Miss Darcy's Diversions

by Ronald McGowan

  It is true that the air was anything but smokeless, that the carriage way could hardly be described as ‘silent, bare’ and that the throngs of people and carriages quite effectively disguised the beauty of the morning, but still, I should have known. Had I realised I should have reacted appropriately, but I fear I will never be mistress of the impromptu swoon, and so missed my opportunity.

  The sight of Westminster Abbey, however, more than made up for missing St Paul’s and the route, past St. James to Piccadilly, and so up Bond Street to Grosvenor Street held quite enough excitement to fill the day.

  I tried very hard not to gawp, truly I did, but Fitzwilliam must have seen how I gazed at the shop windows, more than I had ever seen before in my life.

  “You need not fear any vile contamination in this part of town,” he remarked. Royal patronage naturally removes any such taint, and you will be hard put to find a doorway her without its ‘by appointment’ sign. Miss Bingley will no doubt introduce you to her own favourites tomorrow, if not sooner.”

  The house in front of which we drew up was quite in the latest style, with the newly fashionable Doric Portico and wrought iron balconies which only a few establishments yet sported.

  Grosvenor Street was no longer almost exclusively the abode of Dukes and Earls – indeed a few shop-fronts had even made their appearance – but it was still one of the smartest addresses in London.

  We were met when we had scarcely passed the doorway by a very elegantly- dressed gentleman with a bustling air and such a broad smile upon his face as I had not seen in many years.

  “Darcy, old fellow,” he cried, shaking my brother’s hand as if anxious to pull it off, “I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you after three weeks stuck in this place with only women to talk to, for I do not count Hurst, who never looks up from his newspaper even when he is not asleep over it. What fun we shall have now that you are here!”

  “You already have a full house, I collect,” said Fitzwilliam, “If Mr Hurst and both your sisters are here already. Are you sure that you can put us up?”

  “On, never worry about that, there is plenty of room, plenty of room. Even my sisters cannot fill the place, which is far too big for us really.”

  “Since sisters appear to be the subject of the moment,” replied Fitzwilliam, “permit me to introduce you to mine.”

  Mr Bingley acknowledged my bob with a very low bow.

  “Forgive me, Miss Darcy,” he said, “if I have appeared to ignore you. I was so taken up with the reunion with an old and valued friend that I had no attention left to give to anyone else. And you may see how I am paid back for that want of attention. Darcy has spoken of you often – in fact your prodigious learning, your remarkable accomplishments, are always on his lips. ‘Georgiana would know that’ he will say when we are all at a loss for some quotation; ‘Georgiana would have no trouble playing that’ is his invariable comment when one of the ladies makes a mistake on her keyboard. But one thing he has never mentioned – and I marvel at the omission – is how remarkably pretty you are.”

  I felt my cheeks turn red instantly. It was all mere convention, of course, no more. But I was fifteen years old, and had barely spoken to any young gentlemen outside my family, and certainly never to one who had called me ‘remarkably pretty’.

  “You are very eloquent, sir,” I replied, “but I must hope that such constant and extravagant praise has not made my name a hissing and a byword among your sisters.”

  “But there you are, you see,” was his retort, “the very first thing you say has a proverb in it. You simply cannot help it, you see, and we shall all look to you to set us to rights with our grammar and prosody and such in future.”

  “I sincerely hope you will not, sir. I should hate to be thought such a prodigy of learning did I think you were serious.”

  “You were right, Darcy, she is as quick as they come. See how she found me out straight off. You are right, too, Miss Darcy, for I cannot bear to be serious. But never fear for my sisters’ disapproval. They disapprove of almost everything except money, and I believe you are well provided with that.”

  “You must ask my guardian about that, sir.”

  “Perhaps I shall, one of these days, but the coffee is waiting in the drawing room, and I must not keep you standing about any longer. Mr and Mrs Hurst are at the shops, but I thought my sister Caroline would have been down by now.”

  We all went through and sat down, and a maid brought a silver tray set with pretty china cups.

  “Bessie,” said Mr Bingley as she turned away, “would you tell Miss Bingley that our guests have arrived?”

  “I hope you will find your room satisfactory,” he continued, turning to me, “It cannot boast of anything much in the way of a view, but we have tried to make it as comfortable as we could. Caroline will give you all the details if you wish. I cannot tell tulle from tulips, nor muslin from Mussulmen.”

  “And are inordinately proud of your ignorance, because it shows your mind is set on higher things,” commented Fitzwilliam. But mine is set on much lower things at the moment, and I sincerely hope that the garret you have allocated to me will have a modicum of comfort reserved to it, if any be left over from my sister’s, that is.”

  “Oh, you are an old campaigner, Darcy, and may rough it. But young ladies are tender plants, you know.”

  They were obviously very old friends, and how long they might have continued in this vein I do not know, for at this point they were interrupted by Miss Bingley’s making her entrance.

  She did not merely come in. She did not even arrive. She definitely made an entrance. No other words could adequately describe the way she glided through the door and gazed around the room for applause.

  Miss Bingley was a very tall young lady, made to seem even taller by her habit of carrying her nose very high, so that she might, literally, look down upon her company. I had never seen anyone, not even my aunt, dressed so elegantly, nor so fashionably. I hesitate to use a word so unkind as ‘overdressed’, but such a profusion of satins and brocades, such a display of the jeweller’s art did strike me as perhaps a trifle excessive for a meeting between friends on a fine spring morning.

  Her greeting could only be described as gushing, especially towards Fitzwilliam, whom she addressed in terms even more sickeningly familiar than those she used for me.

  If I divulge that I was ‘a treasure’, that we should be ‘such great, great friends’ and that she could not conceive why ‘such a pearl of great price’ had been hidden away in the country for so long, it will convey an idea of her style, which, indeed, I should blush to record verbatim.

  She rather spoiled the effect by the comments she made on my dress, however.

  “But, my dear, wherever did you get such an outré gown? These country styles are quite démodé. It may pass, perhaps, in Derbyshire, but such things will never do in London. I shall take you to my dressmaker’s this afternoon. We shall have such fun there! You will adore her creations,”

  I confess I was not much inclined to like her right from the start. She was undeniably something of a beauty, but so many young ladies are, with nothing else at all to recommend them. Harriet Smith, who could not tell a noun from a verb, nor a fortepiano from the Forty Thieves, was undeniably a beauty.

  The conversation which followed revealed no meeting of minds. The books I mentioned brought nothing but general comments of the ‘I never read novels’ variety, the plays I spoke of were ‘not at all the thing these days’, and at every sentence she strove to turn the conversation to millinery and drapery. When I mentioned that I should like to go to the Opera some day she became more animated, however.

  “One sees the best society at the opera, of course, and visiting between boxes is so much more convenient than traversing the streets. If only the band did not make such a noise, and the singers. There are times when one can hardly make out what one’s companions are saying.”

  “Forgive me, Miss Bingley, but I somehow had the ide
a that the purpose of attending the opera was to hear the music and singing, rather than to gossip with one’s acquaintances. I dare say I am naïve, however.”

  “Oh, is not your sister the sweetest little thing, Mr Darcy? Imagine going to the opera to listen to the singing!”

  “I must confess,” replied Fitzwilliam, “that that had always struck me as rather the point of it all.”

  “But what would be the point of listening to the singing. Ten to one it will be in foreign, anyway.”

  “It is only Italian,” I remarked. “Italian is a very easy language to follow. Indeed, I find it suits music much better than English. I often have difficulty following the meaning when I listen to an English song. The words become so twisted and distorted by the melody.”

  “My,” observed Miss Bingley, “your sister is a very paragon of learning, is she not, Mr Darcy? Pray, when may we expect to read her thesis?”

  Patronising b….! I decided then and there to hate her.

  Mr Bingley, however, who had been sitting studying a note just delivered to him, intervened at this point, however, with such sensitive and intelligent comments on how he should like to be able to speak a foreign language himself, but somehow lacked the head for it, that I quite put him down as a friend.

  Miss Bingley’s gushing platitudes continued nonetheless, until at length even she saw that they were not being heeded. She broke off, therefore, and took up pen and paper.

  “But you must forgive me, Mr Darcy,’ she said, “ I must just write this note to Lady Frome, to thank her for her kind invitation to her rout this evening. Do you know, Mr Darcy, I wish I could prevail upon you to write it for me. You write so well, you have such a firm, clear hand, and you express your meaning s0 succinctly.”

  “I do not write particularly well, and I hold it as a general rule that a gentleman should not intervene in a correspondence between two ladies.”

  “Oh, but if I particularly ask you? But I see you are adamant, and I cannot say that you do not have the right of it.”

  “You see, Miss Darcy, your brother always puts us on the right track. But, tell me, Mr Darcy, shall I mention that I shall be bringing two guests with me?”

  “I thank you for the thought, Miss Bingley, but I must decline to be smuggled into a party to which I have not been invited. If Lady Frome should here of my arrival and send me an invitation, that would be a different thing. But you must consider that I am not here as yet. I have made no calls, left no cards, nor have I received any. As far as London Society is concerned, I do not exist.”

  “Can I not persuade you to escort me?” said Miss Bingley, “I should be so infinitely obliged. But I see you will not have it, and now I consider, perhaps it will not do. Your sister, you see, is quite delightful, Mr Darcy, but I fear I cannot quite make her out. Forgive me, my dear” (this last aside, to me) “but I must be satisfied on such an important point.”

  “Pray, is Miss Georgiana out, or is she not? I am puzzled. She takes a part in conversation with the rest of us, and a very valuable one, too, which seems like being out; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she is."

  Fitzwilliam, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, "I believe I know what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My sister is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me."

  "And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The distinction is so broad.

  Manners as well as appearance are, generally speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl's being out or not. A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite—to confidence! That is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to see a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing—and perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Charles, I dare say you have sometimes met with such changes."

  "I believe I have, but this is hardly fair; I see what you are at. You are quizzing me and Miss Henderson."

  "No, indeed. Miss Henderson! I do not know who or what you mean. I am quite in the dark. But I will quiz you with a great deal of pleasure, if you will tell me what about."

  "Ah! you carry it off very well, but I cannot be quite so far imposed on. You must have had Miss Henderson in your eye, in describing an altered young lady. You paint too accurately for mistake. It was exactly so. The Hendersons of Baker Street. We were speaking of them the other day, you know. Darcy, you have heard me mention James Henderson. The circumstance was precisely as this lady has represented it. When Henderson first introduced me to his family, about two years ago, his sister was not out, and I could not get her to speak to me. I sat there an hour one morning waiting for Henderson, with only her and a little girl or two in the room, the governess being sick or run away, and the mother in and out every moment with letters of business, and I could hardly get a word or a look from the young lady—nothing like a civil answer—she screwed up her mouth, and turned from me with such an air! I did not see her again for a twelvemonth. She was then out. I met her at Mrs. Holford's, and did not recollect her. She came up to me, claimed me as an acquaintance, stared me out of countenance; and talked and laughed till I did not know which way to look. I felt that I must be the jest of the room at the time, and my sister, it is plain, has heard the story."

  "And a very pretty story it is, and with more truth in it, I dare say, than does credit to Miss Henderson. It is too common a fault. Mothers certainly have not yet got quite the right way of managing their daughters. I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong."

  "Those who are showing the world what female manners should be," said her brother gallantly, "are doing a great deal to set them right."

  "The error is plain enough," said the less courteous Fitzwilliam; "such girls are ill brought up. They are given wrong notions from the beginning. They are always acting upon motives of vanity, and there is no more real modesty in their behaviour before they appear in public than afterwards."

  "I do not know," replied Miss Bingley hesitatingly. "Yes, I cannot agree with you there. It is certainly the modestest part of the business. It is much worse to have girls not out give themselves the same airs and take the same liberties as if they were, which I have seen done. That is worse than anything—quite disgusting!"

  "Yes, that is very inconvenient indeed," said Mr. Bingley. "It leads one astray; one does not know what to do. The close bonnet and demure air you describe so well (and nothing was ever juster), tell one what is expected; but I got into a dreadful scrape last year from the want of them. I went down to Ramsgate for a week with a friend last September, just after my return from the West Indies. My friend Snooks—you have heard me speak of Snooks, Darcy—his father, and mother, and sisters, were there, all new to me. When we reached Albion Place they were out; we went after them, and found them on the pier: Mrs. and the two Miss Snooks, with others of their acquaintance. I made my bow in form; and as Mrs. Snooks was surrounded by men, attached myself to one of her daughters, walked by her side all the way home, and made myself as agreeable as I could; the young lady perfectly easy in her manners, and as ready to talk as to listen. I had not a suspicion that I could be doing anything wrong. They looked just the same: both well-dressed, with veils and parasols like other girls; but I afterwards found that I had been giving all my attention to the youngest, who was not out, and had most excessively offended the eldest. Miss Augusta ought not to have been noticed for the next six months; and Miss Snooks, I believe, has neve
r forgiven me."

  "That was bad indeed. Poor Miss Snooks. Though I have no younger sister, I feel for her. To be neglected before one's time must be very vexatious; but it was entirely the mother's fault. Miss Augusta should have been with her governess. Such half-and-half doings never prosper. But now I must be satisfied about Miss Darcy. Does she go to balls? Does she dine out every where, as well as at my sister's?"

  "No," replied Fitzwilliam; "I do not think she has ever been to a ball. She is but lately come from school, and has yet to make her mark in society.”

  "Oh! then the point is clear. Miss Darcy is not out."

  All this while, I stood there, mute as a statue - of Venus, I hope - being discussed by a group of students and their tutor. Had I been out, I should have felt obliged to have something to say to Miss Bingley, perhaps on the subject of civil tongues. Since it had now been authoritatively established that I was not out, however, I felt myself to be spared the necessity, and authorized to ignore all her comments in future.

  Mr Bingley, meanwhile, covered up the slight feeling of awkwardness left by this conversation by begging our pardon for being obliged to desert us.

  “I am wanted yet again at Staples Inn,” he said, waving the note that had just been brought him. “The mills of Chancery may not grind quite so fine as God’s, but I am convinced they grind even slower. You see what a good influence you are, Miss Darcy. I have only just met you and already I am bursting with proverbs and quotations.”

  “Shall I see you for dinner?” asked Miss Bingley.

  “I sincerely hope so, but one never knows when King’s Councils and Sergeants at Law are concerned. They keep such queer hours, almost as bad as parliament men. But I shall see you at the Fromes’ at any rate. Are you sure you will not come with us, Darcy? I am bursting to dance with Miss Georgiana.”

  “I believe Miss Bingley has just made a decisive ruling on that point, but in any case, I have other plans for the evening, thank you.”

  “Well, I really must go. Caroline, I will see you in Curzon Street if not before. Darcy, I will see you at breakfast. Miss Darcy, your eternal and devoted servant.”