement. “Georgiana had no intention of settling for anyone except the Colonel—or the General, if you prefer. Though I cannot approve of unions between first cousins. Their eldest girl is so stigmatised that they have had to shut her away,” said Mary.

  “The Bladon blood, dear. Lady Catherine, Lady Anne, and Lady Maria. Sisters all.”

  “They married very rich men,” said Mary.

  “And rightly so! They were the daughters of a duke,” Kitty protested. “Their papa was very high in the instep—the merest whiff of Trade was enough to kill the old gentleman. That was the General’s father—turned out to have made his fortune in cotton and slaves.”

  “How ridiculous you are, Kitty! Is your life nought but gossip and gallivanting?”

  “Probably.” The fire was dying; Kitty pulled the bell cord for Jenkins. “Do you really expect the Collinses to travel twelve miles to condole?”

  “It is inevitable. Mr. Collins can scent a tragedy or a scandal a hundred miles away, so what are twelve? Lady Lucas will come with them, and we can expect to have Aunt Phillips here constantly. Only an attack of her lumbago prevented her coming today, but a good cry will cure it.”

  “By the way, Mary, must Almeria sleep in my room? She has a tendency to snore, and I know there is a nice bedroom at one end of the attic. She is a lady, not an abigail.”

  “I am keeping the attic room for Charlie.”

  “Oh! Will he come?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Mary.

  It was not custom for women to attend funerals, either in the church or at the graveside, but Fitzwilliam Darcy had decreed that this social rule should be ignored on the occasion of Mrs. Bennet’s obsequies. With no sons among her offspring and five daughters, attendance would be far too thin unless the rule were relaxed. So notification had gone out to the extended family that the ladies would be in attendance at church and graveside, despite the objections of persons like the Reverend Mr. Collins, whose nose was rather out of joint because he would not be officiating. Thus Jane’s sisters-in-law, Mrs. Louisa Hurst and Miss Caroline Bingley, came down from London to be present, while Mrs. Bennet’s cronies, her sister Mrs. Phillips, and her friends Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long, made the shorter journey from Meryton to attend.

  And there they are together at last, the five Bennet girls, thought Caroline Bingley after the funeral service was over and before the procession to the grave began.

  Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia…Twenty years of living in limbo, thanks to them and their fabled beauty. Of course it had faded, dimmed—but so had her own considerable good looks. Jane and Elizabeth had embarked upon the stormy seas of their forties; but then she, Caroline, had already survived those tempests and looked now at her fearsome fifties. As did Fitz; they were much the same age.

  Jane looked as if God had grafted the head of a twenty-two-year-old upon the body of a forty-two-year-old. Her face, with its tranquil honey-coloured eyes, rich unlined skin, exquisitely delicate features, was surrounded by a mass of honey-gold hair. Alas, twelve pregnancies had taken their toll of her sylphlike figure, though she had not grown fat; merely thickened in the waist and dropped in the bosom. In her, the Bennet type was decided; all five of them were some shade of fair, no surprise considering their fair parents.

  Elizabeth and Mary had the best Bennet hair, thick, waving, as much red as gold, though it could be called neither; to herself, Miss Bingley called it ginger. Their skins inclined to ivory and their large, slightly sleepy eyes were a grey that could turn to purple. Of course Elizabeth’s features were not as perfect as Jane’s—her mouth was too wide, too full in the lips—but for some reason that still eluded Miss Bingley, men found her more alluring. Her excellent figure was swathed in black fox, whereas Mary wore dismally plain black serge, a shocking bonnet and even worse pelisse. Caroline was fascinated by her, for she had not seen Mary in seventeen years, an interval of time that had transformed Mary into Elizabeth’s equal. Or she would have been, had her naturally generous mouth not retained its prim severity: it alone proclaimed the spinster. Did she still have that ugly overlapping tooth?

  Kitty she knew very well. Lady Menadew of the wheaten hair and cornflower-blue eyes, so elegant and fashionable that she enjoyed a sublime widowhood. As good-natured as she was frivolous, Kitty looked twenty-seven, not thirty-seven. Ah, how brother Charles had gulled them! Curse Desmond Hurst! When his port bill had outrun his pocket, he had applied to Charles for assistance. Charles had agreed to pay, on one condition: that Louisa gave Kitty Bennet a London season. After all, Charles had said reasonably, Louisa was bringing out her own daughter, so why not two? Caught, Desmond Hurst had traded the port bill (and many other bills) for Kitty’s London season. But whoever would have believed that the minx would walk off with Lord Menadew? Not one of the Marriage Mart’s biggest prizes, but extremely eligible despite his advanced years. While dearest Posy (as Letitia was called) did not catch a husband at all, and went into a long decline—fainting fits, vapours, starvation.

  Lydia was another matter. It was she who looked well into her forties, not Jane. What age was she? Thirty-five or-six. Caroline could well imagine the shifts her family must have resorted to in order to stop Mrs. Wickham drowning herself in a bottle. Had they not endured the same with Mr. Hurst? Who had succumbed to an apoplexy eight years ago, enabling Caroline to quit Charles’s houses in favour of the Hurst residence in Brook Street, there to dwell with Louisa and Posy, and indulge more freely in her favourite pastime—pulling Elizabeth Darcy and her son to pieces.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat as Fitz and Charles emerged from the church, their mother-in-law’s small coffin balanced on their shoulders, with the diminutive Mr. Collins and Henry Lucas on its back end; it gave the polished rosewood box an interesting but not precarious tilt. Oh, Fitz, Fitz! Why did you fall in love with her, marry her? I would have given you real sons, not a sole specimen as ludicrous as Charlie. A devoté of Socratic love, everyone is convinced of it. Why? Because the breathtaking degree of his beauty makes him look the sort, and I spread the calumny as a truth my intimacy with that family makes eminently believable. To brand the son with an affliction so far from his father’s heart is a way of punishing Fitz for not marrying me. You would think Fitz would see through the ploy, always starting, as it does, with something I have said. But no. Fitz believes me, not Charlie.

  Her long nose twitched, for it had picked up nuances of trouble on this unwelcome trip to bury the empty-headed old besom. All had not been well in the Darcy ménage for a while, but the mood was increasing—markedly so. Fitz’s air of aloof hauteur had grown back; during the early years of his marriage it had all but disappeared, though some instinct told her he was not the blissful man he had been at the altar. Hopeful, perhaps. Still aspiring to conquer—what? Caroline Bingley did not know, beyond her conviction that Fitz’s passion for Elizabeth had not resulted in true happiness.

  Down through the graveyard now, the black-clad mourners threading between the haphazard monuments, old as the Crusades, new as still-sinking soil. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst walked with Georgiana and General Hugh Fitzwilliam, not in the forefront of the congregation, but somewhere at its middle. Goodbye, Mrs. Bennet! The silliest woman ever born.

  Standing well back, Caroline let her gaze roam until it encountered Mary’s; there it stopped, startled. The violet orbs of the maiden sister rested in derision upon her face, as if they and the apparatus behind them knew what she wa
s thinking. What had happened to those eyes, now so intelligent, expressive, alert? She was leaning on Charlie, who held her hand: an odd pair. Something about them hinted at a divorcement from this maudlin parody, as if their persons stood there while their spirits cruised among other worlds.

  Do not be ridiculous, Caroline! she told herself, and inched her rump onto the edge of a convenient stone; that frightful mushroom, the Reverend Mr. Collins, was preparing to add a few words of his own to an already overly long service. By the time that Caroline had unobtrusively adjusted her weight in some relief, Mary and Charlie had returned to who they actually were. Yes, Caroline, a ridiculous notion. As well that Louisa and I bespoke the carriage for immediately after the funeral; to have to exchange civilities with all five Bennet sisters at Shelby Manor is not an enthralling prospect. If our coachman springs the horses, we can be back in London by nightfall. But if I am invited to Pemberley for this summer’s house party, I shall go. With Louisa, of course. A Pemberley party had gone before the beginning of December, anxious to be home in plenty of time for a Christmas spent with children and loved ones. This was especially true of Jane, who loathed being away from Bingley Hall for as much as one night, except for visits to Pemberley, fairly close at hand.

  “She is increasing yet again,” said Elizabeth to Mary with a sigh.

  “I know I am not supposed to be aware of such things, Lizzie, but can’t someone tell brother Charles to plug it with a cork?”

  The crimson surged into Elizabeth’s face; she put both her hands to her cheeks and gaped at her spinster sister. “Mary! How—how—oh, how do you know about—about—and how can you be so indelicate?”

  “I know because I have read every book in this library, and I am tired of delicacy about subjects that lie so close to our female fates!” said Mary with a snap. “Lizzie, surely you can see that these endless pregnancies are killing poor Jane? Why, brood mares have a better life! Eight living children and four either lost at five months or stillborn! And the tally would be larger if Charles did not sail to the West Indies for a year every so often. If she is not prolapsed, she ought to be. Has it escaped your notice that those she has miscarried or borne dead have all been after the living ones? She is worn out!”

  “Dearest Mary, you must not speak so crudely! Truly it is the height of impropriety!”

  “Rubbish. No one is here save you and me, and you are my most beloved sister. If we cannot be frank, what is the world coming to? It seems to me that no one cares about a woman’s health or welfare. If Charles does not find a way to have his pleasure without causing Jane to increase so frequently, then perhaps he should take a mistress. Immoral women do not seem to increase.” Mary looked brightly interested. “I ought to find some man’s mistress and ask her how she avoids babies.”

  Speech utterly failed Elizabeth, so mortified and at a loss that she could do nothing but stare at this apparition, no more her young sister than some female out of the hedgerows. Was there perhaps some gross peculiarity in Mama’s ancestry that had suddenly come out in Mary? Plug it with a cork! Then from a time far away and a place long gone, her sense of humour came to Elizabeth’s rescue; she burst into laughter, laughed until tears streamed down her face.

  “Oh, Mary, I do not even begin to know you!” she said when she was able. “Pray assure me that you do not say such things in other company!”

  “I do not,” said Mary with an impenitent grin. “I just think them. And confess it, Lizzie, don’t you think the same?”

  “Yes, of course I do. I love Jane with all my heart, and it grieves me to see her health declining for no better reason than the lack of a cork.” Her lips quivered. “Charles Bingley is the dearest man, but, like all men, selfish. It is not even that he is trying for a son—they have seven already.”

  “Odd, is it not? You bearing girls, Jane boys.”

  What had happened to Mary? Where was the distressingly narrow and imperceptive girl of Longbourn days? Could people change so much? Or was this dangerous emancipation from female constrictions always there? What had inspired her to sing when she could neither hold a note nor keep a tune nor regulate the volume of her voice? Why had she pined for Mr. Collins, surely the most unworthy object of any woman’s love ever put upon the earth? Questions to which Elizabeth could find no answers. Except that now she could better understand Charlie’s affection for his Aunt Mary.

  A huge guilt washed over her; she, no less than Fitz, had thoughtlessly sentenced Mary to the caretaking of Mama, a task that, given Mama’s age, could well have lasted another seventeen years. They had all expected it would last a minimum of thirty-four years! Which would have made Mary fifty-five when it ended—oh, thank God it had come to an end now, while Mary had some hope of carving a life for herself!

  Perhaps, she thought, it is not wise to isolate young women as Mary had been isolated. That she possessed some intelligence had been generally accepted in the family, though Papa had sneered at its direction, between the books of sermons and the gloomily moral works she had chosen to read as a girl. But had that been forced upon Mary? Elizabeth wondered. Would Papa have given her a free rein in his own library? No, he would not. And Mary had trotted out her pedantic observations upon life because she had no other way of gaining attention from the rest of us. Maybe the singing was a way to gain our attention too.

  For a long time now I have looked back upon my childhood and girlhood at Longbourn as the happiest years of my life; we were so close, so merry, so secure. Because of the last, that security, we forgave Mama her idiocies and Papa his sarcastic attitude. But Jane and I shone the brightest, and were well aware of it. The Bennet sisters were layered: Jane and I considered the most beautiful and promising; Kitty and Lydia empty-headed jesters; and Mary—the middle child—neither one thing nor the other. I can see shades of that Mary in this one; she is still a merciless critic of frailties, still contemptuous of material things. But oh, how she has changed!

  “What do you remember of our years at Longbourn?” Elizabeth asked, seeking answers.

  “Feeling a misfit, chiefly,” said Mary.

  “Oh, a misfit! How awful! Were you at all happy?”

  “I suppose so. Certainly I did not repine. I think I was absorbed in a goodness I could not see in you or Jane, or in Kitty and Lydia. No, do not look alarmed! I am not condemning any of you, but rather myself. I thought you and Jane were obsessed with making rich marriages, while Kitty and Lydia were too undisciplined, too wild. I modelled my own conduct on the books I read—how dreadfully prosaic I must have been! Not to mention boring, for the books I read were boring.”

  “Yes, you were prosaic and boring, though it is only now that I understand why. We left you no other recourse, the four of us.”

  “The pustules and the tooth did not help, I confess. I saw them as a punishment, yet I had no idea what my crime had been.”

  “No crime, Mary. Just unfortunate afflictions.”

  “It is you I have to thank for ridding me of them. Who could ever have believed that something as banal as a small teaspoon of sulphur every two days would cure the spots, and that extraction of the tooth would allow the others to grow into place perfectly?” She got up from the breakfast table, smiling. “Where can the gentlemen be? I had thought Fitz wanted to make an early start.”

  “Charlie’s fault. He went ratting with Jem Jenkins, and Fitz has gone to find him.”

  The queries swarmed inside Mary’s head, all of them crying for satisfaction. Ask, and ye shall know, she thought.

  “What kind of man is Fitz?”

  Elizabeth blinked at such bluntness. “After nineteen years of marriage, sister, I confess I do not know. He has such—such exalted ideas of who and what the Darcys are. Perhaps that is inevitable in a family that can trace itself back to the Conquest and before. Though I have sometimes wondered why, given this centuries-old pre-eminence, there has never been a title.”

  “Pride, I expect,” said Mary. “You are not happy.”

  �
��I had thought to be, but entering the married state is to commence a voyage into the unknown. I suppose I thought that, given Fitz’s love for me, we would settle to an idyllic life at Pemberley, our children around us. But I was not aware of Fitz’s zeal, his restlessness, his ambitions. His secrets. There are elements in his nature that elude me.” She shivered. “And I am not sure I wish to know what those elements are.”

  “It grieves me to see you so blighted, Lizzie, but I am glad we have had this opportunity to talk. Is there a definite element to Fitz that worries you most?”

  “Ned Skinner, I would have to answer. That is a very strange friendship.”

  Mary frowned. “Who is Ned Skinner?”

  “If you had come to Pemberley, you would know. He is Fitz’s general manager, overseer, factotum. Not his steward—Matthew Spottiswoode is steward. Ned travels a lot for Fitz, but what he does exactly, I do not know. He lives in a beautiful cottage on the estate, has servants of his own, and his own stables.”

  “You called it a friendship.”

  “It is, a very close one. That is the mystery. For Ned is not Fitz’s equal in society, which under ordinary circumstances would disbar him from friendship. Yet they are close.”

  “Is he a gentleman?”

  “He speaks like one, yet is not one.”

  “Why have you never mentioned him?”

  “I suppose the subject has never come up. I have not had any opportunity in the past to speak with you so openly.”

  “Yes, I know. Mama was always there, or Charlie. How long has Fitz been close with this Ned Skinner?”

  “Oh, since before he married me. I remember him as a young man lurking in the background, looking at Fitz with adoration. He is a little younger than I—”

  Elizabeth cut off whatever else she might have been going to say when Fitz walked in, bringing a rush of cold air with him. Still a fine-looking man, Mary thought, even at fifty. Everything a young, sheltered female could have wanted in a husband, from circumstances to presence. Yet she remembered Jane’s saying once, with a sigh, that Lizzie had not loved him as she, Jane, loved her dear Mr. Bingley. A true Jane statement, holding no condemnation or disapproval; just something about Lizzie’s setting eyes on the glories of Pemberley and thinking much better of Mr. Darcy thereafter. When he had renewed his addresses in the wake of Lydia’s scandalous elopement, Lizzie had accepted him.