Chapter Seven
Longbourn
Elizabeth
"You have not yet received any response, have you?" Jane asked as she entered the room, her attention immediately drawn to her sister bent over the writing desk in the fading afternoon light.
Elizabeth's countenance must have answered for her, for Jane did not wait before adding, more gently, "It has been five months now, Lizzy."
"Yes." Elizabeth occupied herself with folding the last page of the letter she had just finished.
Her movements had become practised in a way they had not been in March, when every letter sent to Somerset had seemed an act of hope rather than a habit.
She reached for the wax and fixed her seal before looking up.
"Five months tomorrow, if you are determined upon accuracy. "
"I did not mean to press you."
"I know."
Jane crossed the room and settled into the chair beside the desk. "I only wondered whether there had been any word at all."
"None."
There had been a time when Elizabeth could not have spoken the word so calmly.
During the first weeks she had watched every post with an eagerness painful to remember now.
By May, expectation had begun to give way to disappointment before the letters were even distributed, and by June she had ceased hurrying downstairs to enquire.
Now, when a letter came for anyone at Longbourn, she could hear the announcement without that sudden leap of hope which had once made every disappointment fresh.
She had not, however, ceased writing.
Jane's gaze rested upon the newly sealed letter. "And you still send one every week?"
"Nearly every week. It was easier when Polly had only to carry them into Meryton. Sending them to Somerset is another matter."
"How many must there have been?"
Elizabeth considered. She had never counted them. "Fifteen, perhaps. A few more."
Jane's eyes widened slightly.
"Do not look so alarmed. I have not written her a novel every week. Some have scarcely filled more than a page."
"I am not alarmed."
"You are Jane. You are incapable of looking alarmed. You merely look concerned enough to make everyone else uneasy on your behalf."
A faint smile touched Jane's face, but it did not remain. "I am concerned for you."
Elizabeth lowered her eyes to the letter. "I know because you asked this same question last week."
Jane hesitated. "Are you still certain of the direction you send these letters to?"
"As certain as I can be." Elizabeth touched one finger to the address she had written so often that she scarcely needed to think of the words any longer.
"Willowbrook House, Somerset, near the timber forest. Julia mentioned it once or twice, and I remember it distinctly.
I have gone over those conversations often enough since. "
She rose and crossed to the window. The day had been overcast, and the light was already failing though the hour was not particularly advanced. Beyond the glass, everything at Longbourn had continued exactly as it ought. That had seemed almost offensive at first.
Meryton had long since returned to its ordinary habits.
Elizabeth still passed the milliner's where she had first met Julia, walked roads they had once taken together, and saw Mrs. Tunley's locked cottage whenever her errands carried her near the church.
Even the neighbourhood's fascination with their extraordinary resemblance had faded.
No one spoke any longer of the two young women who might have passed for twins, nor turned to look for Julia when Elizabeth entered a shop alone.
Meryton had found other novelties to occupy it, but Elizabeth had not.
"If the direction were wholly wrong," Jane said, "surely there would have been some difficulty in delivering so many letters."
"I have thought the same."
"Have you never considered sending one without paying the postage beforehand? If someone at Willowbrook has indeed been receiving your letters, perhaps seeing whether they accept one at their own expense might tell you something."
Elizabeth turned from the window. "I have considered it, but I cannot bring myself to do so.
Julia was desperately ill when she left Meryton.
If she remains so, she is hardly in a condition to concern herself with the expense of my correspondence.
As for her father and stepmother, they do not know me.
I cannot expect strangers to pay merely because their daughter happens to have a friend in Hertfordshire who refuses to stop writing. "
Jane smiled faintly. "Julia would object to that description."
"Then she must recover and tell me so herself."
The words escaped before Elizabeth had considered them.
Her expression altered, and she looked away. Five months had not made such moments easier. They had merely taught her how quickly to conceal them.
Jane spared her the necessity of doing so. "I wish there were some other person we might ask."
"So do I."
"Mrs. Tunley must have relations somewhere."
"Undoubtedly, but no one here appears to know where.
" Elizabeth returned to the desk, though she remained standing beside it.
"She had lived in Hertfordshire scarcely a year before Julia came to stay with her.
I asked her neighbours after they left. None knew where she had lived before coming to Meryton, nor could anyone name a relation to whom we might write.
Julia was the first member of her family any of them had ever seen visit the cottage. "
"And she never spoke of them to you?"
"Very little. I knew Julia's father lived in Somerset and that he had remarried. I knew the name of his house because Julia happened to mention it. At the time, there was no reason to ask for more."
That was perhaps the part Elizabeth found most difficult to forgive in herself, though she knew the reproach was unreasonable. Seven months of almost daily intimacy had furnished her with a hundred insignificant facts about Julia Harding and very few useful ones.
She knew which books Julia disliked, though she pretended otherwise when politeness required it.
She knew that she preferred walking before breakfast and disliked currants in cakes.
She knew the particular expression which preceded a wicked observation and that Julia could never keep her countenance when Lydia became excessively enthusiastic over an officer.
Yet she did not know her father's Christian name.
She did not know the name of her stepmother, nor anything at all of Julia's family beyond the plain fact that she had none but the two of them, no siblings, no cousins she had ever mentioned, no old family friend who might now tell Elizabeth whether she lived.
Such knowledge had never seemed necessary while Julia sat beside her.
Whenever conversation turned towards family, Julia had possessed a remarkable talent for directing it elsewhere, usually by asking some question about Elizabeth's own sisters or introducing another subject before her reluctance could become conspicuous.
Elizabeth had noticed it, certainly, but had understood enough of Julia's reserve never to press where confidence was not freely offered.
She regretted that delicacy now.
"I suppose one never thinks to ask such questions," Jane said, following the direction of her thoughts with uncomfortable accuracy. "Not until one discovers one needs the answers."
"No."
Elizabeth sat again and drew the sealed letter towards her.
"I have tried to remember whether she ever said anything else of Willowbrook. Some neighbouring village, perhaps, or the name of a family nearby. But there is nothing. Only the house, Somerset, and the timber forest."
"And Mrs. Tunley cannot be traced through anyone in Meryton."
"No."
There it was, the entire difficulty reduced to a handful of words. Mrs. Tunley had disappeared almost as completely as Julia.
Elizabeth had been angry with her at first. It had seemed impossible that the woman who had faithfully sent word throughout Julia's illness could leave without a single line and remain silent afterwards.
But anger had become difficult to sustain when Elizabeth knew nothing of what had happened after the cottage door closed behind them.
Perhaps Mrs. Tunley had intended to write and been prevented.
Perhaps Julia's condition had worsened upon the journey.
Perhaps they had never reached Willowbrook at all.
There were too many possibilities, and Elizabeth had exhausted herself upon them months ago.
"Have you ever considered not writing?" Jane asked.
Elizabeth looked up.
"Not because I think you ought to stop," Jane added. "I only wondered whether you had."
"Many times."
"And yet you continue."
"Yes."
Elizabeth ran one finger lightly along the edge of the letter.
"At first, I wrote because I half-expected Julia to answer. Afterwards I thought Mrs. Tunley might. Now..." She paused. "Now I write because I do not know what else to do."
Jane said nothing, and Elizabeth was grateful for it.
"If Julia is at Willowbrook and my letters reach her, I should hate to think she might believe herself forgotten merely because she cannot answer. If she is still ill, perhaps someone reads them to her. If she is recovering, perhaps they give her some little amusement. I cannot know."
"And if she is not there?"
Elizabeth's fingers stilled.
"Then I do not know where she is. But I hope that, wherever she may be, she will one day read them all and know that I never forgot her."
Jane's expression softened. It was not the worst possibility, and neither sister needed to give the worst one a name.
For several moments Elizabeth merely looked at Julia's name upon the letter.
Five months ago she had imagined her correspondence arriving beside a sickbed, Mrs. Tunley standing beyond the door and reading it aloud while Julia listened from within, the familiar little absurdities of Longbourn and Meryton reaching her despite the distance between them.
She no longer permitted herself to picture it so clearly.
"I shall go on writing," she said at last. "There are a hundred conversations I would have had with her had she still been here. I see no reason she should be spared them merely because Somerset stands in the way."
Jane smiled. "I think she would be glad of every one."
"Then she shall have them, until I am given some genuine reason to stop." Elizabeth's fingers rested upon the letter. "And I hope the reason will be that she has returned and can hear them from me instead."
She could not make herself consider the other reason.
Elizabeth rose and placed the letter with those intended for the post. Until she knew otherwise, Julia was somewhere beyond her reach, and Elizabeth would continue writing to her, and go on hoping there might be an answer one day.