Mr Bingley's smile faltered, just for a second. "No, no. I mean... profound. I wish to engage with a text that challenges the mind. A work of significant gravity."
He was stumbling. Mary could almost see the gears inside his head grinding to a halt in the face of Mrs Chester's provincial scepticism.
"I attended Eton," he added, his voice dropping an octave as if the name of his former school was a secret that would unlock the mysteries of the library. "I graduated Cambridge. Barely, admittedly, but the degree is quite real."
Mrs Chester continued to stare. The silence stretched, filled with the ticking of the clock and the sound of Kitty sighing with the weight of her newfound maturity.
"Is that so?" Mrs Chester said at last. "And did they teach you at Cambridge that a library is arranged by subject, or did you spend your time chasing after horses and spilling port on your cravat?"
The insult was calculated. Mr Bingley glanced at his impeccable cravat, and for a moment, Mary saw the realisation hit him. He looked ignorant. He looked like he had more money than sense and was now trying to buy the latter by the pound.
It was a painful sight. The cheerful Charles Bingley was a creature of the sun. Seeing him shadowed by the petty tyranny of a librarian felt like watching a goldcrest get caught in a web.
"I merely wished to broaden my horizons." His voice lacked its usual bounce.
"The horizons are in the back." Mrs Chester pointed a bony finger to the travel section. "Next to the cookery. Try not to get your hair oil on the pages."
She returned to her mending. Mr Bingley stood frozen for a moment. He was disheartened. He looked, Mary realised with a sudden jolt of unwanted feeling, quite small.
Kitty, meanwhile, had wandered over to a display of sermons and was staring at them with the intensity of a bird of prey. She did not notice the social execution that took place.
Mary felt the familiar urge to remain hidden—to let the scene play out and eventually catalogue it as another example of Mr Bingley's inadequacy. But the image of his slumped shoulders was too much like her own reflection in those moments when Jane or Elizabeth were the centres of the world and she was merely part of the noise.
She stepped out from behind "Domestic Pests."
"Mr Bingley." Her voice cut through the stuffy air loud and dry. "I believe you are in the wrong section. Mrs Chester's definitions of 'profound' are strictly limited to the thickness of the vellum."
Mr Bingley spun around, the pained expression on his face instantly replaced by an expression of such relief that one might have thought Mary was an angel descending into the pit of his despair.
"Miss Bennet!" he exclaimed, his hat nearly slipping from his grasp as he performed a bow that was several degrees more vigorous than their current level of acquaintance warranted. "I did not... that is to say, I had no idea you were a regular inhabitant of this establishment."
"I am an inhabitant of any space that contains quiet and a lack of required social dancing, Mr Bingley," Mary replied, stepping fully into the aisle. She noted the way he seemed to physically inflate at the sound of a civil voice.
Beside him, Kitty blinked slowly, as if the light of the library was an affront to her newly adopted mantle of gloom. "Mary," she murmured, her voice a hollow echo. "This place is full of the vanity of the world. All this paper, and for what? To distract us from the coming winter?"
Mary ignored her. Kitty's seriousness was currently a theatrical performance that lacked both an audience and a coherent script.
"You seem," Mary said, turning her attention back to Mr Bingley, "like you have accidentally walked into a lion's den while carrying a tray of raw meat."
Mr Bingley let out a laugh that was more of a wheeze. "Is it that obvious? I merely wished to find a book. I am... I am attempting to improve, Miss Bennet. I have spent too long as a man of leisure. I am in search of depth."
"A man of depth does not usually announce his arrival to the local librarian by asking for a book by its weight," Mary observed. She led him away from Mrs Chester's desk, deeper into the stacks where the air smelled of decaying leather and forgotten biographies. "And a man who wishes to win a village does not do so by lounging on a chaise while a valet reads to him."
Mr Bingley stopped dead, his face flushing a shade of crimson that clashed violently with his light green waistcoat. "You heard about that? But I was contemplating! I was absorbing the information through a secondary source."
"You were being a spectacle, Mr Bingley. In Meryton, a spectacle is only acceptable if it involves a puppet show or a large pig at the harvest festival. For a gentleman who has recently abandoned the village's favourite daughter, appearing to be too lazy to hold his own book is a tactical catastrophe."
He glanced down at his hands, and for a moment, the regret was genuine. No smiles, no airy pleasantries. He was finally realising that the ground he stood on was not merely soft but actively sinking.
"They hate me, do they not?" he asked softly.
"They do not hate you," Mary corrected. "Hate implies a level of energy that Meryton rarely expends on anything other than the weather. They are, however, deeply offended. You are the man who, metaphorically, promised a wedding and delivered a departure. It matters not a jot that Jane is well-situated now. What matters to them is that you left."
"I did not mean to!" he burst out, then winced as the sound echoed off the high shelves. "I was led. I was advised. I thought I was doing the right thing for your sister. For everyone."
Mary gazed at him steadily. Her internal cataloguer noted the sincerity in his eyes. It was a terrifyingly honest gaze, devoid of the artifice that usually governed such conversations.
"Advice," Mary lifted an eyebrow, "is a dangerous commodity when it comes from those who do not have to live with the consequences. You let others hold the quill, Mr Bingley. And now you are surprised that the story has been written without you."
