Posted on Monday, 31 October 2005

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single scientist who researches Yetis and is in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

At least that's what Mrs. Bennet told her husband when she forced him to go make nice with the two scientists who'd braved the treacherous paths of the Himalayas just to reach the top and study the legendary Yeti. She had five daughters and was determined to unload two of them on these scientists. The Yeti clan could always do with some new blood. Being set as apart from normal society as they were, the Yetis were hopelessly inbred. Why, she and her own husband were eleventh cousins eight times removed! (Which explained so much.)

Now Mrs. Bennet was pestering her husband for pocket money so she could buy some lace and fabric and sew new dresses for her five daughters. There was to be an assembly in Yetishire to welcome the scientists, and Mrs. Bennet was determined that her daughters look the best.

Mr. Bennet, however, was a man who had no time for silly business like assemblies. He would much rather hide in his library amidst his books and trace his family's ancestry. An interesting task when you considered theirs was a family tree with no branches, only roots. He watched his wife flit around him now and fantasized about throwing her off one of the sides of the Himalayan Mountains.

"Are you listening to me?" his wife demanded, when she saw her husband's eyes go vacant and a smile appeared on his face.

Mr. Bennet snapped back to attention. "No lace! No lace! I beg of you, no more lace!"

"But what will we use to cover all the hair on the girls if not with lace?"

Mr. Bennet rolled his eyes and reminded his wife, "They're Yetis. As are you and I. We're supposed to be hairy."

"But the scientists might not like a hairy woman."

"Then they wouldn't be the men for our girls."

Mrs. Bennet glared at her husband. Did he always have to have an answer for everything? She took her revenge by stealing money from the cookie jar and outfitting her daughters in dresses layered in lacy ruffle. On the way to the assembly, Elizabeth, the second daughter, asked her older sister, Jane, "Who is our mother kidding? Does she really think these frills are going to hide anything?"

"Shush," Jane replied. Jane was the good daughter. So good that she never complained, never said no, and never had a negative comment for anybody. There were times when Jane's angelic (and rather dull, if the truth had to be told) nature made Elizabeth want to strip and beat her hairy chest while running down the street. Only the fear of creating a traffic jam rivaling (okay, surpassing) that of the President's motorcade prevented her from doing so.

Once at the assembly, Elizabeth ditched her sister for the company of her best friend, Charlotte. Mrs. Bennet took stock of her daughter's actions and nodded approvingly. Standing next to Charlotte, Elizabeth looked like Venus on a Half-Shell. (Only not so naked.) Charlotte, Mrs. Bennet mused, could use a deep conditioning treatment. Her fur was hopelessly filled with split-ends, leaving it with a dull sheen.

While Charlotte and Elizabeth went off to gossip and make fun of all their Yeti neighbors, Jane stood next to her mother to help keep track of her youngest sisters, Vickary, Crytty, and Jennifydia. (Odd names, I know, but what else would you expect from a Yeti?) That was how when the scientists came over to be introduced, Jane stole the attention of the first scientist, Mr. Bingley.

"Good G-d, she's an angel!" he thought.

"A hairy one," his friend, Mr. Darcy, telepathically agreed. Damn his friend's good-luck. Bingley always got the good ones.

Darcy was still sulking over his friend's easy and outgoing nature when Bingley cornered him in - where else? - the corner. "Come man! I won't have you standing about looking like an idiot. You have to dance."

"Why? You have done enough dancing for the both of us tonight."

"I have, haven't I?" winked Bingley. "But can you blame me? Look at all these women around us! What talent! A true mark of a polished society, I daresay."

"Every savage can dance," Darcy reminded his friend. "But, I might've been persuaded to dance given the proper amount of inducement. Unfortunately, you have been dancing with the only hairy one tonight," he said, nodding his head in Jane's direction.

"She is a beauty, isn't she?" Bingley's heart sighed, well on his way to being in love. "But look! Look there." He pointed at Elizabeth, currently taking part in an intricate Yeti dance that was sort of like a square dance but also involved the women periodically running past their male dancing partners while beating their hairy chests. "Look at her, running through the archway, beating her hairy chest. I daresay she's quite pretty too."

Darcy glanced over with a disdainful look. "She is tolerable, I suppose, but not hairy enough to tempt me!"

Unfortunately for Darcy, the music had stopped right before his ill-timed proclamation. The Yetis who all had super keen senses of hearing to begin with, all stopped dead in their tracks. There could be no doubt that the entire assembly room had heard his public denouncement of Elizabeth.

Darcy found it unnerving to suddenly have over four and twenty pairs of Yeti eyes trained on him, yet he refused to back down.

Across the room, Elizabeth stood rooted in rage. Who did this stranger, this interloper think he was, coming in here and insulting her in front of all her family and friends? (Well, okay, family. They were all inbred, after all.) Not one to take things standing down, Elizabeth wasted no time in crossing the dance floor.

Like a western showdown, all Yetis quickly headed for the sidelines. Bingley wasn't far behind them. "Good-luck, man," he told his friend. "This one looks practically feral."

Trust Bingley to run at the first sign of trouble, Darcy thought disgustedly. Watching Elizabeth close the distance between them, Darcy braced himself. "May I help you?" he drawled when she came to an abrupt stop in front of him.

"As a matter of fact you can," Elizabeth retorted, poking him in the chest. "How dare you? Why, everyone in Yetishire knows I am more than tolerable. Do you want to be laughed out of the room? I'm a reputed beauty!"

"A reputed beauty?" Darcy looked her up and down. "I should think not. Your face is too thin, your complexion has no brilliancy, and your features are not all that handsome. Your nose wants character - there is nothing marked in its lines. Your teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way, and your eyes . . ." Well, hm. The more Darcy studied Elizabeth's eyes, the more he realized they required a second glance.

"Yes?" Elizabeth prompted, spoiling for a fight. He'd had something negative to say about her every attribute so far, what would he say now about her eyes? "Are they too dark, too cross-eyed, or too narrow set? And more importantly, do I have a unibrow?"

"No, your eyes, they're quite fine," Darcy said after a while, after he'd managed to find his voice. "In fact, oh hell. I cannot do this."

He turned away and bent over in the middle. Sweat was pouring from his forehead; his entire body was shaking with internal strife. He was like a volcano waiting to erupt, the lava bubbling dangerously. Bingley came rushing over from the sidelines, handed Darcy his handkerchief, and patted his back encouragingly. "You can do it, man! Go for it!"

It took Darcy a moment to focus, but when he did it was welcome relief to see his friend's cherub-like face. "Sidebar!" he croaked.

Bingley looked over Darcy's shoulders at Elizabeth. "Excuse us a moment?"

"Be my guest," she magnanimously answered. She turned and shrugged her shoulders at her fellow Yetimen. They in turn shrugged back.

Somewhere amidst the crowd someone started to sing:

Be our guest!
Be our guest!
Put out service to the test
Tie your napkin 'round your neck, cherie
And we provide the rest

"Hush now, Vickary," a deeper voice spoke over the singing one. "Now is not the time for young ladies to exhibit themselves."

Elizabeth tried not to blush as she continued to keep one eye trained on the scientists, conferring in a whispered huddle. "Are you sure I should do this?" Darcy was asking Bingley.

"Absolutely."

"Then I have your blessing?"

"Do you need my blessing?"

"No, but I should like to have it anyway."

"Really? Really, truly, honestly? You want my blessing?"

"Well gees, Bingley, if you're going to be this way about it . . ."

"No!" he quickly said, lest Darcy took his request back. This was a monumental occasion for him and he was determined to hold onto it. "Of course you have my blessing. Go to it, man!"

"Thanks, man. Okay, 1-2-3 Break!" Their huddle broken, their backsides slapped, Darcy stood tall once more. And while Bingley returned in a scurry to his place next to Jane on the sidelines, Darcy turned back to Elizabeth.

"Here's the thing. In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feeling will not be repressed. I took one look at your fine eyes, and now you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

The entire room gasped; Mrs. Bennet's the loudest. She grabbed her neighbor's glass of wine, gulped down its entire contents, and sent a prayer heavenward. Please let her accept him!

But Elizabeth, that pesky daughter, she never did as her poor mama wished. While everyone else gasped, Elizabeth stared, colored, doubted, and was silent. But only for a second. "Are you out of your non-hairy mind?"

"Why ever not? Do you have any better proposals?" Darcy sent a slashing glance around the room, daring any of the men to step forward and say yes.

"How can you want to marry me when only five minutes ago you were describing me as tolerable and saying I could never tempt you?"

"Well, how could you tempt me? Consider, we come from different worlds and it'd be a long-distance relationship unless I moved here (I mean, let's be honest but I don't think you'd be able to assimilate into my world)."

This was true, Elizabeth thought.

"Furthermore, could you really expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hopes of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own? I mean, for goodness sakes, you're all inbred!"

This too was also true, Elizabeth was forced to admit. She'd been thinking the same thing not fifteen minutes earlier.

"And if those weren't problems enough, the fact that you just aren't - I'm sorry to have to say it, but it's true - hairy enough was the clinching factor. Until I gazed upon your fine eyes, that is."

Elizabeth's head jerked to attention. "Did you just say I wasn't hairy enough?"

"I know you don't need me to repeat myself. Yetis are known for their ability to hear whispers uttered a mile away."

"No need to get your boxers in a twist," Elizabeth retorted. "I only asked because as it happens, I really am hairier than I appear."

Darcy looked her up and down and smiled almost indulgently, "My dear, I have studied Yetis for years and am considered quite an expert on the subject back home. I'm afraid you'll find it near impossible for me to believe that you're a hairy Yeti. I've seen hairier Yetis." He waved a hand around him. "Why, all I have to do is look around me to see that you are not as hairy as your neighbors here."

Elizabeth shook her head. It was her turn to be patronizing. "My dear sir, you may be an expert on Yetis, but I am a Yeti." She turned him to a mirror hanging in the assembly hall and stood next to him so that they could see each other's reflection. "Remember, objects in the mirror may not be as hairy as they appear."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"While you are considered an expert on Yetis back home, around these parts of Yetishire, I am considered an expert on humans."

"Oh?"

"Yes, and it has been my observation from many years of studies that I humans like a shaved woman."

"That may be the general norm, but that is not the case for me."

"Or me!" Bingley piped up. Jane beamed from gladness and relief at his declaration. Darcy and Elizabeth, however, ignored him. They had their own problem to solve.

"I couldn't know that," Elizabeth said. "I thought my only chance at snagging a human was to shave a little of my fur off."

Darcy raised an eyebrow. "So you're really a hairy Yeti?"

"I'm afraid so."

Mrs. Bennet came running over, pulling her wallet outside of her purse. Inside the wallet were billfolds of her children's pictures. She shoved them in Darcy's hands. "It's true. Look there and there and there. You won't find a hairier Yeti amongst my daughters."

Darcy studied them thoughtfully. The pictures were beautiful, but they didn't do justice to the Yeti standing in front of him. Turning back to Elizabeth, he said, "You truly are my perfect mate then. I've been searching for someone like you all my life."

"You'll marry me then?"

"Yes."

Murmurs of excitement started to spread throughout the room.

"But on one condition."

The entire room went dead silent again.

"You never shave yourself again. I love you just the way you are."

The room erupted into cheers and catcalls. "He loves her!" they cried out. "Just as she is!"

It was a moment of celebration.

But as happy as all the guests at the assembly were, none of them were as happy as Mrs. Bennet the day she got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards boasted of Mrs. Darcy and Mrs. Bingley may be guessed; after all, they'd become national heroes by finally bringing new blood into the Yeti fold.

Epilogue

Nine months later, Mr. Bennet finally started to see some leaves and branches on his family tree.

The End