Part 11.

Further down the river, in the area of the Thames where Kent and Surrey meet, between the ghettos of the poor and the haven of society, the schools of the borough were situated, each with varying degrees of wealth, ability and intelligence.

Charlie Philips attended one of the poorer institutions. Not a ragged school, where he had begun his education, but the one from which a schoolmaster had visited said ragged school, taken him out of, and transferred into his better school. The kind where the only avenue for advancement, was apprenticeship, or becoming a schoolmaster oneself. He was destined for the latter profession, having possessed a little more wit than the rest, a determination to better himself, and a attitude which endorsed respect, whether he truly earned it or not. His cousin's money had helped send him there, and he was glad of it, for the last thing he wanted to do was follow in his father's footsteps. He had seen the journey's end of them, a horrible entanglement in the towrope of boats. He would raise himself above such a dreadful end. He was quite determined about it.

He was nearing the end of his education, and in time, would take his exams, before becoming a schoolmaster. And he wished to thank his cousin, for her willingness to pay for his education, by whatever means he could. He was aware of his Uncle Bennet's situation, the family's now reduced circumstances, and knew that Jane, rather than place a further burden upon her father's meagre resources by moving back home, had chosen to find herself work and livings elsewhere instead.

She had sent him the address of her new situation in reply to his kind inquiry, and now he wished to pay call on her, along with his schoolmaster and mentor, Mr Collins, a man of six and twenty, who had the constant appearance of always seeming troubled about something, as though he had toiled hard all his life to attain the knowledge and position he possessed, and now having reached them, feared to lose both such gifts, thus was always checking to see if he still had firm hold of them.

Carrying the letter in his hand, Charlie guided his schoolmaster through the maze of alleyways, across Westminster Bridge and the Middlesex shore, following the directions written in his cousin's elegant hand until he reached the equally elegant house of his younger cousin, Elizabeth Bennet, otherwise known as the Reynolds's ward.

He stepped inside, followed by Mr Collins, and found himself in a elegant white marbled tiled hall, where an elegant footman awaited to receive their card. Since they had none, he received a verbal communication of introduction instead, whereupon the elegant footman left them in that elegant hall while he went to convey the communication to Charlie's cousins of his and his schoolmaster's presence and request to wait on them. Said request was elegantly accepted a few moments later, as the elegant footman returned to conduct the visitors into a fine and elegant drawing room, much richer than any rooms either pupil or schoolmaster had been accustomed to, and better than what pupil's father had ever managed to provide for him.

"Charlie!" Jane cried, followed by Elizabeth, and the two ladies, looking more elegant and refined than Charlie had ever seen them, even in the days of Mr Bennet's more prosperous youth, rose from their seats to embrace their cousin.

"There, there, Janie, there there, Liz," Charlie replied to their joyful greeting, stepping back and gesturing to the man behind him. "See, here is Mr Collins to see you. How well you look, Jane, and you, Liz."

"Oh, yes, Jane always looks so well. Everyone thinks so, don't they, Jane, m'dear?" Elizabeth replied, making her sister blush from the praise.

"Does Charlie do well, Mr Collins?" Jane asked.

Mr Collins felt awkward in the presence of so much beauty. He was stiff in his style of teaching, stern to his colleagues and pupils alike, but beneath the stern style there ebbed and flowed a deeply passionate nature, which threatened to overwhelm him when he was confronted with beauty such as this. She was like the Greek Goddesses described by ancient philosophers. Her sister was just as beautiful, but a contrast; dark where Jane was blond, striking where Jane was Grecian, a dark enchantress to her sister's angelic qualities. "Yes, he could not do better," he struggled to reply.

Jane still held her cousin close by her, while Elizabeth returned to the elegant furnishings of the elegant sofa. "Well done, Charlie," the former praised. "Well, I hope we'll not take too much time from your studies. It is better for us not to become between him and prospects, don't you think so, Mr Collins?"

And such intelligence too. It was more than he expected. More than he could have hoped for. "Yes, your cousin has to work hard. But once he has established himself, that will be another thing."

"Shall we walk, Janie?" Charlie asked her, anxious to talk without the presence of Elizabeth, whose impertinent manner he had always found disturbing.

"Of course," Jane replied and fetched her cloak.

They made an odd party as they walked into the formal and elegant gardens of the Reynoldses' grand and elegant townhouse; one elegantly attired, refined lady accompanied by a boy barely into manhood, and a man aged by the circumstances of his paltry wealth and hard life, both dressed sombrely, in clothes which when placed beside those of the lady, displayed the sharp divide between the rich and the poor of London's vast society. Mr Collins walked ahead of them, giving them some semblance of privacy amongst the mass of elegant box hedges and elegant flower arrangements, attended to by discreet gardeners, whose close stewardship sometimes required daily grooming upon such splendid grounds.

"When are you going to settle yourself in some Christian place, Janie?" Charlie asked her as they walked. "I'm ashamed to have brought Mr Collins with me. How can you keep company here? Do you not realise how precarious your current situation is?"

Jane was calm in the face of his distaste for her surroundings. "I could hardly return to my father's, Charlie. Forcing him to support two daughters again when he has only just adjusted to supporting one. Mr and Mrs Reynolds wrote to me after Uncle's death, asking me to become my sister's companion here. And Lizzy had missed me so much since our removal to London that I could not refuse. Where else would you have me stay? With one of the persons related to the police notices on our Wall?"

"I want to forget the police notices," Charlie said firmly, annoyed that she was asking him to renege on her wish to recall his time by the waterside as only something out of a dream. "And so should you."

"I don't think that I ever could," Jane replied. "And I was wrong to ask you to forget them aswell. Mr and Mrs Reynolds do not forget their humble beginnings. They help as many people as they can who live in worse situations than they ever did themselves."

"I don't see what it's got to do with you," Charlie remarked.

"Do you not? Don't you think we owe some compensation for the life we led? For the profit that your father, my Uncle, made?"

"Don't talk such nonsense!" Charlie cried. "I've left the river far behind and so will you. I will not have you draw me back, Jane."

"But I don't draw you back, Charlie. If you choose to become a teacher, like Mr Collins, you will be educating the children of the river."

"I mean it, Jane!" Charlie repeated, ignoring the fact that she was correct. "Now let's not fight. I mean to be a good cousin to you."

Mr Collins rejoined them, causing Jane to draw her cousin into a farewell hug. She felt a little glad of the short duration of his visit. She felt as if in their time apart they had lost the connection of blood and kin which had once drawn them together. Where once he would accede to her judgement, now he took his way in everything, and forced her to obey him as well. They had become like strangers to each other.

Unlike his pupil, Mr Collins was all politeness. "But surely, we can go your cousin's way back into the house?" He inquired, offering his arm to her.

But Jane did not want to be with her cousin in his current temperament. "I'll not return to my sister just yet. And you have a long walk ahead of you both. You'll go much faster without me."

She smiled at them both, and disappeared into the elegant wilderness which surrounded the east side of the townhouse. Her cousin's words had disturbed her, both in their ungratefulness, and their harsh opinion of her living. They were nothing to her views, for Jane was not unhappy with her new situation. After her Uncle's death, she could hardly go back to her parents' house, with their distressed circumstances. There were still Charlie's school fees to pay for. She could not ask her father to divide the earnings that were barely enough to feed himself, her mother and her younger sister, and pay the rent, for a further expense.

Elizabeth had offered to fund their cousin out of her own handsome allowance, but Jane could not bear that either. And since they had not seen each other since her removal from Longbourn to their uncle's, a compromise was reached; and she came to live with her at the Reynoldses' nice new house in a nice new neighbourhood. The situation may be precarious, but she was as equal a ward as Elizabeth was, and were not all situations in life precarious, when one took into account the uncertainty of life? Change could come at any time, something which both she and Elizabeth had learned, to their tragic cost.

A series of chimes suddenly disturbed her from her thoughts, and she counted the hour Big Ben bell's marked. Realising the time, she turned and made her way back to the elegant townhouse. She was expecting another visitor today, one who could be counted on being far kinder than her young cousin. Mr Charles Bingley had been very kind, very gentlemanlike since her Uncle's death. He had offered to investigate the matter for her, to see if there was any means to clear their Uncle's name from the rumours of his involvement with the Darcy murder. But not only that, he had been kind to her, and to Elizabeth too, even if she discomposed him, as Elizabeth was frequently wont to do whenever Mr Bingley paid a call.

No, Jane mused as she made her way to the elegant drawing room, she found no cause to follow her cousin's advice and give up her current situation just yet.


Further down the river, in surroundings where the Philipses and their cousin had once lived, another woman was in the same situation which Jane had once been. She stood on the shores of the river, bidding her father- not her Uncle -farewell for the day, as he went out on the river to earn their keep.

Her name was Pleasant Jenkinson.

"Please be careful on the east bank at Blackfriars at tide turn, father." She said.

"What would you know?" Her father remarked curtly. His eyes caught what accompanied his food for the day. "What's this?" He asked, referring to the liquor. "You wanna see me off? Over the side and into the mud?"

Pleasant looked away from him, saddened by his jibe. She caught something out of the corner of her eye, and looked to see a man had paused to observe them. A fine looking man, a man of fashion and society.

Jenkinson treated him with the same contempt with which he treated everybody he could not get money out of. "And what are you looking for?"

"I believe it was you that first sought out a lawyer," the man replied.

"Gaffer's dead now," Jenkinson reminded him.

"But my investigation is not," the man informed them, before walking away.

His route back into the finer parts of the city took him over Vauxhall Bridge, the same bridge which Charlie Philips and Mr Collins chose to use as their return route across the Thames to their school.

Charlie could not fail to recognise him, though it was some months since they first and last made each other's acquaintance, and immediately halted his walk, to watch him pass them and beyond till the end of the bridge.

"Who is that you stare after?" Mr Collins asked his pupil.

His pupil seemed not to hear him. "Yes it is him. It is that Bingley. I don't like him."

"Does he know your cousin, this Bingley?" Mr Collins asked.

"Yes, sir. He's met her," Charlie replied. "He came with a friend of his on business, that is the friend had business and he came with him. The other time was when my father died. He was one of the ones who found his body, and he came with Ms Hill, a neighbour, to break the news to Jane. He came there early morning and was still there when I was finally fetched home, as soon as my cousin was recovered enough to say where I could be found."

"Going to see her then, I dare say," Mr Collins concluded.

"He doesn't know her well enough," Charlie replied, annoyed at the presumption, just as he was annoyed at the man who had not seemed in the least to like or respect him in the Library when they first encountered each other. "I'd like to see him try."

Pupil and schoolmaster continued their walk, the route taking up the rest of the daylight hours so it was dusk by the time they returned to the school gates.

"I suppose your cousin has received little teaching, Philips," Mr Collins remarked. "And yet she hardly seems like an ignorant person."

"Jane was left to look after her own education at her father's house, sir. But he was an landed gentleman, and she was provided with the best materials." Charlie paused, considering the contrast which existed even then, between himself and his cousin's circumstances. "She has as much thought as the best of them, Mr Collins. Too much perhaps. She used to look at the river and have strange fancies."

"I don't like that," Mr Collins remarked, and Charlie realised that he had to change tack, if he wanted to repay all his cousin's kindness to him.

"It's a painful thought, but if I do as well as you hope, I shall be- I won't say disgraced as such -but rather put to the blush by a cousin who really has been very good to me."

"There is another possibility. Some man might come to admire your cousin. It would be a sad drawback for him this inequality of education."

"That's my drift, sir," Charlie replied.

"Yes, well you speak as a relation. For... an admirer... a cousin you see cannot help the connection. Whereas a husband would..." he trailed off, but Charlie could guess the direction of his thoughts.

"Jane could learn quickly. Enough to pass muster. Certainly if given a little education," Charlie informed. He had a lower opinion of his cousin's intelligence than was the true state of affairs, a product of his arrogant character rather than experience.

Nevertheless, he had said enough to gain his schoolmaster's interest. "Yes well I'll think about it, Philips. I'll think about it maturely."


"Mr Charles Bingley, is it?" Elizabeth remarked as the man in question entered the elegant drawing room some minutes later.

Charles pretended to glance around as if he were checking that they were in danger of being overheard. "So I am told."

"You may come in if you're good," Elizabeth declared, her fine eyes twitching in amusement.

"I am not good, but I will come in," Charles replied, encountering Miss Bennet's gaze as he closed the elegant drawing room door. "Forgive the unexpected intrusion but I happened to be nearby."

"Lost, I dare say," Elizabeth remarked, before moving to the piano forte to give her sister and their caller a little privacy.

"I'm afraid I have nothing to report, Miss Bennet, concerning Mr Jenkinson," Charles began to Jane, "but you may always be assured of my best help, and that of my friend Fitzwilliam's in our efforts to clear your Uncle."

Jane nodded at him, touched beyond words by his manner with her and gentle address. Such a contrast to her cousin. She been away from gentle society far too long.

"And how is Mr Fitzwilliam, Mr Bingley?" Elizabeth inquired.

"He is quite well, Miss Bennet, and sends his compliments." Charles turned to Jane. "Have you considered my suggestion, Miss Bennet?"

Jane nodded. "I have thought of it, but I cannot make up my mind to accept it."

"False pride?" He asked her.

She shook her head. "Oh no, Mr Bingley. Well, I hope not."

"What else can it be? I propose to be of use to someone which I never was in this world, nor ever will be again, by offering to be an intermediary between yourself and those personages mentioned on your Uncle's wall, to provide them with the means to furnish their impoverished circumstances with an income, which you would not require, had you not been a self-denying niece and cousin by choosing to live and raise said cousin. This false pride does wrong both to you and your dead Uncle."

"How to our Uncle, Mr Bingley?" Elizabeth asked him.

"By perpetuating his blind obstinacy; by resolving not to set right the wrong he has done yourself and those personages in the notices upon his wall." He paused, recollecting himself, as his passionate response had seemed to have startled her and her sister. "Please don't be distressed. I am afraid I am a little disappointed. It shall not break my heart but I am genuinely disappointed. I'd rather set my heart on doing this little thing for you and Miss Elizabeth, but so be it. I meant well, both honestly and simply."

Jane felt a little guilty she had refused him. "Well, I've never doubted that."

Charles innocently continued to increase that feeling of guilt, carrying on as if what she said had not registered. "And I intend to go back to my old ways immediately, never to put myself of use to anyone or anything, for it will always be a doomed endeavour. And always mistaken for my own selfishness."

"Well! I think I have hesitated long enough, Mr Bingley," Jane said, unable to think of disappointing him a moment longer, "and I hope you won't think the worst of me for having hesitated at all. But for myself and for Elizabeth, I thankfully accept your offer."

Charles smiled, and Jane was immediately pleased, for she wanted him to be happy, for there was such a pleasing handsomeness acquired by his countenance when he smiled. He appeared to be a man who was unaccustomed to happiness, for his expression always seemed to savour it whenever the emotion came his way. A part of her wished to always make him happy.

"Agreed! Dismissed! Well, let's hope we never make so much of so little ever again," he took her proffered hand and raise it to his lips gallantly.

Elizabeth smiled, seeing her sister blush as the gentleman unconsciously lingered in this gesture to her. Jane had been only months in her company, and already it seemed she was to lose her again. But this time she would not begrudge the person who took her away, as she did when they were first made aware of their Uncle Philips' now dreadful circumstances. For he was not her selfish cousin Charlie, but a pleasant and gentlemanlike Charles, to whom her sister could do nothing but good, and who would welcome whatever alterations her sister might bring into his character and his life, unlike their selfish cousin who resented everything everyone has ever tried to do for him. She could not admit such an opinion to Jane of course, who never thought ill of anyone. Her sister was everything that was noble and good in their family, and she deserved a man who would do right by her, who could provide for her, and make her happy.

But ultimately, she deserved a man who loved her as she deserved to be loved, and that Elizabeth was determined to see Mr Bingley provide.