Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Dearest Mary, you must not speak so crudely! Truly it is the height of impropriety!”

“Rubbish. No one is here save you and me, and you are my most beloved sister. If we cannot be frank, what is the world coming to? It seems to me that no one cares about a woman’s health or welfare. If Charles does not find a way to have his pleasure without causing Jane to increase so frequently, then perhaps he should take a mistress. Immoral women do not seem to increase.” Mary looked brightly interested. “I ought to find some man’s mistress and ask her how she avoids babies.”

Speech utterly failed Elizabeth, so mortified and at a loss that she could do nothing but stare at this apparition, no more her young sister than some female out of the hedgerows. Was there perhaps some gross peculiarity in Mama’s ancestry that had suddenly come out in Mary? Plug it with a cork! Then from a time far away and a place long gone, her sense of humour came to Elizabeth’s rescue; she burst into laughter, laughed until tears streamed down her face.

“Oh, Mary, I do not even begin to know you!” she said when she was able. “Pray assure me that you do not say such things in other company!”

“I do not,” said Mary with an impenitent grin. “I just think them. And confess it, Lizzie, don’t you think the same?”

“Yes, of course I do. I love Jane with all my heart, and it grieves me to see her health declining for no better reason than the lack of a cork.” Her lips quivered. “Charles Bingley is the dearest man, but, like all men, selfish. It is not even that he is trying for a son-they have seven already.”

“Odd, is it not? You bearing girls, Jane boys.”

What had happened to Mary? Where was the distressingly narrow and imperceptive girl of Longbourn days? Could people change so much? Or was this dangerous emancipation from female constrictions always there? What had inspired her to sing when she could neither hold a note nor keep a tune nor regulate the volume of her voice? Why had she pined for Mr. Collins, surely the most unworthy object of any woman’s love ever put upon the earth? Questions to which Elizabeth could find no answers. Except that now she could better understand Charlie’s affection for his Aunt Mary.

A huge guilt washed over her; she, no less than Fitz, had thoughtlessly sentenced Mary to the caretaking of Mama, a task that, given Mama’s age, could well have lasted another seventeen years. They had all expected it would last a minimum of thirty-four years! Which would have made Mary fifty-five when it ended-oh, thank God it had come to an end now, while Mary had some hope of carving a life for herself!

Perhaps, she thought, it is not wise to isolate young women as Mary had been isolated. That she possessed some intelligence had been generally accepted in the family, though Papa had sneered at its direction, between the books of sermons and the gloomily moral works she had chosen to read as a girl. But had that been forced upon Mary? Elizabeth wondered. Would Papa have given her a free rein in his own library? No, he would not. And Mary had trotted out her pedantic observations upon life because she had no other way of gaining attention from the rest of us. Maybe the singing was a way to gain our attention too.

For a long time now I have looked back upon my childhood and girlhood at Longbourn as the happiest years of my life; we were so close, so merry, so secure . Because of the last, that security, we forgave Mama her idiocies and Papa his sarcastic attitude. But Jane and I shone the brightest, and were well aware of it. The Bennet sisters were layered: Jane and I considered the most beautiful and promising; Kitty and Lydia empty-headed jesters; and Mary-the middle child-neither one thing nor the other. I can see shades of that Mary in this one; she is still a merciless critic of frailties, still contemptuous of material things. But oh, how she has changed!

“What do you remember of our years at Longbourn?” Elizabeth asked, seeking answers.

“Feeling a misfit, chiefly,” said Mary.

“Oh, a misfit! How awful! Were you at all happy?”

“I suppose so. Certainly I did not repine. I think I was absorbed in a goodness I could not see in you or Jane, or in Kitty and Lydia. No, do not look alarmed! I am not condemning any of you, but rather myself. I thought you and Jane were obsessed with making rich marriages, while Kitty and Lydia were too undisciplined, too wild. I modelled my own conduct on the books I read-how dreadfully prosaic I must have been! Not to mention boring, for the books I read were boring.”

“Yes, you were prosaic and boring, though it is only now that I understand why. We left you no other recourse, the four of us.”

“The pustules and the tooth did not help, I confess. I saw them as a punishment, yet I had no idea what my crime had been.”

“No crime, Mary. Just unfortunate afflictions.”

“It is you I have to thank for ridding me of them. Who could ever have believed that something as banal as a small teaspoon of sulphur every two days would cure the spots, and that extraction of the tooth would allow the others to grow into place perfectly?” She got up from the breakfast table, smiling. “Where can the gentlemen be? I had thought Fitz wanted to make an early start.”

“Charlie’s fault. He went ratting with Jem Jenkins, and Fitz has gone to find him.”

The queries swarmed inside Mary’s head, all of them crying for satisfaction. Ask, and ye shall know, she thought.

“What kind of man is Fitz?”

Elizabeth blinked at such bluntness. “After nineteen years of marriage, sister, I confess I do not know. He has such-such exalted ideas of who and what the Darcys are. Perhaps that is inevitable in a family that can trace itself back to the Conquest and before. Though I have sometimes wondered why, given this centuries-old pre-eminence, there has never been a title.”

“Pride, I expect,” said Mary. “You are not happy.”

“I had thought to be, but entering the married state is to commence a voyage into the unknown. I suppose I thought that, given Fitz’s love for me, we would settle to an idyllic life at Pemberley, our children around us. But I was not aware of Fitz’s zeal, his restlessness, his ambitions. His secrets. There are elements in his nature that elude me.” She shivered. “And I am not sure I wish to know what those elements are.”

“It grieves me to see you so blighted, Lizzie, but I am glad we have had this opportunity to talk. Is there a definite element to Fitz that worries you most?”

“Ned Skinner, I would have to answer. That is a very strange friendship.”

Mary frowned. “Who is Ned Skinner?”

“If you had come to Pemberley, you would know. He is Fitz’s general manager, overseer, factotum. Not his steward-Matthew Spottiswoode is steward. Ned travels a lot for Fitz, but what he does exactly, I do not know. He lives in a beautiful cottage on the estate, has servants of his own, and his own stables.”

“You called it a friendship.”

“It is, a very close one. That is the mystery. For Ned is not Fitz’s equal in society, which under ordinary circumstances would disbar him from friendship. Yet they are close.”

“Is he a gentleman?”

“He speaks like one, yet is not one.”

“Why have you never mentioned him?”

“I suppose the subject has never come up. I have not had any opportunity in the past to speak with you so openly.”

“Yes, I know. Mama was always there, or Charlie. How long has Fitz been close with this Ned Skinner?”

“Oh, since before he married me. I remember him as a young man lurking in the background, looking at Fitz with adoration. He is a little younger than I-”

Elizabeth cut off whatever else she might have been going to say when Fitz walked in, bringing a rush of cold air with him. Still a fine-looking man, Mary thought, even at fifty. Everything a young, sheltered female could have wanted in a husband, from circumstances to presence. Yet she remembered Jane’s saying once, with a sigh, that Lizzie had not loved him as she, Jane, loved her dear Mr. Bingley. A true Jane statement, holding no condemnation or disapproval; just something about Lizzie’s setting eyes on the glories of Pemberley and thinking much better of Mr. Darcy thereafter. When he had renewed his addresses in the wake of Lydia’s scandalous elopement, Lizzie had accepted him.