Chapter 7 Whims and Inconsistencies #4
“I should feel neglected were he not!” Mr Bingley left the girls to change their shoes and went to greet his guest—and knew not whether to be diverted or incredulous upon finding him this time in private conference with his fifth daughter.
He allowed himself a modest smile and cleared his throat.
“I commend your zeal for my progeny, Mr Bingley, but even you cannot believe there is potential here.”
His delight in the man’s bewilderment was overshadowed by the noise of all five daughters and his wife converging on the place, and he hastily left in search of solitude.
Tuesday 2 June 1812, Hertfordshire
Peabody lit one of Mr Bingley’s finest cigars and leant back in his chair. “She’ll be one of old man Bennet’s.”
“Hush your tongue before the walls hear you!” Mrs Arbuthnot said sharply.
Peabody shrugged and blew out a smoke ring. “What say you, Mr Banbury?”
“I noticed a resemblance, I’ll grant you,” answered Mr Bingley’s manservant from behind his newspaper.
“The master’s noticed it, too.”
“How do you know that then?” jeered Mrs Arbuthnot, “Tell you himself, did he?”
Peabody smirked and tapped his ash on the flagstones. “He caught her scrubbing the grate in the library. Near buttered his breeches when he saw that face. I tell you, he’s noticed the replica, just as he’s noticed the original.”
Banbury lowered his paper. “Indeed?”
“Aye,” Peabody assured him with a sage nod. “And no person can look so much like another without being from the same seed. If Amelia’s not old man Bennet’s by-blow, I’ll eat my hat.”
“I care not who her father is,” groused Mrs Arbuthnot, “so long as she keeps the brass shiny. If it keeps the master happy to have her looking like his fancy woman, then more’s the better. Might be as he don’t forget my tip this quarter.”
“The resemblance is not so very marked,” Banbury opined. “Miss Eliza has a smaller nose and less pointy chin. And much prettier eyes.”
Peabody did not reply. His attention was now on the glass of Mr Bingley’s best port in his hand.
Thursday 4 June 1812, Hertfordshire
Elizabeth peered longingly into the garden.
In spite of her aching head, she longed for air and exercise that she might banish her confusion, but persistent rain kept her indoors.
Denied any such relief, she sat in the window seat in the parlour, paying scant attention to her mother, sisters or book, tracing raindrops as they slithered down the glass and thinking about Mr Darcy.
As recently as last week, he had convinced his aunt of his enduring regard.
The possibility of his loving her still was more gratifying than she could have imagined possible a few short weeks ago, yet it was scarcely to be believed.
Indeed, it was impossible to believe. Lady Catherine could not know of her nephew’s previous offer or indeed how very much he must now be repulsed by the notion of a second. She must be mistaken.
A flash of movement drew Elizabeth’s eye to the paddock; a rider was coming towards the house.
For one horrid moment, she thought it might be Mr Greyson.
Mr Greyson who had pressed his thigh against hers throughout last night’s dinner and afterwards insisted she play the pianoforte, only to repeatedly brush his hand the length of her arm as he turned the pages for her.
Mr Greyson, who mistook her mother’s encouragement for permission and with whom she had no desire whatever to be in company.
The dread of that encounter was soon replaced with a greater terror as she caught sight of the rider’s red coat. She quite unintentionally cried out.
“What is it, Lizzy?” Jane enquired, all concern.
Lydia and Kitty rushed to the window, leaning over her in their rage to see. “La, ’tis only Colonel Forster!” cried Kitty, laughing.
“I thought the pigs had got out,” Elizabeth said feebly, too shocked to admit how much the sight of a red coat had frightened her.
Colonel Forster presently arrived at the house and expressed his dismay at finding Mr Bennet from home, for he had important news.
“There is nothing you can have to say that we cannot hear, sir,” Mrs Bennet assured him. “We have grown quite accustomed to being astonished these past weeks.”
She proved quite insistent, and Colonel Forster eventually relented, conveying the news that Mr Wickham had been apprehended. Elizabeth could not comprehend why that intelligence should make her hands shake.
“My dear Colonel Forster, what wonderful news!” her mother exclaimed. “We shall be able to sleep peacefully in our beds at last. How shall we ever thank you?”
“I cannot justly accept your thanks, madam. Though my men did assist in the search, it was Mr Darcy who had him found and arrested.”
Despite her mother’s assurances, Elizabeth was not prepared to be quite that astonished. “Mr Darcy?”
“Yes, it was rather a strange turn of events,” the colonel agreed.
“He had written to warn me about Wickham. Unfortunately, his letter arrived too late; thus, I was obliged to reply not with thanks but with an account of Wickham’s violence and desertion.
Thereafter, nothing was to be done in the search that he did not arrange himself. ”
This prompted Mrs Bennet to declare him a fine young man, adding, “I knew nobody could really be that disagreeable! Would that half the young men these days were as good!”
“He truly is good,” Colonel Forster replied, “for he has also settled the majority of Wickham’s debts in Meryton—more than a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand pounds!” Mrs Bennet screeched. “Heaven and earth, his fortune must be vast to afford such a sum!”
Elizabeth shared a glance with Jane, and together they redirected their mother’s raptures from Mr Darcy’s wealth to the somewhat less vulgar subject of his generosity with it.
Elizabeth hardly dared suppose the wish of protecting her had added force to whatever other inducements led Mr Darcy to take so much trouble.
She could not even be sure whether he knew it was she whom Wickham had injured.
She did think it possible that his decision to write to Colonel Forster might be a result of her reproofs, and she respected him all the more for the graciousness and humility he had shown in doing so.
It was yet another thing to admire. Indeed, there was nothing she had learnt about him in the weeks since his proposal that had not deepened her regard.
She would not say she loved him, but never had she felt so certain she could.
Nevertheless, the greater swelled her affection, the heavier grew her heart, for naught spoke more eloquently of the improbability of his renewing his addresses than his continued absence. His aunt’s claims notwithstanding, he stayed away, and whatever he might feel was moot.
Friday 5 June 1812, Hertfordshire
Bingley was foxed. He knew this because each of the tankards on the table before him overlapped the other by several inches. He wished he knew which one of them contained his ale.
“Speaking of women,” somebody said, slapping him heavily on the shoulder and sitting down next to him, “how goes your courtship?”
“Terribly!” he slurred. Then his forehead thumped onto the table, and laughter erupted all around him.
“That bad, eh, old boy? Come, tell us all about it.”
Would that he could explain it, but he was tied in such knots, he knew not how to begin.
He had come back to Hertfordshire to court Miss Bennet, the handsomest woman ever to have walked the earth and for whom he had pined all winter.
Yet, it was not she who trespassed his dreams at night.
That honour was reserved for Elizabeth, possessor of the most provocative smile, penetrating eyes and come-hither figure of any woman of his acquaintance.
Elizabeth whom he had carried in his arms, broken and beautiful.
Elizabeth with a marked resemblance to the maid he had squeezed past in the narrow passage to Peabody’s pantry earlier…
He lifted his head and propped an elbow on the table, pointing his forefinger at the sea of expectant faces. “’S’the wrong one!”
“Ah ha! He is wavering!” another voice cried, banging the table triumphantly.
“I told you he would. They all do. Only took him a little longer than most.”
“Damn it, Bingley, you’ve cost me a florin!”
Bingley squinted at them all. “What are you blathering about?”
“Miss Bennet, man,” Henry Lucas, sitting opposite him, said with a grin. “The enthralment wears off after a while, does it not?”
Guilt sent a hot flush up Bingley’s neck. “It does?”
“Invariably, my friend. Trust me, I have known the Bennets all my life. I have watched more than a few men follow the same course.” Addressing the entire table, he said loudly, “Boys, shall we? Attend, Bingley—the Bennet Ballad!”
Bingley almost fell off the bench when, without warning, the man on his right gave forth a booming note, from which several others took up their harmonies then burst into a rowdy tavern song.
Take the fifth for a wife only if ye dare,
For a man tied to her will needs must share.
A ripple of sniggers and snorts rolled around the table, and more voices joined in the evidently well-known song.
Wed the fourth if you value not common sense,
For asinine prattle will deafen you hence
Take the third for a wife to atone for your sins,
She’ll preach you to death but yield not her quim.
He had lapsed into a drunken stupor. It was the only explanation.
Marry the first and be every mans’ envy,
’Til ennui strikes and witless rends ye.
Every man in the tavern seemed to join the refrain as the volume swelled loud.
But hail the man who weds the second,
For she is the jewel, alluring and fecund,
She’ll fill your days with laughter and wit,
And by night, beguile ye with that arse and those tits!
Somebody raised his tankard in a toast, and the final note promptly dissolved into a roar of hearty laughter that filled the parlour.