Damnation.
What was the best way to address such a thing? I suppose I could go to her and be very straightforward about it all, but she would only deny that she had ever thought anything of the sort, and then I should feel quite embarrassed for having brought it up, and it would all be difficult.
Best to simply be clearer in my behavior towards her going forward, I thought. She would see that she had been wrong in her assumptions, and she would eventually cease to behave the way she’d been behaving, and I would be free to pursue Elizabeth Bennet.
I actually laughed aloud.
What? I had no intention of pursuing Elizabeth Bennet, for one thing, and for another, I could be quite assured that Caroline would not leave me free to do such a thing. She was jealous. She thought that my attention had been assured, that my affection for her was obvious, and seeing that I felt it elsewhere had shaken her. If I went after Elizabeth now, it would make Caroline’s behavior worse.
Anyway, Elizabeth Bennet hated me.
Added to all of that, everything I had said about the girl’s lack of connections was accurate. And it was also true that if Elizabeth Bennet had come marching into the breakfast parlor at either of my aunt’s houses with her hair a tangle of overflowing curls glinting in the sunlight and her hem mud-stained, they would have been scandalized.
That was not the sort of woman a man like me married.
I knew that.
CHAPTER THREE
To add insult to injury, the next day brought us a visit from all of the Bennet sisters. I don’t think I had been aware there were ever so many of them.
It was quite normal to have a family so large, of course, and I supposed it all made sense, because all of them were female, and they must have kept trying for a boy child. It was common enough for there to be ten or twelve children in a family. The Queen herself had thirteen children.
Perhaps it wasn’t so many sisters in the end.
Perhaps it was only that they were all so very loud. And shrill. And with the giggling and the talking over each other, and the discussion of balls. They were like a cavalcade who could all be turned towards one desire and then they would demand such a thing in orchestrated cacophony until it seemed that someone would bend to their will.
Which Bingley did easily enough, all smiles. “Oh, yes, I should love to give a ball here at Netherfield,” he said.
I caught Elizabeth making pained, embarrassed expressions when members of her family spoke, and this only made me like her more.
I had to own that I had a number of ridiculous relations myself, and I knew what it was to be mortified to be related to the person who was utteringthat.
Perhaps now is the point in time when we must, however, deal with Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth’s mother.
At the ball in Netherfield, the dreadful ball, the one in which I did not dance and sat in the shadows thinking to myself that I didn’t know why I had allowed myself to be dragged here by Bingley at all, at that ball, Mrs. Bennet was overheard saying a number of things that would indeed mortify any sensible relation of the woman.
She was overheard by practically everyone, mostly because she said all the things she said rather loudly.
She made a number of comments about incomes, for one thing. She announced, practically to the entire gathering, how much money she thought that Bingley was bringing in each year, and she made it known how favorably she found it. “Yes, Jane is dancing with that one, the one who has five thousand a year!” she may have shrieked, at the top of her lungs, or something like that, anyway, if I haven’t gotten the turn of phrase entirely accurate.
This would have been quite enough, but she also made comments about someone’s dress very loudly, so loudly that the person—I don’t recall this woman’s name—heard and reacted and Mrs. Bennet was all the time entirely oblivious, even as the offended woman was looking on in horrified shock. Additionally, she was overheard talking about her own daughters and ranking them in terms of their relative charms. Though, however, I cannot reproduce her ranking, for, at the time, I had not paid much mind to the girls’ names, and I did not connect any of the names she said to anyone. The point of recounting is not so much to wonder if she had the ranking of her daughters’ attractiveness accurate, or if we would agree with it, only that a mother should not say such things, especially not loudly, especially not so that a large gathered company of others could hear it.
At any rate, Caroline had seized upon Mrs. Bennet as a source of endless delight and ridicule, for the woman was far too easy to poke fun at. Mrs. Bennet did almost all of the work herself. I had joined in with Caroline on a number of occasions, I am afraid to say, especially after that ball, which I had regarded as punishing, a sort of gauntlet I had run. So, anything I could do to point out how absolutely awful it had been, I was quite happy to do.
But now I felt foolish for having done so, and a bit ashamed of myself, too.
It was small behavior to make fun of others. I was not a small man.
I resolved that I would do better in the future.
Especially considering that Mrs. Bennet was very cold towards me. She seemed predisposed to dislike every word out of my mouth. I made a comment—I should have kept my mouth shut, I think. At any rate, we were discussing the benefits of the city versus the country, and I said that there were a greater variety of people to associate with in the city, and Mrs. Bennet got very huffy and acted as though I had personally attacked her.
Of course, I… had. On other occasions, I had said positively unflattering things about the woman, to Caroline, and to the others in the party here at Netherfield, but never in public, I did not think.
However, at this point, I could only conclude that somehow, it had gotten back to her. I was not certain how.
There had been little contact between us and them, but the Bingley sisters had called at the Bennets several times.
