Chapter Twenty Six #2
He found it easier to laugh the longer he was with Elizabeth, and there was something very much like his beloved wife’s manner in the way that Mr. Bennet said that.
“I am happy,” Darcy said, “to see you, no matter the hour. Though I do not intend to stay up much past my bedtime to keep you company.”
After saying that, Darcy felt rather worried that Elizabeth would remain up speaking with him till late, as she always had when they were in the same house. He was very much hoping for them to spend some time together, intimately, before falling asleep.
The glowing eyes that Elizabeth looked at him with when he talked about going to bed suggested that her mind had gone in a similar direction as his, and that she at least felt a strong desire to join him in bed.
Mr. Bennet laughed. “Just show me this library of yours and a room to sleep in, and I’ll be happy as a lark. No need to entertain me.”
“If you stay up exceeding late,” Elizabeth said warningly, “I’ll still set George on you as soon as he wakes in the morning.”
Mr. Bennet grinned.
“Can I assume, based on your happy manner,” Darcy asked, “that there was no news of importance brought you here?”
“Well, no,” he replied cheerfully. “My visit is prompted by news of importance. It is just quite nice news. Ah, yes, I’ve letters for you both. From Jane and your friend Bingley.”
“Bingley?” Darcy replied in surprise. “Why is he using you in place of the post?”
“Oh,” Georgiana exclaimed. “Is he to marry Miss Bennet? I mean Jane—Lizzy, I know you’ve insisted that I must think of your sisters as my own.”
“Guessed it in one,” Mr. Bennet agreed.
The party then did go to the library, and from her expression, Elizabeth very much enjoyed seeing Mr. Bennet’s reaction to the library.
“Oh, my. Oh, my.” He repeated several times, and then immediately walked over to one of the bookshelves, accompanied by his daughter who started pointing out some of the best items in the collection.
Darcy made a serious effort to interpret the letter that Bingley sent him, but in the end he gave it up for a bad job.
The words ‘Joy’, ‘brothers’, ‘angel’, and ‘Jane’ appeared with frequency, or at least Darcy thought they did. But if Bingley hoped to convey any particular information, it was impossible for Darcy to decipher.
He walked over to where Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth laughed at a printing from the first edition of Paradise Lost that Darcy had purchased at a good price about three years previously.
“It is, it is,” Elizabeth was saying. “I had not looked at it before, but it is.”
“What is?” Darcy asked.
“This was my copy of Milton’s book,” Mr. Bennet said.
“You can see the pattern of wear on the cover, and this dogear—and these notes written in that odd spelling of more than a hundred years ago in the margin next to the ‘sing Heav’nly muse’.
I recall being enormously charmed by reading that fellow’s course of thoughts on the poem when I first purchased it—I sold a good part of my library to fund the first purchase of consols when I began to take seriously providing dowries for the girls. ”
Darcy took the book and looked at the faded pencil notes. He laughed and shook his head. “How odd, and yet not odd at all.”
“No, not at all,” Elizabeth said grinning.
“Do you wish me to return it as a gift?” Darcy asked Mr. Bennet.
“What?” He laughed. “No, not at all. Not at all. I am quite satisfied that it will one day be in the library of my grandchild. That is quite as good as having it myself. But it is such a delightful coincidence.”
“Do you perhaps know what Mr. Bingley meant to say in his letter? His handwriting is usually atrocious, but this was a particularly bad specimen.” Darcy handed the letter to Elizabeth, wondering if she would have better luck with it.
She stared at the page. “Good God. You understand any of this? You must convince him to dictate—do you know if he meant to write anything besides simply informing us that he and Jane are to make a match of it?”
“Yes,” Mr. Bennet said with some pleasure. “They hope that you will all come south to be present at the wedding—they even offer to have the ceremony in January so it will be more convenient around your habitual Christmas plans and travel for the season.”
“Well,” Darcy said, “if my friend desires that much for me to be present at his wedding, I must be there.”
“That’s the spirit!” Mr. Bennet said.
“But how did you end up as the messenger,” Elizabeth said. There was rather a tone of suspicion in her voice.
Mr. Bennet grinned. “Bingley denied needing any sort of dowry for Jane. And while I, of course, am very happy to put most of the money I’ve collected into the dowries for the other girls—I thought that I might do a kindness to Mrs. Bennet and give her a substantial sum of money to purchase Jane’s wedding clothes. ”
“You need say no more. I understand everything,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy enjoyed watching the interplay between Elizabeth and her father. “I am afraid I do not.”
“Mama is very enthused by the search for clothes, is she not?” Elizabeth asked.
“The house was far noisier than I like,” Mr. Bennet agreed. “And then the notion came to me that if I came up for a visit, I could save the money for postage.”
Elizabeth laughed.
Georgiana, who listened to the story with clear delight, asked, “But how did it happen! I saw that they liked each other’s look very much, but for them to be engaged so quickly, how did they fall in love?”
“Dancing, I believe,” Mr. Bennet said. “And talking over cards and dinner. In any case, Miss Bingley had invited Jane to dine with her and Mrs. Hurst one day while the gentlemen were dining with the officers, and Jane fell sick with the flu, and stayed for several days while recovering.”
“Oh, no,” Elizabeth said with concern.
“Well, she is perfectly healthy now,” Mr. Bennet said. “In any case, by the time she was recovered sufficiently for my wife to think it possible to move her to home, Bingley had made his decision, found his opportunity, and received his happy answer.”
“Aww,” Georgiana sighed. “That is so romantic.”
Mr. Bennet laughed. “I suppose it is, but despite that, I have not a doubt of them doing very well together. Their tempers are by no means unlike. They are each of them so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat them; and so generous, that they will always exceed their income.”
Elizabeth laughed at that description. “I do hope they both have sufficient examples of imprudence before them to avoid that error.”
“That is what Jane says; she replies every time I say that, ‘imprudence in money matters would be unpardonable in me.’ And then she looks at me in such a way.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“I will say for Bingley,” Darcy offered, quite amused but also wishing to defend the honor of his friend, “that while at university he would frequently loan more to friends than he could safely afford to, but he has learned better over time. I have more than once heard him to say that he could not help a fellow more than a little when an unreasonable request was made. He generally puts a few hundred aside each quarter—though now that he has an estate and a wife that may be more difficult.”
Mr. Bennet shrugged. “I still insist they will be so complying that if they have an argument about what to do, the difficulty will be that both strive to be the one to give the other what they wish?”
“That,” Elizabeth said, “sounds very much like Jane.”
“It is not a wholly inaccurate portrait of Bingley,” Darcy agreed.
“You are nothing like that,” Elizabeth said to Darcy. “First, if you determine to give something another, you will succeed at making them take it.”
He laughed. “And you are not so stubborn that it is impossible to convince you to let others support you.”
“We are a perfect couple, and I hope that my Jane, and your Bingley will be just so perfect as well.” Elziabeth looked at him in a way that made Darcy wish to take her to bed immediately.
Mr. Bennet possibly detected that mood in the couple. “I have kept you all awake long enough—there, let’s each drink a toast from that port to the happy couple, and then I will see you in the morning.”
All of them took a small glass of the fine port that sat on the library side table, even Georgiana.
Darcy raised his glass high and said, “To friends, and to love, and to all of us being happier than we deserve.”