The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“A nation of shopkeepers, Bonaparte called us.”

“Bonaparte has failed. Sir Rupert Lavenham was telling me that his grand army is lost in the Russian snows. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers frozen to death. And he has left them to their fate — can you believe that, Elizabeth? The man is an upstart, to have so little honour.”

“No honour at all,” she said dutifully. “By the way, Fitz, when did Mary tell you she was enamoured of Argus?”

“When I saw her in the library the morning we left. We — er — had a little falling out.”

They had reached her door; she stopped, her hand on its lever. “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”

“They are not your affair.”

“Yes, they are, when they involve my sister! What kind of falling out? Is that why she is living in Hertford? Did you make her feel she is not welcome at Pemberley?”

His dislike of being criticised made him answer sharply. “As a matter of fact, she absolutely refused to come to Pemberley! Or even to have a companion! It is the height of impropriety to live unchaperoned! And in Hertford, under the eyes of the people who have known her for years! I have washed my hands of her, frittering away her jointure on some quest put into her head by the letters of that fool, Argus!”

“Not a very generous jointure at that,” she countered, eyes flashing. “As I know for a fact that brother Charles contributed a full half of it, Mary has cost you less per year than you spend on stabling your carefully matched curricle horses! And I do not mean the bays plus the greys, I mean one team only! Two hundred and fifty pounds a year! You pay your valet that much, and your horse master more! When it comes to yourself, Fitz, you spend. But not on my poor — literally as well as metaphorically — sister!”

“I am not made of money,” he said stiffly. “Mary is your sister, not mine.”

“If you are not made of money, why do you spend it on fripperies like emeralds? I have no lust for jewels, but Mary needs more security than you have given her. Sell these emeralds and give the money to Mary. After seventeen years, she will have no more than nine and a half thousand pounds all told. If she chooses to live on her own, she can afford no conveyance, or do more than rent. Do you expect her to pay for the lady’s companion? Obviously! You are shabby!”

To have his conduct called shabby roused him to a rare anger; his lips drew back to bare his teeth. “I can take no notice of you, Elizabeth, because you speak in ignorance. Your idiotic sister has withdrawn her money from the four-percents, thus will have no income. Had I dowered her better, she would simply have more money to waste. Your sister, madam, is crazed.”

Gasping, Elizabeth fought for control; if she lost it, he would dismiss her rage as worth less than it was. “Oh, Fitz, why have you no compassion?” she cried. “Mary is the most harmless creature ever born! What can it matter if she — if she goes off in some peculiar way? If she refuses to be chaperoned? It was your determination to be rid of our mother that made Mary whatever she has become. And how could you predict what she would do, with Mama dead? You predicted nothing, simply assumed that she would go on being what she had been as a girl, and cheated her of an old age comfortable enough to live as you made sure our mother would. Why did you do that for our mother, then? Because untrammelled she was too dangerous — she might turn up at some important political reception and make you a laughing-stock with her silliness, her loud and thoughtless remarks. Now you visit Mama’s conduct upon poor Mary’s head! It is unforgivable!”

“I see that I was right not to tell you what transpired.”

“Not to tell me was unconscionable bad form!”

“Good night,” he said, bowing.

And off down the shadowed hall he strode, his figure as straight and well-proportioned as it had been twenty years ago.

“And don’t bother to write me one of your self-excusing and self-pitying letters!” she shouted after him. “I will burn it unread!”

Trembling, she entered her suite of rooms, profoundly glad that she had told Hoskins not to wait up. How dared he! Oh, how dared he!

They never quarrelled; he was too high in the instep, she too desirous of peace at any price. Tonight had been the first time they had exchanged bitter words in years. Perhaps, she thought, teeth chattering, we would be happier if we did quarrel. Yet even as angry as he had been tonight, he would not demean himself beyond what he deemed the conduct of a gentleman. No shouting, though she had shouted; no hands bunched into fists, though hers had been. His façade was unbreakable, for all that it had nearly broken her. Did his marriage satisfy his ideas of marriage? On her side, who could have dreamed the nightmare marriage would be?

What she harkened back to in her memories was the period of her engagement. Oh, the way he had looked at her then! His cold eyes lit from within, his hand finding any excuse to touch hers, his kisses soft on her lips, the conviction he gave her that she was more precious to him than all of Pemberley. They would always exist in a haze of perfect bliss: or so she had believed.

A belief shattered on her wedding night, a humiliation she endured only because so had God ordained procreation. Had Jane felt the same? She had no idea, could not ask. These intimacies of the bed chamber were too private for confidences, even with a most beloved sister.

Breathless with the anticipation of hours spent tenderly kissing and fondling, she had found instead an animal act of teeth and nails, hurtful hands, grunts and sweat; he had torn her nightgown away to pinch and bite her breasts, held her down with one hand while the other poked, pried, fumbled at the core of her. And the act itself was degrading, unloving — so horrible!

The next day he had apologised, explaining that he had waited too long for her, could not help himself, so eager was he to make her his. A shamefaced Fitz, but not, she realised, on her behalf. It was his own loss of dignity concerned him. A man had needs, he had said, but in time she would understand. Well, she never had. That first encounter set the pattern of the following nine years; even the thought that he might come to her in the night was enough to make her feel sick. But after the fourth girl in a row, his visits stopped. Poor Charlie would have to assume the burden of a position his very nature found repugnant, and her girls — such dear, sweet souls! — were as afraid of their father as they were of Ned Skinner.

The emeralds would not part company at the back of her neck. Elizabeth tore at them, heedless of how she pulled out tendrils of hair by the root. Oh, wretched things! More prized than the welfare of a sister. There. Free at last. But if only she were free! Did Mary realise that no husband meant at least a modicum of independence? To Elizabeth, dependence was galling.

Perhaps, she thought, crawling into the vast confines of her bed, I never loved Fitz enough. Or else there was not enough Lydia in me to respond to him the way a Lydia would. For I have grown sufficiently to realise that not all women are created the same: that some, like Lydia, actually welcome the grunts, the sweat, the stickiness; while some, like me, loathe them. Why can there not be a middle path? I have so much love to give, but it is not the kind of love Fitz wants. During our engagement I thought it was, but once I was his at law, I became a possession. The principal ornament of Pemberley. I wonder who his mistress is? No one in London knows, otherwise Lady Jersey or Caroline Lamb would have tattled it. She must be from a lower situation, grateful for the crumbs he throws her. Oh, Fitz, Fitz!

She cried herself to sleep.

Mr Angus Sinclair walked home to spend another hour in his library, but not in writing incendiary prose under the nom deplume of Argus. Angus — Argus. What a difference one wee letter made! He plucked a fat folder of papers from under a number of others on his desk, and settled to studying its contents afresh. It was made up of the reports of several of his agents on the activities of men he had christened the “nabobs of the North” — the ultimate owners of factories, foundries, workshops, mills and mines in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Prominent among them was Mr Charles Bingley of Bingley Hall, Cheshire. Boon companion of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Yet the more Angus thought about it, the more curious that friendship became.

What did the colossal snob and the captain of trade and industry have in common? On the surface, a friendship that should not exist. His enquiries had revealed that they had met at Cambridge, and had been grafted to each other ever since. A youthful thing like an inappropriate crush on one side and a lofty condescension on the other? A wee Socratic fling, bums up? No, definitely not! Bingley and Darcy were nothing more nor less than firm friends. What they had in common must be less obvious … Bingley’s grandfather had been a Liverpool dock worker; it was his father had carved out an empire of chimneys spouting dense black smoke into the Manchester air. While Darcy’s grandfather had contemptuously refused a dukedom because, so rumour had it, he could not be the Duke of Darcy. Shires only for dukes.

Something binds that pair together, thought Angus, and I am positive it rejoices under the title of Trade and Industry.

“Yes, Angus,” said Mr Sinclair aloud, “the answer must be the only logical one — that the illustrious Fitzwilliam Darcy is Charles Bingley’s silent partner. Fifty thousand acres of Derbyshire peaks, moors and forests must yield Fitz ten thousand a year, but he also has many fertile acres of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. Why then is he said to have an income of a mere ten thousand a year? It must surely be twice that from the land alone. What other smokier, machine-driven activities contribute to how many thousands more?” He grunted. “Och, man, you’re tired and not thinking properly!”

The situation appealed to him enormously because, sensible Scot that he was, he failed utterly to understand why any man should be ashamed of dirtying his hands. Trade and industry bring rewards enough to transform the grandson of a Liverpool docker into a gentleman. What is wrong with having no ancestors? How Roman that is! New Men versus the Old Nobility, and never the twain shall meet. Except in Bingley and Darcy. Though would that twain meet if Bingley had a desire to be socially prominent in certain London circles? He did not, never had. A man of the North, he kept a London residence only because friendship with Fitz made it necessary.

His eyelids drooped; some time later Angus sat up with a jerk to find that he had nodded off, and laughed softly. He had dreamed of a skinny, hatchet-faced female clad like a governess and marching up and down outside the Houses of Parliament carrying a placard that said REPENT, YE EXPLOITERS OF THE POOR! How Argus would love that! Besides which, however, no ladies ever marched up and down outside any Westminster building. The day they did that, he thought wickedly, the whole pile would tumble down.

Was she a skinny, hatchet-faced female in the garb of a governess? he wondered as he closed the folder and put it back where it belonged. If Elizabeth’s sister, then surely not! Yet what spinster owned beauty? None, in his experience. She bore the Christian name of Mary, but how was he going to find out what her surname was? Then a memory surfaced: of Fitz saying Mary Bennett — one t or two? Two. One left the name looking the victim of amputation. Miss Mary Bennett … Who lived in Hertford, a mere skip from London. How old was she?

The vision of Elizabeth had haunted him for ten years, and to find that she had an unmarried sister was irresistible. Yes, he would have to see Miss Mary Bennett, enamoured of Argus! Poor Elizabeth! A wretchedly unhappy creature. Well, what woman could be happy married to Fitz? One of the coldest men Angus had ever met. Though exactly how did one define cold, when applied to human beings? Fitz was not devoid of feelings, certainly. He had feelings — strong ones, too. The trouble was that they existed beneath an exterior made of ice. And Elizabeth had probably thought she could melt that ice when she married him. I have read, Angus mused, of a volcano covered in snow and glaciers, yet still, in its depths, a boiling pit of white-hot lava. And that is Fitz. God spare me from the day of the eruption! It will be devastating.

On his way to bed Angus notified the under-butler on duty that he would be going out of London for two weeks on the morrow; would he kindly inform Stubbs of that fact at once?

When commencing a mission to collect facts for Argus personally, Angus Sinclair’s practice was to go first to the local legal chambers. Just because this was a mission to discover what sort of woman Elizabeth’s spinster sister was did not mean a different approach. A Ned Skinner might have preferred taprooms and stables, but Angus knew lawyers were like a maypole: all the threads connecting a district came together in them. Of course this was only true in small towns, but England was a place of small towns and villages. Big towns and cities were a result of that new phenomenon, industry on a scale undreamed of in the days of Charles Bingley’s grandpa.

Conveyed into the courtyard of the Blue Boar, there to deposit his chaise, his baggage and his valet, Angus discovered from the landlord that Patchett, Shaw, Carlton and Wilde was the firm of solicitors patronised by Hertford’s best people, and that the man to see was Mr Robert Wilde.

In Mr Robert Wilde he found a younger, more presentable, less hidebound man than he had expected, and decided to appear frank. Of course his name had been recognised; Mr Wilde knew him for a hugely rich fellow from north of the Border as well as the proprietor of the Westminster Chronicle.

“I am a great friend of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s,” Angus said easily, “and have learned that he has a sister-in-law residing in Hertford. A Miss Mary Bennett — is that one t, or two?”

“One,” said Mr Wilde, liking his visitor, who had a great deal of charm for a Scotsman.

“As I feared, an amputation — no, no, Mr Wilde, I am being whimsical! It is not on Mr Darcy’s behalf that I am here. In actual fact I’m on a trip into East Anglia, and Hertford being on my way, I thought to call on Miss Bennet with news of her sister Mrs Darcy. Unfortunately I left in such a hurry that I did not think to obtain Miss Bennet’s address. Can you furnish it?”

“I can,” said Mr Wilde, eyeing Mr Sinclair with some envy: a striking-looking man, between the silvering sandy hair above an attractive face, and the fashionably tailored apparel that shouted his means and his social pre-eminence. “However,” he said smugly, “I am afraid that you will not be able to pay her a call. She does not receive gentlemen.”

The blue sailor’s eyes widened, the fine head went to one side. “Indeed? Is she a misanthrope? Or indisposed?”

“Perhaps a little of the misanthrope, but that is not the reason. She has no chaperone.”

“How extraordinary! Especially in one connected to Mr Darcy.”

“If you had the privilege of knowing her, sir, you would better understand. Miss Bennet is of extremely independent turn of mind.” He heaved a sigh. “In fact, she is fixated upon independence.”

“You know her well, then?”

The Puckish cast of Angus’s countenance lulled most of those who met him into confiding facts to him that were not, strictly speaking, any of his business; Mr Wilde succumbed. “Know her well? I doubt any man could say that. But I had the honour of suing for her hand some time ago.”