CHAPTER 34 #2
Elizabeth looked at her. “And how great is the cost?”
Miss Bingley folded her gloves. “Miss Bennet, I have considered Miss Mary Bennet in white muslin and discovered that my constitution is not equal to the image.”
“She need not wear white muslin,” said Jane.
“She must not wear white muslin.”
“There,” said Elizabeth. “We have already saved Mary from one misfortune.”
Miss Bingley inclined her head. “I can make anyone appear fashionable if I exert myself.”
“That is a formidable claim.”
“It is not a claim. It is a burden.”
Jane tried to object and failed. Elizabeth was glad of it.
“She need not be made fashionable,” Jane said. “Only comfortable enough not to feel observed for the wrong reasons.”
Miss Bingley considered this. “That is nearly the definition of fashion when properly understood.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “I had not expected so merciful a definition from you.”
“Mercy and taste are not enemies. They are merely seldom introduced.”
This, Elizabeth thought, was precisely why Miss Bingley might be needed.
Mary knew the value of substance. She did not always understand that appearance could decide whether anyone came near enough to discover it.
Elizabeth might tell her so and be thought patronising.
Jane might tell her and be thought too gentle to understand the principle.
Miss Bingley, who had never mistaken polish for affection, understood very well that without some polish, merit was often left waiting outside the door.
Mary might need to hear that from such a woman.
Jane was watching Elizabeth with anxious hope.
“My dear Jane,” Elizabeth said, “I should be very glad for Mary to come to you.”
Jane’s relief was immediate and lovely. “I hoped you would not think I meant to interfere.”
“With improvement? I welcome interference when it arrives with a plan and no expectation that I shall marry Mr. Collins in gratitude.”
Miss Bingley paused. “Was that ever a term?”
“At Longbourn, all improvements had hidden terms.”
Jane’s smile faded a little, but she did not look away.
“Then let this one have plain terms. Mary shall come to us if she chooses. Her instruction may be paid from the fund. Her ordinary comfort shall be ours. And if you would like to have her here for a little while, Lizzy, I should not object. I only did not wish to make another claim upon you.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened unexpectedly.
She had carried the younger girls in arrangements: letters, permissions, limits, masters paid for or proposed, books sent, opportunities laid down like bridges which Longbourn crossed only when the bridge happened to be directly under its feet.
Jane carried them in memory. Jane knew Mary before solemnity had become armour, Kitty before imitation had made her foolish, Lydia before spirits had learned to demand an audience.
Elizabeth could give means. Jane could give welcome.
And Miss Bingley, apparently, could give gloves.
“I should like to have her here,” Elizabeth said. “For part of the visit, if she wishes it. Portman Square may be quieter for practice.”
“It may also be safer for scales,” said Miss Bingley. “Charles is capable of applauding exercises.”
Jane laughed. “He would not.”
“He would. He would ask whether they were improving and then praise them for having done so.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Mary may need encouragement, though perhaps not that much of it.”
“She needs truth kindly given,” said Jane. “And perhaps a better master than Mr. Lorrimer, if he has done all he can for her.”
“Mr. Lorrimer was a beginning,” Elizabeth said. “London may provide a continuation.”
“Mrs. Pratt may know whom to ask,” Jane said. “Or Miss Hall. I should not like Mary to be given someone merely fashionable.”
“She would be miserable,” said Elizabeth, “if she thought she was being humoured.”
“She would be more miserable,” Miss Bingley observed, “if she were corrected by a fool.”
Jane nodded with solemnity. “Then we must avoid fools.”
“A modest ambition,” said Elizabeth, “and almost impossible to execute in London.”
Miss Bingley arranged her cuff. “London offers a young lady wider prospects than Meryton. Better masters, better rooms, better examples, and fewer people who believe every assembly to be the summit of existence.”
Jane smiled. “Caroline.”
“I am agreeing with you, Jane. You must not object merely because I do it accurately.”
Jane’s smile grew, and for a moment Elizabeth saw her not as the gentle sister who had once been kept within Longbourn’s demands, but as a woman quietly making a household of her own.
“There is another reason I wished to speak of Mary now,” Jane said. “Charles does not think we shall continue Netherfield beyond the present arrangement.”
Elizabeth looked up quickly. “No?”
Jane blushed.
“No. We have been very happy there, and I shall always be grateful for it. But—” She stopped, laughed a little at herself, and lowered her voice. “There is such a thing, Lizzy, as being too close a neighbour to one’s mother.”
Elizabeth stared at her for half a second, then laughed with such delight that Pom-Pom raised his head again.
Miss Bingley looked satisfied. “I have long believed a little distance to be the making of family affection.”
Jane’s blush deepened, but she did not retract the statement. That was new. Jane loved her mother, pitied her, excused her, soothed her; but marriage had taught her, already, that love and proximity were not always the same virtue.
“My dear Jane,” Elizabeth said, “you have become wise.”
“No,” Jane said, still smiling. “Only married.”
“Then marriage is more instructive than I had supposed.”
“It is, when one’s mother calls before breakfast,” said Miss Bingley.
Jane pressed her lips together. “Caroline.”
“I did not say how often.”
Elizabeth, who could imagine the frequency very well, allowed herself another laugh.
“We have not yet fixed upon another place,” Jane continued, more composed now that the worst had been said.
“Charles wishes to look properly, and I do not think we ought to hurry merely because Netherfield was convenient. So we shall remain in London for the present—until it grows too warm, at least.”
“Then you have time,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes. That is why I thought of Mary. We have a house, and time, and Charles is very willing. It seems selfish to have so much music within reach and not ask whether she might like some of it.”
There was nothing selfish in it. There was only Jane discovering that happiness, once secured, need not be hidden away like a fragile ornament. It might be used. It might make room.
The conversation settled then into practicalities.
Jane would write first to Mary, not to Mrs. Bennet, so that the invitation might be received as a pleasure rather than an expedition.
Elizabeth would write to Mr. Bennet regarding the education fund and the payment of a London music master.
Jane would write separately to her mother once Mary had answered, with as few alarming words as possible and no mention of gowns in the opening paragraph.
“That would be fatal,” said Miss Bingley. “Mrs. Bennet would read no further.”
“She would read as far as Charles,” said Elizabeth. “Then order trunks.”
Jane looked a little guilty and a little amused. “We shall manage it carefully.”
“Very carefully,” said Miss Bingley. “One Bennet sister at a time is a principle of sound government.”
“Miss Bingley, I had not known you were a political philosopher.”
“I have lived near your family, Miss Bennet. Philosophy was forced upon me.”
By the time tea was brought, Mary had acquired, in theory, one walking dress, one serviceable but not severe evening gown, gloves, half-boots, a shawl, and Miss Bingley’s firm opinion that brown must be approached with caution.
Jane defended comfort. Miss Bingley defended fitness.
Elizabeth, who saw merit in both, saved Mary from becoming a project too polished to survive first contact with its subject.
Pom-Pom, appealed to on the question of colour, declined to commit himself.
“His lordship does not object to brown in moderation,” said Mrs. Doddridge from her chair.
Miss Bingley paused.
Elizabeth hid her smile in her teacup.
“And Mrs. Pratt’s concert on Friday night?” Jane asked presently. “Mary cannot be here in time for it, I know. That would be too sudden. But it was that invitation which made me think how much she has never had.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “She cannot attend this one. But there will be others.”