Chapter Twenty-Eight #3
“I am glad you feel better now, sir.” Elizabeth moved to one side of the window seat, making room for Mr. Darcy to sit beside her. When he did, she dropped her voice lower. “You have given me a great deal to think upon – the relationship of a guardian and his ward can be difficult to navigate.”
His gaze darted to Mr. Bennet, who was studying them with open curiosity. Mr. Darcy betrayed a moment of discomposure before he looked back at Elizabeth. “Perhaps you ought to take the excellent advice you gave me and say what is on your mind.”
“Is that what you have done?”
He smiled wistfully. “It took me several drafts – no less than half a dozen crumpled attempts to express myself lie in my fireplace – but I believe I penned things that needed to be said, that ought to have been said before. If nothing else, I hope that my sincerity will count for something.”
Elizabeth felt herself reaching for his hand, but stopped just as her fingers brushed his. She gave a breathy laugh at her mistake. “I wish you every success, and I am sure it will come out well. As eloquently as you spoke to me, I am sure you expressed yourself to advantage in your letter.”
Seated nearby, Miss Bingley had been attempting to listen to them with little endeavor at discretion. She scoffed and stood, then stalked out of the room in a huff, with her sister in pursuit. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy shared an irreverent laugh.
“I cannot say that anybody has ever called me eloquent,” he said. “Now that Miss Bingley despises me, there is nobody to lavish me with undeserved praise.”
“I certainly shall not, as I think you know,” Elizabeth quipped with an arch smile.
Jane finished her song and went to sit beside her father.
She murmured something to him, and he nodded as Jane extended her arm beseechingly toward Elizabeth.
“Lizzy, come and walk in the garden with us. Milton Hall is so near to Hartfield that I am sure I did not stretch my legs enough after sitting so long, painting for hours.”
Elizabeth stood and acquiesced, and then whispered to Mr. Darcy, who seemed inclined to join them. “Will you walk with Charlotte?”
“That is just what I intended; you must have something particular to say to your father, and Miss Lucas has promised to delight me with tales of your misspent youth.”
“Good heavens!” Elizabeth laughed but smiled gratefully at him, for Charlotte looked perfectly willing to amble in the garden with a handsome gentleman.
Mr. Bennet offered each of his daughters an arm as they commenced their stroll together; the path was just wide enough to admit three, though the larger hedges were still as unkempt as when they first arrived.
“Mr. Bingley ought to hire a gardener,” Mr. Bennet observed, swatting away a branch from a rosebush before it could snag Elizabeth’s sleeve.
“You might prune the bushes for him, Papa, and collect a fine bouquet of flowers as Mr. Darcy has done,” Jane teased. “Or do you mean to only follow Mr. Bingley’s advice for wooing ladies?”
Elizabeth blushed; she was pleased that Jane could have a sense of humor about romance, despite all that she was suffering, but she was not quite ready for Mr. Bennet to have his say in the matter of Mr. Darcy.
“Perhaps it must depend upon which lady he is wooing,” Elizabeth mused.
“Ah! But I expected this,” Mr. Bennet drawled. “Your mother would probably beat me over the head with a bouquet of flowers, if I brought her such an offering.”
“That is not the impression I had this morning, when Jane and I spoke of you with Miss Bates.”
Mr. Bennet grimaced. “I wish you would not interfere, Lizzy. If Miss Bates wished to be Mrs. Bennet, she might have been for ten years or more.”
Jane smiled serenely as she took the same contrary approach that had served them well at breakfast. “I think Grandmother is rather glad Miss Bates is not Mrs. Bennet. Despite all my mother’s warm praise of you, Grandmother thinks you a fool.”
“A fool for your choice of bride,” Elizabeth added. “Her words.”
“I understand you once got on famously with Grandmother; I would have liked to have seen that,” Jane said with a sigh.
“So would I,” Elizabeth agreed. She knew that they were meant to press their father about courting their mother, but lately other feelings had plagued her. “There are many things I wish might have been different in my youth.”
Mr. Bennet’s ever-playful visage turned serious. “You have every right to be angry that you were separated all these years. It was a mad plan, made at a time when circumstances… we were not thinking clearly, your mother and I.”
Elizabeth considered what she knew of Mr. Bennet’s history. “Because of your brother and your father?”
“Yes, that ghastly business was certainly a consideration, and I believe your mother was influenced by her half-brother, your late uncle Gardiner. He sought to convince me that she would be better off wed to his friend, Captain Weston, a widower with a young son.”
Jane wrinkled her nose at this, clearly horrified to think that she and Frank Churchill might have been brought up as brother and sister.
“I cannot say whether you are still the same as you were twenty-one years ago, since I have known you for less than a month, but my mother is much as she ever was. With one exception, perhaps, for I believe she bitterly regrets… the way it all happened.”
“But at least she can reminisce about those days with a smile, as she did this morning,” Elizabeth said. “It was difficult to be cross with her for her part in separating us, when she was so carried off by her tender sentiments."
“Do not think me devoid of every proper feeling, my Lizzy. I can tell you as many pretty tales as your mother, if only to escape your wrath for how I have done you wrong.”
“By all means, sir,” Elizabeth prompted her father. “Jane may have some memories of our mother from her youth, but I do not. Pray, what was she like?”
“You know she was beautiful, Lizzy, since you stole that watercolor of her,” Jane teased.
Mr. Bennet looked at Elizabeth with tears in his eyes. “That was you?” He sighed heavily and shook his head, but Elizabeth would not apologize for it, when she had deserved so much more than a mere picture of her mother.
“I was desolate at the loss of that picture. She was beautiful, and I shall own that she is still fair and well-featured. It was what first drew me to her – and you need not think me too frivolous, for I know she was first drawn to my dashing appearance in a redcoat!”
Mr. Bennet chuckled at this, a faraway look in his eye.
“I suppose there was more in it than that. I enjoyed her boundless optimism, her enthusiasm for everyone and everything. She always had a kind word – or many words – for everybody she met with, and I thought it beguilingly sportive of her. Even when she was prone to rhapsodize about ribbon and lace, she spoke with such passion, and when I teased her for it, she gave it right back. She loved a jape of a jest, just as I always have. She did not take life too seriously, as I had been raised to do by my tyrant of a father. At times, there was even something rebellious in Fanny’s spirit; she has ever stood up for herself when she is displeased, which has been rather a failing of my own. ”
Elizabeth gave her father a genuine smile. “She sounds remarkable. I begin to understand why you would recite poems to her, as you were depicted doing in that watercolor.”
“Oh, that was a lark of hers,” Mr. Bennet laughed.
“She never cared much for reading, and unlike Miss Bingley, Fanny never bothered pretending to be fonder of books than she was. She would tease me for my scholarly pursuits; she preferred being out of doors, tending to the garden at the vicarage where she lived when first we met, or sitting by the lake and taking in the scenery. We used to go riding together; I bought her a horse for that purpose, and I thought her mother would throttle me for such a bold gift.”
Elizabeth and her sister shared a look of delight at their father’s musings. “I suppose I come by my spirit naturally, then; it seems the work of generations.”
“Indeed it is, Lizzy, indeed it is. The Bates women are not prone to simpering and fawning; your grandmother is not even especially concerned with making herself agreeable. ‘Tis an odd quality in a vicar’s wife, but I have always rather respected her for it, even when she is resolved to be my formidable opponent.”
“I should like to know a great love like that,” Jane said with a wistful sigh.
“I cannot imagine settling for anything less, after having such a romance,” Elizabeth said. “How could you bear it, Papa?”
“I did not have any choice,” he answered grimly.
“My father published news of my engagement to Lady Amelia before my vicious brother was cold in his grave. I went to Fanny at once, I knew she would have heard of it, and she had – Edward Gardiner made sure of that. By the time I felt right in parting from my grieving mother, Fanny seemed resigned to resent and refuse me.”
Tears welled in Jane’s eyes. “But why?”
“She was in a bad way after giving birth to you, and losing her sister and Captain Fairfax. It was sudden and horrible for her, and she blamed herself. I told myself for many years that she could not have been in her right mind when she rejected me. She sent me away broken-hearted, and when I returned to Longbourn, my father punished me soundly, for I would have eloped with Fanny if she had consented, and spoiled his rapacious plans for me. I brought you home with me then, Lizzy, and told my father I would marry Lady Amelia if he would accept the child of my late friend, whom I meant to take as my ward.”
“Did he believe that story?”
Her father laughed bitterly. “Of course not, but my mother begged us to make peace. She loved you at once, for she had always wanted a daughter. She offered to take you, Lizzy, when I wed, but I loved you so dearly from the moment I set eyes on you.”
Mr. Bennet withdrew a watch from his pocket, an old thing he had possessed for as long as Elizabeth could remember.
He pressed a small mechanism she had never noticed, and the back panel opened like a locket, revealing a small sketch of a baby.
At the bottom was a tiny, embellished letter J.
“I loved you at once, too, Jane. In a moment of mercy for which I have always been grateful, your mother sketched this for me, the day I bid you farewell.”
Tears now streaked Jane’s face, and she impulsively hurled herself into her father’s embrace. “I am sorry you endured such misery, Papa. I cannot think why my mother did not wish us all together.”
Elizabeth brushed away a tear of her own and drew in a deep breath. “Perhaps now that we are all in the same place, she may feel differently. I wish you could have seen her, Papa, the first time she saw us together.”
“Was she as near to a fit of apoplexy as I was? Deserved it may have been, but what a wicked trick! I presume you are both very proud of yourselves, eh?”
“Vastly so,” Elizabeth agreed. “I believe our mother thoroughly enjoyed it as well, and Grandmother only wishes we could have made you squirm twice as much.”
“Well, if I must have a nemesis, I suppose one who seldom speaks in public is not so very bad. I shall have to seek her in her lair if I really wish to quarrel with her!”
Jane laughed at their father’s irreverence, and Elizabeth was glad that the subject turned to happier things. She did not know if she would ever fully make peace with being denied a childhood spent with her sister, but hearing of her father’s tribulations had made her heart ache.
There was hope for him yet, though, for she believed that she and Jane had planted a seed in his mind, and she could see it taking root over the course of the day.
At dinner, Miss Bingley was uncommonly petulant; once again, the cook had filled every course of the meal with the things she detested, courtesy of the list that Bessie gave Elizabeth.
Mr. Bennet was generally prone to cheerfully placating his betrothed with sardonic banter, but tonight he was remarkably quiet; he only stared at Miss Bingley, as if seeing her for the first time.