Chapter 21
“Jane!” Elizabeth exclaimed, jumping down from the carriage and rushing to embrace her sister at the front door of Longbourn.
“How well you look! Although your letters said how much your health had improved in these last few weeks, I feared you wrote only to spare me from worrying and discourage my leaving London too early.”
“No, I really am quite, quite well now,” Jane assured her, with a sparkling smile.
“I have even been out walking with our sisters most days this week, at least for a mile or two. I believe Dr Groves’ advice was right, and I am glad I listened.
Everyone here has been so good to me, too. Mother, Father, Mr Bingley —”
“Mr Bingley?” Elizabeth asked, wondering what their lovelorn neighbour could have been doing and whether his attentions could really be helpful. Still, there seemed to be no cause for concern in Jane’s shining eyes and clear complexion.
Before Jane could answer, Mrs Bennet came bustling out of the house and joined them, wrapping a lacy shawl about herself and fussing with her hair.
“You are come too early, Lizzy,” their mother said rather crossly.
“I was lying down when Hill came running in to say that the carriage was back already. How dusty you look! You must go and wash quickly. Mr Bingley often calls for tea, and he cannot see you like this. Your younger sisters are all in Meryton, and there is no one to distract him but Jane.”
Briefly, Elizabeth thought of George Wickham and hoped that Lydia and Kitty were not furthering their acquaintance with that bold deceiver.
Mary’s presence must surely prove a deterrent, she decided.
It would be quite impossible to conduct even a mild flirtation under Mary’s nose without provoking an outpouring of Fordyce’s Sermons.
There was no need for immediate action, but Elizabeth must discuss what she had learned with Jane and decide what to do.
They really ought not to have Wickham in the house again, but how could he be excluded if his brother officers came for tea?
It was an important question, but one for later consideration.
“As a visitor, Mr Bingley must take us as he finds us, surely,” she replied to her mother, with a laughing glance to Jane and glad at least to find that nothing had really changed at Longbourn in her absence.
“As to being early, I wonder if you mean late. You are the one who has been urging me to come home for weeks, Mother.”
“How you remind me of your father, Miss Lizzy,” retorted Mrs Bennet, shaking her head with displeasure.
“Always joking about serious things and then getting upset about the most trivial matters, like Lydia being too often at the punch bowl in the assembly rooms. As though anyone had a care for that!”
“I’ll tell you later,” Jane told her sister in a low voice, taking her arm and steering them both into the house. “According to Charlotte, it was not so bad as it might have been, but Father has said that Lydia may only drink lemonade or tea until Christmas.”
“Do not talk of Charlotte Lucas before me, Jane! You know how it upsets my nerves to think of her taking my place here at Longbourn. I have not had a full night’s sleep since she accepted Mr Collins’ proposal. To think that she has been scheming and plotting under our very noses all this time…”
Mrs Bennet followed after her elder daughters, keeping up an unceasing and slightly nonsensical stream of chatter and criticism as she went, and neither expecting nor wanting any input from their side.
“…Furthermore, you are very late back indeed, even if you are early, Lizzy. Mr Bingley has been back at Netherfield Park over a month and calls here most days, hoping to see you or hear of you, I imagine, for there is no other reason to do it.”
“Mother, Mr Bingley must have been lonely at Netherfield Park without his sisters,” Jane demurred gently. “Is it not natural that he comes here for our company? He is a kind neighbour too, and I believe he really wishes to be helpful when he brings things from Meryton for us.”
“Lonely? Maybe he is, even with that stern-faced, sulky friend of his back again. I can’t imagine he’s much company, although his sister is a fine young lady and her companion very superior indeed for the type.”
“What friend?” Elizabeth asked abruptly, turning to face her mother. Her heart was in her mouth, for she suspected she already knew the answer to her question.
“Why, Mr Darcy, of course, although what Mr Bingley sees in him, I don’t know.
Still, it’s little enough trouble to nod one’s head on the Meryton High Street occasionally, and Mr Darcy does not merit our further attention.
More importantly, you should have been home weeks ago for Mr Bingley, Lizzy, and Jane ought to have stayed in London near Lord Grantchester. ”
“That is not what the physician recommended, Mother,” Elizabeth reminded Mrs Bennet patiently. “You cannot deny how well Jane is looking now. I do not like to think what might have happened had she stayed in London.”
“Jane might still be set to marry Lord Grantchester,” Mrs Bennet said mournfully. “That’s what might have happened. You might both have been engaged if you would only follow my advice, but no one listens to me. No one!”
“I must greet father,” Elizabeth said when Jane seemed likely to guide her upstairs first.
“Come up and join me after that. I shall help you with your hair.”
“Make sure she puts on a becoming dress too, Jane,” Mrs Bennet urged.
“Do whatever you can to make Lizzy presentable. I am sure Mr Bingley will be here at any moment, and her covered in road dust, me half asleep, and the young ones out. What will become of us all, I’d like to know?
When Charlotte Lucas takes my place here, and we are all thrown into the street… ”
∞∞∞
“How awful!” Jane said, her face growing pained in the looking glass behind Elizabeth as she finished her account of Mr Darcy’s narrative about George Wickham. “They are serious charges indeed, and I do not think we can doubt their veracity.”
“No, Mr Darcy would not make up such stories involving his sister,” Elizabeth agreed. “Nor is he a liar, I must say, for all that I find other aspects of his character unpleasant. He is too partial to the truth, rather than not partial enough.”
“What will you do?” Jane asked, taking up a hairpin and continuing in her task of tidying Elizabeth’s hair. “Will you tell our sisters and our neighbours?”
“I do not see how I can. Mr Darcy has not authorised me to share the information, and I would not like to make Miss Darcy an object of public gossip. Yet neither can we let Lydia and Kitty run about unguarded with such a man.”
“No. It puts you in a very difficult position, Lizzy. It is hard to know why Mr Darcy felt the need to tell you anything, given that you cannot act. What made him do it, do you think?”
At this, Elizabeth turned bright red, finding herself unable to turn away from her sister’s enquiring gaze before the looking glass.
“Mr Darcy proposed to me in London, Jane, or at least I think he did. I rejected him.”
“Oh, my!” Jane gasped, dropping hairpins on the floor and then stooping to retrieve them. “I had no idea of his feelings.”
“Nor I,” Elizabeth responded. “It was the strangest, strangest thing…He wrote that he wanted me to judge him only for things that were true.”
“He thought to change your mind by telling you of Mr Wickham’s wicked history?” Jane questioned with considerable puzzlement.
“I don’t know what he thought,” Elizabeth returned with a shrug, still blushing and finding it hard to meet Jane’s eyes, particularly as she had omitted all mention of Mr Darcy’s interference in Jane’s engagement, and his likely responsibility for its ending.
“He is a most unpredictable man, but I think him an honest one.”
Jane considered all this in silence for another minute. “I think that Mr Darcy’s motives in telling you of Mr Wickham were noble. He thinks to protect the young ladies of the district through your knowledge and tactful intervention.”
Noble? Elizabeth could not bring herself to apply that description to someone who had done any injury to her sister, even if he did have other strengths of character.
“No, it is you who are noble, Jane, for not holding any grudge against Mr Darcy after he was so rude about your engagement from the first. Mother has not forgotten that, and nor have I.”
“You ought not to hold that against Mr Darcy, Lizzy,” Jane said. Elizabeth looked at her curiously. Her sister’s expression was strange, but not unhappy. She did not know what to call it.
“Informing you of Wickham’s character shows him to be a man of principle, I feel,” Jane went on. “Have you considered, too, that he may have been right about my engagement? Maybe Lord Grantchester and I were badly suited. Mr Darcy has known him much longer than we have, after all.”
“You are far too good, Jane,” Elizabeth protested, standing and turning to face her sister. “Your heart is broken, your future blighted, and still you insist on thinking the best of Mr Darcy. I do not know how you can bear it!”
Jane put her arms about Elizabeth, as if to comfort her, rather than seeking any comfort for herself. “My heart is not at all broken, Lizzy. That is the strangest thing,” she admitted. “I feel that Lord Grantchester and I have done the right thing, even though I do not understand it.”
“But surely, you loved him?” Elizabeth asked, bewildered. “You could never have accepted him if you did not.”
“Lord Grantchester is a good man, and he was kind to me,” Jane said.
“I liked him a great deal, and I think I mistook that for love. Still, there were always moments while we were engaged when I felt…wrong. I looked at him and felt that he was somehow not meant for me, even if he was so handsome, so amiable, so honourable.”
“I cannot understand this,” Elizabeth protested weakly. “I truly thought you both loved one another.”