The Fraught Discussion
They entered the parlour to the sight of tea and biscuits, suggesting Mrs Hill had drawn the obvious conclusion and taken the obvious action when she espied the visitor.
Mary ruefully reflected that it must be a terrible life to be forever saddled to someone with authority over you whom you could not respect.
With a frown, she thought the same might be said for many marriages but tried to shake herself free of the malaise the thought produced.
She considered a bad husband likely to be the very least of their concerns, since they now seemed unlikely to obtain any husbands at all.
She had never been at all certain she even wanted one, but to have her choice removed by the actions of her parents and her youngest sister was galling in the extreme, and for the first time in her life, she felt a true thirst for revenge.
Elizabeth tried her best to ease the conversation, but everyone was nervous as they partook of the refreshments.
Mary endured the tension for some time, before blurting, “If I may be so bold, why are you here, Colonel?”
He chuckled slightly, which Mary found annoying but unworthy of comment.
The man regarded all three ladies seriously and began.
“I have several purposes for my visit. Before I begin, may I stipulate that I know considerably more about your situation than you are likely to be aware of?”
None of the ladies were very pleased by the announcement, but everyone in the village knew their situation anyway, so it was not that much worse.
“That cannot be helped, colonel,” Elizabeth finally sighed.
He nodded, regarded the three ladies, and added, “With that in mind, I should like to suggest you allow me to relax propriety’s rules and speak bluntly for a few minutes. I promise I shall return to gentlemanly behaviour once we conclude.”
“Proceed, sir,” Mary said, wishing to be done with the conversation before she either burst into tears or went to refill her bucket.
He glanced about pensively. “The first item is somewhat happy news that Mrs Bennet will wish to hear. Your sister has been found, and she will be married in five days’ time, on Friday.”
They all gasped, not having entertained any such possibility, but then Kitty asked the obvious question. “Why is that only somewhat happy news? It is all we ever hoped for.”
Elizabeth took pity on the colonel and stepped into the breach. “Because, unless Lydia has become far more reasonable lately, she will marry the bounder she ran off with, and he is a loathsome man—the worst I have ever known.”
Kitty looked confused, so Mary added her opinion. “By definition, any man who did what he did is… ah… what Elizabeth said.”
Elizabeth added, “And that was far from his first offence, and probably will not be his last. Lydia has chosen very poorly, and fool that I was, I learned what a villain he was months ago but did not apprise her of it. I begged our father not to send her into that snake pit unchaperoned but could not explain in detail what I knew and how I knew it.”
Mary looked at her sharply with a million questions on her lips, but the colonel intervened.
“You are correct, Miss Elizabeth. He is all you say and more, and as you know, I am aware of what you knew then and why you could not be more explicit. Your uncle offered to find her a good man—which he could do by selecting a passer-by on the street at random—but Miss Lydia is stubborn as a stone and will have Wickham or nobody, and despite what is commonly believed, a lady cannot be forced to say her vows.”
Elizabeth said, “I imagine he did not approach the altar for nothing?” with a look at the colonel.
He frowned. “Let us just say that your uncle brought it about and leave it at that.”
Mary supposed there was far more to the story, but she was frankly both tired of speaking about Lydia and anxious over the complete reversal of her mother’s nerves which would ensue. “I believe we can let that subject rest for the moment, colonel, though I do wonder how you became the messenger.”
“Ah,” he said, looking at the three ladies in turn. “Well, I have other business here, so I volunteered. Mr Bennet will return on Wednesday, as he does not wish to witness the debacle nor allow Mrs Bennet to do so, but he thought you should hear it from a trustworthy source at once.”
The four ladies stared at him hard, apparently wondering how he had become a trustworthy messenger to their father, but nobody chose to enquire.
“How much do we owe our uncle?” Elizabeth at length asked.
“You will have to discuss that with him, though I would save your breath to cool your porridge if I were you.”
The three ladies looked confused, so he gamely continued. “That was not my only item. May I proceed with the next?”
“By all means,” Mary said nervously.
He drew a deep breath, and Elizabeth suspected he approached the heart of the matter.
She listened with a certain degree of trepidation.
As of Friday next, they would no longer be ruined, but she was now the lady who had rejected the best man she ever met and would now be sister to that man’s worst enemy.
Her situation with Mr Darcy was hopeless, but perhaps something might yet be salvaged from the debacle.
“I caution you—I must be blunt, even by a soldier’s standards, let alone a gentleman’s.”
“You need not confirm that Lydia relinquished her virtue for nothing, sir. As you probably surmised from my… ah… speech to our mother—we already assumed that—or at least I did.”
Kitty and Jane gasped, since they had probably not conceived it at all, but Mary and Elizabeth only looked stoic.
“I have done with your sister’s actions, though your assumptions are correct. I came to speak to Miss Mary.”
Everyone stared at him in confusion.
He continued, “More specifically, I came to ask for your hand in marriage, but as you can see, the proposal is somewhat… unusual.”
Mary looked shocked, and stammered, while Elizabeth looked at the colonel sheepishly. Kitty and Jane both leapt to a favourable conclusion, but in a moment, they became as confused as everyone else.
Mary stared at the floor for quite some time, and finally said, “Our cousin Collins asked for Lizzie’s hand last autumn after knowing her eight days. When she rejected him, our good friend Charlotte accepted him three days later. We considered that… precipitous.”
“Yes, and I have your cousin beat by eight days. It is extra precipitous for me! Pray, allow me to explain before you reject me out of hand or put me off.”
“Proceed,” Mary said with about the same voice she had used before emptying the bucket on her mother’s head.
“Here is the simple explanation,” the colonel said, leaning forward to give Mary his full attention and disregarding her sisters, who really ought not to have been in the room for a proposal.
“You are intimately familiar with entails, which I consider to be among the stupidest ideas in English law. That said, it sometimes works to advantage. One of my distant relatives created an entail two generations ago,” then he gave a dramatic pause, “but he was a man who had an affection for strong drink, as did his brother-in-law attorney.”
Kitty snorted in a very unladylike manner and burst out, “Like Papa and Uncle—” but then stopped in belated embarrassment.
The colonel laughed. “Yes, very much like that, I suspect. They ended with an overly complicated document that left the conditions of transfer in quite a muddle. There is a long story involved, which I shall be happy to relate, but the short version is that I am to inherit a small estate. It has been neglected for generations. It is about half the size of Longbourn and yields perhaps a quarter as much on a good year, but it may be restored with time and effort. That is out of the ordinary, though hardly shocking. It is run down, but I am not afraid of hard work, especially when I consider that hardly anyone will shoot at me.”
He laughed, but the joke fell flat, leaving Mary frowning disapprovingly, while Elizabeth attempted to laugh, and Jane and Kitty merely looked confused.
The four sisters looked back and forth between the colonel and one another, wondering when he would reach the point.
“Ah, well, as you can see, I must accustom myself to society a little more.”
Elizabeth felt his chagrin. “Do not distress yourself, Colonel. We are not your barrack-mates, but we are hardly ignorant children either.”
Mary looked at Kitty as if to dispute the claim, but then she turned back to her chief antagonist. “Pray continue, Colonel.”
He chuckled. “Well, the long and short of it is, that in order to inherit it, I must be married—before Monday!”
“What!” Mary shouted, while the other ladies looked on in consternation.
The colonel, looking very nervous, said, “I apologise that I could not deliver the news more gracefully, but the situation is as it is. I find myself in the position of needing a wife rather urgently, so, on advice, I resolved to approach you.”
They were all merely shaking their heads in confusion, but Elizabeth at last asked the operative question. “Why Mary, Colonel? The only person in your circle who knows both you and her is Mr Darcy, and I am not certain he could have named her.”
The colonel chuckled. “He could name all five of you in order, Miss Elizabeth.”
She blushed at the manner of his reply, which suggested he knew more than she had supposed.
Mary spoke. “Still, it begs the question. How did you choose me? More importantly, why choose me over my two more attractive sisters?”
“There are no more attractive sisters, Miss Mary! I just met you, but what I have observed, together with what I have been told by Miss Elizabeth and others, makes me confident I have chosen wisely.”
“How?” she said, still confused. “And for that matter, who was your adviser, Mr Darcy?”