Читать книгу The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet - Колин Маккалоу, Colleen McCullough - Страница 6
ОглавлениеAt first the winter passed more delightfully than Mary expected. Though she could receive no gentleman callers, Mrs Markham, Miss Delphinia Botolph, Mrs McLeod and Lady Appleby came often to her house, privately deploring its musty atmosphere and dark outlook, not to mention privately speculating as to why dear Miss Bennet had no lady’s companion. Enquiries met with a stone wall; Miss Bennet simply said she had no need of one, and changed the subject. However, if a carriage was sent for her or she hired one of her own, she could attend dinner parties and receptions. There were always enough unattached gentlemen, and Mr Robert Wilde had dropped unsubtle hints that he would very much like it were he to be seated beside Miss Bennet at a dinner table, or care for her on other kinds of occasion.
Wriggled brows and winks flew from face to face; it was no mean thing for a thirty-eight-year-old female to charm such an eligible bachelor as Mr Wilde. Who seemed not to care that he was her junior by a good six or seven years.
“Clever of him,” said Miss Botolph, whose sixty years meant she experienced no pangs of jealousy. “One hears that she has an adequate income, and if he snares her, it will elevate his station. She is Darcy of Pemberley’s sister-in-law.”
“I could wish she dressed better,” said Lady Appleby, a keen reader of ladies’ fashion magazines.
“And I, that she did not come out with those truly peculiar remarks,” from Mrs Markham. “I do believe she was seen in deep conversation with a gypsy.”
The object of these observations was seated on a sofa with Mr Wilde in attendance, her plain black gown so old that it had a greenish hue, and her hair scraped into a bun without a single curl to frame her face.
“What did you learn from the gypsy?” Mr Wilde was asking.
“Fascinating, sir! It seems they believe themselves the descendants of the Egyptian pharaohs, and are doomed to wander until some paradise or prophet arrives. What he was really trying to do was to separate me from my sixpences, but he did not succeed. His eyes hungered for gold or silver, not food. I went away convinced that his tribe, at least, is neither impoverished nor discontented. He said they liked their life. I did learn that they move on when they have fouled their camp site with rotten food and bodily wastes. A lesson some of our own hedgerow people should learn.”
“You say they like their life. But you do not like yours.”
“That will change in May,” said Mary, nibbling a macaroon. “This is very good. I must ask Mrs McLeod for her cook’s recipe.”
“That’s a relief!” cried Mr Wilde, forgetting that it was not polite for new acquaintances to contract words.
“A relief. In what way?”
“It says that there will be an end to your travels. That one day you will command the services of your own cook.”
“I do that now.”
“But do not entertain. Therefore, no macaroons.”
“I am reproved.”
“Miss Bennet, I would never dream of reproving you!” His light brown eyes grew brighter, gazed into hers ardently, and his whirling mind quite forgot that they were in Mrs McLeod’s drawing room with ten other people. “On the contrary, I ask for nothing more of life than to spend it at your side.” He took the plunge. “Marry me!”
Horrified, she wriggled down the sofa away from him in a movement so convulsive that all eyes fixed on them; all ears had been flapping far longer.
“Pray do not say it!”
“I have already said it,” he pointed out. “Your answer?”
“No, a thousand times no!”
“Then let us speak of other things.” He took the empty plate from her nerveless fingers and smiled at her charmingly. “I don’t accept my congé, you understand. My offer remains open.”
“Do not hope, Mr Wilde. I am obdurate.” Oh, how vexatious! Why had she not foreseen this inappropriate declaration? How had she encouraged him?
“Will you be at Miss Appleby’s wedding?” he asked.
And that, concluded the satisfied onlookers, is that — for the time being, at any rate. Sooner or later she would accept his offer.
“Though if she plays too hard to catch,” said Miss Botolph, “she may find her fisherman has waded far upstream.”
“Do you know what I think, Delphinia?” asked Mrs Markham. “I think she does not give tuppence for matrimony.”
“From which I deduce that her situation is easy and her way of life settled,” Miss Botolph answered. “It was certainly so for me after my mama died. There are worse fates than a comfortable competence and a maiden existence.” She snorted. “Husbands can prove more of a sorrow than a blessing.”
An observation that the married ladies chose to ignore.
Argus put down his pen and viewed his latest effort with a slightly cynical eye. Its subject was actually rather silly, he thought, but comfortably off English folk, particularly those who lived in cities, were incredibly sentimental. Not the most vivid, emotive prose could move them to pity the lot of a chimney sweep, but if one substituted an animal for the human being — ah, that was quite a different matter! Many a tear would be shed when this letter appeared in the Westminster Chronicle! Pit ponies, no less. Permanently blind from a life spent underground, their poor shaggy hides furrowed with whip marks …
It amused him to do this sort of thing occasionally, for Argus was not what he seemed to his readers, who in their fantasies pictured him starving in a garret, worn to bones by the sheer force of his revolutionary ideals. Ladies of Miss Mary Bennet’s kind might dream of him as a fellow crusader against England’s ills, but in truth his epistolary zeal was fired by his desire to make life uncomfortable for certain gentlemen of the Lords and Commons. Every Argusine letter caused questions to be raised in both Houses, provoked interminable speeches, obliged Lord This and Mr That to dodge a few rotten eggs on that perilous trip between the portals of Parliament and the cabins of their carriages. In actual fact he knew as well as did the most conservative of Tories that nothing would improve conditions for the poor. No, it was not that which drove him; what did, Argus had decided, was a spirit of mischief.
Closing his library door behind him, he sallied into the spacious hall of his house in Grosvenor Square and held out a hand for his gloves, hat and cane while his butler draped a fur-collared cape about his broad shoulders.
“Tell Stubbs not to wait up,” he said, and ventured out into the freezing March night wearing his true guise; Argus existed only in his study. His walk was very short; one side of the square saw him reach his destination.
“My dear Angus,” said Fitzwilliam Darcy, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Do come into the drawing room. I have a new whisky for you — it takes a Scot to deliver a verdict on a Scotch whisky.”
“Och, I’ll give my verdict happily, Fitz, but your man knows his Highland malts better than I do.” Divested of cloak, cane, hat and gloves, Mr Angus Sinclair, secretly known as Argus, accompanied his host across the vast, echoing foyer of Darcy House. “Going to try again, eh?” he asked.
“Would I succeed if I did try?”
“No. That is the best part about being a Scot. I don’t need your influence, either at Court or in the City, let alone the Houses of Parliament. My wee weekly journal is but a hobby — the bawbees come from Glasgow coal and iron, as you well know. I derive much pleasure from being a thorn in the Tory paw, stout English lion that he is. You should travel north of the Border, Fitz.”
“I can tolerate your weekly journal, Angus. It’s Argus who is the damnable nuisance,” said Fitz, leading his guest into the small drawing room, blazing with crimson and gilt.
No doubt he would have continued in that vein, except that his ravishing wife was coming forward with a brilliant smile; she and Mr Sinclair liked each other. “Angus!”
“Each time I see you, Elizabeth, your beauty amazes me,” he said, kissing her hand.
“Fitz is making a bore of himself again about Argus?”
“Inevitably,” he said, heart sinking a little at her use of “bore”. Too tactless.
“Who is he?”
“In this incarnation, I know not. His letters come in the post. But in his original, mythical incarnation, he was a huge monster with many eyes. Which, I am sure, is why the anonymous fellow chose his pen name. The eyes of Argus see everywhere.”
“You must know who he is,” said Fitz.
“No, I do not.”
“Oh, Fitz, do leave Angus alone!” Elizabeth said jokingly.
“Am I making a bore of myself?” Fitz asked, a slight tinge of acid in his voice.
“Yes, my love, you are.”
“Point taken. Try the whisky, Angus,” said Fitz with a tight smile, holding out a glass.
Oh, dear, Angus thought, swallowing a potion he detested. Elizabeth is going to embark upon yet another of her poke-gentle-fun-at-Fitz essays, and he, hating it, will poker up stiffer than any iron implement ever forged to tame a fire. Why can she not see that her touch isn’t light enough? Especially given its object, thinner-skinned by far than he pretends.
“Do not say you like it, Angus!” she said with a laugh.
“But I do. Very smooth,” Angus lied valiantly.
A reply that mollified Fitz, but did not raise him in his hostess’s esteem; she had been hoping for support.
It was a private dinner; no other guests were expected, so the three of them sat at one end of the small dining table in the small dining room, there to consume a five-course meal to which none of them did justice.
“I publish Argus’s epistles, Fitz,” Angus said as the joints were removed and the syllabubs came in, “because I am so tired of this waste.” His rather crabbed hand swept the air above the table. “It is de riguer to serve me a gargantuan dinner, though I do not need it, and have eaten but a wee bit of it. Nor has either of you made greater inroads. All of us would have been content with a loaf of bread, some butter, some jam, some cheese and a winter apple. Your staff and all their relatives wax fat on your leavings — so, probably, do the ravens in the square gardens.”
Even knowing Fitz’s detestation of excessive loudness, Elizabeth could not help her burst of laughter. “Do you know, Angus, you and my sister Mary would get along together famously? That was exactly the kind of remark sets people’s backs up, but you care as little for our feelings as she would.”
“Whose wife is she?”
“Nobody’s. Mary is unmarried.”
“A spinster enamoured of Argus!” Fitz snapped.
Startled, Elizabeth’s eyes flew to his face. “How do you know that?” she asked. “I certainly do not.”
She had taken care to say it lightly, almost jokingly, but he would not look at her, and his face had gone very impassive. “I know it from Mary, of course.”
“Does she live in London?” Angus asked, shrewd blue eyes taking note of the sudden tension between them.
“No, in Hertford,” said Elizabeth, rising. “I will leave you to your port and cheroots, but do not, I beg you, linger over them. There will be coffee in the drawing room.”
“You’re lucky in your wife, Fitz,” Angus said, accepting a port. “The most beautiful, vital creature.”
Fitz smiled. “Yes, she is. However, there are other ladies equally entrancing. Why not espouse one yourself? What are you, forty? And unmarried. London’s most eligible bachelor, they say.”
“I beg to differ about the ladies. Elizabeth is unique.” Angus puffed at his slender cigar. “Is the spinster sister in her mould? If she is, I might try my luck there. But I doubt it, else she’d not be a spinster.”
“She was called upon to look after their mother.” Fitz grimaced. “Mary Bennet is a silly woman, forever quoting someone else’s noble Christian thoughts. Though at her last prayers years ago, she has found a new god to worship — Argus.” Darcy leaned both elbows on the table and linked his hands together; a habit of his to make other men think him relaxed, unworried. “Which leads me back to that vexed subject. It will not do, Angus, to keep on publishing this fellow’s pathetic crotchets.”
“If they were in truth pathetic, Fitz, you would not be half so perturbed. It’s not London eating at you, is it? London has always been a stew, and always will be a stew. No, you fear some revolution in the North — just how far do your interests go?”
“I don’t dabble in things beneath the notice of a Darcy!”
Angus roared with laughter, unoffended. “Lord, what a snob you are!”
“I would rather say I am a gentleman.”
“Aye, an occupation all of its own.” Angus leaned back in his chair, the hundred candles of an overhead chandelier setting his silver-gilt hair afire. The creases in his lean cheeks deepened when he smiled; they made him look impish. Which was how he felt, more intrigued with Fitzwilliam Darcy tonight than ever he had been. There were undercurrents he had not suspected — was that perhaps because Elizabeth was on a rare visit to the south? Most of his acquaintance with her had taken place at Pemberley during the house parties Fitz enjoyed having; she was, for all her beauty, not fond of the fleshpots of London society. A Court reception had brought her, and he counted himself fortunate that Fitz’s curious fixation upon Argus had produced things like an intimate dinner for three.
“It is no good,” he said, tossing back the last of his port. “Argus will have his forum for debate as long as I own the Westminster Chronicle — and you do not have sufficient money to buy me out. That would take the funds of a Croesus.”
“What a pleasant dinner,” Elizabeth said to her husband after their lone guest had departed. She commenced to climb the left-hand fork of the stairs above a splendid landing halfway up, Fitz by her side, helping her with her train.
“Yes it was. Though frustrating. I cannot seem to get it through Angus’s head that it is Argus and his like will bring us down. Ever since the American colonists started prating about their democratic ideals and the French started cutting off the heads of their betters, the lower classes have been rumbling. Even here in England.”
“A nation of shopkeepers, Bonaparte called us.”
“Bonaparte has failed. Sir Rupert Lavenham was telling me that his grand army is lost in the Russian snows. Hundreds of thousands of French soldiers frozen to death. And he has left them to their fate — can you believe that, Elizabeth? The man is an upstart, to have so little honour.”
“No honour at all,” she said dutifully. “By the way, Fitz, when did Mary tell you she was enamoured of Argus?”
“When I saw her in the library the morning we left. We — er — had a little falling out.”
They had reached her door; she stopped, her hand on its lever. “Why don’t you tell me about these things?”
“They are not your affair.”
“Yes, they are, when they involve my sister! What kind of falling out? Is that why she is living in Hertford? Did you make her feel she is not welcome at Pemberley?”
His dislike of being criticised made him answer sharply. “As a matter of fact, she absolutely refused to come to Pemberley! Or even to have a companion! It is the height of impropriety to live unchaperoned! And in Hertford, under the eyes of the people who have known her for years! I have washed my hands of her, frittering away her jointure on some quest put into her head by the letters of that fool, Argus!”
“Not a very generous jointure at that,” she countered, eyes flashing. “As I know for a fact that brother Charles contributed a full half of it, Mary has cost you less per year than you spend on stabling your carefully matched curricle horses! And I do not mean the bays plus the greys, I mean one team only! Two hundred and fifty pounds a year! You pay your valet that much, and your horse master more! When it comes to yourself, Fitz, you spend. But not on my poor — literally as well as metaphorically — sister!”
“I am not made of money,” he said stiffly. “Mary is your sister, not mine.”
“If you are not made of money, why do you spend it on fripperies like emeralds? I have no lust for jewels, but Mary needs more security than you have given her. Sell these emeralds and give the money to Mary. After seventeen years, she will have no more than nine and a half thousand pounds all told. If she chooses to live on her own, she can afford no conveyance, or do more than rent. Do you expect her to pay for the lady’s companion? Obviously! You are shabby!”
To have his conduct called shabby roused him to a rare anger; his lips drew back to bare his teeth. “I can take no notice of you, Elizabeth, because you speak in ignorance. Your idiotic sister has withdrawn her money from the four-percents, thus will have no income. Had I dowered her better, she would simply have more money to waste. Your sister, madam, is crazed.”
Gasping, Elizabeth fought for control; if she lost it, he would dismiss her rage as worth less than it was. “Oh, Fitz, why have you no compassion?” she cried. “Mary is the most harmless creature ever born! What can it matter if she — if she goes off in some peculiar way? If she refuses to be chaperoned? It was your determination to be rid of our mother that made Mary whatever she has become. And how could you predict what she would do, with Mama dead? You predicted nothing, simply assumed that she would go on being what she had been as a girl, and cheated her of an old age comfortable enough to live as you made sure our mother would. Why did you do that for our mother, then? Because untrammelled she was too dangerous — she might turn up at some important political reception and make you a laughing-stock with her silliness, her loud and thoughtless remarks. Now you visit Mama’s conduct upon poor Mary’s head! It is unforgivable!”
“I see that I was right not to tell you what transpired.”
“Not to tell me was unconscionable bad form!”
“Good night,” he said, bowing.
And off down the shadowed hall he strode, his figure as straight and well-proportioned as it had been twenty years ago.
“And don’t bother to write me one of your self-excusing and self-pitying letters!” she shouted after him. “I will burn it unread!”
Trembling, she entered her suite of rooms, profoundly glad that she had told Hoskins not to wait up. How dared he! Oh, how dared he!
They never quarrelled; he was too high in the instep, she too desirous of peace at any price. Tonight had been the first time they had exchanged bitter words in years. Perhaps, she thought, teeth chattering, we would be happier if we did quarrel. Yet even as angry as he had been tonight, he would not demean himself beyond what he deemed the conduct of a gentleman. No shouting, though she had shouted; no hands bunched into fists, though hers had been. His façade was unbreakable, for all that it had nearly broken her. Did his marriage satisfy his ideas of marriage? On her side, who could have dreamed the nightmare marriage would be?
What she harkened back to in her memories was the period of her engagement. Oh, the way he had looked at her then! His cold eyes lit from within, his hand finding any excuse to touch hers, his kisses soft on her lips, the conviction he gave her that she was more precious to him than all of Pemberley. They would always exist in a haze of perfect bliss: or so she had believed.
A belief shattered on her wedding night, a humiliation she endured only because so had God ordained procreation. Had Jane felt the same? She had no idea, could not ask. These intimacies of the bed chamber were too private for confidences, even with a most beloved sister.
Breathless with the anticipation of hours spent tenderly kissing and fondling, she had found instead an animal act of teeth and nails, hurtful hands, grunts and sweat; he had torn her nightgown away to pinch and bite her breasts, held her down with one hand while the other poked, pried, fumbled at the core of her. And the act itself was degrading, unloving — so horrible!
The next day he had apologised, explaining that he had waited too long for her, could not help himself, so eager was he to make her his. A shamefaced Fitz, but not, she realised, on her behalf. It was his own loss of dignity concerned him. A man had needs, he had said, but in time she would understand. Well, she never had. That first encounter set the pattern of the following nine years; even the thought that he might come to her in the night was enough to make her feel sick. But after the fourth girl in a row, his visits stopped. Poor Charlie would have to assume the burden of a position his very nature found repugnant, and her girls — such dear, sweet souls! — were as afraid of their father as they were of Ned Skinner.
The emeralds would not part company at the back of her neck. Elizabeth tore at them, heedless of how she pulled out tendrils of hair by the root. Oh, wretched things! More prized than the welfare of a sister. There. Free at last. But if only she were free! Did Mary realise that no husband meant at least a modicum of independence? To Elizabeth, dependence was galling.
Perhaps, she thought, crawling into the vast confines of her bed, I never loved Fitz enough. Or else there was not enough Lydia in me to respond to him the way a Lydia would. For I have grown sufficiently to realise that not all women are created the same: that some, like Lydia, actually welcome the grunts, the sweat, the stickiness; while some, like me, loathe them. Why can there not be a middle path? I have so much love to give, but it is not the kind of love Fitz wants. During our engagement I thought it was, but once I was his at law, I became a possession. The principal ornament of Pemberley. I wonder who his mistress is? No one in London knows, otherwise Lady Jersey or Caroline Lamb would have tattled it. She must be from a lower situation, grateful for the crumbs he throws her. Oh, Fitz, Fitz!
She cried herself to sleep.
Mr Angus Sinclair walked home to spend another hour in his library, but not in writing incendiary prose under the nom de plume of Argus. Angus — Argus. What a difference one wee letter made! He plucked a fat folder of papers from under a number of others on his desk, and settled to studying its contents afresh. It was made up of the reports of several of his agents on the activities of men he had christened the “nabobs of the North” — the ultimate owners of factories, foundries, workshops, mills and mines in Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Prominent among them was Mr Charles Bingley of Bingley Hall, Cheshire. Boon companion of Fitzwilliam Darcy. Yet the more Angus thought about it, the more curious that friendship became.
What did the colossal snob and the captain of trade and industry have in common? On the surface, a friendship that should not exist. His enquiries had revealed that they had met at Cambridge, and had been grafted to each other ever since. A youthful thing like an inappropriate crush on one side and a lofty condescension on the other? A wee Socratic fling, bums up? No, definitely not! Bingley and Darcy were nothing more nor less than firm friends. What they had in common must be less obvious … Bingley’s grandfather had been a Liverpool dock worker; it was his father had carved out an empire of chimneys spouting dense black smoke into the Manchester air. While Darcy’s grandfather had contemptuously refused a dukedom because, so rumour had it, he could not be the Duke of Darcy. Shires only for dukes.
Something binds that pair together, thought Angus, and I am positive it rejoices under the title of Trade and Industry.
“Yes, Angus,” said Mr Sinclair aloud, “the answer must be the only logical one — that the illustrious Fitzwilliam Darcy is Charles Bingley’s silent partner. Fifty thousand acres of Derbyshire peaks, moors and forests must yield Fitz ten thousand a year, but he also has many fertile acres of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. Why then is he said to have an income of a mere ten thousand a year? It must surely be twice that from the land alone. What other smokier, machine-driven activities contribute to how many thousands more?” He grunted. “Och, man, you’re tired and not thinking properly!”
The situation appealed to him enormously because, sensible Scot that he was, he failed utterly to understand why any man should be ashamed of dirtying his hands. Trade and industry bring rewards enough to transform the grandson of a Liverpool docker into a gentleman. What is wrong with having no ancestors? How Roman that is! New Men versus the Old Nobility, and never the twain shall meet. Except in Bingley and Darcy. Though would that twain meet if Bingley had a desire to be socially prominent in certain London circles? He did not, never had. A man of the North, he kept a London residence only because friendship with Fitz made it necessary.
His eyelids drooped; some time later Angus sat up with a jerk to find that he had nodded off, and laughed softly. He had dreamed of a skinny, hatchet-faced female clad like a governess and marching up and down outside the Houses of Parliament carrying a placard that said REPENT, YE EXPLOITERS OF THE POOR! How Argus would love that! Besides which, however, no ladies ever marched up and down outside any Westminster building. The day they did that, he thought wickedly, the whole pile would tumble down.
Was she a skinny, hatchet-faced female in the garb of a governess? he wondered as he closed the folder and put it back where it belonged. If Elizabeth’s sister, then surely not! Yet what spinster owned beauty? None, in his experience. She bore the Christian name of Mary, but how was he going to find out what her surname was? Then a memory surfaced: of Fitz saying Mary Bennett — one t or two? Two. One left the name looking the victim of amputation. Miss Mary Bennett … Who lived in Hertford, a mere skip from London. How old was she?
The vision of Elizabeth had haunted him for ten years, and to find that she had an unmarried sister was irresistible. Yes, he would have to see Miss Mary Bennett, enamoured of Argus! Poor Elizabeth! A wretchedly unhappy creature. Well, what woman could be happy married to Fitz? One of the coldest men Angus had ever met. Though exactly how did one define cold, when applied to human beings? Fitz was not devoid of feelings, certainly. He had feelings — strong ones, too. The trouble was that they existed beneath an exterior made of ice. And Elizabeth had probably thought she could melt that ice when she married him. I have read, Angus mused, of a volcano covered in snow and glaciers, yet still, in its depths, a boiling pit of white-hot lava. And that is Fitz. God spare me from the day of the eruption! It will be devastating.
On his way to bed Angus notified the under-butler on duty that he would be going out of London for two weeks on the morrow; would he kindly inform Stubbs of that fact at once?
When commencing a mission to collect facts for Argus personally, Angus Sinclair’s practice was to go first to the local legal chambers. Just because this was a mission to discover what sort of woman Elizabeth’s spinster sister was did not mean a different approach. A Ned Skinner might have preferred taprooms and stables, but Angus knew lawyers were like a maypole: all the threads connecting a district came together in them. Of course this was only true in small towns, but England was a place of small towns and villages. Big towns and cities were a result of that new phenomenon, industry on a scale undreamed of in the days of Charles Bingley’s grandpa.
Conveyed into the courtyard of the Blue Boar, there to deposit his chaise, his baggage and his valet, Angus discovered from the landlord that Patchett, Shaw, Carlton and Wilde was the firm of solicitors patronised by Hertford’s best people, and that the man to see was Mr Robert Wilde.
In Mr Robert Wilde he found a younger, more presentable, less hidebound man than he had expected, and decided to appear frank. Of course his name had been recognised; Mr Wilde knew him for a hugely rich fellow from north of the Border as well as the proprietor of the Westminster Chronicle.
“I am a great friend of Fitzwilliam Darcy’s,” Angus said easily, “and have learned that he has a sister-in-law residing in Hertford. A Miss Mary Bennett — is that one t, or two?”
“One,” said Mr Wilde, liking his visitor, who had a great deal of charm for a Scotsman.
“As I feared, an amputation — no, no, Mr Wilde, I am being whimsical! It is not on Mr Darcy’s behalf that I am here. In actual fact I’m on a trip into East Anglia, and Hertford being on my way, I thought to call on Miss Bennet with news of her sister Mrs Darcy. Unfortunately I left in such a hurry that I did not think to obtain Miss Bennet’s address. Can you furnish it?”
“I can,” said Mr Wilde, eyeing Mr Sinclair with some envy: a striking-looking man, between the silvering sandy hair above an attractive face, and the fashionably tailored apparel that shouted his means and his social pre-eminence. “However,” he said smugly, “I am afraid that you will not be able to pay her a call. She does not receive gentlemen.”
The blue sailor’s eyes widened, the fine head went to one side. “Indeed? Is she a misanthrope? Or indisposed?”
“Perhaps a little of the misanthrope, but that is not the reason. She has no chaperone.”
“How extraordinary! Especially in one connected to Mr Darcy.”
“If you had the privilege of knowing her, sir, you would better understand. Miss Bennet is of extremely independent turn of mind.” He heaved a sigh. “In fact, she is fixated upon independence.”
“You know her well, then?”
The Puckish cast of Angus’s countenance lulled most of those who met him into confiding facts to him that were not, strictly speaking, any of his business; Mr Wilde succumbed. “Know her well? I doubt any man could say that. But I had the honour of suing for her hand some time ago.”
“So I must congratulate you?” Angus asked, feeling a twinge of excitement. If Miss Bennet had elicited a proposal of marriage from this well set up and prosperous young man, then she could not be either skinny or hatchet-faced.
“Lord, no!” cried Mr Wilde, laughing ruefully. “She refused me. Her affections are reserved for a name in your own journal, Mr Sinclair. She can dream of no one save Argus.”
“You do not seem cast down.”
“Nor am I. Time will cure her of Argus.”
“I am well acquainted with Mrs Darcy, also with another of her sisters, Lady Menadew. The most beautiful of women!” Angus exclaimed, throwing a lure.
Mr Wilde took it, hook and sinker. “I believe Miss Mary Bennet has the edge on both of them,” said he. “She is in the mould of Mrs Darcy, but she is taller and has a better figure.” He frowned. “She also has qualities more difficult to define. A very outspoken lady, particularly about conditions among the poor.”
Angus sighed and prepared to go. “Well, sir, I thank you for the information, and am sorry that it will not be possible for me to convey Mrs Darcy’s regards to her. Norwich calls, and I must take my leave.”
“If you could stay in Hertford overnight you may meet her,” Mr Wilde said, unable to resist the impulse to show his beloved off. “She intends to be at the concert this evening in the assembly rooms; Lady Appleby is taking her. Come as my guest and I will gladly introduce you, for I know that Miss Bennet is very fond of her sisters.”
And so it was arranged that Angus would call at Mr Wilde’s house at six. After a good lunch at the Blue Boar and a rather unstimulating stroll to see the attractions of Hertford, he presented himself at six to walk just across the high street to the venue.
There, half an hour later, he set eyes on Miss Mary Bennet, who came in with Lady Appleby just as an Italian soprano was about to launch into several arias from the operatic works of Herr Mozart. Her garb was dismal in the extreme: depending on the governess, they dressed better. But there could be no diminishing the purity of her features, the glory of that wonderful hair, or the charm of her willowy figure. Entranced, he saw that her eyes were purple.
A supper was laid out after the concert, which was voted excellent, though privately Angus rated the musical talents of La Stupenda and Signore Pomposo mediocre. With Mr Wilde at his elbow, he was taken to meet Miss Bennet.
At the news that Mr Angus Sinclair was the publisher of Argus, she lit up like a Darcy House chandelier.
“Oh, sir!” she cried, stepping in front of Mr Wilde and thus excluding him from the conversation. “I can find no compliment lavish enough to bestow upon the publisher of such a one as Argus! If you but knew how his letters thrill me!” A gleam shot into those amazing eyes; Miss Bennet was about to ask questions maiden ladies were not supposed to upon first meetings. “What is he like? What does he look like? Is his voice deep? Is he married?”
“How do you imagine him, Miss Bennet?” he asked.
The question flustered her, especially since she had come to the concert in no expectation of more than music to while away the time. But to meet the publisher of Argus! Mind in a spin, Mary fought for composure. The proprietor of the Westminster Chronicle was not at all what she might have imagined had it ever occurred to her to wonder, so how could she find words to describe the god Argus?
“I see him as vigorous and dedicated, sir,” she said.
“Handsome?” he asked wickedly.
She froze instantly. “I begin to think, Mr Sinclair, that you are teasing me. That my unmarried state and my advanced years make me an object of pity and amusement to you.”
“No, no!” he cried, horrified at this prickliness. “I was merely trying to prolong our conversation, for the moment I answer your original questions, Miss Bennet, it is over.”
“Then let us get it over, sir. Answer me!”
“I have absolutely no idea what Argus is like, literally or metaphorically. His letters come in the post.”
“Have you any idea where he lives?”
“No. There is never a mark upon the exterior, and no kind of return address.”
“I see. Thank you.” And she turned her shoulder on him to speak to Mr Wilde.
The devastated Angus returned to his rooms at the Blue Boar, snapped Stubbs’s head off, and sat down to scheme how he could further his acquaintance with Miss Mary Bennet. The most ravishing creature! Where did she get those awful clothes? How could she sully the ivory skin of her graceful neck with rough serge? How could she cram a black cap over that glorious hair? If Angus had ever dreamed of the one woman he would make his wife — he had not — he would have stipulated beauty and dignity, of course, but also a measure of ease in any situation. In other words, the gift of genteel chat, the ability to conjure up an expression of interest even if the subject, the occasion and the object were hideously boring. Prominent men needed such wives. Whereas his Mary — how could he be thinking of her so possessively after one short and disastrous encounter? — his Mary was, he suspected, a social imbecile. The beauty was there, but nothing else. Even Miss Delphinia Botolph, sixty if she was a day, had bridled and simpered when introduced to such a desirable bachelor as Mr Angus Sinclair. Whereas Miss Mary Bennet had turned her shoulder because he could not feed her frenzy for a figment of his own imagination, Argus.
He began to plot. First of all, how to meet his Mary not only again, but many times? Secondly, how to impress her with his undeniable assets? Thirdly, how to make her fall in love with him? In love at last, he found to his horror that things like social imbecility did not matter. Once he had snared her, he would have to paint Mrs Angus Sinclair as an eccentric. That is the best quality of the English, he thought: they have an affinity for eccentrics. In Scotland, not so. I am doomed to live out the rest of my days among the Sassenachs.
Ten years ago he had made the journey south from his native West Lothian to London. The Glasgow coal and iron had been in his family for two generations but, to a Scot as puritanical and logical as his father, wealth was no excuse for idleness. Newly graduated from Edinburgh University, Angus was bidden do something for a living. He had chosen journalism; he liked the idea of being paid to play, for he loved to write and he loved to pry into the affairs of other people. Within a year he was master of the innuendo and the allegation; so steeped was he in his profession that few, even among his closest friends, had any idea who and what he was. It had been exactly the right training for an Argus, for his work had taken him everywhere: a series of murders in a factory; fraud in government and municipal circles; robberies, riots and mayhem. In all walks of life, not least among the poor, the unemployed, and the unemployable. Sometimes he penetrated south of the Border into the haunts of the northern Sassenachs, and that had taught him that, no matter whereabouts in Britain he might be, ultimately everything stemmed from London.
When his father died eleven years ago, his chance had come. Leaving his younger brother, Alastair, to run the family businesses, Angus emigrated, reinforced with the huge inheritance of an elder son, and in the knowledge that income from the businesses would keep his pockets lined with gold. He had bought a house in Grosvenor Square and set out to cultivate the Mighty. Though he made no secret of the source of his money, he discovered that it mattered little because that source was, so to speak, in a foreign country. But he could not quite give up the journalism. Learning that no newspaper existed devoted entirely to the activities of the Houses of Parliament, he had founded the Westminster Chronicle and filled the gap. Given Parliament’s lethargy and reluctance to meet any more frequently than necessary, a weekly journal sufficed. Make it a daily event, and soon much of its contents would be prolix and spurious. His spies had infiltrated every government department, from Home to Foreign, and the Army and the Navy were guaranteed to provide plenty of fodder for his paper’s voracious maw. Naturally he employed half a dozen journalists, but nothing they wrote escaped his personal attention. Which still left him with time on his hands. Hence, a year ago, the genesis of Argus.
Oh, there had been a number of love affairs over the years, but none that had dented his heart. With the daughters of the Mighty it could be flirtation only, but his native shrewdness and considerable social skill had kept him out of the serious clutches of the many high-born young women who succumbed to his charms — and his money. The easiest way to rid himself of his more basic urges was to set up a mistress, though he took great care to avoid married Society ladies for that role; he preferred opera-dancers. None of these activities had imbued him with much respect for the female sex; women, Angus Sinclair was convinced, were predatory, shallow, poorly educated and, after a few months at most, hideously boring.
Only Elizabeth Darcy had captivated him, but at a distance. For one, she was incapable of seeing any farther than Fitz, and for another, beneath her attractions lay the temperament of a warm, maternal kind of creature. Whatever a man’s scars, she would want to kiss them better, and Angus didn’t think such a woman could keep him interested through half a lifetime of marriage.
Now to find that the woman of his heart was fixated upon his own creation was a blow both ironic and frustrating. No fool, Angus saw at once that, were he to confess his identity, she would scorn him as a dilettante. He did not practise what he preached, and had no intention of doing so, even for this new and painful emotion, love. Imbued with ardour, Mary took Argus at face value. Thus face value it would have to be.
Still, better to cross some bridges as he came to them; the first order of business was to get to know his Mary, make her like and trust him. What a hypocrite you are, Angus/Argus!
The next morning she was the recipient of a note from him asking her to walk with him. An activity, he was convinced, that could not offend her sensibilities. A gentleman escorting a lady through Hertford’s public streets was irreproachable.
Mary read his letter and came to the same conclusion. Her plans for her mission of book-writing investigation were made as firmly as possible and the winter had long since begun to drag, despite the efforts of such determined individuals as Mr Robert Wilde, Lady Appleby, Mrs McLeod, Miss Botolph and Mrs Markham. How, she asked herself, could any person exist in such a pointless way? Concerts, parties, balls, receptions, weddings, christenings, walks, funerals, drives, picnics, visits to the shops, playing the pianoforte and reading; they were designed purely to fill in the huge vacancies in a female’s life. Mr Wilde had his law practice, the married ladies had their husbands, children and domestic crises, but she, like Miss Botolph, existed in that fashionable new word, a vacuum. One short winter had been enough to teach her that the purpose she yearned for was vital to her wellbeing.
So, upon receipt of Angus’s note, she met him in the high street eager to discover more about him, if not about Argus. After all, he did publish Argus! He was very personable, eminently respectable, and not to be sneezed at as a companion for the walk she would have taken anyway. His hair, she decided as they exchanged bows, was like a cat’s pelt, sleek and glittery, and something in his features drew her. Nor was it disappointing to find that, in spite of her own height, he was much taller. If any fault were to be found in Mr Wilde, it was that he and she were on the same level. Miss Bennet liked the sensation of being towered over, a disturbing facet of basic femininity that Miss Bennet promptly buried.
“In what direction would you like to go?” he asked as he held out his arm for her to lean upon.
She spurned it with a sniff. “I am not decrepit, sir!” she said, striding out. “We will proceed up this way because it is but a short step into the countryside.”
“You like the countryside?” he asked, keeping up.
“Yes, I do. The beauties of Nature are not obliterated by humanity’s tasteless urban huddle.”
“Ah, indeed.”
Her idea of a short step, he learned, was more than a mile; beneath that awful dress two powerful legs must lurk. But at the end of the short step fields began to open up before them, and her pace slowed as she gazed about with delight.
“I suppose that Mr Wilde has informed you of my plans?” she asked, hopping nimbly over a stile.
“Plans?”
“To investigate the ills of England. I commence at the beginning of May. How extraordinary that Mr Wilde did not mention it!”
“It sounds an unusual aspiration. Tell me more.”
And, liking the set of his far-sighted blue eyes, Mary told him what she intended to do. He listened without evidence of disapproval; rather, she thought, gratified, he took what she said seriously. And certainly, once she had finished, he made no attempt to dissuade her.
“Where do you intend to start?” he asked.
“In Manchester.”
“Why not Birmingham or Liverpool?”
“Birmingham will be no different from Manchester. Liverpool is a sea port, and I do not think it wise to associate with sailors.”
“As to sailors, you are right,” he said gravely. “However, I still wonder at your choice of Manchester.”
“So do I, sometimes,” she said honestly. “I think it must be because I am curious about my brother-in-law Charles Bingley, who is said to have ‘interests’ in Manchester, as well as huge sugar plantations in Jamaica. My sister Jane is the dearest creature, and very devoted to Mr Bingley.” She stopped, frowning, and said nothing more.
They had reached the perimeter of an apple orchard, beginning to foam with white blossoms; after such a cold winter, spring had come early and warm, and living things had awakened. The stone wall bordering the fluffy trees was low and dry; Angus spread his handkerchief on its top and indicated that she should sit.
Surprised at her own docility, Mary sat. Instead of joining her, he stood a small distance away from her, his eyes intent upon her face.
“I know what you will not say, Miss Bennet. That you are worried about your sister Jane. That if her husband is exploiting women and children especially, she will suffer a disillusion like to kill her love.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, gasping. “How perceptive of you!”
“I do read Argus’s letters, you know.”
Suddenly he stepped over the wall into the orchard, and snapped a branch off the nearest tree. “It is in full flower already,” he said, presenting it to her with a smile that made her feel a little breathless.
“Thank you,” she said taking it, “but you have deprived the poor tree of some of its fruit.”
The next moment she was on her feet and walking swiftly in the direction of Hertford. “It is growing late, sir. My maid will be anxious if I do not return at the expected time.”
He did not argue, merely ranged himself alongside her, and let her walk in silence. I am learning, he was thinking; do not dare court her, Angus! She is willing to be friends, but the slightest hint of wooing, and she closes with a nastier snap than a poacher’s trap. Well, if a friend is what she wants, a friend I will be.
That was the first of enough excursions to cause flutters of hopeful expectation in the bosoms of Mary’s female cronies, as well as gloom in the heart of Mr Wilde. What a catch! Angus’s valet had triggered a chain of servant’s gossip that, naturally, whizzed above stairs; Mr Sinclair had been going into East Anglia, had never intended spending over a week in Hertford. Yet here he was, dangling after Mary Bennet! Lady Appleby scrambled to give a dinner party at Shelby Manor to which Mr Wilde was not invited, and Mrs Markham aired Miss Bennet’s proficiency upon the pianoforte during a cosy evening in her drawing room. To his astonishment, Angus discovered that Mary’s talent on the instrument was considerable; she played with unerring touch and true expression, though she was not fond enough of the soft pedal.
On Mary’s side, try as she would, she could not resist her suitor’s blandishments. Not that he ever said a word she could construe as romantic, or let his hand linger when it brushed hers, or gave her the kind of looks Mr Wilde did. His attitude was that of the brother she had never known; something like, she assumed, an older version of Charlie. For these reasons her sense of fairness said that she could not show him the cold shoulder, though, had she suspected what people were saying, Mr Sinclair would certainly have been dismissed forthwith.
And he, fearing for her, bit his tongue. After nine days he knew every minute aspect of her plans, and gained a better idea of why Fitz had spoken of her sneeringly. She was exactly the kind of female he most despised, for she lacked innate propriety and was too strong willed to take discipline. Not from any moral failing; simply that she did not see herself, an ageing spinster, as needing the full gamut of the proprieties. Young ladies were hedged around because they must go virgins to the marriage bed, whereas a thirty-eight-year-old spinster stood in little danger from masculine lusts or attentions. In that, of course, she was completely mistaken. Men looked at the sleepy-lidded eyes, lush mouth and spectacular colouring, and cared not a rush for her years or her appalling clothes.
Given her age and the years still to come, her means were not adequate for the kind of life she was entitled to; her house cost her fifty pounds to rent, her servants a hundred pounds in wages alone, to which had to be added their upkeep; Angus suspected that the married couple Mr Wilde had found cheated her, as did the cook. Her income did not permit of a riding horse or any kind of conveyance. If Angus understood anything about her, he did understand why she shrank from employing a lady’s companion. Those females were uniformly dreary, ill-educated and stifling for such a one as Mary Bennet, whose vitality conquered the clothes and the life society decreed she must lead. What he could not know was what kind of person she had been until very recently, how successfully she had suppressed her aspirations. All in the name of duty.
The withdrawal of her nine thousand, five hundred pounds from the Funds was insanity — why? Her excuse to the ferreting Angus was that she might need it for her journalistic investigation, an arrant nonsense.
“I take it you will travel by post?” he asked her.
She looked scandalised. “Post? I should think not! Why, that would cost me three or four guineas a day, even for a single horse and a smelly chaise! Not to mention the half-crown I would have to pay the postilion. Oh, dear me, no. I shall travel on the stage-coach.”
“The Mail, surely,” he said, still thrown off balance. “There is a Manchester Mail every day from London, and while it may not pass through Hertford, it certainly does through St Albans. You would reach your destination the following night.”
“After a night spent sitting bolt upright in a swaying coach! I shall travel north from Hertford on the stage-coach to Grantham, breaking my journey every evening to put up at an inn,” said Mary.
“There is that to be said for it,” said Angus with a nod. “A posting house will afford you overnight comfort as well as good food.”
“Posting house?” Mary snorted. “I can assure you, sir, that I cannot afford to put up at a posting house! I will avail myself of cheaper accommodation.”
He debated whether to argue, and decided against it. “Grantham is surely too far east,” he said instead.
“I am aware of that, but as it is on the Great North Road, I will have several stage-coaches to choose from,” she said. “At Grantham I will go west to Nottingham, thence to Derby, and so to Manchester.”
Just how straitened were her circumstances? he wondered. Her nine thousand, five hundred pounds would not keep her into her old age, that was true, so perhaps her pride forbade her telling him that she knew she would have nothing more from Fitz, in which case, it made sense that she should scrimp on her mission of investigation. Yet why withdraw her money from the Funds?
Then one reason why occurred to him: because once it was deposited in a bank in her name she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was there. To a Mary Bennet, investment in the four-percents was evanescent; her money might vanish in a puff of smoke, victim of another South Sea Bubble. Then a more sinister reason occurred to him: she was afraid that if she left it invested, Fitz might somehow deprive her of it. On their many walks she had talked of him freely, with scant respect and no love. She did not fear him, but she feared his power.
Angus did not fear Fitz or Fitz’s power, but he did fear for Mary. Her indifference to clothes meant that she did not look what she was: a gentlewoman of some substance. Those who travelled on the stage-coach with her, Angus’s racing mind went on, would take her for the most lowly sort of governess, or even a superior abigail. Oh, Mary, Mary! You and your wretched book! Would that I had never dreamed of a nonexistent man named Argus!
What did not occur to him, as she never once mentioned it, was that she expected to pay at least nine thousand pounds to a publisher to put her book into print. So in one way he had been right: the withdrawal of her money from the Funds was done because she feared the power of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
On the tenth day of his sojourn in Hertford, he decided that he could take no more. Better to stew about her fate in London sight unseen than continue to feast his eyes upon her while April’s blossoms fell to the ground. Yet he could not say goodbye, did not dare face her again in case his resolution broke down and he made a declaration of love he knew was not returned. Apostrophising himself as a coward and a curmudgeon, he ordered his chaise for straight after breakfast and drove out of Hertford without telling his love that he was going, or leaving her a note.
The word of his departure flew faster than a bird from the landlord of the Blue Boar to Mr Wilde’s under-clerk and Miss Botolph’s manservant, and thence, equally swiftly, to Mr Wilde and Miss Botolph. Who were on Miss Bennet’s doorstep before the uncomfortably High vicar of St Mark’s sounded the Angelus.
Mary heard their news impassively, though under her composure she was conscious of the sadness she always felt when Charlie’s visits were over. She dealt with Mr Wilde’s overt jubilation in the most dampening way, and assured the pair of them that she had been expecting Mr Sinclair’s departure for some time. When Miss Botolph hinted heavily about disappointed hopes she was ignored; the rest of Hertford’s upper stratum might have been anticipating a joyous Announcement, but Mary had not. To her, Angus was simply a good friend whom she would miss.
“Perhaps he will return,” said Mrs McLeod toward the end of April.
“If he intends to, Sophia, he had better be quick,” said Miss Botolph. “Mary is off on her travels very soon, though I do wish she was less secretive about them. And what is Mr Darcy about, to let her ride in the common stage?”
“Pride,” said Mrs Markham. “A ha’penny to nothing, he has no idea she is journeying to Pemberley, though I note that her things have been packed and sent to Pemberley ahead of her.”
“Is she at all cast down about Mr Sinclair?” asked Lady Appleby; living five miles out at Shelby Manor, she was always the last to know anything.
“Not a scrap cast down. In fact, I would say she is happy,” said Mrs McLeod.
“The field is clear for Robert Wilde,” said Miss Botolph.
Mrs Markham sighed. “She will not have him either.”
