The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“Do you know what I think, Delphinia?” asked Mrs Markham. “I think she does not give tuppence for matrimony.”

“From which I deduce that her situation is easy and her way of life settled,” Miss Botolph answered. “It was certainly so for me after my mama died. There are worse fates than a comfortable competence and a maiden existence.” She snorted. “Husbands can prove more of a sorrow than a blessing.”

An observation that the married ladies chose to ignore.

Argus put down his pen and viewed his latest effort with a slightly cynical eye. Its subject was actually rather silly, he thought, but comfortably off English folk, particularly those who lived in cities, were incredibly sentimental. Not the most vivid, emotive prose could move them to pity the lot of a chimney sweep, but if one substituted an animal for the human being — ah, that was quite a different matter! Many a tear would be shed when this letter appeared in the WestminsterChronicle! Pit ponies, no less. Permanently blind from a life spent underground, their poor shaggy hides furrowed with whip marks …

It amused him to do this sort of thing occasionally, for Argus was not what he seemed to his readers, who in their fantasies pictured him starving in a garret, worn to bones by the sheer force of his revolutionary ideals. Ladies of Miss Mary Bennet’s kind might dream of him as a fellow crusader against England’s ills, but in truth his epistolary zeal was fired by his desire to make life uncomfortable for certain gentlemen of the Lords and Commons. Every Argusine letter caused questions to be raised in both Houses, provoked interminable speeches, obliged Lord This and Mr That to dodge a few rotten eggs on that perilous trip between the portals of Parliament and the cabins of their carriages. In actual fact he knew as well as did the most conservative of Tories that nothing would improve conditions for the poor. No, it was not that which drove him; what did, Argus had decided, was a spirit of mischief.

Closing his library door behind him, he sallied into the spacious hall of his house in Grosvenor Square and held out a hand for his gloves, hat and cane while his butler draped a fur-collared cape about his broad shoulders.

“Tell Stubbs not to wait up,” he said, and ventured out into the freezing March night wearing his true guise; Argus existed only in his study. His walk was very short; one side of the square saw him reach his destination.

“My dear Angus,” said Fitzwilliam Darcy, shaking him warmly by the hand. “Do come into the drawing room. I have a new whisky for you — it takes a Scot to deliver a verdict on a Scotch whisky.”

“Och, I’ll give my verdict happily, Fitz, but your man knows his Highland malts better than I do.” Divested of cloak, cane, hat and gloves, Mr Angus Sinclair, secretly known as Argus, accompanied his host across the vast, echoing foyer of Darcy House. “Going to try again, eh?” he asked.

“Would I succeed if I did try?”

“No. That is the best part about being a Scot. I don’t need your influence, either at Court or in the City, let alone the Houses of Parliament. My wee weekly journal is but a hobby — the bawbees come from Glasgow coal and iron, as you well know. I derive much pleasure from being a thorn in the Tory paw, stout English lion that he is. You should travel north of the Border, Fitz.”

“I can tolerate your weekly journal, Angus. It’s Argus who is the damnable nuisance,” said Fitz, leading his guest into the small drawing room, blazing with crimson and gilt.

No doubt he would have continued in that vein, except that his ravishing wife was coming forward with a brilliant smile; she and Mr Sinclair liked each other. “Angus!”

“Each time I see you, Elizabeth, your beauty amazes me,” he said, kissing her hand.

“Fitz is making a bore of himself again about Argus?”

“Inevitably,” he said, heart sinking a little at her use of “bore”. Too tactless.

“Who is he?”

“In this incarnation, I know not. His letters come in the post. But in his original, mythical incarnation, he was a huge monster with many eyes. Which, I am sure, is why the anonymous fellow chose his pen name. The eyes of Argus see everywhere.”

“You must know who he is,” said Fitz.

“No, I do not.”

“Oh, Fitz, do leave Angus alone!” Elizabeth said jokingly.

“Am I making a bore of myself?” Fitz asked, a slight tinge of acid in his voice.

“Yes, my love, you are.”

“Point taken. Try the whisky, Angus,” said Fitz with a tight smile, holding out a glass.

Oh, dear, Angus thought, swallowing a potion he detested. Elizabeth is going to embark upon yet another of her poke-gentle-fun-at-Fitz essays, and he, hating it, will poker up stiffer than any iron implement ever forged to tame a fire. Why can she not see that her touch isn’t light enough? Especially given its object, thinner-skinned by far than he pretends.

“Do not say you like it, Angus!” she said with a laugh.

“But I do. Very smooth,” Angus lied valiantly.

A reply that mollified Fitz, but did not raise him in his hostess’s esteem; she had been hoping for support.

It was a private dinner; no other guests were expected, so the three of them sat at one end of the small dining table in the small dining room, there to consume a five-course meal to which none of them did justice.

“I publish Argus’s epistles, Fitz,” Angus said as the joints were removed and the syllabubs came in, “because I am so tired of this waste.” His rather crabbed hand swept the air above the table. “It is de riguer to serve me a gargantuan dinner, though I do not need it, and have eaten but a wee bit of it. Nor has either of you made greater inroads. All of us would have been content with a loaf of bread, some butter, some jam, some cheese and a winter apple. Your staff and all their relatives wax fat on your leavings — so, probably, do the ravens in the square gardens.”

Even knowing Fitz’s detestation of excessive loudness, Elizabeth could not help her burst of laughter. “Do you know, Angus, you and my sister Mary would get along together famously? That was exactly the kind of remark sets people’s backs up, but you care as little for our feelings as she would.”

“Whose wife is she?”

“Nobody’s. Mary is unmarried.”

“A spinster enamoured of Argus!” Fitz snapped.

Startled, Elizabeth’s eyes flew to his face. “How do you know that?” she asked. “I certainly do not.”

She had taken care to say it lightly, almost jokingly, but he would not look at her, and his face had gone very impassive. “I know it from Mary, of course.”

“Does she live in London?” Angus asked, shrewd blue eyes taking note of the sudden tension between them.

“No, in Hertford,” said Elizabeth, rising. “I will leave you to your port and cheroots, but do not, I beg you, linger over them. There will be coffee in the drawing room.”

“You’re lucky in your wife, Fitz,” Angus said, accepting a port. “The most beautiful, vital creature.”

Fitz smiled. “Yes, she is. However, there are other ladies equally entrancing. Why not espouse one yourself? What are you, forty? And unmarried. London’s most eligible bachelor, they say.”

“I beg to differ about the ladies. Elizabeth is unique.” Angus puffed at his slender cigar. “Is the spinster sister in her mould? If she is, I might try my luck there. But I doubt it, else she’d not be a spinster.”

“She was called upon to look after their mother.” Fitz grimaced. “Mary Bennet is a silly woman, forever quoting someone else’s noble Christian thoughts. Though at her last prayers years ago, she has found a new god to worship — Argus.” Darcy leaned both elbows on the table and linked his hands together; a habit of his to make other men think him relaxed, unworried. “Which leads me back to that vexed subject. It will not do, Angus, to keep on publishing this fellow’s pathetic crotchets.”

“If they were in truth pathetic, Fitz, you would not be half so perturbed. It’s not London eating at you, is it? London has always been a stew, and always will be a stew. No, you fear some revolution in the North — just how far do your interests go?”

“I don’t dabble in things beneath the notice of a Darcy!”

Angus roared with laughter, unoffended. “Lord, what a snob you are!”

“I would rather say I am a gentleman.”

“Aye, an occupation all of its own.” Angus leaned back in his chair, the hundred candles of an overhead chandelier setting his silver-gilt hair afire. The creases in his lean cheeks deepened when he smiled; they made him look impish. Which was how he felt, more intrigued with Fitzwilliam Darcy tonight than ever he had been. There were undercurrents he had not suspected — was that perhaps because Elizabeth was on a rare visit to the south? Most of his acquaintance with her had taken place at Pemberley during the house parties Fitz enjoyed having; she was, for all her beauty, not fond of the fleshpots of London society. A Court reception had brought her, and he counted himself fortunate that Fitz’s curious fixation upon Argus had produced things like an intimate dinner for three.

“It is no good,” he said, tossing back the last of his port. “Argus will have his forum for debate as long as I own the Westminster Chronicle — and you do not have sufficient money to buy me out. That would take the funds of a Croesus.”

“What a pleasant dinner,” Elizabeth said to her husband after their lone guest had departed. She commenced to climb the left-hand fork of the stairs above a splendid landing halfway up, Fitz by her side, helping her with her train.

“Yes it was. Though frustrating. I cannot seem to get it through Angus’s head that it is Argus and his like will bring us down. Ever since the American colonists started prating about their democratic ideals and the French started cutting off the heads of their betters, the lower classes have been rumbling. Even here in England.”