by Lucy Tilney
“How refreshingly different of her,” smiled Louisa.
Caroline twisted a little emerald ring on one of her long, beautiful hands. Elizabeth noted how the mention of Miss Darcy always made her a touch brittle.
“Miss Bennet is very modern,” said Louisa smiling at Caroline who was now tilting her ring back and forth making it flash and sparkle in the newly installed electric light.
“Is she?” Mr. Darcy put his book aside and looked intently at Elizabeth.
“Elizabeth works for a women’s magazine,” replied Caroline in the tone she might have used to inform them Elizabeth worked in a fish and chip shop. “Which one is it again, dear, Peg’s Paper?”1
“And what do you for this magazine?” He fixed his dark grey-blue eyes on her unnervingly.
“I’m a writer. I interview people and I write articles to inspire young women to do something other than marry the first man who comes along. I occasionally write for other publications simply as E. C. Bennet, usually on women’s issues, but sometimes on pacifism.”
“I daresay there is an increased interest in women’s issues now thanks to the reduced number of available men,” he replied.
“Oh, shocking,” interjected Caroline “you cannot be suggesting, Mr. Darcy, that we would all be content to leave the voting age at thirty2 if only there were enough husbands to go around. Isn’t that an abominable statement, Eliza? You must punish him.”
“I think that should be your task, as intimate as you are you must know how it can be done.”
At that statement, he bristled and she looked wistful.
“I meant,” he said, “that there must be many more women now entering professions than there would have been without the war. You may wish them to do it on principle but the reality is that the reduced number of suitable husbands is forcing women to do things they would not have done ten years ago.”
“I think the world was changing for women before the war,” said Elizabeth, “and I will go as far as to say that had there been no war we would have had just as much progress.”
“You give your opinion very decidedly,” he replied with a smile.
“I speak as I think. It’s patronising of the establishment to say that women are being rewarded with this and that for being good girls during the war.”
“I am inclined to agree with you regarding certain attitudes but women’s contribution to the war has undoubtedly altered public opinion.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, “The public is fifty percent female and we have always known what we are capable of. You mean male opinion and elderly male parliamentary opinion at that.”
He rolled his eyes dismissively, “Oh, Miss Bennet, do not tell me you have never come across an old lady who did not want a young woman bus driver.”
“Bus driver!” exclaimed Caroline tiring of a conversation in which she had no part, “Well perhaps there is not so much to be said for the modern woman if all she can aspire to is driving a bus. True modernity is the preserve of the woman of substance. A woman who has her own house and car, who controls her own finances, who dresses immaculately and visits Paris frequently to see the latest designs by the best designers. One should never trust London dressmakers to get the details absolutely right. And naturally she should speak French, do you remember that awful woman at Madame Vionnet’s, Loulou, who could only speak English very loudly?”
Louisa smirked, “I do indeed. The poor thing was an absolute fright.”
Elizabeth thought for a moment about continuing the conversation in French to see how far Caroline’s would take her but contented herself with asking if anyone had read the article in Le Petit Parisien about the Rheinische Republik.
“I have read it,” said Darcy slowly, “and found it exceedingly partisan. The Weimar Republic must work for Germany’s sake, and all our sakes if peace is to be maintained and the situation is not helped by a handful of hotheads attempting to incorporate the Rhineland into France.”
“Do you have no sympathy for France?” asked Elizabeth in astonishment.
“I have every sympathy for France but her behaviour while occupying the area has been imprudent and threatens to destabilise it. The situation is fragile enough as it is. The war is over Miss Bennet, there is no need to side with France simply on principle.”
“It is true that Germany has suffered terribly but she only has herself to blame and we cannot blame France for wanting to create a strong buffer zone.”
“France does not only want a strong buffer zone. France wants the industrial base of Alsace-Lorraine and the Saar and there may be arguments against letting France become too strong. We need balance in Europe and there is nothing to be gained from supporting the strength of one European nation over the rest. Have you forgotten Napoleon?”
“Napoleon was over a hundred years ago, Mr. Darcy, the threat for the last half century has been a unified Germany. If we let them recoup goodness only knows what they’ll do next.”
Charles pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, “I suppose Jane will be asleep.” His tone gave the impression that saying goodnight to Jane was to have been the highlight of his evening and he had missed it. He replaced his watch and rummaged in his evening jacket.
“D’ye have a gasper by any chance, Darcy?”
Darcy frowned. His attention was on Elizabeth.
“No, nothing on God’s earth would induce me to smoke these things.”
“Well, give me one of your Black Russians then and I’ll clear off.”
Caroline moved briskly and threw up a window but before they could feel the chill Charles had ambled out. Elizabeth hoped he wasn’t going to keep a smoky vigil outside Jane’s room.
“I suspect, Miss Bennet, you enjoy an argument.” Mr. Darcy’s voice brought her back to their discussion.
“I thought the word was 'debate', Mr. Darcy, and I suspect you cannot brook disagreement.”
She looked intently at him and held his gaze for long enough to disconcert Caroline who almost ran to the piano.
“Louisa, do you recall the song by Gwen Godfrey we heard on the wireless a few days ago, I believe I have the music here, would you sing for me?”
The languid Sir Reginald who had had no time for Elizabeth when he discovered she referred a simple gin and tonic to the chartreuse and maraschino laden concoction he had discovered in New York, smirked. He was as fond of his fiancée as any man but he also had an eye for Miss Bennet’s fine calves.
The Bingley sisters played and sang beautifully and under normal circumstances, Elizabeth would have enjoyed the performance but, as few people were brave enough to disagree with her, she regretted having the conversation with Mr. Darcy cut short so soon.
Darcy himself was simply relieved. He had begun to find this particular incarnation of the modern woman a little too bewitching.
On the third morning, Jane came to breakfast and pronounced herself well enough to return home. Darcy heard her with relief. The temptation to pay Elizabeth too much attention was becoming overwhelming. He told himself firmly, in the tone he might use for an over-active spaniel, that she was not the otherworldly beauty she had appeared to be in the moonlight outside the Assembly Rooms but simply a rather ordinary, if opinionated woman, with pretty hair. He did not believe himself and realising this forced his attention back to briskly slicing the tops off his eggs.
“Monsieur le Guillotine,” whispered Charles and Jane giggled.
He listened in irritation as Charles attempted to persuade Jane to stay another day, perhaps two, knowing that she would certainly give in but, when Mrs. Bennet dissembled at Elizabeth’s request for the car, and Charles offered to drive them himself, Mr. Darcy once again felt safe. He left to find some work to do safe in the knowledge that the next time he sat down to eat the Misses Bennet would be somewhere else.
While Jane packed their belongings Elizabeth went to return what she had borrowed from Charles’ library. She found Mr. Darcy going through boxes of books a few of which
appeared to have been sent on from another house but most were from booksellers. She watched him for a few moments observing the way his dark wavy hair fell over his forehead and the deft movements of strong but gentle hands, clearly used to handling books, and realised he was singing a snippet of operetta.
I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed - who never would be missed!
Ta dada da da da
And that singular anomaly, the lady journalist,
She never would be missed - she never would be missed!3
She stifled a laugh and quietly placing the books on a table left him to it.
1 A weekly magazine running from 1919 to 1940 aimed at working class women and consisting largely of romantic stories.
2 Britain achieved universal suffrage in 1927.
3 3 Mr. Darcy is paraphrasing the Lord High Executioner’s song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta, ‘The Mikado’.
A CHRISTMAS BALL
Elizabeth was more partial to autumn in London than in any other season. She enjoyed the drifts of leaves piling up on the pavements and sniffed appreciatively at the wood smoke curling up from prim Hampstead gardens as gardeners and small boys made bonfires and immolated the occasional Guy Fawkes.
She read avidly in the newspapers about a Mr. Hilter and his ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ in Munich and richly annoyed herself by wondering what Mr. Darcy might have to say about it. Certainly, he must disapprove, she did not consider him so far gone from righteousness as not to disapprove, but she longed against her will to know exactly why and to hear him explain it in his clipped upper-crust accent.
By Christmas, though the autumn leaves had all gone (and with them her desire to discuss European affairs with Mr. Darcy) to be replaced by a deep desire to be in Hertfordshire with its crisp, frosty fields, glistening church towers, and Mrs. Hill’s fragrant mince pies.
Her arrival was noted at Netherfield by the Bingley girls who would have been equally delighted if she had run away with a chimney sweep.
“I hear Miss Eliza Bennet is home for Christmas,” announced Caroline over coffee in the cream and gold drawing room.
“Really?” smirked Louisa, “I didn’t realise you were so close she had telephoned you.”
Darcy and Charles caught each other looking hopefully at the door but it was impossible; they had volunteered to have coffee with the ladies and were trapped each wishing his ears had an off switch.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Louisa. Cook saw her on the bus and told Bertin who told me. She uses the bus every week apparently if she doesn’t walk.”
“We all know what a fine walker she is,” snortled Louisa as Caroline drained her black coffee having eaten for a sparrow at dinner, “and frankly, my dear, anyone seen on a bus after the age of twenty is a failure in life.”
“Unless one is a cook,” was Caroline’s witty riposte.
“Or a silly little magazine writer,” added Louisa and both sisters laughed heartily and treated themselves to listing exactly why Miss Bennet was, and would ever remain middle class.
Darcy rolled his eyes. What vile, puerile women! He had met the late Mr. Bingley once and found him to be an older version of Charles albeit jaded by life, and the mother he had met twice and considered her enchanting. How they had produced Louisa and Caroline was a disturbing mystery. Perhaps they were adopted? Yes, that was it, their natural father was a slave trader, and their mother had been hanged from the neck until dead for poisoning old ladies, which meant the only mystery was how on earth the Bingleys came by them.
George had driven Elizabeth from the office to Kings Cross promising all the way to die of a broken heart if she didn’t come back quickly and then he had held her up at the station attempting to persuade her to have dinner with him. Once in Meryton she met May Oliver, the schoolmistress, outside the station and chatted for half an hour about bringing the older girls up to London to visit the magazine office and then she dawdled along the High Street with Jane’s friend, Edith, which made her miss the bus and have to walk home. In turn, she missed dinner and managed only a cursory goodnight to her mother who was in bed reading bridal magazines.
Inspired by her reading Phoebe set about her second daughter as soon as she reached the breakfast table.
“I want you to be particularly nice to Cousin William at the ball tonight, Lizzy, dear.”
Elizabeth had allowed herself to hope that her mother hadn’t noticed the tender glances Mr. Collins had been casting her way. She should have known better.
“I am always polite to our cousin,” she said calmly although it was obvious politeness was not what was required and the duty of becoming wife to one of the silliest clerics in England had been passed from her younger sister to her.
“There are worse things than marrying Mr. Collins, Lizzy” opined Mary spreading a teaspoonful of jam, no more and no less, her toast, “he does not gamble and he is not violent, besides he has placed shelves in all the cupboards in the rectory. These are most agreeable traits in a husband, I believe.”
Phoebe spluttered into her coffee cup.
“There will be a constant supply of roses,” added Jane, “he has put a great deal of work into nurturing the Van Fleet ramblers old Reverend Finch planted; they make a gorgeous show in summer.”
“And…oooooh… marital duties and lots of them,” giggled Lydia.
“Enough… enough,” cried Elizabeth, “be merciful! You all know I would never accept William but I would like to head him off before it goes further. Is there no-one in Meryton we can prevail upon to take his mind off me? No desperate spinsters, no-one obsessed with roses and clerical headwear, no-one determined to be a vicar’s wife at all costs?”
Poor Mrs. Bennet, to have lived to the great age of forty-eight only to have her daughters whom she had raised to be paragons of Meryton society behave so was intolerable.
“Stop sniggering, Gilbert,” she snapped at her husband who immediately took refuge in a napkin.
“And you,” she said turning to Elizabeth, “are a disgrace. Twelve hours I laboured with you and spent your entire childhood in palpitations waiting for you to break your neck falling from a tree or going through the ice on the Gouldings’ pond, and now you are too good for William Collins, are you? Well, Miss Superior, when your father dies we will be turned out of this house by whomever William marries and then what will become of us? Your father has never given a thought to managing Longbourn so between feeding, clothing and educating five of you, there has been very little put by. I have made personal sacrifices, God knows, but if you think that plus the little your grandpapa left me is enough for six of us to live on should your father die first then think again. We must keep Longbourn.”
“Mother,” replied Elizabeth with the calmness that comes with oft-repeated lines, “Longbourn is no longer supporting me. My job is not a treat from my aunt and uncle like the pantomime at Christmas. It is a real position and if I had to I could apply to other magazines and newspapers to do the same. I only live in Uncle Edward’s flat for your peace of mind, but I earn enough to rent somewhere else as well as feed and clothe myself. Mary will soon be able to do the same and if you would permit Jane and Kitty and Lydia to find positions none of us would be dependent on the estate.”
“At least Cousin William is respectable,” cried Kitty, “it’s not as if two years in London has found you anyone, Lizzy. You’re twenty-three and still single. I should die of shame if it were me.”
“Oddly enough I’m still alive,” replied Elizabeth dryly, “and I did not go to London to find a wretched husband.”
“Your sisters will get positions over my dead body and if I have my way my brother-in-law will let Mary go in the New Year.”
Mary rushed out upsetting a bowl of sugar lumps over Lydia.
“I don’t know why you want a boring old job, Mary,” she shouted after her while catching most of it bef
ore it hit the carpet, “Lizzy only has one while she’s waiting for the love of her life. Oh Lord, how sad I will be if I haven’t met the love of my life before I’m as old as her! Have some sugar, Lizzy, keep yourself sweet for Mr. Right.”
“Will anyone mind if I leave?” asked Elizabeth ignoring Lydia.
Professor Bennet waved his hand, “Go, my dear, count your beaux in private but do let your mother in on the number later. You know how she worries.”
“I shall go myself,” said Phoebe standing up before Elizabeth could, “Mrs. Hill informs me there are visitors in the pantry. I had better see for myself before I send for the rat catcher.”
Her mouth trembled a little as she spoke for she was terribly worried. That it had come to this, that her lovely Jane and stolid Mary should have degenerated into the flippancy she had once hoped to confine to Gilbert and Elizabeth was more than she could bear.
“There, there, my love,” said Professor Bennet patting her hand, “it is much better to have rats in the pantry than bats in the belfry. Have another cup of tea.”
She pulled her hand away, “The only rodents I am sure of are seated at this table and I really do have better things to do with my time than listen to a respectable man being ridiculed by four very silly girls with not a husband between the lot of them.”
And she stalked towards the door perfectly aware that the moment it closed Gilbert would put his crumb-encrusted knife straight into the marmalade and Lizzy would empty the cow-creamer and make it jump over the half moon croissant plate.
So breakfast in the Longbourn household ended on a sour note but the rest of the day was sweetened by preparations for the Netherfield Christmas ball that evening.
Miss Bingley's transformation of Netherfield’s formal rooms was exquisite and several tradesmen’s families from the neighbourhood would have a sumptuous Christmas because of it. Joiners, cabinetmakers, electricians, plasterers, and decorators had been employed non-stop for three months and the domestic staff had been decorating for days. Stripped branches sprinkled white and silver crowned the doors set with candles and gleaming fairy lights, more fairy lights sparkled and glimmered in the extravagant wreaths of greenery festooning the length of the grand staircase, Christmas roses bloomed where they were told which was almost everywhere, and over it all hung with a thousand glass baubles was a sixteen foot blue Norwegian spruce towering up into the space above the hall. Elizabeth was admiring it with a full heart when seeing Fatty Willikins beetling towards her she adroitly moved out of the way of a bunch of mistletoe someone had attached to a chandelier. Somehow, she thought as she lost herself in the crush, that was probably Charles’ idea, not Caroline’s.