Chapter 8 A Winter’s Tale
CHAPTER EIGHT
A WINTER’S TALE
The winter was difficult within the little house on Clements Street and underscored to Elizabeth the rightness, if not the absolute necessity, of her decision to be Anne de Bourgh’s paid friend.
Their mother simply refused to comprehend their circumstances; for nearly a fortnight complete, they had to forgo eating meat because Mrs Bennet had purchased a new fan and gloves and they had no money for the butcher.
Even the younger girls seemed to grasp the gravity of their situation and began to think of ways they might improve their lot. Alas, most of their solutions involved marriage to a military officer, but nevertheless, they did at least comprehend their position.
Shortly after an excessively dejected Festive Season, Mary came to them all with the news that she would marry. Her sisters simply stared with disbelief. “When did you get a beau?” Lydia asked eventually.
“I did not. It is not that sort of thing,” Mary said dismissively.
“Then what sort of thing is it?” Elizabeth enquired.
Mary inhaled deeply. “I have been attending meetings of my aunt’s relief society,” she explained. “And that is where I met Mr Harris.”
“At a relief society meeting?” Kitty’s face appeared sceptical. “Is he a parson? Like Mr Collins was?”
Mary nodded. “He only took orders last Easter but knew our cousin well. In fact, Mr Collins aided him in gaining the position at Hunsford that he left when…when he became the master of Longbourn.”
Lydia snort-laughed. “So Mr Collins took our house and now you will take his!”
“It is a lovely house,” Mary shot back defensively. “And a wealthy parish.”
“And a good match for you,” Jane interjected gently. “A very good match. Congratulations, Mary. When might we meet Mr Harris?”
It quelled the burgeoning squabbling. Mary relaxed and Lydia quieted her scorn.
Mary would have what none of the rest of them did: a comfortable home of her own and a liveable income.
They should all be so fortunate. Elizabeth wondered if Mr Collins or Lady Catherine were due any thanks in the matter but reasoned it was likely best not to know.
Allow Mary the sole triumph of her conquest. Elizabeth, for one, would be happy for her.
Mary’s wedding was held as soon as the banns could be read, and by the end of January, she was off to Kent, as quickly as Charlotte had once been before her.
“It is frightening,” Jane said to Elizabeth the next morning in their bedchamber, “seeing us all fly apart. I am happy for Mary, truly I am, but it feels as though our family is…diminishing.”
Elizabeth, who had been trying a new way to style her hair, paused and went to sit on the bed beside her sister, her brush still in her hand. “My absence is only temporary,” she promised. “And once I have succeeded in my task, things will improve. The money will make things different for us.”
She had not told her mother the sum of money she would receive once Miss de Bourgh married; it was her intention to be frugal, to help her sisters…
not to squander it on a house they could ill afford and gowns they did not need.
But Jane knew, even if she felt insistent that Elizabeth keep her gains for her own use.
“For you it will,” Jane said, taking the brush from her sister. “I do not mean to touch a farthing of it for my own needs.”
Jane wordlessly urged Elizabeth to turn her back to her and then without further ceremony began the task of putting her hair up for her.
Wishing to lighten Jane’s melancholy, Elizabeth said, “Did I tell you of the conditions Lady Catherine has insisted upon?”
“Conditions? No, I do not think so.”
“One of them was not so very surprising. She said I could not husband-hunt when I was meant to be finding her daughter a husband.”
“Not unexpected,” Jane replied. She sounded absorbed in her task.
“The other was that I must never be introduced to a man who disappointed her daughter…a gentleman called Mr Darcy.”
Jane’s fingers in her hair paused briefly. “The one who is Mr Bingley’s friend?”
“I really cannot say whether it is the same Mr Darcy. I have no idea of how many Darcys might inhabit London.”
“I suppose it hardly signifies. You did not know him in Hertfordshire and will refrain from knowing him now. I can only hope it will not be too disagreeable to you, finding Miss de Bourgh a husband,” said Jane fretfully.
“I have the feeling that they are people who, so long as I mind my place, will be good to me,” said Elizabeth reassuringly. “And the task cannot be too difficult, after all! Miss de Bourgh’s wealth is beyond anything I have ever heard of! Surely some man will be induced to propose.”
“Presuming to imagine that he is Mr Bingley’s friend, I wonder that he thinks any woman is good enough,” said Jane. “Though he was very wealthy, perhaps wealthy enough that Miss de Bourgh’s fortune did not entice him.”
“Perhaps he is a lover,” said Elizabeth lightly. “In any case, it seems I am never to know him, so that is one riddle we must allow to be unanswered.”
Darcy spent a quiet Christmas in town, alone.
It was very dull, and Darcy was glad to have it done.
There was nothing worse than tedium amid everyone else’s gaiety.
January passed as it always did, dark and cold.
Thoughts of Miss L persisted in his mind throughout, even as he chastised himself for being so foolish and silly.
And then it was February, and some people began to return to town, preparing their daughters for what would become earnest husband-hunting after Lent.
Darcy was invited to an evening of music towards the end of the month and at first thought to decline.
If there was one thing he disliked heartily, it was these amateur performances.
Chairs set up in a ring while one hopeful debutante after the next performed, with varying degrees of talent.
It seemed he was invited to more of them than most gentlemen were, likely because everyone with any connexion to any unmarried young lady believed hearing her sing might provoke him to propose.
Instead he found himself sitting, his mind miles away and his ears hearing nothing but the sounds of Miss L’s voice.
This is unseemly, he told himself, trying once again to concentrate on the fair-haired young woman playing the harp in front of him.
How can a man spend so much time dreaming about a woman he does not know?
Could she sing? Did she play? Was she a talented performer? Did she enjoy music or, like himself, see it as a relief from the requirement of discourse?
He had replayed their time together in his mind so often that it had taken on the hue of lore; he no longer trusted the faithfulness of his recollections or the feelings which surrounded them.
Surely I have made it more wondrous than it truly was.
Surely she was not as clever, not as sweet, not as pretty as I remember.
Surely the feeling between us was not as instantaneous, nor as fervent, as in memory.
It was a well-worn refrain in his mind by now.
He had escaped to the room at the Merry Fox that night because he had developed a ferocious headache from the screeches of the unskilled musicians, and from the overwhelming smell of the inexpensive and heavily applied colognes and pomades of the dancers.
When a young lady had come in after him, closing the door, he had assumed she was one of the brazen misses wishing for matrimony at any cost.
Instead she had been willing to jump out a window to escape it. He repressed a chuckle.
Who could she be? How will I find her again?
Wanting to know of her, wishing to see her, had grown into an unhealthy obsession in his mind.
It had already been some months since their unorthodox meeting and yet his fever was not abating.
He reminded himself often of how unlikely it might be that she was a lady he could know in society.
She might be married, after all, or on her way back to the Canadas.
She might be far younger than he had believed, or far older. The light had been very dim.
This is insanity. He shifted in his seat and again applied his attention to the performance. A different young lady was up now, and her singing, while by no means capital, was adequate and learned.
Bingley leant over to whisper to him. “You will not believe who I saw this week.”
Darcy raised one brow, silently asking, ‘Who?’.
“Her.”
Darcy wrinkled his brow and inclined his head towards his friend. He murmured, “Who is her?”
“Miss Bennet.”
“My cousin’s friend?”
That electrified Bingley. He sat bolt upright and said, loudly, “Miss Bennet is your cousin’s friend?”
Hisses of ‘shh’ went up around them, and both men offered blandly rueful smiles of apology all around.
When everyone had turned their attention back to the fair performer, Darcy pointed towards a drinks table at the far end of the room.
Bingley nodded, and the two men rose and went thither as silently as possible.
Darcy poured himself and his friend generous glasses of wine. “A lady called Miss Elizabeth Bennet is coming to town this Season. She is staying with my aunt, and I believe is meant to play some role in seeing Anne settled.”
“Could it be the same Miss Bennet that I met in Hertfordshire?” Bingley asked urgently. “I only knew her as Miss Bennet. I have no idea what her Christian name might be.”
“I should think not,” Darcy said, remembering the Netherfield drawing room full of silly misses, each more vulgar than the next.
His aunt would never tolerate such people, much less take them out in society.
Although, if he was to be just, the eldest had been better behaved.
She had, perhaps, smiled too much, particularly given her family’s antics, but she was well-mannered.
“But if I can, I shall find out for you.”