“Oh, I am so very happy to see you!” Mary glowed as she embraced Elizabeth the moment she stepped from the carriage. “I have been so eager. Mr. Collins can confirm. I have checked my watch a dozen times this morning, to see when you might arrive.”
Mr. Collins added his agreement and his confirmation of his wife’s claim. While he spoke in his ordinary slow manner, Elizabeth could see from his manner that he was at least pleased to see his fair one in good spirits.
Elizabeth looked around in delight.
Convincing Mr. Bennet to let her travel to visit Mary had been a matter of some difficulty. It likely was simply that he would miss her very much, but Mr. Bennet hated to see her travel outside of the neighborhood.
In the end, he could not stand the disappointment of both Elizabeth and Mary at his refusal. But when Mr. Bennet relented and allowed Elizabeth to travel, he several times insisted that she must bring her pistol and keep it with her.
“You look so very well!” Mary also exclaimed.
This Elizabeth was conscious of doing.
Her travelling dress was not one of the ones that she had purchased with the money that Mr. Bennet gave her. It was a dress that she had modified to make it so that the bosom mostly disappeared, and to keep the waist particularly wide.
Last night she had snipped the threading she’d put in to pull fabric in together in a subtly ill-fitting manner and then done some simple adjustments to partly bring the waist in.
The whole time she’d done this by candlelight Elizabeth had felt odd.
This was what Mary wished her to do.
But…why had she ever tried so hard to dress badly? Why had she spent years strategizing what small changes to make to her dresses that could make her look her worst? Why had she never ever allowed herself to wear the rouge that other gentlewomen, even poor ones, even women who were not gentlewomen at all freely used?
She could not let herself think too much about that.
Upon being led into the house and up to her room—the best guest room, and a larger one than what she had at Longbourn—Elizabeth was scarcely given ten minutes to refresh herself and wash the dirt off before she was ordered back into her walking boots by Mary and then given a thorough tour of the whole farm.
Both Mary and Mr. Collins made her pay especial attention, of course, to those parts of the rectory house that had been improved by the kindnesses of Lady Catherine. But the whole proved to be a fine place, and the happiness which Mary had expressed in her letters was justified by the reality.
Elizabeth had greater curiosity to see how the couple fared in their married life than she did to see the home farm, the sheds, the chicken house or the kitchen.
They were all as was to be expected. But was Mary happy?
Mr. Bennet had charged her, in his oblique way, to make effort to discover this for him. Whenever Mary and Mr. Collins were spoken of, Elizabeth perceived that his concerns about his daughter’s choice had by no means been fully assuaged by the increasing show of tenderness between them that the last visits of Mr. Collins to the house before Mr. Bennet authorized the wedding.
“I do hope that you shall be invited to dine at Lady Catherine’s soon.” Mary said, “Usually she has us there each week, sometimes twice in a week. But with Mr. Darcy and another of her nephews visiting this next week her habits may be changed. Likely she shall have a great round of guests from the highest echelons of the neighborhood during the time they are here.”
“Mr. Darcy visiting!” Elizabeth exclaimed with some surprise. “I had no notion that he would be in the country.”
“Oh, yes. That is a settled thing. As a customary matter he stays with his aunt for a week or two every year around Easter.”
“A most dutiful nephew,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “ That I expect from him—I shall be most happy to see him, and think that an ample compensation, even if it prevents me from dining as often as I otherwise would have at his aunt’s table.”
“That is very proper of you,” Mr. Collins said, “to bear up under the news of misfortune.”
It was difficult, but possible, for Elizabeth to suppress her smile at that observation.
Elizabeth forced herself to pay attention to Mary, even though her spirits were all aflutter with the thought that she would soon see Mr. Darcy. And also, Miss Anne de Bourgh, who he was to marry. She very much hoped to find that woman a wholly superior creature. That would be incomparably the best for her peace of mind.
Once the tour of the outdoors was done, Elizabeth was given a great tour of the housekeeping indoors. Here was the kitchen. Here the room where their maid lived, here was the arrangement they had for meals, here the set of shelves in the pantry, here the newly purchased stove upon which all was cooked, and here the way that they cleverly arranged to have the hot water for their baths heated with a minimum of additional labor.
In the little main room, Mary proudly showed the piano that Mr. Collins had purchased for her as a wedding present.
“At first,” Mr. Collins said as he explained the purchase, “Lady Catherine had thought it an extravagance, as Mrs. Collins would have been able to practice on the piano in the housekeeper’s room at Rosings and then been in no one’s way. But she withdrew her objections when we offered the consideration that this way Mrs. Collins will always be available if a parishioner calls requiring aid or council from my wife, and further the presence of the piano gives the whole of the house more of the aspect of a gentleman’s residence. After we explained all of this, Lady Catherine thought it a very pretty scheme indeed. Her Ladyship is very fond of music.”
“It is a tidy piece. Very well suited to the size of the room.”
“While small,” Mary said with delight, “it is new built. We ordered it directly from Broadwood, when we were in London I was able to play on many of the pianofortes they had for sale, and we decided directly on this one. While it is not so resonant, the sound is purer than the one at home, I mean at Longbourn. Do you wish to hear?”
“Oh, certainly.”
Mary sat and immediately began a piece that had always been a favorite of hers.
Sadly for Elizabeth’s determination to be the perfect guest, and to repay Mary’s delight in her presence with the proper attention to Mary’s interests, her rebel thoughts turned, with very few stray considerations on the purity of the notes or their lack of resonance, in one direction:
Mr. Darcy!
Mr. Darcy, here, in the same country, across the lane. Closer by far, in fact, than he had been at Netherfield.
What would his treatment of her be? Would that easy comradery and free conversation remain? Would the passage of time make him distant and quiet once more?
Perhaps she was presumptuous, but Elizabeth did not have any fear that he would pay her no attention.
Elizabeth knew that she had no right to his attention, nor reason to expect it. He had simply chosen to show her such attentions out of friendship, and if he did not continue to do so, she would have no cause to complain, not even to herself.
Of course, she could not wish to be his sole interest, nor even his chief interest—not when he was in the same house as the woman he was engaged to marry—but Elizabeth knew she would be amongst his interests. That would satisfy her. That would give her cause for all the happiness she could hope for in this world.
It was around when Elizabeth had nobly determined to be easily satisfied that Mary finished the concerto and turned to the audience of Elizabeth and her husband.
Elizabeth’s claps were the more enthusiastic for her consciousness of having barely heard a note.
Mr. Collins’s praise seemed sincere, and as Mary stepped away from the piano and replaced the stool back under it, he said to Elizabeth, “It always gives me such exquisite delight to hear how well she plays. And so often as well! Each day I have the particular pleasure of being able to hear the lovely music while I write my sermons. I wonder how I could have found joy in this house when it was empty of such sound.”
Once the tour had been completed, and Mr. Collins went into his garden, Mary went up with Elizabeth to her room to look through the dresses that she had brought with her.
“Oh,” Mary exclaimed picking up a pale blue silk evening gown, “This is so very nice.”
“I thought I should have something that would not shame you when we dined at Rosings.” Elizabeth frowned at it. A part of her, a large part, still felt as though buying a dress new for herself, rather than adjusting something from another person, was a ridiculous extravagance. Who was she to have such a dress? She had no right to expect such gifts from Mr. Bennet.
“Do put it on, I wish to see you in it.”
“Should I not wait for an appropriate occasion?”
“No.” Mary grinned. “I am now your elder as a married woman, and so I am well versed in the art of giving commands.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Are you happy, really happy?—no that is not how I should ask the question. Have you—”
“Truly I am,” Mary replied with a glow that convinced Elizabeth that she was. “The married state is delightful. Like nothing I could have imagined. And, well, uh, Mama told me things…about what I needed to tell Mr. Collins to do.” Mary’s face was very red. “When you marry, if you wish, I can tell you these things. I can assure you that the Almighty meant the married state to be a place of joy and happiness.”
Elizabeth blushed as well. “Do you really enjoy it? One hears such contradictory things about whether husbands and…whether that is a terrible burden or delightful.”
“I do believe,” Mary said, “that which it is chiefly lies in the gentleman’s behavior. But Mr. Collins is always kind, and he always listens when I strictly tell him to do a thing.” Mary blushed even redder after saying that. She looked at the plastering around the roof. “In any case, you must find a husband who listens to you. That is the chief point.”
Elizabeth was happy to see Mary’s happiness. Despite Mr. Collins’s deficiencies of person, this clearly was a delight for Mary, rather than the terrible burden.
“And in conversation, and daily life, you do not…” Elizabeth hesitated not quite sure how to say in an inoffensive way that Mr. Collins was a dull man whose tendency to speak polite things without ever coming to his point seemed to have not changed.
“He is my husband, and I like him,” Mary said fiercely. “He would not be to your taste. But I certainly would not want him to be. I want him to be to my taste, and he is. I like him more and more the more time that we have spent together. And he is…” Now it was Mary’s turn to frown. She paused. Then she said, “He is far more sensible in private conversation with me than with most other people.”
“That is all I wished to hear,” said Elizabeth.
“Enough of that! Put on that dress, I wish to see you in it.”