Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Yes. The moment others were around, she turned into an aunt. A maiden aunt, prim and prissy. Having seen them splash through many a stream, I can vouch for her legs-very shapely.”

“I am intrigued,” said Owen, deeming it time he reverted to a tutor. “However, Charlie, the weather has set for some days, and Virgil is still stuffed. No Horatian odes until he is as empty as an English pillowcase drying on a line. Virgil now, a letter to your mama later.” T 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 private 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 congй, 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 late 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 baw-bees 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.”