Last Christmas at Longbourn #3
“I heard you and Papa talking.” Catherine sat beside her mother on the sofa. “He is away at school and must be very lonely. Can he not come stay with us and you be his teacher? Just as you tutor us, like Grandmama taught you and Aunties?”
Elizabeth brushed a curl from her eldest’s forehead. “I would like nothing better, dear.” Considering a moment, she added, “But… this is not a matter for you children to concern yourselves, nor should you be listening to grown up conversations. Say no more about this, especially to Father.”
The children’s nanny, Judith, entered the room to gather them to the nursery for midday tea. “A letter has arrived for you, Ma’am.” She held out an envelope for Elizabeth, who thanked her before sending the children off. It was addressed in Jane’s hand from Netherfield Hall.
Dearest Lizzy,
I have distressing news about our Father. He is ill and has been so for some time. I fear the worst if he does not improve soon. Do make haste to Longbourn at your earliest convenience. I wish there were better things to report at this time of the year, but I am as ever…
Your loving sister,
Jane
***
“She will come for Christmas? Lizzy, you must see she does.” Her father begged her.
Mr. Bennet’s sudden illness, she learned, had progressed from a slight cold to a racking cough settling in his chest, leaving him fatigued and sickly in a manner of weeks. Lizzy berated herself for not coming sooner, though she hastened to Longbourn by week’s end of receiving Jane’s letter.
“You shall have many Christmases to spend with all of us,” she bravely assured him, spooning another draught of broth to his fevered lips. “But, of course, we all would relish seeing Lydia again.”
“Three years it has been,” he sputtered out before another raspy cough rattled his breath. “Ireland… she and Wickham were last in Ireland.”
“Yes, Papa.” Elizabeth had never fully trusted nor forgiven Wickham for his treachery and illicit dealings with her youngest sister.
Lydia may have her faults, and still, now a married matron, never fully relinquished her capricious ways, nor had her husband.
Yet it was only Lydia that her father, in his illness, wished to see.
“We shall all be together for Christmas if that is your wish. And next summer, we shall all take a summer by the sea. T’would do us all good, especially the children. ”
He smiled, a hint of the old twinkle persisted. “Yes, children love the seaside. Mr. Corwin recommends it.”
“And your licorice root tea, Papa,” she said, “It will ease your cough.”
“Bah! A trifling cold, ‘tis all.” Again, the merry glint she knew so well.
“Yes, Mama said as much the day she sent Jane out in the rain to Netherfield Hall.”
“And… you rushed to her side, just as you have… mine.”
“And just like Jane, I shall see your health restored.”
In the years since the Wickhams’ marriage, a cloud of scandal remained over them; never were they received in polite society again.
Wickham now released from the army, never quite settled on any permanent position.
It was rumored the couple remained one step ahead of creditors while pursuing a libertine lifestyle.
Lizzy knew not how she would bring her prodigal sister home again, but she must see to it.
Christmas at Longbourn it would be, but it meant upending their plans for a lavish holiday party at Pemberley in favor of a quieter, homely gathering in her childhood home.
Downstairs, she found her mother and Kitty talking quietly as they sat down to supper.
Pausing in the doorway, Elizabeth beheld the room in a moment’s reflection: all of them together for Christmas again in this house.
Memories flitted unbidden, taking her back to this room, unchanged over the years.
Father’s chair at the head, Mother directly opposite.
The same chintz curtains catching the muted winter light.
She was a young girl of twelve, Jane a bare year older and the three younger sisters, little girls nattering over the last cherry tart.
How innocent and carefree their world seemed then and never would be again. How very far they had all come.
“There you are, Lizzy,” her mother called from her seat. “Do sit down and eat. We have much to discuss. Whatever shall we do if Mr. Bennet does not survive the winter? How shall I ever turn over our lovely home over to that Mr. Collins and his brood?”
The spell broken, the memory faded. She would return to Pemberley and lay another task upon her husband, one involving her ‘family obstacles’ as once he deemed them.
Even still a decade later, three children in the fold, and his first assessment of her family irked and stung.
Was it all truly more trouble than perhaps any amount of happiness was worth?
***
Three days before Christmas and there was still much to do.
Clothes were packed for a journey from Pemberley to Longbourn.
Regrets sent to all invited guests, promising a grand Twelfth Night Ball instead of Christmas Day.
The children were reassured, “Father Christmas will indeed not forget you if you hang your stockings at Longbourn instead of home.” And just when Lizzy, weary of it all, pondered that perhaps Mr. Scroggins was right about the holiday being a ‘humbug’, Darcy awakened her early one Saturday morning to view the first true snowfall of the season out their bedroom window.
“My dearest, a sleigh ride is in order.” He nuzzled against her disheveled braids.
“Before breakfast?”
“Unless you have another… idea?” Hands gripped around her waist left no doubt to his ‘other idea’. Girlishly wriggling from his grasp, she leaped to don her riding cloak and furs for a stimulating morning ride through snow-laden fields.
“He simply will not bring his son home for the holiday.” Darcy helped his wife into the sleigh and arranged the furs and woolen blanket neatly around them. “There is nothing more to say. The man is a stubborn, tight-fisted misanthrope if ever there was.”
“I still wish there were something we could do for the child.” Lizzy pushed her hands deeper into the fur muff and wiggled her booted toes closer to the coal box on the sleigh floor on this wintry December morning.
“It is not Lewis’s fault, and he need not be left at school alone throughout the holiday. ”
“He has his reasons,” Darcy lightly snapped the reins and the horse moved forward away from the carriage house and down the lane toward the road, harness jingling in the frosty stillness. “He calls Christmas a humbug. I am no great reveler, myself, but certainly not a misanthrope.”
Lizzy placed a mittened hand on his arm. “You have your moments, dearest, but the years have quite mellowed you.”
“I have had little choice, when it comes to you and the children.” He offered a tender rebuff at his lovely bride of not quite eleven years.
Softening into a loving smile, she then turned sober. “I suppose it cannot be easy this time of year after losing our dear Anne on a Christmas Eve. Perhaps, I should be more charitable in understanding his sorrow. I miss her dearly too, but…’tis not the boy’s fault.”
“No, certainly not.” Darcy turned the sleigh around the bend, the winter sunrise warmed the horizon, sending rays of light across the drifting snow.
It was the first snowfall of the year. How the children would delight upon awakening to this early Christmas present, as she had to a sleigh ride before breakfast.
“I’ve a mind to rescue poor Lewis from school, just for the day, now that we will be so close while at Longbourn.” A foolish prospect this was, but one that brought devilish delight.
“And what then? Do you truly think the school would allow us to abduct a student with no proof of guardianship?” He flicked the reins to ease the horse onward. “I should rather not spend the day interrogated by constables or sitting in jail.”
Lizzy playfully smacked his arm. “Oh! Mr. Darcy do not be so dramatic. He should be imprisoned, given his treatment of the Collinses no less. Can he really turn them out, simply because he has no regard for the church?”
“Scroggins is in a prison of his own making, my love.” His voice faded. “As to the Collinses…” An inhale and release of frosted respiration. “But, take courage, dearest. We know not…”
“…the day nor the hour…” she wearily finished his thought. “I am not inclined to accept this… No, not yet.” She turned her head, letting the tears threatening to crest, freeze and mingle with the snowy breeze.
“The future is uncertain, but your mother and sister are welcome at Pemberley and, Bingley assures me, at Netherfield, if it comes to that. Collins would have a secure future as well.”
“Someday, but... not yet.” Lizzy brushed a bit of snow dust blown onto her blanket before finding solace in the frosted trees where a chipmunk scrambled up a trunk and into a hole.
“I hoped it would not be quite so soon.” A fleeting memory of Father pulling her young sisters in a sledge around Longbourn’s snow laden field took her back to a place where life was simpler, they were all younger, her father stronger.
The return home was silent, the sleigh runners swishing across the snow packed road.
The muffle of clopping hooves and jingling bells offered a soothing cadence to Lizzy’s tormented mind, a balm for her frazzled soul.
A carol of her own making chimed in her head.
We will all be together at Longbourn. Let Sorrow’s expense be banned from hence, all payment have greater delay.
We’ll spend the long nights in cheerful delights to drive the cold winter away. Christmas at Longbourn.
That was all that mattered.
***