by Peter Archer
Elizabeth inquired after the whereabouts of their mysterious visitor, caught up in her sisters’ infectious excitement. Mr. Bennet, having seated himself by the window and in the midst of lighting his pipe, gestured expansively. “Says he’s a doctor….” At which point, he was interrupted by his wife going on once again about blue boxes in the lane and nattily dressed gentlemen masquerading as country physicians, to which her daughters paid no mind. Lydia clapped her hands in childish excitement, exclaiming “La! A doctor!”
At that precise moment, the drawing room door opened, silencing all of the assembled Bennets. The man standing in the doorway adjusted his bow tie and cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. I do apologize, but I’ve only just realized I’ve come at a bad time, and—” to which the girls politely demurred that it was, in fact, a perfectly reasonable time and, as social obligations dictated, bade him to sit with them. Mrs. Bennet quickly sent a crestfallen kitty to arrange tea for their impromptu gathering.
The stranger, looking quizzically at an instrument resembling a flameless candle, explained, “Well, you see, I seem to have arrived a bit early. I should be here later in the narrative. Right about the time Miss elizabeth Bennet realizes the nature of her true feelings for Mr. Darcy.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Jane Austen’s mother was very proud of her high connections. She was born Cassandra Leigh, and many of the Leighs had become nobility themselves or married into the aristocracy. Moreover, her uncle Theophilus Leigh held the esteemed position of master of Balliol College at Oxford University. Mrs. Austen was certainly clever enough herself to justify a suspicion that Jane’s intellect was the greatest manifestation of a Leigh trait.
Elizabeth issued a shocked declaration of her intention of never having any kind of positive feelings toward such as man as Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Bennet took up her daughter’s discarded book and proceeded to fan herself quite vigorously, having worked herself up to an almost apoplectic state at such an idea as her dear Lizzie and the arrogant and aloof—and very wealthy—Mr. Darcy.
Having made another unintended social faux pas, the stranger retreated from the room into the hall, where Mr. Bennet, who was also intent on making his escape, joined him. At that moment they were passed by Mary Bennet, so intently reading aloud from a well-used copy of Fordyce’s Sermons that she did not seem to even see the oddly attired stranger and quite passed him by without even an acknowledgment.
Apologizing for his daughter’s lack of manners, Mr. Bennet took his guest by the elbow. “Young man, now that you have sufficiently shocked and scandalized the women of my household, let us retire to the study so that you may tell me all about that marvelous contraption of yours. You say it has something to do with time….”
Hubris and Humiliation
MARIA HOPE
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. I must have you!”
The last thing in the world Elizabeth Bennet expected was to see Mr. Darcy walk into the parlor where she sat alone, having excused herself from dining at Rosings that evening. His proposal of marriage caused even greater surprise. Although she thought him a jackass whose sensitivity could fit neatly within one of the thimbles in the sewing basket she had laid aside as he entered, she listened with a calm demeanor. Only by reminding herself, “I am a gentlewoman. I am a gentlewoman,” was she able to refrain from a display of anger at his unbridled audacity.
But his appalling proposal grew worse. She watched him in silent amazement, doubting her ears but eventually having to acknowledge she was hearing correctly. If the way to win a woman was to tell her that loving someone with a family like hers was a horror exceeded only by his expectation of the gnashing of the teeth and tearing of the hair this announcement would incite within his own family, then Mr. Darcy most certainly would have succeeded. Unfortunately for him, she was not the woman for whom this method of wooing would be successful.
Since she could see he truly had no idea of the true consequence he was wounding, she decided to find in his injury to her the means of retribution. She let him finish. Seeing his obvious assumption at his conclusion, that she was his for the asking, nearly made her lose it.
She endeavored to stay her course. Hoping this would be just enough poetry to kill whatever vague inclination he had for her, she turned her rejection into doggerel. “But, sir, you yourself own it true. I am certainly not good enough to be a wife for you.”
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with surprise, and then condescension.
“But, my dear—” he began, only to be interrupted by her quick interjection, “No, sir. Really, I cannot accept your proposal. I am not good enough.”
“But you must. I insist!”
She drew a breath before offering her counterproposal. “Sir, have me you will, but not as your wife. Come to me tonight for the time of your life. My window faces the lane, and it will be open. Don’t disappoint, climb up my trellis, I’m hopin’.”
He heard with shock, disbelief plain upon his face, and—the reaction that eventually overwhelmed those feelings—keen interest. Wanting to assure that he understood correctly, he said, “You would take me to your bed? And you a maiden?”
“You have told me all the reasons you shouldn’t marry me, and yet, you insist you must have me. Is this not a better solution?”
He changed colour before her eyes at the proposal. The man who spoke forcefully before, words flying from his mouth in arrogant haste, now seemed indecisive.
Seeing this, she seized the initiative with a subtle sweetness and gentleness of manner designed to lull him. “If my willingness to bed you without marriage provokes some change in your feelings, then it’s probably exactly as you thought—that you liked me against your will and have now returned to reason. But we certainly both agree, I am a most unacceptable choice to be your bride.”
Elizabeth hoped this would silence him forever. to her dismay, he replied with no little assumed tranquility, “I will come to you as you offer, and when I am finished, you will not be able to deny yourself my lifelong association.”
He continued, following her earlier example in rhyming, “once you have had the best, there is no returning to the rest. once you have lain in my arms, no other will do. You will beg me to marry you.”
Unable to help herself, Elizabeth felt her mouth drop open. The man did, indeed, exceed her expectations. She had thought she was angry previously, but now she found herself nearly biting through her tongue to hold back her words. When she felt she could speak calmly, she allowed herself only to say, “tonight then,” and quitted the room.
On her way to the bedroom where she had been sleeping while a guest at Hunsford Parsonage, Elizabeth smiled as she passed the bedroom whose directions she had given to Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Collins slept there alone most nights, except for Saturdays when his wife, Charlotte, visited before returning to her room. Since tonight was Friday, Elizabeth could know for certain that Mr. Collins would be alone to receive Mr. Darcy as he climbed into the window.
Absinthea Pillock’s Charm School for Girls Whose Fathers Can Afford Tuition
MARGARET FISKE
On a brisk morning, late September in North trollop Downs, the cold breath of autumn plucked the first tender leaves of summer from their branches. Once again, ’twas time for Orientation Day at Tartfield Academy.
A new crop of pigtails, fresh from the hedgerows, filed into the lecture hall in their crisp pinafores and settled on the polished oak benches with their slates poised to record the lessons that would ensure their matrimony to suitable husbands.
As a rather striking woman clad in plum took the podium, the clank of heavy chains could be heard securing the exits. “Welcome to tartfield, ladies. I am your head mistress, Absinthea Pillock.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Pillock,” chimed the pupils.
The head mistress slammed her merry-widowed fist on the lectern with a clamorous ferocity. “Nay! You shall a
ddress me properly as Miss or Mistress, never Missus. Nor should you assume that you shall become wifely candidates based solely upon the fact that your fathers produced the tuition to enroll you here.
“The grim facts are threefold: Firstly, many women will never march the chapel aisle. Secondly, those who do wed often find their husbands unsupportive and must sustain the household by their own means. Thirdly, the world is full of widow makers galore.
“While most finishing programs produce graduates full of fraudulent hope for an impossible future, Tartfield faculty foster no such false expectations. Traditional schooling makes girls far too clever for the pastoral oafs of the township, yet still beneath the affections of gentry.”
The girls squirmed nervously in their seats.
“When do we begin pianoforte, and the embroidery of silk ribbons, and china painting?” asked Alice Singletwit.
“Never,” replied Absinthea. “Such frippery earns you an early, unmarked grave in Potter’s Field. However, if you merely remove that paintbrush from the undecorated china plate and rub it elsewhere, you will achieve happier results, Missy.”
Prim Jenny Periwinkle’s lower lip trembled anxiously. “What exactly are we to learn here?”
Mistress Pillock continued with a rejuvenated vigor. “We teach real-world skills for survival in a manless domicile. First-semester curriculum presents Introduction to Gutter Sniping, Recognition of Items One Cannot Afford, How to Nurture Multiple Cats as Substitute Kin, and tutorials on Cottage Maintenance for Dunces.
“Second session expands on these themes with informative lectures about Staving Off the Scythe of Death by Resale of Other People’s Rubbish, Embracing Your Inner Crone, and Cuisine Derived from Things You Can Catch (which features the preparation of hearty dishes such as Rodent étouffée and Mayfly Surprise Casserole). Also, we cover Ways Not to Waste one’s Primary Childbearing Years Governing Other People’s Offspring for a Pittance.
“Trimester courses focus on the corporal delights and development of one’s Sza Sza Szu. You will leave here with the scruples of a barn cat, eager to strut the cobblestones for profit. Highlights are to include Working the Maypole 101, Overcoming One’s Gag Reflex, and Advanced Mistressing.”
“My father shan’t like these topics,” said Eliza Frost frigidly.
Absinthea tittered. “Poppycock! Your father had the prudence to send you to our academy. He understands that many a gentleman prefers a bit of tartar sauce on their cod, a little something-something that may be absent on the wife’s home menu. So, tart you up, we shall. Here, you will be kept abreast of the latest methodology for snaring a weaker woman’s spouse. Here, you will master the art of trapping a bachelor at the altar by the fabrication of hysterical pregnancy or other vile trickery.
“Today, we shall finish with a preview of the Classical Male Anatomy Laboratory, which offers scholars a rare opportunity for hands-on experience.”
Although most of the audience was gingerly weeping, Miss Pillock did not cease.
“Observe,” she said, thrusting a lever. A curtain dropped, exposing Custodian Dobbins in a state of jubilation, sporting only a grin and a hickory pointer. Little Mary Goodhead swooned and fell into the aisle, splayed in a most salaciously undignified fashion.
“Marvelous!” said the head mistress. “You’re catching on already.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Girls’ schools make several appearances in Austen’s novels, and Austen never has much good to say about them as institutions of learning, although she shows sympathy for the women who work in them. Mrs. Goddard, who runs the boarding school Harriet Smith attends in Emma, treats her boarders with great kindness, but she cannot be doing much for their minds. A much harsher reference to such places appears in the fragment of a novel Austen began that we know as The Watsons. Emma Watson protests that she “would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.” Her sister Elizabeth replies, “I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school…. I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; you never have.” This exchange also certainly shows that many women were faced with nothing but bad options when it came to figuring out how to provide for themselves in life.
The Horrors of Expectation
MATTHEW P. MAYO
Lord Dalnabbie paused, his hand trembling above the drawing-room door’s brass handle. Would she think him too forward? too brazen? Would she deign to glance his way at all? oh, he hoped not. Not on this day, no, no, certainly not today. Or tomorrow, for that matter. Oh dear, what if she greeted him with a “good morning, m’lord.” How does one answer such an offering? Day after day, always the same. It was all too much.
On the other side of the drawing-room door, Tilda, the house-maid, tidied the young mistresses’ sewing basket—the girls were such flibbertigibbets. Much like their mother, Lady Dalnabbie, who lamented daily of ever finding them suitable husbands. And daily, Tilda quelled the urge to shout that the little demons would be lucky creatures indeed to end up wedded. Given the odds, she prayed for their betrothal. tilda did not look forward to spending her future years doting on the two Dalnabbie dimwits as they fluttered into spinsterhood.
Now, Lord Dalnabbie, he was a different sort. Tilda wondered how he had ever managed to marry. Peculiarity rode him hard, as Bonn, the stable boy, said. Indeed, Tilda had spied the master alone many times in the library, smoothing his vest front, sitting stiff and straight, an unopened book beside him on the sofa. He would glance about, a half smile twitching on his mouth, seeming forever on the verge of apologizing for causing possible offense to himself.
Lord Dalnabbie bit down on a tight knuckle. This would not do. He withdrew his hand from its near grasp of the brass door handle. No, not this way. With a quick, bold gesture, surprising even himself, Dalnabbie stuffed the trailing end of his handkerchief into his cuff, but could not keep from staring at the door. He fancied he almost heard the soft sounds of Tilda neatening the room. Tilda. His breath paused, and with a sudden willfulness summoned from his very slippers, he turned in the hallway of his ancestral home and remounted the stairs. This would not do at all. …
Inside the drawing room, Tilda heard the master dithering. She narrowed her eyes and considered racing for the door, recalling that morning years before when she had opened it to find him standing there. She had shrieked, then apologized and curtsied low. But his paroxysms had lasted for days. MacNee, the valet, had told her that, buried under layers of bedding, Lord Dalnabbie had twitched and wept as if he bore the world’s shame on his shoulders.
And yet, since his recovery, she knew that he descended the stairs each morning, hovering in the passage outside the drawing room, like the shadow of a ghost, trembling, reaching, but never quite grasping …
Good heavens, thought Tilda as she tied back the last curtain. It’s his house, after all. Bonn was right—money is wasted on the rich.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Lord Dalnabbie paused, one foot poised above the final step. Though he knew it to be carpet, and thus suitable to disguise his footfalls, he suspected that his timing this morning had been off. He had, of course, read about such things happening to perfect strangers in faraway places, but to date it had not happened to him.
He set down a tentative left foot, to act as a guide. Then, and no doubt urged forth by the very keeper of the gates of hell himself, first one, then both of the girls’ bedchamber doors wrenched inward as if forced by storm gales, and his daughters, dressed for the morning, thundered toward him, hooting like gibbons.
Tilda paused at the bottom of the stairs on her way to give Cook a hand. She heard the girls’ doors, their feet on the upper landing, their shouts. And so begins another day, she thought, looking up at them, her teeth tight behind a smile.
At that precise moment, Dalnabbie glanced downward, toward the bottom of the stairs, the very direction from which he had just returned. There stood Tilda, who had appeared as if from nowhere at all. Ther
e seemed no escape. Assault from below and from above. He glanced again. Yes, he was certain of it. No escape.
Lord Dalnabbie felt his mouth move, trying to form words. With all of their mother’s grace, his daughters pushed by him, braying and stomping down the stairs. Toward Tilda, dear Tilda …
Dalnabbie trembled as if he were a leaf in a gale. He could not move from the top stair, even as a new horror swept over him—soon his wife would rise. Soon, and she would expect a response to her greeting. Oh, it was all too much. …
Proper Order
MICHAEL WRIGHT
Lady Catherine opened the small leather-bound volume and read, It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
“Poppycock,” said Lady Catherine. In her youth she had known many wealthy unmarried men whose only interests were to slaughter large quantities of game birds and to consume even larger quantities of intoxicating liquors. She closed the book and reached for a volume of Fordyce’s Sermons.
The following Tuesday, when her niece made her weekly visit, Lady Catherine inclined her head in the direction of the morning-room table. “You may retrieve the novel you so kindly brought for me. I found it quite stupid.”
“Why, Aunt, you did not enjoy the story?”
“My dear Jane, I did not attempt to read the story, after encountering the absurd premise given in the first line.”
“But, Aunt, it is a most delightful tale of obstacles overcome on the way to achieving happiness in marriage.”
“In that case, I am glad I did not continue reading. It is my firm belief that literature should seek to uphold the virtues of an ordered society, not indulge the wanton emotions of parlor maids. Happiness in marriage, indeed!”
“I assure you, Aunt, that the books of this author serve not only to entertain but to instruct. Perhaps you might enjoy another of her works.”