Pomp and Circumstance: A Pride and Prejudice Continuation

Chapter 3: A Chance Encounter

The next morning, Mary decided to take a stroll along the grounds after breakfast, bringing along a book from the Pemberley library. She had had half a mind to find a quiet place to sit with it, but once she saw the fair weather, the warm but gentle sun, and the intense hues of green that stretched before her, she gave in to her temptation to take a lengthier walk before retiring to her reading.

The grounds were vast, and she did not remember them well. She headed absently north of the house, following a path which she thought might lead her to the gardens. As she walked, she thought of what she might contemplate, but for each topic which she chose, she found her mind wandering aimlessly.

'Focus,' she thought sharply. 'You are very much not yourself this morning.'

And indeed she was not – perhaps it was the rapture of the grounds and the weather, but she was inclined towards mawkishness. As her thoughts continued to slip from subject to subject, not able to gain purchase on any of them, she felt unexpectedly a sharp and earnest pang of desire, to have someone with whom she could converse – not simply a friendly companion, who might twitter of trivialities and provide only idle amusement – but one who might share her passion of rhetoric and philosophy, who might provide stimulating discourse, and even exude appreciation of her own knowledge and ideas rather than dismissing them as frivolous occupation.

To have such a companion, rather than one who merely humored her on a whim, as did Mr. Bennet, or one who was prone to laugh away her graveness, as did Lizzy, was something for which Mary had never before wished as earnestly as she did now; it was a melancholy, almost absent wish, however, and one which was void of hope for its realization.

So lost in thought was she that she had no sense of the path she walked, nor where it led, nor where she had wandered at that moment; and when she was in such moods of deep contemplation it was in fact very difficult to rouse her from them, or to regain her attention.

It was to be considered an accomplishment, then, that her attention was instantly reclaimed by a loud exclamation on the other side of the hedge past which she walked – and it startled her out of her thoughts, not only by its loudness, but by its most uncouth nature.

"Blast it! D–– this wind!"

She stopped and stared in strong disapprobation at the offending hedge, though she could think of no response to such an interjection which might be suitably severe and censuring. She was distracted from crafting reply by a stray leaf of paper which flew over the hedge, clearly the object of the voice's ire. She could no sooner decide it would be most prudent to apprehend it and return it to its owner, no matter that owner's coarse language, than the wind had ruled on the matter on her behalf, and skittered the paper away and out-of-sight deeper into the gardens.

"Are you taking a stroll, Mary? You shouldn't mind if I join you, should you? I do so like company on my walks, and Lizzy is seeing to some business this morning." Georgiana had just appeared from the small copse which shrouded the gardens from the west, her cheeks pink with youthful exertion, her pale blue dress most becoming and vernal, and only missing the delicate flowers threaded through her golden blonde hair to complete the illusion of Titania emerging from her fairyland.

Overwhelmed at all these sudden accosts to her solitude, Mary found herself nodding mechanically and agreeing that, 'yes, it was certainly much better with company,' though herself quite unused to having a companion who might join her on walks.

However, Georgiana seemed to be quite pleased, and their previous encounters to be generally forgotten; and so Georgiana passed her arm through Mary's, a gesture which in youth was often bestowed so thoughtlessly and generously on fellow acquaintances, but which to Mary was disconcerting and wholly unfamiliar in its intimacy, if not entirely unpleasant.