Elizabeth Bennet was stuffed tightly into the corner of the carriage. She carefully did not move, so that Mrs. Bennet would not have any cause to complain about her crumpling the dresses of the daughters of the house.
When Kitty complained that Lydia sat on the edge of her dress, Mrs. Bennet directed Kitty to sit directly on Elizabeth’s leg, saying, “It cannot signify if her dress is more rumpled than it already is.”
Miss Elizabeth Bennet had reached the age of twenty—only a fortnight past!—with having very little to vex her... except for her “benefactress” Mrs. Bennet and her four daughters, particularly the two youngest.
So thought Elizabeth as she finally descended from the carriage to walk into the assembly hall.
No, no. Do not think like that. You must always be grateful. You should feel guilty for thinking ill of Mrs. Bennet.
Mrs. Bennet looked around at the girls before they entered the assembly hall. “Jane to the front, and Lydia after. Kitty, and Mary behind. And Lizzy, next to me.” She turned a critical eye on Elizabeth’s ink-stained Quakerish ensemble.
Severe hair parted at the middle with no curls falling about to frame her face. Not a touch of rouge or powder. No necklace, the only ornament Elizabeth owned in any sense was a locket with a miniature of her mother that Mr. Bennet kept under lock and key. It would only be hers to freely wear when she turned twenty-one.
Her dress was an old faded bluish gray muslin that Mrs. Bennet had abandoned as unfashionable the better part of a decade ago. The bosom was too large, the waist not at the right location on her torso, the sleeves too long, and the hems were visibly pinned up. The heavy bombazine fabric reflected the origin of this dress as a mourning piece from when Mrs. Bennet’s father died.
Elizabeth’s own addition to the unattractiveness of the dress was an untidy ink stain on the left arm.
Most observers, Elizabeth hoped, would consider even Mary her superior in looks. It was a pity that Mary was not prettier, for she was Elizabeth’s favorite among Mr. Bennet’s daughters. Poor Mary also made a point of not dressing well, so she would not appear to compete with her prettier sisters.
Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth had maintained a silent conspiracy to make Elizabeth dress in the manner least likely to draw attention to her since Jane had come out.
After her long examination of Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennet said with a slightly dissatisfied air, “Be particularly sure tonight to not put yourself forward. Do not indulge in that satirical air you have learned from Mr. Bennet. Remember, you must not run on in such a way in company.”
“I know.”
Mrs. Bennet pinched her cheek with something that mixed affection with command and ownership. “You are never any trouble.”
Elizabeth often wished to be trouble.
There was a thing in her mind which would suggest ways that she might be trouble.
That was Mr. Bennet’s fault.
When they sat together in the library, Mr. Bennet always encouraged Elizabeth to say whatever ridiculous, perhaps unkind, and often silly thing that came to her mind. That was the only place when she felt as though she belonged and that she was acting out her true self.
Sometimes in her heart, though never aloud, Elizabeth thought of him as her “Papa”.
With Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth always played the role of “Elizabeth Bennet, poor, unwanted relation, who is interesting in absolutely no way.” And even though part of her deeply feared Mrs. Bennet for reasons she could not explain to herself, there was something about the role that seemed false to her.
Some of her was convinced, probably by how Mr. Bennet treated her, that she was not really poor and unwanted.
Mr. Bingley had not yet arrived, and Elizabeth contemplated how Papa would be delighted with the irony if after the speculation, anxiety, and careful pains that the young maidens fair of their neighborhood had taken to appear their best, that wealthy gentleman did not in fact appear.
Fortunately for the many young females of gentle descent—Elizabeth liked to distract herself by inventing different ways to say something when bored—Mr. Bingley did arrive with a far smaller crowd of friends than the tale had made them all hope for. Just two other gentlemen, one of them unfortunately married, and two ladies, one of them unfortunately unmarried and with a large dowry.
The fine tall appearance of the other unmarried gentleman at first promised to compensate for the fact that there was but one unmarried gentleman.
Within minutes the tale had spread around the ballroom that he was the possessor of a very large estate in Derbyshire, and worth at least ten thousand a year.
Elizabeth was not a participant in the hopes that his presence in the ballroom raised in the beating breasts of all the brightest jewels of the country. However, she liked the look of Mr. Darcy.
Likewise, Elizabeth could not agree with the distaste which arose in every breast at Mr. Darcy’s high manners and refusal to dance. Oh certainly, it made him to be less the perfect gentleman, but as someone who felt outside of the community, and who had no close friends except for Mr. Bennet and Mary, Elizabeth did not think enough of them all to be offended on their behalf.
One time she caught Mr. Darcy looking towards her with a half frown. But upon noticing that she had noticed him, he immediately looked away. Elizabeth assumed that he had merely made a critical study of the many flaws that she had layered her appearance with. Elizabeth was, for reasons she did not wish to think about, unhappy to see his disapproval…
Elizabeth did not expect to ever marry.
She could not try to attach a gentleman when she was presented to the world as the poor relation of Mr. Bennet. Even though Mr. Bennet tried to hide it from her, she knew what her true birth was.
She was a bastard.
One of Elizabeth’s earliest memories was a man beating her as he called her a bastard again and again. “Bastard, bastard, I should kill the bastard child.”
Mrs. Bennet had slapped her and demanded to know where she had heard that word. This was much later when Elizabeth asked what it meant.
Elizabeth had never seen Mr. Bennet as angry as he was that day at his wife. She had certainly never touched Elizabeth, nor any of the other girls, in such a way again. However, Mr. Bennet had clearly not wished to explain what a bastard was to her. But after a while he did.
Mr. Bennet had never told her that she was illegitimate. Such was his kindness for her.
He wished her to think that she was just like any other child. Mrs. Bennet certainly knew about nothing which lacked respectability in Elizabeth’s origin. Besides the lack fortune, which was the worst sort of lack of respectability.
Elizabeth hated how everyone who she met did not know . When they were kind to her, when they thought well of her, or even when they thought ill of her, they did not know something that might make them despise her.
Still, she never told anyone.
Habits of secrecy, of discretion, and a sense of terror prevented that. Elizabeth guiltily stayed silent and acquiescent in Mr. Bennet’s fabricated tale of her background.
Near the middle of the evening, when Jane was dancing with Mr. Bingley for a second time, Mrs. Bennet settled next to Lady Lucas so that she could make a long narration of her delight at the ball.
Elizabeth decided to take this as her opportunity to escape her constant attendance on Mrs. Bennet.
She would hide for twenty minutes from demands to grab punch, to put Mrs. Bennet’s shawl back into the carriage, to retrieve Mrs. Bennet’s shawl from the carriage, to grab Lydia’s forgotten fan from the carriage, and from the occasional requirement to hold Mrs. Bennet’s own fan. She also would escape from being regularly sent on a hopeless quest to convince Mary to put aside her book and look pretty for the gentlemen.
When she sat in the far side of the room, Elizabeth did keep half an eye on Mrs. Bennet, in case her benefactress required her attention once more. Mrs. Bennet’s temper was quickly changeable.
In making this escape, Elizabeth settled in a chair near Mr. Darcy. Something about him drew her closer to him. And she thought that he was the least likely person in the room to offend Mrs. Bennet by asking her to dance.
It was almost as though she recognized him.
Elizabeth observed him from the corner of her eyes.
When she sat, three chairs distant from Mr. Darcy, he glanced at her again. He studied her with that frown of his before looking away and back at the dancing couples.
She knew that even if she had made herself to look as pretty as she could and turned her every female art and allurement towards him, Mr. Darcy probably would have ignored her in the same way that he ignored the pretty and elaborately dressed young Misses in the room.
But she wished that she could permit herself to make the effort.
Not worth thinking upon.
Elizabeth turned her own eyes to the crowd, and more especially at Miss Bingley who was presently dancing with Mr. Lucas.
Despite the way that Elizabeth pointedly never purchased clothes, ribbons, bonnets, or other accoutrements of fashion with the ample pocket money that Mr. Bennet gave her, she was fascinated by such things. Elizabeth was as aware as Mrs. Bennet, or any other woman, of the meaning of how much lace a woman wore, and what made someone appear to be a particularly fine gentlewoman.
The Bingley sisters looked around hauteur, but they were very finely dressed indeed. An ample quantity of Brussels lace trimmed onto the hem of their gowns and around the necklines. Even though they conversed with the neighborhood, Elizabeth thought that they considered themselves as far above everyone else as Mr. Darcy did. It was only Mr. Bingley who behaved as though there was equality between himself at the denizens of this market town.
Elizabeth loved it when she had a peaceful chance to listen to the music and just observe. She liked to watch the women fan and flirt, and the gentlemen preen and flirt in turn. The way that the older women stood aside, watching everything, the gaiety, the drinking, the sound.
A ghost observing the happiness of the living, but unable to touch any of them.
Lydia flounced over and flopped into the chair next to Elizabeth. “I have never been so disappointed in a man! Mr. Ferris had drunk so much that he twisted his ankle near as soon as we started the set, and now I am left without a partner.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“It does not signify. I am taller than him. And he is painfully awkward. I only hate to miss a dance. Even Mary is on the floor this set. But there are no free gentlemen. Perhaps I could convince that Mr. Darcy to dance with me.”
Lydia pointedly looked towards the gentleman, ready to flash him an inviting smile if he should glance in their direction.
He did not.
“He is so tall. That might match me as well—I hate when a man is shorter than me, like Mr. Ferris. You are lucky to be so short. I would hate to be short.”
After they waited a minute, and Mr. Darcy still determinedly did not look towards them once, Lydia sighed. “The set is ruined. But I have the younger Goulding for the next.”
However, at the middle of the set there was a minute of rest and using it to advantage, Mr. Bingley stepped out of the line and approached Mr. Darcy. With a cheerful hand on his friend’s shoulder, Mr. Bingley loudly entreated his friend to join the dance.
Mr. Darcy replied with a clear refusal.
“No, no, I say, some of them are uncommonly pretty.”
“You are dancing with the only pretty girl in the room,” Mr. Darcy said, which comment brought a pouty frown to Lydia’s face. Though she could not disagree that Jane had greater beauty, it was not a fact which Lydia particularly liked to be reminded about. “But she smiles too much”—this addition from Mr. Darcy visibly improved Lydia’s mood.
She glanced meaningfully at Elizabeth, who also could not suppress an amused smile.
“Smiles too much!” Mr. Bingley protested. “I would not be so fastidious as you for a kingdom. But her sister and cousin are sitting behind, and they are both, I dare say, excessively pretty.”
Mr. Darcy now turned to them.
He glanced quickly over Lydia and then looked at Elizabeth.
Their eyes met, and something flipped in Elizabeth’s stomach.
Despite her habits she did not immediately look down and away as she should have. His mien was serious. She forced herself to look away, amused by something she could not explain to herself.
Mr. Darcy turned back to Bingley and said in a voice loud enough for them to both clearly here, “They are tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me. I am in no mood at present to give consequence to young women that have been slighted by other men.”
Such an end to that odd instant of fluttering hope that Elizabeth had felt that he would ask her to dance. Elizabeth struggled not to giggle at herself.
Bingley returned to Jane, and Mr. Darcy returned to his contemplation of the dance floor.
“La, what a disagreeable fellow,” Lydia whispered to Elizabeth. She huffed and frowned at Mr. Darcy, who still did not look at them. Lydia got a sly look to her eye. “I do believe he spoke more of you than of me. Are you not terribly offended?”
“No.”
“You are no fun! It would be such a todo if a great gentleman fell in love with you instead of Jane. I do believe Mama would scream and claw you. Does not your vanity demand revenge—I know what I shall do. It will be such a joke. I will pretend to be horribly offended and heartbroken by what he said. Watch, I shall make as though I am crying and then I will shout at him—and after, I shall run out to the balcony, and you must follow me.”
“No, do not—”
“La! You cannot stop me!”
Lydia leapt from the seat with a blotchy and squeezed together expression that someone who did not know better, and who had not seen it resolve into smiles within seconds many times, would have thought showed the emotion a woman might have when mourning her dead husband or lost virtue.
Mr. Darcy turned towards the sound of Lydia’s rushing footsteps, but it seemed that facing the sober gentleman’s sober gaze had a sobering effect on Lydia. There was something imposing and intensely proud and respectable about Mr. Darcy. It seemed that his ill-tempered comment that he was unwilling to be tempted by them was not sufficient to make him a figure of mockery.
Elizabeth thought rather more now of Mr. Bingley for his bravery in having poked such a bear with his bare hands, instead of using a stick.
Lydia and Mr. Darcy stared at each other for what seemed to Elizabeth’s anxious nerves a terribly long time. Perhaps half a minute, though likely it was less. Lydia did keep the devastated expression upon her face, and she managed to get some glistening tears to start down her face.
By now Mrs. Bennet would have already promised Lydia five guineas, to come out in society the day she turned fifteen (no matter how much it annoyed Mr. Bennet) and the purchase of an ugly new bonnet that she might tear apart to make something better with. Mr. Bennet would have been in full retreat to the library, whilst rolling his eyes at the antics of his youngest child.
Mr. Darcy’s expression was unemotional, with just a hint of confusion.
“Oh, I am not ugly,” Lydia at last stuttered out, in a mumble that Elizabeth could barely hear. “Not so… oh, never mind.”
The girl successfully accomplished the portion of her plan where she ran out the nearest balcony doors. With a sigh, Elizabeth rose to follow her. She glanced back at Mr. Darcy who stared after Miss Lydia with a puzzled frown.
Their eyes met.
Elizabeth felt that sense of something twisting in her stomach again. She gave him a small smile and little shrug before following Lydia.
Elizabeth was far more amused by Lydia’s stumbling in her joke than she would have been by complete “success”.
The instant Elizabeth stepped out onto the balcony Lydia burst into helpless giggles. “So imposing! Such a forbidding expression.” A giggle that was halfway to tears. “I couldn’t shout. I could barely say anything. Such an imposing face.”
“It was quite improper to try.” Elizabeth could not keep the amusement out of her tone.
Lydia shook her head. “No, no, not with Mr. Darcy—I can promise to never dance with him. I would be too scared to say a word.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Mr. Darcy is a far more interesting man than Bingley.”
As soon as Elizabeth spoke, the two girls perceived that the gentleman himself had stepped out onto the balcony. He stared at them with that same serious, unreadable expression.