When I was seven years old, I went with my mother to call upon her friend Mrs. Bennet, who had recently given birth to a second daughter. My mother instructed me to play quietly with Jane, the elder Bennet sister, though I did catch a short glimpse of the infant, who had a healthy wail and round red cheeks, and whom her mother had named Elizabeth.
For a very long time, Elizabeth Bennet remained in my mind merely one of the many Bennet girls—there are five in all, the final three born in quick and disappointing succession—all of whom are several years my junior, closer in age to my sister, Maria, than they are to me. My mother and Eliza’s liked to visit one another frequently, and generally we children were brought along, as well, for it was a short, easy walk down the dusty lane between the two houses. My mother thought Lizzy was wild and needed discipline, for she spent most of her childhood looking more like a village waif than a young lady of quality, her hair tangled, her slippers splashed with mud. As we all grew up, I spent more time conversing with our mothers than I did with Elizabeth and her sisters; the difference in our ages seemed like a chasm between us when I was of an age to come out in society and Lizzy was still losing her hair ribbons and tearing holes in her stockings.
But when she was fifteen, we happened upon one another at the circulating library, both in search of the same novel. I happened to arrive half an hour earlier than Elizabeth and had curled on a chair in the little reading room, the first volume open in my lap.
“It was you,” she said, in a tone of laughing annoyance.
Startled out of my absorption, my head jerked up. Eliza had begun by then to dress herself with more care, though still the curls of her hair were a little blown and wild, as though she had run rather than walked into the village. She stood before me, hands on hips, her bonnet dangling down her back by its ribbons. Nodding at the book, she said, “The clerk told me someone had only just borrowed it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You are forgiven.” She smiled. “Only, you must tell me the moment you have finished.”
I WAIT NOW in the stuffy confines of the Hunsford circulating library. In front of me two young ladies are giggling together over something in the book they hold between them. They put me strongly in mind of my younger self and Elizabeth Bennet, for after that first chance meeting, we began to go to the circulating library together, and when we both wanted the same book we would take turns reading it aloud. We also passed novels back and forth between our two houses, urging one another to finish quickly so that we could discuss them. The girls before me seem to be deciding which of them will borrow the book first, and the clerk, who really ought to have finished with them by now, is indulging them so that I suspect he wishes to pay one or the other special attention. I cover a smile and look out the window at the people passing outside.
The door opens behind me; when I turn to look, I am startled to find Mr. Travis in the doorway, and though he looks as surprised as I feel, he is smiling at me. After a moment, he walks closer, stepping carefully into line behind me.
“Well met, Mrs. Collins,” he murmurs.
“Good day, Mr. Travis. What brings you here?”
His eyes slide to one side. “I am in need of a new pair of boots; am I in the wrong place?”
I smile. “You are indeed, sir.”
An exaggerated sigh. “Ah, well. I suppose I shall have to make do with a book instead.”
We are interrupted by the young ladies’ departure and the clerk leaning slightly over his desk to catch my attention.
“And how can I help you, madam?” he says. I walk to the counter and make my selection, all the while feeling Mr. Travis’s presence a little behind me. I nod when I pass him on my way out, and he tips his hat.
I’VE NO OTHER business in the village today, but still I am reluctant to leave just yet. I pause at the milliner’s, leaning close to peer at the window display, pretending—for whose benefit, I don’t know—that I am interested in a new bonnet.
Only a few steps away is the circulating library. My thoughts drift toward the man inside, and I jerk them away, back to the hats in the window before me. My reflection in the glass gazes back at me, blurry and indistinct—a fool of a matron in a green dress, the lace of her cap showing under her plain straw bonnet. She looks as bemused as I feel, as if she, too, finds the idea of dawdling in the street, hoping for a few snatched moments of conversation, as peculiar and pathetic as I do.
But the door to the library is opening, and Mr. Travis is coming through it, a book tucked under his arm and an abstracted expression upon his face. I turn my head so that I am not caught looking, the side of my bonnet hiding my face. I stare fixedly at an arrangement of ostrich plumes, even as I see his approach reflected in the glass.
“Are you reading something improving?”
I turn. “Not at all, though I shouldn’t admit it.” I hold my book out for him to see.
He leans forward and examines it, turning it open to the title page. “A novel?” he says, something teasing about his tone. “You’re right, you should not admit to it.”
“Fordyce’s Sermons was unavailable.”
He laughs outright, head back and throat exposed above his neckcloth, and I am shocked by my own pleasure.
“You do not have your own copy? For shame, Mrs. Collins!”
“No, I confess we do. Mr. Collins has always been an admirer of Mr. Fordyce. Louisa will no doubt learn his sermons off by heart when she is older.”
“Like her mother did before her?”
“Oh. Well. I cannot say I am as well versed as that. My father is not a clergyman; he is more concerned with . . . earthly matters than spiritual.”
“I suppose,” he says slowly, dryly, “this is actually rather . . . apt.” He looks at me again, brows raised. “Patronage, Volume One?”
Dismay rises inside of me, and then our eyes meet and I see his quiet amusement—and suddenly I am laughing, loud and gasping, as helpless against the force of it as a rowboat against a gale. I clap one hand over my mouth and snort through my fingers. The sound is utterly impolite, and from the corner of my eye I see Mr. Travis pressing his own fingers over the grin spreading across his face.
Passersby cast us curious glances, and the sounds of the village around us intrude upon me suddenly—the clop of a horse and cart is loud enough to startle; the laughter of small children racing each other down the other side of the street, and a woman’s voice shouting after them, make me flinch. Doors open and then close again; one young man calls across the road to another. I draw in a shaky breath, struggling to gain control of myself.
At last, I turn back to Mr. Travis to find him watching me. We look at each other and I feel my cheeks drawing up, my mouth stretching, and though I bite my lip I am incapable of stopping the puff of laughter that escapes me. Every line about Mr. Travis’s eyes and mouth stands out as he chuckles and looks briefly away.
“Forgive me,” he says at last. “I should not have said that.”
“And I should not have laughed,” I say.
He pinches his lips together, as if trying to contain his smile, and just looks at me, shaking his head.
I glance at the book he holds. “And you? Shall I assume your choice is not frivolous? In my experience, men rarely appreciate novels as women do.”
He looks down, almost as if surprised to discover that there is a volume in his hands. “It is not for me,” he says at last, without looking up.
“It is something your father requested?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “No. It is—well.” He holds the book out for me to see, his face closed as winter shutters.
“The British Herbal,” I read aloud. “An history of plants and trees, natives of Britain, cultivated for use, or raised for beauty.” I stare at the title for a moment longer, then look up at Mr. Travis, uncomprehending. “My father has this same book,” I say.
He draws it back from me. “Ah—yes.”
I cannot make sense of my conclusions, and I stand dumb, staring at him.
After a moment, he grimaces and says, “I apologize—it was presumptuous. It is only—you spoke about it with so much animation. I suppose that is why the name stayed with me.”
I am full of bafflement and fear and wonder, all at once. “You remembered that?”
Another pause, longer this time, as if he is choosing his words carefully, but at last he merely rubs his neck again. “It stayed with me,” he says once more, and holds the book out to me.
I take it, and it is as if the shutters over his expression have been pulled back to let in the sunlight. His hands hang down, relaxed and open.
“I think I will go back,” he says, indicating the library. “I rather feel I’ve something to prove, now you’ve said you think men do not much care for novels.”
I wonder who these novel-reading men are; except for Elizabeth’s father, Mr. Bennet, I cannot think of any men I know who read for pleasure. “Do they?” I say. “Do you?”
“Mmm. Well. Sometimes.” He huffs a laugh when I look at him sideways. “My father likes to be read to occasionally, of an evening, but his taste runs more toward histories. I rarely have time to read for my own pleasure; I hardly know what I would choose. But certainly there are many men who do read novels. Indeed, a great many novels are written by men; it seems reasonable to assume that other men read them.”
“Other than Mr. Collins and my father, I suppose I have rarely had occasion to discuss such things with the men of my acquaintance,” I say. “My eldest brother is at Oxford; I assume he must read a great deal more than he did while he was at home.”
Something flickers in Mr. Travis’s expression, and all at once the easiness of our exchange is gone. I stand, baffled by the sudden tension.
But when he speaks, it is lightly. “I myself have never left Kent, so perhaps I—and those like me—have more reason to seek the escape of novels than do more . . . worldly men.”
My mouth opens, but the words are caught at the back of my throat, and before I can force them out Mr. Travis bows. “I wish you enjoyment in your reading,” he says. “I have some business to attend to.”
I curtsy and say my good-byes and watch him go; he jams his hat onto his head and dashes out into the street without looking, nearly colliding with another man before nodding quickly in apology and disappearing down the street.
WHEN I RETURN home, I am relieved to find no one immediately about; the door to William’s book room is closed, and I can hear, softly, Martha singing upstairs in the nursery. I shed my bonnet and spencer and go into my parlor, closing the door behind me. Then I stand in the center of the room, watching without really seeing as dust motes dance in the sunlight that slants through the windows.
It is too quiet in here. I look down at the books I still carry and my entire body is at once consumed with agitation. I think of Mr. Travis’s sudden discomfort—oh, I should have said something to put him at ease. My own station in life is not so very high, after all.
And yet—Mr. Travis has never left Kent.
My fingers open and close around the bindings, and then I turn away from the window and sit abruptly in my favorite chair. There is nothing pressing for me to attend to; I can read in peace awhile.
I look for a moment at Dr. Hill’s Herbal, thinking, He thought of me. And then I shake my head, sending implications scattering, and set the book aside, covering it, after a moment’s thought, with my whitework. I open my novel and scan the first line, and then the second. My toes move restlessly within my half boots; my gaze refuses to lie still upon the page but darts, without particular focus, about the room until it lands on the corner of the book poking out from under my embroidery. I drag it back, read another line. Close the book and sit with my lips pressed together.
There is a tentative knock at the parlor door, and I start. The novel slides to the floor as the door opens.
“There you are,” William says, entering the room. “Did you have an enjoyable walk into town?”
I resist the urge to scoop up the novel. “Very nice,” I say.
He wanders about the room looking at our possessions as if seeing them for the first time. With one fingertip, he swipes at the top of a little round table, then raises the finger as if to inspect its cleanliness. I gather from his lack of comment that either Martha or Mrs. Baxter has dusted recently.
“Did you meet anyone of note?”
“No,” I say quickly. With one foot I slide the novel back under my chair. “No one.”
He is moving restlessly from one spot to the next; he picks up the porcelain shepherdess from its place on the mantel, puts it down again, and then does the same with the little painted bowl Elizabeth sent me from London. I watch him and hold in a sigh. He is bored, or putting off writing his sermon, or both.
“I saw Miss de Bourgh riding out; I thought perhaps you might have met her on the road.”
“No,” I say, “I did not have the pleasure of seeing her.”
“A shame.” He looks around and appears to really see me for the first time. He frowns, just a little. “What are you doing in here, my dear?”
I suppose it must seem odd that I am sitting here with nothing to occupy myself. “I was—going to take up some work,” I say. “But I was just resting for a moment.”
He is all sympathy. “Yes, it is so hot—I do not remember the last year it was so hot, so early in the year.”
“Indeed.” I feel a little of the same thrill I experienced when Lady Catherine visited yesterday, but underneath it lies a touch of shame. I have never made a secret of my trips to the circulating library, but William rarely sits still long enough to take notice of what I am reading or working on. But I cannot pretend not to know that, although he has never read a novel himself, he is opposed to them as a general rule—particularly for women, whose natural delicacy, he says, makes them especially vulnerable to the frivolity and dissipation between the covers. I keep a book of sermons in the room as well, in case he ever wishes me to read aloud; his patience rarely extends beyond six lines or so, and thus he has never noticed that the volume never changes.
I imagine the novel beneath my chair is glowing like an ember.
William leaves the parlor at last, as I knew he must; there is little enough to occupy him here. When the sound of his footsteps in the hall has faded, I crouch down in an undignified way to pick the book up off the floor, then rise and take the Herbal from its hiding spot. Opening the front drawer of my worktable, where I keep odd bits of ribbon and lace for which I have not yet found a use, I tuck both books inside.
IT IS A few days after my encounter with Mr. Travis at the library, and I am in the nursery, surrounded by the wreckage of my morning’s work. Martha sits in a chair by the window, squinting in the dim light as she mends a tear in William’s waistcoat. She has said nothing all morning, even as she watched me waste sheet after sheet of paper, rending them in my frustration and tossing them away until the floor was strewn with half-formed sketches. Even Louisa has lost interest in the game of chasing the papers around the room. Rain streams down the windowpanes, and the sky is covered by one vast, dark cloud, which suits my mood perfectly.
The sketches I copy directly from The British Herbal are fair imitations of the originals, but anything I try to create from life seems, incongruously enough, to lack the spark of life entirely. I will never, I fear, be truly proficient as an artist. Louisa’s bloodless image, crinkled and torn, looks up at me from every corner of the room.
“I quite like this one, ma’am.”
I look at Martha; she has finished with the waistcoat and folded it neatly, and now sits with one of my drawings smoothed out across her lap. A hand, far lumpier and less well proportioned than it is in life, but with faithfully drawn square, clipped fingernails and the suggestion of skin that is thickly callused. I start to blush, and wish fervently that I could stop.