Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
My dearest Lizzy,
Papa has given us a half an hour to write while he prepares for travel.
I confess I do not know what to say, except that I love you, that I am thinking of you every moment, and that I hope with my whole heart that you are well.
You must write to me as soon as you are able.
I know you will not be able to tell me everything, we shall save that for when we next meet, but you must tell me what you can.
Mamma wishes me to tell you that she is so happy she could faint, and that you are to explain to your Mr. Darcy that we are normally a very healthy family. She also wishes to know whether the Darcys have a house in London.
Mary asks that I tell you that she will copy out some of the more relevant passages on marriage for you from her recent text to send on when there is more time.
Kitty and Lydia congratulate you. They would like to know what your intended is like, and whether he has any younger brothers. Lydia asks for a fur muff when you receive your pin money.
There, she has gone. Do not waste your allowance on us, Lizzy.
I wish to tell you, before Papa comes to collect this, that I have always admired your strength of mind and that I believe you are equal to whatever comes next.
Be happy, dearest. Or if you cannot yet be happy, at least be patient and trust that you one day will be.
All my love,
Jane
Elizabeth stood at the window of her chamber watching the dark and light clouds argue with each other and reading Jane’s letter for the fifth time.
She had always thought her elder sister would be with her on her wedding day—her entire family, really, including Uncle and Aunt Gardiner.
She took a deep breath. At least Papa would be here.
Mrs. Morgan fastened the buttons at the back of her gown. It was the best dress she had with her, a pristine white muslin with a worked hem that Jane had embroidered for her last Christmas, delicate sprigs of lilacs in thread so fine they might have been painted on.
They were her favourite flowers.
“Stand still,” Mrs. Morgan said. “You are fidgeting.”
“I am not fidgeting. I am breathing.”
“You are breathing and fidgeting. I can endure only one.”
Elizabeth held herself motionless while Mrs. Morgan dealt with the final button. In the glass she looked composed, but she did not feel it.
“You will do,” Mrs. Morgan pronounced, stepping back to survey her work.
It was just what every woman wished to hear on her wedding day. “A rousing endorsement.”
“It is not my business to offer praise. It is my business to deliver you to the church upright and buttoned.” Mrs. Morgan reached out and adjusted one of Elizabeth’s curls. “You look very well, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth turned from the glass, contrite. It was not the woman’s fault that Jane was not here. “Thank you, Mrs. Morgan.”
There was a knock at the door. Hannah opened it, and there was her father, dressed in his best coat with his hair brushed flat in a way that suggested someone had made him sit still and submit to a comb.
His cravat was tied with uncharacteristic precision, as though he had decided that if his daughter was to be sacrificed on the altar of propriety, the least he could do was dress for the occasion.
“Shall we?” He offered his arm, and Elizabeth took it.
They stood together in the little chamber, neither speaking, and Elizabeth thought of Jane, who would have cried prettily and glowed like a candle in a window.
She thought of her mother, who would have wailed with such energy that every neighbour within a quarter mile would have known the hour of the wedding, and then would have fallen into raptures over her new son’s wealth.
She thought of Mary, who would have quoted something biblical, and Lydia, who would have danced down the stairs and into the street, pulling Kitty along in her wake and hoping to catch a glimpse of the soldiers filing down to the harbour and boarding their transports.
She was marrying to save herself, but all of them too.
“You are certain?” her father asked.
“I am certain it is necessary.”
“It is not necessary, but it is the simplest and best course to preserve your reputation and that of your sisters.”
“Which is necessary, Papa.”
He placed his hand over hers where it rested on his arm. The gesture was clumsy and tender and so unlike him that she had to swallow back tears as they threatened.
“I have always found that the quickest way through an unpleasant business is straight through the middle,” he told her.
“Is that how you have carried on in your marriage, Papa?” She had meant it as a half-hearted tease, but there was enough truth in it to make her wish it unsaid. Her father sighed and then answered her.
“My dear girl, I have carried on in my marriage by retreating to my library and hoping for reprieve.” He guided her towards the stairs. “I expect you will do rather better.”
They stepped out into the street. The church was not far, a ten-minute walk along the sea road, past the lodging houses and the bathing machines and the gulls that wheeled and shrieked above the harbour.
Her father set a measured pace, as though he wished to make the walk last longer than the distance required.
“Since you fell ill, I have been thinking,” he said, after they had gone some way in silence, “about what I ought to have done differently. During the fever.”
Elizabeth glanced at him. “Papa, that was months ago.”
“Yes, which has given me months to think about it.” He adjusted his grip on her arm.
“Your mother was right to keep me from the sickrooms. If the fever had taken me, you would all have been tossed out of Longbourn before the summer was done. I am certain that your cousin Mr. Collins would have seen to that with great Christian charity and no delay.” He said this lightly, but she could sense something solemn as well.
“So I stayed away. I sat in my study and read my books and waited for reports, and when the servants fell ill and there was no one left to carry either news or trays, I brought what you needed and set it in the passage and knocked twice and walked away.”
“You brought me clean linens at three o’clock in the morning,” Elizabeth said. “And broth, and candles when we ran out, and laudanum for Kitty when the cough was at its worst. I found them every time.”
“I left them in the hall like a man provisioning a siege. I could hear you through the door, Lizzy, talking to your sisters. Singing to them, once, when Mary’s fever was very high.
And I stood on the other side of a closed door and did nothing, not even for my wife, because if I crossed the threshold and caught the fever myself, there might be no Longbourn for any of you. ”
She did not like to think of it. “You did the only sensible thing.”
“I did the cowardly thing, which happened to also be sensible. Your mother told me that if I set foot inside a sickroom and became ill myself, I could be responsible for throwing you all into poverty. That there was not enough for any of you to live as gentlewomen should I leave you all unprotected. And the worst of it was that she was right. She was perfectly right, and I despised myself for it.”
They walked a few paces in silence. A fisherman’s cart rattled past. The driver touched his cap, and Elizabeth nodded to him.
“And then you collapsed,” her father said quietly. “You did not even tell anyone you were ill.”
“There was no one to tell. Mrs. Hill and Cook were still in bed. Sarah had gone home to her mother. The girls and Mamma were only just recovering. Someone had to—”
“Yes. Someone had to, and so you did. That is what I have been thinking about, Elizabeth. Not the fever itself, but the fact that you were the one who bore it, because I had arranged my life so carelessly that there was no provision, no safety, no alternative. If I had put money aside, if I had settled something on you girls years ago as I ought to have, your mother would not have been so desperate, and you would not have had to carry the household on your back while I stood in the hall and knocked twice.”
Elizabeth tightened her hold on his arm. She did not trust her voice.
“I am selling the Aldines,” he said.
She stopped walking. “Papa, no.”
“And the Elzevirs. And the folio Shakespeare.” He resumed walking, drawing her gently along. “I have contacted your Uncle Gardiner to make inquiries among the best dealers.”
“But you love those books, Papa. They are your most prized possessions.”
“Those books are paper and ink and very fine binding, and they have sat on my shelves giving me pleasure while my daughters went undowered.” He looked at her steadily.
Elizabeth wished to deny it, but she knew he was right.
“Jane first. She deserves a proper settlement. I shall find other things to sell, other economies to make. My father and grandfather left me quite a collection of items from their own travels abroad that are tucked away in nearly every room of the house. I will not beggar us, but I will not sit idle any longer while my girls have nothing. I will see them taken care of in the event something does happen to me.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth and found she could not speak. She tried again. “You do not have to do this because of what happened to me.”
He shook his head. “I am not doing it only because of what happened to you. I am doing it because of what might have happened to all of you.” He patted her hand.
“I stood by while you nursed your mother and your sisters through that fever. I never questioned your own health until you collapsed. And then I sent you to Ramsgate to recover, and instead you landed in the worst trouble of your life, and I could not help you then either. Not from a hundred miles away.”
“You came when I asked.”