Chapter Text
In the villages and small towns of England, there is no currency more valuable than news, and no event more exciting than a new entrant into the daily life of the community, especially that part of the community which busies itself in calling, visiting, and dancing. This is especially the case that new entrant is young, gently-reared, and newly in the possession of an inheritance which must make them an object of interest to those who, like themselves, are as yet unmarried.
Imagine, then, the way the excitement of such an occurrence must naturally be magnified many times over when two notable events of this nature occur at about the same time, as happened in the county of Hertfordshire late in the summer of 1812.
The first was the return of Jane Bennet, who had spent the previous year with her maternal grandmother in that lady’s home country. Jane had been much missed by the beaus of Hertfordshire, for she was generally acknowledged to the foremost beauty of the shire, and even more so by her sisters, who one and all acknowledged her in her absence as the steady keel of all their family pursuits, and had greatly missed her calm presence in their home. Her sister Elizabeth had missed her especially, and on what turned out to be the day of Jane’s return had been seen walking spring-footed into Meryton, her falcon dæmon turning quick complex circles about her so that he that resembled nothing so much as a slip that had got loose on washing day to tumble about in the air. It might naturally have been expected that she would go to the home of her aunt or another acquaintance, but instead she went directly to the coaching inn and took a fine room for the day. This was unusual behaviour in a young lady alone, and since it seemed to obvious an act to be the beginning of an assignation, and besides, Miss Elizabeth was not known to have any special favourites, it was quickly assumed amongst those who took an interest in matters that Elizabeth must have received a letter advising her of her sister’s imminent return, and that only the necessity of keeping the horses for work in the fields had prevented Mr Bennet from sending his carriage to London to receive his eldest daughter in style.
Such a long absence to a place no one had heard of in an unmarried girl might have been suspicious, but Mrs Bennet had made a point some years earlier of telling all the matrons of the country how her mother insisted upon all her grandchildren visiting her in order to receive their inheritance in person, and the matrons of that county, many of whom recalled the peculiar manners of the then-Mrs Gardiner when she had been resident in Meryton, had dutifully told their families and acquaintances. So the story had spread, soaking into the web of knowledge that bound each inhabitant of the county, and thus were the reputations of all the Bennet sisters inoculated against the future by their mother.
Mrs Bennet was greatly concerned for the preservation of her daughters’ reputations, as any mother ought be, but her concern on the matter was compounded by some peculiar conditions that had been imposed many years earlier, at the time of her marriage.
Mrs Bennet liked to think romantically of the days of her courtship and early marriage, as is often the case in those who find themselves somewhat disappointed in later years and who do not like to think their present situation the fault of their younger selves. She had what she considered to be two very good reasons for this rosy view, which reasons she had liked to relate to her daughters since they had been old enough to listen to her. The first was that she had married well — very well, in the eyes of the world, for her husband was a gentleman of good income and property, as well as handsome, intelligent, and sensible, and Miss Gardiner, as she had then been, was, for all her personal beauty and charm, merely the daughter of a country attorney.
The second reason was that her mother had opposed the marriage. Mrs Bennet was never very clear about the reasons for this opposition when she related to her daughters the manner of her firmness of will and surety of future felicity in convincing her mother to agree to her marriage, and perhaps Mrs Bennet was not altogether sure of what they had been herself, although she believed they had to do with Mrs Bennet’s relative youth in comparison to her husband, and the matter of her husband’s estate of Longbourn being entailed upon the male line. Mrs Bennet had carried the day by somewhat underhanded means, and had been duly married, although Mrs Gardiner had insisted upon having a clause inserted in the marriage articles which determined that any daughters Mrs Bennet might bear were not to enter into any contract of that sort before they reached the age of one-and-twenty, and that were they to do so, those daughters would forfeit their rights to their inheritance from Mrs Gardiner’s property, which portion they would receive upon visiting their grandmother at her own home and staying with her for a season or more.
The new Mr and Mrs Bennet had been perfectly happy to oblige Mrs Gardiner in this, since the majority of any property inherited must naturally go to their son and heir, save only what Mrs Bennet brought to the marriage, and there could be no harm in keeping a daughter about Longbourn for a few years after she came out, as might be expected in any case. The years went by, and Mrs Bennet, despite her best efforts and no small amount of ingenuity, failed to produce the expected boy, instead producing five daughters in steady succession. She often lamented her promise to her mother then, declaring that her mother had wished her ill-luck in disapproving of her marriage, and chided her daughters to listen to her in all things, lest the same fate befall them. That she had praised her good fortune in marrying well and admired her own strength of purpose in telling them the story of how her marriage came to be, while ending such stories with a command to filial obedience, was a contradiction in morality that did not seem to occur to Mrs Bennet.
Elizabeth, the second of her daughters, had found such stories unsatisfactory, and had often wondered at the reason for her grandmother’s disapproval of her father, for the lady had left Hertfordshire before the birth of her first grandchild, and so none of them had ever met her. When she was very young and in the schoolroom, Elizabeth had secretly determined that her grandmother must be a lady of the French nobility who had fled that country when the king and queen had lost their heads. She based this assumption on the fact that her mother and grandmother, when they communicated at all, did so chiefly in french, and the knowledge that had been imparted to her that her grandparents had met and courted in France and that her grandmother was in some way foreign. When she had grown a little older, and her understanding of the ages of history grew more nuanced than the dates before which she had been born and the dates after, Elizabeth had realised that this could not be the case, as the fall of the ancien régime had occurred at almost the same time as her own birth, and this did not allow time for her own mother’s childhood, or even her marriage. Then she had been as confused as before about her mysterious grandmother, but consoled herself that time and the promised visit — that of her elder sister Jane, if not her own — must shed light on the strange matter.
She had been distressed, therefore, to learn that Mrs Bennet was in the habit of asking her mother, as often as she dared, to amend the conditions of the promised inheritance. Mrs Bennet considered herself and her daughters to be in great danger, for she lived in constant fear that her husband’s untimely death might force them from his estate, and that she would be required to provide for herself and five maiden daughters on the mere two hundred and fifty pounds per annum her marriage portion provided. It would be quite impossible, and it was most heartless of Mrs Bennet’s mother to be so unfeeling towards the future security of her poor granddaughters.
Such pleading was of no use, except to result in Mrs Bennet’s mother restating her position, and adding, by the intermediary of Mrs Bennet’s younger brother, who was on rather better terms with his mother, a stern reinforcement of her feelings on the matter. Mr Gardiner had gentled this message by reminding his sister that he had undertaken to arrange the necessities of travel for his nieces, and promised to escort them in person as far as was practicable, when the time came for the promised visits.
The morning of Jane’s arrival, Elizabeth had awoken to the agitated flutter of wings, and for a moment old habit made her think to ask her sister what the matter was, before she remembered the strange circumstances of the previous days. Patroclus was fluttering at the window, trying to pull back the heavy drapes in a state of high agitation. Elizabeth sprang up in terror, Kari swooping ahead of her, and caught up her dressing gown so she might throw the window open.
‘What is it?’
‘Jane,’ Patroclus trilled, freeing himself from the drapes, and she looked over him for any sign of illness or injury, and then her heart leapt as she heard, ‘Jane is come, she is come, she is here!’
Elizabeth leaned out to stare down the drive leading to Longbourn, the two dæmons flinging themselves in an excess of joy and incaution from the open window, dark and bright in the small light the candle she lit — but it was dark, and the drive quite, quite empty. No carriage sounded, nor any lantern flared. There was not even the softest crunch of gravel underfoot, of the sort that might be made by a bold rabbit making for the garden in the absence of gardeners.
Kari returned, and settled on her shoulder, rubbing his fine strong head against her cheek in comfort and fussing at the strands of hair that had escaped her braid in the night.
Patroclus gave a cry, and returned, settling on the window.
‘My dear,’ Elizabeth’s dæmon began.
‘She will come today,’ said Patroclus. ‘I feel it. She will come from the south — it must be from London!’
Sagging with relief, and not a little with exhaustion, Elizabeth settled on the bed again and drew the blankets up, for it was not near enough dawn to be warm. Too suddenly alert to be able to sleep again, she studied Patroclus, who was preening himself in a fit of anxiety, and doubted.
‘She can’t have come to London today, surely. She would have arrived first in Portsmouth, or Newcastle, and then we would have had a letter. Couldn’t you feel her before?’
He looked a little ashamed of himself. ‘I could, but I…I wasn’t precisely sure where she was. I thought it would be better to stay here and wait for her. If you see a person but can’t see their dæmon you might think their dæmon is inside their clothes or something like, but anyone who might who see me and look about without seeing her would wonder at it. But when she came close — I think she must have felt me close and woken up, just as I felt her and woke up.’
He fluttered in a way that suggested he was not quite telling the truth, or, if Jane had been here, might have suggested that she was not quite telling the truth. Elizabeth had never thought this a trait likely to be noticed by anyone outside the family, so she had been content to allow her sister’s dæmon to continue in this habit without correction. Falseness of speech was not precisely a habitual fault in Jane, but she was loathe to inflict her disturbances of mind or emotion on others, and had found early in life, perhaps by the circumstance of being her mother’s eldest daughter, that perfect truth-telling was so often infelicitous to happiness as to render it undesirable, except, perhaps, to Elizabeth.
She bit her lip. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Of course he’s sure,’ Kari put in with stubborn loyalty. ‘I’d know.’
‘Well, then,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I suppose she will arrive in a post-chaise, if she’s coming from London. We’d better go to Meryton after breakfast.’
A few hours later, Elizabeth and her dæmon stepped quietly out of the house, Patroclus discreetly secure in the depths of her work basket, where he had made a nest among her pieces of mending and old letters. Elizabeth ignored a little pang of guilt at leaving her family so unprepared, but consoled herself with the notion that a welcome party could be arranged within half an hour of Jane’s arrival, and that in any case she was likely to be tired from such a long journey. And, after all, there could be no way to explain how she knew that Jane would arrive that day without explaining that her dæmon had spent a whole month in seclusion in Elizabeth’s bedroom, oceans away from his person and apparently quite at ease, and that Elizabeth, moreover, had informed no one else of that fact. If Jane came at all, that was.
Once she had secured a private room for the day at the coaching inn so that she might welcome her sister in comfort, and left the door cracked for the sake of propriety, Elizabeth had spent most of the morning alternately pacing the floor and gazing out the open window.
Horses and coaches arrived throughout the day, and she studied each lady she saw alight, wondering with each moment of hesitation if it possible to forget the look and manner of her own sister each time she saw someone of about the right height or colouring. When Jane arrived, however, there was no mistaking her, and Elizabeth thought herself ridiculous for ever thinking otherwise. Patroclus gave a stifled, glad little gasp from the within his nest and, snatching it up, Elizabeth hurried down the stairs.
As she had when she had left, Jane arrived carrying a tall, elegant basket draped in a patterned muslin veil, the sort in which a lady’s dæmon might rest comfortably in a public carriage without fear of any unwanted touch. She had sensibly rolled up a scarf in the rough size and shape of Patroclus and inserted it into the basket to give it some weight. Apart from this and a little valise, she carried no other luggage.
Elizabeth embraced her sister. ‘It is silly,’ she confessed, ‘but I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.’
Jane embraced her with one long arm, snaking the fingers of the other inside the lid of the work basket in quiet reassurance, and said, a little thickly, ‘Of course I would come back. Did you think I would abandon you? I could hardly wait to see you. Oh Lizzy, I am so glad. And,’ she drew back, fussing at Elizabeth’s hat, ‘you look so well!’
‘So do you. But — oh!’ Elizabeth started, noticing for the first time the black ribbons adorning her sister’s attire at wrist and waist and neck. ‘What has happened?’ she asked, touching one.
‘Oh!’ said Jane. ‘Nothing at all, do not alarm yourself. It is only that it is the fashion to wear black ribbons where my grandmama comes from. It does not signify.’
‘I think it very grim,’ said Elizabeth, whose taste ran to the many hues of the countryside. ‘But perhaps you found it useful in fending off the enquiries of your fellow travellers. Although,’ she continued with a sly smile, ‘it would be a coup to make Mama happy forever if you managed to become engaged before you set foot in Longbourn again. I comforted myself, you know, by reading your letters over to see if you mentioned the names of any young men, but you were entirely silent on the subject. Not that I am disappointed, only I cannot imagine what sort of society you must have been in to have been so overlooked.’
Jane gave her a very rueful look. ‘I suppose I must expect all that and worse. I had hoped…oh, but you do not know. I could not find the right words to write about all of it. Not that there were…well, come inside and let us have some refreshment. It will be my treat, since I am a lady of means now. Is anyone else here?’
They linked arms cordially, and Elizabeth took her sister up to the room she had reserved, and fussed quite unnecessarily about tidying Jane’s things while Patroclus pressed himself against her neck and cheek, murmuring in his hoarse parrot’s voice. When they had done, and tea and some luncheon had been brought up, they sat down to talk.
It was awkward at first, but the awkwardness, which both had half-feared, was less that of meeting a stranger in the place of a sister, and more that of too much to say and feel. Gradually, talking often at cross-purposes and odd tangents, they began to explain all that had happened to each other in the period they had spent apart, and by the time Mr Bennet’s carriage arrived, summoned by a letter from Elizabeth, they had established a scaffold of understanding on which long explanations might be built, and had begun to be quite comfortable with each other again, and the length of the carriage ride, where Jane had a chance to see all that had once been so familiar to her, was enough to make her feel quite grounded and ready to greet the rest of her family.
‘Now, Jane,’ said Mrs Bennet. ‘You must recall that I asked you to work on my mother most earnestly to revise her requirements on you girls not marrying before you reach your majority. Did you do as I asked, and have you succeeded?’
Jane looked a little distressed, and Patroclus, deciding discretion was the better part of virtue, flew up to the rafters, where Mrs Bennet’s pelican dæmon could not easily reach him in the small family breakfast room which served as their parlour. The role of advocate was not altogether foreign to Jane, provided she was convinced of the rightness of the position she championed, but she was by nature averse to conflict, preferring to think uncritically of the motives of everyone she had cause to associate with, and as she had warned her mother before she left, she could not in all honesty promise to press an argument with a lady she had never been acquainted with — a lady who was moreover very much her senior in years, her host, her benefactor, and her ancestress.
‘I did, but madam she was firm. She did give me the funds she promised you for my portion, and was most gracious in doing so. She asked me to remind you that she has no objection to any…informal understandings being formed, provided any such thing does not interfere with our visiting her and may be broken by the lady without breach of promise.’ This sounded rather nonsensical to her sisters, whose understanding of the standards of courtship was bounded by the propriety of their class, and Jane blushed very heavily, at which Kitty whispered something to Lydia, who giggled.
‘As she should have! It is a scandalous thing, really, to ask five young ladies to travel alone to the north, to risk Muscovites and ruffian adventurers and panserbjørne and the French, and for a only five thousand pounds! I am quite sure she can afford more. Really I think it is very mean of her, and I always said that she did not understand England or our ways. She will have you all old maids starving in the hedgerows.’
‘Five thousand pounds each, madam, and in a stroke she has increased Jane’s portion to match your own,’ Elizabeth interjected. She did not mention that in doing so her grandmother had gifted Jane with more than their father could ever reasonably hope to provide, and that as the funds had been given directly to Jane they would be available to her at once rather than on the death of Mrs Bennet, whose dowry had previously made up almost all the security her daughters could be certain of.
It was to that topic that Mrs Bennet turned next. ‘I received five thousand pounds from her and my father when I married! I do not see why she should not give you girls the same at least, which it is not at all near is when one accounts for the great increase in the cost of everything from when I was a girl. She might save the expense of your travel and make up the difference in the percents. I am sure your uncle would be willing to make the arrangements for that.’
There could be no answer to this from any of her younger daughters, who had never met their grandmother and whose sole understanding of that lady’s position was extracted from Mrs Bennet’s beliefs and recollections, and who in any case did not think that the cost of travel and board could greatly increase such a sum.
Jane said a little diffidently. ‘Madam, you forget that part of her condition was that we go to her to learn what we may not in England. I am thankful to have met her, and our other relatives. I think I should never have had the opportunity to see such things otherwise.’
‘Such danger,’ Mrs Bennet grumbled, but brightened at the sound of a carriage passing and the happy reminders of local gossip such a sound brought. ‘But here, my love, I have not told you our news! There is a great deal of it, you know. Miss Perkyns has married, and your aunt says that Mr Phillips heard from old Mr Morris that he has finally been convinced to allow Netherfield to be let. He has been advertising it, discreetly you know, for some months, and is sure to have an occupant soon. So we shall not want for entertainment, indeed. And at such a good time! You are looking very lovely, my dear, quite blooming.’
From there the conversation passed to all that had occurred in her absence in the surrounding countryside, and so the afternoon passed away without giving Jane further opportunity to tell any stories of her time with her grandmother. Whether she would have liked to was a mystery, though certainly Elizabeth was burning with curiosity after the little she had heard, but she contented herself with the knowledge that she would certainly hear all Jane had to tell over the coming evenings, once they had resumed their custom of holding secret conferences in one or the other of the girl’s bedrooms after retiring for the evening.
Elizabeth, out of old habit, reached behind her head into the pillow sham, and, after a moment or two of fussing, drew out a feather, the sort of ordinary goose feather that is found in any good bed, but not quite so fine as so make the very best down. She blew on it, twisted it between her fingers for a moment, and then let go, watching it float into the air over her, rocking lazily as it rose.
She looked at Jane, who was smiling wistfully at this trick, which she had seen Elizabeth perform a thousand times before.
‘What?’
Jane shrugged, diffidently. ‘It is is a wonder to me that your pillows are not completely flat a week after you stuff them. When I was away, I was quite put off balance the first time I managed to put on a freshly laundered shift and not find down stuck somewhere inside it.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘It is a bad habit, I know, but I cannot seem to break it. I suppose it is better than chewing my nails.’ She rolled over. ‘You cannot find it very remarkable anymore, though. Tell me about the north.’
‘Mmmm,’ Jane said, and plucked a loose petal from the slightly-drooping arrangement that sat on the chiffonier. She blew on it, as Elizabeth had done, and let go, letting it spin gently, wafting rose-tinged air about it as if the window had blown open and let in the scent of the summer evening. Elizabeth was impressed. The feathers of a bird that had flown often were easy to set to flight, since one had only to remind them of what they had been when they were alive, but a petal that had never fallen was another matter entirely. Petals, after all, did not fly.
‘How did you do that?’
Jane leaned conspiratorially close. ‘It is the same trick one uses for travelling by cloud pine. You…hmmm. You have to make the thing you’ve plucked recall the wind coming through the leaves and the petals and setting them dancing. It feels a little like brushing your hair until it stands on end, and then running your hand over it.’
‘Did you really learn to fly by cloud pine?’
Jane looked enthused at this. ‘Of course! It is difficult, but not more so than riding a horse — do not look at me like that, Lizzy, it is your own fault if you will not practise — and you have your dæmon to help you, so that makes it easier. I left mine in London with Uncle Gardiner, though. Mama would have been horribly distressed if I had made such a display of myself coming home in that way. He will send it on with my trunks once they are unpacked from the ship. I am a little sorry I do not know when I will be able to travel about so again, but not so sorry as I am glad to be home.’ She sighed.
Elizabeth frowned at this. ‘Do not be so uncertain. Perhaps you have not heard, for I know that it is a matter of great importance that rumours do not spread beyond England, but the government has sent Mr Strange to the peninsula, and there have been all manner of reports in the papers of how the army has been relying upon him in ways quite unheard of before now. The practise of magic may have been a secret in the past, but it is has become almost a fad now. I am sure it is only a matter of time before it will be seen as quite a respectable pursuit for young ladies, just as it is for gentleman. There are lady writers and lady philosophers now, why not lady magicians? To be sure,’ she continued, ‘it might not be respectable for unmarried ladies, but you will surely be able to remedy that now, if you wish it. Think of how Miss Wollstonecraft spoke about how a lady should be accomplished, so that her children might be properly educated. You would simply need to say that since theoretical magic is now part of any young man’s education, you are making yourself useful to your family.’
Jane laughed at this little speech, which had been delivered with all manner of sly winks and oratorical gestures, and, coaxed so into good humour, spent some time showing Elizabeth the petal trick, until both were satisfied, and it was very late indeed when they finally went to bed.