Chapter Thirty-One
The modiste’s shop in Bond Street was everything Mrs Bennet had hoped for and a great deal more besides, and she was not backwards in letting everyone within earshot know it.
She stood in the centre of the shop with the expression of a woman who has waited a long time for this particular pleasure and intends to make the most of every moment, while the shop’s proprietress maintained the carefully neutral expression of a woman who has learned to be grateful for country mothers with London daughters and the budgets they represent.
Lydia moved through the bolts of fabric with the confidence of someone who knew her own mind and had long since learned to trust it.
She had opinions about Mary’s trousseau that were specific and practical: colours that would suit a country parsonage, fabrics that would wear well and look well simultaneously, nothing that would be inappropriate for a clergyman’s wife in a small parish.
Mrs Bennet had rather grander ideas. The negotiation between them was affectionate and continuous and arrived, gradually, at sensible conclusions, which Lydia thought was how most negotiations with her mother had always worked, if one had the patience to let them run their course.
Elizabeth was watching with the amused attention of a woman who has navigated this channel herself.
Mary stood beside a display of ribbons and looked perfectly content, which Lydia thought was perhaps the most telling thing of all.
Mary had spoken little of her Mr Pearce, but the peace in her expression while their mother carried on spoke volumes.
This was a woman who did not in the least care about the details of her wedding and was content to let those who did care fuss over the matter.
All Mary cared about was that the wedding was to take place.
“Now, this one,” Mrs Bennet said, holding up a bolt of figured white silk. “What do you think, Lydia? For the wedding dress itself?”
“I think Mary should be consulted,” Lydia said.
“Mary doesn’t mind, do you, Mary?”
“I don’t mind at all,” Mary said, without looking up from the ribbons. “Though I had thought something more practical than white.”
Mrs Bennet’s expression underwent several rapid alterations. Lydia caught Elizabeth’s eye and did not smile.
Eventually, Elizabeth drew Mrs Bennet’s attention to a fine bolt of cream satin that had appeared as if by arrangement from the back of the shop, and the question of the wedding dress was settled with only moderate further negotiation.
Mary, holding a length of pale blue ribbon against her wrist, looked across at Lydia with an expression of contented gratitude.
They were there two hours. At some point the group divided, as groups in shops will: Elizabeth with Mary and the proprietress discussing the particulars of the order, Mrs Bennet having discovered a display of trimmings that required her full attention.
Lydia was looking at gloves when her mother appeared at her elbow, which she had not expected.
Mrs Bennet was quiet for a moment, which Lydia had also not expected.
“You have been very good today,” Mrs Bennet said.
“You always had an eye for what was right. I didn’t always see it, when you were young, but you did.
” She was looking at the gloves, not at Lydia.
“I know things were difficult. When you first married and went to Matlock without him, I mean. I know that was not easy. I worried.” A pause.
“Your father said I was not to write too often, that you needed to find your own way, and so I tried not to. But I worried all the same.”
Lydia looked at her mother’s profile.
“I am your mother,” Mrs Bennet said, with the simplicity of a woman stating a fact that contains everything.
“I know I am not always, that is, I know I was not always...” She stopped, and started again.
“You have turned out so well. Better than I had any right to expect, given that I was not, perhaps, always.” Another stop.
“I am very proud of you. That is all I wanted to say.”
It was badly put. It went sideways twice and probably did not arrive where she had intended. It was, Lydia thought, the truest thing her mother had ever said to her.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said. Not with composure; composure was not what was wanted here. With sincerity.
Mrs Bennet patted her hand and moved back toward the trimmings, her equilibrium restored by the effort and the release of it.
Lydia stood for a moment among the gloves, and let herself feel it, and then put it away in the place where she kept the things she intended to take out and look at properly when she had more time.
She had never for a moment doubted that her mother loved her. But proud of her? That was a different feeling.
The library at Darcy House was a peaceful place, and one Fitzwilliam naturally gravitated to. He was there when Mr Bennet found him, apparently by accident, though Fitzwilliam had spent enough time with the man by now to treat apparent accidents with some caution.
Mr Bennet looked around the room with the appreciation of a man who did not get to visit enough good libraries, ran a finger along a shelf, removed a volume, inspected it, replaced it. Then he sat down in the chair opposite Fitzwilliam’s.
“A good collection,” he said.
“Darcy reads everything,” Fitzwilliam said. “And remembers most of it. It can be somewhat discouraging in a cousin.”
Mr Bennet smiled. “I find Bingley has the same effect on my son-in-law, from the opposite direction.” He settled back in the chair. “You must be glad to be home. London is considerably more comfortable than Canada, I should think, by most measures.”
They talked about Canada for a while: the climate, the strategies required to survive winters that were genuinely hostile, the way distance reorganised one’s sense of what mattered. Mr Bennet was a good listener when the subject interested him, and the subject appeared to interest him.
“And what do you make of it,” he asked, at a pause, in a tone of pleasant curiosity that Fitzwilliam was already learning not to underestimate, “coming home to find yourself a married man in earnest?”
Fitzwilliam considered the question. “I am not sure I was fully prepared for it,” he said.
“No,” Mr Bennet agreed, with the air of a man who had expected this answer. “I imagine not. What did you expect, when you came back? Specifically, I mean. Of Lydia. She was very young when you left.”
The question was gently put. It was also, Fitzwilliam thought, precisely the right question. He had been considering the matter for some time, ever since his conversation with Georgiana.
“Someone more settled,” he said, after a moment.
“More at ease. I thought she would be glad to see me, and that we would find our way into things without too much difficulty.” He paused.
“I did not expect… Mrs Fitzwilliam.” He did not know how to explain what he meant by that. Fortunately, he did not need to.
“No,” Mr Bennet said, with an expression that might have been a smirk. “I imagine she was rather a surprise.”
“She is.” He looked at the fire. “She is impenetrable, sir. Everything correct, everything warm, everything perfectly managed. I cannot find a seam in her anywhere. I have been trying for two months.”
Mr Bennet was quiet for a moment, in the manner of a man deciding how much to say.
“Lydia,” he said, “was always the one I found most difficult to understand. Not because she was incomprehensible; quite the opposite. She was rather too comprehensible, if I am honest, which is not always comfortable in a child. Too loud, too much, too present. It was easier to be amused by her than to attend to her, and I am afraid I took the easier option rather consistently.” He looked at the fire.
“She has her mother’s feelings and my brains, which is a combination I failed to appreciate at the time. ”
Fitzwilliam said nothing.
“She never applied herself to anything at Longbourn,” Mr Bennet continued.
“Her mother’s fault partly, mine partly; we did not expect it of her, so she did not expect it of herself.
But when there was something she truly wanted to learn, or truly wanted to become, she was capable of an application quite unlike any of her sisters.
” He paused. “I have wondered, in the past two years, watching her letters change, and watching her when she is here; I have wondered what it was that drove it. Your parents and the Darcys gave her the opportunities, yes. But Lydia has never in her life worked this hard for other people’s approval.
” He looked at Fitzwilliam steadily. “She must have truly wanted to make you proud.”
The fire settled.
Fitzwilliam sat with it for a moment; the full weight of it arriving not quickly but with the slow, comprehensive force of something that had been true for a long time and had been waiting to be said.
Mr Bennet did not press the point. He picked up the book nearest to hand, looked at its spine with interest, and said: “Ah. I have been meaning to read this,” and the conversation moved on to other things, and he stayed another half hour, and was very pleasant throughout, and said nothing further of any significance.
He did not need to.
The Bennet carriage departed at ten o’clock the morning following, and Mrs Bennet filled the time before it arrived with instructions, embraces, and a comprehensive list of everything she expected to be kept informed of, in approximately that order.
Mr Bennet bore this with the patience of long practice and said his goodbyes with the brevity of a man who has made his peace with the fact that anything he says will be followed immediately by his wife saying it again, at greater length.
Mary made her way quietly around and farewelled everyone in turn while her mother was fussing over someone else.
Lydia watched her father with Fitzwilliam as the carriage was brought round.
They were standing a little apart from the main business of departure, not talking, in the easy silence of men who have arrived at some understanding she was not party to.
It sat in her chest in a way she could not account for: something small and uncomfortable, watching her father’s ease with her husband.
He had never had that ease with her. Even now, with pride said and meant and more generosity between them than she had ever expected, there was an effortlessness in the way he stood with Fitzwilliam that she could not remember him standing with her, not once in her whole life.
She looked away before either of them noticed her looking, and smiled at Mary, who had come to embrace her.
“I look forward very much to meeting your Mr Pearce, Mary,” she said. “I am sure he is very worthy. Of you.” She phrased it humorously on purpose, and was pleased to see Mary laugh.
Mrs Bennet embraced Elizabeth at length.
She embraced Georgiana. She said goodbye to James three times.
She embraced Lydia last, and held on rather longer than usual, and said “write to me, darling, I mean to hear everything” in a tone that she had not heard from her mother before and found she could not speak in response to, so simply held on in return.
Mr Bennet kissed Lydia’s cheek. “Take care of yourself,” he said, which he had never said to her before either. “And take care of the other matter.” She knew what he meant, and felt the guilt of it, and nodded.
He shook Fitzwilliam’s hand. There was a look exchanged that she could not read, and did not like not being able to read, and then her father was in the carriage and her mother was calling from inside it, and the door was closed, and it was moving away up the street.
The household stood on the steps a moment longer than was necessary. James, held on Elizabeth’s hip, watched the carriage until it turned the corner and disappeared, and then turned his attention to a pigeon on the opposite rooftop with the same focused interest.
Elizabeth and Darcy went inside. Georgiana followed.
Lydia stood a moment more, watching the empty street. Beside her, Fitzwilliam had not moved either.
“Your father,” he said quietly, “is very proud of you. I believe you should know that he told me so.”
She looked at him.
The carriage was out of sight and the street was cold and the ordinary surface of things had not reassembled itself yet, and what was underneath it she did not know what to do with. He was looking at her with an expression she had not seen from him before and could not immediately name.
She opened her mouth to answer.
A rider came clattering up the street and pulled a sweating, steaming horse to a halt right in front of them.
The butler came hurrying down the steps to receive the letter the rider offered, brows raising as he looked at the direction on the front.
He handed a coin to the rider, who clattered off again in a great rush.
“Forgive me, Mrs Fitzwilliam,” the butler said. “A note has arrived. From Richmond.” He held it out, and something in Lydia went suddenly very still. The hand on the outside was not Lewes’. She did not recognise it.
She broke the seal.
She read it once. Then she read it again, because the first time had not made sense.
The cold of the step came up through her shoes. The street was very quiet. She was aware of Fitzwilliam beside her, very still, watching her face, and she could not, for once, do anything at all about what her face was doing.
General Lewes had died peacefully in the night. His heart, the note said. Very sudden. He had not suffered.
The paper was in her hands. The street was empty where the carriage had been.
She stood on the step in the cold and did not perform anything at all.