Dear Friend (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

Chapter One

Meryton

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Bennet could only stare. Whatever preparation her sister Lydia’s account of the preceding day ought to have afforded her proved entirely insufficient. Miss Julia Harding was precisely as she had been described.

Though perhaps two years Elizabeth’s junior, she possessed so remarkable a likeness to herself that Elizabeth might almost have believed herself looking upon some younger reflection of her own person.

To hear such a resemblance discussed over the dinner table had been curious enough; to behold it at scarcely an arm’s length was another matter altogether.

“I beg your pardon,” Elizabeth said at last, recollecting herself sufficiently to summon some appearance of composure. “I am afraid I have been staring most abominably. I ought to apologise, though I confess I have never before had so excellent an excuse for staring at my own face.”

The young lady laughed, and Elizabeth was startled anew. There was something disconcertingly familiar in the sound, a quick, unaffected amusement so like her own that the resemblance seemed, for an instant, to extend beyond mere countenance.

“Then we are equally guilty, for I have spent this last minute staring at yours and wondering whether I ought to curtsey, beg your pardon, or introduce myself and have done with the absurdity.”

“Miss Julia Harding, I believe?”

“The very same. And you must be Miss Elizabeth Bennet, though I assure you no introduction was necessary. Half of Meryton has taken pains to inform me whom I resemble, whether I expressed any curiosity upon the subject or not.”

Elizabeth smiled despite herself. “I hope they had the civility to be kind in their observations, and did not merely stand and gape as I have done.”

“Oh, some certainly gaped. Mrs. Long, in particular, was most conscientious in her examination.” Julia’s eyes, so remarkably like Elizabeth’s own, brightened with mischief.

“I believe she compared every feature separately before she was satisfied. Had she possessed a measuring ribbon, I daresay she would have employed it.”

Elizabeth laughed, and some of her uneasiness departed with it.

The likeness remained extraordinary, but there was an animation in Julia’s expression which belonged wholly to herself.

“You have been subjected to a great trial, then. Meryton possesses many virtues, but indifference to a novelty has never been numbered among them.”

“So I have discovered. It is not every day that a lady arrives in a new neighbourhood only to find her own countenance already perfectly well known there.”

“How long have you been in Meryton?”

“A little more than a week. I am staying with Mrs. Tunley, my aunt, who lives in the cottage near the church. She has been settled here since last year, though I came most lately from Somerset.”

“Somerset? You have travelled some distance, then.”

“Yes.” For the first time, something in Julia’s expression altered. The change was slight and so quickly mastered that Elizabeth might have imagined it. “My aunt wished me to come to her, and I had no particular inducement to remain where I was.”

There was enough in the answer to awaken Elizabeth’s curiosity, but not enough to justify satisfying it.

An acquaintance of scarcely ten minutes could hardly be subjected to an interrogation merely because she possessed an interesting face, particularly when that face happened to resemble Elizabeth’s own.

Julia’s smile returned. “I confess Meryton has already proved more diverting than I expected. I had certainly not anticipated discovering that my likeness had been wandering about Hertfordshire for years without so much as asking my permission.”

“An intolerable liberty,” Elizabeth said gravely. “I am ashamed to have been guilty of it.”

“I might forgive you, if you promise not to do it again.”

“I fear I can make no such promise.”

Julia laughed, and Elizabeth joined her. No doubt half of Meryton was observing them from parlour windows and shop doors, delighted by the spectacle of two nearly identical young women conversing before the milliner’s.

Yet before Elizabeth quite knew how it had happened, her astonishment had yielded to something far more agreeable: a decided wish to know Julia Harding better.

~

21st October 1810

Meryton

Elizabeth

Elizabeth entered the drawing room already dressed for walking, her bonnet tied and her gloves in one hand. Her father sat near the fire with a newspaper open before him, while Jane worked quietly at her embroidery beside their mother.

“I am going to visit Julia, Mama,” Elizabeth said, drawing on her gloves. “I shall be home before supper.”

“Julia again!” Mrs. Bennet cried. “Upon my word, Lizzy, you have scarcely remained at home for an hour together these several months. I begin to think you have quite forgotten that you possess a family.”

Her mother had made much the same objection nearly every day since Julia’s arrival in Meryton had ceased to be a novelty and her friendship with Elizabeth had become an established fact.

“I assure you, Mama, I remember you all perfectly well.”

“One would never suppose it, the way you are forever running after that girl. Jane, at least, is content to remain at home and keep her mother company.”

Jane looked up from her needle work, but Elizabeth answered before her sister could be drawn into the dispute.

“Jane remains with you because she likes your company, Mama, which is a very different thing from being denied everybody else’s.

” She smiled as she fastened the second glove.

“Besides, Julia’s aunt has been unwell of late, and I promised to call upon them. It is a very small kindness.”

“A small kindness! You have been paying small kindnesses nearly every afternoon this month. What you can possibly find to say to one another for so many hours, I cannot imagine. You have known Miss Harding scarcely four months, and already you are more intimate with her than with Charlotte Lucas, whom you have known all your life.”

Mr. Bennet, who had until then appeared wholly occupied by his newspaper, lowered it sufficiently to regard his wife.

“You mistake the matter, my dear. Their attachment is perfectly natural. Were it not that Lizzy has something of your looks and rather too much of my disposition, I might begin to suspect Miss Harding of being a daughter I had somehow mislaid and neglected to mention.”

“Mr. Bennet!” His wife turned upon him at once. “How can you say such a thing? I wonder you can take pleasure in vexing me so. And what if somebody were to hear you? What would Lady Lucas say?”

“I imagine Lady Lucas would say a great deal,” Mr. Bennet replied, returning his attention to the newspaper. “She generally does.”

“I will not have you make a jest of it. The resemblance is extraordinary enough without your putting such notions into people’s heads.”

“My dear, I flatter myself that Meryton requires very little assistance from me in putting notions into its head.”

Elizabeth concealed a smile. Jane was less successful, bending her head over her embroidery with suspicious haste.

“It is not the resemblance that concerns me,” Mrs. Bennet continued.

“It is your being forever at that cottage when you have a family of your own who might wish to see you occasionally. Morning or afternoon, it is always Julia. Julia wishes to walk, Julia wishes you to call. I wonder what is to become of us all.”

“I expect you will survive my absence until supper.”

“There! You see how she treats me, Mr. Bennet? But you never correct her. You encourage her in everything.”

“Not everything, my dear. Only when she amuses me.”

Elizabeth judged this an excellent moment to retreat. “I shall be home before supper, Mama.”

“You had better be. And do not remain out if it rains. You know how the lanes become, and I will not have you bringing half of Hertfordshire into the house upon your shoes.”

“I shall endeavour to leave the county where I find it.”

“Lizzy!”

Elizabeth laughed as she escaped into the hall, and a moment later the front door closed upon her mother’s renewed complaints.

The amusement remained with her as she set out towards Meryton, though her thoughts soon turned, as they had done with surprising frequency of late, to Julia.

Four months ought scarcely to have been sufficient to produce so settled an intimacy.

Elizabeth had known Charlotte Lucas nearly all her life, and Jane possessed a place in her affection which no new acquaintance could threaten; yet Julia had somehow passed, with astonishing ease, from stranger to friend.

The remarkable likeness between them had first awakened Elizabeth’s curiosity, but curiosity alone could not account for what had followed.

Julia was clever without wishing to display it, lively without being foolish, and possessed a humour sufficiently like Elizabeth’s own that an hour in her company seldom seemed an hour at all.

Four months was a very little time in which to know another person. Yet Elizabeth had begun to feel as though Julia Harding had been absent from her life far longer than she had been present in it.