Chapter Five
Longbourn
Elizabeth
Elizabeth sat with her sisters in the drawing room, half attending to Kitty’s opinion of the ribbon Mrs. Bennet had promised for her new bonnet and half listening to Lydia dispute every particular of it.
Her own needle had been idle for several minutes, though her thoughts had wandered too far from the conversation for her to notice, when Mrs. Bennet entered with sufficient energy to put an immediate end to ribbons altogether.
“Lizzy!” she cried, coming directly towards her. “Hill tells me you have sent Polly with another letter to Julia. Every day these two months, I am told, without missing one! Upon my word, one would think you had nothing else to occupy you but paper and sealing wax.”
“Yes, Mama.” Elizabeth resumed her neglected stitch, though without much attention to its direction. “I have written to her every day since she became too ill to receive me. I know of nothing else I can do for her at present.”
“But every day, Lizzy! Surely Miss Harding cannot require so many letters.”
“Perhaps not. But she has been glad of them, and I am glad to write them.”
Mrs. Bennet shook her head. “I cannot imagine what you find to say when you have not seen the girl in two months.”
“Very little of consequence, I assure you. But Julia has been confined to her bed long enough that even the ordinary news of Meryton or Longbourn is welcome to her.”
Mrs. Bennet drew breath to continue, but the door opened before she could do so.
Polly appeared upon the threshold, still wearing her bonnet and cloak. The letter Elizabeth had sent scarcely half an hour before remained in her hand.
Elizabeth’s needle stilled.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Elizabeth,” Polly said, looking uncomfortable beneath the sudden attention of the room, “but I could not deliver your letter.”
Elizabeth set her work aside. “Could not deliver it?”
“No, miss. Mrs. Tunley was not at the cottage, nor Miss Harding neither.”
For a moment Elizabeth only stared at her. “Not there?”
“No, miss.”
“I do not understand. Where have they gone?”
Polly shifted the letter between her fingers. “The woman next door said they left Meryton yesterday evening. In a great hurry, she said. Miss Harding was to be taken to her father.”
“To her father?”
“Yes, miss. That is all I could learn. I did not like to press her for more.”
The room seemed suddenly too still. Elizabeth was aware of Jane beside her, of Kitty’s work suspended in her hands, of Lydia no longer fidgeting in her chair, but all these things appeared strangely distant.
Left…Yesterday evening?
“Did she say where?”
Polly shook her head. “Only to her father, miss.”
“Did she say how Miss Harding was when they left?”
“No, miss. I am sorry.”
Elizabeth’s gaze fell upon the letter in Polly’s hand.
She had sealed it only that morning, imagining without question that before noon it would be lying beside Julia’s bed.
She had written of Kitty and Lydia, of a book she had begun, and of the walk they would take when Julia was strong enough to leave the house again.
“Thank you, Polly,” she said at last. “You did quite right.”
The maid crossed the room and placed the undelivered letter upon the table beside her before withdrawing.
Elizabeth did not touch it.
“I thought she was improving,” Mrs. Bennet said. All her earlier irritation had vanished. “Lizzy, I am certain you told us the fever had abated.”
“It had. At first.”
Jane turned towards her and laid a hand upon her shoulder. “Lizzy?”
Elizabeth forced herself to meet her sister’s eyes.
“She had begun to improve. The fever lessened at first, and Mrs. Tunley believed the worst of the scarlet fever was past. But these last several days...” She stopped and gathered herself.
“When I saw Mrs. Tunley last week, she told me Julia had become delirious and that the apothecary feared the fever might have returned and was affecting her brain.”
Jane’s face lost colour.
“Mrs. Tunley meant to take her to London if she grew worse, that she might be attended by a physician there,” Elizabeth continued. “At least, that is what she told me. She said nothing about leaving Meryton. Nothing about her father.”
Mary closed the book she was reading upon one finger. “A fever of the brain after so severe an illness must be a grave complaint.”
“Mary,” Jane said quietly.
“I only mean there may have been good reason for their haste,” Mary said, returning her attention to her book.
Elizabeth knew Mary intended no cruelty. Ordinarily she might have been impatient with her sister’s solemn manner, but she had no room for impatience now.
“Her father is in Somerset,” she said absently.
Mrs. Bennet stared. “Somerset! Surely, they cannot mean to carry a sick girl all that distance.”
That was the thought Elizabeth had been refusing to form.
She rose abruptly and went to the window. Outside, Longbourn looked offensively unchanged. The bare trees stirred in the winter wind, and beyond the lawn a servant crossed towards the stable yard, intent upon some ordinary business.
Why would anyone take Julia to Somerset in such a condition?
Perhaps she had improved. Elizabeth seized upon the possibility, but it brought little comfort.
If Julia had been well enough to undertake so considerable a journey, why had Mrs. Tunley sent no word?
For nearly two months Elizabeth had been informed of every alteration in her condition.
A better night, a little broth taken, an hour of sleep, a return of fever.
Mrs. Tunley knew how anxiously she waited for any intelligence.
And now they had gone without a word.
“Perhaps Julia was well enough to travel,” Kitty ventured.
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. “Perhaps.”
She wanted very much to believe it.
“If she was not...” Kitty began.
“Do not, Kitty,” Lydia said, with an unusual seriousness that made Elizabeth glance towards her.
Kitty coloured and lowered her eyes.
Jane joined Elizabeth at the window. “There must be some explanation for their leaving so suddenly, Lizzy.”
“There must be one.”
The answer came more sharply than Elizabeth intended. She turned towards her sister, her expression softening. “I beg your pardon, Jane.”
“There is nothing to pardon.”
“But I cannot understand it.” Elizabeth pressed her hands together. “Mrs. Tunley knew how anxiously I waited for news of Julia. How can they have gone to her father in Somerset without leaving so much as a note?”
“Perhaps the decision was made suddenly.”
“Then a few words might have been left. Only enough to tell me where they had gone.”
Jane had no answer to that.
Elizabeth turned back towards the window.
Hurt had begun to mingle with fear, and she was ashamed of it.
If Julia were dangerously ill, what right had Elizabeth to feel injured because Mrs. Tunley had neglected her?
A woman fearing for her niece could hardly be expected to remember the feelings of a friend left behind.
Yet Mrs. Tunley had known how dear Julia had become to her.
In seven months, their acquaintance had passed beyond ordinary friendship into something Elizabeth had never thought to name.
Jane was her dearest sister and always must be, but Julia had somehow made a place for herself beside that affection without diminishing it.
“Julia may not have known they were going,” Jane said softly.
Elizabeth looked at her.
“If she is delirious, Lizzy, she may have known nothing of the arrangements. She may not even have understood that they were leaving Meryton, much less thought to ask her aunt to send word to you.”
The thought struck harder than Elizabeth expected.
Until then some part of her had been imagining Julia leaving the cottage, however ill, with an understanding that she was going away. Now she saw instead a very different picture: Julia carried out without knowing where she was being taken, perhaps scarcely sensible of Mrs. Tunley beside her.
Elizabeth turned away, but not before her eyes betrayed her. She pressed her fingers briefly against them and attempted to command herself.
Jane slipped her hand into hers and said nothing.
For several moments Elizabeth could not trust herself to speak either.
“It still seems difficult to believe,” Lydia said at last, unusually subdued. “To think she was with us at Christmas.”
Elizabeth looked towards her youngest sister.
“She danced twice with Mr. Goulding at the Lucases’ ball. Do you remember?” Lydia continued, almost absently. “She said his dancing was almost tolerable so long as he did not attempt conversation at the same time.”
The memory came with painful clarity. Julia had been flushed from dancing, her eyes bright with amusement as she leaned towards Elizabeth to deliver the observation where Mr. Goulding could not hear it.
A small, unsteady laugh escaped Elizabeth. “I remember.”
How could that have been scarcely three months ago?
Julia had seemed so well then, so full of animation, that Elizabeth could almost hear the laugh which had followed the remark.
Since then there had been nothing but the cottage, the apothecary, Mrs. Tunley’s reports, and letters sent into a sickroom Elizabeth herself was forbidden to enter.
“Do you think she will die?” Kitty asked softly.
“Kitty!” Jane said.
“No.” Elizabeth had answered before she knew she meant to.
Every face turned towards her.
She drew a slow breath. “No. I will not suppose it. Not until I am given reason to do so.”
Whether she believed the assertion mattered less than the necessity of making it.
Mrs. Bennet sank into a chair. “Poor girl. I cannot think what her aunt must be suffering.”
Elizabeth looked away.
“Do you know her father’s direction?” Jane asked after a little while. “If they have truly gone to Somerset, you might write there.”
For a moment Elizabeth could not answer.
Then she remembered Julia mentioning the place months before, during one of those long conversations in which one subject wandered into another until neither could have said how they had arrived at the last. A village in Somerset, and her father’s house there.
Elizabeth had scarcely attended to the direction at the time, but she thought she could recall enough of it to discover the rest.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I believe I do.”
“Then you may write.”
Elizabeth’s gaze fell upon the letter Polly had returned. Only that morning she had written Julia’s name upon it with the certainty of habit. For two months her letters had gone to the same cottage, through the same door, and into Julia’s hands.
Now she could only hope those hands were somewhere on their way to Somerset, that Julia yet lived, and that each passing day found her a little stronger.
She crossed the room and picked up the letter, then set it down again. “Before I write, I mean to speak to Mrs. Tunley’s neighbour. Polly did not press for much. Perhaps, I may learn something else.”
Jane immediately offered to accompany her, and Kitty and Lydia were equally determined to go.
Mrs. Bennet consented readily enough once she was assured that none of them intended to enter Mrs. Tunley’s cottage, though she accompanied her permission with several warnings against going anywhere near the door.
Mary alone elected to remain at Longbourn, observing with some gravity that after so dangerous an illness, unnecessary exposure to the house would be most unwise.
“We shall speak only to the neighbour, Mama,” Elizabeth assured her, reaching for her bonnet.
Jane was already drawing on her gloves, while Kitty and Lydia hurried to fetch their own things. Elizabeth remained by the table a moment longer, looking down at the undelivered letter.
An hour ago she had thought she knew where Julia was, and had taken comfort in believing that her daily letter might lift Julia’s spirits. Now she could be certain of neither.
Elizabeth took up her gloves and followed her sisters from the room.
She could do nothing about Julia’s sudden removal to Somerset, nor about whatever illness she might be suffering there, but Mrs. Tunley’s neighbour was within walking distance.
A few minutes later, having taken leave of their mother, the four sisters set out for Meryton.