“My dearest cousin Elizabeth,” he said, “I do wish you would permit me to pick some fruit for you. I am certain you are needful of sustenance, as I have just consulted a clock and it will be at least another hour before supper begins. If only you would tell me which are best suited to your palate—for I would not risk selecting fruits that aren’t completely agreeable to you—I would return immediately with a plate of your favorites. I know you mean not to put me to any trouble by refusing, for you place, like I do, the well-being of others before your own, but I can assure you that any difficulty I might meet with in completing this challenge would be well rewarded by the sight of watching you eat from the plate I have procured and your telling me, truthfully, that the morsels I have chosen are sweet and delightful to your discriminating taste.”
To which Lizzy replied, “You are all kindness, Mr. Collins, but you do try my patience by asking me the same question over and over again. I have already told you that I have no desire to eat any fruit and that my constitution is not so weak that I am in danger of fainting after only two dances.”
Mr. Collins uttered a cry before promptly throwing himself at my sister’s mercy. “Dearest cousin Elizabeth,” he exclaimed, “I feel certain I’ve offended you by the persistence of my concern for your well-being, but you might bring yourself to understand my own precarious position should anything happen to you while in my care.”
“Yes, and I am certainly grateful for your concern, though you may find it hard to believe that I have survived many similar evenings of revelry without being so assiduously chaperoned,” Lizzy answered. “Oh! Here are Charlotte and Maria! And Mary! How lucky that we have finally come across each other.”
Mr. Collins bowed courteously to us, taking care to replicate Lizzy’s cheerfulness towards her friends. His eye touched briefly a few points of interest on my person—the white feather, the thin band of pink ribbon I’d tied around my waist, the shoe-roses that wilted like dead poppies on my slippers—before wandering indifferently away.
The moment one becomes certain of defeat engenders a strange feeling. Possibly it is different for every person, but for me, it is a quiet, penitent moment, wrapped furtively within the confines of my body until it may be reopened and studied at a more convenient time. I swallowed my defeat the same way one hesitates to ingest something distasteful—the bitter skin of a grape, an underdone cut of meat that tastes a little too soft and bloody on one’s tongue—but it must go down. One must swallow, though I can tell you that defeat is patient. It will wait quietly and without fuss until its host is at last ready to unravel the lifeless thing that was formerly a marvelous and miraculous vision. What had seemed possible, if not downright probable, less than a day or two ago was now cause for intense embarrassment. Garden walks in the twilight. Midnight carousing so loud it would wake up the servants. Shoulder rubs to help with sermon writing. And a year later, a brown-eyed, brown-haired child with a head as large and round as an apple dumpling. There was more, much more in the way of daydreams and fantasies conjured nightly in the warm and hazy minutes before one finally drifts off to sleep. But Fate wags a finger at me and says, “No, I don’t think so, Mary Bennet. That is not for you.” The parcel carrying one’s wishes flies out of one’s hands and into another’s. Done, dead, and gone.
“Careful, Mary, you’ll drop the plate if you hold it like that!” Lizzy cried out.
Eventually, Charlotte, Lizzy, and Mr. Collins moved off together, and only Maria was left standing by my side. As soon as they were out of our sight, Maria turned to me and emitted a piglike squeal. Every aspect of her face radiated what I can only describe as perverse hilarity, that variant of laughing expression which derives the majority of its amusement from another’s pain.
“Mary!” she cried. “Did you not notice how Mr. Collins fretted and fussed over Lizzy? ‘Oh, let me hold your wineglass, dearest Elizabeth.’ ‘Oh, be careful you don’t trip over your dress, my dear.’ ‘Oh, cousin, are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit down for a moment to rest your feet?’ How she can stand it, I’ll never understand! I would have gone half-mad by now.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Lizzy, if I were you,” I replied, pretending nothing was the matter. “She has a high tolerance for madness, living with Mama and Lydia.”
“But I am convinced this behavior is as suggestive as it is laughable,” Maria said, “particularly if Mr. Collins has received permission from Mr. and Mrs. Bennet to stay close to Lizzy for the entire evening. Do you think he means to propose to her? I’m sure he does.” After pausing to consider the matter, Maria added, “But the real puzzle is not whether Mr. Collins will propose to Lizzy, which is likely unavoidable, but whether Lizzy will have him. Do you think there’s a very good chance she’ll accept? She probably has to, poor soul.”
“The way you’re prattling on about it,” I said, replenishing my wine and guzzling it down, “a stranger would think you wanted Mr. Collins for yourself.”
“Goodness, no! You wouldn’t catch me dead as the wife of a clergyman,” Maria said with great emotion. “I wouldn’t make it past two Sundays before collapsing from sheer boredom in one of the pews. But I will tell you something amusing, and this might put some color back into your cheeks. When Charlotte and I learned from our mother that Mr. Collins meant to take a wife among the Bennet girls, who do you think we first thought of as the most fitting match for him? I’m sure you’ll never guess!”
“Lydia, I should think. She is the most sensible and would be more persuasive than any of us in assisting Mr. Collins with the collection of tithes.”
“I wish you wouldn’t joke, Mary. But since I see you’re quite determined to be a bad sport, I will just tell you: Charlotte and I were both convinced it would be you. Wouldn’t that be something, if you were to marry before any of your sisters did? Even before Jane or Lizzy?”
“Yes, Maria,” I answered. “That would be something indeed, and about as likely as Mr. Bingley’s friend Mr. Darcy falling head over heels in love with me and making me mistress of Pemberley. Some jokes are certainly less funny than others.”
By the conclusion of supper, I was in a much better mood. I was, in fact, in so much of a better mood that if someone in that moment were to have pinched my nose and pulled my hair, I would have likely laughed in the perpetrator’s face and pinched his nose and pulled his hair back. At the far end of the table, I noticed Jane and Mr. Bingley sitting very close together. Jane was engaged with daintily flipping a piece of chicken with the end of her fork, and this piece of chicken went round and round and round and round the inside of her plate until it bounced out onto the tablecloth. When this happened, she looked coyly at Mr. Bingley, who grinned back at her, and the two burst into laughter. Though they did not see me, I felt sufficiently moved by the scene to raise my glass to them.
“What a fine couple,” I said and met the stare of an elderly woman with a sour face who I didn’t know and who looked understandably nonplussed at being seated in the middle of a family she wasn’t acquainted with, this family having as little interest in her presence at the table as she had in theirs. Mama was then deep in conversation with Lady Lucas, Mr. Collins was diverting Charlotte and Lizzy with tales of the Battle of Philippi and the Second Triumvirate, and Maria was anxiously eavesdropping on anything she could pick up between the two parties. Papa and Sir William were seated next to me, and true to the behavior of serious and learned men in public, they confined their conversation to only the most respectable of topics—that is, to the ongoing war with France, meetings of Parliament, and what either was occupied with reading at the time (military histories and articles of science; absolutely no mention of novels was ever made).
All around me, the air was golden and tinkling with musical sounds: laughter, silverware glancing off fine china, molars grinding against slabs of cold tongue and gobs of sweetbread. I caught snatches of interesting phrases from the other tables—“hard litt
le bump,” “two o’clock by the marble fountain,” “no fool like an old fool,” “baby’s knees,” “the dog would have made a better child,” “bring the money,” and “I’m still hungry.” No one bothered to talk to me, which was just fine, as the wine proved more interesting company than any of my tablemates, and soon I was able to discover secret humor in places I had never bothered to look before, such as the drooping corners of Charlotte’s mouth, the oily streaks of gray in Papa’s hair, and Lizzy’s lines of bad teeth. But at last, a voice from far, far away floated, as a leaf from a tree, to where I sat tilting back on the legs of my chair, and what this voice said was really the most sensible thing I’d heard all evening.
“Is there to be no singing tonight?” the voice shouted. “Come, we must have some singing! It has been far too quiet!”
I stood, very nearly toppling my chair, and bustled to the front of the room, sheet music flapping in my arms. As I plopped triumphantly onto the piano bench, I heard Mr. Bingley introduce me to my audience as the “reputed songbird of Longbourn,” and the unexpected kindness of his words rendered me a little tearful between my hiccups as I waited to begin my first song.
“I shall not displease you, Mr. Bingley, nor any of you,” I cried with feeling from my seat at the piano and, wiggling my fingers theatrically, launched into “The Last Rose of Summer,” which I’d practiced for many hours over the last three days with this display expressly in mind. I recall that I sang with intense emotion, and this passion must have plucked at the heartstrings of at least a few members of my audience, for I heard a woman sitting at the table nearest the instrument comment to her husband.
“Good Lord,” she said in a voice certain to carry to more than one table, “how agonizing to listen to.”
Which was the truth, because anyone familiar with Thomas Moore’s poem will know that this is a tragic song about living alone in the world, bereft of all hope of companionship and affection. As I sang, I envisioned myself a flower drooping from its stem and gazing sadly over the petals of my dead friends as they lay strewn in the grassy bed of the garden at Longbourn. It was all terribly poignant, and I howled the final few lines of the song with greater passion—indeed, passion that seemed to rise from the deepest pit of my being. “Oh!” I shouted to the rooftop of Netherfield Park and then paused for dramatic effect. “Who would inhabit…” I bawled, “this bleak world alooooone?” After finishing with a few inspired flourishes, I bowed my head in imitation of the dying rose, until the tip of my nose rested over my wrists on the keyboard. The applause, in my opinion, was a bit sparse for such a soul-rending performance, but more gratifying were the murmurs from the audience, particularly, as expected, from the women.
Lifting my head from the keyboard, I peered about the room in time to view two ladies fanning themselves and another clasping a gloved hand over her mouth. Some young men among the officers seemed at a glance to be laughing, but I expected no better from them, as they were sitting at the same table as Lydia and Kitty.
“Thank you,” I said, flashing a smile at the expanse of blurred faces that watched me. “Thank you so very much.”
“Won’t you play another?” a mustached officer called out from the table of barbarians.
“What’s that?” I slurred. “Who said that? Yes, I think that’s a wonderful idea. I need to cheer us all up. We all need some cheering up tonight.”
As no one ventured to disagree with me, I began the opening of “The Soldier’s Adieu” by Charles Dibdin.
“Adieu! Adieu! My only life!” I sang in short, feverish bursts, the curls around my ears shaking violently to the bobbing of my head. “My honor calls me from thee. Remember thou art a soldier’s wife. Come, everyone together now! Let us fill this hall with angelic music!”
A few scattered voices charitably joined in, but the result was weak. The majority of the guests still preferred to stare, and I had all but abandoned the idea of transforming the dining room of Netherfield Park into a patriotic theater of boisterous, impassioned singing when the mustached officer suddenly shot up from his seat and opened his mouth. The uniformed boor turned out to be a baritone, and a baritone with a voice so rich, heaven-sent, and miraculous that I quite forgot, for all of three seconds, to keep playing. Moving confidently in the direction of the piano, he reached my side a short while later, and I watched him beckon to the rest of his friends, who had remained sitting and nudging one another with amused looks. These men begrudgingly rose and filed one after the other to stand shoulder to shoulder around the instrument and supply their voices. Then additional members of the audience joined in, and every one of us remembered, for the better part of two verses, that we were a nation at war, until there were no more lines to sing, and the singing became thunderous applause contributed by the whole room.
“Thank you, Netherfield Park!” I shouted at the top of my lungs and executed a dazzling glissando before springing to my feet.
I spotted my sisters, Mama, and the Lucas family matriarch all gazing at me in a condition of bewilderment, as if I’d grown two horns and a tail. In fact, Sir William, who had always been unabashedly patriotic, appeared the only one at my table genuinely pleased by the performance. He stood up to shout “Bravo!” and “Encore!” and encouraged others sitting around him to do the same. The officers returned cheerfully to their seats, and I was considering what to play next when a lean, black silhouette appeared at the end of the piano and said to me in a voice I recalled from my infancy, “That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.” Looking up, I saw my father peering at me, an outstretched hand prepared to guide me back to my chair. I wanted to tell him I wasn’t quite ready to leave the piano yet—I still had some excerpts from Handel’s Water Music to perform. But the wine was finally taking a turn. My belly lurched, and I stared strangely at Papa before sprinting with my sheet music out of the room, into the hall, through the front entrance, and down the thirty or so steps to ground level, where I finally spewed a puddle of yellow froth at the foot of someone’s carriage.
“Who’s garn ter clean that oop?” a liveried servant snarled at me from the top of the carriage.
My stomach twisted again, and I was forced to lean forward and regurgitate another few glasses of the excellent wine I’d enjoyed at Mr. Bingley’s expense. In a brilliant spray of translucent gold, the vomit splattered across the coat of arms emblazoned on the door, running in shining channels down to the spokes of the wheel. Breathless and feeling much better, I stumbled a few steps backwards to get a better view of the servant, who was still staring furiously at me.
He looked my cotton dress up and down, dwelling longer than I liked on the white feather that crowned the top of my head. Then he licked his lips and hissed, “Lemme guess. The ovver women made fan of your gahn and ’air. Ya got oopset and drank too much. Is that it? Did me mistress make fan of ya? Ya ’ave nah business vomitin’ on ’er carriage, though. Remember, it’s us poor folk that ’ave ter clean up after aw the bleedin’ fan is o’er.”
“No,” I replied, as the ground tipped dangerously. Everything, even the vomit I’d expelled, had taken on a warm glow. “I don’t know who your mistress is,” I said, squinting up at the driver’s face, which was also encircled by a wide-ringed halo. “Who is she?” I asked in a tone of disbelief.
At the sound of footsteps approaching, the servant straightened and averted his gaze. Thinking it my father, I spun around and came face-to-face with Mr. Darcy.
The sight of him succeeded at once in sobering me, and with that sobriety, I felt the first wave of shame which was my due. I’d rather it had been any member of my family come to rebuke me for my behavior, for I would have gladly received their censure to this gentleman’s. It is one thing to be lectured on proper conduct in public by your own flesh and blood, quite another to receive the same chastisement from a prominent member of the landed gent
ry. I was aware I had done badly. So much of Jane’s happiness was riding on this ball, and what had I accomplished with my antics, except to play the wine-soaked clown to Lydia and Kitty’s usual impropriety.
“You look a mess” was the first thing he said. Then he caught sight of the carriage wheels and wrinkled his nose.
“Yes, yes, all right,” I mumbled.
“Your behavior tonight surprises me, Miss Bennet,” he began. “The first time we spoke, I confess you struck me as a very rational young woman. But I must say something on behalf of my friend, whose kindness you imposed upon greatly with what I can only call your inspired performance at the piano, to say nothing of the amount of alcohol you have consumed unchecked this evening.”
Though the insult struck home, I continued to gaze impassively at him.
“Bingley thinks too highly of your eldest sister to reproach you or your family,” Mr. Darcy continued, “but as no ties of affection can claim my heart, I won’t deign to withhold my opinions. Haven’t you any shame in your conduct? Did you not pause, even for a moment, to consider the consequences of your actions on the reputations of your sisters, particularly Miss Jane and Miss Elizabeth, before you committed to carrying them through?”
At the mention of Lizzy, I thought of Mr. Collins. At the thought of Mr. Collins, the memory of his diminutive body moving away from me in the crowd brought renewed pain, and I nearly lost my footing.
“I…I have been wronged….” I managed to say at last, my voice fluctuating wildly. Or had I meant instead to say that I was wrong? Wrong for believing I could be loved by any man who was not obliged, as my father and uncles were, to love me? Wrong for thinking I could be the first among my sisters to marry? What a fool I was for mistaking a man’s willingness to converse with affection! How could I, little weed, be a favorite of anyone? No, for all the books I consumed, I was still a dupe to my own vanity.
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