The Zephyr

Chapter 34

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

AN EXASPERATING BAGGAGE

A few hasty preparations were made for my return home in order for the small parsonage to accommodate Lady Lucas, her maid, and her many trunks. She was, after all, a product of the same generation that produced my mother, and I had a strong feeling she would bring with her an entire storehouse of possessions to have at hand. My uncle Gardiner in London sent his coach for me with one of my aunt’s maids for company, and in a sober state, I went to Rosings Park to sit with Lady Catherine one last time.

Instead of exuberant and proud, Mr Collins walked alongside me towards the great house as a forlorn and anxious version of himself. It struck me then he was not quite as absurd a person as I had once thought. If I was not mistaken, he greatly missed Charlotte’s steady support while facing Lady Catherine. Had he actually grown attached to her? I thought perhaps he might have .

“Abed!” the lady had cried upon hearing his mournful explanation.

I felt compelled to help my cousin, since it was I who had placed him directly in the path of her roars.

“She has been exceedingly tired, ma’am.”

“And? A little exertion and exercise are all one needs when one is tired, as I have so often told Anne.”

I fell mute in the face of such a profoundly unfeeling reply. What could be said to move such a hardened person? I felt compelled to say something, so I took a breath and raised my eyes to Lady Catherine’s.

“She is pale and uncomfortable, unable to sleep, and furthermore, she has sent for her mother and must rest pending that lady’s advice. Meanwhile, Lady Lucas’s arrival requires that I make way for her. This visit must serve as my leave-taking of you, Lady Catherine. I thank you for your hospitality and for the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of Rosings Park, ma’am.”

I purposely did not look at Mr Darcy as I solemnly made this announcement, for I feared some expression or darting look of misery would betray my regret, the totality of my feelings for the gentleman, or even the nature and depth of our understanding.

Lady Catherine, however, had no attention to spare for Mr Darcy, and she temporarily forgot Charlotte’s defection as she began to chastise me.

“Leaving! But you have only lately arrived!”

“Yes, ma’am. However, my mother has only allowed me this visit on the condition that my stay be short, for we are to have a wedding at home in a little over a month.”

“A wedding! Pray tell, who is marrying that you must leave in such haste? ”

“My eldest sister, Jane, is marrying a gentleman who has leased an estate nearby.”

“A gentleman of fortune, you say?”

This interrogation had quickly become so tiresome I found my temper rising against my firmest resolution not to show my teeth to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Just as I opened my mouth, however, I was interrupted.

“My friend Bingley is marrying Miss Bennet.”

Mr Darcy had rescued me, delivering this news in his sparsest, most impatient tone. The sound of his voice, firm with finality and unimpressed by Lady Catherine’s disobliging nature, rendered me helpless against my resolve not to look at him, and I let my eyes swim in his for perhaps too long.

Something in this news that my sister was marrying advantageously, coupled with the unspoken current of extreme tension in the room greatly disturbed the lady, but she was not perceptive and seemed not to know what precisely had vexed her. When Miss de Bourgh stifled a cough into her enormous handkerchief, she turned her ire on the lady’s poor companion.

“Why is my daughter ill?” she demanded. “Have you not dosed her properly?”

The scene then collapsed. Mrs Jenkinson abased herself with apologies while simultaneously trying to hold her charge upright in her chair. Both Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr Darcy stood, and without permission, supported their cousin out of the room, while her companion, still babbling about having done just as she was told, stumbled behind as she bowed herself out of Lady Catherine’s presence.

“Come, sir,” I whispered to Mr Collins, “we should make our excuses now. ”

For once, he was too overset to overrule me, and in between Lady Catherine’s raging demands that her nephews return to her side, that her daughter compose herself and also return, that the servants convey her orders, and other angry bellowing to no purpose, we thanked her, and we also bowed our way out.

Late that same afternoon, Mr Darcy arrived at the parsonage. He entered the parlour where Mr Collins sat fretfully in front of a cold hearth and handed over a basket of hot house fruits to the maid.

“For Mrs Collins,” he said to her. Then after greeting my cousin, he added, “I hope your wife is resting comfortably, sir.”

Mr Collins had jumped to his feet and was in the midst of assuring Mr Darcy that Charlotte would come downstairs to greet him properly if he would only wait for a minute for him to fetch her.

“By no means bring her down, sir, only be so kind as to convey my best wishes. I am on my way to walk in the park before dark.” Indeed, before my cousin could blink, the gentleman had dipped out the front door. With his spirits greatly revived from such reassuring notice, Mr Collins snatched the basket from Cora’s hands and dashed up the stairs, undoubtedly to tell Charlotte of Mr Darcy’s condescension.

With my shawl in one hand flying behind me, I took the chance thus offered and ran out the door, down the lane, through the gate and into the woodlands of Rosings Park. The object of my pursuit outstripped me in the gathering dusk and had quickly disappeared into the trees, but I never questioned where I would find him .

“You are leaving,” he said from where he waited in the deepening shadows of the lime walk as I ran towards him.

“I must,” I said with my chest heaving as I came to a stop. “And though I love to look at you, Mr Darcy, might I admit that I will be glad to leave this place?”

“I warned you, did I not? But tell me, did we succeed?”

“With our intention for this visit? I do not rightly know.”

“Remind me to strangle the idiot who suggested a secret engagement,” he then said. “I do not wish to be parted for another second.”

“If it is of any comfort, Charlotte most certainly suspects you of an interest in me which she believes to be honourable. Thankfully, she has not been exposed to the less respectable suspicions of my small-minded neighbours who wish with all their hearts for a scandal. Still, I do not know that she has written any of this in her letters home. But the passage of time alone may have been useful since neither of us have been on anyone’s mind in Hertfordshire. All the talk is of Mr Bingley’s upcoming engagement ball.”

“At best a diversion, then. Ah well. I shall see you at your sister’s wedding, and thereafter, I do not plan to waste any time in collecting you.”

“Like a debt upon a note of hand?”

“Like a treasure from an exotic land to be proudly brought home.”

“Shall I have a pedestal?”

“Hmm. Made of gold and marble and ebony and jade.”

“How dreadful! Shall I not look like a dowdy muffin teetering atop such a splendid perch?”

“Very well, I could collect you like baggage, if you prefer.”

“Because I am a baggage, you mean? ”

“You are an exasperating baggage,” he grumbled, pulling me into a long, sweet kiss.

After we had satisfied our hunger for this wordless exchange, I was sufficiently emboldened to ask, “And your cousin? Has he opined upon the matter?”

“Gentlemen do not, as a rule, judge one another’s choices.”

“Yet, you judged Bingley’s inclination for my sister. Do not deny it.”

Mr Darcy’s eyes searched mine. “I do not. The thought of being regularly exposed to your pertness was sufficiently threatening to make me forget myself. It was shamefully presumptuous of me, and I do not need to be reminded of something which has caused me such regret.”

I felt I must soften his self-reproach somehow, and looking sweetly up at him, I said, “Well, in your defence, the thought of your friend being related to my family did not help matters, did it? Mr Wickham perhaps did us a favour in that respect. The worst of our transgressions against your standards have been filed off by misfortune and reversals, though we are hardly elegant just yet. Perhaps time and exposure will render us quite dignified.”

“You may entertain any notion you please, Elizabeth, but let us leave Wickham out of our love affair, shall we?”

“By all means, let us pretend him away.”

By this time, his lightness of manner had returned a little, and he spoke nearly teasingly. “I know very well you are using him to poke at what you have long considered to be my arrogance.”

I offered him a little moue of angelic innocence. “My, but how insightful you have become, Mr Darcy!”

“My survival depends upon being one step in front of you, Swiftling. But it is full dark now, and I had better see you safely to the parsonage.”

The following day, Mr Gardiner’s coach arrived for me. I bade Charlotte a heartfelt farewell, bolstered by the fact that my friend would soon have the smothering attentions of a mother to support her through the final two months of her confinement. A little rest had restored her colour, and she had even got out of bed, had breakfast with Mr Collins and me, and waved me away at the door. This improvement, and the likelihood that Lady Lucas and I were crossing paths somewhere between Hertfordshire and Kent, relieved me of the burden of guilt at having abandoned my friend.

I then turned my attention towards my future.