Chapter 11 #3
“Ma’am, we truly are very much frightened for our younger sisters,” Elizabeth said instead, doing her best to keep her voice level and pleasant.
It would not do to agitate her mother into a fit of ‘nerves,’ which seemed to appear whenever anyone presented facts she did not like.
“Truly, you need not believe in Mr Wickham’s perfidy to see the danger.
Would it not be better to be a little cautious, just until the facts can be determined?
No harm could come of it, and a great deal of good. ”
“No harm? No harm, you say, Miss Lizzy,” her mother retorted.
“There is a great deal of harm in hiding yourself away from every eligible man, though you do not see it. Poor Jane is already three-and-twenty without a husband, now that Mr Bingley has gone away, and what will become of us if all my daughters are as determined as yourself to send away marriageable men, I do not know!”
Elizabeth had drawn breath to reply, though she hardly knew in what words, when Mary spoke gravely, responsibly, and quite ruinously for any chance they might have had of convincing Mrs Bennet.
“Really, ma’am,” Mary said austerely, “do you not think this way of going about things is most detrimental to my younger sisters’ characters?
For my part, I am quite convinced of the danger presented by Mr Wickham.
But even if it were not so, great dangers await any young woman who so badly strays from the wise lessons presented by Fordyce and others.
Kitty and Lydia ought to spend less time dancing, and more time thinking about their immortal souls. ”
This brought forth such a tirade from Mrs Bennet on the subjects of entails, hedgerows, husbands, and how one might attain them that all discussion was quite at an end. Even as she agreed with the essence of Mary’s point, Elizabeth could not help wishing that it had been better timed.
When their mother at last dismissed them in favour of Hill with a selection of smelling salts and home remedies, each went to find their own consolation.
Jane went to the stillroom to bury her disappointment in cataloguing the stores, and Mary went to the pianoforte to express herself in a thunderous Beethoven symphony.
Elizabeth returned to her room to stand at the window and think. Her sisters were distraught because they knew they had exhausted their powers, only to leave their family and their neighbourhood as unprotected as ever, but Elizabeth had a very different torment before her.
It was not hopeless — not quite. There was something she could do, only it was uncertain of success, bore risk in its own right, and required her to beg aid from a man to whom she already owed a great deal.
She could ask Mr Darcy for help.
The reality faced, Elizabeth sat down heavily in her chair by the window.
The difficulties were obvious. A young woman could not write to a young, single man of no relation to her.
It would be a scandal of the first rate if she were caught doing so, and unfair to Mr Darcy as well as ruinous to herself.
Why did she even believe he would help if she asked it of him?
She had no reason to think so. If Mr Darcy wished to punish Mr Wickham, surely he would have done so after the attempted elopement.
That he had not done so meant that he had his reasons.
She must be mad to think that any plea of hers would outweigh his private judgement.
Yet Elizabeth could not help knowing that all her hesitations could be overcome.
Almost as soon as she had thought of the difficulties of writing, she had known how it could be done.
The letter could be styled as being from “Bennet of Longbourn”, and its contents written in a form discreet enough to cause no scandal even if they were read by someone other than the intended recipient.
Mr Darcy was the cleverest man of her acquaintance; he would understand what she meant.
And he would help her. Elizabeth felt sure of it, even as she told herself there was no reason to be sure.
She had once thought that Mr Darcy looked on her with contempt.
She thought so no longer. Mr Darcy would not have warned a woman he did not respect.
He would not have shared Miss Darcy’s secret with a woman he did not trust. Likely he had warned her only out of a sense of responsibility, but if he learned that the warning, though heeded, had not been enough, surely that same sense of responsibility would motivate him to act.
And that left nothing that prevented her from reaching out, nothing except her pride.
Elizabeth let out a long, slow breath, accepting it. She must let it go. Pride had its place, but she could not value it so highly as to let it stop her from seeking the only solution she could. What would pride mean if she allowed Mr Wickham to prey on Lydia and on all the people of Meryton?
Elizabeth smiled a little ruefully to herself.
Mr Darcy had once shown her that he was not the cold, unfeeling man she thought him at first. Now she must take a risk from which she shrank back.
But Mr Darcy must have shrunk back from exposing himself to speculation in speaking to her privately, from giving her his greatest secret, and yet he had done it anyway.
Moving to her little writing desk, Elizabeth took up her pen and paper, and wondered when Mr Darcy had become a man she trusted without hesitation.