Chapter 21 To Work
To Work
Dear Harry,
A week now of Miss Darcy and our research proceeds.
However, only in such hours as we can steal late at night, for our days are fully occupied.
Her second morning here we arrived at the breakfast table to an unexpected problem.
There was a perfect mountain of letters and notes at each of our plates.
Upon opening them I found that they were all invitations.
Card parties, walking parties, tête-à-têtes—overnight I had become overwhelmingly in demand.
“You shall accept them all,” my beaming mother proclaimed. “I am sure that Miss Darcy will relish the opportunity to get to know the neighborhood.”
“Can’t you take her, Mamma?” I asked. “I’ve got that new concerto to study, and I’m right in the middle of the most fascinating chapter on—”
“No,” said Mamma. “They have invited you both.”
“They don’t really want me, though. They only said so to be polite. It’s a Darcy they want.”
Miss Darcy looked a bit awkward at that, and I felt bad. I do not suppose being in demand for one’s name and fortune alone is very pleasant.
“Oh, very well,” I said.
“Good,” said my mother. “Now, Mary, mind you smile upon that clubfooted nephew of Mrs. Long’s.
I have always maintained that he has a fondness for you, and he is doing quite well as a curate, and does not drink so very much.
I know Mr. P’s attentions have been marked, but you must cast a wide net.
Miss Darcy, you need not trouble yourself.
There are no single men here worth your having. ”
And so we are to spend our days ensnared in the social whorl, which will leave us little time to talk. Luckily there is one window of daylight we have managed to reserve for ourselves: our daily walk.
Conveniently for Miss Darcy’s cover story, there really is a spring in Meryton. I took her there this afternoon. Its reputation for healthfulness is only local, but perhaps it will spread in time, and at least it comes out of the ground cold and pure and sweet.
“Good lord,” Miss Darcy said, when I first took her there. She peered into the tin cup, then took another sip. “That’s actually good! The water at Bath tastes like one is swilling gravel. How is it that it is not better known?”
I was sitting on the bank, hugging my knees.
“It is only the last few years that it’s been drinkable.
” I pointed across the spring to the nearby field.
“The Johnson farm used to have a privy just there. I was at the time rather interested in the transmission of disease and found that proximity to such foulness leads to an increase in cholera and typhus for those nearby. It seemed a shame to ruin an otherwise pure spring.”
“So you… What? Persuaded the town to remove it?”
“Of course not!” I said. “I, a young lady, speak to a gentleman on such a subject? It would be most improper.”
“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”
“No,” I continued. “I blew it up.”
She froze in the act of scooping up another glass of water. “I beg your pardon?”
“I blew it up,” I explained. “As you know I am a dab hand at crafting gunpowder, so it was a fairly simple matter to build a tidy little bomb and to leave it under the privy.”
She was staring at me. “What if someone had gone in the privy?”
“Unlikely. I chose a cold, wet day just after harvest so no one would be about. But even if they had been, I believe I had calculated the power of the bomb carefully enough that such a person would have got a fright and a singed underside at worst.”
“Right,” she said. “Then what?”
“Well, then they rebuilt it. So I waited till they were done and blew it up again.”
“Quite proper.”
“Thank you. Then I wrote to Mr. Johnson anonymously and suggested that the location of the privy was causing a buildup of hazardous vapors and that he had better move it. He did. Thus—” I gestured to the water burbling before us. “Spring.”
“Meryton really doesn’t know what it has in you.”
I scanned her face. Was she mocking me? No, she looked sincere. “They are quite certain that they do know.”
“They’re blind then,” she said. “Clubfooted drunken curate, indeed.”
“Perhaps,” I said. My face felt hot.
We use our walks to discuss the problem of Pike. Miss Darcy continues to treat the matter as an emergency, though I maintain it is no such thing.
“I agree that we must have a more permanent solution,” I said this morning, “but at the moment he is a model citizen.”
“Is he?” Miss Darcy was striding ahead of me, as she does when her emotions get excited. For a girl who is supposed to be in delicate health, she has the stride of a dragoon.
“Yes. You’ve seen him. He is everything charming.”
“Hmph,” she said. “How did Mr. Smith die?”
“In his bed, of old age.”
“Did anyone see it happen?”
“No, but—”
“Perhaps it was Pike, then.”
I laughed. “Do not be ridiculous.”
“Why ridiculous? He killed once already.”
I flinched. “We don’t know that. Anyway, that was before I made him better.”
“Right.” She shook her head. “I do not understand you, Mary. I know you must keep him under control, but you act as though you are friends now. Have you forgot how horrid he was to you?”
“Well, it is my fault he died.”
“More’s the pity he did not stay that way. Have you never thought of repeating the application of lightning till he stops moving for good?”
“Miss Darcy!”
She sighed. “Yes, all right, murder is inadvisable. But how can you trust him? Do you not remember what he was like to you, even before he died?”
I swallowed. The trouble was, I did.
I remembered how his eyes had followed me when I was invisible to everyone else. How we had had each other to talk to. I remembered the Meryton game.
Miss Darcy is pretty and rich, and anything but invisible. She could never need the Meryton game, nor even understand it. I knew if I attempted to explain she might revile me.
And yet I found myself explaining it to her anyway. I shall do so in these pages as well.
The Meryton game was a pastime Pike and I used to indulge in years ago, before his first proposal.
It started at a card party at Netherfield.
Netherfield was at the time let to an admiral and his family, and Mamma had been very eager that my sisters and I should befriend his daughters.
Unfortunately for all concerned, Lizzy and Jane were away on a visit, and my little sisters were ill, which left only me to try to form the acquaintance.
Henrietta Hogarth loathed me. There is something about the particular ways I am deficient that fills some people with a sort of rage.
She could not escape inviting me to things, but she made no secret of her disdain.
Pike, too, was often at her parties to make up the numbers.
She did not actively hate him, but she treated him as part of the furniture.
Once when I was about fifteen I arrived at a card party to find that instead of the intended twelve guests, there were only nine of us.
Miss Henrietta immediately formed her particular friends into two groups of four for bridge.
“Miss Mary will not mind,” she announced in my general direction. “She dislikes cards.”
True enough that I disliked cards, but this was a card party. She could have chosen a different game, one that allowed more players at a table. My cheeks heated. I hovered next to one game, then another. I tried to participate in the conversation, but my voice seemed inaudible to the players.
My head began to ache. I could, of course, have claimed illness and gone home. It would have been quite true, really. However, I was quite sure that if I fled, I would be the topic of conversation the rest of the afternoon. I would see it through if it killed me. It felt as though it might.
Then a footman entered to announce a late arrival.
Miss Henrietta rose and greeted Pike quite politely. As he bowed, I saw his sharp eyes take in the situation at a glance. She promised to rearrange the tables more inclusively “after this game”; then sat again and was soon reabsorbed in her hand of bridge.
I felt a touch at my elbow. “Miss Bennet,” Pike said, “will you take a turn about the room?”
It was something to do, at least. I took his elbow. We walked. He was wearing his best clothes, but his sleeve was cold and damp. He had walked here. It was snowing.
We had made two circuits of the room at least before either of us spoke. “A charming hostess is Miss Henrietta,” he said.
“Mmm,” I said. We were at the far end of the room from the players. He needn’t bother flattering our hostess, for she could not hear us.
“A shame about the pox.”
I looked at him in alarm. “The pox?”
“Didn’t you know? Died of smallpox, poor thing. Long and slow. First it spoilt that lovely complexion of hers. She became quite a hermit.”
Had he gone quite mad?
There was a titter of high-pitched laughter. Miss Henrietta was whispering behind her hand to her cousin, an arch young man called Thompson. He looked in our direction, caught my gaze on him, and guffawed. I looked away.
“Mr. Thompson, too,” he said. “Rest in peace. Torn apart by lions.”
Surprise tore a laugh from me. “You speak nonsense.”
“The pox spread to Miss Henrietta’s mouth, eventually,” he said. “Her beautiful laugh became a torture to her.”
“At least she could still play cards,” I offered.
“Yes, thank God she had that comfort. At least until her fingernails fell off.”
The laugh I tried to suppress came out as a snort. The headache that had begun to blur my vision receded a little.
“Quite a shame,” he said. “I do not know how they will make up their card games with those two dead.”
“Do not despair. They will still have a perfect four for bridge, since the Misses Charing drove their barouche into a volcano last week.”
His laugh was loud enough to draw the eyes of the players. We scorned to look at them. By the end of that afternoon, no one had made room for Pike or me at the tables, and we had killed each of them many times over. And that was the Meryton game.
Oh, Harry, I can imagine how you’d look at me if you could really read this.
I know it’s odious. You were always so kind, so desirous of thinking the best of everyone.
We only played it, I assure you, when we had been so aggressively ignored that it felt like the only respite.
It was always Pike who began it, but I admit I played, too.
Do you see? I cannot abandon him. Whatever awful things Pike may have done to me—deep inside, I am just as bad.
I could not look Georgiana in the eye after telling her all this.
Well, telling her a softened version. I may have been vague about how vicious and frequent the deaths I assigned were.
It may be selfish, but by some miracle she likes me, and if she knew what I was really like that would be quite impossible. “I daresay it sounds strange,” I said.
We had reached the spring by then. She was sitting on the bench, plucking dandelions. “I do not think it at all strange, Mary, if you should want to burn Meryton to the ground,” she said softly. “I read your letters. They do not deserve you.”
My face went hot again. Why must she say things like that? “Well, still. I spend too much time thinking about death, I suppose. Perhaps it comes of sleeping in a bed that—”
I froze midsentence as an idea sliced through me like a thunderbolt.
“Yes?” Miss Darcy said. “A bed that what?”
“I think I know what to do,” I said. “We will need something more substantial than blood, though.”
Her eyes gleamed. “What do you have in mind?”
I told her, but I hardly dare set it down here—not till I know if it works.
It is an audacious idea to be sure. I am not at all certain that Quindley would approve—but I hope that you would, Harry.
You were always so kind, even to those, like me, who do not deserve it.
I hope that very much, for you shall have rather a large part to play in it.