Chapter 21 Longbourn #2
A memory returned from his ride after the wedding.
Elizabeth looked to the side of the road when a dog barked, and Darcy had asked if she knew the farm.
She replied, ‘I know the dog’, which made no sense at the time, but made all the sense in the world in retrospect.
Had she been chased by that dog in the middle of the night, in the dark?
Might her flight have ended early with toothmarks on her leg?
What had it taken to hear that—to know that was only the first of the many dogs, literal and figurative, that she might have to face alone—and still prefer that to becoming Mrs Darcy?
He found himself swaying, but Longman was no more enamoured with gentlemen fainting than ladies, so a solid squeeze on the shoulder reminded Darcy to get hold of himself.
“That explains quite a lot, Miss Katherine. I learned recently that she had been to Lambton, but not the scope of the thing. Did she bring a maid back with her? I know she became close to one named Molly Hatcher and took her along wherever she went.”
Jane replied, “We were not here when they returned.” Then she faltered, but finally added, “Father started locking her into her room at night and roping the door shut for good measure.”
Lydia hopefully added, “He did not want her to pick the lock and escape.”
“Was picking a lock something she could do?” Darcy asked in surprise.
“Of course! We all can! Can’t everybody?” Lydia laughed.
Darcy just shook his head, wondering how much of a secret life women had. For his own part, if his escape from a prison depended on his picking a lock, he would starve to death before he worked it out.
Lydia continued, “Maybe all women do not know, but all sisters of Elizabeth Bennet do. She taught us. She was reading gothic novels day and night at the time and was convinced at least one of us would get locked up in a dreary tower someday.”
He wondered if she thought her prophecy had come true at Pemberley but did not dwell overly long on the thought.
“You say your father—roped her in? That seems—” and he tried to think of a polite word.
Mary helpfully said, “Will ‘extreme’ or ‘excessive’ do?”
“Yes, I think it might.”
Lydia laughed. “Not extreme enough!”
“What do you mean?”
“She took an old file she found in the garden and one of Father’s old large books that she hated, and knocked out the—” then she looked around at her sisters, and asked, “you know—the things in the other side of the door.”
Darcy guessed. “Hinge pins?”
“Yes, that was it. Father roped one side of the door closed, so Lizzy opened the other. Then she took a bag of apples and onions and walked to London. She thought she could convince your uncle, Lord Matlock, to save her from her fate.”
A memory of a conversation with his uncle and Bingley just before the wedding came back to him as if he had experienced it the day before, and he asked, “Did she take your father’s coat?”
“Yes, of course. It was December, and she was walking to London! What would you expect?” Lydia stated as boldly as if she did that every day.
Darcy was stunned, and at first wanted to disbelieve it, but it told him something.
London was only twenty-five miles or so, about eight to ten hours of walking for the then Miss Elizabeth.
If she had walked to Hatfield in the middle of the night, she could obviously work out how fast she walked.
It was a brave and foolhardy manoeuvre, but he had to give credit where credit was due.
It was bold and brash, and might even have worked if she applied the old lure and the lash to his uncle: offer to go somewhere quietly to preserve his reputation as the lure, and offer to ruin him socially as the lash.
It very well might have worked. Approaching his uncle was clever, as she knew that by the time she arrived, Darcy House would be watched carefully.
Longman surprised everyone with, “She would do that.”
The three ladies looked at the groom in surprise, and Darcy said, “This is Mr Longman, my oldest and most trusted associate, and stablemaster.”
Longman bowed, and the ladies did not know what to do with a groom introduced as something closer to a peer.
Longman said, “Do not fret about how to greet me, Ladies. Your sister never did.”
Mary asked, “Did you know her well, Mr Longman?”
Longman replied, “She was kind to horses,” to which Darcy added, “That is Longman’s highest praise. He taught your sister to ride,” which piqued his curiosity, since that was a subject he wondered about.
Longman replied, “She had the basics, but needed some work. This is her horse, Omega.”
The sisters were long confused by just how many rules of propriety were being trampled in the dust, but they reacted exactly as Longman intended. They all crowded around Omega to coo and pet him.
Longman returned to Hercules, pulled some apples and carrots from his bag, and handed them to the sisters to feed the beasts. He thought it would be useful to calm the whole situation down; but once they finished feeding both horses, just to be fair, he faded back into the background.
Darcy had, as per Longman’s design, regained his equilibrium, and that caused him to recall almost her last words to him back in the carriage. They had been lost memories after typhus, but they came back to him with the force of a hammer-blow in that moment.
Mrs Darcy had just torn his hide off about his manners, calling him ‘loaded with selfish disdain of the feelings of others,’ and claiming he would ‘be the last man in the world whom she could ever be prevailed on to marry.’
He had angrily accused her of taking Wickham’s lies to heart.
She had snapped, quite furiously as he recalled, ‘When I said, a month, I meant literally one month, not some vague interval between one and three months. That opinion preceded my acquaintance with Mr Wickham, and it was based entirely on my interactions with you.’
He noted Jane had recovered her equilibrium, and asked, “She never liked me, did she? Never for a second. Not even a little.”
Jane cringed and stared at the ground. “No sir, she did not.”