Goodly Creatures: A Pride and Prejudice Deviation (30 page)

Lizzy was quite certain Mr Bennet knew she had used her gift for humour to deflect possible inquiries. The ruse appeared to work, though. She wondered whether he would settle on continuing their discussion by way of witty banter or would he assert his right of parental accusations. He gave her a moment of discomfort when he said, “Elizabeth even with my diminished sight, I see evidence of sadness in your eyes. It was never there before, and I hope you will tell me what has caused it.” When she hesitated, he seemed to quickly choose not to press and said with some mischief. “Perhaps, I now have two daughters who have suffered a devastating disappointment in love.”

Lizzy decided his humour laced with insensitivity for the plight of his oldest daughter gave her the opening to make her most crucial request. “Papa, you are mistaken. I have decided I do not want to marry. The legacy I received will allow me to live modestly, and take care of Mama. Please intervene with her on my behalf. Persuade your wife that my decision is for the best.” Elizabeth noticed a quickly suppressed look of dread cross her father’s countenance. She hurriedly added, “I believe I can abide house parties with our neighbours, but I would like to be excused from attending assemblies and balls. I really desire no wider company than the four and twenty families of our neighbourhood.”

Mr Bennet’s eyes travelled from her face to her décolletage and back again—as if searching for an understanding to explain both her physical and emotional metamorphosis. Elizabeth prayed he would not continue to probe the reason for her appeal. Though he did not successfully conceal his concern, his face suddenly lightened with levity. “Lizzy, what happened to your fatally flawed amber cross? Is that silver one what all the fashionable young ladies are wearing in London?”

Lizzy touched the silver cross at her neck, paused for a moment, then replied, in a voice devoid of all emotion. She tried to keep the sadness of the truth from reaching her eyes, but she feared she was not entirely successful. “No, I simply lost the other one along with a few other things while I was gone.”

Elizabeth was very pleased with the changes in her sister Mary. Before going to London, she had judged her younger sister too unbending in her outlook toward others. Her interaction with Mr Bennet seemed to have taken the edge off her natural tendency to dismiss others for their failings. The irony of her evaluation of Mary was that she and her father had also been experts at condemning others. They, however, were skilled at reproaching with sly humour. Sometimes her father’s sarcastic wit stung its recipient a bit too much, while Elizabeth had an archness combined with sweetness that was not as off putting as either his caustic gibes or Mary’s sanctimonious criticisms.

Mary had developed a sense of humour during the past year. She told her sister it was the only way she could ensure harmony with her father. “Every day he would almost reduce me to tears with his merciless barbs. His favourite target was my religious beliefs. The day your letter came advising the two of us to curtail our theological debates, I resolved to change. That night, I decided to fight wit with wit.”

Elizabeth was looking in wonder at her sister as she related her story of transformation. She was almost certain she saw a twinkle in her sober sister’s eyes when she continued.

“The next day, I launched my first successful foray. With my traditional stern face, I inquired whether he was reconciled to going to Hell. He looked at me with the assumption that I was as self-righteous as ever.” In enthusiasm for her triumph, she grabbed her sister’s hand. “During my entire assault, I kept asking myself—what would Lizzy do?” She dropped her sister’s hand and pointed to her temple. “Your wisdom guided me. Before Papa could pounce, I told him he would be unable to collect all the needed species of beetles he had promised God. I added that I was beginning to doubt he would ever leave England, so how would he collect those in other lands.” Now her hands reached toward heaven as she finished her tale with a flourish. “I told him it was time to strike another bargain with God. Perhaps, he could agree to be pleasant to his middle daughter until he was called. Oh Lizzy, he threw back his head and laughed.”

Elizabeth enjoyed spending time with Mary. They would chat and laugh as they worked. Elizabeth found it particularly agreeable that Mary, who had always been a great reader of sermons, had expanded her interests. Mary explained that she had recently become enamoured of Daniel Defoe. She had been reading some of his religious pamphlets when their father suggested she read his novels. Next thing she knew she was reading Jonathon Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels,
which was said to parody
Robinson Crusoe.
She was hooked. She still read sermons, but felt the additional reading expanded her horizons.

Mary shared with Lizzy the other experience that had wrought a change in her. She found that learning to enter debits and credits in the estate’s books had given her a new way of evaluating acquaintances. Before she made a judgment as to their character, she made a human ledger. She balanced all the new acquaintance’s attributes against their flaws. She was amazed to realize that her first impression was often not what the ledger approach concluded. Elizabeth wished, as she listened to her sister’s process for sketching a character, that she had developed such an important skill before she had gone to London.

About six months after Elizabeth arrived home, a young man, Mr John Reynolds, came to fill the position of steward. He was eighteen, even taller than Mr Darcy, and was Mrs Reynolds’ nephew. Lizzy believed she had heard a long lanky body like his—that had not yet reached its full potential—referred to as gangly. Despite his form not yet being set, his character seemed to have been in place since the cradle—he was quiet, calm and very respectful toward her father. He reminded her of his aunt in both his personality and the air of efficiency he projected.

Mrs Reynolds soon wrote her through her uncle to tell her how pleased she was that her nephew had taken the position. She assured Elizabeth that he knew nothing of their acquaintance. The only news she relayed about her daughter was that her employers had baptized her Elizabeth Anne, but they called her Bethany. She also communicated that Mrs Darcy was with child. Elizabeth worried that a baby of their own could jeopardize the treatment of Bethany; but decided she would trust Mr Darcy to be honourable. Mrs Reynolds seemed to know her news might cause anxiety. She spent much of the letter reassuring Lizzy of Mr Darcy’s scrupulous commitment to obligations.

Later when she received the letters from Mrs Reynolds, Jamie and Bronwyn telling her of Anne’s death, Elizabeth had sobbed. To add to her pain, Bronwyn had written that Lady Hughes had died giving birth the same day as Mrs Darcy. Elizabeth was unsure why she felt such despair at the news. Anne had betrayed her, but that no longer seemed important. All she could feel was sorrow for her daughter and the other little ones being denied a mother, Mr Darcy and Lord Hughes for losing their wives, but mostly for all the women who died trying to give the gift of life to another being. Even Mary Wollstonecraft, who had moved Elizabeth so with her words about the rights of women, had paid the ultimate price while delivering her daughter.

The day after Elizabeth learned of Anne Darcy’s death, she was befriended by another. She often walked early in the morning both as an antidote to sleeplessness and to contemplate her most personal thoughts in private. This morning as she climbed Oakham Mount, she was unable to shake memories of the past and the woman and the man who had stolen her life. As she reached the crest, there he stood like a sentinel—the ugliest dog she had ever seen. He was huge and appeared to have some Irish Wolfhound in him—but his body was much more powerful. Sir Walter had kept several of the breed when she was younger. Elizabeth laughed as she speculated about this dog’s parentage. Her favourite scenario was that he was the result of one of Sir Walter’s Wolfhounds getting out and visiting the gaming den on the far side of Meryton. Years before, her Uncle Philips had been the source of the information that dog fighting and bull-baiting took place there. Her father, when she questioned him, had told her the dogs of choice for those sports were Old English Bulldogs. Somehow the characteristics of the two breeds did not blend, but instead seemed to exist as though the animal had been stitched together with pieces of several dogs. The short hair of the Bulldog would stop abruptly to make way for patches of the long wiry hair of the Wolfhound. The beast was brindled and had obviously been in numerous fights. Half his right ear was missing, and his left eye drooped from another injury. Though frightening looking, Elizabeth was drawn to him. Instinctively she knew he was destined to protect her, and they seemed to immediately accept each other as fellow outsiders. She laid out her blanket and sat to watch the sun rise over the meadow as she did most mornings. He lay down on the blanket beside her and put his head in her lap. Her hand was drawn to caress his mangled ear. She named him Caliban. Though she had sworn she would never think of
The Tempest
again, one look at the dog’s deformities and the wisdom in his eyes—and she believed him to be a sign from above. Surely, he was sent to teach her to survive a life deferred as Caliban had taught Prospero.

PART TWO
HERTFORDSHIRE,SEPTEMBER 1811

23 WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE, SWEET LOVE

“I am violently in love with your sister and will most surely die if I am not allowed to marry her. You must tell me if I am out of place to think I could be so favoured. She is, after all, a gentleman’s daughter, and I am but a steward’s son. ”

Lizzy tried not to laugh as she watched this man nearly three times her size desperately wringing his hands at the thought of speaking to her father. He was so quietly confident in most matters, but obviously not in the realm of the heart. When they had met, more than four years earlier, he had been very tall and lanky. Now he was massive… a veritable door off the hinges. Once transformed, she had begun calling him Little John because he reminded her of Robin Hood’s boon companion—both physically and in his loyalty to her family. She took his hands to calm him. “You have nothing to fear from Papa.”

The big man shook his head with doubt. “He has every right to send me packing when I petition him.”

She had been expecting this development between John and her sister Kitty for some time. They were well suited, and seemed to have a deep attachment and affection. “I am certain he will agree. You must know my parents already think of you as a son, and it surprises me you have not heard Mama speculating about when you would ask.” Elizabeth Bennet gave Little John a mischievous look and a poke as she prepared to mimic her mother. “Who do you think she is encouraging when she says?—
’it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a thriving business, must be in want of a wife’.
Besides, my family hangs on to our claims of being landed gentry by a thread… and an entailed thread at that. I do not think being a steward’s son is that different from being a country lawyer’s son… and look at my Uncle Gardiner. He is the wealthiest and most admired member of our family.”