Chapter 5
FIVE
HALF AGONY, HALF HOPE
Unsurprisingly, she could not sleep. She retired almost immediately after seeing her trunks packed, more from a wish to avoid the Collinses than to rest. She left a note for Charlotte and begged her not to wake to see her off in the morning, assuring her of her gratefulness for her hospitality.
She had no wish to watch Mr Collins blather and fret in front of Mr Darcy. One humiliation at a time, she thought.
Life as she knew it was rapidly changing. Mr Darcy, the man she had long believed a black-hearted villain, would be her unlikely hero.
Is it really so unlikely, Lizzy?
She had never doubted Mr Darcy’s honour; it was only his arrogance and pride that she had a fault with. Arrogant and proud, yes, but he did readily admit his mistake about Jane. He did say that had he known all the facts, his advisement would have been different.
It put a far different hue on things, to be sure.
Forget about that, she told herself. At present you need to think of Jane and helping Jane in her predicament. With that, she determinedly turned herself over and closed her eyes, hoping she could force herself to sleep.
The next morning, Mr Darcy’s carriage arrived at the appointed hour in the drive before Hunsford Parsonage.
Happily, Mr and Mrs Collins trusted the housekeeper to see her off, and everything, from adding her trunk onto the back to seeing herself situated inside, proceeded smoothly and easily.
There was no confusion, nor fretfulness, just a dignified beginning to a journey that Elizabeth found exceedingly soothing, given what she would find at the end of it.
Elizabeth took a forwards-facing position beside Mrs Jenkinson who had arranged herself with the placid competence of a woman who had spent a considerable portion of her life seeing to someone else’s comfort before attending to her own.
She took up very little space and, as soon as the carriage began to move away from the parsonage drive, produced a half-completed piece of needlework from her bag, settled her spectacles upon her nose, and gave every appearance of being perfectly content.
Elizabeth had wondered how she and Mr Darcy should go on together for the hours required to get to London. What manner of conversation was possible between two people who had arrived, by very strange and rapid degrees, at some mutual understanding that she was not yet prepared to examine?
They could not be engaged, of that she was certain.
He had spoken of his intentions, but he had never actually carried through on those intentions.
Nor would he, now that he knew of the potential for scandal which lurked over them.
Yes, there was every hope of a good outcome if they could find Mr Bingley and make him marry Jane, but even so, it would be a patched-up, hasty affair that anyone could see through.
Not that she was any expert, but she believed Jane’s child would be born in August. No one in their right mind would believe that a healthy child would be born in August if his or her parents were wed in April.
It would not be ruinous, but it would be scandalous.
Whispers would follow the Bennets for quite some time, but they would be saved from true ignominy.
Mr Darcy had become a friend, she decided.
Whatever feelings he might have once had for her would be changed, perhaps forcibly, into friendship, and she was grateful to him for that.
He owed them nothing and yet proffered them their only hope.
For that hope, she would put aside whatever irascibility she once had for him and treat him as someone dear to her.
In any case, it seemed her feelings for him had been built on a false foundation.
Mr Wickham’s testimony was nothing but lies, and she was mortified by how easily she had accepted them.
Mr Darcy had apologised for his actions against Jane, and even their time at Netherfield must surely be counted as friendship—albeit a contentious one—particularly when set against the truth of his feelings for her.
Ardent love and admiration. It was a shocking notion and cast a very different light onto everything.
As she had awaited the appearance of his carriage that morning, she had wondered whether the constraint of the preceding months, the accumulated weight of misunderstanding and misjudgment on both their parts, would settle back over them the moment they were enclosed in the same small space without the distractions of Rosings or the parsonage to diffuse it.
She had not, she found, wondered enough.
There was an additional constraint she had not anticipated, which was that the situation bearing them both towards London was one that could not be openly discussed before a third party.
Mr Darcy appeared to have anticipated this difficulty. He leant slightly forwards as the carriage moved away from Hunsford and—in a voice carefully modulated—said, “Mrs Jenkinson is, I understand, considerably hard of hearing. However, I think we ought not to speak with perfect freedom.”
Elizabeth glanced at Mrs Jenkinson, who was counting her stitches with the absorption of a natural philosopher examining the unusual, and nodded. It felt peculiar to be silent on the subject which felt almost like a fourth presence in the carriage, but Mr Darcy was correct. They must be silent.
The Kentish countryside was awakening into the spring dawn, and Elizabeth turned her head to study it for a brief time. Had Jane slept the night prior? Was she, too, awake and studying the burgeoning light, unaware that salvation, or at least the possibility of it, approached?
There will be plenty of time to speak of Jane, Elizabeth decided. For now, I owe it to Mr Darcy to converse, and to be an engaging partner for travel.
“I wonder if you often make this journey,” she said. “Between London and Rosings.”
“Not as often as my aunt would like me to. Lady Catherine would have me quarterly, but Easter is the most I will generally grant her. As you may suspect, these visits are undertaken more from duty than pleasure.”
“I confess I am not surprised,” she said with a smile. “And do you find the journey tedious?”
“I find it long. Whether it is tedious or not depends entirely upon the company.”
“Then I shall do my best not to be tedious,” she said lightly.
“You are never tedious,” he said quietly. “Of all adjectives, I should never apply that one to you.”
“I would not apply it to you either,” she replied honestly.
He laughed, surprising them both. “Thank you. I can only hope you speak in truth, and not only to please me.”
“I think we both know that I have rarely said anything in an effort to please you. Perhaps never. Certainly not in the initial weeks of our acquaintance at Netherfield.”
“We did have several interesting debates,” he admitted.
“I believed that you argued with me because you thought me silly.”
“I argued with you because I wanted to hear what you had to say.” He adjusted his position on the bench.
“You were, I admit now, fascinating to me for your capability to be perspicacious but not presumptuous, decided in opinion without being uncompromising. You demonstrated to me a true intelligence in that you had opinions which had been, clearly, critically examined and yet you were willing to further contemplate…”
His voice died off as he beheld her. The hotness on her cheeks revealed to her what he must see and that was profound embarrassment. Was this truly what he had thought of her those many months ago?
“And yet,” she said quietly. “There was one opinion I did not examine, but held to obstinately no matter what evidence was presented to me. I think we both know what, or rather who, that opinion was formed on, but only I can know how foolish I feel for having been so certain about it.”
“Thank you,” he said equally softly but said no more.
Elizabeth turned her head to study the scene on the side of the road, an unremarkable expanse of grass and trees about which she could think of nothing to say. At length she hit upon the absence of his cousin as a neutral subject. “Do you often travel with the colonel?”
“His duties to his regiment do not often permit it,” Mr Darcy replied, seeming relieved. “And it is likely for the best. He tends to fall asleep and deafen me with his snoring.”
After a light giggle, she enquired, “I hope I have not inconvenienced him too much in assuming his place in the carriage?”
“As it happens, my aunt has given him one of her carriages. An older one that has suffered some damage. Fitzwilliam has an unusual interest in mending old carriages; he tells me that once this one is remade to his satisfaction, he will have it painted scarlet to match his uniform.”
She laughed at that and remarked upon what a sight that would be to see in town or in the country.
From there they began a discussion of travel, the condition of the road and from that proceeded a comparison of the relative conditions of roads between London and Kent, compared to those between London and Hertfordshire and, lastly, Hertfordshire and Derbyshire.
Of all, she was surprised to find he thought those between London and Hertfordshire the superior and those between Hertfordshire and Derbyshire the inferior.
The conversation then moved to the parsonage garden, the gardens at Rosings, and the grounds of Pemberley.
Then they spoke of books, and discovered that their opinions of a recently published novel that they had both apparently read, independently and without communication, were precisely contradictory, and the disagreement was sufficiently lively to carry them some miles without discomfort.