Chapter 20
Elizabeth Bennet
They stopped at Longbourn on the way north, which added one day to their journey and left Elizabeth grateful that it was not two.
Her mother had been in fine form. The militia was leaving Meryton for Brighton, and Mrs Bennet had decided that the family would follow.
The result was a level of domestic enthusiasm that Elizabeth could hear in the state of every room she walked into.
Kitty was ecstatic. Lydia was already planning the gowns she would wear, the ornaments she would buy, and the officers she would dance with.
Mrs Bennet entered into all their plans with enthusiasm, and seemingly not a whit of concern for what her youngest daughters might make of a whole camp full of soldiers.
Not all the Bennets looked forward to the trip with such unmixed delight. Jane, as optimistic as ever but too wise not to be concerned, wore the expression she reserved for situations that could not be improved. Mary, when Elizabeth found her in the back parlour, was sitting at the pianoforte.
Elizabeth smiled wryly to herself at the first glimpse of her middle sister.
If she were not much mistaken, Mary had the appearance of someone who has been listening to plans of which she does not approve for several consecutive days and has had enough.
“I shall come to Pemberley,” Mary said, before Elizabeth had finished explaining the invitation.
“I am glad of it,” Elizabeth said with some relief. Both the thought of going alone and that of abandoning her family to Brighton without Jane to steer the ship were equally impossible. “But if you perhaps wished to take time to consider it —”
“I thank you, no.” Mary closed the pianoforte lid with a decisive sound.
“I should be willing to go almost anywhere to escape more talk of Brighton and officers. Going to a beautiful estate where our hostess will be a modest young lady with a great deal of sheet music and a beautiful instrument is not a difficult decision.”
“Very good,” Elizabeth said. “Then we shall go north together.”
Mary packed with great efficiency, and they were away the next morning before Lydia had finished her breakfast.
∞∞∞
The first part of their journey took them through London, and therefore over familiar roads. It was what came next that Elizabeth anticipated with a thrill — roads and landscapes that she had never seen before.
As they went further north, the countryside changed around them.
Derbyshire was as lovely as it was unfamiliar.
The hills came up on either side, darker and older than the gentle countryside of Hertfordshire, and the trees were the deep, settled green of a northern summer.
Elizabeth watched it out the carriage window and felt herself settling too, the noise of Longbourn falling away with each mile.
“Here is Lambton, the closest village to Pemberley,” Georgiana said as they passed through a comfortable, prosperous-looking little town. To judge by the friendly looks and waves their carriage received, the Darcy family appeared to be very popular with the townsfolk.
“How long until we arrive?” Mary asked as they passed the last house.
“Not long now,” Mr Darcy said. “We are on Pemberley land now, and we will reach the house in perhaps a quarter hour.” Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. He had sounded almost self-conscious about the vast extent of his estate, but surely that could not be so.
Then the park gates appeared, and the road wound in beneath the trees, and everything else stopped being important.
Even after admiring the dramatic landscape of Derbyshire, Elizabeth could not have expected anything nearly so lovely.
The carriage drove for a long time through beautiful woodland before the ground began to rise, and Elizabeth found herself thinking of nothing at all, only marvelling at the loveliness nature had created and generations of Darcys had wisely left all but undisturbed.
They climbed for half a mile through the trees, and then the wood ceased, and the road turned, and Pemberley House appeared.
It stood on the opposite side of a shallow valley, a large, handsome stone building on rising ground with a ridge of wooded hills behind it and a stream in front that had been subtly encouraged into greater importance.
The banks were natural, the water clear, and the whole of it sat in its valley as though it had grown there rather than been placed.
Elizabeth was silent in her admiration, for she did not think she could say enough to do justice to the place. Even Mary, who had never been much inclined to look for beauty outside of a book of philosophy or a score of music, seemed overawed by the scene before them.
The road wound down and across a bridge, and up again.
At no point did the house become less beautiful on approach.
It remained exactly what it had appeared to be from the hill.
Large and very well proportioned and entirely without the quality some great houses had of demanding to be admired.
It simply was what it was, and it was very fine.
Georgiana sighed with happiness. “Oh, I am always so very glad to be home,” she said. “Perhaps you will think me dreadfully conceited, Elizabeth, but I confess I feel proud to be a Darcy of Pemberley. Is that not silly of me?”
“No,” Elizabeth said quietly. “No, I believe I know exactly what you mean.”
And she looked carefully out the window at the lovely, winding stream, because she did not have the courage to look at Mr Darcy’s face.
∞∞∞
Elizabeth had been confident Mary would be reasonably happy at Pemberley, and would not embarrass her by anything more than a tendency to quote Fordyce and perhaps to force an unflattering comparison between her performance on the pianoforte and that of Georgiana.
That much was right, but Elizabeth soon found that her hopes had been set too low.
On hearing the obvious superiority of Georgiana’s playing, Mary had been neither downcast nor petulant — quite the contrary.
She had instead become determined to improve herself, and for Georgiana, who had always wanted a sister and never tired of thinking and speaking about music, the result was very welcome.
The two of them were soon such great friends that Mary might have been the intended guest for the visit, rather than a mere addition for the sake of propriety.
That left a great deal of time for Elizabeth to think her thoughts and explore the house, both of which seemed to require as much time as she could find for them.
Georgiana had joined forces with the housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, to offer them a tour, but Pemberley did not give up all its secrets so easily.
There was always a painting she had not noticed before, another lovely prospect through a window, a particularly comfortable sitting area.
But even in the great beauty and comfort of Pemberley, the library stood out as the work of generations. When their little party drifted apart to their own occupations, Elizabeth often seemed to find herself there before she had decided to go.
On a summer afternoon, the space was impossibly lovely.
The fine leather of the bindings shone in the warm light, and a breeze came through the window.
Sighing happily, Elizabeth browsed the shelves until she found a book that she had been meaning to read for a year, settled into the window seat, and was still there when the light changed.
The sound of the pianoforte drifted through from somewhere further in the house. Two pairs of hands, working through the same passage repeatedly, stopping and starting. Occasionally there was laughter.
“They sound well together.”
She looked up. Mr Darcy was standing in the doorway with a book of his own. He glanced toward the sound with an expression she had come to know in Kent, the one that meant Georgiana was happy and he had noticed.
“They do,” Elizabeth said. “I do not know when I last heard Mary laugh so much.”
He came in and took the chair across from her, as if it were the natural thing to do. He opened his book, and they read together in the comfortable way of people who have spent enough time in each other’s company to know that silence is not a problem.
After a while he said, “Has anything been heard of your father?”
Elizabeth set down her book. “Nothing. Not since the autumn.”
He was quiet for a moment. “That is a long time.”
“Yes.” She looked out of the window. “I have stopped expecting a letter. I do not quite know what to expect instead.”
She said it plainly, because plainness was the only way she had found to speak of her father without letting the anxiety beneath it show. Mr Darcy received it as he always received hard truths. Quietly, without trying to soften or explain them away.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Jane writes cheerfully about Brighton,” Elizabeth said, because she did not want to sit with the other thing any longer than necessary. “She says my mother is in wonderful spirits. Kitty has already made twelve new friends, by her count.”
“And Miss Lydia?”
“Lydia is the centre of everything, as Lydia generally is.”
Something moved in his expression. “Bingley regrets your family’s absence, I understand. He has written to say so.”
Elizabeth looked at him. “Has he?”
“Several times.” He said it with the particular restraint of a man choosing his words with some care. “He seems to feel the loss very much.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Do you know, Mr Darcy, Jane recently told me that while they have met with many pleasant gentlemen, she has met none with manners that could compare with the excellence of his.”
“A very high compliment, to be sure.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Neither of them said anything further, but there was an understanding between them that went beyond what had been said, the shared awareness of two people who have each noticed something and are each pretending, for the sake of good manners, that they have not.