The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

She rose. “Excellent! Send word to me at Shelby Manor when you have found me a house. What little property I have, Jenkins can move. It will give the poor fellow something to do. With my mother gone, he is rather at a loss for occupations.”

And out she sailed.

Mr Wilde went back to the window in time to see her step into her chaise, her profile through its glass pane as pure and sculpted as a Greek statue. Lord, what a woman! She would petrify Satan. So why, asked Mr Wilde of himself, have I fallen in love with her? Because, he answered himself, I have been half in love with the vision of her for years, and now this one meeting tells me she is unique. Suitable ladies are inevitably boring, and I have, besides, a penchant for mature women. She enchants me!

Oh, what a dance she will lead her husband! No wonder Mr Darcy looked disapproving when he broached the subject of Miss Mary Bennet and her tiny fortune. A fortune not imposing enough to form a decent dowry, nor sufficient, really, for a gentlewoman to exist upon without help. Mr Wilde had gathered that Mr Darcy wished her to retire to Pemberley, but such were very evidently not the lady’s plans. And what did she plan to do with her money, stripped of its potential to earn more? Uninvested, it would not last her into old age. The best alternative for Miss Bennet was marriage, and Mr Wilde very much wanted to be her husband, no matter how frightful the dance she led him. She was a nonpareil — a woman with a mind of her own, and not afraid to speak it.

The chaise drew off; not a minute later, the hulking fellow who had been lounging against a nearby wall was riding his black thoroughbred behind it. Not precisely like a guard or escort, yet somehow tied to it, for all that Mr Wilde suspected its occupant was unaware that she was being followed.

The letter to Mr Darcy had to be written, and immediately; sighing, Mr Wilde seated himself. But before he had dipped his pen in the standish, he had brightened; she would be in town for the winter … Now how did one get around the fact that she would be unchaperoned? No gentleman callers. A man of some resource, Mr Wilde mentally reviewed their mutual acquaintances and resolved that Miss Bennet would be invited to all manner of parties and dinners. Festivities whereat he might attend his awkward beloved.

A nice young man, Mr Robert Wilde, but rather hidebound was Mary’s verdict as the chaise bowled along; one of Fitz’s minions, to be sure, but not subserviently so. Her stomach rumbled; she was hungry, and looked forward to a good tea in lieu of any luncheon. How easy it had been! Authority, that was all it took. And how fortunate that she had an example for her conduct in that master of the art, Fitzwilliam Darcy. Speak in a tone that brooks no argument, and even the Mr Wildes crumble.

The idea must have been there all along, but Mary had not felt its presence until that interview this morning in the library. “What do you want?” Fitz had asked, goaded. And even as she spoke of needing a purpose, of having something useful to do, she had known. If the many eyes of Argus could see into every putrid English corner, then the two humble eyes of his disciple Mary Bennet could bear witness to all the perfidies he wrote about so briefly, and set down what she saw at far greater length than he. I shall write a book, she vowed, but not a three-volume novel about silly girls imprisoned in castle dungeons. I shall write a book about what lies festering in every corner of England: poverty, child labour, below-subsistence wages …

The landscape went by outside, but she did not see it; Mary Bennet was too busy thinking. They set us to embroidering, pasting cut-out pictures on screens or tables, thumping at a pianoforte or twanging at a harp, slopping watercolours on hapless paper, reading respectable books (including three-volume novels), and attending church. And if our circumstances do not permit of such comfort, we scrub, cook, drag coals or wood for the fire, hope for leftovers from the master’s dinner table to eke out our own bread-and-dripping. God has been kind enough to exempt me from drudgery, but He does not need my tapestry chair covers or tasteless pictures. We are His creatures too, and not all of us have been chosen for bearing children. If marriage is not our lot, then something else quite as important must be.

It is men who rule, men who have genuine independence. Not the most miserable wretch of a man has any notion how thankless life is for women. Well, I have thirty-eight years on my plate, and I am done with pleasing men as of this morning. I am going to write a book that will make Fitzwilliam Darcy’s hair stand on end far stiffer than ever it did for my singing. I am going to show that insufferable specimen of a man that dependence on his charity is anathema.

The fire was roaring when she entered the parlour, and Mrs Jenkins came in a moment later with the tea tray.

“Splendid!” said Mary, sitting in her mother’s wing chair without a qualm. “Muffins, fruit cake, apple tarts — I could ask for nothing better. Pray do not bother with dinner, I will have a large tea instead.”

“But your dinner’s a-cooking, Miss Mary!”

“Then eat it yourselves. Has the Westminster Chronicle come?”

“Yes, Miss Mary.”

“Oh, and by the way, Mrs Jenkins, I expect to be gone a week before Christmas. That will give you and Jenkins ample time to set the house in order for the Applebys.”

Bereft of speech, Mrs Jenkins tottered from the room.

Six muffins, two apple tarts and two slices of cake later, Mary drained her fourth cup of tea and opened the thin pages of the Westminster Chronicle. Ignoring the usual ladies’ fare of court pages and obituaries, she turned to the letters, a famous and prominent feature of this highly political newspaper. Ah, there it was! A new letter from Argus. Devouring it avidly, Mary discovered that this time its author was attacking the piecemeal transportation of the Irish to New South Wales.

“They have no food, so they steal it,” said Argus roundly, “and when they are caught, they are sentenced to seven years’ transportation by an English magistrate who knows full well that they will never be able to afford to return home. They have no clothes, so they steal them, and when they are caught, they suffer the same fate. Transportation is as inhuman as it is inhumane, an exile for life far from the soft green meadows of Hibernia. I say to you, Peers of the Lords, Members of the Commons, that transportation is an evil and must stop. As must cease this senseless persecution of the Irish. Not that this evil is confined to Ireland. Our English gaols have been emptied, our own poor indigent felons sent far away. Hogarth would scarce recognise Gin Lane, so denuded is it. I say to you again, Peers of the Lords and Members of the Commons, abandon this cheap solution to our country’s woes! It is as final a solution as the graveyard, and as loathsome. No man, woman or child is so depraved that he or she must be sent into a permanent exile. Seven years? Make it seventy! They will never come home.”

Eyes shining, Mary laid the paper down. Argus’s attention to phenomena like transportation did not thrill her as did his diatribes against poorhouses, workhouses, orphanages, factories and mines, but his fiery passion always inflamed her, no matter what his subject. Nor could the comfortably off ignore him any more; Argus had joined the ranks of the other social crusaders, was read and talked about from the Tweed to Land’s End. A new moral conscience was blossoming in England, partly thanks to Argus.

Why shouldn’t I make a difference too? she asked herself. It was Argus who opened my eyes; from the day I read his first letter, I was converted. Now that I am freed from my duty, I can march forth to do battle against the pernicious ulcers that eat away England’s very flesh. I have heard my nieces and nephews speak to beggars as they would not speak to a stray dog. Only Charlie understands, but it is not his nature to go crusading.

Yes, I will journey to see England’s ills, write my book, and pay to have it published. Publishers pay the ladies who write the three-volume novel, but not the authors of serious works: so said Mrs Rowtree, that time she gave a lecture in the Hertford library. Mrs Rowtree writes three-volume novels and has scant respect for serious books. Those, she informed us, have to be funded by the authors, and the publication process costs about nine thousand pounds. That is almost all I have, but it will see my book published. What matter if, my money exhausted, I turn up on Fitz’s doorstep to claim the shelter he has offered? It will be worth it! But I do not trust Fitz not to think of a way to stop me spending my money if it is invested in the Funds, so I will breathe a sigh of relief when it is safely banked in my name.

“Dearest Charlie,” she wrote to her nephew the next morning, “I am going to write a book! I know that my prose is a poor thing, but I remember once or twice your saying I had a way with words. Not a Dr Johnson or a Mr Gibbon, perhaps, but after reading so many books, I find that I can express my thoughts with ease. The pain of it is the realisation that none of my thoughts thus far has been worthy of commitment to paper. Well, no more! I have a theme would adorn the humblest pen with laurels.

“I am going to write a book. No, dearest boy, not a silly novel in the mode of Mrs Burney or Mrs Radcliffe! This is to be a serious work about the ills of England. That, I think, must be its title: The Ills of England. How much help you have been! Was it not you who said that, before anything can bear fruit, all the research must be done? I know you meant it for the rigours of Prolegomena ad Homerum but for me it entails the inspection of orphanages, factories, poorhouses, mines — a thousand-and-one places where our own English people live in impoverishment and misery for no better reason than that they chose their parents unwisely. Do you remember saying that of the urchins in Meryton? Such a neat aphorism, and so true! Were we offered the chance, would we not all choose kings or dukes for fathers, rather than coal-lumpers or jobless on the Parish?

“How wonderful it would be, were I, busy doing my research, to light upon some awesomely grand personage deep engaged in crime and exploitation? Were I so lucky, I would not flinch from publishing a chapter upon him, complete with his august name.

“When I have assembled all the facts, the notes, the conclusions, I will write my book. Around the beginning of May I will set out on my journey of investigation. Not to London, but to the North. Lancashire and Yorkshire, where, according to Argus, exploitation is most vicious. Mine eyes yearn to see for themselves, for I have lived circumscribed and circumspect, passing the wattle-and-daub hovels in the hedgerows as if they did not exist. For what we see and accept as a part of life when children has not the power to shock us later on.

“By the time that this reaches you at Oxford, I imagine I will have moved to a house in Hertford; believe me when I say that I will not mourn at quitting Shelby Manor. As I write this, the first flakes of snow are falling. How quietly they blanket the world! Would that our human lot were as peaceful, as beautiful. Snow always reminds me of daydreams: ephemeral.

“Do you mean to go to Pemberley at Christmas, or are you staying in Oxford with your tomes? How is that nice tutor, Mr Griffiths? Something your mama said made me think he is more your friend than a strict supervisor. And though I know how fond you are of Oxford, have a thought for your mama. She would dearly love to see you at Pemberley at Christmas.

“Write to me when you have time, and remember to take that restorative tonic I gave you. A spoonful every morning. Also, my dearest Charlie, I am tired of being addressed as Aunt Mary. Now you are eighteen, it seems inappropriate for you to defer to my spinster station by calling me your aunt. I am your friend.

“Your loving Mary.”

Stretching, Mary lifted the pen above her head; oh, that felt better! She then folded the single sheet of tiny script so that it had only one free edge. There in its middle she dropped a blob of bright green wax, taking care not to besmirch it with smoke from the candle. Such a pretty colour, the green! A swift application of the Bennet seal before the wax solidified, and her letter was ready. Let Charlie be the first to know her plans. No, more than that, Mary! said a tiny voice inside her head. Let Charlie be the only one to know.

When Mrs Jenkins bustled in, she handed her missive over. “Have Jenkins take this into Hertford to the post.”

“Today, Miss Mary? He’s supposed to mend the pigsty.”

“He can do that tomorrow. If we’re in for heavy snow, I want my letter safely gone.”

But it was not Jenkins who lodged her letter with the post in Hertford. Grumbling at the prospect of a tediously slow errand, Jenkins decided to drop into the Cat and Fiddle for a quick nip to fortify himself against the cold. There he found that he was not the only patron of the taproom; cosily ensconced in the inglenook was a huge fellow, feet the size of shutters propped upon the hearth.

“Morning,” said Jenkins, wondering who he was.

“And to you, sir.” Down came the feet. “Wind’s coming round to the north — plenty of snow in it, I hazard a guess.”

“Aye, don’t I know it,” said Jenkins, grimacing. “What a day to have to ride to Hertford!”

The landlord came in at the sound of voices, saw who had arrived, and mixed a small mug of rum and hot water. Hadn’t he said as much to the big stranger? If Jenkins has to go out, he will come here first. As Jenkins took the mug, the landlord winked at the stranger and knew he would be paid a crown for a tankard of ale. Queer cove, this one! Spoke like a gentleman.

“Mind if I share the warmth?” Jenkins asked, coming to sit in the inglenook.

“Not at all. I am for Hertford myself,” said the stranger, finishing his tankard of ale. “Is there aught I can do for you there? Save you a trip, perhaps?”

“I have a letter for the post,’ tis my only reason for the journey.” He sniffed. “Old maids and their crotchets! I ought to be fixing the pigsty — nice and close to the kitchen fire.”

“Do the pigsty, man!” said the stranger heartily. “It’s no trouble for me to hand in your note.”

Sixpence and the letter changed hands; Jenkins settled to sip his hot drink with slow relish, while Ned Skinner bore his prize as far as the next good inn, where he hired the parlour.

Only in its privacy did he turn the letter over and see the bright green wax of its seal. Christ almighty, green! What was Miss Mary Bennet about, to use green wax? He broke the seal very carefully, unfolded the sheet, and discovered writing so fine that he had to take it to the window to read it. Giving vent to a huff of exasperation, he had no idea that he was not the first man to suffer this emotion over Miss Mary Bennet. He took a sheet of the landlord’s paper, sat at the desk and began to copy the letter word for word. That took three sheets in his copperplate hand; Ned Skinner had been well schooled. Still, it was done. He picked away every remnant of the green wax, frowning at the landlord’s stick of red. Well, no help for it! Red it would have to be. The blob in place, he swiped his own signet across it in a way that rendered the sender’s identity unintelligible. Yes, it would suffice, he decided; young Charlie was not observant unless his eyes were filled with the ghost of Homer.

Pausing in Hertford only long enough to dispose of the letter, Ned hunched down in the saddle and rode for Pemberley. Out of this Lilliputian southern world at last! Give me Derbyshire any day, he thought. Room to breathe. The snow was beginning to drive rather than fall, and would get worse, but Jupiter’s strength belied his looks, he could forge through a foot and more with Ned up.

Having little to do and nothing save snow to see, Ned turned his mind inward. An interesting woman, Miss Mary Bennet. As like Elizabeth as another pea, and not, he knew now, pea-brained. Addle-pated, yes, but how could she be aught else, given the circumstances of her life? Naive, that was the right word for her. Like a child set loose in a room made of thinnest glass. What might she shatter were she not restrained? If she had selected London for her crusade, all would have been well. But the North was a dangerous place, too close to home for Fitz’s comfort. And the trouble with naiveté allied to cleverness was that it could too easily be transformed to worldly shrewdness. Was Mary Bennet capable of making that leap? I would not bet my all against it, Ned thought. Some of what she had to say to her pretty-boy nephew in her letter was not so much worrying as a nuisance; it meant he would have to keep an eye on her without letting her know that he was keeping an eye on her. Though not, he thought, heaving an inward sigh of relief, until May.

Of course Mary Bennet’s nuisance value could not keep his mind occupied for very long; rigging his muffler to shield his lower face as much as possible, he passed to a more agreeable reverie, one that always made the dreariest, longest journey of little moment: his mind’s eye was filled with the vision of a weeping, toddling little boy suddenly lifted up in a pair of strong young arms; of cuddling against a neck that smelled of sweet soap, and feeling all the grief drain away.

* * *

The snow had isolated Oxford from the North; Charlie could not have gone home for Christmas even had he wanted to. Which he did not. Much as he adored his mother, an advancing maturity had rendered his father less and less tolerable. Of course he knew full well that he, Charlie, was Pater’s chief disappointment, but could do nothing about it. At Oxford he was safe. Yet how, he wondered, gazing at the snowdrifts piled against his walls, can I step into Pater’s shoes? I am no Minister of the Crown, no ardent politician, no conscientious landlord, no force to be reckoned with. All I want is to lead the life of a don, an authority upon some obscure aspect of the Greek epic poets or the early Latin playwrights. Mama understands. Pater never will.

These unhappy thoughts, so familiar and answerless, were banished the moment Owen Griffiths pushed open his study door; Charlie turned from the window, eyes lighting up.

“Oh, the boredom!” he exclaimed. “I’m stuck in the middle of the stuffiest Virgil you can imagine — say that you have a better task for me, Owen!”

“No, young sir, you must unstuff Virgil,” said the Welshman, sitting down. “However, I do have a letter, delayed a month by the snows.” And he held it up, waved it just beyond Charlie’s reach, laughing.

“A plague on you! It is not my fault I lack your inches! Give it to me at once!”

Mr Griffiths handed it over. He was indeed tall, and well built for one who had espoused Academe; the result, he would say unabashedly, of a childhood spent digging holes and chopping wood to help his farmer father. His hair was thick, black and worn rather long, his eyes were dark and his features regular enough to be called handsome. A certain Welsh gloom gave his face a severity beyond his years, which numbered twenty-five, though he had little cause for gloom once Charlie had arrived at Oxford. Mrs Darcy had been searching for a tutor able to share a good house with her son as well as guide him through his in-college studies. All expenses paid, of course, as well as a stipend generous enough to enable the lucky man to send a little money home if his parents were in need of it. The miracle of being chosen from among so many hopeful applicants! A memory that still had the power to deprive Owen of his breath. Nor had it done his academic career any harm to secure this position; the Darcy wealth and influence extended to the upper echelons of power in Oxford’s colleges.

“Odd,” said Charlie, having broken the letter’s seal. “It is Aunt Mary’s handwriting, but the wax isn’t green.” He shrugged. “With so many people at Shelby Manor, perhaps the green wax was all used up.” He bent his head, absorbed now in what his aunt had to say, his growing look of mingled horror and despair giving Owen a pang of apprehension.

“Oh, Lord!” Charlie cried, putting the letter down.

“What is it?”

“A conniption fit — an attack of some feminine peculiarity — I don’t know how to describe it, Owen. Only that Mary — I am to call her plain Mary in future, she says — has well and truly taken the bit between her teeth,” said Charlie. “Here, read.”

“Hmmm” was Owen’s comment. He raised an eyebrow.

“She doesn’t know what is entailed! It will kill her!”

“I doubt that, Charlie, but I see why you’re concerned. It is the letter of a sheltered woman.”

“How could she be aught else than sheltered?”

“Does she have the money for this quest?”

That gave Charlie pause; his face screwed up in the effort of remembering something unconnected to Latin or Greek. “I am not sure, Owen. Mama said she had been provided for, though I fancied she deemed the provision niggardly in view of Mary’s sacrifice. See? She says she is living in Hertford — because Shelby Manor has been sold, I suppose. Oh, it is too bad! Pater could afford a dozen Shelby Manors to house Mary for the rest of her life!” He wrung his hands together, anguished. “I don’t know her circumstances! And why didn’t I ask? Because I couldn’t face a scene with my father! I’m a coward. A weakling! Just as Pater says. What is wrong with me, that I cannot face him?”

“Come, Charlie, don’t be so hard on yourself. I think you cannot face him because you know it will accomplish nothing, perhaps even make a situation worse. As soon as the post is moving again, write to your mother. Ask her what Mary’s situation is. She is not travelling until May, so you have a little time.”

Charlie’s brow cleared; he nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Oh, poor Mary! Where does she get these zany ideas? Write a book!”

“If her letter is anything to go by, she gets her ideas from Argus,” Owen said. “I admire the man immensely, but he is no friend of the Tories or your father. I would keep this from him if you can. It never crossed my mind that ladies read the Westminster Chronicle, least of all your aunt.” His eyes twinkled. “Whom, I note, you have no difficulty in calling plain Mary.”

“Well, I have always thought of her as plain Mary, you see. Oh, how I used to look forward to those holidays with her at Shelby Manor! Mama used to take Grandmother to Bath once a year, and I stayed with Mary. The fun we had! Walking, going out in the trap — she could talk about anything and was game for anything from climbing trees to pot-shotting pigeons with a catapult. With Pater snapping at my heels when my schoolmasters were not, my weeks with Mary remain the most wonderful part of my childhood. She loves geography most, though she is no mean historian. It amazed me that she knew the common and botanical names of all the mosses, ferns, trees and flowers in the woods.” Charlie’s perfect teeth flashed in a grin. “I add that — spread this no farther, Owen! — she was not above tying up her skirts to paddle down a stream in search of tadpoles.”

“A side to her that you alone were privileged to see.”

“Yes. The moment others were around, she turned into an aunt. A maiden aunt, prim and prissy. Having seen them splash through many a stream, I can vouch for her legs — very shapely.”

“I am intrigued,” said Owen, deeming it time he reverted to a tutor. “However, Charlie, the weather has set for some days, and Virgil is still stuffed. No Horatian odes until he is as empty as an English pillow case drying on a line. Virgil now, a letter to your mama later.”

THREE

At first the winter passed more delightfully than Mary expected. Though she could receive no gentleman callers, Mrs Markham, Miss Delphinia Botolph, Mrs McLeod and Lady Appleby came often to her house, privately deploring its musty atmosphere and dark outlook, not to mention privately speculating as to why dear Miss Bennet had no lady’s companion. Enquiries met with a stone wall; Miss Bennet simply said she had no need of one, and changed the subject. However, if a carriage was sent for her or she hired one of her own, she could attend dinner parties and receptions. There were always enough unattached gentlemen, and Mr Robert Wilde had dropped unsubtle hints that he would very much like it were he to be seated beside Miss Bennet at a dinner table, or care for her on other kinds of occasion.