Uncommonly Intelligent Chapter 21: Encounter in Meryton, a pride and prejudice fanfic

Author's Note:

Chapter Names: It's really fun to read all the suggestions for chapter names, but very hard to pick one, because they are all good, and usually all unique. But Chapter 20 was an exception, with "A Labour of Love" getting a dozen votes by review and PM. So that's what it will be, British spelling and all. Chapter 18 didn't have quite the unanimity, but there was consensus that "interest" should be in the title, so I went with dksais54's "A Matter of Interest." Chapter 19 was the hardest of all - several different suggestions, and they were all excellent, but no consensus. I finally went with one I got in a PM from a fellow author that picked up on Lizzy's describing the sudden influx of suitors as a deluge - "It's Raining Men." Thank you to everybody who contributed; I enjoyed reading them all, and I will continue to solicit suggestions, although not for this chapter, because…

This Chapter: The main part of this chapter is making its third appearance. It first appeared as a one-shot about 18 months ago when I was sticking a toe into the waters of fan fiction, to see whether all the reviews would tell me I should find a different hobby. Happily, they did not, so I started working on this story in earnest, intending to use Encounter in Meryton as one of its chapters. I took it down as a stand-alone and used it as a temporary chapter when RL prevented me from posting for several months, then took it down again when I resumed. Now my story has finally caught up with it, so it is being posted again in its proper place in the timeline, slightly modified and expanded but essentially the same.

Last Chapter: I sincerely thank the reviewers who took me at my word and pointed out perceived errors, and I apologize that my glacial pace of writing caused a misunderstanding. As faithful reader Lauramari pointed out, Lizzy's use of "incontinent" to describe Lady Catherine was deliberate, making fun of the letter Mr. Collins wrote in Chapter 15. It's understandable that you wouldn't remember every detail of Collins' letter, since that chapter was published a couple of months ago. If this were a normal book, and you had read the letter only an hour or so before reading Lizzy's remark, you hopefully would have found it funny, instead of puzzling.

Sadly, this may happen again, because the only reason I was able to post 21,000 words earlier this month was that I had Spring Break off the previous week, and spent almost all of it working on the story. I won't have another break like that until late June, so at best I will only be able to post a chapter or two a month after this one. I'm very sorry; I simply don't have the skills to write any faster. I write like I do home repairs: after I get started, I realize I'm missing some tools or knowledge, then after I am better equipped, I make a first attempt, and it really stinks, so I start over again with no more skill but at least a better idea of what I want to do, and after many iterations, I eventually end up with something that won't bring shame to my ancestors and force me to commit sudoku, but it took me at least ten times as long as someone really competent would take to do it. I'll never understand how the pros on this site can have an entire novel up and down and published on Amazon in less time than I can write a chapter or two.

Chapter 21: Encounter In Meryton

Meryton, Hertfordshire, October 18, 1811

As the coach topped a hill, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam leaned out of the window and espied a small village about a mile down the road. "I believe that we will be in Meryton in a few minutes," he said to his companions.

He shared the coach with his young cousin, Georgiana Darcy; her companion, Mrs. Annesley; and her personal maid, Susan. Georgiana's brother had recently written a letter inviting her to join him at Netherfield. Richard, who shared the guardianship of Georgiana with Darcy, was escorting her. They had been delayed for a fortnight while Richard secured extended leave from his post at army headquarters in London, where he was temporarily stationed while recovering from a wound received earlier that year in Spain at the Battle of Barrosa.

As they drew nearer to the village, the road began to be lined with dogwood trees, made beautiful this time of year with their bright red foliage. Georgiana remarked, "Oh, what lovely trees! What kind are they, I wonder?"

Richard grinned mischievously and answered, "Those are dogwood trees. You can tell by their bark." He waited a beat, then guffawed. "Haw, get it? You can tell dogwood trees by their bark!"

Georgiana and Mrs. Annesley looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Richard was a dear man, but his propensity to tell jokes that only he laughed at could be trying.

As they entered the town, Georgiana asked, "Will we be stopping here?"

"No, poppet," the colonel answered. "It should be less than 30 minutes from here to Netherfield."

"Oh!" Georgiana said, with rather more dismay than Richard felt warranted.

Mrs. Annesley noticed Georgiana twisting the ribbon of her dress in agitation, and addressed Richard. "Colonel, if you please, may we make a brief stop at an inn? I am afraid I drank rather too much tea before we left," she said as she flicked her eyes toward Georgiana.

Light dawned on Richard, and he said, "Perhaps an ale would not go amiss, and it will allow me to verify the direction."

Georgiana immediately stopped fidgeting.

Richard rapped on the carriage roof, leaned out of the window, and shouted, "Find a quality inn where we can get ale and directions." In his letter, Darcy had told Richard that Netherfield was less than five miles from Meryton and had given directions, but since Darcy was a stranger to the area himself, Richard saw no harm in asking a local. A seasoned campaigner in the Napoleonic Wars, he knew the value of multiple sources of intelligence.

The coachman pulled into the yard of the Meryton Inn, which looked respectable enough. Richard exited the carriage gingerly, favoring the leg that seemed to be a magnet for lead, then helped his charges out, and said, "Georgie, you and the ladies can refresh yourselves while I get directions. Please try not to take too long, because we will be at Netherfield very shortly, and you will be able to take your ease there."

Richard escorted the ladies inside and waited until they were directed to a private room by the innkeeper, who could recognize quality when he saw it. After quickly verifying Darcy's directions, he gazed idly out the window as he sipped an ale and waited for his companions. The village vaguely reminded him of Lambton, near Darcy's home in Derbyshire. The street was clean and the shops were neat, but then his eyes fell on a man sitting by a shop holding a begging bowl. His initial reaction was one of distaste, for the man looked to be young and sturdily built, and there were laws against begging by those able to work. But as the man shifted position, Richard saw that he had only one arm, and his disapproval was transformed into sympathy. As he looked more closely, he was astonished to realize that he knew the man. He was, or had been, Sergeant Cummings, who had served with Richard on the continent and fought bravely, and who he had thought had been killed there some two years earlier.

The man was nearly sideways to him and partly in shadow, so although Richard could not see it, he knew that besides missing an arm, Cummings had suffered other grievous wounds from the shrapnel shell that had exploded near him, and that most likely his trousers concealed a wooden leg. Back then, Richard had thought he must have perished. His last sight of Cummings before today had been a mangled, seemingly lifeless body in a pool of blood. The tide of battle had carried Richard away from that spot, only to be wounded himself by another shell scarcely ten minutes later. Fortunately, Richard's own wounds, while serious enough to have him relieved of his command and sent back to England, had almost completely healed over the following year. He had returned to the Peninsula only to be wounded again by a musket ball to the same leg. Somebody up there is trying to tell me something, he mused. Perhaps he should listen to every relative and close friend he had, and sell his commission.

His first instinct was to rush out and greet the man, but he couldn't leave his ladies alone in a strange inn in a strange town, even for a few minutes. He settled for watching the street from the window while he tapped his foot impatiently.

He noticed that many passers-by gave the sergeant a wide berth, and avoided looking at him. Some even crossed the street to avoid walking past him. But then a pretty young lady came out of the bookshop and walked directly toward the sergeant. She not only looked at the man, but she also smiled brightly at him, and the smile transformed her face from merely pretty to enchanting, as she stopped to talk with him for a minute. She dropped some coins into his bowl before she left.

Well, at least there is one decent person in this town, Richard thought. As a soldier himself, he hated the hypocrisy of the people who cheered the troops as they went off to war, but wanted nothing to do with them when they returned wounded or maimed. His musings were interrupted when Georgiana and her companions joined him.

"We are ready, Richard," she said. "What are you watching so intently?"

"I see an old comrade of mine," Richard replied as he pointed him out. "A brave man, and a fine soldier, who has fallen on hard times. Let me get you into the carriage, and then if you do not mind, I should like to speak to him before we set off."

"Of course, Richard," and they were quickly returned to the carriage. Richard said, "I shall only be a moment," and walked over to the sergeant, doing his best not to limp, for he did not doubt that idiots who fancied themselves wits often mocked the man. As he got closer, he saw that the side of Cumming's face that he had not been able to see from the inn was badly disfigured from scars and scar tissue. Richard recalled the revulsion shown by some of the people he had seen passing by the sergeant, and for the thousandth time, he mentally consigned Bonaparte to the deepest chasm of hell. Nevertheless, he made a conscious effort to settle his face into a pleasant mien as he approached.

"Cummings, is it you?" Richard asked.

The man looked up, slightly startled, and then recognition came into his good eye. "Ah, bless me if it ain't Major Fitz! Oh, pardon, sir, I see you're a colonel now. Good day to you, sir."

Fitzwilliam's smile was broad and genuine. "Well, it is a small world! I am astonished to see you here, Cummings. In fact, I am astonished to see you at all! I was quite sure you had been killed."

"Near enough, sir, near enough," the sergeant chuckled. "They tell me that I was in hospital for two months, but I only remember the last two weeks of it. And they seem to have misplaced a few bits," he said as he glanced ruefully at his empty sleeve.

"It is a crime that brave men like you are not given a proper living. I was watching while I waited for my cousin at the inn, and saw only one person contribute anything." He looked at the bowl, and saw just two pennies in it. Bitterly, he continued, "I thought she must be a decent person, but now I see she gave you only tuppence."

"Ah, no sir, that's just for show, like."

"What!? Do you mean she thought that giving you tuppence would impress the townspeople with her generosity? It smacks of miserliness, if you ask me."

"No sir, it's our scheme, like. See, if my bowl is empty, like it was before she come along, people get the notion that I have something catching, and they keep their distance. But if I had ten shillings in my bowl, then people would think I don't need no more, specially as how many of them are none too flush their own selfs. I told Miss Lizzy that tuppence is just about the right amount to prime the pump, like. So she gives it for other people to know I'm no danger, but that I could use some help, if you see, sir."

Fitzwilliam was puzzled. "But surely she could afford more? She was dressed like a gentlewoman."

"Oh, make no mistake sir, Miss Lizzy is every inch a lady, and very generous. She always asks me what the family needs, and brings it over to the cottage quick as you like. Today I told her we could use more blankets before it gets too cold, and she said she'll bring some over tomorrow. And unless I miss my guess, she'll have some sweets for the children, and some fabric for my ma, and other helpful things."

Fitzwilliam, previously confused at this young lady's miserliness, was now confused at her generosity. "But why would she do all that? Is she a relation?"

Cummings gave a short bark of laughter. "Not likely, sir. My parents are tenants of Netherfield."

"Netherfield? But that is my destination! I was told that it was vacant until my cousin's friend leased it last month. How could she be living there?"

"No, sir, see Mr. Bennet - that's Miss Lizzy's father - he owns Longbourn, what's next to Netherfield. But as you say, Netherfield was closed these two years, so the Bennet girls started visiting Netherfield's tenants as well as Longbourn's. I'll allow that Netherfield's steward is a fair man, but he can't afford to be giving us such." He scratched his chin. "Miss Lizzy is kind to everyone, and no mistake, but I like to think she takes special care of us because she minds the days when we were tots, and played together." Cummings gave a small smile, as if to himself. "Her ma frowned on it, course, but Miss Lizzy had no brothers, so she made up for it by playing with some of the tenant boys. She could climb a tree quick as any of us, and beat most of the boys in a race, too, 'cept the older ones. And smart as a whip - smarter than any of us, older or not." He grew wistful. "I was quite in love with her. Course, I never let on."

Fitzwilliam looked at him closely. "It sounds as if you still are."

"Well, come to that, sir, I've never known a finer lady, and that's God's truth." Cummings gazed at something only he could see, then he shook his head. "Not for the likes of me, course, but you can't hang a man for his dreams, now can you, sir?"

"Indeed not, so long as they remain within your skull," Fitzwilliam smiled at the sergeant. "See here, I must be going, but I will see you again, as I plan to be in the area for a while. In the meantime, please take this, but do not put it in your bowl; it would spoil your scheme," Richard said with a wink as he pressed a guinea into the man's palm.

"Ah, bless you, sir, and good fortune to you."

A/N: For Math Geeks Only

At the end of Chapter 16, in an author's note about the inventor of chess, I said, "Don't get me started on the number of permutations in a deck of cards." Several people found these instructions unclear, and promptly PM'd me asking about the number of permutations in a deck of cards, so I decided to write another "Math Geeks Only" note. However, when I was looking something up for it, I stumbled across a much better essay than the one I was going to write, so I'll just point you to that. Simply google "52 Factorial czep" without the quotes, and look at the first entry.

The only problem with that page is that he seems to assume that you know what "factorial" means. It's a very simple concept, but not if it isn't explained, so here is the explanation: The factorial of a positive integer is simply that number multiplied by every lower positive integer. So two factorial, which is written 2!, is 2x1, which equals 2. Five factorial would be 5! = 5x4x3x2x1 = 120. That's all there is to it. It's useful because if you want to know how many different ways you can arrange a set of different things, like five cards, it goes like this:

You have five choices for the first card. After you pick the first card, you have four choices for the second card. So you have 5x4 choices for the first two cards. You will have 5x4x3 choices for the first three cards, 5x4x3x2 choices for the first four, and 5x4x3x2x1 for the first five. Note that the number of choices does not change when placing the fifth card, because you really had no choice - it was the only one left.

So the answer is 5!. If you were arranging ten cards, the answer would be 10!. And if you were arranging an entire deck of 52 cards, you could put it into 52! different arrangements, and you can now read the web page I pointed to above to see how unimaginably huge that number is. Hint: the number of grains on the chessboard in Chapter 16 is essentially zero compared to 52!.

Thanks to everyone who faves, follows, or reviews, especially with constructive criticism.