Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

OF CLOISTERS, CONVENTS, AND DRURY LANE

A lmost immediately after this exchange, Mr Bingley made plans to close Netherfield Park and return to London.

Though it was ultimately what I wanted, news of Mr Bingley’s decision to withdraw irritated me as much as had his first retreat. I consoled myself with the thought that Jane could at last forget all about him. As it turned out, however, she had other plans.

Ever the magnanimous host, the young gentleman threw open his house for one last dinner party before his departure, and off to Netherfield Park we all dutifully went. My aunt and uncle were included in the invitation, and since they were not leaving until late the following morning, they chose to attend. Even Lydia, though she still felt shy of her friends on account of her past behaviour, was coaxed to step out, and we flanked her protectively as we filed up the stairs and into the house where we then greeted our host and hostesses.

The gathering was as humdrum as could be. Sir William Lucas pontificated as to how much the gentleman would be missed in the neighbourhood, and sitting as I was between the curate and John Lucas, I stifled a yawn or two throughout a long meal.

Miss Bingley, it seemed to me, was making a flourish of her skills as hostess. The menu was excessively elegant in my inelegant opinion, meant to dazzle the provincials at her table and stamp an impression upon the mind of her intended bridegroom.

Having nothing better to do, sitting as far down the board as I was, I amused myself by paying close attention to her little mannerisms. She must have practised such twists of her wrist and shakes of her head as much as she had practised her demure chuckles and comely smiles. Her objective sat unmoved, however. He was, as most men are, unutterably dense and could not decipher an obvious lure, much less the invitations couched in her slanted glances. In effect, the lady’s efforts crashed like waves upon a rock, and though I had a strong inclination to chuckle, I felt some sympathy for her struggle.

My sister Jane was undergoing a similar struggle, looking longingly at the head of the table, then dashing her eyes elsewhere. Her smile, when directed at Mr Hurst on her left or Uncle Gardiner on her right, reflected nothing but strain—misery! Then her eyes, huge and hollow, would seek out Mr Bingley yet again as though in search of some relief. Alas, that gentleman was as oblivious to her silent pleas for love as Mr Darcy was of Miss Bingley’s appeals for marriage.

“Has the cat got your tongue tonight, Lizzy?” John asked. “You have not stung me with it even once. What are you pondering with your fork hanging in the air over your plate?”

“Oh, I was reflecting what a great shame it is that our Tudor king decided we should no longer be a Catholic country,” I said irreverently.

Mr Graves, a religious man, perked up. “How so?”

“My dear sir,” I said, smiling at him with genuine goodwill, “I am ill qualified to speak of the specifics of one religion over another. Only there are, let us say…times when a convent or a cloister would be a most convenient solution for a lady.”

“Pay her no mind, Mr Graves,” John said, leaning forwards to speak around me. “Lizzy has always said the most outrageous and idiotish things.” And then turning a quizzical eye on me, he asked, “And what would you love most about a life of dreary contemplation in your damp, cold cell?”

“The fact that you cannot easily guess might be a clue,” I said, turning back to my plate.

When he stared at me in stupid incomprehension, the curate pointed out with a touch of amusement that I was perhaps taking a wee swipe at men and might he dare to infer the institution of marriage as well?

“Oh,” John retorted, speaking around me once again. “That is because she is afraid her husband would take away her little gig which, were he a sensible man, he should do.”

I could not help but notice Mr Darcy’s expression even from the opposite side of the table and several seats up the board. He must have been listening with one ear and threw me a spurious look of condolence which barely concealed how entertaining the suggestion was to him that I would have my wings clipped by my future husband.

Later, while Miss Bingley was at the pianoforte in a somewhat crowded salon, he glided silently around the perimeter of the room and stood beside me .

While attending to Miss Bingley with his eyes, he murmured, “You would make a shockingly bad nun.”

I too spoke in a low voice. “Because I am too pert?”

“I believe the required quality is humility .”

“I wonder that you can even pronounce that word. Does it not stick in your throat?” I turned to look fleetingly up into his face before turning back to the performance. “When do you leave?”

“Tuesday.”

“So long?”

“Will you miss me?”

“Not nearly as much as you will miss me,” I said with an indifference I did not feel.

His expression changed to a most indecipherable, arresting look.

To cover my confusion and the confounding stuttering of my heart, I plunged ahead. “Before you again depart the neighbourhood, might you explain why you are so altered from your last visit to Hertfordshire? As I recall, you then were a humourless grump.”

“I am reserved, and you do not like it.”

“Precisely! But you are much less reserved—at least where I am concerned—than you were.”

“Am I? What am I now, then, if not reserved?”

“You are, hmm, what is the word? Nettlesome?”

“And is that so far distant from humourless grump?”

“The art of provocation requires more than a little wit.”

“On this subject, I defer to you,” he said with a lazy smile.

“Have a care, Mr Darcy, lest I accuse you of being droll.”

“I beg your pardon, but I have not yet broken into the laughter of a wild African dog. ”

“Oh? And I have? Is that what you are implying?”

“I am merely defending myself against one of your narrow opinions.”

Again, I choked back a chuckle. Unfortunately, something went slightly awry in my windpipe, and I fell into a fit of coughing which required I leave the room. I meant to step out but briefly, but instead, I wandered aimlessly away from the salon and down a long passage to a French door, all the while speaking sternly to myself of the evils of making more of Mr Darcy’s raillery than was meant. He, as did all rich men, entertained himself irrespective of the consequences. In this instance, he was merely entertaining himself at my expense.

As I returned the way I had come, I reflected that to be fair I amused myself equally at his expense, thus, I had no cause for resentment. The nuisance of feelings I had allowed to creep in upon me was my own fault, for he had never done more than banter with me. As soon as he had gone away again, I would forget all about him.

When I stepped back into the salon in a much more rational state of mind, Miss Bingley had finished her turn at the pianoforte, and her company had formed into murmuring clumps. Mary, Maria, and Kitty were pointing out to Lydia the decorative filagree on a fire screen, Mama and her set were decrying the French fashion of dampening ball gowns, and Sir William was blinking senselessly at my father’s satirical observation that human nakedness would never go out of fashion, principally because it was such a common topic of disgust among women.

I stepped around these groups in search of Jane and found her sitting next to Aunt Gardiner who was in conversation with Mr Darcy .

“…public day at Pemberley,” my aunt was saying with the contented smile engendered by some distant and happy memory.

“My mother greatly enjoyed extending her hospitality,” Mr Darcy replied.

One of Mrs Gardiner’s cheeks dimpled sweetly as she said, “But your father did not?”

To this, Mr Darcy replied far more warmly than I expected he would. “She could never find him on such occasions.”

“I do not recall seeing much of you either, sir, after you reached your majority.”

My uncle, who stood behind her smiled benignly upon his wife before looking up expectantly at the target of her gentle teasing.

“Ah. By then I had learnt all his hiding spots,” Mr Darcy said.

This was an odd start. Was Mr Darcy, the humourless grump, indeed speaking amiably with my unfashionable relations? Even Mr Bingley, who stood beside him, looked bemusedly from one to the other. I could only presume that having briefly met my aunt on the lane by the dairy and learning she had grown up in the shadow of Pemberley, he could safely condescend to recognise her.

I raised one eyebrow slightly as I listened to this exchange and reflected that it is easy to lower one’s standards for someone who could speak kindly and knowledgeably of one’s parents. That he did so did not necessarily exonerate Mr Darcy of the sin of snobbery, however, and I was on the verge of declaring my scepticism by stepping away to rescue Lydia from the minutiae of filagree when Mr Darcy spoke again, this time to my uncle.

“When do you return to London, sir? ”

“We leave tomorrow, though not as early as I would like, since we will have three full carriages.”

“Oh?”

“We brought our children, sir, and sufficient belongings to set up a household in the wilderness,” Uncle Gardiner said drily.

My aunt responded to this good-natured attack by saying, “My husband has failed to mention that we take my niece Lydia with us, and Jane, too,” she said, turning to pat my oldest sister’s arm, “if she wishes to come.”

“Will you go, Miss Bennet?” Mr Bingley blurted out.

“I-that is, yes, I believe I shall,” she blushingly replied.

What then transpired was painful to witness. Mr Bingley stammered something about having a box at the Theatre Royal if—well, he would be happy to, um, that is if she— they —would like to see a play.

In effect, he invited Jane to a play and then fell over himself to suggest he would not importune her family with his presence if she would rather he not be there.

Jane was no less bewildered than she was alarmed by his suggestion. “But surely, you would make use of your own box, sir?” she asked, a slight frown of consternation marring her perfect brow.

Oh lord. I stepped away as Mr Bingley, sinking farther into the hole he was so cleverly digging for himself, assured my sister he had not meant to imply he did not want to go—he would be delighted—beyond delighted and et cetera. In other words, assurances so exaggerated as to sound a little hollow.

Shaking my head to clear it, I went straight to the gaggle of matrons and pulled my mother aside.

“Jane has decided to go to London,” I said quietly .

“What? Now? At this hour?”

“Shh. I believe,” I said, pulling her farther into a corner and speaking in a low murmur, “she is throwing her handkerchief at Mr Bingley.”

“Again?” she cried.

I then led my mother out of the room, and we stepped out of the house, ostensibly for a breath of fresh air.

“But she will come to grief again!” she began. “And I had my hopes set on that Mr Farnsdale—was that his name? The gentleman she met in Brighton. She said he was handsome, respectable, and?—”

“She has made her choice, Mama. And now what remains to be seen is what his choice will be.”

She grumbled a little. “He is rich, amiable, and well-favoured, I grant you. But I have not yet forgiven him for raising her hopes last year. What if he does so again, and it all comes to nothing?”

She grasped her forehead and let out a little moan of dismay, for no less than Jane’s had her hopes been dashed by Mr Bingley, and she was a little wiser and more cautious for having been so thoroughly disappointed. We walked slowly for a few more yards whilst my mother rambled through the various thoughts she had on the subject. I had no need to reply to any of it, for she would not have heard my opinion in any case.

As to my unspoken opinion, I could only conclude that it was long past time I stopped meddling in Jane’s life, even if I did so only in the privacy of my own thoughts. She was now a grown woman, and her eyes had been opened last year as to the risk she took and the price she would pay if Mr Bingley did not come to the point. My task, I realised, was to set aside my own fear of her potential sorrow. I would love and support her regardless of what transpired, and what is more, were I her, I too would long for the freedom to decide for myself, guided solely by the inclination of my heart.

Having thus prepared my mother, I then offered the reasonable suggestion that we should call for the carriage. There was a great deal of packing to do.

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