Chapter Seventeen
Mary
She had wanted tea, and had not wanted to ring for it.
The morning room was on the ground floor and the distance between it and her room was short enough to make the errand justified.
Moreover, she had been in her room for the better part of two days and the walls had begun to look familiar to the point of producing a faint, restless pressure around her.
She was at the bottom of the staircase when she heard her name.
The voices were low, speaking in a register calibrated for the space between them rather than for an audience.
She recognised Elizabeth's first. The second took a moment, and when she placed it she remained where she was not from any intention of eavesdropping but due to the pure, immobilising surprise of hearing Mr Darcy's voice in their hall.
"—mentioned to me with an intent to discredit your family," he was saying, "which I wish to be entirely clear I do not share. I came because I thought you should be informed before others are."
There was a pause and then Elizabeth said: "Please say plainly what you were told."
"Mrs Bingley heard it from Mrs Bennet, in confidence, that Miss Mary Bennet was not born to the household. She was taken in as an infant."
For a moment, the hall was quiet.
Mary stood with her hand on the bannister. She was aware that her breathing had changed, and that her body was perfectly still. There was a bunch of bright yellow daffodils on the opposite end of the stairway and she seemed to stare at them without being able to tear her gaze away.
Her first instinct was to doubt it. The instinct arrived with force, promptly, in the way of the body's immediate response before the mind has been consulted.
Reflex that preceded thought. He was wrong.
This was a mistake or a misunderstanding, something Mrs Bennet had said imprecisely and Mrs Bingley had misconstrued.
Or it could be a detail that had been distorted in transmission and would, upon examination, align into something explicable.
The instinct lasted only for seconds.
Then a colder and considerably less welcome feeling emerged. It brought along a slow, cold recognition of information already known and simply never named.
She thought of the portrait at Longbourn.
The upstairs hall, the frame that needed regilding, the dark and serious face above the unfashionable neckline that she had been told, at various points by various people, was her grandmother — Mrs Bennet's mother.
She had stood before it often enough, and had felt, in the absence of any resemblance to any living person in the house, a provisional comfort in the idea that the likeness existed somewhere in the family, only further back in time than could be easily pointed to.
She had accepted this explanation because it was the one available and she had no reason to look for another.
She recalled her mother's face, two nights ago, in the sitting room, saying: you have always been so different. The flat, tired delivery of it. There was no measure of cruelty, but it included some other degree of feeling that was perhaps the exhaustion of a woman who had been holding a detail back for a long time and no longer quite remembered how to withhold it so that it didn’t show.
Her thoughts turned back to the mirror above the writing desk in the library, and the face she did not consider similar to anyone else in her primary family.
All the explanations she had accepted for years because she had not, until this moment, heard the alternative stated plainly by a man with no reason to invent it.
Her vision blurred.
She turned, gingerly placed one foot in front of the other and made her way back up the stairs.
The door closed behind her.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her mind spinning in various directions.
The family she had known all her life was not hers.
The sentence was simple. It was also, in its simplicity, entirely resistant to absorption; she could hold it in her mind and turn it over and it would still not make it elaborate sense.
She was not related to Jane. Jane, who was the warmest person she knew, who had always defended her against the carelessness of Lydia and Kitty's teasing.
Nor was she related to Elizabeth, whose sharpness she had always respected and occasionally envied and whose habit of paying attention was a trait Mary most admired in any person.
Or her father, whose infrequent notices she had always valued without much complaint.
And the mother she had always known was not hers. Mrs Bennet, who often told funny, loving stories from Mary’s childhood and raised her to believe she was a Bennet daughter, despite nurturing a secret regarding this subject for eighteen years.
The emotions within Mary were turbulent and she could bear it no longer. She rose and paced around the room. What could she do to ease this nerve-wracking feeling she felt? This sick sensation of loss and betrayal combined?
She considered what it was that she needed, arriving at an answer that emerged with startling clarity.
Elena.
Elena would know what to do, how to help. She would take the reality of the situation, piece it apart and assemble it gradually into a canvas that made better sense. She understood Mary’s worries, fears and could be counted on to give proper advice.
Every other person Mary could speak to was connected in some ways to her family—her sisters, even Mr Thwaite—and what she needed now, most of all, was a neutral air. Someone who saw through Mary’s calm facade and saw the hurt and devastation beneath.
She could not manage this by letter. Letters arrived and could take days to get a response, but what she required was not the reflective distance of correspondence but immediate, physical presence. It was a good thing then, that Elena was in London.
Mary retrieved Elena's most recent letter and copied the address carefully onto a card. She put the card in the pocket of her morning dress.
Then she sat for a moment and considered the option of leaving the house unannounced.
It was not proper for a young lady to leave home without any prior announcement, but Mary’s heart quivered at the notion of having to announce her absence.
She was not quite ready to speak to anyone in the household about what she’d just overheard or to entertain any long discussions.
In only a matter of minutes, the ground had shifted from under her, and she had little option but to proceed anyway.
***
Elizabeth
Long after Mr Darcy had finished speaking, there was no sound to be heard. Elizabeth stayed mute, too stunned to speak. She made herself think, in sequence, about the claim. Mary was born to the Bennets. She had been taken in as an infant.
She had been two, perhaps three, when Mary arrived.
The memory of that time was that of a small child: impressionistic, non-specific, more feeling than fact.
There had been a baby, and then the baby grew to become Mary.
Mary had always been there, as much a part of the household as the kitchen range or the elm tree at the back of the garden.
It had never occurred to Elizabeth to find this arrangement in need of examination.
Although, Elizabeth thought uncomfortably, Mary did not look like any of them. She had Elizabeth's shade of dark hair and that was it. They had all been told she resembled Mrs Bennet's mother and that explanations had been sufficient.
She looked at Mr Darcy.
His expression was serious and unguarded, with none of the smugness that came from having confirmed a prior judgment or arrived at a satisfaction he had been seeking. This registered, even through the confusion she was sorting through.
He had not come to deliver a verdict for malicious reasons. He had visited because he thought they needed to know. The distinction was visible in his face, but a stubborn part of herself refused to acknowledge it.
The truth was that she was frightened. Mary would learn this and what would happen afterwards? A fracturing within their family, most likely. Total devastation, a sense of betrayal…
She felt helpless, aware that she could see a blow coming with no way to intercept it.
What came into the space where clear reflection should have been was fury. It was directed at the gentleman in front of her, and she could not hold it back.
He had been enquiring, from the first evening at Almack's, into her family's circumstances.
On other occasions, he had asked about the townhouse, their experience of the Season and the length of their stay.
She had deflected his attempts, and all along she had suspected he had been forming a judgement regarding the Bennets.
And here it was: her family's most private matter, delivered to him by Mrs Bingley.
That he had not sought the information was, at present, a distinction she wasn’t prepared to consider.
"I see."
"I want to be clear—"
"You have been very clear." She heard the register of her own voice: precise and unkind. She made no attempt to adjust it. "You have come to inform us of what Mrs Bingley intends. I suppose we are meant to thank you for that."
"There is no obligation to say anything." His voice was even. "I came because I thought you should know before others were told."
"And what a great deal you have discovered in the course of knowing us. How very thorough your interest in this family's affairs has proved."
A flicker of puzzlement crossed his face, soon followed by a tightening of his jaw.
"I was not looking for anything. I encountered Mrs Bingley this morning by circumstance.
What she told me was not sought. I came here because the information being circulated through Mr Thwaite's circle and the wider connections Mrs Bingley can reach could do great damage to Miss Mary, and to your family's position. The threat here is real and immediate."
"How very considerate. I hope, Mr Darcy, that you are now satisfied with what you’ve learned about our situation. My regards to Mrs Bingley as well. How kind of her to provide you, her dearest friend, with the complete details. It brings to mind a term about birds of similar feathers."
"Miss Bennet," he replied, with a restraint that she was too far into the anger to properly credit, "I came to warn you.
I will not defend myself beyond that. But I would ask you to consider that whatever you believe my interest in your family's circumstances to have been, it has never been this.
Not this kind of knowledge, not used in this way.
Mrs Bingley intends to use this knowledge before the week is out. You have very little time."
She held his gaze. Opened her mouth.
"I thank you," she said in a dry tone that made it clear she was not being thankful at all.
He held her gaze for one further second, then he inclined his head and said formally: "Good luck to your family, Miss Elizabeth."
The front door opened and closed.
Elizabeth stood in the hall and looked at the space where he had been.
The guilt arrived within seconds. She held it up to the anger bubbling in her and found, to her considerable discomfort, that the guilt was more prominent.
She had known she was being unfair and had proceeded regardless.
He had come uninvited, breaking social laws of visiting, at his own personal inconvenience, to give them a warning they needed, and she had addressed him as though he had orchestrated the situation himself.
I hope you are now satisfied. She had said it precisely, and with intention, and it had been wrong. She had known it was incorrect before the sentence was finished.
But the time available for regret was limited at present.
Straightening, she set the guilt in the category of things to be returned to when circumstances permitted, alongside several other topics awaiting their proper examination, and turned towards the stairs.
The next thing to do was have her mother tell her the truth of Mary’s birth, after which they would decide together what was to be done.