Pomp and Circumstance: A Pride and Prejudice Continuation

Chapter 25: An Earnest Entreaty

One can only speculate upon the many and fanciful conjectures to which Mary's mind may have leapt at her mother's most unexpected declaration; a great many visions, both pleasant and unpleasant in their vividness, filled her imagination directly. But Mary's character had never been one which was inclined towards allowing the dubious imagination to run unbridled; nor was she inclined to ever allow herself to remain unknowing of that which was perfectly knowable.

Therefore, she did not permit herself any undue time to indulge in supposition - she would not allow herself to bear the cruelty of such anticipations - but extricated herself from her distraught mother's grasp, and, with a grave, immoveable determination at what awaited her, entered the parlour directly.

As soon as she had entered, she was most grateful she had not spent any time dithering in indecision or speculation outside the door; for, aside from being, just as she had suspected, not at all the gentleman she would desperately wish it to be, it was, indeed, a gentleman whose name should have never occurred to her, had even an entire hour elapsed in her conjecturing as to his identity in the hall.

Mr. Edmund Benson stood swiftly upon her entrance, giving her a low, dramatic bow. "Good afternoon, Miss Bennet," he said stiffly. "Indeed, I had feared I would miss you entirely." His tone had lost a great deal of its previous condescension, though some traces of it, which had perhaps been so long entrenched as to be unremovable, were yet retained. He was in some measure distraught; this much was clear; his air had all the colourings of an emotional wretchedness; but there was, at the same time, an inherent superiority to his manner, and such a fineness to his clothes, which had the effect of imbuing his address more with petulant impatience than with urgency, and his appearance more with careful vanity than with heedlessness.

"Mr. Benson," said Mary after a moment of recovering from the shock, with a cursory curtsy in greeting.

Mrs. Bennet, meanwhile, was peering in at them from the threshold of the parlour, having swiftly recovered from her previous distress, now that it was clear Mary would be able to receive the gentleman before he grew tired of awaiting her arrival. "Indeed, Mr. Benson, I will be most glad to join you and my daughter shortly," she called cheerfully, "but I am afraid I must first see to some arrangements with tonight's supper. I shall no be more than a few minutes - a half hour at the most." And she winked so overtly at Mary then that her daughter could not help but blush slightly on her mother's behalf, even with how little she cared of Mr. Benson's opinions of her family.

To remove the need to make any reply to this, Mary took a seat on the couch, and Mr. Benson also lowered into his seat once more. She was relieved at least that he had made no efforts thus far to extend any trite, insincere pleasantries, which he had never felt need to extend to her heretofore.

"Miss Bennet," he began, "I am here to see you on a greatly urgent matter, and I request your confidence in it, in knowing that, by gaining your trust, you are one of the very few people who are currently in a position to sway the matter in my favour. Miss Darcy has, I take it, confided in you that I had some months ago extended to her an offer of my hand?"

That Mr. Benson's visit was in some way concerned with Georgiana's affections could be of little surprise to Mary; it had been the only probable reason she could fix upon for his unannounced visit, and she had, indeed, fixed upon it as such almost as soon as she had recovered from the shock of seeing him there at all. However, the impatient directness with which he had begun to pursue the subject was nevertheless somewhat vexing, even to one as naturally blunt as herself.

"And yet, if, indeed, you are incorrect in this, and she had not told me of it, Mr. Benson," Mary said rather coldly, "I think you would be considered in ill form to speak of it so openly among unintimate company, as I undoubtedly am to you."