Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“As you say, Mary, an MP has to be good for something .”

Angus saw nothing of Mary for the next three days; all her time was given up to the children, since even nine nursemaids proved hard to find at such short notice.

It isn’t fair, he told himself; in the days when she lived in Hertford, I saw more of her than I have here at Pemberley. Some kind of task always has first call on her time, including these wretched children-and her without a maternal bone in her entire body! Jane does it melting with sensibility, Kitty does it because she is easily dominated, and Elizabeth does it because, of all of them, she is the true mother. But Mary does it from that huge sense of duty-does love enter into her life at all? At this moment I tend to think it does not. She is kind, but not loving.

Prey to the blue devils and atypically morose, he was jerked out of what was threatening to become a mire of self-pity by the appearance of his beloved, who doffed her apron and demanded that he take her for an airing.

“For I am tired of wees and poohs,” she declared as they left the house in the direction of Mary’s favourite glade, which happened to be Elizabeth’s favourite as well.

“Infantile talk is depressing,” he said.

“So is human waste,” she answered tartly, and ground her teeth. “I find myself more attuned to the prospect of educating them in literacy and numeracy than in weeing and washing. How can they shun anything as delightful as water?”

“You find it delightful because your nurse gave you your first bath before you could remember,” he said, spirits soaring just to be with her.

“They must commence their schooling as soon as possible. I believe that there is a warehouse in Manchester that sells desks, slates, slate pencils, chalk, blackboards, copy-books and the like.” She stuck out her chin and looked militant. “Now that I don’t have to pay to have my book published, I have plenty of money-yes, I have abandoned all thought of writing a book. I’ll crawl before I can walk, and what better place to crawl in than a schoolroom? One of the most disgraceful aspects of childhood at Longbourn was Papa’s reluctance to see us well-educated. So we went to the Meryton school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, but after that we were not given a governess. Had we, then Kitty and Lydia might not have turned out so wild, or I so narrow. The daughters of gentlemen should have a governess. Instead, Papa spent the money on his library, Mama’s clothes, and our dinner table.”

Head whirling, Angus fixed on the most pertinent fact among these confidences. “May I ask you a question, Mary?”

“Of course you may.”

“Pay for your publication? Is that what you were planning to do when you finished your book?”

“Yes. I knew it was going to cost many thousands-almost all that I had, in fact.”

“Mary, you silly chicken! First of all, if a publisher knows you are determined to pay to have a book published, then he will take you for every penny you have. But you must never pay to have a book published! If it’s worth reading, a publisher will be willing to incur the expense of publication himself. In effect, he takes a gamble on the author-that the book will attract enough readers to make a profit. If it does make a profit, he will pay you what is called a royalty on each copy sold. The royalty is usually a small percentage of the book’s price.” He glared at her. “Oh, you are a silly chicken! Do you truly mean that you scrimped and pinched your pennies on your travels because of your book?”

A delicious pinkness had suffused her cheeks; she hung her head, apparently willing to be apostrophised as a silly chicken. “I wanted it published,” she said gruffly.

“And nearly got yourself murdered! I could shake you!”

“Pray do not be angry!”

He waved his hands about wildly. “No, I am not angry! Well, a wee bit-but only a wee bit. Och, Mary, you would drive a sane and sober man to madness and the bottle!”

The sight of Angus in such straits was quite fascinating, but it also caused her to experience a sudden empty panic in her middle regions-what if one day she angered him so much he walked away? She gulped, backed away from the thought. “Would you be able to drive me into Manchester for the schoolroom needs?” she asked.

“Of course, but not tomorrow. In case you had forgotten, we bury poor Ned Skinner Darcy tomorrow.”

“No, I had not forgotten,” she said, voice low. “Oh, and we made Fitz and Charlie laugh!”

“And thereby did them a very good turn. Death is always in our midst, Mary, you know that. Anything that lightens grief, even for a moment, is a blessing. While Ned has lain waiting for the vindication he couldn’t have in life, you and your sisters have dealt with those he saved. He could not do aught else than applaud your kindness and hard work. In one way, they are his children.”

“Yes, you are right.”

They walked on in silence as far as the glade, where the sun, directly overhead, turned the water in the little brook to solid gold save for the diamonds of its tumbles.

Mary gasped. “Angus, I have just thought of something!”

“What?” he asked warily.

“Father Dominus told me that he had a hoard of bars of gold. I know the caves have collapsed, but do you think you could look for the gold? Imagine how many orphanages it would build.”

“Not as many as you think,” he said prosaically. “Besides, the old villain must have stolen it from the government. Gold is marked on each ingot-that’s the proper name for a bar of gold-with the brand of its owner, and that owner is almost inevitably the government.”

“No, he said he melted it down from coins and jewellery that had been entrusted to him by some far bigger villain. He melted it down and poured it into ingots himself. More than that I do not know, save that it definitely was acquired by nefarious means.”

“I think he was bamming you.”

“He said each ingot weighed ten pounds.”

“Which, being gold, isn’t very big in size. Gold is hugely heavy, Mary. Ten pounds of it would be nowhere near the size of a house brick, I assure you.”

“Please, Angus, please! Promise me that you’ll look!”

How could he refuse? “Very well, I promise. But don’t hope, Mary. Charlie, Fitz and I are going back to see if there’s been a fresh subsidence, and to look at the hill itself. If we find any gold, rest assured that we’ll claim it on behalf of the Children of Jesus. Who, I suspect, would be entitled to a large percentage of any treasure-trove. If, that is, it can be proven that the real owner is not the government.”

Her face took on a martial expression. “Oh, no, the children cannot have it! They’d spend it on the wrong things, like any poor people gifted with unexpected fortune. It will build orphanages.” Her chest heaved on an ecstatic sigh. “Just fancy, Angus! Perhaps my incarceration had a divine purpose-to unearth ill-gotten gold and set it to work on gifting the poor with the things that really matter-health and education.”

“She is determined,” Angus said to Fitz after Ned Skinner Darcy was laid in his resting place.

“If such a treasure exists, Angus, Father Dominus didn’t earn it from selling a cure for impotence, no matter how successful it was. The gold may be ill-gotten, but from where or from whom? The government does ship consignments of gold coins around the country, but none has been plundered that I or any other MP remembers. Which is why I doubt the story. Except that I know of one man who might have amassed so much, and all of it ill-gotten. A man long dead who, as far as I know, had no association with Father Dominus. Yet it’s true that when that man died, his ill-gotten gains could not be found anywhere, apart from precious stones prised out of jewellery.”