The Unexpected Miss Bennet (27 page)

It might be pleasant to meet Anne de Bourgh again on an equal footing. She called herself Anne’s friend, but she knew – and Anne knew – that Mary had occupied that uncomfortable place between friend and servant. No good could come of that, not in the long run.

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN the great house of Rosings and the Collinses’ humble abode was not far. They soon arrived, and Mr Aikens helped the driver with the trunk. Charlotte was most astonished as she stood in the doorway and watched Mary step down from the cart, splashing into the muddy lane. Mary told her what had happened in as few words as possible. Mr Collins appeared behind his wife, for once rendered silent by surprise. The men set the trunk inside the little hall, Mr Aikens paid the driver, and sent him off with a promise to try some horse draught or another, and then Mary was able to introduce Mr Aikens. She was keenly aware of all their eyes upon her.

‘Charlotte, you may know Mr Aikens. I met him first at Lucas Lodge in the spring,’ she said.
Had
Charlotte known him? Mrs Collins eyed the young man doubtfully and so it appeared that she did not.

Mr Aikens cleared up the mystery. ‘Will Lucas is a friend of mine,’ he said. ‘Or at least he would be, if he didn’t ride so badly. No idea you were his sister.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Charlotte said. ‘I think my brother has spoken of you. How do you do?’

Behind his wife Mr Collins burst out, ‘But how did you come to Hunsford, sir? Have you come to visit my wife?’

‘Never met her before,’ Mr Aikens said. ‘No, I came to visit Miss Bennet at Rosings.’

‘Visit Miss Bennet?’ Mr Collins could scarcely credit it.

‘Mr Aikens is a friend of Mr Darcy as well, and we met a second time at Pemberley,’ Mary said, her irritation rising at his disbelief. Why did Mr Collins always manage to bring out her anger? He could never stop insulting her, it seemed. And now the Collinses made no move to invite them into the parlour; in all fairness, this was the second house Mr Aikens had dripped all over, and Mary was well aware that her dress clung to her most unbecomingly.

‘I’m afraid it’s my fault that she was driven from Rosings,’ Mr Aikens said. ‘I came to visit and that old harridan threw her out. Had no idea that would happen or I never would have come, but I still think Miss Bennet made a terrible mistake. Lady, indeed! Who can stand her?’

Mr Collins’s mouth worked. To hear his patroness be so maligned required him to make some address to the young man dripping in his greatcoat on his floor, but he could not summon a sound. If the truth were to be told, the young gentleman
was
a gentleman, after all, and Mr Collins was in the habit of approaching such a gentleman with flattery and obsequiousness. How to manage such flattery and self-abasement and at the same time correct his judgement of Lady Catherine was beyond his powers. Mary took matters into her own hands.

‘Charlotte, I apologize, but may I presume upon your hospitality? It will just be until I can take the mail to Longbourn.’

‘Of course, Mary! Please, you are both drenched. Come and warm yourselves in the parlour.’

‘The idea of a fire and chance to dry off is too good to be true,’ said Mr Aikens. ‘But I wouldn’t want to sit down on your furniture, Mrs Collins, and you have no stable for Hyperion. I will just go on down to the inn in the village and put up there.’

Mary was almost relieved at his decision. She wanted him to stay, but she could not bear it if Mr Collins was rude to him. She turned to him. Conscious of her audience, she held out her hand. He took it, and despite the cold and wet his hand was warm. He held her hand tight and did not appear to want to let her have it back.

‘Mr Aikens, thank you. You are a good friend to help me. Please do not blame yourself. It was only a matter of time before something of this sort happened.’

Behind her she heard Mr Collins gasp.

‘So you did need to be rescued,’ Mr Aikens said with a cheerful grin. ‘I made a mess of it, as usual, but that’s me. I mean well, but I’ve been told I’m like a bull in a china shop, and though I’ve never been in a china shop, I can see how that could be. Mrs Collins. Mr Collins. Miss Bennet.’

Mr Aikens let her hand go, though the sensation of his rough palm remained with her for a few moments longer. He made another rather wet bow and took his leave, Hyperion splashing off to the village inn. Charlotte took Mary’s other hand and drew her into the house. The housekeeper took her up to her room to change. It was the same room that she had stayed in when Lady Catherine had refused to offer her a room at Rosings. Mary undressed quickly, and Charlotte knocked on the door, pushing in a warm wrap to her.

‘I will ask Mr Collins to bring up your trunk and leave it outside your door and you may change your clothes. Please come downstairs when you wish. Oh dear, Robert’s woken up.’ The baby’s cries filled the hall, and Charlotte hurried away. Mary wrapped herself in Charlotte’s robe and then heard a laboured thumping and dragging and heavy breathing. Mr Collins was not a strapping young footman, and the trunk was too much for him. A louder thunk indicated that he had dropped it outside her door. Mary waited, nervously. Surely he could not think of coming in. He did not; he coughed once in his hand. She waited. He waited. Then at last he spoke through the door: ‘Miss Bennet, er, Mary. When you have, er, decently covered yourself, you may come downstairs. I think we have much to discuss over your intemperate remove from Rosings. I cannot tell you how upset – nay, disappointed, I must say – yes, harsh as it is, disappointed, and yet not surprised, that your adventure ended in such a bad way. I fear, however, that it may have caused grave damage to your family—’

‘Mr Collins, I am coming out to get dry clothes, if you please,’ Mary called out.

There came an unhappy silence from the other side of the door. But she had no indication that he had moved away. She reached out for the doorknob and rattled it, without opening the door.

‘Mr Collins, I am coming out now, sir,’ she warned. At last she heard what sounded like a frightened gasp and the creak of floorboards as he moved away. Mary pushed open the door and peeked out. Her trunk stood there, damply, but the hall was empty. She knelt and with shaking hands opened the trunk and fished for dry clothes and a dry shawl. Her trunk had kept her things mostly dry, for which she was grateful. She grabbed her things, closed the door, and dressed gratefully.

THE PARLOUR WAS everything she could have wished: a cheerful fire, aromatic tea steeping in Charlotte’s porcelain teapot, and biscuits. Charlotte sat with Robert in her lap and the little boy gave a great toothless grin when he saw Mary. She looked around warily, but Mr Collins was not present. Charlotte saw her look.

‘I asked Mr Collins to let me talk to you first to find out what happened. He’s most disappointed.’

‘Yes, he is.’

Charlotte nudged the teapot towards Mary. ‘Please, Mary, will you pour? I have my hands full at the moment.’ As Mary poured the tea and set a biscuit on a plate for Charlotte, her friend added, ‘He is a very interesting young man, Mr Aikens. So he came to visit you at Rosings? You are particular friends, then?’

Mary blushed. ‘He’s a particular friend of Mr Darcy I should say. We became more acquainted during my stay at Pemberley, while he put up at the inn at Lambton.’

‘And he came all this way to Rosings to visit you,’ Charlotte said, smiling at her over the tea things. The Charlotte Mary knew, when she had been Lizzy’s best friend, would have considered such things as matchmaking to be nonsense. Is this what happens when women marry? she thought. Even those who marry such a man as Mr Collins? Perhaps it is a way to ensure that all women enter their state so that none might judge them by their choice. The uncharitable thought was an indication of her tiredness and irritation.

‘Yes,’ Mary said. She didn’t say anything about his plan to rescue her.

‘What happened, Mary? What made Lady Catherine so angry?’

Mary told her the story in a few short words, including Lady Catherine’s admonition against suitors. When she was finished, Charlotte fussed with her tea.

‘Mr Aikens is not like any gentleman I’ve ever met,’ she said at last. ‘He is quite original. But he came unannounced to Rosings? Surely you should have realized that it was not your place to have visitors without Lady Catherine’s knowledge or permission. You of all people, Mary. You see how it must have looked.’

The room was no longer so pleasant but had become uncomfortably warm. Had she fallen, much as Lydia had? There was such a narrow path alongside a chasm of disaster.

‘I offered him tea,’ Mary said, aware of how inadequate it sounded. Well-intentioned though her motives had been, no matter how she had meant not to flirt, Lady Catherine would think the worst of her, and so would anyone else who heard the tale. Those Bennets! the story would go. The companion to Anne de Bourgh, meeting men on the sly.

‘It was just – terribly forward, Mary. I know you meant no harm, for we have been friends for our whole lives. But Mr Collins – Lady Catherine – they will judge you. They
have
judged you. I think it was an unfortunate
faux pas
. We shall have to consider how to remedy this.’

Judgement from Charlotte made Mary even hotter.

‘Charlotte, you of all people should know that anyone can look at the actions of others and think the worst.’

Charlotte stopped stirring her tea and grew very still. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

Mary had not meant to say it out loud and she regretted the words even as they burst from her.

‘What actions of mine do you think the worst of?’ Charlotte continued. When Mary said nothing, she pushed further. ‘Do you mean my marriage to Mr Collins? Go ahead, Mary, tell me.’

‘And what do you know of me?’ Mary said. ‘Tell me, Charlotte, what do you know of me? A friend came to visit me and I offered him tea in the house where I was something between a guest and a servant. My crime, if crime it can be considered, was to have a society beyond the one selected for me. Yet you have been judging me and judging me from the moment I arrived on your doorstep with nowhere else to go. The old Charlotte would not have judged me. This new Charlotte – I no longer know this person. But I can tell you this. In order to live your life, you had to slough off the old Charlotte and become this new person, who looks upon old friends and judges them not with her eyes but with her husband’s and that of his patroness.’

The words were quietly spoken, but they rang in the parlour. For a few moments the only sound were the mantel clock and the hissing of the fire in the grate.

A knock came at the door and Mr Collins came in. He looked grave indeed, and quite wet, and for a moment Mary feared that he had heard them quarrel. She felt quite ill at the thought. He was a foolish man, but no doubt he loved Charlotte as best he could, despite all his faults. If he had heard her accusation that Charlotte had merely made sure of him to secure herself an establishment, it could turn out very badly.

Mr Collins’s next words laid her fears to rest. He only had Mary’s transgressions on his mind, not his wife’s esteem of him.

‘Mary,’ he said very soberly. ‘It is as I have most desperately feared. Nay, it is worse. I have been to Rosings,’ he said, rather as if he were telling her he had been to war, or to Hell. ‘Lady Catherine is most upset. Mary, you have achieved what your unnamed sister could not. You have incurred Lady Catherine’s full wrath and displeasure.’

Charlotte looked frightened. Mary was a little apprehensive too, until she remembered that she had always incurred Lady Catherine’s displeasure and wasn’t sure what more was expected.

‘I do not know how to mend this thing. You will have to go home, of course,’ Mr Collins continued, with the air of one thinking out loud. ‘Though I am not sure that will be enough. Your parents would do well to seclude you. I think it best you never set foot in society again, where your paths and Lady Catherine’s – or Miss de Bourgh’s – might ever cross.’ He lowered his voice. ‘She did not want me to shelter you, cousin, but I prevailed upon her mercy and her just temperament.’