Chapter Twenty-two
Elizabeth
The last of the search party returned at half past two in the morning.
The footmen had covered the square in both directions and the streets beyond. None of them had found Mary.
Jane lay on a drawing room sofa with a shawl over her shoulders and her eyes closed, which was the nearest any of them came to sleep.
Elizabeth sat in the armchair by the window, wide-eyed and staring out into the street.
Sleep was not available to her and pretending otherwise was a waste of time.
Kitty and Lydia were tangled against each other in the unselfconscious way of sisters who have shared rooms all their lives, with Lydia's head on Kitty's shoulder and both of them looking morose.
Mrs Bennet barely rested. She had been in the armchair beside the fire since midnight with the writing box on her lap and Mary's letters spread across the side table.
She had been reading them in a repetitive way, each time searching for an extra detail that would bring all the necessary facts to light.
Elizabeth watched her without interfering, because she understood the reading was a way of coping with the reality of what had occurred. In addition, it was a form of acquaintance with a daughter she had not, until tonight, fully understood, and a form of penance for that same reason.
It was at past three o'clock that Mrs Bennet said, without preamble: "She knew."
Elizabeth turned to her curiously.
"This woman knew exactly what to write. Every subject.
Every question." Her mother held one of the letters with both hands, as if the page required steadying.
"Every subject is exactly what Mary would most wish to discuss.
It is as if this woman knew what to ask about beforehand. As if…As if she had researched her."
Mrs Bennet’s words left a hushed air in its wake.
"And the questions about the family. They are asked in a way that is not natural.” She paused.
Then she stood with a gasp. "Alice Haverford wrote these letters," she said.
"Of course it is her. The handwriting looked so familiar.
It is her. I am sure of it. She must have had Mary investigated.
She knew what to write before she ever met Mary. "
Lydia shook her head in disbelief. "Alice Haverford Her natural mother? You think she wrote all those letters pretending to be someone else? For months?"
"Yes."
"She aimed to gain proximity to Mary."
Mrs Bennet nodded. "Correct. It is my fault.
All of it. If I had told Mary years ago or had maintained some correspondence with Alice…
if I had not told Lavinia Bingley…" She stopped.
There was no useful ending to any of these sentences and she seemed to know it.
"I want my daughter back," she said instead, simply, the way one stated a fact that contained accurate information: "I want her home. "
Jane adjusted on the sofa. "It is frowned upon in society to call on people without warning, even more so if it's done in the middle of the night.
We will go to Jermyn Street in the morning, at a reasonable hour.
We must ensure not to alarm the whole street, thus giving Alice, if she is indeed the one holding Mary there, cause to do something precipitous. "
"Jane is right," Elizabeth said. "We wait for morning."
Dawn came in the slow, grudging manner of days that had nothing to recommend them. It was grey and cold, the light arriving as a reduction of darkness rather than illumination.
Kitty had been weeping sometime in the night; her eyes had that puffy redness.
She sat up, looking around the room with a stricken expression that revealed the unsaid.
She had hoped to find that the previous day was not as true as her mind presented to her, and was devastated to receive the confirmation that it was.
"When she comes back," Kitty said to no one in particular, "I am going to encourage her to speak at length about everything. The music, the theology…all of it. I have never paid proper attention. I have always let it go past me as if it were noise, but that’s not the case. Henceforth, I am going to listen."
"So am I," Lydia said with a pronounced sniffle.
She continued to speak in the tone of someone making a private promise rather than a public announcement.
It had none of her usual performance in it.
"I always interrupted when she played the pianoforte.
I always said it went on too long. It didn't. I was just not paying attention. "
Jane nodded at her two younger sisters with undiluted affection.
Her eyes were sad as she wiped her face with a handkerchief.
"I am going to stop trying to smoothen everything for her in relation to Mama and actually say what I think. She has always known when I was keeping the peace rather than speaking directly to her. She does not need to be protected from her own or anyone else’s opinions. "
"She has very good opinions," Elizabeth added. That was something she had not said often enough, which she intended to remedy.
Mrs Bennet wrapped her arms around herself.
"I should like to be the one to tell her the truth.
If she does not yet know all of it — about the real story behind Alice's fake name of Elena and every other detail else regarding her birth real purpose — I should like to tell her myself. I owe her that."
"You do, Mama," Elizabeth agreed. "And you will."
She had sent two notes before dawn. One to Mr Bingley, asking whether he had any intelligence of Mary's whereabouts.
She included in it everything they had discovered thus far.
And another to Darcy. She had sat for a moment with the second before she handed it over, aware of a tiny but real irony: that the first person her mind had supplied when she thought capable, possessed of connections, able to do something we cannot was a man she had sent away the previous afternoon with words she had not meant and had regretted within seconds of his departure.
She had not been fair to him across the season and that fact was no longer impossible to ignore.
She had read the questions he asked about the Bennet family circumstances as prying, as the interest of a man forming unfavourable judgements.
But the questions, viewed differently, understood through the lens of several hours of thinking about what kind of man acted with the speed and the integrity he had shown yesterday led her to arrive at a different conclusion.
She had snagged the attention of a man who wished to understand a situation, not to take advantage of it, but to know it and extend help when needed.
It was a form of care, even. She had not, at the time, been inclined towards that interpretation.
Now she was contrite enough to consider the chance that she had been wrong.
She had written: Mr Darcy. I write to ask whether you can render any assistance in finding my sister. I believe you have resources in this city that we do not. I also owe you an apology, which I intend to deliver in person at the earliest opportunity.
— E. Bennet.
She had handed it over to be delivered and had then lain next to Jane, glancing unblinkingly at the ceiling until the household began to stir fully.
Mr Thwaite arrived as early as seven. He had not slept a wink.
This was obvious in the stiffness of his movements, which was effortful rather than natural.
He had returned home the previous evening only because Jane had pressed him to, on the grounds that he could do nothing useful by remaining, and he had returned now for the same reason he had left: because Mary required people capable of acting in her favour, and he intended to be part of that group.
When Elizabeth handed him some of Mary's letters, he read them with full concentration and furrowed eyebrows that made it clear he found the task painful. Once he reached the passages about Caroline Bingley, he winced and tilted his face up to the sky in a silent prayer. He was hit hard by Mary’s disappearance.
That much was clear, and Elizabeth knew then and there that she would never doubt the veracity of the love he had for Mary.
"She believed she was losing me," he said in a tone that was not a question.
"That appears to be the case."
He set the letters down. "I will never give her cause to doubt my attentions again. Not for a single day." Then: "That I did not see all of what she was withholding…I said it once and I'm saying it again. I intend to account for that when she is home."
Elizabeth took in the absolute, uncomplicated clarity of his feeling for her sister, visible in every line of his face.
Mary had had nothing to fear from Caroline Bingley.
She had never had anything to fear from Caroline Bingley.
She had simply not known it, and no one had told her plainly enough, and that was a failure that had compounded over weeks into the morning's crisis. But never again.
"I do not doubt that you will, sir. I'm so glad Mary has you for her suitor."
Mr Bingley arrived at half past eight with Mr Darcy beside him. Quickly, they were made aware of the latest discoveries and the family’s determination to go to the address.
Then, Mr Bingley went to Jane without preamble.
"I owe your family an apology," he said, making eye contact with Jane, Mrs Bennet and then at Elizabeth in rapid succession.
"My mother cultivated your mother's friendship with the intention of gathering information to use against your family.
My sister participated, knowingly, in an attempt to undermine Miss Mary's connection with Mr Thwaite.
I cannot undo what has been done, and I will not insult you by suggesting the apology is adequate to it.
But I want you to know that I am ashamed of their conduct, and that I have addressed it, and neither of them will trouble your family again this season. "
Jane fixed him a look of affection. "You are not your mother. Nor are you your sister. We know that. You are someone whose company we enjoy, myself most of all." She squeezed his hand briefly. "Now help us find Mary."
Mr Bingley appeared relieved. "Certainly. I have been granted a chance I do not deserve, due to my family’s conduct, but I intend to prove myself."
Mr Darcy had been at the edge of the room for the duration of Bingley's apology, and now he came forward with a propelling energy. He turned to glance at Elizabeth, she met his gaze, and neither of them said anything immediately.
"I have spoken to a friend who works with the Bow Street Runners," he announced.
"I will send a message via messenger to ask him to meet us at the address.
They have the authority to search the premises if required.
Their Hackney coach will follow at a distance.
We do not want to alert the household before we have been able to speak to them. We should go now."
They were distributed between two carriages, with the Hackney coach trailing far enough behind to be unremarkable.
Mr Thwaite, Mrs Bennet, Mr Bingley and Jane took the first. Elizabeth, Mr Darcy, Kitty, and Lydia took the second.
Kitty and Lydia sat together on the opposite seat with a subdued air.
They had after all spent a sleepless night worrying about a sister who had, until recently, seemed the least likely to disappear.
The carriage moved along the streets, and Elizabeth looked at the city going past and thought about Mary.
Mary out in the cold night, Mary in an unfamiliar area.
How would Mary feel upon learning that the correspondence she had kept, valued and turned to in her most private moments had been engineered from the start?
Devastated, most certainly. She would require plenty of support to recover from that shock.
And what was she doing currently? No matter how Elizabeth tried, she couldn't conjure a suitable answer to that question. She shut her eyes, praying that Mary was safe and that they would find her soon.
She thought about Mary's sweet face, often animated when discussing subjects that mattered to her.
But otherwise tranquil. She was a figure of support, like Jane, always present to aid Elizabeth however she could.
Even in matters she did not approve of, Elizabeth mused with an internal chuckle.
Mary did not always share the same critiques Elizabeth held about specific practices in society but she always lent a listening ear.
"She will be safe."
She glanced up. Mr Darcy was staring at her, with an attention that was not the measuring edge she had assigned to him across the season but something softer. Concern, she thought. For her, specifically, not just the situation in general.
"You cannot know that."
"No. But I believe it." His voice was pitched for her rather than the others. "She is resourceful, she is not easily frightened, and we are not far behind. We’ll find her soon. I would not say it if I did not mean it."
Perhaps she was experiencing a clarity that arrived at the end of a sleepless night, when the ordinary defences had worn thin, but she believed him. Maybe it was because she had spent so long reconsidering what she knew of him and arrived, repeatedly, at the same conclusion.
"I was very unjust to you yesterday. You came to warn us.
You came because you thought we needed to know, and you were right.
I said it in a way I did not mean. I was aware of that even as I was saying it.
But I went ahead anyway, because I was frightened.
I was also angry and you were the nearest available person to lash out against. That is not an excuse. I am sorry."
"You were frightened. That is understandable."
"It is not sufficient reason to behave in such a way."
"Perhaps not. But it is an explanation, a valid one." Something in his countenance shifted, revealing a bright smile, one she had never witnessed from him in the months of their acquaintance and doubted many did.
"The apology is accepted, Miss Elizabeth. Completely and without reservation."
He had received what she offered and returned something better. There was also a total absence of satisfaction in being apologised to.
The comforting feel that descended on Elizabeth was a new sensation. She was not certain what to do with it, except to feel, amidst a morning that had offered very little in the way of solid ground, that she was not facing the situation alone.
"Thank you," she murmured, and meant it with every bit of her heart.