Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Swiftly, Elizabeth grasped her sister’s arm and dragged her out of sight. Jane would have protested, but Elizabeth succeeded in motioning her into silence and back into her bedroom.
“Elizabeth, that was Mama. We must go down and see her.”
“No, we must not,” said Elizabeth, searching for her sister’s nightgown.
“You must get back into bed immediately. You know you are here entirely by Mama’s contrivance.
What do you think she will say if she sees that you are recovered and ready to return home?
Can you not imagine how indignant she will be to find all her plots and plans so thoroughly undermined?
” She did not mention how that indignation would be expressed; she did not have to, for Jane began to undress hurriedly, urging Elizabeth to help her with buttons and ties.
She was under the sheets just in time, for a knock came at the door shortly after, a maid sent to enquire whether Miss Bennet was ready to receive her mother.
Jane squeezed her eyes shut as Elizabeth opened the door a crack and whispered that her sister had just that minute closed her eyes and that she, Elizabeth, would come down.
When she arrived downstairs, she found her mother and Lydia ensconced in the drawing room, drinking tea and talking with all their usual thoughtless inanity.
Mrs Bennet was extolling Jane’s virtues to a fascinated Mr Bingley and a highly suspicious Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst. “I have no idea what could have happened to Jane, for she has not had a day’s illness since she was very small.
Such a healthy young girl, and as for her temperament, you could not wish for a sweeter—no, nor a kinder—and although I say it—who should not—she is a girl in whom beauty of face is just a sign of the greater beauty within. ”
Meanwhile, Lydia was attempting to persuade Mr Bingley to hold a ball.
“…For with the militia newly arrived in the village, there shall be partners for all, and I shall not have to stand up with Mr Wright who does not know his Sir Roger de Coverley from his Gathering Peascods, and even if he did, he does not have a red coat and a sword.”
When Elizabeth entered, she was assailed with enquiries from Mrs Bennet about Jane’s health, and she knew she was not the only person in the room to read her mother’s determination that Jane stay exactly where she was for the time being.
Mrs Bennet’s elephantine ideas of sophistication were transparent to anyone of ordinary intelligence.
Luckily, Mr Bingley seemed too interested in and concerned for Jane to have noticed.
Once Mrs Bennet had assured herself that her plans were—as she considered it—working to perfection, she attempted to gather up Lydia and depart. Lydia, however, had not given up her attack upon their host and his hospitality, which gave Elizabeth a chance to enquire after her father.
In the background, Lydia finally received the promise she had been begging for, but it meant little compared to Mrs Bennet’s news.
She took Elizabeth’s arm and turned her away from the party.
“He is no worse, Lizzy, but I cannot say he is any better. That horrid cough—and he does not seem to sleep. And now that dreadful Mr Collins is coming to inspect Longbourn and work out how soon he can put us all out into the hedgerows, and what I shall do without Mr Bennet, I do not know.” For the first time ever, Elizabeth could see what her mother would look like as an old woman; her exasperation drained away, and she helped Mrs Bennet into the family coach with more tenderness than—her conscience reproached her—she had shown for some time.
The day was fine, and after she had waved the coach away, she took a turn about the gardens. She could see where the neglect of several years was being repaired and found a warm, sunny terrace where she could sit and consider her situation.
Neither she nor Jane could stay for more than another night.
Quite apart from the encroachment on Mr Bingley’s hospitality, she was wild to be home to see how her father did.
Tomorrow, yes—she would request the loan of a coach tomorrow, and they would both return, even if, as seemed likely, nothing was settled between Jane and Mr Bingley.
Indeed, while Jane kept to her bed, nothing could be settled.
Well, at least when they returned home, they would face Mrs Bennet’s objections in decent privacy.
Having thus determined her course of action, she set off back into the house.
As she passed through the hall on her way to see Jane and Miss Darcy, she heard Miss Bingley’s voice raised in complaint.
“Charles, you cannot possibly mean to gratify that dreadful chit and hold a ball here in these savage backwoods.”
“Yes, I do, Caroline. It is time we took up our position in the society of the neighbourhood.” Elizabeth could hear him shaking out a newspaper, the gentleman’s ever-ready resource in times of domestic dispute.
Miss Bingley was not that easily out-manoeuvred. “But I am sure the poor, dear captain is far too ill to be disturbed by the society afforded by country neighbours.”
Mr Bingley, like many good-natured men before him, had been pushed too far, and he had obviously decided to make a stand.
“My dear Caroline, Darcy has seen considerably coarser society than he will see at our ball, and if he overtires himself again, he may retire and lie down until he feels better.”
“But—”
“Next full moon should give us ample opportunity to make preparations and send out invitations. May I leave that to you? Or shall I leave it all to Mrs Needham?”
As she climbed the stairs towards the bedchambers, Elizabeth wondered whether that last comment had been innocently made or whether Mr Bingley had unsuspected Machiavellian depths.
That night, both Miss Darcy and the hitherto-unseen Mrs Darcy came down to dinner, arriving a little after Elizabeth and Jane.
Mrs Darcy was a small, colourless woman, rather younger than she had expected; indeed, she seemed little older than the stepson on whose arm she entered.
Both ladies were dressed simply, and Miss Darcy’s gown had quite obviously been darned.
From their expressions, the sight did not escape either Miss Bingley or Mrs Hurst, although both ladies exerted themselves to be charming and hospitable.
Neither mother nor daughter contributed much to the conversation at table.
Miss Darcy was quite obviously shy, and Miss Bingley was soon using her for a sort of conversational target practice, directing a stream of bright, false chatter in the young lady’s general direction without waiting for any response.
Mr Bingley attempted to speak to Mrs Darcy but soon retired, defeated in the face of a thin trickle of ‘Yes, sirs’ and ‘No, sirs’, and it was left to Jane to do her best to entertain and put the older lady at her ease.
The captain, in response to Elizabeth’s question, professed himself quite recovered and spent the meal staring worriedly at his sister and her mother. In an effort to enliven the evening, Elizabeth thought to ask Mr Bingley how he and the captain had come to be friends.
Mr Bingley seized on the topic at once. “We met in France,” he said, adding hurriedly, “in the Peace, of course. My father sent me over as soon as the treaty was signed. I think he hoped I would acquire a little town bronze. I met Darcy a few miles outside Calais when Boney broke the peace and started detaining travellers. I did not much care for the idea of the fortress at La B?che; the rumour was it was most unpleasant. Captain Darcy and I were in the same hotel and both decided to skip the place and try for the coast.” He smiled gaily.
“Dashed horrible it was too. Took us a week to sneak through France, raining all the way, and then we had to wait ’til Darcy found us a fishing boat he could sail to England. ”
“You make it sound much more exciting that it was,” interrupted the captain. “We were not twenty miles from the coast, and I had every confidence we would meet the Channel Fleet—and we did, less than five miles from shore. And once we did, we were home and dry.”
“Not exactly dry,” protested Mr Bingley, and went on to describe the hardships of life in a war sloop of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. “While the hanging cots are very comfortable, I regret I never got used to the way the walls kept opening up and squirting me with ice-cold seawater.”
This at least had the effect of distracting Miss Bingley from her pursuit of Miss Darcy, and the rest of the dinner passed in her commiserations to the captain for the rigours of his life afloat and his attempts to assure her that, as captain of a ship of the line, it had been many years since he had slept in a shower-bath.
When the ladies retired, with Mr Bingley’s pledge that the gentlemen would not be long, Miss Bingley seemed ready to recommence her assault on Miss Darcy.
Elizabeth, however, was prepared. She affected to see signs of fatigue, where in truth there was only shyness and discomfort, and suggested that Mrs Darcy and her daughter retire.
The eagerness with which Miss Darcy seized on the proposal soon persuaded Elizabeth that she had been right to act.
The two Darcy ladies retired, and Elizabeth and Jane went up with the younger lady to see she had everything she needed.
Once Georgiana was settled for the night and a maid was seeing to Mrs Darcy, Jane, too, retired, exhausted by the evening after her recent illness. Elizabeth, however, went downstairs, resolving to request the carriage for the morrow.