Mary B

by Katherine J. Chen

  Pushing open the door, I found not my father but Mr. Collins in Papa’s armchair, a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons perched philosophically across a single hand. He balanced the volume so that it was level with his chin, and my initial impression was that he wasn’t reading at all, but posturing for an invisible artist who was painting his likeness. Upon seeing me, he put down his book, stood, and articulated with one or two flowery turns of phrase his hope that I had slept well. Having by this time overcome my surprise at seeing him, I assured him that I had and shyly broached the matter of last night’s reading.

  “I’m sorry my sister didn’t appreciate your selection, Mr. Collins,” I said. “You must excuse Lydia for interrupting you. These days, her mind is very differently engaged, what with the militia being quartered so near Longbourn.”

  To this, Mr. Collins sighed and waved a dismissive hand over his brow. “It is true I took some offense when the incident occurred,” he began stiffly, “and couldn’t bring myself to read any further. But the whole matter has since been forgotten and, I promise, will not cross my lips again. I forgive my young cousin wholeheartedly for displaying the impetuosity characteristic of her age. My wish, even now, is entirely benevolent, which is that she may yet show some interest in the improvement of her mind by the instruction contained within sound and honest books, such as this. Though her fascination with the militia is, I suppose, natural for her youth and unmarried condition, in circumstances as these, the application of moral and virtuous teachings is rendered even more vital by the presence of so much temptation.”

  “You seem to comprehend a good deal on the subject,” I said.

  “I admit I do,” he replied, smiling. “In the last year, I’ve made it a particular study of mine to investigate and approve such texts as, in my judgment, show great promise in outlining the manner of behavior which is most befitting to ladies. There is, at present, a wealth of publications in circulation that I would eagerly recommend to the youngest Miss Bennet should she welcome my suggestions and which I have been honored to endorse by way of recommended reading to both my benefactress and her daughter, however little either may be in need of the instruction offered.”

  “I am an avid reader myself, Mr. Collins,” I said, “though my younger sisters tease me because I do not share their interest in fashions or parties.”

  “It is both delightful and rare indeed to meet a young woman who chooses to live her life unburdened by such un-Christian vanities, as you have! How liberating it must be to conduct one’s daily schedule without frittering whole hours away in front of a looking glass.”

  Touching my chin, I grazed a pimple at the height of its swelling and cringed. His comment surprised me, and I didn’t know whether to smile or to appear offended. “I cannot claim to possess no vanity, sir. I believe that would be impossible for any person, man or woman,” I said, hoping the hardness I felt didn’t show in my voice. “I only meant that I share your love for books and would be happy to pass a whole month in my father’s library with enough food and water to sustain me, if it meant I could decline every invitation to a ball.”

  “I understand your feelings, Mary, but we must take care not to fall victim to extremities,” Mr. Collins replied, “for that is a vanity itself, no better than the unneedful purchase of ribbons!”

  “But there is a pleasure, is there not, Mr. Collins, unrivaled by any other feeling in the world, to reach the last page of a book and know that you have lived in it, that you have stood witness to the performance of momentous deeds at the hands of extraordinary personalities? I have only just turned nineteen, but I feel I have already known great romance and tragedy. Do you not sometimes marvel at how the construction of a beautiful line can leave you either shaking with laughter or bawling like an untended infant? Is that not a miracle which deserves as much scrutiny as the wonders of science and nature?”

  My little exposition met with silence, which is perhaps what I deserved. I had been saving these same lines for Papa, had rehearsed them over and over in my head, sometimes delivering them with fanatical zeal, other times imploringly. I had so many other beautiful speeches in reserve, scribbled in the margins of books, that might never be spoken for lack of an audience, a kindred spirit, a friend. And as the silence between us lengthened, my humiliation increased. I pretended to remove a piece of lint from my sleeve, even as my skin felt too hot to live in. If only I could shed it and slink unnoticed out of the room…or if we could change the course of the conversation. I frowned from the effort of thinking. Favorite foods? What species of flowers did the gardeners cultivate at Rosings Park? The proper paring of potatoes?

  “You must forgive my silence,” Mr. Collins said, at last, smiling a little. “I was only thinking how very different you are from your sisters. To an outsider such as myself, you could not be more unlike them if you were a stranger, though you were born of the same parents.”

  Not seeking to discuss the subject any further, I admitted that he was probably right, and after an interval, he took up the volume at his side and inquired if I’d be opposed to his continuing the reading he had begun last night. As I wished to humor him and make amends for the previous evening’s discourtesy, I encouraged him to proceed, and without delay, he turned to the fourth sermon, on female virtue. I’d read Fordyce’s Sermons before, so I was familiar with the excerpt he’d selected, which enumerated the various evils of the novel—its lascivious descriptions of love between the sexes, the many indulgences taken in scenes of pleasure, and the proliferation of immoral behavior among its principal characters as would be certain to influence the highly impressionable minds of female readers. The sermon offered, by way of a safe alternative, the reading of chivalric romances, which, though as much filled with passionate declarations of love as their dissolute counterparts, were always tempered by the censorious whip of honor and chastity, rendering them significantly less treacherous to members of the fair sex. To myself, I conceded that the author’s description of novels was quite flawless, but that the elements which he considered offensive were exactly what made them so delightful. I did not mind that Mr. Collins was opposed to novels. It was the “proper” thing to pooh-pooh the likes of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe in public, even if one did read The Romance of the Forest under the covers, and a differing of intellectual opinion would, in the long term, make for far more interesting conversation than if two people simply agreed with each other on everything.

  “ ‘The parents of the present generation, what with selling their sons and daughters in marriage, and what with teaching them by every possible means the glorious principles of Avarice…’ ” He stopped. Above us, in one of the bedrooms, the beginnings of a heated argument had erupted, followed by a rash of hurried footsteps in the hall and the flinging open of doors.

  Mr. Collins wisely set aside his book. “It appears your younger sisters have awakened,” he said with more grimness than he perhaps intended.

  I smiled. The surprising pleasantness of his voice hadn’t yet released me to the full awareness of the tantrums occurring upstairs. Mr. Collins stood and, running his hand over the cover, held the book for me to take. I accepted it with a questioning look. “For you to read,” Mr. Collins explained, “as I hear I’m to accompany my cousins on a walk to Meryton this morning, and Mrs. Bennet told me that you are usually the only one among your sisters who can’t be prevailed upon to go. The shops of Meryton, the sighting of a red-coated officer in the street, the thriftless spending of one’s pocket change on attractive bonnets hold no pleasures for our dear cousin Mary.” And with that, he bowed and excused himself from the room.

  Kitty was in a foul mood all through breakfast. She would not touch her food and sipped her hot chocolate only when Mama bid her to take some refreshment. At unexpected intervals during the meal, she kicked the table leg closest to her, once with so much violence that the teapot lid rattled and a few buns stacked high on a platter rolled off their perch a
nd onto the ground before anyone could catch them. Her behavior drew the notice of our guest, who gently inquired if his young cousin had taken ill.

  “She isn’t ill,” Lydia replied energetically. “She’s just angry that I took one of her bonnets apart and made something better out of it.”

  Kitty gaped at her sister. “Without asking me!” she shouted across the table. “You’re always taking my things without asking me, and Mama always lets you have your way!” The last part of her charge was uttered with especial bitterness through clenched teeth and fresh tears.

  “Surely,” I said, endeavoring to bring peace to the breakfast table and look well in front of Mr. Collins at the same time, “we should take care never to let our vanity threaten the bonds of sisterhood which bring us together.” Glancing in my cousin’s direction, I hoped for an encouraging nod or some other acknowledgment of my virtuous character, but Mr. Collins was then engaged with scraping the last of the apricot marmalade onto his bread roll. I returned with disappointment to my dry toast but not before Kitty piped up and with exaggerated civility asked if I wouldn’t mind kindly holding my tongue for the rest of the meal.

  “No one wants your ‘thou shalt not’ teachings here, Mary,” she added vehemently.

  Lydia giggled. “And anyway, the only reason you would want to share with the rest of us, Mary,” she said, looking at me with twinkling, malicious eyes, “is because you don’t wear anything even remotely attractive. Not that it would make you look any the better for doing so.”

  “Then it’s just as well I have no care for my appearance,” I replied hotly.

  “A thoughtless remark,” Jane chided, radiating beauty this morning as on all others.

  “Beauty is indeed a virtue unappre—” Mr. Collins began.

  Lydia snorted, interrupting our guest. “There’s no need to declare the obvious to us, Mary,” she said, wet crumbs of plum cake dropping from her mouth. Considering her late rejoinder a very witty one, she burst into a self-congratulatory fit of laughter, joined soon after by her Kitty, while Lizzy and Jane exchanged looks across the table. The laughter would have continued for some time more if Papa hadn’t cleared his throat and made his usual complaint about having fathered three of the silliest girls in England.

  “I wouldn’t consider myself silly, Papa,” I said petulantly, near tears myself.

  “No, I daresay you wouldn’t, my dear,” he answered and, catching the eye of his favorite, gave her a small, appreciative smile.

  * * *

  —

  KITTY WAS STILL in a sour mood after breakfast. Doubtless she would have recovered sooner had Lydia decided to wear to Meryton any other bonnet than the one that rested at the very heart of their dispute. But discretion had never been Lydia’s strength, and she pranced prettily up and down the vestibule, waiting for her sisters and Mr. Collins.

  “Have a good walk,” I called out from the pianoforte, where I was practicing my scales.

  “We’ll say hi to the officers for you, Mary,” Lydia snickered, popping her head in, “and ask Denny, your dashing lieutenant friend, if he thought about you at all while he was in London.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” I replied. “I’m sure Mr. Denny forgot about me as soon as you introduced us. It was over a fortnight ago.”

  Kitty crossed the room and observed my fingerwork from over my shoulder. “I really don’t know why you bother, Mary,” she sulked as I continued to play. “You’re such an awful musician. Everyone hates it when you stand up with your music at parties.”

  My fingers punched the keys. I imagined they were Kitty’s teeth and smiled to myself.

  “Why are you smiling?” Kitty said, her voice and temper rising. “I hope you don’t think it’s funny. It’s not funny, you know. It’s embarrassing the way you always parade yourself in public with your quotes and your sheet music, as if you play any better than the rest of us.”

  I stopped. These were not new insults, and over time, I’d grown accustomed to them. Almost as soon as I’d learned my first scale, I’d known that I would never become a great proficient at any instrument, bereft, as I was, of both natural talent and formal instruction. But it would have been a poor excuse to give up an exercise which I enjoyed solely because I was not gifted at it. How, too, could I abandon one of the only devices, within my power, of causing headache and strife among my younger sisters?

  Turning towards Kitty, I observed that Mr. Collins had joined Lydia in the hall and that the two were watching us like spectators at a gladiator pit. But I wouldn’t be the tiger.

  “Kitty,” I said, shutting my eyes and exhaling. “I know you’re upset about your bonnet, but it won’t help to be angry at me. You had much better go with your sisters and Mr. Collins to Meryton and meet some officers and leave me to my practicing.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Kitty snapped. “You’re always taking Lydia’s side. All that talk at breakfast about sisterhood, which is just nonsense. That bonnet was mine. I’d bought it with my pocket money, and Lydia ruined it. She had no right.”

  “Fine, Kitty. Whatever you say.”

  “And I meant what I said about your disastrous playing. No one will say it to your face, of course, but everyone thinks the same thing.” Leaning forward, she removed the sheet music I’d placed on the rack earlier that morning. It was a new Irish air I hoped to learn by the next ball.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “One of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies. I copied it from Aunt Philips.”

  The pages crinkled in her hands. She frowned as she scanned the lines of inky notes and unevenly drawn bars, listening for the song that wouldn’t materialize in her head.

  “Careful, Kitty,” I said. “You’ll smear the—” But it was too late. In her rage, her fingers worked faster than scissors. I could only watch as pieces of “The Last Rose of Summer” scattered like a shower of black-and-white petals over the piano bench and carpet, taking with it hours spent meticulously copying every musical notation by hand. I bent to gather the fragments while Kitty stalked away, rejoining Lydia and Mr. Collins in the hall. Mr. Collins, standing a little apart from Kitty, lest she should turn on him as well, asked how far they would have to walk to reach Meryton, and Lydia, having made the journey over a dozen times since the militia’s arrival, answered that the distance was no more than a mile. This seemed the extent to which any civil dialogue could pass between them, so it was to everyone’s relief when Jane and Lizzy made their entrance from upstairs, a few moments later, with many breathless apologies. The whole party being assembled, they departed from Longbourn without any further delay, and I promptly resumed my practicing. As I breezed through a few Scottish ditties I knew by heart, my eye caught sight of the ravaged song, which, having no better place to put the pieces before throwing them out, I’d uselessly restored to the music rack in a small pile.

  A restlessness came over me, and I no longer heard the melody my hands mechanically constructed. In its place, I recalled a voice—a male voice—that some weeks ago had addressed itself to me outside the milliner’s shop in Meryton on one of the rare occasions when I’d agreed to accompany Lydia and Kitty on their walk. “Delighted to make your acquaintance,” Mr. Denny had said as I curtsied, and our eyes met briefly, disinterestedly, before turning to objects of more amusement: for me, a pile of excrement left in the middle of the road by some passing horse; for him, the youngest Miss Bennet, all smiles and good humor where officers were concerned. He had a handsome face framed by thick sideburns and a full head of rich, chestnut-colored hair, which I imagined many women would have liked to comb their fingers through, if modesty permitted. Our group walked for some time together, Lydia whispering in Mr. Denny’s ear, Kitty shooting jealous looks that the other ignored or failed to register. I recalled Lydia’s introduction, spoken in the pleasing, coquettish tones she’d already mastered at her young age. “And
here is Mary,” she had said, giggling, “who Kitty and I practically had to drag from Longbourn just to meet you and who, you’ll remember, I told you all about before now.” And pray, what did you tell him all about? I wondered. What could you possibly know about me that would be true?

  I imagined how very different I might have felt that afternoon had he not looked away, had I held his gaze for a few moments longer than might have been considered proper between a man and a woman who had just met. In my mind, I composed the beautiful words he’d say. You’re unlike anyone I’ve ever known, he’d stammer, holding me at arm’s length with the gaze of a madman. You have enchanted me, enslaved my spirit, and I am no longer the free man I once was. I am now your servant, your plaything to do as you like with my body and my soul, which is no longer God’s or the Devil’s to have but yours. I love you, Mary Bennet. I love you, so help me God.

  The discord of a wrong key being pressed startled me from my reverie. Fingering a piece of the torn music, I sat for some moments commiserating with myself before turning towards the empty doorway where Lydia’s head had earlier protruded. I’m sure Mr. Denny forgot about me as soon as you introduced us. Yes, I thought, a familiar numbness taking hold. There would be no love affairs here.

  My restless hands soon found their way back to the piano, and the room swelled with the plaintive longing of “Robin Adair.” A voice sweeter than my own sang to me from a distant memory some years old when, wandering through the house, I happened upon Sarah standing alone at a window in our drawing room, her small body encased in the pale yellow light of a newly risen sun. “What’s this dull town to me? Robin’s not near,” she had sung, unraveling the old rags she always carried with her for cleaning. “What was’t I wish’d to see? What wish’d to hear? Where’s all the joy and mirth, made this town a heaven on earth? Oh! They’re all fled with thee, Robin Adair.”