Chapter Thirty-One #2
Colonel Hastings cleared his throat. “No, sir. That is the cause of all of this. She is missing, as is Lieutenant Wickham. His belongings have been cleared out from his room, and his trunk is missing. Likewise, Miss Lydia’s finest frocks are missing, as well as the coins in her sisters’ reticules.
From what we have been able to gather from talking to his fellow officers, they have eloped. ”
Whatever Papa was going to say in reply to this was never heard, for Mama chose this exact moment to let out a wail and collapse in a heap of lace and muslin upon the floor.
There was absolute silence for a moment as everybody stared in amazement, and then the room erupted into a din of chaos.
Papa knelt beside his wife’s side calling, “Franny, enough of this; it is not a game,” all the while tapping at the back of her hand, which he had taken in his own.
Kitty exchanged her miserable sniffles for a loud and most undignified wail, after which she broke into a torrent of alarming and very noisy tears.
“Really, Kitty,” Jane admonished, “this is hardly helpful. Come, Mary, I need you. I shall find Mama’s salts, if you can bring down her large jonquil shawl. Oh, Lizzy! Can you—”
“Put on some tea. I was about to do exactly that!”
Before she turned back to the kitchens, she observed the two soldiers confer with Papa, and at his nod, bend down ever so carefully to lift the fallen lady from the floor.
Mama was not a large woman, but her voluminous skirts and layers of lace, not to mention the woollen coat she had worn for the carriage ride, made this a chore Lizzy would gladly leave for two strong and well-coordinated men.
She turned back to the kitchen and in moments had refilled the large kettle that sat upon the new stove.
The fire inside was still hot from the tea she had so recently made, and the water would boil quickly.
When she returned to the scene of the activity, Mama had been laid out upon the couch in the family’s favourite parlour, Papa sitting at her side ordering her to wake up, whilst Colonel Fitzwilliam crouched at the fireplace, coaxing the flames to life.
What she ought to think right now, Lizzy did not know.
Her immediate concern was for her mother, who began to moan, but other than that her mind was a blank.
Jane rushed in with the vial of salts in her hand, and immediately afterwards Mary entered with the large colourful shawl.
A whiff of the salts had Mama coughing and blinking her eyes, and all the time, Kitty stood off to one side, scarcely in the room, with that same look upon her tear-streaked face, refusing to meet anybody’s eyes.
Mr. Darcy, who had all but proposed to her only minutes before when he requested his interview, now glared around the room with cold hauteur and an expression of pure disgust upon his face. He met her glance with his own, then withdrew it and went to exchange a few words with his cousin.
“We must be off, Miss Elizabeth,” Colonel Fitzwilliam bowed to her. “Colonel Forster will pay a visit in the morning once he has learned all he can from his men. Hastings here will make for London to see what he can learn there, and he will send one of his men who knows Wickham northward.”
“Scotland,” came a weak and teary voice from the corner.
“Yes, Kitty?” There was no mirth now in Papa’s tone.
“Lydia joked about running off with Mr. Wickham to Scotland. She believed he would marry her.”
Colonel Hastings straightened to his full height. “Is that so? You knew of this plan and said nothing?”
“Oh Kitty, how could you?” Mama wailed again, as Papa grimaced.
Mary began to expostulate from whichever book of sermons she had been more recently reading until Papa quieted her with a single stern glance. “Kitty, what else do you know?”
“Nothing, really, nothing at all. I thought it a joke. I never believed he would actually marry her, but she did laugh about having to decide what to take in her small trunk... Oh...” and she dissolved once more into a puddle of noisy tears.
“Then we search northward towards Scotland and in London.” Colonel Hastings snapped a smart bow and said he would write as soon as he had news.
Likewise, Colonel Fitzwilliam took his leave, pausing to bid a personal goodbye to Elizabeth, with an admonition to remain optimistic.
And Mr. Darcy, who was now standing by the door with his hat and greatcoat once more in his arms, merely stared at her with a forlorn expression in his beautiful eyes.
“I am sorry. I must join my cousin,” was all he said.
He took her hand, kissed the back, and he bowed once before sweeping out of the door without a backward glance.
***
OVER THE NEXT THREE weeks, life at Longbourn settled into a sad mockery of a routine.
Colonel Forster had, indeed, come by the day after the elopement to commiserate with the Bennets, to apologise for what had been inadequate supervision of his men, and to relate to them any other information he might have.
This, however, proved to be exceedingly little.
He had not noticed Lydia paying particular attention to any one of his officers, despite a propensity to flirt with them all, and certainly had not observed any special attachment by Wickham to Lydia.
Here Kitty once again admitted knowing that the two had been meeting in secret for a while, and that they had made a point of keeping their burgeoning courtship from the eyes and ears of the rest of the camp.
“Lydia thought it all a laugh, and she made me promise never to say a word, because Mr. Wickham had made her promise to him. She told me what a joke it would be when she went away and returned a married lady, with none even knowing she had a beau.”
When he heard this, Colonel Forster let out a great huff and muttered something about foolish girls and untrustworthy officers.
Next came the visits from relations and friends from Meryton.
Aunt Phillips was a frequent guest in the house, as were Mrs. Long and Lady Lucas, although whether they came to commiserate or gloat, Lizzy was not certain.
Mama kept mostly to her rooms, and her sister and friends visited her there, where her daughters were not always welcome.
Along with the company from the village came the tales and rumours.
That Lydia had departed in great haste from Colonel Forster’s house was well known.
The Forsters had, however, been quite careful about what exactly was told about her disappearance, and there were conflicting reports of her having accompanied Mrs. Forster to London, where she decided to stay for some time with her aunt and uncle, or having accepted a sudden invitation to travel to Kent to visit Mrs. Collins, or—to the shock and disbelief of the town—of her having run away in the night with one of the officers!
Whilst Elizabeth was not happy with these rumours, she was relieved that there was enough variety in them that it might yet be possible to salvage Lydia’s reputation, should she be found in good health and in a suitable situation.
If Wickham were located, he could be forced to marry her, thereby saving the entire family from the greatest disgrace.
Another tale from the village that gave her some minor ease was the story that a messenger had been sent from the inn at Oakham instructing Mr. Washburn from The Lion to search the old cabin at the far end of Longbourn’s lands, by the river.
One of Hastings’ men happened to be at the inn when the message was delivered and offered to discharge the obligation, since it was on his path back to his camp.
Later on he told Washburn that he had found an old coat and five guineas on the cabin’s floor, which he offered to Washburn, for they surely were meant for him; there must be some purpose for the message, after all.
The villagers had no notion of what the true import of this message was; Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief that Stanton, for all the horrid things he had done, had not intended Mr. Darcy to die in that deserted shack, but had arranged for his rescue.
Matters at home took longer to settle. Papa had, at first, stalked through the house in the foulest temper Lizzy had ever seen from him. He said nothing, but Lizzy wondered if he were berating himself for not taking his youngest daughter to task after having been discovered in the hedgerow.
He now seemed as much disappointed in his daughter and furious with Mr. Wickham as he was frustrated at his impotence to act.
Where should he go? He asked this of Lizzy a hundred times a day.
“If I chase them north, they will be in London. If I go to London, they will be in Scotland. And if I wait here, they will abscond to the Low Countries, and if I travel, they will return here to Longbourn!”
When, three days later, Hastings’ officer returned from the Great North Road, it set Papa’s direction.
“If they had gone north,” the officer explained, “they must have gone through Hertford, or more likely, Hatfield or Welwyn, for the lesser roads would still be impassable in any sort of carriage like the one Wickham took. No one at the toll gates or in any of the inns or taverns along any of those routes had seen them. I had seven of my soldiers with me, sir, in the search. I can only assume, then, that they headed south instead, to London.”
Elizabeth and Jane were in their father’s study as the officer gave his report. “That means, then,” Jane collapsed in on herself, “that they have not gone to Scotland and have no intention to marry.”
“It appears not, Miss Bennet.” The officer lowered his eyes.
“My hat, Lizzy, my bag. I must be off at once to London!” Now that one of the two directions that vied for his attention was eliminated as an option, Papa was all determined to throw himself into the search in the other.
“I shall stay at my brother Gardiner. I cannot sit idly by any longer. My hat! Where is Hill with my hat?”
And thus Papa departed almost immediately for London, leaving the four sisters and their mother to manage as best as they might.
Mrs. Hill and the servants kept the household running smoothly, even without Mrs. Bennet’s guidance and decisions as to menu and the choice of table linens, and food and supplies were ordered and delivered as they always had been in the past. Elizabeth and her sisters were not shunned in the streets, nor was their credit at the shops in town refused, despite the whispers that paved their paths and wafted in their wake.
It was a simulacrum of normality.
And yet, for Elizabeth at least, matters were anything but normal.
Whilst she rose at her normal time and took her walks when the weather allowed and followed her normal routines, her mind was never at rest. So much had transpired, so much of which she could disclose to no one.
She could tell no one of her suspicions of Mr. Wickham, of what she knew of his base character.
And worse, she could tell no one that he might very well be one of the henchmen that the traitor Stanton had placed into the militia unit!
How could she tell her mother and her sisters that Lydia—stupid, selfish Lydia—had run off with a man who was not only a scoundrel with no honour and a trail of debts, but who was also in service to the enemy?
Her mind roiled at the thoughts of her father trailing through the back alleyways of London in search of his wayward youngest daughter.
That was no place for a gentleman, particularly one as modest and countrified as he.
She knew well she ought not even to have knowledge of such places as he might find, but what little she did know filled her with the greatest trepidation for his safety.
And should he discover Wickham? What would he do then?
She could hardly imagine her indolent father challenging the cur to a duel, but would Wickham himself offer violence?
She steadfastly and repeatedly denied her mother’s lamentations over Papa’s impending doom at the point of Wickham’s sword, but in the depths of her private fears she had the same concerns.
And what of Stanton himself? All that Mr. Darcy had told them—all he had known—was that Stanton had absconded with the machine and the false discs, thinking he had won a victory over Papa and his French cousins.
What had transpired next, she wished she could know.
Had he managed to repair the machine well enough to decypher the message?
Had he the tools and knowledge to learn what it now said?
And had he acted upon that message? These were secrets for the Home Office to know and not for an unimportant lass in some tiny village in Hertfordshire, but still her father and cousins had risked their lives for this.
Her friend Mr. Mendel had worked miracles for this.
Colonel Fitzwilliam had all but frozen to death on his snowshoes for this, and Mr. Darcy had nearly died for this.
Not knowing the outcome was almost a physical pain, and she wished she might learn what had happened.
And then, if matters were not sufficiently gloomy, there was her abandonment by Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Darcy, whom she had come to love, and who she believed was preparing to offer for her almost at once, had heard the news of Lydia’s foolishness and had returned to the disdainful disgust she had first seen in him when he arrived at the Meryton assembly.
Those beautiful warm eyes had become cold and sneering, and from his parting words it seemed he could not be out of her presence quickly enough.
Oh, how he must be congratulating himself for having so narrowly avoided such a fate as to be connected with Wickham!
He had, Elizabeth was certain, been rehearsing in his head words of love and adoration, but these emotions could never be strong enough to counter the ignominious disgrace of being brother by marriage to one he had despised so deeply and for so long.
She could not blame him, but her heart was broken quite in two, nonetheless.