Chapter Twenty Three
Elizabeth was rather distracted the next morning as she sat in the housekeeper’s office, listening to Mrs. Reynolds describe the usual times of meals, the preparations that should be made in the next several months to ready the house for winter, the excellent modern stoves that the estate had installed over the last decade, and other patterns and regularities with which Pemberley was managed.
He loved her.
Was this marriage really an actual love match? Had all that discussion of duty and prudence been a pretense?
It would, as Georgiana liked to say, be romantic.
“I apologize, Mrs. Reynolds,” Elizabeth shook herself, “I did not quite catch that question.”
The woman had a slightly offended look. “Mrs. Darcy, are there any particular foods that you wish to have added to the regular menus?”
Elizabeth smiled. “Chocolate with the desserts, but from Georgiana’s habits, I am confident that there will be enough to satisfy me already. I am hardly able to pay attention this morning. Perhaps we might continue this in the afternoon, if you have time.”
“Of course, Mrs. Darcy.”
Elizabeth stood, and then holding the back of the chair, she asked, “What was Mr. Darcy like as a child?”
This brought a smile to the white-haired woman.
It made her appear more approachable, less formal and more civil.
“The sweetest tempered and most generous-hearted boy in the world. But I have always observed that those who are good-natured when children are good-natured when the grow up. I have never heard a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.”
“It must have shocked you then to hear that he fought in a duel,” Elizabeth said.
Mrs. Reynolds fiddled with her spectacles, pulling them off, closing the legs, then opening them again, and then pushing them back onto her nose.
“Not so much. Young Wickham had always been a jealous sort. His mother was not a good woman, and she led his father to excesses and into many problems. No, no, I was not surprised at all to hear that he provoked Mr. Darcy. We’d heard that he had not lived well. ”
“Was he good-natured as a child?”
“Wickham? He was whatever he thought would get him a cookie.”
Elizabeth laughed at that description of her first husband’s character. “He was much like that for the whole of my connection with him—but there was a hint of anger growing in him. It must have consumed him in the end.”
“He always hoped to get more. He expected more than was reasonable. He was jealous.”
“You think the rot was already there when he was young—Two, three years younger than Mr. Darcy. You must have known him as a young child. At four, was there any sign that he would become what he was?”
“I would never judge a four-year-old boy with much harshness.”
“Yes, but had the rot already set in?”
Mrs. Reynolds took off her spectacles again. She pulled a soft cloth from a drawer in her dresser. “Do you worry for your own child?”
“Exceedingly. But that is not why—how can you know?—oh, forget that question.”
“Know what?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“I was exceedingly surprised,” Mrs. Reynolds said after they’d both been silent for half a minute, “when I heard that Mr. Darcy was to marry.”
“I know,” Elizabeth sat back in the chair.
“You must have a great deal of suspicion about me—” Elizabeth smiled disarmingly, “I do not ask you to confirm that. But it is strange. The whole tale is strange, and there are twists to it that I have only of late discovered. I of course do not apologize to you. I do not think I have anything to apologize about, and it is not my place to explain myself to you—but I hope in time you will come to see…I hope in time it will be true that we are well matched. How do you know? Were you happy in your marriage?”
“If one does not know,” Mrs. Reynolds replied stiffly, “they should not marry.”
“That is simple to say, but—besides, it is not that I do not feel as though I know. But how can one have confidence in that sensation? Oh, but I am saying more than I should. It is that Darcy always speaks of you as one who gives advice of great wisdom. He would not say so much, but I think he sees you as the closest to a mother that he has had since his own died. And you knew both of them—when did you know that the rot was in Mr. Wickham? That he would turn out exceedingly bad?”
Mrs. Reynolds smiled at her. “Perhaps you will do. The master is happy. I have never seen him so joyous.”
That brought a smile to Elizabeth’s face. Darcy had been most joyous since they had arrived at Pemberley.
The older woman then shrugged. “I confess that while I had long since ceased to think well of him, I never expected to hear such a thing about Mr. Wickham. Not until the tale of the duel reached us.”
“Yes, yes. It was much like it for me—I walked into the house that Mr. Darcy had taken in Ramsgate, and inquired if he knew about my husband’s whereabouts, and then…it was a shock, and yet not such a shock. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I do. And why did you remain?”
Elizabeth suspected that Mrs. Reynolds was particularly interested in this question. The question could even be construed as stepping across a boundary, if Elizabeth wished to see it in that way.
“I had no idea what to do next. But Mr. Darcy’s bandage needed changing, and that was a useful thing to do,” Elizabeth replied. “I always try to find something useful to do when unhappy.”
“Miss Darcy said as much. And that she wished to be like you in that way.”
“I worry for her exceedingly,” Elizabeth said.
“I do as well,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “She has been dear to all of us for so long.”
That evening when Elizabeth and Darcy retired to their chambers, leaving the drawing room early due to the ‘continuing fatigue from the road’, she kissed him as soon as they were through the door, and said, “I love you too. I do.”
He smiled at her warmly and kissed her softly. “I know.”
“You know!”
“Yes,” Darcy smiled. “I knew before you said.”
“How did you know?”
“Lizzy,” he said as he nuzzled her and kissed her neck. “You must think about it from the standpoint of philosophy. Let us pretend that I am Socrates, ‘And what does it mean to love’.”
Elizabeth giggled and held him tight against her. Her anxiety about caring so much, and her fear that the whole marriage would turn out to have been a simple mistake was dissolving. She kissed him back tightly, pressing her body against his. “And what, oh great philosopher, does it mean to love?”
“To enjoy looking at the other person, for them to be frequently in your thoughts, to be happy when they are happy, and to wish to be part of that happiness, to care for what they care for, simply because it is of importance to them—and divers other things.” And so saying that he picked her up and kissed her as she wrapped her legs around him.
“I see,” Elizabeth gasped. “And that is why you knew I loved you?”
“Whoa.” Darcy put her back down. He dropped himself heavily onto the sofa.
“Let me rest for half a minute. I cannot quite manage to carry you for more than a few seconds yet.” He grinned at her, and his face was only inches from hers.
That lovely, happy, boyish grin. “I am only a little surprised that it took you so little time to admit to yourself that you love me.”
Elizabeth laughed. But then she looked deeply into his eyes. “It terrifies me.”
“I know.” He said that in the same tone that he’d said that he knew that she loved him.
She could not resist the urge to stick out her tongue.
“But I do.”
Elizabeth kissed him again. “It is convenient that I can now allow you to inform me of all my feelings. I shall not need to speak in the future.”
“Oh, no, no. That would be too cruel. I like to hear you speak.”
Elizabeth giggled and settled on the sofa next to him, enjoying how she could just curl up next to him.
He was so much bigger than she was. “The great philosopher said, being in love includes finding joy in the inane chattering of the beloved—I wonder if Mr. Wickham ever really loved me in such a way.” Elizabeth frowned.
“A great part of my charm for him was that I refused to permit any substantial liberties until we were in fact married. The entertainment was found in the chase. For a time, I loved him. But it was not eternal, irreversible. My feelings depended upon what he did—upon what sort of character he in fact proved to have. Did not Shakespeare say, ‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’.”
Darcy replied, kissing the top of her head, and wrapping his arms tighter around her, “Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come—the bard said that love does not change with age.
You were wrong about Wickham, what you loved was a man who you thought was better than he was. ”
“How can it be really love, when what I loved was an illusion? I do not wish to love what I imagine you to be, but what you are in fact. But if I love what you are in fact, if there is in fact alteration in that fact, my love ought to alter. Oh no, this is not an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”
“Poor Elizabeth,” Darcy kissed her softly. “You have taken your Shakespeare too much to heart.”
It was impossible to not laugh at the way that he said that.
“You do not worry?”
“You expect me to be an honorable and considerate man—to be the best version of myself which I might be. There is nothing in that for me to fear. And though I will perhaps at times fall short of the vision of myself that I seek to embody—I did when I fought Mr. Wickham, and I have at other times—I do not think I ever will change in fundamentals. And if I did change in fundamentals, I would not remain myself.”
“To thine own self be true, and then it follows that thou canst not be false to any man?”
“Rather, were I to cease to be true to myself, then ‘I no, no I, for I must nothing be.’—and to turn this towards the question about love and alteration, if I were nothing, there would be nothing left of me to love, and that is not alteration. But as for the rest, I trust you. I trust you to love dearly, tenderly, and so long as we both shall live. I know that your affections will not alter with brief hours or weeks, and I think that I can trust you to bear it out even to the edge of doom.”
“And you say I take my Shakespeare too seriously? Why did you memorize that sonnet?”
Darcy kissed her tightly, with passion, instead of answering. She found herself kissing him back with equal fervor, and they began to release the ties to their clothes.
Later, when they both were drifting off to sleep in bed, Elizabeth moved Darcy’s arm to cover her stomach.
She softly kissed his hand without. “I have been frightened that if I ever trusted someone completely, I would find myself alone and adrift again. I think that has become a habit with me. I do not think this fear is essential to my character, but it may take some time before the habits of fear dissipate.”
“I shall be here, to always assure you of my affection,” Darcy replied.
“I wondered earlier today, if our present regular exertions might quickly result in a child. And I was so happy at the thought of having your child that it became impossible to pretend to myself that I did not love you.”
Darcy rolled over to kiss her intensely. “I have dreamed of us having children—girls with your eyes, boys with your smile and sparkling way of speaking.”
“No, no. The girls must have your eyes.”
“If we have a great many children there shall be a good chance that both of our wishes shall come to fruition.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Mrs. Reynolds told me a great many stories of when you were a child, and Wickham also.”
“And I thought you were focused upon important matters when you cruelly abandoned me this morning.”
Elizabeth giggled. “When we finished, you were so insistent on going up to our rooms to ‘show me something’.”
“I did show you something,” Darcy replied with a satisfied voice. “But, did you learn anything new?”
“From what you showed me?” Elizabeth replied innocently. “Oh, my husband, yes.”
Darcy sputtered. He pulled her tighter against his body. But then he said, “What was the difference? You had been nearly as annoyed as Colonel Fitzwilliam when I tried to tell my stories of growing up with Wickham to George.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Mrs. Reynolds did not wish to praise Wickham, the young boy. I cannot trust her belief that the rot was visible early, contaminated as memories can be by the knowledge of what will be, but I liked that she told me what I hoped to hear.”
“Which was?”
“That Wickham already was jealous and used his charm to wheedle people into giving him what they ought not, and that you were the sweetest hearted, most generous boy in the world—do not blush, you must know that is what Mrs. Reynolds thinks of you.”
“She thinks too highly of me.”
“Mmmmhmmm.” Elizabeth nibbled at her husband’s ear. “I plan to do the same. But what was all of that about your duty to marry me?”
“I…I think that my admiration of you drew me to see that it would be a matter of fulfilling a duty to marry you. That made the decision easy. Had I been in a position where my only reason to marry you was to please myself, there would have been a conflict within my principles and in my judgement. I do not know what I would have done then—but you needed aid, and my sense of rightness demanded I give it.”
“Very sensible.” Elizabeth agreed, “You were delighted that it would be your duty to marry me, but a duty is still a duty, even if it is a pleasant one. But I still think that I must be annoyed with Georgiana forever, since she was right, it is romantic.”
“You need not tell her,” Darcy offered. He moved so that he could start kissing her neck. There was that in his manner of kisses that suggested to Elizabeth that even though she was becoming quite sleepy, she would not in fact sleep for some time.
“Georgiana is like you,” Elizabeth complained, “she already knows—oh, yes, do that again.”
Mr. Darcy complied with his wife’s wishes.