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  EXPECTATIONS

  A NOVEL CONCERNING CERTAIN WELL-BELOVED CHARACTERS ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED BYMISS JANE AUSTEN

  BY AN ADMIRER

  This book is for those readers of Pride and Prejudice who might want to know what happened after the weddings of Jane and Lizzie Bennet. In it they will encounter again Mr. Bennet and his heir, Mr. Collins and his wife Charlotte, as well as the redoubtable Lady Catherine de Burgh. There will be some fleeting glimpses of Lizzie and Jane and their respective husbands as well as the Gardiners, Mary, Kitty and Lydia. However the story is chiefly concerned with Phoebe, the daughter of Lady Catherine’s niece and a naval officer. The author hopes she has not taken too many liberties with Miss Austen’s characters and that you will enjoy this pastiche as much as she has enjoyed writing it.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE 4

  CHAPTER TWO 17

  CHAPTER THREE 26

  CHAPTER FOUR 32

  CHAPTER FIVE 40

  CHAPTER SIX 48

  CHAPTER SEVEN 60

  CHAPTER EIGHT 70

  CHAPTER NINE 80

  CHAPTER TEN 93

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 102

  CHAPTER TWELVE 111

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 123

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 134

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN 145

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN 157

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 167

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 178

  CHAPTER NINETEEN 189

  CHAPTER TWENTY 201

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE 216

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO 229

  Other books by the Frances Murray 246

  It is not possible to make any apology for having written the following tale for it has afforded so much enjoyment to the writer that she thinks it unnecessary. If no one is to read it but herself it will still have served that purpose. If others come to think it worth the reading she hopes that they will not consider that too great a liberty has been taken with an author so beloved by so many.

  R.B. October 1998

  CHAPTER ONE

  In the evening of June 4th in the Year Five, Mrs. Sophia Parker sat down to write a letter to her godmother and aunt by marriage. It was not an easy letter to write but she had concluded that she had no choice but to do so. Mrs. Parker was the widow of an officer in the navy who had been killed during the Battle of the Nile. He had been commended in the highest terms by Admiral Nelson but, lacking good fortune in the matter of prize money, had left his widow and family of five children in difficult circumstances. His wife who had, in the common parlance, married to disoblige her family, could not, indeed would not, apply to them for relief and was therefore constrained to bring up her family on a tiny pension. The youngest of the family, Susan, had been nine years old at the death of her father; the twin boys, Peter and Horatio, eleven; Camilla, named for her father’s first command, thirteen; Phoebe, the eldest, eighteen. Since the day when the awful news had come, Phoebe had been her mother’s right hand and she was, in the Year Five, twenty six years old. On hearing of the death of her husband Mrs. Parker had removed from her lodgings in Portsmouth and settled in W……., a small village some twenty miles from Chester where her husband’s widowed father was Rector. He had little more than his stipend but by finding her a cottage and educating her children he had assisted her as much as was possible. His reward had been to find in his granddaughter, Phoebe, someone who shared, not only his musical ability, but also his taste for scholarship. Consequently, she was as accomplished as she was well educated and was fortunate enough to find a position as governess to the children of Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, who lived in the great house at W…………. Her wage had made the difference between poverty and penury during the years when the younger children had been growing up.

  Phoebe’s assistance to her mother was not limited to the money she earned: her height and the air of authority which she could assume when necessary, she employed to control her twin brothers who were energetic, spirited boys. Between them they could set their mother at defiance, play truant from their gentle grandfather and set the village by the ears. They respected only two people in the world; their sister Phoebe and Captain Despenser.

  Captain Despenser was a retired naval man, their father’s devoted friend, who had been wounded by the same broadside which had killed Captain Parker. Promoted to command his friend’s ship he had been unable to enjoy his command long but had retired on account of poor health. He had taken a house near his friend’s widow so that he might, as his dying friend had requested, watch over the Parker children. With the girls he took little to do. He was shy and unaccustomed to female company. However, he had stood godfather to Peter and Horatio and while he could not endow them with a fortune he did as well for them as he might by instilling in them from an early age, a love of the sea and of ships and an ambition to follow their father into the Service. Captain Despenser, unlike many captains, had been an excellent navigator and found in both his godsons a talent for mathematics which he honed until by the time they were thirteen years of age they might have satisfied the most severe examination board in navigation. He also taught them as much as was possible of seamanship so far as they were from the sea. He made them free of the books on his shelves and discussed with them the contents. His stories of his own days as a midshipman had prepared them for the hardships of life at sea.

  He crowned his endeavours for the boys by prevailing upon two of his fellow-Captains to accept them into their ships as midshipmen. The news of this acceptance he had brought to Westgate Cottage at noon on June 4th. He commended the two Captains, saying that they were capital fellows and would do all they could for Horatio and Peter for the sake of their dead father. He had then left Mrs. Parker and Phoebe with the letters of acceptance to show the boys and a long list of what they would require before they were despatched to their respective ships, both of which were still cruising in the West Indies but due to be sent Home before winter. He returned to his own house content in the knowledge that he had done for his godsons all that was within his power to do..

  He did not suspect that considerable dismay marred the pleasure with which the two females had greeted the news. Mrs. Parker discussed this offer as she discussed all such matters, with Phoebe. Her daughter was strongly of the opinion that the boys should go but knew how impossible it would be to provide them with all that was required.

  “I am in despair what to do,” said her mother. “Had it been one only we might have saved and scrimped and achieved it. But for two it is impossible.”

  “We cannot send one and not the other,” Phoebe declared, very firmly, “it must be both or neither.”

  “And how can we possibly give such an affront to Captain Despenser and his friends as to refuse this very obliging offer?”

  Mother and daughter looked at one another and then at the long list which lay on the table.

  “I cannot regret that both Camilla and Susan have found such excellent husbands,” Mrs. Parker said at last, “but neither can I deny that two weddings in eighteen months have resulted in sad expense. All my little savings have gone and I have still to pay Mrs. Lamberton for making Camilla’s dress and, while she has not pressed me at all, I am very conscious that she is no better off than I am myself and such an amount must be a consideration with her.”

  “It is an opportunity which must not be missed,” Phoebe said. “Somehow we must find the money. Do you think that Mr. Allerton would lend us a small sum?”

  Mr. Allerton was Camilla’s husband, a landowner some fifteen years her senior who had an estate near the Lakes and hunted his own pack of fell-hounds.

  “No,” said Mrs. Parker as decisively as her daughter. “They have not been married for six weeks and it would not do. I was never more surprised in my life than when Mr.
Allerton fixed upon Camilla when she was without a penny to her name. For her sake I would not wish to give him any cause to criticize her family. It is just what he would expect, that we would try to hang upon his sleeve, and you know he would not scruple to say so.”

  “And Susan and her curate have not two pence to rub together,” sighed Phoebe, smiling.

  “And after the good news she told me at Camilla’s wedding I would not ask it of them. They will have need of every halfpenny.”

  “As for Grandfather, what he does not give away he will have spent on books.”

  “I would ask Captain Despenser,” said her mother, “for you know I never have asked him for money in all these years, though he has offered from time to time.”

  “It does not do to be breaking shins with friends,” Phoebe agreed.

  “That is a most unbecoming expression,” her mother reproved. “I would do it now except that he told me only last week that he must pay for a companion for his father because the old man’s mind has started to wander and he must have someone with him at all times. Also, I feel, that having provided this opportunity for the boys it would be asking too much of him that he should pay for their outfitting also.”

  “Then it seems that we are quite at a stand, Mama,” said Phoebe.

  “No, not quite. I have, as your dear father might have said, one shot left in my locker.”

  “A most unbecoming expression on your lips, Mama,” mocked Phoebe.

  Thus, we find Mrs. Sophia Parker on June 4th in the Year Five looking out her best piece of letter paper and mending a goose-feather pen.

  Westgate Cottage,

  W…………..

  June 4th 1805.

  My dear Lady Catherine De Burgh, (she wrote)

  You will wonder at my approaching you after all these years, but I am in hopes that you might assist me in a small difficulty………..

  Lady Catherine De Burgh received this letter at Rosings when she was still in deep mourning for the death of her daughter, The Honourable Miss Anne De Burgh. Anne, never robust, had taken a fever during a visit to Town and it had carried her off within a fortnight. Her mother had declared to anyone who would listen that her death had been hastened by the keen disappointment she had suffered when her cousin Darcy had married Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Though no one had observed any other evidence of this disappointment no doubt it had been keen enough in the mother to communicate itself to the daughter. It could not, however, be denied that Anne’s death had left her mother alone amongst the splendours of Rosings, if one did not count the presence of Anne’s companion-governess, Mrs. Jenkinson, the twenty seven servants required to keep her ladyship’s state, or the assiduous attentions of Mr. Collins, the Vicar of Hunsford, and his wife, Charlotte. The latter, however, had given birth to a daughter who was now nearly a year old and was again in a promising way so that her attentions, though still as assiduous as her husband could contrive, were less than they had been.

  Mr. Darcy and his despised bride had come to Anne’s funeral, despite the rift caused by their marriage and some little progress had been made towards healing the breach while they had been at Rosings, progress due in the main to the efforts of Mrs. Darcy who could not like her husband’s being at outs with so close a relative on her account. An invitation to spend a few weeks at Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s seat in Derbyshire, was grudgingly acknowledged at the time it was made and had later been accepted by letter.

  Mrs. Parker’s letter arrived while some weeks still remained before this visit to Pemberley and Lady Catherine had had leisure to consider the inconveniences of her bereaved state. While she could rarely be said to discuss anything with anybody, she missed the presence of someone to whom she could make her opinions and intentions known. Mrs. Jenkinson could not be considered as a person in whom her ladyship might confide for her long residence under the roof of Rosings had engendered in her a habit of silence which made her presence or absence as unnoticeable as her opinion was unsought. However there remained Mr. and Mrs. Collins, who, summoned peremptorily to drink tea on the day after the letter arrived, listened to her ladyship’s account of the dreadful misalliance between her husband’s niece, the only child of his younger brother, General De Burgh, who had served in America during the late rebellion, and a penniless naval lieutenant, one Giles Parker.

  “We were never more shocked in our lives,” she told them. “It was a disgraceful affair and much mismanaged. Sophia, that was the girl’s name, she was called after my husband’s mother and she was always a favourite with my dear Sir Lewis. She was sent to her mother’s sister, a Mrs. Leigh, in order to have the benefit of country air while she was recovering from an attack of the chin-cough, for, as you know, the chin-cough is too often the precursor to consumption.”

  Mr. Collins was understood to wonder whether goat’s milk whey might not have sufficed as he had heard it was much commended in such cases. His wife nudged him in the ribs and Lady Catherine ignored his remark.

  “They met one another at the Assembly in Dorchester,” she continued. “Mrs. Leigh did her possible to hint him away but Sophia was quite deaf to all her representations and when Mrs. Leigh told the girl that she had written to her father, the General, and he intended to post down and remove her from Dorset what did she do but run off and they were married before he could get there.”

  She sighed.

  “It was a sad time. Sir Lewis was distressed beyond measure when his brother expressed his intention of wholly casting her off. The girl’s mother, was quite ill with grief and her life despaired of. But nothing would soften him. My brother-in-law wrote to his daughter. I saw the letter for he brought it to show Sir Lewis because he was, as you must know, head of the family. I recall that he said that he would tell the world that he no longer had a daughter and that she should not expect a penny from him, neither while he lived nor after he was dead. My dear Sir Lewis did his best to prevent the letter’s being sent but his brother would have none of it. As an Army man, you must understand, he had little liking for the Navy. He was used to say that he very much regretted the necessity they had of employing men as officers who were not gentlemen.”

  She drew breath and shook her head.

  “When my sister-in-law died some few years later, my dear husband tried to persuade his brother to inform Sophia of the sad event. But he would not. He would not.”

  “A Roman father!” exclaimed Mr. Collins.

  ”My dear husband’s very words. I recall his saying to me that nothing our dearest Anne could do would be enough to make him behave with such harshness. Though, of course Anne was never to give us a moment’s anxiety, except for her health. She was never strong, alas, never strong. My poor Anne.”

  She sighed and then resumed her story.

  “Sir Lewis had a great partiality for the little Sophia and so, indeed, had I. I was asked to be her god-mother. I have always felt that the dreadful business hastened my poor husband’s end for I recall he mentioned poor Sophia to me more than once while he was ill. And now,”

  She flourished Mrs. Parker’s carefully composed letter at them.

  “After twenty eight years she writes to me. She must have found ways to discover what has happened within the family.”

  Mr. Collins made a somewhat confused remark, the purport of which was that the doings of the great were always public property, which her ladyship received with a gracious inclination of the head.

  “She and her children are, despite all, De Burghs. I must consider how to reply.”

  Mr. Collins assumed a solemn expression and shook his head: his wife considered her clasped hands. When Lady Catherine demanded his opinion of the matter, Mr. Collins drew in a deep breath and replied,

  “For a daughter to set her father at defiance is against the law of God. Children,” he continued, “owe total obedience to their progenitors. And, if this law is transgressed it must be punished, the chastisement extending even unto the second and third generation. For,” Mr. Collins began to
warm to his subject, “to disobey one’s parents is to disobey God….”

  He was interrupted.

  “You make your views very clear, Mr. Collins. These were, let me remind you, the views of my brother-in-law.”

  “She has made her bed,” he went on, perhaps unwisely, “and she must lie therein. Her choice was made in defiance…..”

  “Oh, quite, Mr. Collins. No doubt you are justified in saying so but I must point out that her offence was against her father, who is now dead, not against me, her godmother. And what is more,” she tapped her bosom with her large fan, “I am the sole living relative she now possesses for she was an only child and her mother’s family consisted only of this Mrs. Leigh who is now dead. The De Burghs,” she added mournfully, “do not have large families. Mrs. Collins, what do you think?”

  “I feel sure that Mrs. Collins must agree with me that a father’s wishes must always be respected,” said Mr. Collins before his wife could reply. “Do you not, my dear?”

  However, his wife was more accustomed to listen than her husband and she had gauged her ladyship’s intentions better.

  “One has to observe, Lady Catherine, that she does not ask for much,”

  “But it is not the amount!” cried Mr. Collins, outraged. “It is the principle of the thing. Such actions as Mrs. Parker’s cannot be countenanced or forgiven, even after so long a period, when her father was set thus at nought and felt the slight so deeply. I feel sure, Lady Catherine, we must all be of one mind in this!”

  Both women ignored his frantic interpolation.

  “She does not ask for herself,” Mrs. Collins pointed out, “but for her sons. And they have offended no one.”

  “They offend by their very existence,” spluttered Mr. Collins, “does not the Bible say, unto the third and fourth generation?”

  He shook his head meaningly at his wife who took not the least heed.