The Keeper- Mary Bennet's Extraordinary Journey Read online

  The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey

  By

  Don Jacobson

  A Pride and Prejudice Variation

  © 2016, 2017 by Donald P. Jacobson. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced by any means electronic or mechanical without the expressed written consent of the holder of this copyright with the exception of brief excerpts for review purposes. Published in the United States of America.

  Cover artwork: Manuela González Velázquez tocando el piano (1820) by Zacarías González Velázquez (1763-1834). The author died in 1834, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.

  Cover designed by Janet Taylor, J.T. Originals.

  All characters, real or imaginary, are treated as fiction and may have been altered for literary purposes. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. All errors are the author’s own. He humbly apologizes in advance for any inconvenience or discomfort these may cause.

  Portions of this work have previously been published as “The Bennet Wardrobe: Origins” and “Miss Bennet’s First Christmas.” © 2015 by Donald P. Jacobson..

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Bennet Genealogy

  Book One: From Ludgate to Longbourn

  Excerpts from a Study of Magical Transport

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Book Two: Becoming Miss Bennet

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Book Three: Leaving Longbourn, The Ravel Portfolio

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Book Four: From Waterloo to Peterloo

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Book Five: An Epilogue of Sorts, London

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Sample of The Exile: Kitty Bennet in the Belle Époque

  Author’s Note for the Series and Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  End Notes

  Dedication

  “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

  From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  All writing comes from a wealth of inspirations—places, events, but most of all, persons.

  My wonderful daughter, Anna Jaros, a novelist in her own right, inspired me to drop 40 years of fear and sit down to write beyond my comfort zone. Her periodic invites for reading and coffee gave me the feedback I needed when my own voice had been echoing in my head far too long. Her beta-read of the draft was very revealing. The final work presented here is due to her appreciation for the craft.

  However, I dedicate this work to my patient and long-suffering wife, Pam, who has somehow survived late-night sessions where JAFF invaded our bed as “only one more chapter” was the refrain to her “I have to get some sleep!” Her tolerance of me trying to explain Austenesque arcana has exceeded the bounds of our wedding vows. You have made me a better person. I will love you always (in both the Here/Now and the Where/When).

  The Bennets of Longbourn

  Dramatis Personae

  Those of Longbourn Estate, Meryton

  Mr. Christopher Bennet, First Bennet of Longbourn

  Mr. Grinling Gibbons of Ludgate, the Creator of the Wardrobe

  Mr. Richard Bennet, Master of Longbourn, C. Bennet’s grandson

  Mrs. Charlotte Bennet, Mistress of Longbourn, R. Bennet’s wife

  Mr. Samuel Bennet, Master of Longbourn

  Mr. Silas Hill, Butler of Longbourn

  Mrs. Sally Hill, Mrs. Martha Bennet’s Lady’s Maid

  Mr. Edward Bennet, son of Mr. Samuel and Martha (Lucas) Bennet

  Miss Lizzie Johnson (later Bennet), daughter of the Rector of

  Longbourn

  Mr. Thomas Bennet, younger son of Mr. Samuel and Elizabeth

  (Johnson) Bennet

  Mr. George Hill, Butler of Longbourn under Mr. Thomas Bennet

  Mrs. Alma Hill, Housekeeper of Longbourn under Mrs. Frances

  Bennet

  Mrs. Jane Bingley, eldest daughter of Thomas and Frances Bennet

  Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy, second daughter of Thomas and Frances

  Bennet

  Miss Mary Bennet, third daughter of Thomas and Frances Bennet

  An Unidentified Lady of Distinguished Bearing

  Mrs. Lydia Wickham, fifth daughter of Thomas and Frances Bennet

  Meryton Friends and Family

  Miss Georgiana Darcy, later world-renowned pianist, first performer

  of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue

  Miss Maria Lucas, a friend of the youngest Bennet daughters

  Mme Claudia Rochet, proprietress of Rochet’s Maison au Chocolat

  Naval Lieutenant Guillaume (Will) Rochet of HMS Surprise

  Monsieur Rochet, proprietor of Rochet’s Maison au Chocolat

  Higgins, a bosun’s mate of HMS Surprise, servant to Lt. Rochet

  Sir William Lucas, a knight and father of Miss Maria Lucas

  Those of Longbourn and London

  Mr. William Collins II, defrocked priest, heir to Longbourn Estate

  Mrs. Charlotte (Lucas) Collins, wife of William Collins II

  Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Master of Pemberley

  Mr. Wilson, Butler of Darcy House

  Major General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam, KCB, Wellington’s Right Arm

  Mr. Edward Gardiner, childhood friend of Mr. Edward Bennet

  Mrs. Martha Smithvale, widow of Lt. William Smithvale, 33rd Rgt.,

  1st Bn, Wellesley’s Own

  Angus Campbell, physician to the Highland regiments

  HRH George Frederick Augustus, Prince Regent of Great Britain

  Mr. Charles Bingley, Master of Thornhill Estate, Derbyshire

  Miss Caroline Bingley (later Johnson), sister of Mr. C. Bingley

  His Excellency John Quincy Adams, United States Minister to

  Great Britain

  Mrs. Louisa (Johnson) Adams, wife of Mr. J.Q. Adams

  Mr. Edward Benton (Bennet), Rector of Kympton

  Those of Kympton Parsonage and Town

  Mrs. Eileen O’Rourke, widow of a Waterloo c
asualty, mother of Rory

  and Bridget

  Mr. and Mrs. Anders, Butler and Housekeeper of Kympton Parsonage

  Sarah (later Tomkins), Lady’s Maid to Mrs. Mary Benton

  Mr. Tomkins, Valet to Rev. Edward Benton

  Father John Henry Newman, Catholic Priest, St. Titus, Kympton

  Book One

  From Ludgate to Longbourn

  Origins

  Summer 1690 to May 1779

  Excerpts from a Monograph

  Reprinted by permission of the author from Jacobson, Donald P. “A Study of British Magical Transportation Devices: A Reconsidera-tion,” Proceedings of the Society of Extra-normal Transport, Summer 2013, 36:3, p. 1047-50.

  I do not recall when I first crawled into my closet and shut the door. Decades upon decades have passed since I last sought out the comforting depths of the tiny space in my first childhood bedroom. The house itself is long gone, having been demolished some 30 years ago to accommodate a health club’s parking lot.

  Humans have traditionally found security in dim and enclosed spaces, from the caverns of 150 generations ago to modern isolation chambers costing hundreds per hour. These all have one common thread…they are sealed off and dark, wrapping the person in a womblike cocoon and capable of transporting one to other worlds—real or imaginary.

  So, it came as little surprise when I discovered that the closet’s predecessor, the wardrobe, offered similar properties. Just as a child may inherit a mother’s nose or a father’s eyes, the closet may carry the special properties held by what had once been a fixture throughout the homes of the well-heeled classes of post-Restoration Britain and ancien regime France. After the evolution of personal home architecture in the face of the Industrial Revolution, wardrobes eventually became quaint relics of days-gone-by. But, they did not lose their powers.

  Research and publication about magical transport began in earnest in 1950 and have proceeded for the next 60-plus years.

  Professor C.S. Lewis incisively revealed the power of the wardrobe with his groundbreaking Chronicles of Narnia. The knowledge of this capability stunned post-World War II audiences. Further research discovered other avenues over and through which properly attuned mortals and immortals could pass.

  Ms. Rowling highlighted the unique nature of the flue network used by witches and warlocks in the Harry Potter series. Another excellent study of Britain’s magical transportation network can be found in Susanna Clarke’s discussion of the King’s Roads that were hidden behind Britain’s mirrors in her stunning work, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.

  The British King’s Roads were rooted in pre-Roman and medieval powers obscured after the 15th Century. The powers of the wardrobe in the late 18th Century may have been a response to a need arising from the disuse (either because they were blocked by the Raven King or because they became too dangerous) of the King’s Roads.

  As demonstrated in Clarke’s book, the Roads were hazardous, traveling through realms of frequently hostile beings. While Wardrobes were not a perfectly safe mode of travel, they, none-the-less, seemed tamer. Potter’s more modern and dependable flue network (splitching aside) may have been implemented by Britain’s magical beings as, with the introduction of the closet, the wardrobe passed from common use and availability.

  Even so, each network had its own properties and rules that governed its use. Lewis, for instance, explored the “need based” nature of the wardrobe. For the children of wartime Britain, they had to escape from the horrors of the events that swept over them. Hence, the doorway to Narnia led to another world where these youngsters had complete agency over themselves as the heroes in the epochal battle between good and evil.

  The Bennet Wardrobe has been discovered to be equally potent, but in a different manner. Rather than transporting users to another world, this remarkable cabinet discerns the true desires or needs of the Bennet user and ascertains what is required to meet that need. Then the Wardrobe transports the Bennet to a future time where that requirement can be fulfilled, but only to a frame of reference upon wardrobe’s timeline—a point in time and space where the wardrobe itself exists.

  You will note that I have specifically written “the Bennet user” or “the Bennet” when referring to those seeking to move through time using the Bennet Wardrobe. Because of its unique construction described in the following pages, the Wardrobe is attuned to the peculiar vibrations of those born of the lineage of Mr. Christopher Bennet, the first Bennet Master of Longbourn Estate, Meryton, Hertfordshire. No non-Bennet has ever directly taken advantage of the properties of the Wardrobe. Mrs. Fanny Bennet could only use the Wardrobe to hang a pelisse or store a hat—if Mr. Bennet would let her in the library!

  Imagine that a specific Bennet genome descendent—Lydia Bennet Wickham, for example—entered the wardrobe at Darcy House in 1815 with an unconscious need to understand the concept of her husband’s “glorious death” at Waterloo. This runs headlong into several circumstances.

  First: the rules of the Wardrobe prevent any time travel to the past. Lydia could not be transported back one week, let alone to Belgium.

  Second: as stated above, transport can only be accomplished to a future iteration of the cabinet itself. This brings us to the next difficult fact.

  No battles have been fought on British soil since Culloden in 1746. This forces a conflict with the first two restrictions just noted. Casting our eyes forward from 1815, there have been no clashes in the British Isles (apart from guerilla attacks during the conflict for Irish Independence in the 1910s-20s and the air war during the Blitz in 1940) to the present day. So, if the Wardrobe remained in Britain, Lydia could never be transported to a point in her future to learn the nature of death in battle.

  But, the Keepers of the Wardrobe move, and with them, so, too, does the Wardrobe. Research indicates that the Wardrobe, after 125 years in the Longbourn library, has been moved several times including many locations in metropolitan London. Of greatest interest is a period during which the Wardrobe crossed the English Channel. Its time as an expatriate extended from prior to WWI through the end of WWII in 1945. At that time, it was moved back to post-War London and today it rests in the fashionable Canary Wharf residence of its current Keeper.

  Returning to Lydia Wickham: upon contact with her hands, the cabinet would intuit that Lydia’s need could not be answered in any time frame prior to World War II. In this case, Lydia would be transported from the post-Napoleonic Darcy House to the Wardrobe in 1940s wartime Deauville, France.

  Readers may now wonder if Lydia was moved some 150 miles and well over 125 years into the future, could another Bennet accomplish the same identical journey? Of course, that is possible, but so unlikely that anyone would have the same mental wiring as Lydia any more than the same need to learn a lesson that such an outcome would be improbable. If Jane (or Lizzy or Mr. Bennet, for instance) wanted to use the portal, it would uniquely respond to their thoughts and emotions. Unless their desire centered on Lydia herself (e.g. I need to see/help/be with Lydia.), the possibility of them being transported to France would have been remote.

  What complicates our understanding is our relatively linear view of the world. Events and the world proceed (we consider time to progress forward or, in Kant’s case, upward) from one step to the next, as if time itself was climbing a set of stairs. A leads to B, which leads to C ad infinitum and never, A leads to M.

  Consider this thought experiment: we observe two persons entering a doorway. Our experience tells us that both individuals will leave the same proximate place and, by passing through the doorway, will both arrive at the same location. Doorways lead from one point to another single spot. In our world, this is exactly what occurs.

  The Wardrobe, however, extends from one present to an infinite number of time slices/windows along its timeline leading into the future. Bennets are routed in a manner similar to Rowling’s sorting hat (another magical device which is outside the scope of this work) to the where/when that would best suit
the user.

  While there are many rules that govern the use of the Bennet Wardrobe, there seem to be two that are superior to all others.

  The first is that there can be no travel to the past—the before that transpired prior to the moment of use. Yesterday remains as unreachable as two centuries ago. This will prevent altering the present by doing what Hiro Nakamura of Heroes imagined when he said, “too many butterflies.”

  The second rule is more mechanical. This is the “the cycle.” Once a Bennet has travelled to the future, they either must remain in that future or return to the original cabinet in the past from which they departed. Using the hypothetical involving Lydia: if she was transported to 1944 France and stayed one year into 1945, she would still, by this rule, return to the point and place in 1815 (in the same instant) whence and where her journey began. To an observer in the room, Lydia would vanish from sight outside of the Wardrobe to immediately step from the inside, somewhat older, maybe wearing different clothing, and possibly (hopefully?) acting differently.

  A final point, based upon the comment above “wearing different clothing,” travelers can and do move non-vivified items from the present to the future and from the future to the present. Otherwise, every Bennet would land in the Wardrobe in the way they were born. Talk about breaches of propriety!

  There is more…much more…but perhaps this it is best revealed by a history of the Wardrobe as it assists Bennets in the here/now by sending them to the where/when.

  Additional references on British Magical Transport: Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass, multiple iterations of Doctor Who (1963 to present).

  Chapter I

  London and Hertfordshire 1691

  Grinling Gibbons gently rubbed the marquetry finish on the double-door wardrobe that stood in the middle of his Ludgate Hill workroom.[i] The seamless arabesque design gracing the front of the richly stained oak cabinet had been based upon the complex patterns Gibbons had sketched when he visited the mihrab found in the Moorish Mosque in Cordoba. The mandala tapestries brought back by the ships of the Honorable East India Company had equally inspired him; plunder of the rarest sort to brighten the gray damp of England. Exotic art was flooding the homes of deep-pocketed denizens of the better districts and estates who wanted to buy a level of culture equivalent to the wealth filling their coffers.