The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

by Colleen McCullough

  “Oh, Fitz! It must concern Mary!” Fingers trembling, Elizabeth snapped the seal and unfolded the single sheet of paper, then began to read its few lines.

  She emitted a sound between a howl and a shriek.

  “What is it?” Fitz demanded. “Tell me!”

  “Mary and Angus are on their way to Gretna Green!” She thrust the letter at him. “Here, read for yourself!”

  “If that doesn’t beat all!” he breathed. “They have not a soul there but themselves. Stolen a march!”

  “How will they ever get on?” Elizabeth asked, feelings mixed.

  “Very well, I hazard a guess. She is an eccentric, and he is a man who likes unusual things. He’ll let her have a free rein until she bolts, when he’ll curb her firmly but kindly. I’m delighted for them, I truly am.”

  “So am I—I think. She says she has written to Charlie with the news. Oh, why are we in London? I want to go home!”

  “We can’t until the season is over, you know that. I do have hopes that Georgie will continue to behave herself, but if we aren’t here—!”

  “Yes, of course you’re right. You don’t think Georgie will accept the Duke, or Lord Wilderney?”

  “No, she’s too much a Darcy to care for peers. I think she may choose Mr. John Parker of Virginia.”

  “Fitz! An American?”

  “Why not? He has the entrée—his mother is Lady de Main. He’s also extremely wealthy, so he doesn’t need Georgie’s dowry. Still, it’s early days. The season hasn’t yet really commenced.”

  “Our first chick will probably fly the nest,” Elizabeth said, rather disconsolately.

  “We have four others.”

  “No,” she said, blushing. “Five others.”

  “Elizabeth! No!”

  “Elizabeth, yes. In June, I think.”

  “Then we’ll go home in April, Season or no Season. You won’t want to grow too heavy in London, it’s damp and smoky in spring.”

  “I would like that very much.” She heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “Next year will be a quiet one. The year after that, we’ll have to bring out Susie.”

  Jane descended on London shortly after the news of Mary’s sensational elopement reached her, free to do so because Caroline Bingley had finally found a useful occupation: turning the Bingley boys from harum-scarums into beautifully comported gentlemen. Though she did quite a lot of complaining, secretly she loved it. Nothing gratified her more than wielding power. Not that she had things all her own way. The Bingley boys were foes worthy of her steel.

  “Louisa and Posy are free to do what they have yearned to do for years,” Jane said to Elizabeth the day after she took up residence in Bingley House.

  “And what is that?” Elizabeth asked dutifully.

  “Sell the Hurst property in Brook Street and move to Kensington,” said Jane.

  “No! Among what Fitz would call the old tabbies?”

  “Better to be the only Persians in a society of tabbies than be reduced to hanging on Charles’s sleeve for every guinea,” Jane answered, smiling. “Mr. Hurst left them with very little apart from the property, and that would have been mortgaged had Charles not put his foot down. Its sale has given them a comfortable income that will not require Louisa in particular to economise on her clothes or sell her jewels.”

  “Well, Caroline was ever the driving force. Does she know?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What did she have to say?”

  “Very little. Hugh had chosen to short-sheet her bed the night before she received Louisa’s letter, and Percival broke rotten eggs into her favourite walking boots.” Jane looked demure. “By the time she had found the culprits and exacted vengeance, Louisa’s news was a trifle stale.”

  “How can you bear her at Bingley Hall day after day, Jane?”

  “With equanimity, actually.”

  “So what brings you to London?”

  “I want to say farewell to Louisa and Posy, as I doubt I’ll ever have much time to visit Kensington.”

  “And Charles is coming home,” Elizabeth accused.

  “Yes, he is. Oh, it will be delightful to see him!”

  “And so the babies will begin again,” Elizabeth said to Fitz that night, curled up next to him in bed.

  “It is their business, my dear.”

  “I would not mind, were it not for her health.”

  “At forty-six, how many babies can she bear?”

  “Oh! I never thought of that.” She sat up and linked her arms about her knees. “You are right as always, Fitz. We are all growing old.” She looked wistful. “Where do the years go?”

  “Provided that you survive this child, Elizabeth, I don’t care,” he said, stroking her cheek. “When do you plan on telling our children that there will be a new addition to the family?”

  “Not until February, I think. Just before Georgie’s coming-out ball.”

  “Is that wise? Why not now?”

  “If I tell them then, it will take the edge off Georgie’s nerves. With a duke and an earl refused, I don’t wish her to face that ordeal feeling that every debutante’s eye is upon her.”

  “It is their mamas who are jealous, my love.”

  And so the news was broken, though not without some discomfort on Elizabeth’s part.

  Charlie was delighted, hugged and kissed his mama, shook his father warmly by the hand and announced that at his advanced age he would feel more like an uncle than a brother.

  Susie and Anne were pleased, but not quite sure what to make of decrepit parents who produced babies. Cathy was furious; the family had to endure an outbreak of pranks that only ceased after Charlie shook her until her teeth rattled and told her roundly that she was a selfish little beast.

  Georgie was so thrilled that she sailed through her ball and marked the occasion as memorable by declining to become Mrs. John Parker of Virginia.

  “Why?” asked Elizabeth, exasperated. “To refuse so many advantageous offers is ridiculous! You’ll get a reputation for the worst kind of capriciousness and receive no offers at all.”

  “With a dowry of ninety thousand pounds?” Georgie asked smugly. “I do not intend to marry yet, Mama—if at all. I am enjoying my season, especially breaking hearts. You were twenty-one when you married Papa, and had had other offers. Besides, I refuse to have a betrothed underfoot while I am busy watching our new precious mite grow into a person.”

  Well, that answers one question, thought her mother: Georgie is not in love with any of her suitors.

  What she didn’t know (and Georgie had no intention of telling her) was that every week Georgie wrote to Owen Griffiths, who had not yet succumbed to her charms, but would, she was sure. She had worked out how to have her cake and eat it too, even if Queen Marie Antoinette had failed. When time had proven that she was a dedicated spinster, she intended to buy a farm on the outskirts of Oxford; then she could be a farmer and Owen could be an Oxford don.

  Word came from Glasgow that Mr. and Mrs. Angus Sinclair would shortly be embarking upon a ship to sail to Liverpool, as both orphanages were nearing completion, and Mary wanted to be on hand to drive both teams of builders mad. Everyone knew that builders might be relied upon for ninety percent of the works, but never bothered with the last ten percent. These two projects, vowed Mary, would be finished down to the last nail and the last touch of paint in the most obscure corner.

  Angus had finally succumbed to the need a wealthy man was supposed to have for the status of a country seat. Alastair and his brood occupied the Scottish mansion, and some weeks of Mary’s company had reduced them to abject terror. The very thought of Mary resident in Scotland had Alastair’s wife in the throes of vapours and Alastair himself on the verge of emigration to America. So to learn that Angus intended to live in close proximity to the Sheffield orphanage caused rejoicing in every Sinclair breast north of the Border. They could escort him and Mary on board the ship with light hearts and sincerest good wishes. Let Angus live among the Sassenachs
!

  He found seven thousand acres outside Bradfield on the edge of the moors; they included a forest, a park and a proper number of tenant farms. Because the mansion could be sited atop a tall hill, Mr. and Mrs. Angus Sinclair agreed that the property should be named Ben Sinclair.

  In the meantime, said Angus’s letter to Fitz in London, would Fitz object if they stayed at Pemberley until Ben Sinclair became a reality?

  Everyone gathered at Pemberley or Bingley Hall for the summer of 1814, eagerly awaiting the birth of two longed-for, very worrying babies. The only defector was Owen Griffiths, who was not sure if he could withstand Georgie’s charms did he see her in the flesh, so prudently went home to Wales. His paper upon the movements of Caesar in Gaul had circulated far and wide, so perspicacious was it upon things like the inaccuracy of Caesar’s mileage; the academic Powers That Be were now hailing him a formidable future scholar. If the formidable future scholar kept Georgie’s letters in a neat bundle tied with a satin ribbon the colour of her eyes, that was his business, no one else’s. When he wrote to her, he addressed her as his dear Scruff. Her letters to him said “dear Owen.”

  Elizabeth’s pregnancy had been uneventful yet burdensome; she swore to Fitz that this one was a giant. Her labour was exhaustingly long, though uncomplicated, and resulted in a huge boy child with curly black hair and Fitz’s fine dark eyes. Provided that he was fed by two wet-nurses, he was a quiet and placid baby, but alert.

  “God has been very good to us,” Elizabeth said to Fitz.

  “Yes, my sweetest lady. Ned has been returned to us, and this time he will rejoice in his name. Edward Fitzwilliam Darcy. Who knows? Perhaps he will be prime minister.”

  Mary’s pregnancy was more eventful, chiefly due to the book Kitty had sent her. It was written by an aristocratic German obstetrician who had definite ideas upon motherhood, despite (as Angus protested) his inability to experience the phenomenon in person. Everything she consumed was measured or weighed, its proportion of the whole diet regulated, and her own bodily condition monitored ruthlessly.

  As the months wore on Angus grew increasingly sure that an expectant Mary was a fair indication of her ability to don the mental trappings of a married lady. She had hopped into the connubial bed with all Lydia’s glee, rendering him profoundly grateful that her child-bearing years were nearing an end. Otherwise, he reflected, she would probably have followed Jane’s example and fallen again every time he hung up his trousers for the next twenty years. Therefore he could be confident that his bride was up to the physical demands of marriage.

  As to the intellectual and spiritual demands—she took them in her stride too. Who else would have seized upon the ideas of an unknown German accoucheur as if his book were an obstetrical bible? Who else would have accepted pregnancy as a matter of course, made no attempt to hide herself away and, as her girth increased, shoved her belly into people’s midriffs thinking she was as thin as ever? Unaccustomed to witnessing blatantly pregnant ladies, those she met, including the staff of “her” orphanage at Sheffield, were forced to pretend she was indeed as thin as ever. When “her” children told her she was getting fat, she told them outright that she was growing a new baby inside her tummy, and made them a part of the process. Her frankness appalled the staff, but…hers was the hand that fed.

  As if that were not enough, she insisted upon journeying to London to see how Angus lived there, and participated in the pleasures of choosing furniture, carpets, drapes, wallpapers and paints for the interior of Ben Sinclair. Much to Angus’s relief, her taste in these things proved better than he expected, and, besides, when it veered away from his own tastes, she deferred to him with equanimity. She met all his London friends, and held sway at several dinner parties with that distressing bulge un-camouflaged.

  “The worst of it is,” she informed the insufferably stiff and proper Mrs. Drummond-Burrell with a peal of laughter, “that I cannot pull my chair into the table, and end in wearing everything from soup to sauce.”

  Perhaps the time was right for change, or perhaps it was just that Mary was Mary; Angus didn’t know, save that even the most waspish among his acquaintances hungered for more of her refreshing candour, particularly after they realised that her grasp of politics was highly developed and she cared not a jot that ladies were not supposed to be political. Shorn of his anxieties on her behalf, Angus understood that over the space of one short summer Mary had changed from a dandelion into a most exotic orchid. What he suspected he would never know was how much of the orchid had always lain dormant underneath.

  Entering her eighth month, she returned to Pemberley to make sure the child would be born surrounded by its family. So by the time that she began her labour early in September, Angus had a very good idea of what his married life was going to entail. His wife intended to be his partner in all his enterprises, and expected him to be a partner in all her enterprises. It was as clear to him as it was to Fitz and Elizabeth that the Sinclairs were going to be in the vanguard of social change, particularly education. Mary had found her métier—universal education. Over the wrought-iron gates to the Children of Jesus orphanages at Buxton and Stannington stood the motto Mary had coined: EDUCATION IS LIBERTY.

  To the surprise of everybody save Angus, Mary bore her labour pains with patience, tranquillity and copious notes she wrote in a diary between contractions. Twelve hours later she produced a long, slender boy child with a magnificent pair of lungs; he screamed the house down until shown the purpose of a nipple, then mercifully shut up. Mary was following the dictates of her German bible still, and nursing him herself. Luckily she was brimful of milk, whereas the more buxomly endowed Elizabeth was dry.

  “God has been very good to us,” she said to Angus, who was a ghost of himself after twelve hours spent pacing up and down the Great Library with Fitz and Charlie for company. “What do you wish to call him?”

  “Have you no suggestions?” he asked.

  “None, my dearest friend. You may name the boys, I will name the girls.”

  “Well, with a head of hair that would set a haystack on fire, it will have to be a Scots name, my wanton wench. Hamish Duncan.”

  “What colour other than carrots could his hair have been?” she asked, stroking the baby’s thick ginger fluff. “A dear wee man! I must arrange for Dr. Marshall to circumcise him.”

  “Circumcise? I’ll have no son of mine circumcised!”

  “Of course you will,” she said, unperturbed. “All manner of horrid substances collect beneath an intact foreskin, including a natural exudate called smegma that looks like cottage cheese. The foreskin is removed by all semitic peoples—Jews, Arabs—as hygienic principle. I imagine that if grains of sand got under it they would hurt dreadfully, so one can see why desert peoples originated it. Graf von Tielschaft-Hohendorner-Göterund-Schunck says that the wall paintings in Egyptian tombs reveal that the ancient Egyptians circumcised. He recommends that all male children be circumcised irrespective of their ancestry. I have followed his advice to the letter, had an easy pregnancy and delivery in my forty-first year, and so must defer to him in this too.”

  “Mary, I forbid it! What will they say of him at school?”

  “No, you don’t forbid it,” she said comfortably. “You will consent because it is the right thing to do. By the time he goes to school, I will have taught him how to argue more successfully than a clutch of Privy Councillors.”

  “The laddie’s doomed,” said Hamish’s father morosely. “Our son will be branded an eccentric long before he goes to school.”

  “There is merit in that,” said Hamish’s mother thoughtfully. “He will have his own niche. Nor, with us as parents, will he be brought up too narrow, as I was.”

  “Certainly he won’t lack character, or be a shrinking violet. But, Mary, I absolutely forbid circumcision!”

  Mary squealed with delight. “Oh, Angus, look! He is smiling! Diddlums, tiddlums, coochy-coo, smile for Papa, Hamish! Show him how much you are looking forward to bein
g circumcised!”

  FINIS

  COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH WAS born in western New South Wales in 1937. A neuroscientist by training, she worked in various Sydney and English hospitals before settling into ten years of research and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in the United States. In 1974 her first novel, Tim, was published in New York, followed by the bestselling The Thorn Birds in 1977 and a string of successful novels, including the acclaimed Masters of Rome series. In 1980 she settled in Norfolk Island, where she lives with her husband, Ric Robinson, and a cat named Shady.