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CHAPTER ELEVEN

LONDON

Elizabeth

O ver the course of December, my ankle healed, and my skill at the pianoforte deepened.

By January, I felt equal to going home. My mother’s holiday with Kitty, Lydia, and Mary had been a disappointment.

Due to Papa’s paltry notion of generosity, they stayed in a mediocre lodging and therefore, had been treated like every other country pumpkin to go to Bath to mingle with high society, which is to say the best they managed was a public assembly during which none of my sisters was asked to dance.

My father wrote to me of this with a smirk of satisfaction between the lines, my sister Mary wrote of the trip with heavy disapprobation for being a waste of time, and Kitty wrote a petulant little note about how horrid Bath was and how she hoped never to go again.

My sister Lydia did not write, but I heard in drips and drabs in all three letters that she was in the sulks.

The officers of the militia had gone away, and she was left with the country boys she had known all her life.

Meanwhile, Charlotte married Mr Collins, and my mother, who had hoped to come home from holiday with three husbands in tow, was in a fit of dejected self-pity.

“I must go home,” I told Jane one night after Three Kings Day.

Jane had bloomed in London. My aunt always had company at her table, and while we visited, she made sure she entertained as many young men as she could.

Not only was Jane a favourite of my uncle Gardiner’s banker’s son, who stood to inherit both a business and a fortune, but she was called upon with great regularity by a man who had risen in the ranks of the East India Company, and a barrister whose father was a ranking member of the House.

Mr Charles Bingley’s star faded in the dawn of her new popularity with men who liked her relations very well, or so it seemed to me.

But it was the lowly young doctor with boyish freckles that kept Jane in high sparkle.

Mr Bromley came to look at me once a week, and my aunt Gardiner kept him for tea if she could.

She looked wisely between my sister and the young man and asked him to look into the throats of her children.

This gave him the handy excuse to come twice a week, and when my cousin bent his thumb backwards in a violent scuffle in the nursery with his sister, he came more often still.

My uncle Gardiner, upon seeing this man always in his house, took pains to be home from his warehouse for tea and took Mr Bromley to a lecture one night and a dinner with his contemporaries the next.

I wondered whether he was sounding out the doctor with regards to his means and intentions and was soon enlightened when he brought up the subject over dinner.

I have often pondered the strange dichotomy between my mother, who is silly and uneducated, and her brother, my uncle, who is a man of both sense and consideration.

This difference between them was never clearer than when Uncle Gardiner began to tell us at dinner of Mr Bromley’s family and circumstances.

Whereas my mother would have spouted wild, suggestive nonsense, from my uncle we heard rational facts.

The young man was not wealthy, but he had a decent competence from a landed uncle.

His own father, now living in leisure in Berkshire, had also been a doctor, so he was the son of a gentleman at least. Young Mr Bromley’s status dwelt in that strange state which hung between gentleman and yeoman.

He could marry credibly either up or down but would add no consequence to a lady or provide for her other than passably.

These facts were delivered in a way that spared us all consciousness and embarrassment.

My sister was not studied to see how this news fell on her.

She was gently and with great consideration, told Mr Bromley’s status, without any intent to either encourage or dissuade her.

The decision, my uncle made clear, was hers to make.

For this great discretion, I admired Uncle Gardiner more than ever and thought despairingly of Mr Darcy who would never know what an exceptional tradesman I had as a relation.

Jane seemed inclined to take her time with her suitors, and while I was anxious to go home and pull my family’s spirits up from the doldrums, she hesitated.

In the end, we decided Jane should stay, ostensibly to help my aunt with her children who were on the verge of catching colds all winter, and I would go to Longbourn.

Returning home was worse than I thought it would be.

Confined in a house with no new or exciting visitors, my sisters were forever cross with one another.

My father looked weary, and my mother looked older, and both were somehow more disagreeable than ever.

I did what I could for Mama by telling her in minute detail about Jane’s many admirers.

Lydia and Kitty were drawn into these conferences out of boredom and romantic leanings.

They began to speak better to one another and to talk of how many beaus they would attract when their turns came to go to Aunt Gardiner’s house.

My mother’s thoughts slowly turned away from her defeats, and she once again went out visiting in the neighbourhood to gossip about Jane’s conquests.

For Papa, I could do nothing. He was disinclined to be cheered, and so I turned my attention to my middle sister Mary.

“I had a music master in London while my ankle healed,” I told her one day.

“Yes, I heard,” she said without pulling her nose out of her book.

“He taught me a very great deal. Would you like me to show you a little of what I learnt?”

She puckered up with pride. We Bennets were testy that way, but she acquiesced with a gloomy shrug and by week’s end we had established a habit of practising together.

At first, Mary did not like my corrections.

She had always been the better player, even though she lacked style.

But my improvements had rendered me, in comparison to her, an expert, and she gradually paid more attention to what I had to share.

Without Jane, I grew closer to Mary, and by February, she had become a softer version of herself.

Not only had I helped Mary with her playing, I cut my sister’s hair and put it in a more flattering style, and when we visited friends, I brought her forward and included her in conversation.

I somehow convinced her that looking into the mythology of the Greeks would complement her Christian education, and we read of Mythos and Pathos, of the Kings of Ithaca and Athens, and of Poseidon and Apollo.

I sat patiently as I listened to her assessments of their moral failures and lightly pointed out the lessons we could take away from these tales in a more practical, less critical light.

The lesson I learnt was this: attention will do what lectures will not, and while my youngest sisters remained giddy and empty-headed, my middle sister I salvaged from the dung heap.

Let Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst see us now, and they would have to amend their impression to say the three eldest Bennet girls, at least, were presentable.

That I continued to let the opinions of our elegant visitors of last autumn goad me in my private thoughts was a nuisance I could not seem to conquer.

When I went anywhere, I strove to be on my best behaviour as though in answer to their criticisms all those months ago.

I cannot be other than myself, but the edge of my impertinence had ground away, and being always with my staid sister lent me a little steadiness, a bit of dignity.

March came with rain and news that Jane would marry Mr Bromley. Mama did not know whether to be in alt or crushed.

“But why did she not pick the young man with the fortune?” she mourned in one breath, and in the next, “But married! Jane will be Mrs Bromley and live in London. I am sure her husband will be a famous town doctor, a gentleman doctor , who will only see members of Parliament and important figures at court.”

“You may believe that if it pleases you,” my father said glumly.

Mr Bromley was due to visit Friday with settlements after earning my uncle’s provisional approval and having secured my father’s written consent.

Papa did not like to put himself to the trouble of securing Jane’s happiness, it seemed, or he felt himself to be judged against my uncle’s successful efforts to secure my sister a respectable future.

Either way, he was cantankerous throughout the visit.

Mr Bromley began to impress me, however.

My father’s incivility did not daunt him in the least. Nor did my mother’s mortifying compensation for Papa’s manners.

Mama’s enthusiasm, her effusions over him and our raucous dinnertime ritual at Longbourn amused him, and he even participated by telling a few jokes.

Seeking to salvage something of decorum, Mary and I performed a few duets after dinner before the poor man was compelled to play cards with Mama, Kitty, and Lydia.

My father wandered away with his candle, and I writhed inwardly at the very thought of passing such an evening with Mr Darcy instead of our easily pleased Mr Bromley.

Thankfully, the following day brought Jane home.

She came with the Gardiners and their children, and the sheer number of people present already known to my sister’s betrothed distanced him from our awkward manners.

Aunt Gardiner and her children filled the room and surrounded him with easy recollections of visits and common acquaintances.

He examined a scrape on little Eddie’s elbow with professional gravity and felt little June’s neck for lumps, declaring her safe from putrid throat.

And Uncle Gardiner did his part too, by pulling him into intelligent conversation or out riding when the weather permitted.