What if He Were to Pick Me

by Alyx Silver

  "Don't be ridiculous," he sneered. "I'd have nothing to do with that family. Their uncle is in trade and their mother– Their mother!" He remembered her tirade at the ball and shuddered.

  But Bingley recoiled from his words and stepped back. "Well," he said, stiffly. "Miss Bennet – Miss Jane Bennet – is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld and an angel of patience and modesty and.... and I want her to be my wife."

  Darcy laughed, though it made his head hurt. "Your wife? Charles, you fall in love with a different woman each week. Only last week you worshiped her sister."

  "It is quite forgotten," Bingley said, stiffly. "It never happened. Didn't even Romeo forget Rosaline when he met Juliet? See, I do pay attention when you read Shakespeare aloud, Darce." He grinned. "I never saw true beauty till this night," he quoted, then cleared his throat, self-consciously. "Actually, of course, I knew her long ago, but–"

  Darcy managed to pull himself up, unsteadily, and stand, glaring down at his friend. "You will not propose to this Miss Bennet," he said, ill-tempered and authoritative. "You will not propose to any Miss Bennet. I will not allow you to do this."

  Bingley started a little, or perhaps just stepped back from Darcy's alcoholic breath. But he squared his jaw. "I can't see where it's any of your concern, Mr. Darcy," he said.

  "Of course, it is my concern," Darcy said. "Because.... Because.... Because...." Normally, in his sane and sober state, Darcy would have been able to come up with plenty of reasons. But just then, his stomach realized he was standing up and, startled at the change in position, jumped full force towards his throat.

  It was all Mr. Darcy could do, to make it to a window, before he was most undignifiedly sick.

  As he recovered, he heard Bingley say, behind him, "I don't quite see how you can give advice on anyone's conduct. I don't see why I should take your opinion. In fact, I think I'll go ask for Miss Bennet's hand now."

  "Now?" Darcy croaked. "It's the middle of the night."

  But Bingley had a mad look in his eye. "Now. Right now. True love chooses not its hour."

  He ran out of the room, screaming for his steward to saddle his horse.

  Strange, Darcy thought. I'm the one who drinks and Bingley the one who acts drunk.

  But all this was beyond him. He crept up to his bed and had just fallen into uneasy sleep when he was briefly awakened by the sound of Caroline's trunks being dragged downstairs by three sleepy man servants.

  He heard the thumping and the men's complaints at the weight, and it all resounded in his head like shots of pain.

  Covering his head with his pillow and moaning, he fell into an oblivion not totally devoid of images of Miss Elizabeth Bennet dancing lightly and poised, like a spirit of the air – so perfect, so beautiful, so unattainable. Why it seemed to him her feet made sounds like little bells every time she stepped, as though there were metal inside her slippers. Which of course there wouldn’t be. She was just, somehow, magical.

  At the same time that Mr. Darcy struggled with his conscience and his aching head; at the same time that Mr. Bingley harassed his stable help into saddling a horse in the middle of the night; at that very time, the Bennet household found itself in unprecedented uproar.

  Always, ever since she'd been a very little girl, Mary had been forgotten by both her parents. Mr. Bennet favored his two older, sensible daughters. Mrs. Bennet favored her two pretty, flighty younger daughters. In the middle, forgotten, Mary had always been left to do pretty much as she pleased.

  Up till now, what she pleased was reading and quoting boring maxims. None of which was conducive to disgracing the family, even if her atrocious taste in clothes made her sisters blush.

  But this night, upon returning from the Netherfield Ball, all other four sisters had retired to their rooms, Lizzy expounding on Mr. Darcy's odiousness, Jane speaking brightly of how pleasant a man Mr. Bingley was, and Lydia and Kitty giggling and talking of officers. Through it all, Mr. Collins had tried to interject compliments, mostly to Jane but often to no one in particular. Mrs. Bennet had raved about lace and silks and gowns and how great, how important they would all be when Lydia married Mr. Darcy.

  But Mary had been quiet, looked determined and had run up the stairs to her room almost immediately.

  It wasn't until an hour after going to bed, that Lizzy woke up and, staring at the white ceiling of her room, mentally recapped the evening and their journey home and realized Mary hadn’t come around to wish her a goodnight. More importantly, she had heard no sound at all from Mary’s room.

  "Mary," she said, sitting up in bed, startled. "Mary."

  Something she could not explain made her heart beat faster, her palms sweat.

  Something had happened to Mary. Or Mary had happened to someone. She was sure of it. And she was uncertain which would be more disastrous. Now that she looked up, she remembered an endless array of moments in which Mary had looked longingly at Mr. Stephen Hurst – which meant they must get her better spectacles, Lizzy supposed – and he had looked admiringly at Mary in turn.

  Getting out of bed, while her rational self sneered and mocked – because what could have happened to mousy, stay-at-home Mary? Pious Mary? Frumpish Mary? – she stumbled to her sister's room, and felt her uncertain way to the bed, only to find it made, the cover neatly tucked as Mary always left it.

  Frantically, she ran her hands over the cover again and again, trying to feel for the body that wasn't there.

  Her hand closed on a small piece of paper and she stopped.

  Clutching the paper, she made her way back to her room, and, standing by the window, read by the moonlight, what words she could make out.

  "Dear family," the letter read. "Do not worry yourselves on my account. Circumstances dictated that Mr. Stephen Hurst and I should get married with all possible speed and regretfully without asking consent. Do not trouble yourselves to recover me. We have gone to Gretna Green and I shall soon be back, married, and the happiest of women, as Mrs. Stephen Hurst."

  Lizzy read the paper over and over, again and again, but her brain refused to believe it.

  Years later, she wouldn't be able to remember rousing her family or reading the letter to them. She meant only to read it to Jane, to wake Jane up and read her the letter.

  But, somehow, alarm propagated through the house.

  Mrs. Bennet stood up crying that they were all ruined and Mr. Bennet, pale and drawn in his white night shirt and night cap looked like an older Macbeth bound for slaughter. Jane urged everyone to calm and quiet because Mary and Stephen were sensible and loved each other. Kitty, big eyed and scared-looking, hid in a corner of the room.

  Mr. Collins' snore resounded through the house.

  And in the middle of the emotional scene, while Mary's letter got passed around, Lizzy mentally counted her sisters, wondering why – with all the din – it seemed yet very quiet.

  Then she realized it, and yelled, "Lydia. Lydia."

  Meanwhile, in a very grand estate called Rosings, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Collins’s esteemed and admired patroness, sat at her writing desk, reading and re-reading a letter she’d received from her fawning parson.

  She’d sat there since the letter had arrived late in the afternoon, and still she didn’t know what to do about its contents

  Mr. Bingley had no doubt at all of what he was going to do, and the fact that he had no doubt almost scared him.

  Riding through the fields in the dark of night, he thought only of Jane who looked exactly like an angel come down from heaven and who was all goodness and kindness.

  Mr. Bingley had no experience of kind women and having finally found one decided he must secure her. He must secure her as soon as may be.

  Only halfway there did he start wondering if he'd be waking up the Bennets.

  Still, he could not go back. He could not go back and face Darcy and admit to any loss of resolution. No. He'd sleep at the door to Longbourn if that's what it took and propose first thing in the morning.
>
  But, drawing closer to Longbourn, he realized that this would be quite unnecessary. Every window in the Bennet house showed light. From one of them, on the northwest corner, curtains floated outward in the breeze, and a little rope ladder hung to the ground.

  Closer still, words reached Mr. Bingley's ears.

  "Oh, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Bennet, we are all ruined."

  "Mama, calm yourself."

  "I'm sure they love each other and will be very happy."

  "Oh, but Mary! Lydia! My dear, dear girls. Who will fight Darcy and Hurst and make them marry? Mr. Bennet, you must fight them. You must. Only don't get killed or we'll be turned out to starve in the hedgerows."

  "Calm yourself Mrs. Bennet," Mr. Bennet's peremptory shout.

  Mr. Bingley slowed his horse's gallop to a canter. Darcy? Hurst? Darcy was drunk as a Lord in the Bingley ball room. And Hurst.... Well, Hurst had a wife. Who could he be forced to marry? And Miss Mary Bennet? Who would marry Miss Mary Bennet, forced or not?

  Leading his horse apace to the source of this puzzling noise, Mr. Bingley thought there must be a good explanation, for the Bennets were very good people and wouldn't needlessly smear his friend and his brother in law.

  It was the letter found on Miss Lydia Bennet's bed that tore it. It read,

  I'm going to Gretna green, and if you can't tell with whom, then you're all simpletons. Don't worry about me. My sisters will be disappointed at not being bridesmaids, but that can't be helped. I'll be with the man I adore. Your daughter, Lydia Bennet (for now. But I'll soon trade it for a better sounding name.)

  Mrs. Bennet, hands over mouth, started screaming immediately, while what color remained to Mr. Bennet drained, leaving only a marble–like hardness to his look.

  Lizzy put her hands to either side of her hips. Darcy. She knew it. Darcy. Mary was all her fault, of course. She hadn't even thought that Mary was in danger. But Lydia! She'd tried to protect Lydia from Darcy. If only Lizzy's father had listened to her.

  Well, there was only one thing to be done now, and Lizzy was ready to do it.

  She doubted the two would be gone very far from Netherfield. Maybe the villain had even thought to keep her sister there for the night. He struck her as the sort of man who might very well take his comfort even in this, selfish as he was.

  She would go to Netherfield and recover her sister. That's what she'd do.

  She went to the stables and saddled Nan, and climbed on the nag, without even thinking to change out of her white nightshirt.

  Riding like the wind past a very–slow–moving Mr. Bingley, she didn't think of what an odd spectacle she must present but only, "what is he doing here?"

  Bingley saw Elizabeth Bennet ride off. The poor girl, he thought. She must be sleep riding. How she could sleep with all this noise her family was making, he didn't know.

  The noise was now explained, though. They must be shouting to try to wake her.

  He was glad his Jane was not tainted by such aberrations.

  Thus thinking, smugly, he knocked on the door.

  The door was thrown open by a housekeeper who looked frazzled and sour.

  "Mr. Bennet," Bingley said. "I would like to see Mr. Bennet and er.... Miss Bennet but not, er, in that order."

  The housekeeper had the look of a person who has resigned herself to insanity.

  She took his hat and conducted him into the house where the sight of Miss Bennet, her hair loose down her back like a golden cascade and her lace nightgown molding her figure more than any dress, made Mr. Bingley blush and his heart race faster.

  He smiled at her, a big smile. "I came– I mean, Miss Bennet, if you're not engaged, I wonder if you'd marry the next one with me.... I mean, marry me.... I mean...." The poor man hardly knew what he said, staring into his beloved's blue, blue eyes.

  But Jane seemed to understand his stammering. She put her hands forward and walked a step towards him. She smiled her angelic smile. "I am not engaged sir," she said. "I mean, I would love to be. I mean...."

  Bingley stretched his hands towards her and they would surely have held hands except for Mr. Bennet stepping between them. "What do you think you're doing sir?" he asked Bingley.

  "I.... sir.... I would very much like to marry your daughter, Miss Bennet."

  "Jane? Marry Jane?" Mr. Bennet's eyes flashed indignant disbelief. "No, dear sir. I wouldn't trust you nearer my daughters than the village. No. You shall not marry her. Nor any of my other daughters, before you ask."

  "I do not wish to marry your other daughters. Only Jane."

  "No," Mr. Bennet shouted.

  He had the wild, insane look of a man whose inner springs of reason have dried up, or at least do no more than trickle softly onto the sands of his madness. "No. Oh, no. I have at last learned to be cautious. Marry? None of my daughters shall marry. I have learned to be cautious. No soldiers shall visit this house, or even pass through the village. No men shall ever come near them. Or even be allowed to look at them from a distance, or through opera glasses. Balls are strictly forbidden, unless they stand up with one of their sisters, or sit with one of their sisters. And none of them will stir out of the door until they can prove to me that they've spent ten minutes that day in a rational pursuit."

  This last sentence was too much for Kitty, who burst into loud sobbing.

  Mr. Bennet seemed to notice this, as he hadn't the horrified looks of his other daughter or his wife wailing, "Oh, let her marry Bingley Mr. Bennet, for otherwise Collins will turn us out of this house, and we'll all be ruined."

  Mr. Bennet's eyes paused on his youngest daughter present with something like amazement.

  "Oh, Kitty," he said, softly and tried to smile paternally. Only he was very far from the state in which a man can smile credibly without looking like a mass murderer. "Don't distress yourself my dear. If you're good for the next ten years, I'll take you to a review."

  Kitty shrieked, stomped her foot in fury, and ran, screaming, down the hallway and up the stairs to the bedroom level.

  Seconds later, Mr. Collins' thunder–like snore stopped.

  "Well, that's torn it," Mr. Bennet said. "She woke the toad." And, turning the same helpful countenance to Bingley that he tried to turn on his daughter, he said, "You see, dear sir, you cannot marry Jane because I'm sure you will be your friend's second in the duel over my daughter Lydia. Yes. I can't have you for a son in law, because how would it then look if I shot you. So you must be patient. After the duel, you can marry Jane. Unless you're dead, in which case, of course, you shouldn't, though I read in this Russian novel...."Prattling with a horrible amiability that could only arise from a profoundly disturbed mind, he led a shocked, scared Bingley to the door and out of it to the dark night and his waiting horse.

  The whole episode had been so strange that it was halfway to Netherfield before Bingley fully comprehended that he'd been refused.

  Lizzy got to Netherfield, and found it dark and slumbering.

  It would have deterred her at any other time, but now she was in no mood for it. "Neither dark of night," she told herself. "Nor being in a nightgown, nor the deviousness of Mr. Darcy shall keep Lizzy Bennet from defending her sisters."

  Thus muttering, she knocked at a side door.

  She didn't know this side door was right underneath the window to Mr. Darcy's chamber.

  Mr. Darcy woke up with a frightful thunderstorm.

  At least he thought it was a thunderstorm. One of the most awful ones he'd ever heard, the claps resounding through the house with a force to make the walls tremble and the doors buckle.

  And, with the thunderclaps, there was an unearthly voice, a voice he could hardly believe was from this world, a voice not unlike that of the second Miss Bennet.

  Upon opening his eye a fraction of an inch, against what appeared to an elephantine weight installed upon his eyelid, Mr. Darcy tried to focus on the words that angelic – if ever so slightly hysterical – voice was saying. Presently he distinguished, "Open up within." And, "U
nhand my sister, you villain."

  The only thing Darcy's alcohol–beclouded brain could make of all this was that Bingley had lost his mind and eloped with the fair Jane, or possibly kidnaped her when Jane refused to be the object of a man who but so recently pined for her younger sister.

  "Idiot," Darcy thought, and mumbled something very like "'ni'niot" because his tongue didn't seem to fully obey the commands of his brain. His mouth tasted like an unswept stable. But through it all, he was fairly sure that Bingley had been an idiot – or a ni'niot which Darcy suspected was some tribe in the frozen wastes of North America – and, in all the tender mercies of male friendship, thought up several curses for Bingley's less than normal brain.

  "Should have listened to me," he thought. What he said sounded like a disconnected series of grunts, which we'll refrain from reproducing. "Should have listened to his best and oldest friend. What would have happened to his dumb behind if I weren't forever pulling it out of trouble."

  The thunder – which Darcy now perceived to be the sound of fists pounding on a door – and Miss ElizabethBennet's shrill demands continued.

  There was no sound of a servant stirring, no sound of anyone going to open the door. Of this Darcy was sure, because to his sensitized ears and head, the sound of a mouse creeping across the floor would be too loud.

  "Idiot," Darcy thought, sitting up. "If that idiot didn't allow his servants to do as they pretty much please, they would have some respect, and I wouldn't have to get up."

  He held his head between his hands, fairly sure that, but for that precaution, said part of his anatomy would split and – possibly – allow the emergence of a fully armed woman from within like Zeus birthing Athena from his cranium.

  But no, the fully armed woman was outside, Darcy thought, as Miss Bennet's voice shrieked, "If you had any honor, you'd open this door."