In a word, Mrs. Bennet had become nervous and dissatisfied with her lot in life once more.
It was a change, in Elizabeth’s estimation, entirely for the worse.
Mr. Bennet instinctively and laughingly refused Mrs. Bennet’s request when she demanded he now pursue acquaintance with Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bennet had not bothered to make the three miles’ ride to Netherfield, seeing no point in pursuing a trifling friendship with a man who did not border him, and who had the poor sense to throw his money down upon an estate that all generally considered ill managed and ill favored.
Mrs. Bennet’s tortured nerves made a violent and exaggerated reappearance after their absence of several years.
Mr. Bennet, showing a fortitude that was not oft present in other provinces, remained obdurate in the face of every effort and entreaty, and art and allurement, of his wife.
While Mrs. Bennet’s pleadings, gesticulations, references to her nerves, and high pitched screeches could not move Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth prevailed upon him with a few simple sentences: “Papa, I would like it very much if you called on Mr. Bingley — he and Mr. Darcy, especially Mr. Darcy, are sensible persons and I enjoyed their conversation more than almost anyone else I’ve met here. You will like them well enough, particularly Mr. Darcy. If Mr. Darcy is willing to further pursue our acquaintance, I would very much enjoy the conversation of a well informed and sensible gentleman.”
Mr. Bennet, driven by curiosity more than obligation — what sort of man could attract such interest from his clever daughter? — called upon Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy at Netherfield two days after the ball. Unlike his wife he had enough sense of strategy to not appear desperate before an eligible gentleman.
He valued, further, his independence too much by far to allow an appearance of doing a thing he had been pushed to.
Mr. Bennet found with the twenty minutes of conversation he had with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley that he liked them both, especially Mr. Darcy, but he had long since left the period of life where he had any particular desire to make new acquaintances, being quite satisfied by laughing at those he already had, and mostly sticking to his book room. However, if the two gentlemen would keep Elizabeth entertained, it would entertain Mr. Bennet to see how they interacted.
The two promised to shortly return the call, and they both sent their good wishes to Mrs. and Miss Bennet.
For his part Mr. Bennet detected no sentiment of particular interest in the way either gentleman spoke of Elizabeth, and he returned to home laughing at how Mrs. Bennet’s hopes of a grand marriage for her most disappointing child were quite certain to be disappointed.
Mr. Bennet also hoped they would interest Elizabeth in turn, for he had begun to worry she would not remain in Longbourn for long. He could tell she missed London, and the community of her friends there, and selfish creature that he was, Mr. Bennet would much rather the one daughter whose company he enjoyed remain near.
That afternoon, once Papa returned from his call, Elizabeth escaped her mother’s efforts to convince her that she must spend a great deal on new dresses that would capture Mr. Darcy’s heart, or at least Mr. Bingley’s, and she fled to her father’s book room for what she hoped would be some sensible conversation.
“Mama is become intolerable.” Elizabeth growled as she plopped into a plush winged chair. “A rapid change in a woman who seemed almost… pleasant three days past.”
“Eh, whatever she said, your mother was never satisfied — that’s the way of people. Never satisfied. Nota bene, I am not an old bull who pretends only the fair sex have an unrelenting desire for more. Everyone is selfish, grasping, and foolish at the bottom.”
Mr. Bennet grinned as happily as he said this as a man who had just declared the weather to be sunny, with a pleasant breeze, and not a single English cloud in the sky. What could Elizabeth say, they both were peculiar — she far preferred a damp rainy day in autumn to a pleasant sunny one in June.
“Misanthropy, not misogyny?” Elizabeth tilted her head and grinned back at Papa. “How… original. One never meets such people.”
“None of us are original — I like humanity. I like us all a great deal more for our flaws than I would if we were admirable. Sinners are a good sight more entertaining than saints. The true message of every novel.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes as dramatically as she could. “A quite irreligious opinion.”
“No — that is the opinion of all church mawkers. Opposed to all forms of fun, because happiness is next to sinliness — particularly novels. You remember your erstwhile suitor, Cousin Collins.” Mr. Bennet laughed. “I wish he’d settled on one of the other girls — his real virtue as a son is entirely lost upon Sir William.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes again.
“So,” Mr. Bennet asked. “Here to escape your mother? I hope she does not choose to follow you to your refuge.”
“It only surprises me Mama would suddenly become so desperate to see me make a good match, when she already has four daughters married.”
“Well none of your sisters married well. Not at all.” Mr. Bennet shrugged. “Mostly your fault, leastwise I’ve always suspected it was, that not one of them did well.”
Elizabeth was used to this. But it still hurt to be blamed for hurting her family.
“Don’t look like that.” Mr. Bennet grinned, as if he could just wave away what she felt. “All foolishness. My dear, all foolishness. Nothing to be morose about — don’t take your mother’s hopes to heart either. Mr. Darcy did not talk about you as a lover would, more a friend. But he will make an—”
“We discussed already that I would never make a suitable wife for him.” Elizabeth smirked at Papa, expecting his next response.
“Oooooh?” Mr. Bennet’s voice sharpened. He smiled slyly. “Now I see a different complexion on the matter. You are so close already as to disclaim interest in marriage. Why that is the final step before an engagement. Lizzy! I never expected you to engage in a mutual declaration of disinterest after merely a day.”
“I did not say I was uninterested in him.” Elizabeth smirked back. “And I knew you would reply in such a way — your mind is the opposite of a woman’s, who jumps from the slightest expression of interest to a hope of admiration and marriage. I say that we rationally agreed, as rational people, that we should be friends, and definitely not lovers, and then your mind jumps to marriage.”
“Mutual declarations of disinterest after merely a day—” Mr. Bennet laughed, pushing his spectacles up onto his forehead to peer at her closer without the lenses between them. He shook his head. “Just a day.”
Elizabeth grinned tapping her foot to a happy rhythm. “During the course of our first dance — or in fact, he said as much to his friends after our eyes had merely met.”
“Oh! It must have been an intense gaze.”
Elizabeth mock curtsied as though she were being publicly praised for some particularly astounding feat. “He has excellent eyes. Beautiful even.”
Now was Papa’s turn to blush and look aside.
She laughed, grinning at her father. He was quite willing to tease her, but equally he clearly, in a fatherly way was not eager to hear her describe any actual interest in the person of a fine looking gentleman.
“Not going to play blushing maiden?” Papa replied recovering himself. “Most girls would go clam about their new gentleman admirer, with their old man.”
“Mr. Darcy is delightful — you should have heard his comments upon my — but I promised not to tease him on that matter, on account of a kindness he performed for me.”
Papa now seriously peered at Elizabeth, looking again over his spectacles.
She did not want at present to give Papa any idea that she had actual hopes for Mr. Darcy, especially as she didn’t, but some part of her wanted to. “But you said earlier about the circumstances of my brothers, who I never meet. Mama’s information is not so very particularly reliable. Are my sisters’ husbands all so bad off?”
Ac
tual irritation flashed over Mr. Bennet’s face. “Every one of them are useless lads — They all drain all my resources. Lydia with her fashionable fellow who’ll never make a good go of that business of his in the North — he lacks application, mark my words. No application. What could I do? She is the silliest girl in England. Jane, you know her husband. Little expectations. His parish brought maybe four hundred a year before the crash — very certainly less now, and Kitty with her sea captain, becalmed at half pay in Lyme. No prospect to gain any prizes. Mary worst of all.”
“I would remind you that Doctor Smith is a friend of mine, and he was such prior to his attachment to Mary.”
“Yes. Yes, you introduced them. A great classicist, a man of philosophy and science, a man who they claim to have a genius — I am given to understand by Mrs. Bennet his appearance is much better than she would have expected for Mary given her looks and insistence on the dowdyish use of spectacles. In service. A man in service. An employed man, a man—”
“Employed to an earl.”
“Beneath my daughter. In no way is he respectable enough for a daughter of Longbourn — now, Lizzy, don’t be annoyed.”
“I confess that despite his ample virtues, despite the happiness that Mary attests to in her letters to me, despite—” Elizabeth shook her head annoyedly. “Doctor Smith has no meaningful fortune, no great consequence. No… really though, I don’t care over much, and I am still delighted that I introduced the couple.”
Mr. Bennet sighed. “At least you can see clearly why your mother is not delighted by that match — up to you, Lizzy. Up to you to fulfill every disordered fancy that fevers Mrs. Bennet’s mind. So you will need to marry your Mr. Darcy to keep your mother from Bedlam. I tell you, a man does not declare a decided disinterest in a woman on the date of their meeting if he doesn’t like her already.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied dryly, “the only more promising sign would have been if he’d leapt off the balcony to avoid conversation with me.”
“I wonder if that was why Mrs. Bennet wanted you back — it was only after we heard that Mr. Bingley was to settle himself that she made us to go to London to fetch you.” Mr. Bennet laughed. “It will be quite a joke for me — I shall never stop laughing — if she had for once behaved with prescience.”
“She expected me to marry well before the assembly ball? Quite sure you mistake her — Will my happy union with Mr. Darcy fulfill your desires? I thought the others were decently established. Except Mary of course, who in my view is decently established — do you save any money these days?”
“With all I’ve given you for an allowance? I hardly can put anything aside.”
“You gave me fifty pounds per annum which you reduced to twenty-five the year past with the reasonable explanation that rents had fallen, and that I now earned my own funds — I have a general idea what Longbourn earns, that is no excuse. There are five children already from my sisters. They will need something to set them on a good life course. You cannot endow them with any great fortune but anything you do—”
“It is not my duty to set aside money for the sons and daughters of other men. Not though they are my sons-in-law. I have done my duty to see my family established in the world, and the next generation can be looked after by their own parents.”
“What about Mama and I after your decease?”
“You! Don’t you earn enough to keep yourself from your writing?”
“You have a quite exaggerated notion of how much the recompense of petty scribbling runs to if you think I can keep myself as a gentlewoman upon those funds — my circumstances would not allow any great breadth of living should I need to create my own establishment.”
“You can’t? These books are quite expensive.” Mr. Bennet gestured to the line of them, taking up most of their own shelf. “I follow the reviews in the magazines, I understand you to be quite popular.”
“I have made perhaps two hundred in a year on the average, though a somewhat more these last two years. Half the time a book sells half what I hope it to, but the costs of publication and distribution must be lain out whether the book sells a dozen copies or a thousand. This is not a business I would recommend to anyone who seeks a sure or steady income from their employment — with each book, there is that fear that this time the buying public will discover me to be a trifling fraud not worth buying, and cease to do so.”
“Hmmm. Not a great amount…” Mr. Bennet frowned, and then shook away whatever unpleasant thought he’d had. “Is that why your books are so aggressively trifling? You should care less for what the silly girls think, and write something to impress men of real substance.”
Elizabeth smiled sweetly and fakely at Papa. She actually was offended for once. “I really have no use for men of substance. It is the girls who provide me my slender income.”
“Lizzy, have I pricked your artist’s ego? Claiming your books aren’t of substance? You always say that yourself, laughing at how trifling they are. Quite silly, us humans — we happily insult ourselves, in false modesty, but the instant another repeats that low tale we give of ourselves, we’ll snap at them like a wounded dog, and look as angry as you do presently, my dear Lizzy.”
“I perhaps do have that thin skinned author’s ego.” Elizabeth sighed. “And no ability to laugh at myself for it — but matters of money are important. Promise me you’ll set aside something more for Mama, and should anything happen to one of my new brothers.”
Papa waved his hand irritably. “Maybe. Maybe.”
Elizabeth was quite sure he would not go to any great effort to redirect Mama from spending as she wished, and it annoyed her. It reminded her of the way she had been angry with him when she chose to go to London — but he sent her there.
After a little while longer, Elizabeth went up to her own room to write.
The room was rather cold, as Elizabeth had ordered that no fire be set in it. She had learned some frugality from Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner in the recent years as their business had been wounded, though fortuitously not killed, by the late banking crisis. Elizabeth held now the view that if the weather yet was warm enough that she could subsist without fire, she ought.
But if they all were to make a practice of spending their whole incomes… well she might as well be comfortable while Longbourn remained to the family.
So Elizabeth called for coffee and wood from the box.
Sipping her coffee after all had been set in order by the maid, Elizabeth studied the trees outside, with their rich yellow leaves dripping slowly down, like glowing gold. In her current mood she absolutely could not continue to work on the story whose outline she had developed over the past weeks.
It was not just how she had been annoyed by Papa. There was something about Mr. Darcy, and about how helpless she felt during that odd spell at the ball.
The plan of an entirely new story began to blossom in her mind.
She leaned far back in the chair and closed her eyes, shutting out the pretty outer world so she could let her genius freely speak to her.
Images played in her mind. The voice of the charming villain. She always hated it when the women who read her stories wrote to her through the publishing house, expressing a desire that the heroine be kinder to the rakish villain
Rakish villains sold well, and Elizabeth was frightened of abandoning a pattern of writing that sold.
This time another man came into Elizabeth’s mind.
A tall arrogant man. He was proud, angry at the villain. His younger sister — no, make it his older sister, that was… more different — had been ruined by the villain. And he took care of his sister, and putting aside money for her. He worked and supported her, while she tried to ensure that his home was always a temple of domestic bliss. She tried to keep him happy, and save money.
Elizabeth never had her heroines marry — ultimately her heroines depended upon themselves, like she had chosen to depend, in the end, upon herself for support. But Elizabeth suddenly wanted to write a differe
nt sort of gentleman, one who the heroine would want to marry. A gentleman who was entirely good, or who was what she imagined a good man to be like.
Elizabeth pulled a page forth, and then she let her pen run with the words of this gentleman. This paragon. He angrily faced a villain who had ruined his cousin… any sister was too close to the story Darcy had told her. No the villain… Mr. Blackblood… That was a fine name for a villain. A good alliteration and a hint of the devil about it. The excuse for why the other characters might ever trust a man with such a name was that he was charming, owned openly his rakish appeal, and above all, the characters did not know they were in a novel, where a person’s name was chosen often to reflect their character rather than being an accident of birth.
Mr. Blackblood had ruined the reputation of the sister of the heroine. And suddenly, with that decision, the scene wrote itself, all Elizabeth needed to do was allow her hand to move freely, dipping into the ink quill again and again. The words presented themselves, one after another.
When she wrote a good scene, it was not as though she chose what to write, but as if the story wrote itself.
The plan for the novel developed in her head as she wrote: This time, for the first time ever in her books, the heroine would fall in love with a good man instead of a rakish villain, but something — something mundane and reasonable, none of those convenient fevers or duels — would keep them apart forever.
Or maybe… maybe the Muse would constrain the authoress, and force her to let them marry.
Chapter Seven
The day following Mr. Bennet’s call upon the new owner of Netherfield and his companions, Mr. Darcy met Miss Bennet by coincidence in the town of Meryton.
Darcy had read as much from the novels and other books he had brought packed in his chests to Netherfield as he wished. Mr. Bingley’s slender Netherfield library offered nothing to Darcy that was both of interest and which he had not read, often more than once.
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