The Zephyr

Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO

M y repose was premature. Mr Wickham remained lurking nearby, and he now believed I had tricked him with malicious intent. Mr Hill slept in the stable with the horses, and Mrs Hill slept in the kitchen, both gravely concerned that he would have his revenge by putting a torch to the house or the hay in the stable or both to force us—most particularly his wife—outside in the middle of the night like rats.

I was acutely aware of this new threat, and I sympathised with their anxieties. However, because even if Wickham committed such evil, he would not get his hands on Mary King, I could not feel anything other than safe and satisfied. This abiding sense of ease was moreover a testament to just how thoroughly I trusted Mr Darcy.

By noon the following day, we heard reports that there had been a ‘mighty ruckus’ at one of the cottages up the road, and a man who was lodging with the Fettermans had been taken away by force .

Mr Hill could barely contain his excitement as he delivered this news to my father who was sitting with us in the parlour just after tea had been served.

“Was it the bailiffs?” my father asked.

“I could not say for sure, sir, but he was bustled away none too gently from what I hear. There was some notion he owed his skin to a money monger in East End, and even his horse belonged to the posting house at Palmer’s Green.”

“Then good riddance to the man,” my father murmured. He glanced at me only once before turning back to his teacup, and I sent up a silent prayer that he would let the matter rest without questioning me directly. What might I say to him? That I wrote to Mr Darcy? That I asked another man, a braver, more conscionable man to help me?

To forestall any potential conferences with my father, I stepped away to find Martha.

“How much did he give you?” I asked in the back stairwell where I found her.

“A shilling, miss.”

I pulled the small coin purse from my pocket that I had tucked there first thing in the morning for the purpose of making good my promise.

“Here are two more. May I convince you to be more careful from now on with regard to loose talk?”

“Yes, miss,” she said earnestly, dipping a curtsey.

I sincerely wished to believe her, but I also knew that habits die hard. “Might you go upstairs and clean up? There is likely an unsavoury job to do, I warn you, for she was in hiding for some time.”

Thinking of the surprise that lurked in the farthest corner of the attic prompted me to offer her yet another shilling. “Please be thorough, Martha, and look into the recesses under the eaves, would you? I never want anyone to know she was there. I am sorry to put you to the trouble but needs must.”

She seemed pleased to be needed and ran up the narrow stair to the attic. I returned by the service stair to the kitchen and asked Mrs Hill to bring me a tray, to tell my mother I had likely caught my death just as she had so recently warned me I would after letting myself get wet to the bone, and to assure my parent that I had learnt my lesson.

In truth, I was exhausted and in desperate need of silence. I hoped time and the return of a general sense of regularity would grant me a reprieve from difficult questions should my father choose to interrogate me.

But all he said on the subject was expressed two days later over breakfast.

“Am I mistaken, Mrs Bennet, or has my great uncle Harold left the attic? I have not heard the rattling of bones lately.”

“Nor have I,” I chimed in. “Perhaps he has gone on holiday.”

“I have no notion of having heard him either, now that you mention it,” my mother mused. “Nor have I heard the owl.”

“Perhaps they were one and the same,” Kitty said with a sparkle in her eye. “Do not ghosts sometimes shriek?”

“If the gothics knew anything, indeed they do,” my father said, causing my mother to shudder. I then suffered the last of his penetrating looks, and as the hours passed, I considered the book closed on Mr and Mrs Wickham so far as he was concerned.

In the days that followed, I turned inwards for a period of introspection. I kept my fingers busy with needlework, and I kept the Zephyr in the shed. June and July had to make the best of time in a small paddock next to the barley field while I pondered the sobering fact that our fate and destiny are alarmingly intertwined with the minute choices we make every day.

We are intermingled with those in our lives, we are dependent upon them and hampered in our ambitions by them in the ordinary sense, but we are also either pulled up to a higher sense of the unique gifts of our own souls or dragged into peril and perdition by the weaknesses that lurk in the cellars of our human minds.

It was all well and good to learn to paint tables or drive a pair of ponies, but the critical accomplishment must be altogether intangible—discernment, considered action, and the discipline to examine and understand our weaknesses so as not to become their victims.

I deeply sympathised with Mary King, but I also reflected that her lack of self-understanding, in effect, her inability to see that her craving for approval had made her an almost effortless victim. Lydia’s unchecked desire for attention, her obsession with a kind of fame if you will, led her to betray a natural wisdom that even she possessed. Had not the Greeks worshipped at the Temple of Apollo where they were met with the inscription: Know Thyself ?

It was humbling to reflect that I had always thought that famous admonition to be a gratuitous platitude . I know who I am! I would have said. Who would say otherwise?

But what is unseen is as yet undiscovered, and I began to wonder if getting to know oneself is the work of a lifetime. As with all of life’s deeper questions, paradox plays a part in the answers that appear. Certainly, it is deeply unchristian to blame a victim, yet it is so often done because we fail to truly consider our own failures.

In the end, I settled myself with a resolution given to us by the ancient philosophers. I would strive to be unfailingly compassionate towards others while holding myself to a stricter standard of self-honesty.

“What has so wholly captured your imagination, Lizzy?” my father asked from his chair, startling me out of a deep, inwards stare.

Before I could stammer a useless reply he said, “Do you know? You are as the sun at Longbourn. When you are morose, a cloud descends over us all, and when you are delighted, we bask in your light.”

“I see no call for such fulsome flattery, Papa.”

“But I am sincere,” he said with an enigmatic smile.

“You are sincerely teasing me for indulging in a mood.”

“I am,” he said, “for I would not want you to know how honestly I have described you just now. So, what is it? You have not taken your ponies out for a week at least.”

“If you must have a confession, I have taken Mary’s place as principal doomsayer. Next, I shall be moved to read Fordyce aloud after dinner.”

“Excellent. How I have missed his toothsome advice. Meanwhile, here is a letter from your beau in London.”

Naturally, my heart scrambled into extreme alertness. Had Mr Darcy exposed me?

I frantically searched the envelope in my hand. No, he had not written overtly, thank the stars. The letter was addressed to The Esteemed Owner of the Zephyr, sent by Mr Tomlinson. I broke the plain wax seal and read.

The Derbyshire Swift would be exhibited again for those who could not see this marvel of engineering upon its debut. This time, it would be shown at the square on Mountaintop Lane. Yesterday!

I glanced sharply up at my father who had stood from his chair and was turning to leave the room. “When did this come?” I asked, clamping down on my impulse to loudly demand an explanation as to why I was just now receiving my mail.

“I have no idea,” he replied. “Why?”

“I am suddenly moved to take my Zephyr out of the shed.”

“And so you should, child,” he said a little absently, for he was already halfway out the door.