Chapter 9 #2
“There was once a castle very like Pemberley, but we shall call it Dragonstone, because there was also a very sad dragon,” Bingley began. “He was sad because he was lonely.”
“How come he isn’t friends with the friendly dragon?” asked Samuel.
“I’ll get there.” Bingley laughed. “This dragon was sad because he is responsible.”
“That’s a big word,” Alice noted. “Why is he responsible?”
“Because he must guard everyone he loves. He guarded his castle. He guarded his tortoise, Sir Bertram; he guarded his friends, but most of all, he guarded himself.”
“Why?”
“The sad dragon had a terrible secret,” Bingley’s voice dropped conspiratorially. “He was frightened.”
“Dragons are not frightened,” Samuel objected.
“This one was. He was frightened because he did not know how to talk to people without roaring, and every time he roared, the people ran away, and every time the people ran away, the dragon decided that roaring must be the correct approach, since nobody stayed long enough to tell him otherwise.”
Rose leaned against Bingley’s chest and sucked her thumb. “Was the tortoise his friend?
“Sir Bertram was his only friend. They had known each other for sixty years, and Sir Bertram never ran away, because tortoises are far too sensible to be frightened by noise. He simply pulled his head in and waited until the roaring stopped, and then he came back out and ate a strawberry, and the dragon felt better.”
“What happened next?” Alice set down her pencil.
“One day the dragon met a princess.”
“The sunshine princess?” Samuel jumped up in recognition, pointing to Jane.
“No, not the sunshine princess. This princess was sharp and had excellent aim with an apple. When the sad dragon roared, she threw an apple into his mouth and told him that his roaring was rude, his fire unnecessary, and his scales needed polishing. And the dragon, who had never been spoken to that way, was so astonished that he stopped roaring and just… stood there. Looking at her.”
“Did the princess like him?” Rose whispered.
“The princess thought he was the worst dragon she had ever met. She told him so, repeatedly, with great eloquence. But the dragon did something that surprised everyone, most of all himself. He gave Sir Bertram away.”
“Why?”
“Because there was another princess—a very beautiful one, the one the dragon had done a bad thing to, and the tortoise was his way of saying sorry. He carried Sir Bertram all the way across the kingdom to a house full of children who needed him, and the dragon visited every week to bring strawberries and clean the tortoise’s shell, but really, he came because the sharp princess was there, and he could not seem to stop coming. ”
“Did the dragon tell the truth?” Alice asked, and her eyes darted to me.
I pretended not to notice, counting the number of sides of the patterns on Sir Bertram’s shell.
“The sad dragon fell in love with the sharp princess,” Bingley lowered his voice into a hush.
“And he told the sharp princess every mean thing he did—all the fire he had breathed, the damage he had caused, and it was the bravest thing the dragon had ever done, because the princess might have sent him away forever.”
“Did she?”
The children waited with bated breath, and Bingley glanced at me, so brief and without guile, and then he looked each child in the eye.
“She told him she needed time to think. And the dragon went home and sat in his empty castle without his tortoise and without his princess, and he waited. Because dragons who have learned to stop roaring can also learn to be patient.”
“I want the dragon to come back,” Rose said, with the fierce conviction of a child who has never considered the possibility that love stories might not resolve. “Tell Sir Bertram to write him a letter.”
“I think,” Bingley said, and his voice was gentler than I had ever heard it, “that the dragon needs to hear from the princess. Not from the tortoise. Not from the sunshine princess. From her. Because the dragon gave up everything—his castle, his fire, his tortoise, his pride—and the only thing he kept was the hope that the sharp princess might forgive him. And forgiveness is not something you can send through a tortoise, however noble. It has to come from the person who was hurt.”
“But the dragon was sorry!” Samuel protested. “He fixed it! He brought the tortoise and the strawberries, and he told the truth. What kind of mean princess doesn’t forgive a dragon who does all that?”
My hand was at my throat, pressing against the pulse that was hammering too hard, too fast. I stood in my aunt’s garden listening to a fairy tale about a dragon and a tortoise and felt every word land.
What kind of mean princess doesn’t forgive a dragon who does all that?
I said something about the washing, or the tea, or some domestic fiction that no one believed. And then I escaped through the kitchen door and up the stairs with a deliberateness meant to look calm but felt like drowning.
Sitting at the edge of my bed, I pressed my hands flat against my knees, and felt the shaking start.
It started in my fingers, a fine, helpless tremor that crept up my arms and into my chest. I did not try to stop it. I had used up all my self-control since the lending library, and there was none left.
I had roared, not loudly but with wit, and I had breathed the fire of judgment, criticism, and contempt.
I had heaped coals on Darcy’s head from the moment he injured me at first sight, and I reinterpreted his kindness as orchestration, his goodness as maneuvering—even his attention on me was a performance to achieve his own ends—which was, as he so plainly stated, to get me to love him.
I built an impenetrable fortress and filtered every subsequent encounter through the walls I had erected.
And hadn’t I just tried to manage Bingley’s proposal?
I had almost stopped it because I felt he had been too easily misled.
I had counseled Jane to wait, to test him, to prove to herself that he was constant.
I had even, God forbid, and this was to my eternal shame—told her not to allow Darcy to call on her because I wished to protect her—no, I was jealous.
A knock at the door. Jane’s quiet knock—two taps, a pause, a third.
“Lizzy? May I come in?”
“Yes.”
She entered and closed the door behind her and looked at me with the expression she reserved for moments when she believed I was in more pain than I would willingly reveal.
Her engagement glow was still on her, warm as candlelight.
She did not speak, but lay beside me on the bed, the way we had done as girls at Longbourn when the world was too large, and the bedroom was the only country we could govern.
We stared at each other across the pillows. Her blue eyes. My dark ones. The beautiful sister and the sharp one.
“Oh, Lizzy.” Jane’s hand found mine on the counterpane. “You are both suffering. The sad dragon and the sharp princess.”
“Bingley has the subtlety of a cathedral bell.”
“He didn’t mean it badly…”
“Apparently.” I closed my eyes, and the tears I held at bay since the lending library on Half Moon Street seeped out without sound, which was worse than sobbing, because soundless tears are the ones that have been waiting the longest.
“Lizzy, don’t take it so hard. It was only a children’s story.”
“Yes, but it told me things I’m not proud of. It showed me how Bingley forgave Darcy without question, without recrimination. He simply accepted the truth with gladness, and now, the two of you are happy, and I’m happy for you.”
“I know you are. These tears aren’t because of the story or my happiness. Lizzy, I believe you care for Darcy, and you’ve been fighting it tooth and nail because he hurt you.”
“I’ve been roaring and breathing fire on him ever since. And I have been protecting you, which is just another form of fire breathing. I’m exhausted from all the guarding. And sad. And jealous.”
“Jealous?” Jane’s eyes widened. “Of who?”
“I was jealous of you.”
The words came out scraped and ugly, and Jane’s expression did not change, but her hand tightened on mine.
“Not of Bingley. Not of the engagement. I am happy for you—desperately, unbearably happy—and if you tell anyone I cried, I will deny it. I was jealous because you are the beautiful one, Jane. I have always been the sharp one, and the world made its preference clear early on, and I have spent twenty years making the most of what I was given.”
“Lizzy—”
“Do not say anything nice or gracious because I won’t hear it.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“At the Meryton assembly, Bingley pointed at me and said one of her sisters is quite pretty. Not beautiful. Not the jewel of the county. Quite pretty, which is the compliment you give a woman when you want to sound generous without committing to admiration.” I drew a shaking breath.
“And then Darcy said he was not going to dance with a woman slighted by other men. Then Bingley turned back to you, the light followed him, and I was left standing behind a potted fern with Charlotte Lucas. I laughed, because laughing was the only alternative to crawling under the refreshment table and weeping into the fruit punch.”
Jane’s eyes were bright. “You acted like you did not mind.”
“Because I did not want it to matter. And I could not admit that Darcy’s opinion, a man I did not know—had the power to wound me.
So I turned it into contempt. I wore it like my armor, and every time he did something decent—every time he brought the tortoise or the strawberries, every time he knelt on a carpet or walked beside me at a gallery or shortened his stride to match mine on a pavement—I told myself it was strategy, because admitting it was genuine would have meant taking the armor off and admitting I was just the girl behind the potted fern. ”
I let the tears flow freely—no sense holding them back. No sense reclaiming my pride.
“And Jane, I thought you were soft, that your habit of seeing good in everyone was a flaw. You needed my protection, or so I told myself, because it gave me purpose. I was not the pretty one, but I was the perceptive one, and I defended that territory with every observation and cutting remark I could muster.”
“And Darcy threatened that,” Jane said softly.
“Darcy destroyed it. Because he did exactly what I do. He stood at the center of a situation and arranged it according to his judgment. And when he was wrong, I told him so. I accused him of managing for his own purposes, but I have done the same. He decided you did not love Bingley. I decided he was incapable of goodness. And we were both wrong.”
“Then admit it and forgive him,” Jane said, as if the solution were as simple. “Papa always said that a man’s character is not determined by his worst mistake but by what he does when he recognizes it.”
Jane repeated that tired old adage—the one I had shared with Darcy.
“He did exactly that when he set out to bring you and Bingley together. He recognized his error in siding with the Bingley sisters. He admitted as much, but he didn’t tell me the truth until… until it was too late.”
“Too late for what?” Jane’s face was completely open. “For forgiveness? But Lizzy…”
“Hear me out.” I wiped my eyes furiously. “I’m not like you. I cannot just forget and forgive. I need to analyze, to anticipate, and to guard against future infractions. I cannot trust…”
“But what did he do that was so wrong? I take it he told you his mistakes, and when he told Bingley, Charles waved it off and insisted he accompany him to Gracechurch Street.”
“He told me too late,” I repeated. “He wanted me to love him before I knew the worst of him.”
“Oh…” My sister’s mouth rounded into a wide circle. “And do you love him, Lizzy? Is that the problem?”
I nodded and then shook my head, unsure which question I was answering. “The point is I fell first without knowing, and… I don’t know if I can trust him again.”
“For wanting your love?” She reached for my shoulder. “Would you tell him you drool on your pillowcase?”
“Jane, that is not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” She laughed. “The man wants your regard, and perhaps he should have been more forthcoming, but Lizzy, you hated him already, and then, if he had told you—which, I daresay, this business is not your business, but between Darcy and Bingley, affecting me, not you—but if he had volunteered on that first day. I’m bringing the tortoise to get my foot in the door so I can speak to Miss Bennet and I will also give Miss Elizabeth more reason to hate me so she will not mistake any of my attentions… then where would you be?”
“Better than I am now, weeping onto the same pillowcase I apparently drool on.” My eyes watered, and the laugh was wet and noisy, aching, and then Jane laughed, sweetly like musical bells. Two sisters, one pretty enough and the other magnificently beautiful.
“I am sorry,” I said. “For trying to manage you. For presuming to know your heart better than you knew it yourself. For treating your gentleness as weakness and your forgiveness as na?vety. You were right about Darcy. You were right from the beginning. I could not bear it, because your being right meant I was wrong, and I have built my entire identity on never being wrong.”
“You were not wrong about everything. He did do a terrible thing.”
“He did. And then he undid it. He crossed London with a tortoise, gave up his pride, and fell apart confessing in a library. I walked away, and now I am lying on a bed in Cheapside with marmalade on my sleeve and my face looks like a boiled pudding, and I do not know where to begin.”
Jane propped herself up on one elbow. “It’s rather simple. Tell him what you want. No wit. No argument, just trust that it will be enough.”
“I am afraid.” I sat up, wiping my face with my sleeve, which was already ruined. “But then, so was the sad dragon.”
“Yes. I’m afraid deep inside, we all are afraid,” said Jane. “I hide it behind charitable opinions. I reason that if Miss Bingley did not see me on the street, then it would hurt less than her deliberate cut. You, on the other hand…”
“Will breathe fire and roar.” I went to the writing desk in the corner and sat down and took a piece of Mrs. Gardiner’s stationery—plain cream, unpretentious, smelling faintly of the lavender she kept in the drawer—and I dipped the pen.
The nib hovered over the paper for a long time. I thought of all the things I could write: explanations, justifications, carefully constructed paragraphs that demonstrated my reasoning and acknowledged my errors with appropriate nuance.
But in the end, I wrote three lines.
Mr. Darcy,
Please come to Gracechurch Street. Not for the tortoise or the children. For me.
Elizabeth
I folded it, sealed it, and gave it to Sarah to send. Then I sat at the desk, hands pressed flat to the wood, holding still, waiting for the shaking to stop. And it did.