Chapter 16
Little Boxes
The March sun was warm and inviting as the group set out for the nearby park. The Gardiner children were boisterous, running, laughing, and skipping ahead. As they approached the duck pond, they ran off with bags of bread, followed by their maid and Jane.
Walking beside Elizabeth, Mr Jameson smiled as Jane bounded away.
“It seems it is just us, Miss Elizabeth. I presume this is some sort of intervention?”
“Perhaps… but only if you deem it acceptable.”
“I am at your disposal. I confess I find the operation of large families interesting, and sisters perplexing. I had only one brother, and he joined the Navy at an early age. He found himself in the Americas and liked it enough to stay. Tell me, do different sisters take on different responsibilities in the Bennet family?”
Elizabeth noticed he sounded nervous and wondered what he thought of the arrangement. She would be nervous in his position as well; it fell to her to relieve his anxiety, though not too much.
“Yes sir, we all have our assigned roles. I have been appointed Mistress of Awkward Conversations.”
“I thought as much. So, Miss Bennet has confided in you about our… ah… confusion, I presume.”
Elizabeth sighed. What was she doing here, wishing herself anywhere else—except Longbourn, of course?
Mr Jameson seemed a good man, but he still called Jane Miss Bennet after two months, and his nerves over a quiet conversation with her sister, in broad daylight, in a public park, did not bode well for the state of whatever they shared.
Still, Elizabeth was not ready to give up; hardheaded Bennets required some consideration.
She replied as honestly as she could. “At some level, yes. She is a very private person. I am her confidant, but she always keeps a little back from me, and almost everything from everyone else.”
“Does she expect you to be… helpful in some way?”
“Much to my chagrin, I intervened for my sister Mary, and it turned out well… very well. Unfortunately, that has convinced two of my sisters that I have some skill in the dark arts of courtship, while I maintain I was lucky once.”
The gentleman walked in thoughtful silence for a time. “You know I earn my bread through alliances and negotiations?”
“I am aware. I respect your skill.”
“In trade, one must constantly calculate risk versus rewards. It can become convoluted, but you essentially want to balance the two. For example, investing your last pound, you would happily take a certain reward of 10%, over a 50% chance of making 70%.”
“Rudimentary arithmetic and risk management.”
“If you are investing ￡1 out of ￡10,000, then the latter bet would be better. If you could find a dozen different bets with a 50% chance of triple the benefit, you should take all of them.”
“I can see that.”
“Now we come to the crux of the matter. It is all in the estimate of the chance of success. They say, past is prologue. The best predictor of future success is the past. If I ally myself with another, I prefer those with a record to be defended. Someone who has succeeded a dozen times is obviously better than someone who has never done so, or only once or twice… would you agree?”
“That is only common sense.”
“Suppose you have a choice between someone who has succeeded once and someone who has succeeded never?”
Embarrassment warmed Elizabeth’s cheeks, but not enough to make her back down. “Logically, I imagine you take what you can get, but exercise caution due to the paucity of positive evidence in its favour.”
“We understand each other. Your record is outstanding compared to mine or your sister’s. I shall take you as an expert. What shall we talk about?”
Elizabeth sighed, resigned to being so easily manipulated. “Little boxes.”
He stopped in confusion. “Care to elaborate?”
Elizabeth hated the awkward position, but since she was willing to do anything for Jane, she persevered.
“Of course! I find that I cannot quite bring myself to speak in plain and unambiguous language so early in a conversation, so I must use analogies. Are you willing to entertain such an idea?”
“I shall follow your lead. I trust you to have your sister’s best interest at heart, as do I.”
“Even above your own?”
“Of course.”
Elizabeth gently took hold of the gentleman’s elbow, led him to the side of the path, and pointed to a small shrub. “Let us imagine that is a little box.”
She used her hands to outline its imaginary dimensions, pantomimed opening a lid, pulled something from her chest, and dumped it inside.
“For the next hour, I should like to dump all my propriety into the box.”
She continued her motions. “And here we have politeness, decorum, propriety, manners… all the little lies we use to make social discourse easier.”
She looked up at him, satisfied that he watched her intently, but did not seem intimidated by the exercise.
“Here we leave embarrassment, pride, anger, fear, and temper. All I have left is honesty—clear, brutal honesty.”
She pantomimed closing the lid. “That is my little box. Will you do the same?”
The gentleman stepped right up to the shrub and opened his own box. He repeated her motions. “Propriety, fear, embarrassment, manners, decorum, pride… all as you specified. I shall give you only honesty.”
Elizabeth nodded, took his arm, and started walking in a direction that would take them out of Jane’s sight. She did not want him distracted.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “Now, I want to talk about other boxes. I find the analogy useful.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps we should return to the boxes and add prevarication as well?”
Elizabeth laughed, liking the gentleman more and more.
“We all live our lives in various boxes. Families are like a box, or a house. There are various relationships inside the box, and others between those in the box and those outside. It is useful to have the box to distinguish what is more tightly connected from what is less so.”
“I can agree, though your experience is more extensive than mine. My mother died young, so my family box never held more than three people, and we were all men or boys.”
A pang of pity for such an upbringing struck Elizabeth, but pity was not useful.
“That is unfortunate, though understanding it might help our cause. It could help explain your difficulty in communicating with the fair sex. I was raised in a box with 6 females and 1 male, though, to be fair, my father made his own box, and most of us were seldom invited in. For all intents and purposes, the vast majority of Jane’s life and mine passed in a box filled with women. ”
“I imagine we could find even more kinds of boxes for upbringing, but those are sufficient for our needs.”
“Exactly. Here is the thing about boxes. Sometimes, you can see more clearly from inside the box because you are there, with a full view of all that goes on. However—this is important—sometimes it takes someone outside the box to see clearly, because those inside are distracted by all the noise and bother in the box, or because they are so accustomed to being there that they do not notice what is right in front of their eyes. History clouds their judgement. They may not even be aware there are different boxes in the world.”
The gentleman nodded. “I follow. It is a perfect analogy.”
Now they were getting to the crux of the problem.
“My father is a good example. He was unsatisfied with the isolation provided by the normal box surrounding a family, so he built another box inside the home. In his case, it was his library. He would occasionally pass messages through the wall to the rest of us, and even more rarely to the outside world. There, in his own little box, he collected his treasures, left the raising and marrying of his daughters to anyone who was not him, and treated his box as his entire world. I esteemed him until recently because he did me a great favour as a child, but now I know I did so only because he gave me a slightly larger window into his box than my sisters had, and I found things I liked there when I was allowed inside.”
The man looked pained. “I will not censure the man—”
Elizabeth snapped, “Take that back! It smacks of politeness, which you promised to leave in the shrub-box. You may perfectly well censure him all you want during this conversation, but you are not to moderate your tone for me. I am more resilient than you might think, and the chances of you chastising him any harder than Jane already has are slim.”
“Then,” Jameson paused a moment, as if he might have left his courage in the little box.
“I am horrified! I am appalled! He is master of an estate. He chose to have daughters. He does not have to work for his bread, beyond making certain his tenants are productive. I have learnt the outlines of his perfidy from Jane, and I say I cannot respect a man like that.”
“There now! That was not so hard, was it?” Elizabeth smiled.
He chuckled. “To tell the truth, it was liberating.”
Elizabeth noticed they were out of sight of just about everybody, though they remained in public view, so she had no concerns for her reputation. She dragged him to a stop and faced him.
“Now we come to my first crucial point about boxes. You will assure me, right here and now, that you are not like that. Jane has endured enough indolent men for one lifetime.”
Angered, he practically shouted, “What do you take me for? I will not stand for—”
She boldly grabbed his arm and shushed him. “Very well. That is the exact response I need. Thank you for remembering not to moderate it.”
“I feel like a violin. You play very well.”
Elizabeth coloured. “A drum is a better analogy. I know you think of that as a compliment, but it is not; it is the truth, so I cannot complain unless I want to return to the shrub and open the box to get some pride back.”
They relaxed; she faced forward, took his arm, and started walking again. “Now, let us talk about the little box you and Jane are in.”
He nodded nervously.