Chapter 22 #2
I had expected you at Rosings by now, that we might speak plainly and determine the proper course while discretion could still be maintained.
Your continued absence obliges me to be explicit.
There is work to be done, Darcy, and it is work that admits of neither delegation nor evasion.
The moment does not belong to the idle, nor to those content to be acted upon rather than to act.
If you have allowed yourself to be diverted by provincial concerns, I trust you will correct the error without delay.
Matters of this gravity must not be subjected to casual interpretation—or, worse, to the curiosity of those not equipped to understand their significance.
I expect to hear from you at once, and to receive your assurance that you comprehend both the necessity and the propriety of what is required.
Your affectionate aunt,
Lady C. de Bourgh
Darcy lowered the letter.
Work to be done, she had written.
He folded the paper and set it aside on the bedside table. The presumption of it set his teeth on edge; the confidence with which she spoke of nonsense as though it were account-keeping made his blood run quietly hot.
And yet—he stood at the window a moment, staring out at ground that ought to have been ordinary, and was no longer entirely certain she was mistaken.
Elizabeth did not go down to the sitting room.
She made the excuse before anyone could press her for one: a headache, one branching behind her eyes and over her brow, detailing her discomfort without emphasis or apology. It was not untrue.
Mama protested, of course—as if Elizabeth was somehow in the habit of claiming discomfort when there was company to be entertained—but Jane met Elizabeth’s eyes across the room, and it seemed that she, at least, understood.
Elizabeth climbed the stairs with one hand on the banister, pacing herself as though she had learned a new method of navigation.
Each step away from the sound of voices loosened something behind her ears—not relief, not yet, but space.
By the time she reached her chamber, the pressure had retreated to a dull awareness, present enough to be watched, distant enough to endure.
She sat on the edge of the bed and closed her eyes.
This was ridiculous. She had never been delicate.
She had walked miles in poor shoes with soggy petticoats and laughed at it afterwards.
She had endured sermons, lectures, her mother’s anxieties, and her aunt Philips’s inexhaustible commentary without once needing to flee a room like a startled animal.
She opened her eyes again and looked at the door, as though she might still hear him through it.
Thank Heaven for Jane.
Elizabeth crossed to the small escritoire by the window and stopped there, one hand resting on its edge.
She did not sit. Sitting suggested waiting, and she had no patience for that just now.
She remained standing, listening—not for voices, but for the absence of them—measuring the quiet with the same care she had learned to apply to sound.
Jane knew what to ask. Elizabeth had been very clear about that.
“You must ask him for me,” she had said when they had been dressing for dinner. “Not everything. Only a few things.”
Jane had regarded her curiously. “What things?”
“What Lady Catherine believes,” she had said. “Not what she hopes, or wishes, or praises herself for believing—but what she treats as fact.”
Jane had nodded as she put the last pins in her hair. “Very well. What else?”
Elizabeth had frowned. “Whether she speaks of it as something past, or something expected. Something finished, or something yet to be done.”
Jane had hesitated. “Lizzy—”
“I cannot be in the room when he answers. You know that I cannot, and I wish I could explain. But I need to know what he thinks he knows.”
“But why? What does any of it matter? You never cared about a word Mr Collins said, and now suddenly you want me to interrogate him?”
“Jane, I…” Elizabeth had pressed her fingers into her eyes. “I cannot say why. I only feel that there is something to do with…” She had bitten her lip then, and simply shaken her head. “Never mind. I will only sound crazy.”
Jane had studied her for a moment longer, then inclined her head. “Very well.”
Now Elizabeth waited.
Time passed unevenly. She lay back on the bed at last, one arm flung over her eyes, listening to the house rearrange itself below. Cups. Chairs. The cadence of Mr Collins’s voice, mercifully distant, its edges dulled by walls and floors. Even that carried a faint echo, but it no longer ached.
A knock came at the door, and Elizabeth sat up. Jane entered with a tray—tea, bread, a little dish of butter.
Elizabeth watched her sister’s face rather than the tray. “Well?”
Jane set the tray down and exhaled softly. “He was very pleased to be asked.”
“Of course he was.”
Jane smiled faintly. “I asked what you suggested. About Lady Catherine. About whether she has always spoken of these matters as… ongoing.”
“And?”
Jane considered. “He spoke at great length,” she said honestly. “But I am not certain how much of it meant anything.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Not from pain—anticipation.
“He believes there is something,” Jane went on. “Something important. Something connected to old families and proper order. He spoke of stewardship. Of inheritance. Of responsibility.”
“Those are his favourite words, but was there any substance to it, or mere pontification?”
“He was rather short on specifics. And when I asked whether Lady Catherine spoke of it as a thing accomplished, or still expected, he became vague. He said such matters were ‘not always suited to public articulation.’ That they were preserved through understanding rather than record.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes again. “So, he does not know anything useful.”
Jane shook her head. “Not really. He knows that Lady Catherine believes herself involved in some great legacy. And, rather oddly, he claims that Mr Darcy is, in some way, central. But everything else was… impression. Repetition. Reverence.”
Elizabeth groaned and set down the teacup she had absently picked up. A dead end, then. Or worse—a noisy one.
“And did he say anything else?”
Jane hesitated. “Only that Lady Catherine has been displeased of late. That she believes matters have been delayed unnecessarily.”
Elizabeth’s fingers rose, unthinking, to her ear.
Jane noticed at once. “Lizzy?”
“It is nothing,” Elizabeth said, lowering her hand. And it was, now. Or near enough. “Thank you.”
Jane hesitated. “It is not nothing. I can hear and see that much. I have never known you to flinch from company or complain of headaches. I only wish I understood what to do with it.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I do not understand it myself.”
“If it is pain, I can fetch Hill again. She can make you some tea. If it is worry…” She stopped herself, a faint crease appearing between her brows. “I know you do not always wish to speak of such things. I only mean that I will help. Listen, if that is all I can do.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “I know. Go on, you needn’t hover over me. Mama will be looking for you.”
When Jane left, Elizabeth did not follow her down to the drawing room.
She waited until the sound of her sister’s steps had descended the stairs and faded, then rose and followed. But she did not go to the drawing room, where her family were gathered, but the other way—barefoot and careful—toward her father’s library.
The books were where she had left them. Some were familiar—volumes Papa had always kept, their spines worn by his idle reach—others newer, their bindings still stiff, the shop-scent not yet worn away.
What she did not know was whether the collection was deliberate or haphazard. Grouped for pleasure, variety, or some other reason. If Papa had gathered them with intention, he had done so without comment—and she suspected that no question of hers would alter that silence.
She pulled one from the stack at random. Then another, and another, until her lap was full.
Elizabeth opened one at random and was rewarded with three pages of agricultural speculation that managed to say nothing at all. Another offered a cheerful catalogue of Roman remnants—coins, broken tiles, a road whose course could no longer be traced with confidence. She closed it with a soft thud.
“What am I meant to do with you?” she muttered, low enough that only the shelves could hear.
She tried again. Ballads this time—fragmentary, moralised beyond usefulness, every verse footnoted into submission. Papa’s hand, she thought suddenly. This was exactly the sort of thing he read when he wished to pretend he was not looking for something else.
Elizabeth set that book aside and took up another, thinner, its title promising a History of Ballads and Tales as Translated by Rev Josias Harrowe and delivering instead a collection of observations so cautious they scarcely qualified as conclusions.
Most claimed to be translations, transcriptions, or a consolidation of earlier writings of irregular spelling and composition.
She skimmed, impatient now, her thumb running down the margin as though the page might confess under pressure.
Why these? Why her?
She turned another page. And another. Each passage slipped past without catching—until one did not.
It was buried in a paragraph so hedged and qualified that it nearly escaped notice altogether, offered as a reflection rather than a claim, framed with the careful distance of someone unwilling to be held responsible for what they recorded.
They set her where the land was first made known,
At the far verge where water meets with stone.
No crown was laid upon her brow,
Nor sceptre put within her hand;
She was but given to the ground,
As fire is given unto the hearth—
Not to command,
but keep the land.
She wandered not,
nor was she borne away;
She stood as first she there was set.
Yet in due time the keeping waned,
And more was asked than first was met.
What further charge was laid that hour Is not in any song declared;
Or else the singers lost the verse
And left the burden unrepaired.
Of him that stood in bond with her
But little now is writ.
His name is once remembered there,
And after that is silent kept.
He fled not from the hallowed ground,
Yet neither did the ground him hold;
And from that hour the border dimmed,
And what was knit grew faint and cold.
Those that came after wrote but this:
No charge is borne in secret long;
What one alone was made to keep
He keepeth till it break him strong.
Elizabeth read it once.
Then again.
There was no thrill. No chill. Only the unmistakable sense of recognition—clean, immediate, and entirely without metaphor.
This might be lightly poetic… but it was not allegory.
Her body knew this.
She did not ask why. She did not ask how. She understood only that it had happened before. That it happened still. That it was not imagination, nor accident, nor fancy born of fatigue.
She let the book fall open once more and read the sentence again, her eyes stopping this time on a later phrase she had not noticed before.
The Lady perished not by wrath,
Nor by false dealing driven;
But lacking that which should her guard,
She was as one unwoven.
And once the border crossed alone,
No man might cross it then.
Elizabeth’s finger stopped.
She drew the book closer and read the stanza again, slower this time. There was only the distinct awareness of having seen her own experience placed neatly into language.
If only she understood what it all meant.