TWENTY-SEVEN
Longbourn
Elizabeth
The week following Lady Catherine’s visit was, by any honest accounting, among the most quietly exhausting of Elizabeth’s life.
Not because of what Lady Catherine had said.
Elizabeth had held her ground in that garden and held it still — the claim regarding Anne was false, the implication concerning Darcy’s late wife was cruelty disguised as counsel, and she did not believe either with any part of herself she trusted.
She had walked back into Longbourn that afternoon with her composure entirely intact and her conclusions wholly unchanged.
The difficulty lay in everything that followed.
Her mother had been waiting in the parlour, already bright with speculation and entirely prepared to make the most of whatever had transpired in the garden.
Elizabeth found herself obliged to a small falsehood — to acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.
She made the decision in approximately four seconds and did not afterwards repent of it.
Lady Catherine had come to visit her nephew at Netherfield.
Passing through the neighbourhood, she had thought to call at Longbourn — Mr Collins had spoken of the family and she had wished to make their acquaintance.
As for the private conversation, her ladyship had taken it upon herself to advise her on the abruptness with which she had refused Mr Collins, as it had caused him considerable distress.
Mrs. Bennet received this with enormous satisfaction.
That a woman of Lady Catherine’s consequence should think to stop by and offer guidance upon Elizabeth’s manners was both a personal vindication and a social distinction of the first order.
She praised Lady Catherine’s thoughtfulness at considerable length.
Mr. Bennet, upon his return, observed that the woman had wasted several good hours dispensing useless advice and might better have employed the journey by visiting somewhere worth seeing.
Elizabeth looked across the room at her father as he said it.
He looked back at her. Said nothing further.
She suspected he had not believed a word of her account.
Jane had proved more difficult.
She said nothing the first evening. On the second morning she asked, quietly and without preamble, what Lady Catherine had truly said.
Elizabeth repeated her fabricated story with what she considered admirable steadiness.
Jane listened, too kind to accuse her sister directly of falsehood and too perceptive not to recognise one when she heard it.
Elizabeth could not tell her the truth. Lady Catherine had spoken of Jane and Bingley in that garden as well.
She had included their attachment within the larger accusation of scheming and unsuitability, and Elizabeth would not plant such a seed within Jane’s happiness for any consideration.
Jane deserved to enjoy what she had found without Lady Catherine’s voice lingering at the back of her mind.
So the lie remained, and Jane permitted it to remain, and the slight awkwardness between them became the price Elizabeth paid for it.
It was a small price compared to the alternative.
The larger difficulty was Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Bingley called two days after Lady Catherine’s visit.
He was cheerful and remained nearly two hours.
Darcy did not accompany him. Bingley offered a brief civil excuse closely resembling the sort he had once offered before Darcy’s first call at Longbourn when Elizabeth enquired after him.
Elizabeth received it with a composure she felt rather proud of preserving.
Bingley called again some days later and Darcy still did not come.
The excuse differed very little from the previous one.
Receiving it cost Elizabeth rather more of her composure than before.
She did not believe the Anne and Darcy betrothal story.
She had repeated as much to herself with considerable firmness across several days and believed it still.
But belief and certainty were not the same thing, and silence possessed a way of gradually eroding the distance between them with a patience no argument could rival.
Darcy knew Lady Catherine had come to Longbourn.
Jane had mentioned the visit briefly during Bingley’s first call — and Bingley, having confirmed that Lady Catherine had visited Netherfield as well, was not a man inclined to keep things from his friend.
So Darcy knew. And he had not come. Had not written nor sent word. Nothing whatsoever.
Had Bingley not mentioned him briefly during both visits, Elizabeth might have concluded he had left Hertfordshire altogether. That would almost have been easier. An absence with a geographical explanation was considerably less painful than one without any explanation at all.
As matters stood, she could only conclude that the silence appeared to signify withdrawal.
Whatever had passed between them upon the fallen log, whatever she had understood from it and whatever she had felt in the days since, he had withdrawn from it.
Lady Catherine’s visit had accomplished precisely what it intended, and the gentleman who had asked her, without quite asking her, what she thought of being with him now appeared perfectly prepared to allow his aunt’s interference to stand as the final word upon the matter.
Elizabeth could not entirely dismiss that possibility.
What she found even harder to dismiss was the question Lady Catherine had planted beneath all the claims. Whether Elizabeth truly understood what she was moving toward.
Those doubts had already belonged to her before Lady Catherine ever gave them voice.
Sometimes Elizabeth wished she had never been given cause to recognise that, because she truly possessed no answers.
Because of this, she discovered, to her considerable irritation, that she could not even be properly angry with Mr. Darcy.
Anger required a certainty she did not possess.
She had only silence. Her own silence toward the questions Lady Catherine had awakened within her heart, and his.
Silence could signify anything, and she was growing tired of attempting to determine what.
Everything — every conversation and every activity she had shared with Darcy — now sat within her chest like something which had once been warm and had gradually, without drama, gone cold.
She endeavoured not to dwell upon it. She went about her usual routine and answered when spoken to, reminding herself that Mr. Darcy had made her no offer.
He had merely implied something across the course of several agreeable conversations, and her heart was perfectly capable of recovering from whatever she had imagined existed between them — implied or otherwise.
Unfortunately, her heart appeared wholly unconvinced by the argument.
Exactly one week after their last excursion, Bingley’s carriage came up the lane for the third time.
Elizabeth was seated in the larger drawing room with her parents and sisters when she heard it. Jane hurried to the window to look. Elizabeth did not. She had decided against looking or expecting after his second visit.
“Mr. Bingley,” Jane said, with the softness she always employed in speaking his name. She paused. “And another gentleman.”
Elizabeth looked up from the book which was doing a very poor job of distracting her and joined Jane at the window.
The second gentleman was not one she recognised, though from that distance she could not clearly distinguish his features.
From his dress he appeared a man of considerable consequence. Perhaps a friend of Mr. Bingley’s.
She would find out soon enough.
Bingley entered first, warm and easy as ever, immediately crossing to greet the room. The gentleman accompanying him appeared perhaps thirty, with an ease of manner suggesting long familiarity both with drawing rooms and with circumstances considerably less comfortable.
“Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam,” said Bingley, gesturing toward him. “Darcy’s cousin. He has been kind enough to accompany me today.”
Richard Fitzwilliam bowed toward the room. “I have heard a great deal of Longbourn and its neighbourhood from Bingley,” he said pleasantly. “I hope you will forgive the intrusion. I am newly arrived in Hertfordshire and found myself curious to see something of it beyond Netherfield’s grounds.”
Mrs. Bennet received this with immediate warmth and expressed herself at considerable length. Mr. Bennet offered both gentlemen his hand and before long everyone had settled.
So, this was Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Darcy had described him so thoroughly that sitting not far from him now felt scarcely strange at all.
Elizabeth, however, did not believe the colonel’s presence in Hertfordshire altogether accidental.
Her immediate suspicion was that Richard Fitzwilliam had come for precisely the same reason Lady Catherine had.
Darcy’s relations had been summoned exactly as Lady Catherine threatened, and this represented merely the second instalment of a campaign Elizabeth had never consented to become the subject of.
Then it occurred to her that Darcy had mentioned at Oakham Mount having written to his cousin regarding something connected to Wickham.
A feeling he could not dismiss, he had called it.
Whatever precisely that meant. Perhaps his being in Hertfordshire had something to do with that instead.
Elizabeth could not determine which explanation she found more convincing.
Lydia wished to know what Colonel Fitzwilliam thought of Hertfordshire and whether he found it agreeable compared to other counties he had visited.
Kitty repeated the question before he had fully answered the first. Once refreshments had been served, Mary observed that Hertfordshire had produced several men of distinction throughout history and listened attentively whilst the colonel named several Hertfordshire gentlemen he had encountered.
"And Mr. Darcy," Mr. Bennet said, when the subject had run its course, "he did not accompany you today. He still owes me a game of chess."
“He sends his regrets,” Richard replied pleasantly. “Some urgent estate business has occupied much of his attention of late.”
Elizabeth received this with the composure she had now enjoyed considerable practice maintaining. It was the same excuse Bingley had offered twice before, only delivered now by a different voice. She said nothing.
Mr. Bennet regarded Richard over the top of his newspaper for a moment.
The excuse had been sufficient. Whether it had been convincing was another matter entirely.
He then enquired after the state of the war, which Richard discussed with the easy authority of a soldier who knew considerably more than appeared in the newspapers.
Mr. Bennet listened with genuine interest and asked several follow-up questions that revealed he had been following events closely himself.
The two gentlemen were still engaged upon the subject when Bingley proposed a turn about the garden.
“I should be delighted,” said Richard, an easy smile touching his expression.
Jane rose immediately after Bingley. Elizabeth was not surprised when her mother looked directly toward her and declared, “Lizzy, do go along. Show Colonel Fitzwilliam the east path. It is exceedingly pleasant.”
Elizabeth could not determine whether her mother’s enthusiasm arose from Mr. Darcy’s several visits to collect them for excursions with Bingley, Lady Catherine’s recent call which Mrs. Bennet considered a meaningful connection to the Darcy family, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s relationship to Darcy, or simply her mother seeing yet another eligible gentleman for her second daughter.
Despite her preference, Elizabeth accompanied them because no suitable excuse presented itself.