Page 53 of The Stench of Trade

“I wonder what has happened. Excuse me, I will endeavor to catch him. The invitations are ready. May I call at Longbourn in the morning?”

“Please do Mr. Bingley.”

With that he was off, urging his horse on to catch up with his guest.

“Lydia, I believe you wanted to purchase ribbons. Shall we away?”

Elizabeth’s successful effort to separate her sisters from the officers was only temporary however. When they arrived at their Aunt Philips it was to discover that she had invited the officers of the regiment to her house for dinner and cards that very evening. After a welcome cup of tea and an unwelcome soliloquy from Mr. Collins they prepared to return to Longbourn. Elizabeth took her footman aside.

“Robert, will you stay and assist Aunt and Uncle Philips please.”

“Lizzie that is very kind of you. It will make moving the furniture so much easier.”

“You are welcome Aunt. We will see you this evening.”

Once her aunt had moved off Elizabeth handed several coins over to Robert.

“Have dinner at the Inn please Robert. I know that my aunt will feed you here but I want you to sit in the taproom and listen. You know why.”

“Yes Miss Elizabeth.”

Nothing else needed to be said. He had been around Elizabeth long enough to know that information was king. And that she was extremely concerned about the behaviour of her sisters. He would find out all he could.

“Where is Robert your footman Lizzie?”

“I asked him to stay and help Aunt Philips Mary. He will ride back with us this evening.”

In fact he arrived in the Philips’ gig to drive Elizabeth and Mary to their house. The Bennet carriage was not designed for seven and Mr. Collins was not a slim gentleman. He would have been inappropriately close if they had all squeezed into the carriage. The gig allowed two of the sisters to escape that crush. Elizabeth and Mary left before their mother even realised they had gone, derailing her, and Mr. Collins, plans.

The evening was like so many others they had attended. Their aunt prided herself on providing good fare, and the central location in Meryton was an advantage on a late autumn night. The difference this evening was firstly the inclusion of the 10 officers of the Militia regiment, along with the Colonel’s wife, and secondly the Reverend William Collins. Elizabeth had met the Colonel and his wife already, and she respected the man. Any conversation with him would be enjoyable. What was concerning was that his wife was young, younger than her in fact. There was no way to hide this from her youngest sisters. It was the last thing they needed to see, a young woman married to an officer. The rest of the officers were as yet unknown and a key part of the evening was getting to know them, at least superficially.

The other key part of the evening was to escape the grasp of Mr. Collins. Not that he was holding her physically but he was constantly dragging her into his verbal effusions. They were not sermons, there was barely anything religious in his speeches; she had already used soliloquies; monologues, lectures, speeches? No one word quite described his gushing verbosity.

Actually there was. Tiresome.

The arrival of the card tables was her salvation. Her Aunt Philips corralled Mr. Collins at her table, and Elizabeth was able to slip away. But the respite was brief because as soon as she sat down on a couch, as far from Mr. Collins as possible, an officer requested permission to sit with her.

Elizabeth sat back after listening to Mr. Wickham’s list of grievances against Mr. Darcy. All the teachings of her uncle swirled in her mind as she dissected the list, her memory sharp.

It started with known facts, Darcy had a large estate in Derbyshire, everyone knew that. Wickham stated Darcy’s income as £10,000 which dovetailed with the rumours floating around Meryton. Her guess was that this amount was leaked by Miss Bingley but she had no way of knowing.

What was the next phrase? ‘You could not have met with a person more capable of giving you certain information.’ It was an odd boast. What struck Elizabeth the most was Wickham’s way of exposing secrets. If they were true, how did he know? What was much more likely was that a kernel of truth had been wrapped up in self-serving lies.

The discussion, from her side at least, about Mr. Darcy’s temperament was factual. She had seen the cold greeting between them, she did find Darcy disagreeable, both from his display at the Assembly and his words about poor Mary, although the four days spent at Netherfield nursing Jane had tempered that perceptibly. As to the final point she made, he was not well-liked in Hertfordshire, she had to admit her biases clouded her judgement. He was acknowledged as not social at all but he was a gentleman of the first circles, he had a lot of latitude in how his behaviour was judged. But Elizabeth’s words had spurred Wickham on.

Then came to the largest glaring contradiction of the whole, probably rehearsed, speech. Wickham prattled on about not being forced from the county by the presence of Darcy, how he treasured the memory of Darcy’s father and would never do anything that ended up ‘disgracing the memory of the father’. Elizabeth had sensed Wickham to be sly, but he had the same blind spot as so many men. He did not consider that a woman could be intelligent and discerning. His whole discourse had been damning to Darcy personally, and to the Darcy name, yet he blathered on about not disgracing the memory of Darcy’s father. Elizabeth shook her head, was she ever going to find a man that respected her intelligence?

After some generic compliments to Meryton and Hertfordshire Wickham returned to his tale of woe. It had taken Elizabeth a great deal of effort to keep from laughing in Wickham’s face. Disregarding the will of his father? Elizabeth accepted that she did not like the man but there was nothing about Darcy that suggested that he would behave in such a manner. She had been around contracts for close to decade. She knew that wills and marriage settlements were contracts. And that ambiguous contracts were the bane of all business. Lawyers that drew up such contracts were soon known and did not survive long. She just did not believe that a family such as the Darcys would allow ‘an informality in the terms of the bequest’ to be part of a last will and testament.

Elizabeth acknowledged she had lightly goaded Wickham on, for him to once again claim that he would not expose Darcy whilst retaining the memory of the father. Again, being blindly unaware that he was doing exactly that to Elizabeth.

The question of jealousy between Wickham and Darcy, and Wickham’s absurd contention that old Mr. Darcy liked his godson rather than his only son and heir? There was so much jealousy in all levels of society, Elizabeth herself was not exempt from it, that all Wickham did was expose his own jealousy of the difference in situation between himself and Darcy. Elizabeth knew that she was jealous that she could not have a larger more active part in society, that no woman could aspire to that. The whole ‘men know better’ attitude was an overwhelming and suffocating blanket over all women. Elizabeth knew that she disliked men that perpetuated that arrogance, and as a result she liked very few men. She dealt with them, she tolerated them as she had no other choice, but she did not like them. Wickham had been educated at both school and university, what did he have to complain about?

She shook her head and considered the last part of the monologue. It was clear and obvious that Darcy was proud, he had acknowledged so himself when Elizabeth had been at Netherfield. But Wickham had tried to square the circle claiming that Darcy treated his tenants, sister and acquaintances well, making sure that society was proud of the Darcy name, while being mean to those beneath him, especially Wickham.