Chapter 7
“Two letters for you, Edward,” said Mrs Gardiner, sifting through the pile of correspondence that one of the maids had brought to the breakfast table at her request. “One for Jane from Mrs Philips, whose handwriting I know well. One for me from an old schoolfriend in Bath, and one for you, Lizzie. I do not know the hand.”
The children had already gone to the nursery, the older ones all the happier to get to their lessons today since Jane had promised to come upstairs and read with them later in the morning.
The adults were enjoying a more leisurely last cup of tea before Mr Gardiner was due to go over to his offices.
“For me? Perhaps it is from Charlotte,” said Elizabeth, speculating no further than this, and hoping that her friend was doing well with married life in Kent.
There had been little correspondence in the first month of her friend’s marriage, but that was unsurprising. Likely Charlotte was busy with setting up her household and meeting her staff and neighbours. Elizabeth was therefore curious to finally have all her questions answered.
Was Lady Catherine de Bourgh as gracious as Mr Collins insisted? Was the parsonage at Hunsford as spacious as described? Had Mr Darcy made an appearance at Rosings yet, and was his manner as unsocial as in Hertfordshire?
Once the letter was passed down to her, however, Elizabeth saw immediately that it was not from Charlotte Collins, and her curiosity about life in Kent could not yet be satisfied.
The hand was as unfamiliar to Elizabeth as to her aunt.
Nor was there any indication on the envelope as to the writer’s identity.
Mystified, she broke the seal and opened the letter, as the others had already done with their own correspondence.
Only Jane was close enough, or attentive enough, to hear Elizabeth’s sharp intake of breath as she read the letter’s contents. Their uncle was too focused on the matters of business before him, and their aunt smiling with happy interest in the fortunes of her old schoolfriend.
“Is it from Charlotte?” Jane asked her quietly, and Elizabeth shook her head, knowing that she would soon have to explain herself to everyone and wanting to gather her thoughts first.
Elizabeth had not yet mentioned anything of her recent visit to Mrs Bevan’s agency, not even to Jane.
She supposed she would have told her sister eventually, perhaps after they returned to Longbourn, and it was far enough in the past to laugh.
In the present, she knew telling Jane would also mean telling her aunt and uncle, and that they would feel bound to tell her parents.
That would have made things far more serious and meaningful than Elizabeth ever intended.
She had therefore kept silent in order to avoid unnecessary alarm or wrong presumptions.
Now, however, she could hold her tongue no longer.
To Elizabeth’s astonishment, Mrs Bevan had written to say that her fussy client was keen to interview her in person at the earliest possible convenience.
Laying her letter down on the table, Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“Uncle, Aunt, Jane, there is something I must tell you…” she began, drawing curious looks from all.
“Is it bad news, Lizzy?” asked her aunt immediately, setting aside her own letter. “Is Mrs Collins not well?”
Elizabeth shook her head quickly, with a small, nervous smile.
“My letter was not from Charlotte after all.”
“Have you run up a huge debt at the haberdasher?” Mr Gardiner chuckled light-heartedly. “Or the milliner, perhaps? Ah well, I shall have to get your father to send me your allowance directly for the next quarter.”
Despite her nervousness, Elizabeth smiled fully at her uncle’s jesting.
“There are no debts, Uncle. Have no care in that regard. I will need your advice, however. My letter is from Mrs Bevan, the owner of Mrs Bevan’s Employment Bureau for Ladies of Quality…”
Elizabeth paused then, letting her relatives digest this first piece of information before proceeding.
“But why should Mrs Bevan write to you, Lizzy?” puzzled Jane as Mr and Mrs Gardiner looked at one another in mystification.
With a sigh, Elizabeth finally revealed her adventure on the morning she had collected the books from Mr Brown. Her sister, aunt, and uncle followed her story with expressions of amazement or incomprehension on their faces.
“So, you see, I had not expected that Mrs Bevan would contact me again,” Elizabeth concluded. “But she has, and now I must decide what to do and how to respond to her message.”
“I should write to your parents immediately,” said Mrs Gardiner, worriedly. “They ought to be informed as soon as possible. You are not yet one-and-twenty, Lizzy, and must know that your father could forbid you from any further contact with this Mrs Bevan or her clients.”
“Yes, I will write too,” Elizabeth agreed.
“I would not want them to think that either you or I were hiding anything from them. I certainly would not have run off and taken a job behind my family’s back, you know.
It was only out of a sense of curiosity that I went in to Mrs Bevan’s office at all, for I should not have expected it to amount to anything.
It seems quite unreal that anyone should be interested in employing me. ”
Mr Gardiner’s expression softened.
“Well, Lizzy, your curiosity has bought you more of an adventure than you had bargained for. If you are minded to meet this client of Mrs Bevan’s, I will accompany you. It may all still come to nothing.”
“How very strange,” Jane murmured. “I should never have thought of doing such a thing. What can have possessed you, Lizzy?”
“Your character has always been far superior to mine in sense and virtue, Jane,” Elizabeth replied somewhat ruefully.
“Since I met Miss Alicia Caruthers at Almack’s, I have been thinking a great deal about independent women who work for their own living.
It seemed an interesting life that I had never seen before. I only wanted to know more.”
“Did your first call at Mrs Bevan’s satisfy your curiosity?” asked Mrs Gardiner, her brow still creased with concern.
After a moment’s thought, Elizabeth shook her chestnut curls.
“No, I am still curious,” she admitted. “If Uncle will accompany me, I should like to call on Mrs Bevan again and meet her client. Likely, he is very old-fashioned and stuffy, but he seems to mean well and wishes to do right by his ward.”
∞∞∞
Messages to and from Longbourn were dispatched promptly, sparking the expected reaction from Elizabeth’s mother and a more measured response from her father.
“Dear me,” Elizabeth sighed with vexation as she read Mrs Bennet’s long and voluble letter, berating her behaviour in London and warning her of dire future consequences.
“Mother has written everything to me that she has already written to you, and more besides. How impossible she makes it to write back sensibly!”
Mrs Gardiner lowered her embroidery and looked at her niece with sympathy and resignation.
“Your mother is very worried for you, Lizzy. She cannot understand your way of thinking, although I think your uncle and I have a better idea of it. We must be kind to her.”
“‘How could you even enter the premises of such a woman’?” Elizabeth quoted from the letter. “‘No man of standing would ever think to marry a governess or companion. Even registering your name may already have destroyed all your marital prospects…’”
“That is going a little far,” Mrs Gardiner conceded with a twinkle in her eye. “I do not believe you have done any harm, even though I have doubts over whether you ought to proceed further.”
“That is not all that Mother has to say on the subject of marriage,” Elizabeth continued.
“Listen to this. ‘Compared to Jane, your prospects were never good, of course, but why must you ruin even the modest hopes that might have honoured your family name? First you decline a perfectly good proposal of marriage and now you remove the possibility of receiving others…’”
Her aunt pursed her lips and shook her head as Elizabeth read these lines aloud.
“In time, I am sure your mother will see that Charlotte Lucas was better suited to Mr Collins,” she remarked mildly.
“I cannot see, personally, that it would have been a good match for you. It surprises me that Mary was not considered, given her temperament and that of Mr Collins…Well, Mr and Mrs Collins are married now, and we can only wish them well.”
Elizabeth gave a sigh of exasperation and folded her mother’s letter away again.
“What of your father?” Mrs Gardiner inquired, glancing at the other opened letter on the table before them. “Mr Bennet did not write to me directly, so I only know what Mrs Bennet has said of his views. I gather she is mainly sorry that they do not concur more exactly with her own.”
“Father is more philosophical,” Elizabeth said with a shrug and a smile. “He tells me that I must see as much of the world as I wish, and to come home once I am heartily sick of it, a state that he assumes I will reach sooner rather than later. He trusts that Uncle will advise me well.”
Mrs Gardiner now sighed too, giving Elizabeth the impression that her aunt was not fully satisfied with the response of either parent.
Nor was Elizabeth, although both letters were entirely in character and hardly surprising.
Mrs Bennet’s letter was melodramatic and overemotional, while Mr Bennet’s was detached and amused: exactly what she might have expected in both cases.
“We will speak with your uncle tonight when he returns from his office. He will go with you to meet Mrs Bevan and this gentleman client,” Mrs Gardiner said, and Elizabeth nodded gratefully.
“Thank you. I am glad to have your guidance and that of my uncle too.”
“Will you write back to Mrs Bevan, now that you have your father’s blessing, such as it is?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth nodded. “I told her that I was waiting to hear from him, but I do not like to keep her waiting on me.”
“It is a big step to go out into the world and earn your own living, Lizzy,” mused her aunt, sewing another stitch on her embroidery. “I do not take quite the same view as your mother, but she is right that it would change the way people perceive you. You should be ready for that.”
“I do not think I should mind it so very much,” answered Elizabeth, thinking again of Alicia Caruthers. “It seems to me admirable that a woman should be able to earn her own living and set her own course in life.”
“Even if that meant giving up the prospect of her own home, husband, and children?” Mrs Gardiner enquired. “Not that I say it would, but generally, governesses do not marry. They are either spinsters or widows.”
“I do not know,” Elizabeth admitted. “I cannot say that I do not want a husband and family one day, but I do feel my prospects of a good marriage are slim. Jane is more romantic than I, and more beautiful too. She still dreams that her handsome prince will ride over from Mayfair and sweep her away on his white horse.”
“It may still happen,” commented Mrs Gardiner with a smile that Elizabeth shared, even while shaking her head.
“No, I am certain that his ill-mannered sisters and his stuffy friend will not let him anywhere near Jane. It speaks sadly for his strength of character. Anyway, I have no such dreams and no such object for my affections. Perhaps I had best be practical. Being companion to one young lady could not be so very different to living at home at Longbourn with Lydia and Kitty, could it?”
“Let us see what your uncle makes of Mrs Bevan’s client before I take a view on that,” said Mrs Gardiner circumspectly.
“If he is the good-tempered old man you imagine, then likely it would be an interesting experience and you would make some new friends. You are very young, however, and we must be careful.”
“If Uncle does not approve of the guardian, I would not want to take the role,” Elizabeth assured her aunt.
“I should not really even be speaking like this until I am offered a place. Likely, he will meet me, decide that I am unsuitable and reject me like all the others. Mrs Bevan said he had rejected some of the best educated women in England.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded agreement.
“Let us see,” she said, and then returned all her attention to her needlework.
Elizabeth went to her room and readied her pen and ink to compose a reply to Mrs Bevan.