The instant Elizabeth entered the assembly rooms — those rooms, she had somehow forgotten — she felt like she was being choked. Her chest constricted and her hands started to shake. The air oppressed her, closing in, tighter and tighter.
It had been here — right here — that the magnitude of the social disaster had become clear to her.
Elizabeth had simply not… our heroine had not been sufficiently acquainted with the fickle nature of mankind. In the naive innocence of innocent youth the chance had not occurred to her that almost every one of her faithless fluttering friends would cut her and all her family if she attended a ball.
Ah, that long gone young girl, full of pride and a kind prejudice that made her think too highly of her neighbors. She'd known that Wickham's stories were held in wide currency round about. She'd known nobody could resist believing them a little.
She had not realized how terrified even those who still liked her would be of being kind to anyone who everyone else was unkind to.
Our heroine had not expected to be left in the corner of the ballroom, alone, until she started to sob, despite her gritted teeth. It was a moment a painting could have been based upon.
She had not expected her mother's anger at her for bringing this upon the family.
She hadn't even done anything with Wickham!
Wisened and older, and with the passage of years to soften the pained pang of those days, our heroine could laugh at the naivete of her younger self. Elizabeth knew that the best pattern of life was simply to accept all men as they were, and to not wish for them to be better.
Of course what she'd done next was stupid embarrassing — it still made the adult Elizabeth wince to think upon it. Young, Miss Bennet had marched to the middle of the room — amongst the dancers — and she shouted, while still sobbing, that she had done nothing with Wickham and she didn't deserve this treatment. In the shocked silence, the dance stopped. Even the band stopped playing.
Elizabeth could see something in how people were now looking at her. Maybe they believed her. And then a gentleman she disliked whose interest she had once discouraged, Mr. Reed, ventured a salacious sally: Of course the trollop would deny the dishonor she'd enjoyed with Mr. Wickham.
Everyone laughed.
Two days later Elizabeth took carriage to London.
Sir William stood at the door to greet everyone as they came in. He looked older, balder and, if Elizabeth dared invent a word (she dared), amicabler.
"Capital! Miss Bennet, capital to see you grace these halls once more. The finest gem of Hertfordshire."
"Yes," Elizabeth whispered looking down. Her stomach clenched. "Mama — I… forgot. Excuse me."
Elizabeth fled immediately outside, and she ran into a discussion of herself.
The kind universe had determined to present Elizabeth with exactly what she needed to recover her good spirits — to hear the haughty, arrogant, and quite handsome gentleman who had caught her eye a moment before declaim in a firm, confident, and quite decided voice that she, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, might be lovely — that was nice to hear — but in no way suitable to be a wife to a man of his substantial sort.
Impossible for any lady with a sense of the ridiculous to not giggle — though her sense of decorum kept her from open laughter. The fine handsome gentleman looked at her — their gazes mixed once more — he had such nice eyes, and he looked decidedly embarrassed.
Elizabeth grinned, nodded impishly to him and his friends, and left them to reenter the ballroom.
A fine evening! Elizabeth was delighted for the first time that she had bothered herself to come — that overhearing would be a fine moment to include in her next book. Unfortunately she could not try to write out the sketch of such a scene immediately because Mama had insisted, correctly, that no matter how hoydenish and strange Elizabeth had become, one simply did not present at a ball bearing pencil and paper.
Unable to argue with such logic, Elizabeth had, for the first time in many years, taken off from home while leaving her dear notebook alone and lonely on the pretty and delicate lady's writing desk with enameled Chinese tracings Papa purchased as a welcome home present.
Once back inside, Elizabeth beamed on Sir William, "I thank you for your kindness — it has been too long since I have graced these walls."
"Capital! Capital!" He happily rubbed his hands together and gestured her further into the room.
She followed Mama around the room, helloing and avoiding acquaintances as Mama preferred. It had been discussed by the honorable committee that ran the honorable assembly halls of Meryton at great and honorable length whether the scandalous Miss Bennet ought be allowed to attend this honorable event.
Elizabeth had spent a bored three hours on the warmest day of the month seated inside under examination by four grumpy matrons past forty, when she would much rather have rambled through glen and beck and back. They inquired upon her morality, her behavior in London, and whether she understood the monstrosity of her former crimes.
It mattered to Mama.
Besides the countryside bored her hideously.
A ball would be just the thing. Elizabeth had not realized how much importance she placed on the continuous availability of good society. She had less hope than a mouse caught by a cat of surviving without extreme stupefaction the remaining months she'd sworn to herself that she would spend in Longbourn before she permitted herself to seek the refuge of the sensible and worthy conversation pooled in London.
In London she felt too busy, that there was no time to write, that the endless whirl of gatherings, coffees, lectures, and discussions of art, science, literature, and her many conversations with fellow scribblers upon that infinitely interesting and entertaining topic — how best to gain money through the scratching of words onto paper — were quite disruptive to any serious work.
Elizabeth missed that endless whirl.
In the three weeks she had been back at Longbourn, Elizabeth had read twelve of the twenty-three novels she had promised herself she would soon read. She had made an excellent start of planning out and arranging the order of events for a new novel and she had already sketched out a few of the principal scenes — Elizabeth did not write her books in a chronological order anymore, as she found it faster and easier to write each scene as she felt the most passion for it, and then to stick the pages into order later.
She had reacquainted herself with nature, taking daily walks that in general exceeded an hour in duration, even when it rained, as it usually did. She had spent so much time in nature now that Elizabeth had begun to wonder, quite seriously, why she had ever longed to return to spending so much time with nature.
Likely the notion that it was essential to the soul, or some such nonsense, was a poetic conceit she'd caught like a now cured flu from perusing the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge at too great length.
The matter was not that she had no opportunity for social interaction here. There were those who were cold and curt with her, and several who Mrs. Bennet said had promised to cut her if she tried to presume upon ancient acquaintance. But enough of the young wives and mothers, and older wives and spinsters of the neighborhood were happy to let bygones be bygones.
Seven years past.
Elizabeth looked respectable. Who knew what really happened during that blizzard, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera — she'd been well liked before, and she was now the only remaining daughter of one of the wealthiest houses in the neighborhood. Besides the end of the war had made men less scarce and the competition amongst women for eligible bachelors less desperate.
At this distance from the disgrace, most in Hertfordshire received her as happily as those in the literary circles in London that Elizabeth frequented. Of course most in those literary circles had never cared in the slightest about the matter.
Elizabeth's dilemma, as though it were one in philosophy, had two horns: First, she had a great deal of irrational resentment and reserve still in reserve towards those who had scorned her when she did nothing wrong. And second, and of chief importance, everyone but Papa bored her.
Boring. Boring. Boring.
She'd been invested in too many years of conversation with clever bookish people who she simply liked to be able to return to Papa's habit of ironically liking for their absurdities those who capricious chance threw in her path. Everyone gossiped endlessly about servant troubles, about their children's teething and illnesses, and wooden rocking horse toys, and about their unkind tight fisted husbands — she mostly talked to the women, having no particular desire to argue shooting and foxes with sporting Tally Ho! squires either.
She did not share their interests, they did not share hers.
It began to dawn on Elizabeth how peculiar an arrangement a city was: It was often said that London was a place where anything under the heavens could be found.
That was of course not a matter that Elizabeth, being a law-abiding maiden possessed primarily by an abnormal excess of normal desires for books and coffee could speak to. Or she had not thought she had any particular or peculiar desires.
A few weeks in Meryton convinced her she shared few interests with the women of Meryton.
But she also shared few interests with almost everyone she saw or passed in London. The difference however was that in London she could find within an easy walk, or if not that, at least an easy ride by hackney cab, the society of those rare people whose minds ran in much the same course as her own.
And that was an amazing thing.
So Elizabeth had responded during her interview by the committee in charge of the assembly rooms in a polite demure manner — that of a chastened and repentant woman, rather than her real wont, which was to sneer at them all, both for believing that she had done some scandalous sinful form of love making with Wilted Wicky, and for caring so much if she had.
She had done nothing, and she now refused to repent of the crimes she had not done.
Thus Elizabeth arrived at another assembly ball, the first in seven years, waiting to see if she would be snubbed and not asked once to dance.
And as Elizabeth waited, the candles burned bright on the chandeliers. The room was too warm. The dancers glinted off the mirrors on the inner wall. The band stood on their platform, squeaking out dancing reels that were long out of fashion in London, the bows of the violins up and down in rhythmic tune.
The dance had already started a half hour before they had arrived.
Big bowls of punch. Rows of glasses filled with wine waiting to be grabbed. Tables loaded with hors d'oeuvres, caviar, deviled eggs, cold meats, tiny puddings, a variety of tarts.
That feeling that had come over Elizabeth when she first entered the ballroom attacked our heroine's throat again. Her chest tightened. Everything became smaller and closed off once more. They all hated her. They all looked at her, from the corners of their eyes. If they did not look at her, deep in conversation, that conversation must be about her.
She felt pale and sweaty.
Her mother's voice: "Lord! Oh, yes! Oh, yes! We will happily be introduced."
The gentleman who was the new owner of Netherfield stood five feet away, next to Sir William. He had a sunny golden countenance that matched his light reddish brown hair that almost seemed to form a halo around him. This gentleman wore a black ribbon around his lower arm in honor of his deceased wife, but there was nothing of mourning in the admiring smile he showed Elizabeth that displayed his pearly and well maintained teeth.
Irrationally, Elizabeth felt a pang to see that his friend, Mr. Darcy, the tall man who had insisted she would never be suitable for him, had not come up to beg his own introduction.
Rather ridiculous.
Sir William made introductions, and Elizabeth bobbed her curtsey. "Pleased, entirely pleased to meet you, Mr. Bingley."
The tight feeling in her chest loosened, but it still remained there, and in her stomach, and in her throat, like William Blake's horrible tiger hidden in the grasses, waiting to leap.
"It cannot, upon my honor, it cannot please you more to meet me than it pleases me to make your acquaintance," Mr. Bingley replied smilingly.
"Upon your honor! Then it must be that you are more pleased than I," she shrugged, "but I am yet pleased."
Bingley laughed. "You mark me to be easily and excessively pleased — I confess I am."
"Lizzy!" Mrs. Bennet said pleadingly. "Don't run on as you usually do." She then added in a whisper which Elizabeth knew Mr. Bingley could easily hear, "He's rich."
Ouch.
This was the first time the question had arisen in relation to Mama since she had returned to Longbourn: Why had she come back?
Mr. Bingley kept grinning, and there was a twinkle in his eye, as if he found the situation entirely amusing, and not at all mortifying, but he understood that despite his good humor she would of necessity find it mortifying. "Miss Bennet," he said, "might I have the pleasure of the next set with you?"
"You certainly might, Mr. Bingley."
Mrs. Bennet sighed with relief, as if she had half expected Elizabeth out of some odd fancy to refuse a rich and eligible, even if he did already have two children, gentleman's request to a dance. It was not in fact unreasonable of Mrs. Bennet to suspect that. While never someone with a reputed income of four or five thousand a year, Elizabeth had before refused to dance with gentlemen stuffed enough with cash to be like to explode from so much weight of the ready.
The two remained for several more minutes in almost flirting conversation, made half awkward by the presence of Mrs. Bennet, who watched Elizabeth like a bird watching a snake that had come near its nest, to ensure she did not say anything shocking.
Elizabeth rather doubted that Mr. Bingley had yet heard of her disgrace — though he might have.
But she did not care overmuch. It was not her duty to inform the gentlemen around her of the lies told about her. And she was not so interested in him that she had wished to play some game of telling her own version of matters first to increase the chances that Mr. Bingley would yet think well of her after he had heard the version others would inevitably peddle to him.
Once the current set of the dance finished, Elizabeth and Mr. Bingley joined the long line of dancers waiting for the music to start up once again. In Meryton the line dances that had become almost passé in London were still the center of the ball. These dances had been the joy of Elizabeth's girlhood.
She of course was still, happily, young.
Happier, she thought than when she was a girl, for now she was sensibly happy, instead of simply filled with the delight of youth for everything that was new.
"I note you were quite speedy in asking for an introduction." Elizabeth smiled warmly at Bingley while they waited for the music to start. "I must confess I am flattered to be raised above my neighbors as the first choice of our estimable new neighbor. To quote what my mother said upon the matter of your essential character: He's rich."
Bingley laughed merrily, proving to Elizabeth that he was a good humored man. "Deuced glad you are not so embarrassed by your mother that you feel a need to slink into a corner and hide for an hour — I swear I would be." Then he blushed and coughed. "I mean your mother is a jolly fine natured woman. From what I've seen of her, I think she has an exemplary character."
Elizabeth laughed in turn as the dance started up. "You mean she is embarrassing, but not to you, since she is not your mother."
"Or… it is refreshing. I have been quite used to those in society who whisper such things behind their hands, rather than in the open where I might hear them — enough of that: I was informed by my sister that your dress is quite out of the mode. Did you have no consideration for my credit with her, for you must have known that a single look at you would require me to ask you to dance."
Elizabeth raised her eyebrow skeptically.
Bingley grinned. "Ah, it seems I have lost the practice of exaggerated flattery. You see, this is not only the first dance of the night, but the first dance for me since my dear wife died. So forgive me."
"Oh, for certainty… I am touched you have chosen me for such a momentous occasion."
"Not so momentous."
"You nearly carried it off — you ought know that a gentleman should never suggest a lady appears out of the mode."
"Ah! My mistake. I knew I would make one!"
"So little confidence in yourself?"
"I fear so." Bingley grinned disarmingly. "I have improved of late, but the deuce of it is, I never had the highest opinion of my own judgement."
"I fear we shall not get on well, for I do have the highest opinion of mine own."
"Not at all." Bingley laughed. "Not at all. My friend Darcy has the highest opinion of his own judgement, and he is dear to me. I can happily admire such overly confident persons as yourself."
"Oh, you can admire me."
"Certainly — is that not the place of a gentleman, to admire such women as he has opportunity to dance with?" Then upon saying that Mr. Bingley suddenly and rather unexpectedly frowned.
In response to this expression Elizabeth said nothing for the next several turns through the dance. At last Mr. Bingley sighed and said, "I am not yet fit for company — I confess: I miss my wife, and something you said reminded me of her. She was diffident, and quite unsure of her judgement, like me, but always kind and concerned for those around her."
"My sister was like that, but she was too influenceable — I do not approve of too much easiness of character—" Elizabeth then frowned. "I must apologize, I do not mean to… insult either you or…"
"Or my late dearly departed? No — that is what reminded me of her. We made a joke of pushing women towards Mr. Darcy, and after what you said, we would have talked him up to you, and encouraged him to dance with you. You are much more to his taste than mine."
Elizabeth laughed, trying to lighten the mood. "My goodness: the greatest revenge you might have inflicted upon me — to declare me not to your taste."
"Oh no, do not make me such a monster: 'Twas not what I said."
"'Twas, certainly 'twas."
Bingley smiled easily back to her. "I did ask you to dance the first with me."
"Ah, but that was before I had spoken a word to you. Alas, my mother's fear that I shall drive off every eligible gentleman merely by speaking proved true."
"I might still introduce you to Mr. Darcy. He is even more eligible."
"Alas, I have been given to understand that I am not suitable for a wife to a man such as him."
Bingley blushed, laughed and shook his head as he twirled Elizabeth around in the dance. "You did hear that! Do not take him to heart, for he—"
"I assure you that I do not. He does not know me, and I am quite sure I would not be a suitable wife for him."
"I am hardly so certain." Bingley shook his head. "You see, Mr. Darcy insists he hunts for a wife…"
"But?" Elizabeth could not help but smile, and at the same time be very curious to hear about Mr. Darcy's romantic inclinations. Simply being in this room again made her as silly and romantic as a twenty year old.
"My friend has a list. A detailed and well thought out list."
"A list?"
"Yes, of every attribute that a woman must have to be worthy of — do not laugh."
"I fear I cannot help it. But a most rational man. One sensible and certain of what he wants. I ought applaud and admire him."
"You might, until you learn how many particulars there are to his list. This is why I said Mr. Darcy insists he looks for a wife."
Elizabeth shook her head. "Poor man, to have his honesty questioned by his dearest friends — from how you speak I perceive you are dear friends."
"Since university."
During the remainder of her dance with Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth somehow found them talking about Mr. Darcy. Bingley appeared inclined to speak about his friend, and Elizabeth certainly had the inclination to hear about that handsome and strange man.
Following the dance with Mr. Bingley, the next part of her evening went by well. Mrs. Bennet immediately approached Elizabeth to inquire about all the particulars of their dance — which led to her despairing groans when Elizabeth insisted that they were not at all to each other's taste.
Then Mr. Lucas, Charlotte's brother, asked her to dance, and another gentleman who had been a friend of hers after, and then for the fifth set Mr. Kelton who had rented from Mr. Long, though Elizabeth noted that Mrs. Bennet was not satisfied, as all of those persons were entirely ineligible, being married.
During the course of the night she could not help but keep her eye on Mr. Darcy. And thus she saw that he often glanced in her direction, and then he would, despite her encouraging smile that she could not help but offer him, look away.
She thought him from his behavior rather shy — he tended not to speak with any who were not of his own party, and he was quite stiff when he did so. But perhaps he was simply haughty and arrogant.
The truth was, Elizabeth became convinced over the course of watching him, as he accidentally managed to offend the bulk of the room's inhabitants, that he was both abominably arrogant and quite shy. It was possible for a man to be both. He possessed a definite sensibility towards her that he did not want to admit to either of them.
That was quite flattering.
Mr. Darcy was everything a woman might fancy: tall, with exceptionally fine looks and a noble mien, the lean physique of regular rider, and in the one dance he partook with his host's sister, he displayed a perfect command of the rhythm. To all those perfections he added great wealth and an ancient name, both of which a handsome gentleman ought to have if he could at all manage it.
However, Elizabeth's contemplation of Mr. Darcy studiously not contemplating her through the means of his contemplating a portrait of the late king, was interrupted when for the second time that night a man without a wife asked her to dance.
It was Mr. Reed, the man who had made the sally about her many years before when she tried, in this room, to convince her friends that she was recalled this villain's sneer, his mocking face, and his ugly appearance, with a too large Adam's apple, and the way his head jutted forward unpleasantly.
He looked rather better today, at thirty, than he had then at twenty and three. It was unfair that men tended to ripen like fine wines, only turning to vinegar when they were quite old, while women were like flowers who blossomed into a rosy bloom, when they were excessively young and stupid, and then spent the rest of their lives faded and fading.
She'd written that as a line attributed to one of her heroines in her last book.
"Damned long time since I've seen you," Mr. Reed said when he came up to her with a mocking sneer on his face, mixed with desire. "By God! A damned long time. You still look as fetching as ever." He leered at her. "Miss Elizabeth, would you dance with me for the next, as you do not have a partner yet."
Elizabeth ground her teeth and looked aside, not answering him. "Miss Elizabeth, a dance."
She wanted to cut him. Like she had been cut.
"Miss Elizabeth, do speak to me — you must recall our old friendship."
She yet ventured not reply.
Our heroine could see his face reddening, and becoming as ugly as she remembered it. Though she told herself, firmly, that nothing he could say mattered to her in the slightest, somehow she felt queer and scared.
"Miss Bennet. I am a respectable man, unlike some here, I'll not permit you to treat me in such a manner — you can hear me. You shall dance with me now."
"No. By no means, never. I remember — it is not all bygones for me. I would beg you, never, never, never speak to me. Never."
There was an ugly snarl on Mr. Reed's face. Elizabeth walked away from him.
She would not dance with such a man. Everything felt a little unreal. Was Hertfordshire a real place, or was she still happy in her tiny room in London and dreaming this place?
It seemed again as though the walls closed in upon her, making the room smaller, and smaller, and yet tinier. The roof would collapse on her and bury everything and everyone. The candlelight blared brightly, painfully, boring through her eyeballs into the putty brain behind.
Her throat clenched. She could no longer breathe quite right. She felt as though she were suffocating. Her chest was tight. Her hands distant and far away, far below. Unconnected to her, as though they belonged to another.
What was happening to her?
Elizabeth needed to escape. Be elsewhere. Somewhere. A place where no one stared at her.
Someone laughed, high pitched and screechy.
Almost running Elizabeth fled to a balcony and stepped into the cold night air. She leaned with her elbows on the cold iron railing. She gasped. Her feet felt odd, as though they did not belong to her body. That crushing sensation stayed in her throat, as though she might be about to die.
Was she?
It would be ironic if she were killed by attending a ball.
Elizabeth gripped the railing. She waited for the painful sensation's passage.
She had felt such before, a few times. When Jane abandoned her, and after she had first ventured into company in London under the aegis of her aunt and uncle. But never so severe as she did now, back at the sight of her humiliation.
She forced herself to smile as her stomach clenched. It really was all quite ridiculous, and she would laugh at herself in another half hour.