Pride and Prometheus - Softcover

John Kessel lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, novelist Therese Anne Fowler. He is a professor and the director of creative writing at North Carolina State University. He is the author of The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, Corrupting Dr. Nice, The Moon and the Other, and Pride and Prometheus.

Pride and Prometheus ONE

When she was nineteen, Miss Mary Bennet had believed three things that were not true. She believed that, despite her awkwardness, she might become interesting through her accomplishments. She believed that, because she paid strict attention to all she had been taught about right and wrong, she was wise in the ways of the world. And she believed that God, who took note of every moment of one’s life, would answer prayers, even foolish ones.

Thirteen years later, below the sea cliffs at Lyme Regis, among the tangled driftwood and broken shale exposed by the retreating tide, Mary found a flat stone plate that, when broken open by a tap of her hammer, revealed four Devil’s Fingers.

“Mr. Woodleigh!” she called.

Three days of rain had softened the cliffs above Pinhay Bay, and a recent avalanche had scattered heaps of shale across the stony beach. Behind her the early March surf broke continually upon the shingle. Seabirds cried. A cold offshore wind rustled the stunted trees on the verge of the cliff above. Mary’s hair came loose from her bonnet and fell into her eyes; she brushed it away with the back of the gloved hand that held the hammer.

At her call, Charles Woodleigh, bent over the rocks some twenty feet away, raised his head. “What is it, Miss Bennet?”

“See what I’ve found!”

He laid down his hammer and came to stand beside her as she crouched over her discovery. In the face of the stone plate were four slender conical shells, the shortest an inch or so, the largest, completely intact, at least four inches. It looked not so much like a finger as the point of a spear. She rubbed her thumb over the hard, smooth surface, whose color ranged from rusty brown to dark gray.

“Lovely,” Woodleigh said. “I believe you have discovered something, Miss Bennet.”

“I have!” Mary said.

The rock containing the fossils was roughly a foot across. Together they pulled it from beneath the rubble and placed it into her canvas satchel. It was not so heavy, but Mr. Woodleigh carried it toward the dogcart they had left at the foot of the road, where his man Daniel and Alice, Mrs. Bennet’s maid, waited. As they approached, Daniel saw them, hurried over, and took the satchel, carrying it the rest of the way.

Woodleigh had him set it on the floor of the cart. The gravity with which Alice had taken her duties as chaperone was evidenced by her staying with Daniel rather than braving the blustery seashore. Now she was all concern. She tucked the lap robe around Mary while Mr. Woodleigh told Daniel to take them to the inn.

“A very lucky find, indeed,” Woodleigh told Mary as they rode back to town, his feet resting on her discovery.

The rear seat of the cart faced backward, and as it bumped up the rutted path, their view of the bay expanded. The tide would soon cover the beach where they had spent the last hours. The sinuous masonry of the Cobb, the famous seawall, embraced Lyme’s small harbor and its fishing boats. Below the Promenade the beach lay devoid of the bathing machines of summer. The high street pitched steeply up from the harbor, not half so busy as it would be in that season. Daniel maneuvered their cart around a man waiting anxiously with a groom alongside a chaise and four. Under the overcast sky the town lay steeped in twilight. Some servants could be seen at the fish market and butcher’s shop, while men in work clothes came out of the ironmonger’s. Outside the Assembly Rooms, a boy was lighting the lamps at each side of the entrance.

At the King’s Crown Inn they dismounted. Woodleigh sent Daniel to stable the horse and cart; Mary allowed the shivering Alice to hurry indoors while she stopped at a table set up outside the inn. On the table were displayed baskets full of Dudley Locusts, verteberries, and several such Devil’s Fingers as Mary had discovered. A large, flat stone leaning against a table leg showed the skeleton of some ancient fish. A girl of perhaps fifteen years of age, wearing a well-worn dark green wool dress and an unadorned bonnet, minded the table. Her ungloved hands, which she kept crossed before her, were rough, her knuckles red. This was the celebrated Mary Anning, the girl the locals said had survived being struck by lightning as an infant, and who had acquired such a reputation for her ability to find fossils that enthusiasts from as far away as Edinburgh frequented her stall.

Mary had made her acquaintance earlier. Mary Anning was shy around her betters, but at moments her intelligence broke through their difference in station. Mary wanted to tell the girl what she had found, but hesitated, and in a moment Woodleigh arrived. A basket on the table contained a dozen Devil’s Fingers. Woodleigh selected one. Mary Anning’s hopeful eyes watched his every move. He addressed the girl.

“You ask a shilling for one of these? Yet this lady has found several herself this very day.”

Mary Anning’s eyes met Mary’s, a glimmer of excitement in her gaze. “Did you go where—”

“Excuse me?” Woodleigh interrupted. “I believe I asked you a question.”

“Beg pardon, sir. The lady asked me how she might look for such as these and I told her.”

Woodleigh nodded. “Yes, indeed. It’s remarkable that there are any left to find, since you deprive this beach of antiquities the moment that they appear. Those of us who study fossils can only travel here at great trouble, on certain occasions, while you have the Blue Lias cliffs at your disposal every day of the year.”

Mary set her satchel on the edge of the table, opened it, and showed the girl her find. “I think this must have been exposed by the recent fall.”

Mary Anning studied the plate. “These is very fine.”

“They are not really fingers, are they?” Mary asked.

Woodleigh said, “No, Miss Bennet. These are the horns of some ancient sea creature.”

Miss Anning said, “They comes from some sort of cuttlefish.”

“I doubt that very much,” Woodleigh said.

The girl did not argue the point.

Woodleigh surveyed the fossils laid out, including one very fine example of what the locals called a “snake stone,” a spiral shell rather like that of a nautilus. Woodleigh haggled with the girl until she agreed to sell it for two shillings.

Mary Anning wrapped the snake stone in brown paper while Woodleigh pulled the pittance he had offered from his purse. From their conversations, Mary knew that the girl’s family depended on the meager earnings from such sales for their living. Upon entering the inn, she ventured to speak to Woodleigh about it.

He shook his head. “Your kind heart speaks well of you, Mary. The girl has no learning, yet she presumes to correct her betters. She is unwilling to do work more fitting to someone of her station, and lucky to get what we give her.”

“But Mr. Woodleigh, you know this is the girl who discovered the fossilized crocodile that was the talk of the Geological Society.”

“It was no crocodile. It was an ichthyosaurus.”

“Which she discovered. Doesn’t she deserve some credit for that?”

“Would we say the beggar who finds a sovereign in the gutter earned it? She could not pronounce ‘ichthyosaur’ if her life depended on it.”

Mary wished he would not be so uncharitable. In areas unrelated to his enthusiasm he seemed an amiable man, but at these moments he presented himself in the worst light.

“I believe I will retire until dinner,” she said.

He looked worried. “Shall I carry your fossil up for you?”

“I will carry it myself.”

Mary returned to her room in an ill humor. From her first conversation with Mary Anning, she had felt that her kinship with the odd girl went beyond their given names. Mary Anning was half her age, a Dissenter, and desperately poor, yet they shared an interest in these unwomanly studies. Such affinities were not visible to Woodleigh. He was right, she supposed: friendships outside one’s class were ill-advised, and when Mary was younger, she would never have considered otherwise.

Charles Woodleigh was forty-three, the middle son of a prominent family of Devonshire, who had read the law at Lincoln’s Inn. In London he had dabbled in Tory politics, made a success in some Irish enterprise, and retired to Exeter to pursue his interests. One of those interests was the study of fossils, which he had commenced in his youth as a member of the Askesian Society. He was a regular visitor to Lyme and its famous fossil cliffs. There, at the Assembly Rooms, Mary had been introduced to him. It soon became apparent that unlike anyone she had ever met, and certainly no one in her family, Woodleigh was delighted by her interest in fossils.

Mary was flattered by his attentions. He was a pious man, and had asked her to sit with him at the local service last Sunday. She had noted how well he sang the hymn. Above all he loved talking about his collection, and she was a ready listener. When they discovered their mutual enthusiasm, Mary dared to think that, if it were possible for a man and woman to spend all of their days speaking of fossils, their acquaintance might lead to some more permanent connection.

Mrs. Bennet and Kitty awaited Mary in their rooms.

“There you are,” said Mrs. Bennet. “My Lord, your dress is nothing but mud! You must get out of those clothes immediately. We are to dine this evening with Mr. Woodleigh.”

“I know, Mother. I just left Mr. Woodleigh.”

Mary hoisted her satchel onto the table. She removed her cloak and undid the ribbons of her bonnet, took it off, and set it beside her discovery.

Kitty was already dressed in the gown she had bought the day before. “What is that?” she asked.

Mary began to open the bag. “I found this on the shore. It’s—”

“Oh, dear, it is wet!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. “See, you have soiled the tablecloth already.”

Mary took the bag from the table and set it on the hearthstone, her enthusiasm only slightly dampened. She opened it to display the stone plate and her fossils. The faint light of the coal fire flickered over its surface. “See! Four of these creatures trapped in this single stone. They have been called Devil’s Fingers. Mr. Woodleigh maintains that these are horns of some sea creature, but I believe, and my belief is seconded by the young woman who sells fossils in the street, that they are the remains of some form of cuttlefish.”

“You have spoken with some girl in the street?” Mrs. Bennet said.

Kitty bent over the slab. “Cuttlefish?”

“They have also been called thunderstones: some people believe that they are created when lightning strikes the earth.” Mary warmed to her subject. “But that is not likely. In fact—”

“And you found these yourself!” Kitty brightened.

Mary was pleased. “I did. I—”

“How wonderful! I am certain that Mr. Woodleigh was properly impressed. Perhaps now that you have accomplished what you set out to do in Lyme, we could move on to London?”

“But we were to be here for another week,” Mary said.

“Mother, must we remain?” Kitty said. “One might attend a hundred balls in Lyme in March and not meet one person of consequence.”

Mrs. Bennet had not spared a glance for Mary’s fossils. “Now, my dear, you know that I share your opinion of the society of Lyme, but we don’t want to harm Mary’s chances with Mr. Woodleigh. Patience. We’ll be in London soon enough.”

As if struck by lightning herself, Kitty fell into a chair near the hearth. “Mary, is this proper? You’ve always spoken of the risks women take by associating with men.” Kitty turned to Mrs. Bennet. “Yet she spends hours with Mr. Woodleigh on her own, without a chaperone.”

“Alice was with me.”

“Alice no doubt spent her time flirting with Woodleigh’s servant.”

“With men undeserving of our trust, what I’ve told you is true,” Mary said. “Mr. Woodleigh is not such a man.”

“No, Mr. Woodleigh is too interested in your thunderstones to present any danger, I suppose. So I shall wilt here in this dank town until he departs.” Kitty coughed theatrically, caught her breath, and continued, “Maybe we can get you to sing for Mr. Woodleigh. If anything might drive him back to Devonshire, that would.”

Mary colored. She tried to speak, but nothing would come.

Mrs. Bennet did not seem to have understood Kitty’s thrust. “Kitty! You should be half so accomplished as Mary.”

Kitty would not meet Mary’s eyes. Mary picked up her satchel.

“I must dress,” she said. “Perhaps you should send for Alice, Mother—to clean up after me.”

Mary retreated to her room, closed the door, and leaned against it. She searched for some witty rejoinder she might have made to Kitty. Over the years she had come to understand how much she served as a source of amusement to her sisters, and had thought herself well defended. How cruel of Kitty to remind Mary of Netherfield Park. Thirteen years, yet it seemed the pain lay ready to be reawakened at the least notice.

Mary was neither a beauty, like her older and happily married sister Jane, nor witty, like her older and happily married sister Elizabeth, nor flirtatious, like her younger and less happily married sister Lydia. Awkward and nearsighted, she had never cut an attractive figure, and as she had aged, she had come to see herself as others saw her. There was no air of grace or mystery about Mary, and no man—not even Charles Woodleigh—ever looked upon her with that sort of admiration.

So she had applied herself to the pianoforte from early youth, had taught herself to sing, and had studied harmony. She became by far the most accomplished of the Bennet sisters, quite vain in her regard for her own abilities.

Until that evening at Netherfield. All of Meryton was gathered at a ball thrown by Mr. Charles Bingley, a newcomer to town on whom Jane had set her sights. At the ball Elizabeth was asked to play, and after she had done so, Mary, eager to demonstrate her skills—she had studied much harder than Lizzy, and was far more adept, everybody said—had sat down to the instrument, played, and sang. Quite well, she thought. She took the silence with which she was greeted as a sign of the revelers’ rapt attention. Lizzy caught her eye and shook her head slightly, but Mary could not imagine what she intended.

Mary sang a second song, and was about to assay a third when Mr. Bennet stepped to her side, put his hand gently on her shoulder, and said, “That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”

At that, Mary looked up to see—to actually see, for the first time in her life—the faces of the gathered people, and a veil was lifted. Written on these faces was amusement, indifference, even annoyance. Lizzy’s expression was one of agonized embarrassment. Mary realized that she was at best a figure of fun, and the closer the relation of the observers to her, the more a cause of shame.

She rose from the pianoforte, her hands trembling, and spent the rest of the ball sitting in a corner. The evening ran on past midnight, and the candles burned down to stubs, and Lizzy spoke with Mr. Darcy, whom she would eventually marry, and Jane danced with Mr. Bingley, whom she would marry—while Mary felt as if she had fallen into a pit that had opened up in the beeswax-polished floor of Netherfield Hall....