"John Kessel - Pride and Prometheus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kessel John)

Pride and Prometheus
by John Kessel

Our first story in this issue took us back in time to historic England. Here’s
another tale that does the same, albeit in a very different manner.
Mr. Kessel says that his latest collection of short fiction, The Baum Plan for
Financial Independence and Other Stories, is due to be published in April.
He also notes that an anthology he coedited with James Patrick Kelly,
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, has just been published.

****

Had both her mother and her sister Kitty not insisted upon it, Miss Mary
Bennet, whose interest in Nature did not extend to the Nature of Society,
would not have attended the ball in Grosvenor Square. This was Kitty’s
season. Mrs. Bennet had despaired of Mary long ago, but still bore hopes
for her younger sister, and so had set her determined mind on putting Kitty
in the way of Robert Sidney of Detling Manor, who possessed a fortune of
six thousand pounds a year, and was likely to be at that evening’s festivities.
Being obliged by her unmarried state to live with her parents, and the whims
of Mrs. Bennet being what they were, although there was no earthly reason
for Mary to be there, there was no good excuse for her absence.

So it was that Mary found herself in the ballroom of the great house,
trussed up in a silk dress with her hair piled high, bedecked with her sister’s
jewels. She 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. Every time Mrs.
Bennet told her to stand up straight, she felt despair. Mary had seen how
Jane and Elizabeth had made good lives for themselves by finding
appropriate mates. But there was no air of grace or mystery about Mary,
and no man ever looked upon her with admiration.

Kitty’s card was full, and she had already contrived to dance once with
the distinguished Mr. Sidney, whom Mary could not imagine being more
tedious. Hectically glowing, Kitty was certain that this was the season she
would get a husband. Mary, in contrast, sat with her mother and her Aunt
Gardiner, whose good sense was Mary’s only respite from her mother’s
silliness. After the third minuet Kitty came flying over.

“Catch your breath, Kitty!” Mrs. Bennet said. “Must you rush about like
this? Who is that young man you danced with? Remember, we are here to
smile on Mr. Sidney, not on some stranger. Did I see him arrive with the
Lord Mayor?”

“How can I tell you what you saw, Mother?”

“Don’t be impertinent.”