CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After the Carriage
Longbourn felt altered after Jane's departure, though every chair remained in place.
Lady Bennet walked through the rooms collecting evidence that her daughter had truly gone: a ribbon left beside the mirror, a book on the bedside table, one glove beneath a chair. She carried each object to Netherfield and placed it in Jane's old room there as if constructing a small shrine.
Sir Thomas watched without teasing.
"The house is too quiet," she said that night.
This was objectively false. Lydia and Kitty argued in the corridor, Mary practiced below, and servants carried wedding remnants from room to room.
"It is missing one voice," he answered.
Lady Bennet sat beside him. "Soon Lizzy will go. Then Mary. Kitty. Even Lydia, though heaven knows who will take her."
"Someone with durable hearing."
She struck his sleeve and then leaned against it. "What shall we do?"
Ten years earlier Thomas might have said he looked forward to peace. Sir Thomas thought of breakfast without daughters, walks without reports, a library no one entered without knocking.
"We shall miss them," he said. "Visit too often. Become troublesome grandparents if they permit us. And perhaps discover whether we like one another without five girls to discuss."
Lady Bennet looked up. "I have always liked you, Mr Bennet. Even when you were impossible."
"Your taste remains your greatest mystery."
She kissed his cheek.
Jane and Bingley returned to Longbourn after their wedding journey.
Their first dinner at Netherfield as husband and wife produced no visible transformation, yet Elizabeth noticed small differences.
Bingley looked toward Jane before accepting an invitation.
Jane touched his wrist when he spoke too quickly.
Their ease had become private without excluding anyone.
"Is marriage very different?" Lydia asked over dessert.
Every adult paused.
Jane answered calmly. "Yes. And not in a manner suitable for dessert conversation."
Lydia looked delighted rather than discouraged.
Bingley learned the household at Longbourn anew.
Jane moved the writing desk toward the east window, restored her grandfather's portrait to greater prominence, and opened the schoolroom as a place where tenant children might receive lessons twice a week.
Bingley approved all three and was firmly prevented from ordering an expensive new pianoforte for a room that already possessed one.
"He wishes to improve everything by purchase," Jane told Elizabeth. "I ask him first whether improvement requires money. He finds the question unsettling."
"Darcy improves by plan. Papa by investigation. We shall compare husbands after a year."
"You have not yet married yours."
"Then I retain optimism."
Darcy remained at Longbourn through November.
His courtship of Elizabeth became part of the neighborhood's daily life.
They rode with Sir Thomas, visited the Gardiners in London for three days, attended a concert where Mary heard her composition rehearsed by professionals, and spent evenings arguing over books.
One rainy afternoon, Elizabeth found Darcy in Netherfield's schoolroom helping Lydia with an account.
"If the ribbon costs three shillings a yard and you purchase six yards, how much remains from one pound?" he asked.
"Enough for gloves."
"That is not a number."
"It is a practical answer."
Darcy looked toward Elizabeth with mute appeal.
"You ranked above Papa in weakness," she reminded him.
"I begin to see why."
Lydia completed the sum under protest. When she left, Darcy held up the page.
"She is intelligent."
"Very. Her attention runs faster than instruction."
"Sir Thomas could have ignored it."
"He once would have. Lydia might then have mistaken attention from any man for regard."
They both thought of Wickham.
"She helped save Georgiana," Darcy said.
"Because someone taught her observation could be useful, not merely amusing."
He took Elizabeth's hand. "Your family might have been very different."
"So might yours."
"Will you regret living so far from them?"
"Sometimes."
Darcy accepted the answer rather than asking her to soothe him.
"Will you regret marrying into noise?" she asked.
"Sometimes."
Elizabeth laughed. "An excellent foundation."
He drew her close in the empty schoolroom. "I shall never regret you."
His kiss was warm, familiar now but never ordinary. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his neck. Somewhere in the corridor, a floorboard creaked.
They separated.
Sir Thomas opened the door, looked at them, and looked at the ceiling.
"The roof is sound here," he said. "I thought perhaps another repair required Mr Darcy's full attention."
Elizabeth covered her face. Darcy, to his credit, did not retreat.
"Your timing is remarkable, sir."
"Ten years of practice."
* * *
Mary's wedding composition was published in December under the name M. Bennet.
The first printed copies arrived at Netherfield tied with blue string. Mary opened the parcel in the morning room while the family gathered around her.
Her name—partial, modest, but hers—appeared above the title: Two Houses, A Duet for Pianoforte.
Mary touched the ink as though it might vanish.
"They printed the wrong tempo in measure forty-six," she said.
Elizabeth laughed and embraced her. "Then you are truly an author. Your first response is correction."
The publisher had accepted the piece after hearing it at Jane's wedding.
Lady Matlock purchased fifty copies for friends.
Queen Charlotte requested one after Georgiana mentioned it to a lady of the household.
Within a month, Mary's music was played in drawing rooms by young women who would never know how often its composer had once wished herself invisible.
Success frightened her nearly as much as presentation.
"What if the next piece is poor?" she asked Georgiana during a visit to London.
"Then you will write another."
"What if everyone discovers I am ordinary?"
Georgiana looked surprised. "Mary, ordinary people make music. That is why it matters."
They sat at Darcy's London pianoforte with manuscript pages between them. Georgiana had also changed. She entered shops without clinging to Mrs Annesley's arm. She spoke of Ramsgate to Mary when memory demanded it and then spoke of other things, refusing to make survival her entire identity.
At a small concert, Mary was asked to perform her duet with Georgiana. She nearly declined.
Elizabeth, seated beside Darcy, watched the old fear enter her sister's face. She did not rise to rescue her.
Mary looked toward Georgiana.
Slow the measure.
They sat together.
The performance was imperfect. Georgiana missed one entrance. Mary recovered without stopping. At the end, applause rose warm and sustained.
Sir Thomas stood at the back of the room, tears in his eyes.
"You must not tell her I cried," he told Darcy.
"I believe she saw."
"Then deny it if asked."
Afterward Mary came to her father.
"Was it dreadful?"
"Yes. I suffered through every measure."
She smiled. "Papa."
"You were brave. More importantly, you were prepared."
"Lizzy waited two years for me."
"She did."
"I think I would have managed without her today."
Sir Thomas understood the gift within the statement. "That is what she hoped."
Mary did not acquire a suitor by the end of the concert, nor did she require one to complete the chapter of her life.
A thoughtful young barrister named Mr Avery asked about her composition and spoke to her for ten minutes without praising Lady Catherine, but Mary mentioned him only once and then discussed a modulation she wished to revise.
Two afternoons later, Mr Nathaniel Avery called at Brook Street with his widowed sister, Mrs Bell. Lady Bennet received them in the drawing room with Sir Thomas, Elizabeth, and Georgiana present. Mary entered carrying corrected pages from the concert and stopped when she saw him.
"I hope the printer did not injure the modulation," Mr Avery said after the first civilities.
Mary sat opposite him. "The printer was innocent. I changed it because the first ending arrived too easily."
"Most people prefer an easy ending."
"Only when it has been earned." Mary glanced toward the score. "Music knows when a resolution is false, even if an audience applauds."
Mr Avery did not answer with praise. He asked what made a resolution honest. Their discussion moved from harmony to his work in Chancery, where elegant arguments sometimes concealed unfair results. Mary asked whether law could hear a quiet person when a louder one controlled the room.
"Not reliably," he admitted. "That is one reason I listen for what has not been said."
Georgiana looked at Mary and smiled. Mr Avery noticed the exchange but did not demand its meaning.
Before leaving, he asked Sir Thomas whether he might call again when the family was next in London.
He also asked Mary whether she wished him to bring the pamphlet on composers' publishing rights he had mentioned.
"Yes," Mary said. Then, more firmly, "I should like to read it."
Kitty's drawing improved under a London master. Her portrait of Lady Bennet captured both movement and affection so well that Sir Thomas hung it in Netherfield's front hall.
"Everyone will see me with my mouth open," Lady Bennet complained.
"You were speaking," Kitty said.
"I am always speaking. You might choose a kinder moment."
Yet she showed the portrait to every visitor.
Lydia remained under Miss Harwood for another year by agreement rather than punishment. She joined Colonel Forster's wife in organizing winter baskets for soldiers' families and discovered that officers' coats did not make cold rooms warmer or hungry children fed.
"Mrs Forster says I have a talent for persuading shopkeepers to donate," she told Sir Thomas.
"They surrender to end the conversation."
"The baskets are full either way."
"A defensible method."
Darcy watched these changes and understood how easily the Bennet girls might have become objects of ridicule in another life. Their abilities had required expectation, boundaries, and someone willing to see them before they became crises.
One evening he said to Sir Thomas, "You did more than improve an estate."
Sir Thomas looked toward the drawing room where Lydia laughed, Kitty sketched, Mary played, Jane leaned against Bingley, and Elizabeth argued with Lady Bennet over wedding lace.
"I arrived late," he said.
"You arrived."
Sir Thomas accepted the mercy from a man who understood late learning.