Page 8 of Old Boots (Pride and Prejudice Variations #3)
CHAPTER EIGHT
T he well-established tension between myself and Miss Elizabeth tightened.
We maintained the impression of goodwill because, in truth, we respected one another a great deal, but we often found ourselves studying each other, circling and testing as fencers do, just before the master shouts, “ En guard. ”
Her relations gave me pause, but I rationalised that Bingley also had relations in trade, and he was my particular friend, was he not?
The pertinent fact was that Mr Bennet was a gentleman, and his daughters were suitably genteel by birth, regardless of their wider connexions.
The margin of their respectability was thin—too thin by my usual standards—but something fundamental had shifted within me.
I no longer considered Mr Bennet’s relations to be quite so tawdry as I would have only weeks ago.
While I congratulated myself for being cured of arrogance, Miss Elizabeth lightly lifted her right brow whenever I spoke and regarded me with the blasé disinterest of a sceptic.
Thinking to wipe the lingering smirk off the lady’s face, I stubbornly exhibited my most congenial manners, the ones I reserve for my trusted friends, and I went back to visiting Longbourn with the regularity of a clock.
When I was next there, I asked Mr Bennet if he would take his daughters to the upcoming assembly.
“If Jane decides they will go, I suppose I shall take them,” he said, with a melancholy air, and then he surprised me by adding, “If my wife were alive and my youngest daughters not in school, I would have been dragged out regardless of my preference.”
It seemed I was not the only person in the room stunned by his remark. The heads of all three daughters swivelled and their eyes widened at Mr Bennet before they regained their composure.
I refrained from asking after the two younger daughters, whose existence had only now been revealed.
Instead, I said, “I am sorry for your loss, sir. Was your wife’s death relatively recent?”
“Nearly a year ago,” he said quietly, and then perhaps wishing he had not brought that dreaded topic into the room, he addressed his eldest daughter .
“Well, Jane, you are the mistress of these things now. What say you? Are we to put on our finery and go out in the world next week?”
Miss Bennet had recovered her bearings and placidly replied, “If you will take us, Papa, but we shall not dance. I believe the next time we venture out after the assembly, we shall do so if we are asked.”
I cleared my throat. “Mr Bingley plans a ball at the end of this month. Perhaps you would allow me to lead you and your sisters out onto the floor, Miss Bennet?”
“Since we have not made the gentleman’s acquaintance,” Miss Elizabeth said, “I doubt we shall be invited to his estate for a ball.”
“I have every intention of introducing him to your father at the assembly, and I can assure you that you will be included with the rest of society here.”
“Mr Bingley is a sociable man, sir?” Jane Bennet asked with a hint of surprise, while her sister looked to be choking on a stinging remark.
I realised belatedly that perhaps I should have brought Bingley with me to make him known to her father weeks ago. My failure to do so smacked of—well, it certainly appeared as though I considered my friend and his family to be above meeting the Bennets.
A blunt confession seemed in order. “If I have hesitated to bring Mr Bingley to you, though you would find him both civil and engaging, I did so because I would have been required to bring along his sisters, and they are neither of them delighted to be in the country.”
“I had heard they are exceedingly elegant ladies,” Miss Elizabeth said, stabbing me with a look of triumph.
She must have been deciphering my reluctance to make the introduction for some time, and because she was so piercingly perceptive, her conclusions were within a fraction of the truth.
“Would they find us terribly rustic, sir?”
I was on the verge of yielding yet another point when Miss Bennet rescued me.
“Of course they would, Lizzy,” she said, in the tone of a most gentle reproof. “Our society in Meryton is unvaried and confining. I am sure Mr Bingley’s sisters are used to much better entertainment and more elegant people in London.”
I released my held breath and said, “Truth be told, Miss Elizabeth, I had no wish to be obliged to blush in embarrassment for their manners.”
I rode away from Longbourn later that day after finally having won a match.
My disclosure, which rang with honesty, caused Miss Elizabeth to stumble for once.
Her lips parted, but she had no snapping rejoinder, no scalding-hot expression with which to dispute the one thing with which she could not argue—a sincere statement of fact .
Miss Bingley would have been mortifyingly overbearing when faced with the civility and modesty of the unpretentious ladies of Longbourn.
She would have looked down her nose at their plain dresses, at the comfortable, well-worn furniture, and the simplicity of the tea service.
And she would have taken no pains to disguise her pitying opinion of Mary Bennet, not to mention her dismissal of Mr Bennet.
Neither of them would have been of any interest to her at all.
That treatment of people I had come to think of warmly would have been uncomfortable to witness, but the fact that Caroline Bingley would have been forced to sit politely with Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth, both more beautiful than she, and both so obviously well-acquainted with me—well, I believe she would have turned outrageous, sneering at her hostesses, and setting them up as rivals, forcing me to speak aloud my disgust of her manners.
There was little I abhorred more than just that sort of scene, but my avoidance of it had made me look, to Miss Elizabeth at least, scurrilous in my attentions to her family.
This dawning understanding left a taste in my mouth I did not like.
Perhaps it was chagrin. Whatever it was, I did not celebrate my victory and instead went away from Longbourn more bruised than happy .
My tattered feelings were further exacerbated by the increasing desperation of my hostess.
Miss Bingley’s eyes, which had sometimes struck me as narrow as a cat’s that sat purring with self-satisfaction, were now more likely to be wide with anxiety.
The continuation of my prank, in concert with the unrelenting hindrances of a household staff that could not respect her, rendered her easily startled and frequently lying on the sofa with a vinaigrette.
“Mr Darcy,” she said in the fading whisper of those near death, “You are finally here. Forgive me for not making your tea, sir. Louisa?” She made a vague motion at the tea tray.
“Are you unwell, Miss Bingley?” I asked perfunctorily. I had been forced to attend one too many such prostrations and had depleted all my sympathy.
“She is having another fit of nerves, Darcy,” Bingley explained, waving in his sister’s general direction. “Never mind that. I suppose the birds have all gone now?”
I allowed Mrs Hurst to stir up whatever concoction she had in mind and drank it down while staring out the window and speaking to Bingley about the shooting season that would soon come to an end.
This led me to the precipice that I sensed on the horizon, that of selecting a day to leave Hertfordshire, and I spoke of other things to forestall my decision .
“Is your sister equal to giving a ball?” I asked in a low voice.
“Dashed if I know what has got into her, but if Caroline is having one of her fits, then Louisa can play hostess. I very much want to open the doors to this place, Darcy. Everyone has welcomed me so warmly here, and I wish to show my appreciation.”
In his declaration of intent, I sensed an unspoken resentment.
The Bingley fortune had come from trade, and that accounted for the tepidness with which Bingley was often received in town.
My friend must have suffered a rare half-second of reflection that caused him to think of something else that was on his mind because he turned from the window and spoke in a more public voice.
“I do hope you will be feeling up to going with me to the assembly hall, Caroline. Our neighbours expect us, you know, and I wish to oblige them. Hurst, Louisa? I hope you are in the mood for dancing.”
“Does Mr Darcy intend to go?” Miss Bingley asked weakly.
“That is entirely up to him,” Bingley said with rare annoyance. “Should you not lie down in your room if you are ill?”
She struggled into an upright position and sniffed. “I simply needed a moment to compose myself after the incident with the cook. ”
Hurst, never a man to disguise his feelings, groaned and left the room, and sensing the family was on the verge of an argument over whatever had happened in my absence, I excused myself.