Page 10

10. Dancing Slippers

Elizabeth entered the ballroom with some trepidation, but happy that she had sent to London for two of her uncle’s men to keep an eye on her youngest sisters. Her instructions were simple. They were to prevent utter disaster, but otherwise let things play out as they would. Her objective was to ensure her sisters at least did not ruin the family with scandal, but she had no plans whatsoever to attempt to moderate their behaviour beyond that.

She was frankly getting tired of being the only adult in the family and thought it might finally be time to lance the boil. She expected the evenings events to set her course.

In an uncharacteristic bit of inattention, she had allowed Mr Collins to manoeuvre her into the first two dances. She had chastised her mother every day for the past week over her failure to act as she suggested, but they were at an impasse, as neither lady would bend. Elizabeth even began to worry slightly about the possibility of a compromise attempt, so determined to be on her guard.

The first two dances were dances of mortification. Mr Collins, awkward and solemn, apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from him was ecstasy.

She sat out the second set while Mr Collins abused poor Mary’s toes, and discreetly spoke to Nathaniel, the more senior of Mr Gardiner’s men. He told her the not entirely shocking news that her two younger sisters were flirting outrageously with the officers and making entirely too many trips to the punch table. From this, mortification seemed likely—as expected.

She had just turned away from Nathaniel when she was unexpectedly approached by Mr Darcy, who had been absent for the opening set.

“Good evening, Miss Elizabeth,” he said with a polite bow.

She curtseyed. “Good evening, Mr Darcy.”

He surprised her with a rather impertinent grin. “I do believe that is our very first ordinary interaction.”

She laughed lightly. “I suppose so.”

“Does this mean I am restored to your good graces?” he asked pensively.

“As you well know, you were never truly in my bad graces. I can assure you that, if you were, you would know!”

“After our first… ah… encounter on Gracechurch Street, if I was not in your brown books, I well should have been.”

“Nay, that encounter earned me both a shilling and the right to—”

She frowned at what she was about to utter before continuing softly, “Well, never mind.”

He became pensive as well. “You mean it allowed you the privilege of maintaining your well-earned cynicism.”

“It sounds like I should limit your access to my uncle.”

“Perhaps. It is to my chagrin that I proved your cynicism justified in that instance. I hope my manner has been sufficiently improved by your uncle’s tutelage to redeem at least a tiny portion of my sex.”

She laughed heartily. “Just how much time have you spent with my uncle?”

He looked slightly sheepish. “Several hours… the first about a week after the abandoned dinner engagement. I wanted to apologise, but Mr Gardiner said his niece had gone back home to the country.”

Elizabeth chuckled. “Uncle is full of nuance. He said ‘niece’ in the singular form. Jane returned to Longbourn, but I was still there.”

“I suppose he did not consider me sufficiently reformed.”

“It is hard to say. I suppose you could ask him, and if you are very lucky, he might even answer.”

“Have I redeemed myself sufficiently to request a set?”

She laughed. “That is a clever way to ask for a set without making me sit out the night if I decline.”

Darcy looked slightly chagrined. “Your uncle suggested it.”

She laughed heartily. “I believe my cynical streak is still intact, though I never thought I would have to include my uncle in my brown books.”

“Perhaps, and yet you have not answered my question.”

“Yes, you may have a set,” she said. “That is assuming you will dance with other ladies. I do not like being singled out.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile. “Dare I hope for the supper set?”

She paused for quite a while, calculating the implications, and finally handed him her dance card. “You may.”

Darcy looked like a boy getting a double dose of sweetmeats as he filled in the set, then with a bow, he said, “I had best get on with my other dances.”

A few minutes later, she saw him engage Janet Goulding, who had been his first partner in the neighbourhood. Janet was an excellent choice, as she had a good-sized inheritance, and she disdained the very idea of marriage. Elizabeth had no opinion why that was true, but it was a well-established fact. She was very active in a local orphanage and a school for the poor in nearby Hatfield. She, of course, had a companion for respectability, and the two of them seemed like the kind of ladies who could eschew matrimony until the end of time.

Elizabeth chose not to think about the fact that she could easily list all of his partners in order from that first assembly. She always kept her friends close and her enemies closer and wondered what Mr Darcy would become in the fullness of time. He would certainly never be a matrimonial partner, but he just might be able to be a friend. She was ambiguous about whether that was good, bad, or indifferent.

~~~~~

After the departure of Mr Darcy, and the end of Mary’s purgatory with Mr Collins, Elizabeth saw the opportunity to resolve one of her open problems. She pulled Mary rather bodily over to join Charlotte Lucas.

“Mary, have you noticed Mr Collins has been paying me an inordinate amount of attention?”

Mary laughed. “I could tell you that even without seeing or hearing the man, simply by observing your seething.”

“I told Mama I would not marry him.”

Charlotte asked, “Are you certain that is wise, Lizzy? I can tell you the life of a twenty-seven-year-old spinster is nothing to aspire to.”

Elizabeth had taken her secretive nature to such extremes that Charlotte had no idea of her status. She felt slightly guilty about that, but only a little.

“I have an adequate situation in town, Charlotte. I am in no way desperate.”

“I envy you, then Eliza.”

Elizabeth did not really want to spend more time on her own situation, so she simply nodded and continued.

“Mary, pay attention as this is important! I suggested Mama should redirect his attentions to you, since you seem much more the parson’s wife than I, but she has steadfastly refused. Now I ask you. You have known him a week, so are you interested? Mr Collins, to be sure, is neither sensible nor agreeable; his society is irksome, and his attachment to any of us after a week must be imaginary. That said, he does have a good living. I will not tell you how I know, but I am certain he does not drink or have any vicious propensities aside from his need to talk endlessly. His reverence to Lady Catherine de Bourgh is troublesome, and I believe she is an interfering busybody, but none of us have much room to criticise her, given our parents. He will eventually be master of Longbourn, which will make his wife a principal matron in the area. I assume begetting children with him will be unpleasant, but not much worse than other men. So, I ask you this!”

She looked back and forth between both ladies. “Are either of you interested in becoming Mrs Collins, with all that entails?”

She waited patiently for both companions to contemplate the question.

Mary was the first to speak. “I have heard you tell Mama we will not actually starve in the hedgerows when Papa dies. Is that true? If so, just how far from the hedgerows will we be? Should I consider Mr Collins just to secure a future for my sisters?”

Elizabeth was happy to see her sister thinking for herself for once. She wondered if perhaps there could be two intelligent women in the house, and she had just never noticed.

“I will not be so very explicit, but you would live at least as well as Aunt Philips, but not as well as Aunt Gardiner.”

Mary thought a while more and finally said, “I prefer to take my chances. I am only eighteen. I still have time, and I believe once we eventually beat Mama’s resistance down, Uncle Gardiner could find me a decent tradesman for a husband inside of a year.”

“A month, more likely,” Elizabeth grumbled, then turned to Charlotte.

That lady had been very politely giving Mary first choice but was ready to speak.

“I will take him, and I will do so gladly. I still have two younger sisters, so asking your uncle to find me a tradesman would nearly kill my father, since he has so recently become landed. I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr Collins’ character, connexion, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”

Elizabeth had no real opinion about the proposed union. When she was younger, she had been quite stubborn and overly wed to her first impressions. She could imagine her younger self rejecting Mr Collins’ overtures, then thinking it impossible for anyone to choose differently. Life in Cheapside had taught her to be more reflective and more tolerant of other people’s characters and situations, which were often different, but not necessarily wrong.

With a laugh, Elizabeth asked, “Very well! Shall we accomplish it the easy way or the subtle way?”

“What is the easy way?” Mary asked with real enthusiasm, which quite surprised Elizabeth. She could see equal eagerness in Charlotte.

She pointed across the ballroom, and the other ladies joined her in watching Mr Collins introduce himself to Mr Darcy. Elizabeth noticed that gentleman’s face becoming sterner and sterner as time went on, but then he saw her observing him with a smirk on her face. He either decided he needed to behave more politely to gain her favour, or just found amusement in the situation, as he gradually became far friendlier to the clergyman than he really deserved.

“You seem to be a Darcy Charmer,” Mary said incongruously, which left both Charlotte and Elizabeth descending into a fit of giggles.

Elizabeth shrugged. “As you can see, Mr Collins has lately learnt that Mr Darcy is the nephew of his esteemed patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh . The easy way, though not the least bit subtle or decorous, would be to ask Mr Darcy to simply tell Mr Collins to move his affections to Charlotte. He would treat it as an order from Lady Catherine, and the deed would be done.”

Charlotte and Mary stared in confusion, wonder, or consternation, and Mary stated emphatically, “You cannot be serious.”

“Dead serious.”

She turned to Charlotte. “Have you changed your mind.”

“Not in the least. You assert you have a man that requires female instruction, and you think that a bad thing? ” she asked with a laugh.

It had never occurred to Elizabeth that someone might actually want a malleable husband. She thought she might need to put that thought aside for use later when thinking about Jane and Mr Bingley. Insomuch as she wanted a man at all, she wanted a full-grown one who had a mind of his own like her uncle—at least, if she could find one who was not impervious to change or suggestion. It seemed a fine line, and thus far, she had never met a single man who was steadfast, reasonable, and available.

She finally replied, “Let us try the hard way. I am to dance the supper set with Mr Darcy. If necessary, I can ask him then but let us try subtlety first.”

~~~~~

The subtle way turned out to not be all that hard. All Elizabeth had to do was take her two friends to a spot where they could gossip within hearing of Mr Collins. She spent some time discussing how little she would approve Lady Catherine’s interference in her affairs and then spent an equal amount of effort saying how unlikely that outcome was.

Mary helpfully queried her about Mr Collins’ particular attentions, but Elizabeth simply said she had noticed no such thing. He may have spoken slightly more to her than others, but she thought he was just being polite. She bit her tongue as she expounded on how she found him an eligible man, but not one to her taste. She twisted the knife by speaking about how much she enjoyed staying with her tradesman relatives in Cheapside, and even how she might well find a husband there. She even did it a bit brown by openly wondering how Lady Catherine would appreciate a clergyman’s wife with ties to trade, conveniently omitting that Charlotte’s father had been in trade a few years earlier. What Lady Catherine did not know would not vex her.

Charlotte played her part with aplomb, countering every argument Elizabeth made, agreeing with Mary on the right points, and generally making it known that she envied Elizabeth the attentions she had received thus far, even if they were not marked enough to raise expectations.

Long before Mr Darcy came for the supper set, Mr Collins had asked Charlotte for the same, and Elizabeth considered the problem entirely solved—aside from the fit her mother was likely to throw when she became aware of who would displace her as mistress of Longbourn. Charlotte would have the parson trussed up and at the church before the poor man knew what hit him, and he would be all the better for it.

~~~~~

Mr Darcy appeared right on time, and Elizabeth noticed her neighbours’ sly looks at her being stood up with him. She suspected enough of the neighbours had learnt that they spent a couple of days in the house together but had never danced. That was the sort of thing the gossiping matrons (and men) liked to discuss to death. She did not think it particularly noteworthy, but small towns had to work with what they had.

At first, she did not say much, partially because she was accustomed to being silent around him, and partly because she was watching her two younger sisters in consternation. Their behaviour was even worse than she had expected, and at about the point that Elizabeth suspected that alone would be sufficient to dissuade Mr Bingley from Jane. She thought that if she were an eligible gentleman, it would certainly dissuade her.

They had been some minutes at the dance, and she noticed that not only did he dance very well, but they danced very well together. She had danced with a sizeable number of men who were skilled at the steps, but not in seamlessly interacting with their partners. Mr Darcy had learnt the subtle art of treating the couple as a unit and adjusting to their quirks, and she very much appreciated it.

After some minutes, Darcy said, “Come, Miss Elizabeth. We must have some conversation. A very little will do.”

“Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?” she asked curiously, having never paid the slightest attention to whether he spoke with his other dance partners or not.

“Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.”

“Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?” she asked good-naturedly. “If the latter, I suppose you have ample justification.”

“Both, for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.”

She laughed gaily, and his booming laughter joined it shortly. Most of her neighbours were surprised, but she did not pay much attention to that. Given how noisy the matrons were in their corner, a little laughter could not be all that amiss.

She shook her finger at him like a disapproving tutor. “I suspect you are punishing me for my silence of the first month.”

“I would not have it so,” he said, then looked at her pensively. “Do you know that, absent your uncle’s intervention, it probably would have been me who ignored you the first month. I was quite eaten up with pride.”

“I hope he was not too hard on you.”

“In some ways he was not hard enough, but he does seem to know just the right amount of chastisement required to obtain the desired result.”

Elizabeth laughed a bit, then became pensive, “I can assure you that I could speak at great length on the efficacy of his chastisement, as I have made a detailed study of it.”

The first dance of the set ended, which was probably for the best as that was a subject Elizabeth thought it would be better to say less than more.

The second dance of the set proceeded very pleasantly. Just as an experiment, they tried speaking of the things that passed for standard dancing fare at a ball, but abandoned the effort within minutes, and had a much more agreeable discussion about current events in the capital and the ongoing (and seemingly endless) war on the continent.

By the end, Elizabeth was quite in charity with Mr Darcy, though still quite peevish with her mother.

~~~~~

When they sat down to supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely, openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would soon be married to Mr Bingley. It was an animating subject, and Mrs Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connexion as much as she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger daughters, as Jane’s marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men.

In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother’s words or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper.

She was rather limited in what she could say and how emphatically she could say it with Mr Darcy sitting next to her, and she was similarly limited in her discussions with him, because they could not avoid the matron’s effusions.

Kitty and Lydia, naturally, could not allow the few minutes of pleasant conversation they might have enjoyed. They had obviously made at least a half-dozen trips to the punch table. Elizabeth excused herself from Mr Darcy for a minute and begged her father to do something about it, not because she expected him to, but she wanted to exhaust all efforts before she did something desperate.

Poor Mary did not have the sense to limit herself to one song on the pianoforte and then had to endure the further humiliation of her father’s chastisement. Elizabeth felt bad that she had not helped her sister in that regard. It was too late for that evening, but she started giving serious consideration to bringing Mary to London. Her father’s prohibition against interfering with her sisters had always prevented the others from visiting, except for some brief stays with Jane once a year, but perhaps it was time to be more aggressive.

Mr Collins tried to make some sort of long-winded speech. Elizabeth tried to ignore it by speaking more pleasantly with Mr Darcy, but by then, his face had become stony, his countenance when observing her family looked grim, and she had to sigh in resignation. She had hoped, rather than believed she might be able to make a friend of the man. Now, she would be unsurprised if he left the county in the morning and dragged Mr Bingley with him.

On the other hand, she thought if Jane lost Mr Bingley because of her family, there was plenty of blame to go around. Jane spent far more time at Longbourn than Elizabeth, and had the full backing of the matriarch, and yet in all that time she had made little effort to curtail her younger sisters.

Elizabeth knew for certain that if she had been born the beautiful one that was supposed to save her mother from the hedgerows, she would have been able to work her mother into curtailing Lydia and Kitty. As it was, Jane made no real effort at all. In addition to that, if Mr Bingley could be dissuaded from Jane by someone else’s opinion, no matter how well or poorly founded, then he would be weak husband material anyway.

Elizabeth knew she would be gone herself within the week, so it would have negligible effect on her if the party departed, but she did feel bad for Jane.

By the end of the evening, she had endured enough. To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success.

As the coup de grace , Mrs Bennet manoeuvred to have their carriage last and even kept the Netherfield party a quarter-hour after everyone else departed. Elizabeth thought the strategy of annoying people had little to recommend it, but it seemed her mother’s favourite (or only) tactic, so there was that.

One of her uncle’s men had to carry Lydia to the carriage, and a maid had to steady Kitty. Elizabeth surreptitiously handed each man a guinea of extra pay and suggested they raise a pint to their health at their leisure. She especially enjoyed the fact that the Guinea in question had come from the Netherfield party.

The men briefly outlined their activities for the night and rather enjoyed the idea that Captains Denny and Sanderson would wake up well after noon with a powerful headache from a surfeit of laudanum. It had been a necessary step to protect her sisters, and she did not feel bad about it. She would not have felt bad if they threw the soldiers down a well, for that matter. She had seen worse.

She spoke briefly to Mr Darcy and thanked him for the dance with little hope they would ever share another. It was unfortunate, really, but just the way things were.

He indicated he had to return to town to deal with some family matters, and Elizabeth wished him Godspeed. She did not mention that she would be in town soon, but imagined if he called on her uncle again, she might or might not see him, but she would certainly not invite his attention. She had enough problems already.

She was uncertain how much disappointment she should feel for the end of the acquaintance. He had become at least an interesting person in her life, and she would rue the loss of a friendship that likely would never have been anyway.