Chapter Twenty-One
Elizabeth awoke feeling vastly better than the previous day, to see Jane lying asleep beside her, beautiful, serene face pillowed on her hand.
Gingerly, Elizabeth raised her fingers to lightly brush the bump on her head.
There was no pain until her fingertips touched it, and then she winced slightly, her breath hissing out. That hurt.
Jane stirred as Elizabeth made a sound. Her cornflower-blue eyes opened, widened to see Elizabeth sitting up in bed, fingers to her brow. “Lizzy!” she pushed herself upright, reached out. “Oh, do lie down again!”
“I will not, I am done with lying abed pretending to be an invalid,” Elizabeth smiled to take the sting from her words. “Look; ‘tis a beautiful day outside and I would wish for some air.”
“Lizzy, I cannot think that wise. Won’t you at least wait until Dr. Trent comes by?”
Elizabeth sighed at that and acquiesced to Jane’s pleading, though she insisted that she would get up and dress. Jane went to fetch tea for them both and they spent a quiet half hour helping each other dress and brushing hair, Jane especially careful of Elizabeth’s sore brow.
“No, I shall not pin it up,” she said in response to Elizabeth’s request to do so.
“Nobody expects you to look picture-perfect, dearest. Not after - after what happened.” She wove Elizabeth’s long curls into a loose braid, tying the end off with a ribbon.
“There, perfectly respectable for staying in your room.”
“Which I’m not going to do.”
“Lizzy…” Jane sighed, shook her head fondly. “You had a terrible accident. Do you even remember what happened, yet?”
“No,” Elizabeth admitted a little sheepishly. “I don’t remember anything before waking up and seeing your face.”
“Since when?” Jane asked. Elizabeth frowned, not understanding the question. “What’s the last thing you remember from before? Do you remember anything at all from that day?”
Elizabeth sat back, sipped her tea and thought, eyeing her sister curiously. She had never seen Jane so vehement, so impassioned. “What’s going on, dearest?” she asked finally. “What are you keeping from me?”
“Nothing!” Jane said, far too quickly. She looked away, too, unable to meet Elizabeth’s eyes.
“What is it that you want me to remember?” Elizabeth said softly, wracking her brain. “There’s something…” her fingertips fluttered up to her breasts, and Jane gasped, tears standing in her eyes.
“Darcy!” she cried out, her voice shaking. “When you first spoke to me, when I asked you what had happened, you cried out and clutched at me, telling me that Darcy had done something terrible. What did you mean?”
Then it was Elizabeth’s turn to cry out, reaching for Jane’s hands. “Oh Jane - oh, I can hardly bear to think on it, even now!”
“But you must,” Jane sought to steady her voice. “You must tell me.”
“He told me that he aided Miss Bingley in separating you from your dear Bingley! He was proud of it, the foul creature, proud of wounding so grievously the dearest, sweetest girl who ever lived! Oh Jane, I am so very, very sorry…” tears were pouring down Elizabeth’s cheeks, but Jane only stared back at her, shaking her head slowly.
“I do not give a fig for Mr. Bingley.”
“What?” shocked, Elizabeth’s tears stopped.
“Lizzy, until two days ago, I never knew myself. It was only when word reached me of your accident and I had to spend those long hours on the stage-coach coming to you, never knowing if you yet lived, that I came to a realisation. I cared more for the opinions of my family, even of our neighbours, than for Mr. Bingley. I left Longbourn not because I was heartbroken, but because I was ashamed. Ashamed of what was being said about me, poor Jane Bennet, for all her beauty she cannot even tempt the first serious suitor she ever had even to a proposal!”
Jane covered her eyes, breathing quickly from her sudden outburst. Elizabeth moved to sit beside her, putting her arm around her shoulders in a gesture of silent comfort.
“I have so many more reasons to be ashamed now, of my own behaviour,” Jane said quietly at last. “For as much as we have both vowed only to marry for the deepest and truest love, I would have said yes to Charles Bingley, if he had asked. And I do not love him, I see that now. I loved the idea of being mistress of Netherfield, first among the neighbourhood, accepted as an equal by such fashionable ladies as Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. Mr. Bingley was an amiable means to that end.”
“I think perhaps he was a little more than that to you, Jane,” Elizabeth said gently.
“Perhaps he was, once, but he did not return for me, nor send any word. So either he does not love me, or he has placed the desires of others - his sisters, and yes, Mr. Darcy - above his regard for me. If it is the first, then neither of us are truly injured; if the second, he was never the man for me anyway. I could not respect a man who is not strong enough to make such decisions for himself.” Jane lowered her hands.
Two spots of colour burned on her cheeks; she held her head high, blue eyes bright.
“So do not reproach Mr. Darcy for keeping Mr. Bingley away from me, Lizzy. When all’s said and done, I am grateful for his actions. ”
“He still acted out of an abominable sense of pride, and if you could only have heard his opinions of our family, Jane!” Elizabeth shook her head angrily.
“Mr. Darcy was undoubtedly correct, Lizzy.”
“Jane!” Elizabeth gasped, shocked.
“Mr. Darcy knows what true love is, Lizzy. I believe he knew quite well that he did not see it between Mr. Bingley and myself. As for our family,” Jane took a deep breath, looking down at her hands, “let us be honest with each other. Love them all dearly though I do, I do not deny that their faults exist. I might not throw it in their faces as you are sometimes wont to do, because I would not for the world hurt their feelings.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth, and then closed it again without speaking.
“I think it is your pride that was stung, dearest, to have Mr. Darcy look down on us,” Jane said perceptively.
“Your feelings that are hurt, far more than mine. Now that you know I am not truly injured, can you not find it in your heart to forgive him? Did not you, after all, warn Charlotte that she would be unhappy in marriage to Mr. Collins, perhaps in very much the same way that Mr. Darcy may have warned Mr. Bingley that he would be unhappy in marriage to me?”
Elizabeth started with shock at Jane’s question, her cheeks suddenly flushing. “I… never considered it so!” she cried. “And Charlotte seems content enough,” she finished weakly.
“As I might have been content enough in marriage to Mr. Bingley,” Jane said remorselessly, “but why is it wrong for Mr. Darcy to want his friend to have love, not just mere contentment, when you only wanted that for Charlotte?”
Elizabeth dropped her face into her hands with a moan of shame. “I did, did I not? I acted just as dreadfully as he did!”
“You acted just as much out of love for your dear friend as he did,” Jane corrected gently. “And knowing that, perhaps you can find it in your heart to forgive him.”
“You are too good, Jane. Too good.” Elizabeth was quiet for a moment, thinking. “Still, there is the matter of Mr. Wickham.”
They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Jane said;
“Lizzy, I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe it.”
“Don’t believe what?”
“I don’t believe that Mr. Darcy treated Mr. Wickham as abominably as he says.
I think that Mr. Wickham recognised Mr. Darcy’s regard for you possibly before Mr. Darcy even knew it himself, and that he deliberately poured his poison into your ear to turn you against Mr. Darcy even before he had a chance to court you. ”
Elizabeth froze, her eyes wide. “You… know?”
“That Mr. Darcy is quite hopelessly in love with you? Oh, everybody knows that now, Lizzy, though he kept it very secret indeed, I believe,” Jane sipped her tea and arched an eyebrow at Elizabeth. “Even from you, though considering your animosity towards him, that is understandable, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, everybody knows now?” Elizabeth could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“Lizzy, I have never seen a man so distraught, when he thought that you - that you might die,” Jane caught herself at the last moment.
“He was near collapse. Colonel Fitzwilliam told me that he thinks Mr. Darcy fell in love with you at the very beginning, when you refused to be in the least impressed by his wealth and consequence.”
Elizabeth pressed her hands to her forehead, barely able to take in what Jane was saying.
“If he had begun by saying something like that when he proposed, instead of telling me how much against his inclination it was to like me at all, I might not have been quite so angry with him,” she said quietly.
“When he what?” Jane gaped.
“So you do not know everything, then. Yes, Mr. Darcy proposed to me, Jane, in a proposal which surpassed even Mr. Collins’ for awfulness, and I turned him down flat while throwing every terrible thing I have ever thought of him in his face!”
“So that was why he wrote you the letter,” Jane said, understanding at last. “Colonel Fitzwilliam did not tell me what was in it, but it must have been some vindication of the accusations you made against Mr. Darcy.”
“What letter?” Elizabeth said blankly.
Jane’s eyes widened, and she was about to make a reply, when both girls were startled by a man’s voice shouting from outside. Standing, Jane peered out of the window.
“Why, it is Dr. Trent!” she said. “And… dear God, Lizzy, I think something has happened to Charlotte!”
They both leaped to their feet and raced for the stairs, Jane forgetting entirely that Elizabeth should not be out of bed.