Chapter 21 The Morning After #3
At the end of April, Darcy and Bingley delivered Elizabeth and Jane to Longbourn. Mrs Annesley accompanied them and proved a more vigilant chaperone than Georgiana.
While Mr Bennet had not been pleased at the idea of such a prideful and reticent man as his son-in-law when Darcy first came to Longbourn, he was resigned to the match.
Darcy was hardly the sort of man whom one could refuse anything, much less a daughter’s hand, not when he had five to marry off.
However, it did not take long after Elizabeth’s return for him to see some hint of what Elizabeth perceived in him.
In mid-May, Elizabeth relinquished the name Bennet for Darcy in the small chapel at Longbourn.
It was the same chapel in which her parents and generations before them had wed, and though her mother maintained that the church in Meryton was more fashionable, this was one point on which Elizabeth would not yield.
The idea of marrying in the small chapel appealed to her, and she was determined that her wedding should take place there.
The wedding was everything Elizabeth could have wished for, but the wedding breakfast was an affair that would have been spoken of for years, even if her mother complained there had not been enough time to prepare for it.
Still, after more than two hours, Elizabeth needed a respite from her mother and the guests who still lingered over the sumptuous breakfast prepared for her wedding to a man of ten thousand a year.
A short time later, while Jane helped Elizabeth change into a travelling gown after the wedding, Elizabeth took the opportunity to ask her sister a question she had been wondering about ever since she had arrived in London engaged to Mr Darcy.
Although Mr Bingley had been visiting Jane with some frequency, she seemed reluctant to move beyond a courtship.
To Elizabeth, she wondered if Jane were determined to force Bingley to atone for their months apart.
“Dear Jane”—her smile carried a hint of mischief—“I know you wish Mr Bingley to prove himself capable of acting for himself, but how long do you intend to make him wait?”
“He made me wait for him for months,” Jame said with unmistakable firmness.
“For more than four months, I was heartbroken and convinced he did not want me. While he did not know I was in Town, he made no effort to return to Netherfield and allowed himself to be guided by others. I cannot think of him as I once did, and if he is to win me, he must do more.”
Nodding, Elizabeth understood why she might think that, and was convinced that both partners should enter a marriage with their eyes wide open.
When Jane opened her mouth to explain more fully, Elizabeth lifted a hand, forestalling her from the need to excuse herself.
“I cannot fault you for that, Jane,” she continued.
“Still, I would urge you to do more than smile at him and sit next to him while he speaks to Mama. If you wish to know what sort of man he is, you must speak to him and get him away from our mother. Yes, he has returned to Netherfield, and yes, he continues to call at Longbourn despite Mama’s constant prattling and your silences.
But if you wish to know him, you must speak to him more freely.
” She squeezed Jane’s hand. “Fitzwilliam and I have spoken of inviting you to Pemberley later this summer, and if you wish it, he will invite Mr Bingley as well. Not his sister, mind you—”
Jane did not wait for her to say more. She drew her shoulders back and straightened, colour rising in her cheeks.
Jane exhaled slowly, as though regaining her composure.
“But you are not wrong, Elizabeth. And you may be right that we will have different opportunities to speak away from Longbourn. I have allowed Mama to command the conversation, partly because I did not wish him to know me better.” She hesitated, then gave a small, rueful smile.
“And just perhaps…as a way of punishing him for what he did.”
The newly married couple entered their carriage, bound for a brief wedding trip by the sea. They spent the first two nights in London. During this time, they saw no visitors, kept the knocker off the front door, and spent most of their time within the master’s apartment.
Late in the morning of the third day after their wedding, they set out, travelling west towards Sidmouth, a quieter choice than the more frequented seaside towns.
The journey itself was unhurried, broken into comfortable stages as they stayed in pleasant inns and took long walks to explore whatever they could see at each stop.
By the time they reached the coast, the season was still early enough that the shore lay undisturbed, a circumstance that suited them exceedingly well.
They lodged in a house set above the water. From their rooms, they could hear the sea. Their afternoons were spent on long walks along the narrow cliff paths and the pebbled beach below. They often paused to admire the red sandstone heights enclosing the town, glowing in the sunset light.
Though the air remained brisk and the sea cool in May, they delighted in their time there, rising late, or rather lingering in bed together long after the sun had risen. The residents of Sidmouth neither sought their notice nor intruded upon their privacy.
“Dearest,” Darcy said, as they strolled along the shore arm in arm one afternoon, “though I am persuaded we should have found one another again in the end, I am grateful that I was spared the misery of months or years spent believing you despised me.”
Elizabeth laughed at that. “I should have returned to Hertfordshire resolved to put you out of my mind,” she said, “and I should have failed. I was so very certain of my own judgement, and yet when you left the parsonage, I had begun to regret at least some of what I had said.” She looked up at him then, her smile touched with amusement rather than reproach, and the answering warmth in his eyes told her she was well understood.
“I intended to write you a letter explaining myself,” he said.
“I had begun writing it, attempting to absolve myself in your eyes of what I could, but some impulse persuaded me to pick up a book instead. I believe it was a book, maybe several, that somehow led us through these different events, forcing us to see what we had been blind to otherwise.”
“Had you been a little more obliging when you first entered our local assembly,” Elizabeth taunted in jest, “you might have spared yourself this entire… kerfuffle, as my uncle’s Scottish clerk would say.”
Had the subject not already been well canvassed between them, Darcy might have taken offence. Now he laughed, particularly at her choice of words.
“And had you not been listening to my conversation with Bingley,” he retorted, giving her arm a good-humoured squeeze as they walked, “you might have spared yourself the pleasure of forming so very accurate an opinion of me.”
She laughed, as he had intended, but the sound faded almost as soon as it escaped her, and her steps slowed. “It was not so very accurate. The impression I formed of you was built on lies and misunderstandings, and on my own wounded vanity.”
Darcy turned to her at once. “Had I not insulted you when we first met,” he said, with equal seriousness, “you would not have despised me, and perhaps would have thought more of my character.”