The trio repaired from the modest upper reaches of the house to the grander corridors that led to the family’s private apartments. The damaged harpsichord stood in Georgiana’s personal parlour, a sunny room with pale, fresh colours and modern furnishings, the emphasis on lightness and comfort. The vista from the windows stretched up the slope to the hanging woods above the house, the greenery outside echoed in the Chinese wallpaper with its repeating pattern of birds and foliage.
Charlotte took her daughter firmly by the hand, and began listing the strictures under which she would be allowed to remain in a room so pristine and populated by fragile ornaments. Laura was temporarily subdued until Herr Rosenstein began to unpack his box of tools, releasing the scents of linseed oil and cedar. Soon, she was assisting him in this important task, receiving an explanation for each piece she helped lift from the box. The materials of his trade released, he played a short piece by a Mr Bach – to test the keys, he explained – and Charlotte could hear that some of the lower notes were indeed sadly out of tune.
Next, he shuffled through an assortment of wood fragments and shavings as if dealing a pack of cards, repeatedly disappearing under the instrument to hold up samples to compare them with the fabric of the original. When he was satisfied, he lit a spirit lamp, and began concocting a glue mixture, the room now filling with more pungent and less pleasant smells. Once it was the consistency he desired, he began applying it in tiny amounts to leaves of wood he then inserted into the cracks in the damaged harpsichord.
Laura was fascinated at first, but she had an attention span consistent with her age and, after twenty minutes or so, she arranged herself on a divan in the corner. After earnestly explaining that she was not sleepy, she was just closing her eyes, she fell into the sudden boneless slumber available only to small children and kittens.
Once again, silence fell between the two adults and, once again, it was an easy one.
‘Frau Collins,’ said Herr Rosenstein, ‘I could require that you entertain me as we wait for the glue to dry. I did warn you that this would be a tedious business. But you are equally welcome to choose a book from Fräulein Georgiana’s personal collection, or simply to rest your eyes, as your daughter assures us she is doing.’
‘I would happily entertain you, Herr Rosenstein,’ said Charlotte. ‘But truly, I know not how I could accomplish such a task. Last night, listening to you speak of your travels and experiences, I felt – not foolish exactly, but so narrow. My life has been such a limited one by your standards. Until my marriage I never left my parents’ home in the small town of Meryton, except for one trip to London with my family – the occasion on which my father was knighted for his services to the Mayor. And this visit to Pemberley is the furthest I have ever been from my home in Kent. I have seen and done very little, you know.’
‘But you run a household, you are a wife and helpmeet to a clergyman, and a mother to two daughters,’ he said. ‘Surely this must expose you to all that is most rich in human experience?’
‘I have never thought of my domestic life in those terms, I confess. Each day is similar to a skein of wool; I pick up one end and follow it through to the other, trying to wind it as neatly as possible, smoothing out burrs and knots.’
‘You must remember, Frau Collins, that your life is as foreign, exotic even, to me as my life in Salzburg and Vienna would be to you. If you are so inclined, I would be grateful if you would recite the story of that life to me.’
Charlotte was both nonplussed and flattered. ‘But where should I start? You surely cannot wish to hear of my childhood. I assure you that nothing of any import happened in those years.’
‘Why not tell me about life in this village you speak of? Is this where you met your husband? Was he part of your circle, a neighbour, perhaps? Someone you knew in childhood?’
Charlotte was silent for a moment, recalling her courtship – if one could call it that – by Mr Collins. Could she tell this new friend the entire truth – the very ordinary, but by no means edifying circumstances in which an English gentlewoman of straitened means had managed to attain a husband?
‘My husband is cousin to Mrs Darcy, you know. Our families were neighbours in Hertfordshire, and she and I were intimate friends. I met him when he first visited her family.’ She paused, remembering the voluble young man she had first met seven winters ago. She had not had the slightest inkling of what the future might hold then, not even the faintest speculation: she had assumed that as putative heir of the Bennet estate, he was present to establish some conciliatory bond with his cousins.
But did the tale even begin there? Had it not started when Mr Bingley and his party had taken possession of Netherfield Park, a few miles distant from the town of Meryton, that same fateful winter? No dramatic event, and yet a tossed pebble that was to create ever-widening ripples throughout their small society, changing the course of the lives of the Misses Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, and spreading to lap at the edges of her own life.
Could she admit that her oldest and dearest friend, the lively and lovely Elizabeth Bennet, had been her husband’s first matrimonial object? That in a different life, instead of presiding over Pemberley, Lizzy might have been a clergyman’s wife, taking soup to the poor and mending clerical garb? For a moment, a sense of vertigo gripped her, as she imagined Lizzy in her place at Hunsford Parsonage, gliding through the rooms, ordering the pantry, instructing the servants. In her place. And where might she, Charlotte, be then? She would never have given birth to her children, to Tom. It did not bear contemplation.
It could even be considered that the beginning of her story, and the root of her troubles, lay in the fact that she, Charlotte, had been born a woman – a gentlewoman of impecunious means. This had never been a productive route for contemplation, and yet, if she was honest, perhaps her current situation stemmed from that one significant day back in Meryton, that moment she had stood in the lane between Netherfield Park and Lucas Lodge, experiencing all the helplessness of her situation as a single woman with no prospects. Perhaps the spark of her present history had been set at that moment of frustration.
She looked over at her sleeping daughter, her hair the colour of ripe barley in the light streaming through the window, then glanced at Herr Rosenstein, trying to discern any trace of mockery in his face. But his expression remained open and sincere. She could not of course tell him all – but perhaps she could tell him some of her story.
She took a deep breath and cast her mind back seven years. It was as good a place as any to begin.
1811
CHAPTER XIII
CHARLOTTE WAS TIRED TO THE bone. Tired of the universally acknowledged truism: that a single woman of no great fortune must be in want of a life, at the beck and call of all who might find her momentarily useful, a blank template waiting for the impress of others. Standing in a lane she had walked since childhood, a shuttlecock batted between the lives of others, she struggled to master sensations of both entrapment and aimlessness.
And the day had started out so promisingly. Mrs Bennet and her younger daughters were to visit Netherfield Park, where Miss Bennet and Lizzy were in residence until such time as the former had recovered from a cold caught after riding over in inclement weather, and the latter was satisfied that her nursing was no longer necessary. Charlotte had been invited to join their party, and her father and brothers, who were keen to see the horses and dogs of the Netherfield gentlemen, had walked over with her to Longbourn shortly after breakfast. Charlotte and her father, Sir William, had squeezed into the Bennets’ carriage along with Mrs Bennet and her two youngest daughters, Kitty and Lydia, while the Lucas boys set off down the lane on foot with whoops of encouragement, and were soon left behind.
Netherfield Park was only a few miles distant, and they arrived at the handsome modern house in no time. Charlotte had never been inside before, and was happy to look around at new sights and objects of interest, and admire the furnishings and paintings. The Netherfield party welcomed the
m with varying degrees of cordiality, and initial bows, curtseys, and compliments were dispensed with graciously enough. Mrs Bennet was soon taken upstairs to see her elder daughters, while the gentlemen exchanged remarks concerning the rotation of crops and the hunting season. These were hardly enlivening topics, especially for the young ladies present, but their turn came soon enough. Sir William asked for a tour of the library, and Mr Darcy was obliged to lead him from the room. Charlotte’s brothers, still panting from their walk, took this as their chance to escape to the stables, and more socially interesting conversation could begin, especially once the younger Bennet sisters began a planned attack on Mr Bingley, clamouring for a ball. To this he made courteous noises of agreement, while stipulating that they should wait until their eldest sister had fully regained her health.
The party was a large one, which increased once Mrs Bennet and Lizzy had descended from Jane’s quarters, and Mr Darcy returned to join the company, though without seeming to take any pleasure in it, which intrigued Charlotte. She took it upon herself to engage him with a query as to whether he had much leisure for reading, and although he replied unsmilingly, there was no disdain in his tone: ‘I do not read as much as I might wish. I feel I must remain informed of developments at home and abroad, and rely on newspapers, especially when in the country.’
Encouraged, Charlotte responded, ‘I seldom read the papers, as my father provides us with a daily digest. I never know whether print is his friend or foe, as reading the news seems to aggravate as much as enlighten him.’
Mr Darcy had no opportunity to respond. There was a slight commotion as the parlourmaid bobbed in the doorway. ‘Excuse me, madam,’ she addressed the lady of the house, ‘but Lady Lucas’s Jenny is here with a message, madam, to say that Miss Lucas is required at home right away.’
Mrs Bennet shot Charlotte, who was clenching her hands in her lap, a look that combined shrewdness with malice. ‘A shame you have to leave us. I hope your mother is quite well?’
Charlotte wanted to scream, stamp her feet, and throw china across the room. Mrs Bennet knew perfectly well that she was being called home to deal with some housekeeping emergency, and not the sudden frailty of a mother generally as strong as a carthorse. ‘She was in good health this morning,’ she murmured, rising to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster.
And now she was storming homewards, muttering bitter words under her breath. Her brothers, who had no interest or stake in these matters, were free to stay and eat nuncheon and play with the puppies in the stableyard, but she had to hurry home because of some crisis with the day’s baking or brewing. Not for the first time, Charlotte cursed the swingeing unfairness of the lot that made her a woman.
She was too angry to pay attention to the condition of the road, until a puddle that stretched the width of the thoroughfare confronted her with a new problem: in her flight, and in the servant’s confusion, she had left her pattens behind, and was well on the way to ruining her shoes. What had possessed her to wear them instead of her more serviceable boots? And now she would have to go back to Netherfield. She swung round, irritation compounding anger and hastening her steps.
As she passed back down the driveway and slipped past the house, hoping to collect her pattens from the servants via a back entrance, she caught Mrs Bennet’s nasal voice through an open window: ‘I fancy she was wanted about the mince-pies.’ Charlotte experienced that frisson of exposure felt when realising that one is the topic of overheard conversation, and her dismay grew at the words that followed: ‘For my part, Mr Bingley, I always keep servants that can do their own work; my daughters are brought up differently. But the Lucases are very good sorts of girls, I assure you.’
Mr Bingley endeared himself to Charlotte forever with the words, ‘Miss Lucas seems a very pleasant young woman,’ and she relaxed momentarily. But Mrs Bennet was far from done: ‘It is a pity she is not handsome! You must own that she is very plain. Her own mother has often said so, and envied me Jane’s beauty.’
Charlotte’s mouth went dry as Mrs Bennet continued to canvass the topic of her, Charlotte’s, plainness, in the hearing of all the company present. Given that she had no hope of attracting either the admiration of the gentlemen or the friendship of Mr Bingley’s sisters, she found Mrs Bennet’s insistence on her lack of physical charms doubly unkind. The beauty of her own daughters surely made such a stratagem unnecessary.
Her skin crawled with shame as she stood powerless beneath the open window. Still worse, Jenny came bustling round from the back of the house at that moment, clutching Charlotte’s pattens, and found her listening to others speaking of her, always a moment of awkwardness. It was hard to tell which of them was more uncomfortable, and, as they set off on the three-mile walk towards Lucas Lodge, Jenny’s expostulations of ‘Oh, Miss!’ did not help.
It was not just the exertion of swift walking that had sweat trickling down Charlotte’s sides: sheer mortification and mounting anger contributed. She had no delusions and harboured no false hopes: years of watching the Bennet sisters grow and bloom alongside her, of seeing the way people’s eyes slid past her to alight on Jane and Lizzy, had cured her of any propensity to vanity, any idle hopes of enchanting others with the expedient of a pretty face. But to have the contrast rubbed in by an idle, mean-spirited woman of little intelligence, to be spoken of in such terms before a gathering of near-strangers who represented the first new company she had met in a long while, was truly galling. The presence of the maidservant meant Charlotte did not even have the luxury of breaking sticks or shouting her rage in the privacy of the lane.
She had never before felt so helpless in her humiliation. And as Mrs Bennet’s words replayed in her mind, Charlotte’s rage grew. Somewhere, somehow, she swore to herself, she would have her turn. She would make something of herself. Her success would also be her vengeance. Better still, she would take something precious from a woman towards whom she had only ever shown courtesy and affability, who, as her mother’s dearest friend, stood in the place of an aunt to her.
She came to a halt as the careless words revealing her own parent’s disloyalty repeated in her head. That stung the most: the vision of her mother bewailing her lack of beauty to others. She had somehow hoped that the maternal eye would at least be partial, if not downright blind, in her case. She clenched her lids to halt tears, and muttered something about a stone in her shoe to the anxious Jenny.
In that ordinary country lane, as familiar as the back of her own hand, Charlotte stood in despair – and then another thought came to give relief. Somehow she would escape. She would go somewhere – she knew not where or how – where she was not plain Miss Lucas, a spinster of the parish of Meryton, an object of speculation and pity to her neighbours, a source of anxiety to her family. How this was to be achieved, she had no conception; but she refused to allow the practical difficulties of such a plan to interfere with the momentary respite the thought of it granted.
CHAPTER XIV
FOR SEVERAL DAYS AFTER THE excursion to Netherfield Park, there was little intercourse between the Lucas and the Bennet families, with gusting rain keeping them housebound. This suited Charlotte, who was not yet sure she could face Mrs Bennet and keep a firm rein on her temper. But Lizzy soon sent her friend a note advising of a new addition to the family party: the mysterious future master of Longbourn, the unknown but heartily detested Mr Collins, had taken it upon himself to pay his relatives a visit. This young man had recently taken orders and been granted a handsome living in Kent, life events that had prompted him to pacific thoughts of his distant family. There was much speculation about his motives, which, in a letter to Mr Bennet, he had hinted involved making some conciliatory gesture towards his ‘fair cousins’. All in all, the visit provided some interest, and Elizabeth was eager for Charlotte to join them in a walk to Meryton.
The party from Longbourn fetched Charlotte, greeting her all at once in a fashion to which she was accustomed, so that she filtered out Lydia and Kitty’
s halloos and impatient demands that she hurry along, reserving her attention for Lizzy, Jane, and their escort. A stately and self-important young man, he seemed unable to stop speaking. Words on every possible commonplace flowed in a steady stream, so there were none of the awkward silences that might otherwise attend a group of distant relatives making each other’s acquaintance for the first time – especially in circumstances as delicate as these: the interloper and the cousins he would disinherit. Lizzy and Charlotte were able to catch up with their news under the cover of Mr Collins’s enumerative praise of all his surroundings; by the time they reached Meryton, they expected to hear him congratulate them on the dirt in the main street.
Charlotte was intrigued as to whether the rumours that he had come to pay court to one of his cousins were true, and it was with some amusement that she thought she discerned a particular interest in Lizzy on the part of the young man. He would have been better off setting his sights on Mary, the most studious of the five Bennet sisters, but it seemed that Lizzy was his object, although she was as yet apparently unaware of her prolix cousin’s intentions.
This surfeit of fresh society, both the clergyman cousin and the grander party at Netherfield Park, led to an unusual number of social engagements in and around Meryton. The next fortnight was marked by supper parties, card games, and dinners, culminating in a ball at Netherfield Park. Over this period, Mr Collins’s pursuit of Lizzy became more and more apparent, including to the somewhat harassed object of his attentions. At the same time, his habit of lecturing all and sundry on moral matters, his constant deferential references to his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Rosings, and the endless volume of speech that emerged from his lips, endeared him to no one except Mrs Bennet, who anticipated soon claiming him as a son-in-law.
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