Chapter 10
Mitigation
Mr Newton asked, “What, if anything, should I tell my employer or Mr Darcy about the events of the day?”
The sisters exchanged glances.
Elizabeth said, “Nothing!”
“I agree,” Mary added, “though our reasons may be slightly different. Shall we start with your employer? Mr Bingley courted my sister vigorously for 6 weeks. He told her he was going to town for a few days. He will either return, or he will not. Agreed?”
Everyone nodded.
“His sister and friend left right behind him, so in a few days we shall know if he is resolute and trustworthy—whether he trusts his own intellect and feelings, or his pernicious sisters and haughty friend.”
Everyone nodded with ferocious frowns.
“We have already established that telling him of the incident might cost your young hothead his position, and Elizabeth and I are unwilling to be part of such a scheme over a bit of mud. We are not strangers to the laundry, so we can clean our own dresses with none the wiser. That prohibits you telling him, or anyone in the household, for that matter. Even if that were not the case, I would still oppose it.”
Kep asked, “Might I ask why, Miss Mary?”
“Because remaining silent will bring clarity, and telling him would bring more mud. If you disclose this incident, he will be honour-bound to return to apologise, if nothing else. He will also be honour-bound to deal with his sister, which he has shown no inclination to do. In short, he would return, and we would know nothing more than that he has a minimal sense of honour, embarrassment, or concern for his reputation. We would never know if he returned because of his sister’s actions or his own merits. ”
“That makes sense,” Newton said. “If he returns, he does so by his own design, despite the likely objections of his sisters, and possibly his mentor as well. Your sister would know more of his worthiness.”
“Correct on all counts. Jane will know what happened here within the hour, and she can make her choices accordingly.”
“It all makes sense,” Kep said. “Do you agree, Miss Elizabeth?”
“Yes, though my purposes are slightly more devious than Mary’s. You see, goodness is unevenly distributed in our family. Mary and Jane received the lion’s share. I get by on what is left over.”
“I am shaking in my boots,” Kep said with a grin.
Ordinarily, a man in his position would never say such a thing to most ladies; but he had earned their confidence and respect.
“Do you object to knowing my deviousness?”
“We insist upon it.”
“As Mary said, whether he keeps his word or not will give us—and more particularly Jane—some idea of his worthiness. He has some unfortunate connections in his sisters, but we would be ill-advised to throw stones on that score.”
“Agreed.”
“If he returns, our involvement in the affair is over, and nothing more need be said. I shall leave my elder sister to deal with her potential suitor as she chooses, and should a firmer attachment evolve, she can choose how to deal with the sisters at her leisure.”
“A sensible philosophy, if I may say so,” agreed Mr Newton.
Elizabeth stared at the ground and finally said, “Now, we approach the devious part. What happens if he does not return?”
Mary frowned. She was not in the habit of working out devious consequences, nor had she seriously considered that he might not return.
Elizabeth spoke gravely. “He has already lost any opportunity to communicate with Jane easily and properly. He would be bound to write through intermediaries, most likely his pernicious sisters or our indolent father. We may very well have a note from his sisters on our return, which I will assume is mostly lies. It will take a few days before we know if he returns or not, correct?”
Mary agreed, and the men nodded.
“I hope it does not come down to that, but if it does, I need information to help my sister deal with the repercussions. This may be my last chance to get it, so with your permission, allow me to explain my thinking.”
Elizabeth walked to a spot in the road with a few feet of clean, undisturbed mud. “Allow me to display my reasoning graphically. Mr Newton, would you agree that emotional state, pain, love, and such matters can be represented in a very rough way mathematically?”
“Of course it can. Both my namesake and Descartes[x] would turn over in their graves at the slight doubt shown by even asking the question.”
“Let us presume Mr Bingley does not return after so publicly courting my sister. I know Jane. She will believe she did something wrong—she did not show her feelings enough, she was not clever enough in conversation, her musical skills were lacking, her portion was insufficient, our family was inadequate—something along those lines. Our mother will lament his loss to the ends of the earth and start measuring the hedgerows to work out where she will have to live when my father dies, probably within the fortnight.”
Mary sighed dramatically. “I agree.”
“It gets worse. The neighbourhood will concoct all the same elements and use their 79% chatter to remind her of it constantly. She will be subject to derision for disappointed hopes. Our mother will feed the gossip, which will come back to further inflame her, which will further… you get my drift. It will become a vicious circle. People will deride her for feeling poorly, which will make her feel worse, and so on. Do you concur?”
“I have seen it happen,” Kep said. “I do not know your sister, but it sounds like the way this sort of thing often proceeds.”
“I believe you are right, Lizzy,” Mary said. “You or I would laugh it off and be right as rain in a month, but Jane will suffer for some time.”
“So, let me show you how it will happen. I shall make an atrocious job of it, but let me try.”
Elizabeth poked her hand out of the front of her greatcoat, picked up a stick, and drew a very rough graph in the mud.
She laughed. “That is terribly ugly, but you take my meaning. She will feel all the bad emotions—hurt, shame, embarrassment. These feelings follow a more or less ballistic trajectory. It will start mildly, when she hears the news, worsen as the gossip spreads and our mother relentlessly reminds her, then over several months, sink back to baseline.”
Newton studied the graph. “Crude, but effective—though assuming a ballistic curve is probably oversimplifying. Now, I suppose you would equate the area under the curve with total suffering?”
“It is very rough, but it shows what I wanted to convey: much suffering over a long time, gradually increasing, then eventually falling just as gradually when new gossip comes along. It is the way my sister is, and I would not change her for the world.”
From their faces, everyone followed. “Do you mind if I ask a question that might allow me to propose a slightly different curve, Mr Newton? I ask you not to violate any principle of conscience, so simply do not answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Ask your question, ma’am.”
Elizabeth studied the ground for a moment and took a deep breath. “Does Mr Bingley do this sort of thing… often?”
Embarrassment overwhelmed her. “Pray, forget I said that. It is an impertinent question, and soliciting such gossip makes me uncomfortable.”
Mr Newton said softly, “Very good, Miss Elizabeth. At your suggestion, I will not answer the question. May I ask you one?”
“Of course!”
“Your sister. She is the tall, blonde, handsome one?”
“Yes.”
“Just one more question. As something of a man of science, I should be careless if I assumed she shares your surname. Is your sister Miss Bennet, Miss Markham, Miss Waverly, Miss Simpson, Miss Underwood, or Miss Beauchamp?”
Elizabeth frowned ferociously. “I applaud your thoroughness. She is Miss Bennet; I assume you wish to remove ambiguity because of all the other possibilities for a tall blonde lady courted by Mr Bingley.”
“Yes, ma’am. I would never gossip, but I wanted to be prepared to greet your sister properly should I ever meet her.”
Mary laughed, and Elizabeth joined her. “Clever, Mr Newton. I thank you.”
“Why the graph, Miss Elizabeth?” Kep asked. “I presume you are working your way up to that?”
“I am.”
Elizabeth returned to the graph with her ever-handy stick.
“The emotions we discussed before have rather long decay rates—something like a cannonball fired at a low angle and high speed. It takes time for the air to slow it, so it travels for some time before it comes to ground. Agreed?”
“I can see that. Basic Newtonian physics.”
Elizabeth chuckled. “The metaphor is not perfect, but suppose I point that same cannon almost straight into the air. Not absolutely straight, mind you, since the cannonball would fall on your head, but say 88 degrees.”
Kep took up the stick and drew the second curve.
“Its trajectory would be much higher, and it would come down much sooner and closer to the source.”
Kep added his best guess at the curve; drawing graphs in mud was harder than it sounded. “If your area under the curve theory holds, you can see that both the time spent suffering and the total suffering are reduced—though the maximum intensity is much higher.”
“All right, Elizabeth,” Mary said, “I will go along with the mathematics, and perhaps I will even give you that it is possible to very roughly model human emotions with the same arithmetic as cannonballs, since they have so much in common. How do you propose to raise the angle of inclination of your canon to change the first curve to the second?”
“Rage!”
Mary gasped. “Rage! Explain!”
“I for one, am weary of people treating us like helpless ninnyhammers. We deserve our share of knowledge and power. Mr Bingley singled Jane out for his attention, so Jane needs to know all we do before she decides how to act. I will draw this graph and explain exactly what happened with Mr Bingley and his sisters, along with my theory. Jane keeps her temper firmly under control, so I doubt you have ever seen it, but I can assure you it is there, and I can rouse it. I have done so accidentally several times, and I can do so deliberately if necessary. She will be murderous, much like Ivar the Boneless, if he abandons her without a word; and she will receive him with her eyes wide open if he returns.”
Mary frowned in distaste but did not oppose the plan. It sounded unchristian, but probably effective, and she was not a parson’s wife yet.
“We will mitigate the gossip by telling the neighbourhood exactly what happened, including today’s incident; and the endlessly repeated gossip that fills the neighbourhood and even leaks into Town will be of an entirely different nature.
“If it comes to it, and Jane feels vindictive enough, Aunt Gardiner can have it mentioned in the circles they inhabit, or even the tattle section of the paper, which may well cause reciprocal discomfort.”
Mary stared at the graph pensively. “You are right, Lizzy. You got the lion’s share of the deviousness.”
“It would appear so,” Elizabeth said resignedly. “I am not proud of the idea, but I will implement it without qualms. It follows the same principle as Kep’s instruction for the coachman.”
Kep laughed. “I believe you misunderstand. Your sister was offering praise, not censure.”
They laughed, and Newton said, “I am glad I did not share any solicitous gossip with you.”
“Mr Newton, Kep, it has been a pleasure, but Mary has been engaged less than two hours, and if we want to keep this incident private until the right moment, we need to return to Longbourn without being seen, and proceed with our original mission.”
Newton asked, “Do you know and trust Mrs Morris at Netherfield?”
“We do.”
“Kep and I will leave you to Mrs Morris to hide away. Kep can take the gig to Longbourn with a trusted maid to obtain clothing. You can write a note for your elder sister, and Kep will bring her back with clean clothes. I have Netherfield household funds, so I can give the maid a little extra for her service and silence. Mrs Morris can arrange some discreet baths, and have your dresses laundered.”
“Excellent thinking,” Elizabeth replied. “Jane will also know how to keep any gossip from spreading through Longbourn, and this whole incident will be under our direction.”
“We thank you for your kind assistance, Mr Newton, and Kep,” Mary said. “I hope this will not harm you.”
“Of course not. Nobody knows when we left or when we are expected. Mrs Morris will keep things quiet, and all will be well—or as well as it can be, given the circumstances.”
Mary and Elizabeth were warm and dry, though not ready to give up their greatcoats and blankets. Kep ran back to drop the tailgate of the wagon, then lifted each sister in turn so they could sit on the back with their legs hanging over for the short ride back to Netherfield.
As expected, Mrs Morris was happy to see them. They explained as much of the incident as they dared. True to Mr Newton’s conjecture, all was arranged, and they returned to Longbourn a few hours later.
As planned, Elizabeth explained everything to Jane, including her devious plan to replace heartbreak with rage, though she took the trouble to draw a proper graph, since she did not have any mud in the parlour. Jane took it about as well as could be expected.
Kep drove all three sisters in a gig that belonged to the estate. They thanked him kindly, wished him well, and admonished him not to break anything while he gave lessons in driving coaches—or at the very least, none of his bones.
The sisters were pensive as they returned.
They were ecstatic to see Mary’s face break into the biggest smile they had seen in some time, as Mr Collins greeted her with all the effusions of happiness any woman could ask of a suitor.
Much of the parson’s verbosity and awkward manners had drained away in the few hours since his engagement.
Perhaps the man had only been nervous and had fallen back on his usual behaviour. Stranger things had happened.
Soon after their return, Jane received a letter.
Fortunately, only the elder sisters were present, so Jane could read it in relative privacy.
Her face passed from interest to suspicion, and settled into a ferocious frown.
A vein at her temple started throbbing, and Jane’s hands started to curl into fists.
A few minutes later, she reread it, looked back and forth between the letter and Elizabeth’s ballistic graph, and growled, “Rage it is!”
She crumpled the letter in her fist, threw it in the fire, and stalked from the room.