Writerly Ambitions

by Timothy Underwood

  “Do your heroines ever marry?” Darcy ventured at last.

  Miss Bennet laughed.

  It was a delightful sound when she laughed. A gentleman can admire the laugh of a lady, without forgetting that she is entirely unsuitable as more than a companion.

  “Not the first question I am always asked,” she said, smilingly. “You are not going to interrogate me upon where I find the kernel of thought that grows into a story, how I determine the sequence of events, or if the characters are taken from life?”

  “Mr. Brightworm is indubitably a sketch based upon Mr. Wickham — he had been present in my mind when I read that first novel.”

  “See!” She clasped the book she’d borrowed closer against her chest and gestured fiercely. “This is why I do not wish to be known a writer here in Meryton — I would lose all my credit could everyone trace out the sources.”

  Darcy smiled. “But you have entrusted me with the information.”

  “Guilt! My guilt prompted disclosure. I encouraged you to purchase all my books, whilst I never dreamed, not even a moment’s dream that you would. Now I have earned at least three and change, for that shall be my share as I go even with the printer for printing costs, off a pretense.”

  Mr. Darcy laughed. “I have more than ample to go around, and I shall only judge you harshly for the advice if I do not enjoy the books.”

  “No! That is worse.” She spoke quite happily, and there was almost a skipping way to Miss Bennet’s manner of walking over the wet road and thick piled autumn detritus. “A double burden, to be judged both as a friend, and as an author. What if my work is not to your taste?”

  “I have read two of them, and while even more to Georgiana’s taste than mine, they were both to my taste.”

  “Then I have hope you shall enjoy the rest. It shall perhaps make up for the flaw in your character you have displayed — frightfully backwards in adoring my work, as to not have purchased the rest the day they were on offer.”

  “Unforgivable,” Darcy said agreeably, smiling at her. “But I still have my question — do your heroines ever marry?”

  Miss Bennet grinned back. “You wish me to tell you how each shall end? Do you not think your pleasure will be enhanced by suspense?”

  “My firm view is that any novel which cannot stand a second reading, where every twist is known from the first, is hardly worth a first reading.”

  “Harsh, harsh upon any author who wishes to surprise the audience as the principal means of entertainment — those of the gothic bent — Mrs. Radcliffe. Once you know what lies behind the curtains, you can never read the Mysteries of Udolpho the same way.”

  “I can be harsh upon those who deserve such harshness — I confess to finding little pleasure in such books.”

  “But mine you think you shall like?” Miss Bennet grinned brightly at him. Her pretty figure was framed by two trees, and the yellow leaves fluttering down in the wind matched her dress, and the breeze made her brown curls to flutter in the wind.

  Darcy felt himself flush and involuntarily grin back at her. She had such pretty eyes, mostly brown like her pretty hair, but there were flecks of gold and green in them.

  “Would you enjoy my work more if my heroines do marry once in so often, or if they do not?”

  Darcy had half his mind made entirely unfit for use by her clear gaze.

  It was different somehow to speak to Miss Bennet than with any other woman he had met. And he wanted to impress her with some clever comment upon her books, to prove that he remembered them clearly after so many years — alas, he did not.

  “Never,” Miss Bennet at last whispered rather sadly. “They always, like Miss Bretton — a name, you may note, closer to mine than that of the heroine in any later I wrote — find some means where they can survive, and maintain themselves in a happy, if still hard in some way, situation, without any dependency upon another. I try not to be so very silly in the details. Twice the heroine leased a house from which she rented rooms. Several women in my acquaintance run lodging houses successfully. To be a governess would not be to my taste, and thus not to that of my heroines. One woman becomes a singer, another an actress, fending off the rakes who believe her to be scandalous and for sale, merely due to her profession. One survives upon a tiny annuity. That did not please me, for she still depended on her deceased great uncle for her income’s existence. For her freedom”

  “Freedom? Dependence on a relation is not slavery.”

  “No? But it is dependence. A human should trust themself, for you never can entirely rely upon another.”

  “That is a hard view.”

  “No — the opposite, we can depend upon ourselves. I would never write a character who was an authoress.” Miss Bennet bit her lip and smiled at him. “Nothing is more absurd than those writers who must have a character like themselves in every particular in each novel they write. I wish, in a way, to inspire my readers. And not every woman has the capital, nor the mind, required to earn her daily bread through trifling books.”

  “Not trifling.”

  “Read them all, and again, before you defend them.” Miss Bennet waved a finger in front of his nose. “I will not hear unearned praise.”

  “Fashion Exposed was not trifling — and if you wish to inspire, you do not merely trifle. See, I catch the contradiction in your own words.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “According to my reviews it was the worst of them all — Mr. Brightworm, you see. Very much the trope of the rake, but an immoral tale, for he ruined the heroine’s reputation, and then escaped punishment himself. Yet the reading public has liked it better than any other except Marigold.”

  Mr. Darcy frowned. An old memory of shock at the news, and sadness more prominent than pleasure. “He did not escape. Not in the end. You never heard?”

  “Mr. Wickham?”

  “The husband of a woman he seduced. He shot him, in cold blood. The man was given a year for the crime by the jury. But everyone knew that it was planned, whatever he claimed at the trial.”

  Miss Bennet pulled in a deep breath. “So Mr. Wickham is dead. And everything he knew… dead with him.”

  “Yes.”

  They had walked up to a copse of trees from which the last dozen yards of walkway up to the entrance of the Bennets’ house were visible.

  She looked at the ground. And Darcy wondered what she felt. He did not know if Mr. Wickham had been her only… sinful companion. Something about the way he liked Miss Bennet made him wish to believe that he had been. And that simply a mistake driven by an excess of passion and an honest affection that was too easily twisted by a Wickham.

  Miss Bennet shook her head several times, and she brushed her hand down her dress smoothing it out further. “Wicky, Wicky, Wicky. Poor Wicky.”

  “He had been my father’s godson.”

  “I know — I had forgotten when you entered the ballroom, until you told me about… about your sister. He often railed against you, and how you had cost him everything.”

  “Perhaps I did. Now that he is gone… he was not a good man, but… my father loved and cared for him. I should have found some way… despite his deficits… to care for a man my father cared for.”

  They were silent again until they reached a modest red brick gentleman’s house. He perceived from Elizabeth’s manner that it was Longbourn.

  Elizabeth did not look at him. She sighed. “Dead. And shot dead. I always wondered. Would you like,” she asked without looking up again, “to call upon Papa now — borrow the book?”

  “Certainly.”

  Chapter Eight

  To the decided satisfaction of the noted author Elizabeth Bennet, in the consequence of her developing an acquaintance with Mr. Darcy, she delighted at last in her sojourn in this calm and quiet countryside, unchanged in manner and mode of life since at least the early years of the reign of George III — no matter how bored Elizabeth became, she had sufficient sense of history and sufficient honesty to admit that the changes which t
rade and the progress of industry and science brought to the rest of England since the time of Elizabeth had touched Meryton.

  The weeks following her meeting Mr. Darcy brought considerable progress upon her newest novel. Day by day new scenes were written, and then each evening, or sometimes in the morning, she copied the new scenes from pencil into ink, modifying and thinking carefully as she went.

  Elizabeth always felt a strong glow of satisfaction when she was in this summer season of her vocational life, when the words flowed easy, when she woke up with the scenes playing in her mind, and when every walk she took ended with a desperate need to sit and scribble for two hours to get every thought she had found from her head onto the paper.

  It was fun.

  There were other seasons in the life of an authoress which provided less joy and more frustration. The spring, when she must plant seeds, and constantly work them, and manure them, and pull away the weeds to protect them from being choked out. That was less fun, until a crop of ideas at last burst forth, growing easily, choking any other growth in the happy field of her imagination. The autumn harvest was pleasant, but always a matter of nervousness, for just as locust or hail could descend to destroy the harvest, though it stood ripe in the fields, indifference and poor reviews could blight a new book.

  Winter was when she had neither ideas, exhausted from the writing of the previous book, nor sales, having exhausted the market which wished to purchase her previous book.

  To Elizabeth’s great fortune, as more of her books existed, and as her reputation became solidified, there followed in general a trickle of sales from new editions being produced of older books. Most of Elizabeth’s royalties were in any case placed into bank books, or the purchase of consols, so that they would provide her support when her father was dead and she could hope for no further allowance from him.

  Elizabeth was modest in her desires. Such modesty was necessary for the independence she valued.

  The past weeks’ duration also saw the flowing of the acquaintance between her and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and after several more deep conversations she considered them boon companions, and dear friends.

  One afternoon Elizabeth was compelled from her seat in her room by the presence of valued dinner guests. Thus she chose to depart her usual habit of writing mixed with walks when she had sat in one place for too long.

  The Netherfield party had accepted a dinner invitation.

  Mrs. Bennet displayed this night her expensive and sophisticated talents as a hostess, and Mr. Bingley had expressed himself with such eagerness when he accepted the invitation that Mrs. Bennet was sure he would admire and enjoy the fish. Unknown to Elizabeth, Mr. Bingley had formed much the same hopes regarding his dear — but at times a little lonely — friend and Elizabeth’s relationship as Mrs. Bennet had.

  Their growing friendship, though yet young, showed rather more intensity of interest than the slight attachments his friend had previously shown to a woman.

  When the party of awaited guests arrived in the appropriate style, in a heavy well sprung chaise pulled by four horses, and surrounded by postillions and footmen, they were brought to the drawing room, and it so happened that after the first few minutes of pleasantries were completed, the conversation divided into Mr. Bingley and his sister in conversation with Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bennet in conversation together, as Mr. Bennet found Mr. Hurst to be entertainingly singular in his monomaniacal focus upon cards, wine, and food — spiced upon occasion with econiums upon the prettiness of the girls of Hertfordshire.

  The final grouping of course was Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, standing slightly aside from the others, Elizabeth with coffee cradled in her hands, and Mr. Darcy with a cup of chocolate almost as rich as that fine gentleman.

  “In town for seven years entire — never any long periods away?” Darcy asked.

  “A month here; a month there, a seaside trip and a mountain trip with my uncle and aunt. Nothing so great — I came to love London. The cobblestoned streets, the squares with their inner gardens, the bustle of the major streets, the tea houses and the lectures. Vauxhall and the other places of recreation.”

  “I applaud you — to survive so long in London without a desperate need to leave. Most who grow up in the countryside cannot. I certainly could not.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Not even in your fine house, on one of the most fashionable squares — are you on Grosvenor?” She grinned at him. “My excessively rich friend.”

  “Berkeley Square — no city park, not even Hyde Park, is at all the same. You cannot canter for an hour through beck and glen. You cannot give a hound leave to run as he wishes. There are always so many people. And the smells — the smells follow you no matter where you go.”

  “The smells? Such as those of the peddlers cooking their meats on the streets, and the brewing of beer, and the markets stuffed with fish and vegetables?” Elizabeth grinned and licked her lips exaggeratedly. “I like those smells very much.”

  Darcy laughed. “Did you really like London so much?”

  “Does it surprise you so very much?”

  “You walk so very much, and with such apparent pleasure — I imagine you a woman who likes nature. And there is the way that Miss Cotton discourses upon the pleasure of a fine country ramble and the sublimity of nature, in Hartfield Wilderness.”

  “Ah, I think I understand your question now!”

  “Do you, Miss Bennet?” He smiled satisfiedly. There was a delightful way his face glowed when he was pleased.

  “Nature, beauty, the sublime sense you gain from a field waving heavy and ripe with wheat, that sense of spring hanging in the air, and every tree budding from green with leaf and flower?” Elizabeth laughed. “I once enjoyed them very much. Today, they are not necessary to my soul, while a certain quality of conversation is.”

  “So why then did you make the change — if you do not like the country?”

  “I had forgotten what country society was like. The society is so constrained.”

  “Yes, but individuals who you meet can change so much. I do not think you would run out of variety so quickly.”

  “Mr. Darcy, I yet, honestly, I yet wonder why I have quit London, though such quitting seemed enough the thing to do at this time — there has since rattled in my mind Dr. Johnson’s dictum that no man in the slightest intellectual way will willingly leave London. It has rattled since the carriage trundled past the last of the taller buildings of the city — nay, it has rattled in my head since full arrangement for my removal from town had been made. I wonder what mischance kept these grave doubtings from my mind before that date.”

  “It is to my advantage of course that you are here, Miss Bennet — for my part I see London as a place which one ought experience only in proper moderation.”

  “A month here, a month there — the whirl of the fashionable season. I read the gossip papers. I have a friend or two connected to the decadent and orgiastic pleasures of your class.”

  “Good God! I despise the season — there is nothing so much that I despise as a ball!” Darcy wrinkled his nose. “A ball, that is, during the season, when I must dance every dance, for I am there to meet and to assess those daughters of my peers who are at present tossed upon the so-called marriage mart, like so many sacks of tightly bound meat, and—”

  “You should,” Elizabeth said laughing, “have been a novelist. To compare the pretty diamonds and sapphires of society who even I have felt the occasional twinges of envy when I thought upon to so many sacks of meat. I do not think I have ever managed so repulsive an image myself.”

  Darcy grinned at her. “So I can entertain you? — ‘tis no joke. I wish a wife — I am well into the age where it is seemly that a man marry, and I do not wish to hold myself aloof from women forever. Yet… it is difficult.”

  “Very difficult. For it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of large fortune and good appearance cannot easily find a wife. So very few women could have any interest in you
.” Elizabeth eyed him boldly and freely, though she resisted the urge to lick her lips lustfully.

  Mr. Darcy, in Elizabeth’s unprejudiced opinion, cut a fine figure as a man.

  “Not a question of finding a woman willing, but a woman exceptional, right for me — it is hard.”

  “Oh?”

  “You can have no notion how hounded I have been — to know that every woman looks at me, as though I were myself a piece of meat. They all want me, merely because I am so eligible — it makes it difficult to assess the true character of a woman, for I know everything she says is like a fisherman’s brightly flashing lure designed to encourage my bite — you see now why my mind naturally compares the debutantes to sacks of meat.”

  “Amply clear.” Elizabeth nodded straight faced though highly amused.

  “It is different for you—” Darcy said almost complainingly. “Any man who sought you can only be driven by your own virtues.”

  “Oh, I have no idea in the slightest what it is like for gentlemen to stare at me, desiringly, simply because they like the look of me.”

  Darcy frowned.

  “It is true. Some gentlemen like the look of me, and are not reticent in saying so, especially as — once a woman has lost a reputation as solid as that of the Bank of England, gentlemen will make the oddest offers without the slightest encouragement. A little flattering, but chiefly annoying and unpleasant.”

  “I only mean to say,” Darcy said, “there can be no great surplus of respectable gentlemen seeking your hand in marriage.”

  Elizabeth stared at him, raising one eyebrow.

  Darcy winced. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

  “Like when you mentioned my age. It is all right, I know your virtues, so I can accept your flaws.”

  Darcy shook his head ruefully. “I apologize, Miss Bennet — I truly did not mean to offend. That was… I should not have said that in that way.”