Chapter 13 Green
Green
Over the next few months, my arrangement with Pike continued.
Each month, his agent would send me my five pounds.
Each month, I sent him more dye. Lydia’s disgrace turned out not to be as apocalyptic as we’d feared; Jane and Elizabeth made such triumphant matches that the stories of their courtships are now recounted like fables.
Kitty began to court with a young clergyman, despite the fact that he was, as far as I could see, mediocre in every possible respect.
And me? Outwardly, nothing changed.
I stayed at home. Read my books. Ignored the pitying looks thrown my way now that three of my sisters were married and the fourth was courting. Tried to appear impressed when my father set up his telescope in the garden and showed me the moon.
In reality, though, I was throwing myself into my research in earnest.
Miss Figg proved an excellent accomplice, though hardly a cheap one.
Soon I knew what color might result from the blood of nearly everyone in Meryton.
An attempt at distilling Jane’s sweetness of nature gave me a lovely cyan hue.
Papa’s complacency gave me a warm burnt orange, Mamma’s anxiety was an eye-smarting magenta, and Kitty was a surprisingly elegant blue-gray.
Though similar personalities often produced very similar hues, everyone seemed to have a unique color. I called it chroma.
However, my dye profits barely improved.
I did not have time to produce more than one small batch of each color each month, and because of increasing competition in the dye market, Pike was obliged to shave down my fee several times.
He was very apologetic. I hardly cared. Colors filled my head.
What did the different hues mean? Could I somehow reverse the chromatic decoction—instead of using different temperaments to extract chromae, could I use the individual chromae to alter someone’s temperament?
I had not yet found a way, though not for lack of trying.
I dosed myself with innumerable solutions of dye.
Some produced a change of mood, but only very briefly, and I could not reliably reproduce the effect.
The most common result of ingesting them was an upset stomach, as I learned when I snuck a little bit of tincture into the family’s soup one night.
I felt a bit bad about that particular incident.
Still, just to dig my hands into the problem again made me wake with a smile on my face.
If anyone noticed that I spent less time at the piano and spoke in fewer quotations, they did not say so. Of course it was a busy time.
Elizabeth and Jane carried off their prizes in joint triumph.
They were married together on a blustery morning in late October.
This was preceded by several weeks of bustle of which the little village of Longbourn had never seen the like.
My sisters would have preferred a quiet wedding, but our mother would not be restrained from trumpeting her double matrimonial triumphs with as large a celebration as possible.
Every possible family member on our side was enjoined to come to town, and soon our little inn was filled to the brim with Bennets, Gardiners, Fitzwilliams, and Bingleys.
The Darcys stayed away, whether because they were snubbing us or because the groom failed to trouble them with invitations to the gauche affair, I do not know, but in any case, the most important Darcy relation did put in an appearance.
It was the arrival of this new family member that shook me out of my complacency and changed things for good.
I met Miss Darcy at a luncheon held at Pemberley. She was quite ordinary in appearance. But as she curtsied and her head bent, I caught sight of something in her hair—a ribbon. A remarkable one.
It was green. My green. Unlike her sash, the ribbon was the bright hue I had only seen from my own dyes.
Often, when experimenting with my galvanic apparatus, I have accidentally given myself a shock.
The sensation is quite singular. A sort of shaking, tingling weakness fills the affected limb.
Sometimes there is pain. Sometimes my hairs stand on end.
Sometimes it is a sort of thrill that leaves me wanting more. Perhaps you know the feeling, Holzmann.
All this shot through me when I first saw Miss Georgiana Darcy.
After my gasp, I actually stumbled a step toward her, my hand outstretched.
Her gaze, startled, flew to mine. Another jolt rippled through me.
Her dark eyes were piercing and intelligent, and I found it hard to look away.
Caroline Bingley’s sharp eyes followed hers.
She threaded her arm through Georgiana’s.
“Dear Georgiana,” she drawled. “May I make you acquainted with one of your new sisters? This is—” Her elegant nose crinkled in amusement.
“I do beg your pardon, but which one are you again? There are so many Bennet ladies, one loses track.”
Forgotten as usual. “Miss Mary Bennet,” I said.
“Ah, of course.” She smiled so broadly I could see a dozen gleaming teeth. “The accomplished one.” She squeezed her companion’s arm. “Miss Darcy, Miss Mary Bennet.”
“Delighted,” Miss Darcy whispered, and bobbed another curtsy.
“Likewise,” I said. “Your hair ornament—it’s very bright.”
Her eyes went wide and her hand flew to the ribbon. “Oh,” she said, in that same soft voice. She was, I realized, extremely shy. “I knew it was too…” Here she trailed off, mumbling something too soft to hear.
“Nonsense,” said Miss Bingley. The Bingley sisters are perhaps the only people I have ever met who can glare ferociously at one without for one moment reducing the acreage of their polite smile. “You look charming. I daresay the new fashions have not made their way to this place yet.”
Swiftly, Miss Bingley drew her away, but for the rest of the afternoon, I knew exactly where that green bow was in the room. Echoes of the shock fluttered my heart whenever I saw it.
I had ample opportunity over the next few days to observe the ribbon.
Miss Darcy wore it frequently. She favored a childish, half-down hairstyle, and the ribbon was apparently a favorite.
I found myself drifting after her in fascination, trying to get closer to what must be my own wares.
Except, I reasoned, they could not be. Pike would have told me if ours was on the market.
But then why did it look so exactly like that piercing green of the handkerchief I’d shown him that day?
The debate raged on in my head, practically drowning out the polite prattle around me.
All of Meryton and the wedding guests seemed to fade to a dull obscurity while only the ribbon, and by extension the girl under it, stood out in sharp relief.
I could not even escape by turning away.
The scent of her expensive French soap seemed to reach my nose from anywhere in the room, announcing her location to my senses.
I could not help knowing where she was, whether I screwed my eyes shut or stared openly.
My excitement over my wares made her a source of fascination to me.
Even now I am sure I could draw her features from memory.
Once I was so caught up in my curiosity that I drifted far too close, and when she turned about suddenly, I was only inches from her face.
I had to swiftly babble out a lie about how much I admired it.
She nodded, looking unsurprised, which was worse.
Then, with what I suppose was an attempt at smoothing over my gaucherie, she stepped behind me and examined my hair ornament from a similar proximity.
It was a single tiny silk flower. Gravely she pronounced it very cunning.
I suppose a Darcy is used to hangers-on making up lies to get close to her.
Later, I saw her glance at me with curiosity.
Curse the life of a country gentleman’s daughter!
My thoughts chased themselves in endless circles with no hope for relief.
I wrote to Pike, of course, but it might be weeks before I heard anything.
For days, while Jane and Elizabeth laughed and cried and packed and sewed, while they prepared to leave our house forever, I could think of little but is it my green?
The day of the wedding, Miss Darcy attended Lizzy to church, and my sister Kitty and I attended Jane. I could feel Miss Darcy staring at me throughout the ceremony. Wondering what was wrong with me, no doubt. Imagine making a fool of oneself in front of a Darcy! And now I had done it twice.
She departed that afternoon, a little after Darcy and Lizzy, who were to honeymoon in the Lake District. A little parcel arrived for me soon after. I opened it to find the green, green ribbon and a note.
As you were kind enough to say you admired this little ornament , she wrote, I wish you to have it .
The ribbon, in my hands at last. I turned it over until I found a little tag stamped on one end. Pike’s Green. But I knew the color. This was no vegetable dye.
He was selling my dyes at last.
I tied the ribbon in my hair and ran outside. Red and yellow leaves swirled off the trees as I ran down the lane. My green, my green, my green. Pike was selling it. Perhaps selling a great deal. Perhaps enough to make me independent.
I did not know where I was going until I found myself at the top of a hill overlooking the king’s road. Miss Darcy’s carriage thundered by beneath me. I raised a hand in farewell. A slim hand emerged from the window and waved back.