Chapter 22
Elizabeth Bennet
The rose trellis in the Pemberley kitchen garden was not as grand as the one at Rosings, but it was every bit as charming.
It occupied the far end of the walled garden, where the kitchen beds gave way to an old pergola wound through with climbing roses that had been there long enough to have opinions of their own.
Beneath it stood a bench, set there for no practical purpose Elizabeth could determine, which suggested that whoever had placed it understood that a bench under roses required no further justification.
She had found it on her third day at Pemberley and had returned to it ever since.
It was the best place on the estate for thinking, for it was both beautiful and unlikely to attract anyone in search of her.
She came there now with two letters and the intention of reading them somewhere quiet, away from the companionable but sometimes distracting society of the house.
Elizabeth had received them both together at breakfast, one from Jane and one from Charlotte, and had taken them outside without opening either.
Over many months of uncertain correspondence, she had learned to wait until she was somewhere she could react privately.
A letter that was read at the breakfast table had to be received with a composed face regardless of its contents, and she had found that composure came more easily when she was alone.
Sitting on the sun-warmed bench, Elizabeth opened Jane’s letter first.
Jane’s handwriting was its usual neat self, the letters evenly formed, which always struck Elizabeth as entirely characteristic. Jane was orderly in her correspondence even when, as became apparent in the first line, the subject matter was considerably less so.
My dearest Lizzy,
I must tell you at once that we are all returning to Longbourn, for there has been a terrible scene in Brighton, and though it has ended more happily than it might have done, it is better that we come home.
Doubtless it will not surprise you to learn that the trouble concerned Lydia. But you will be far more shocked by what comes next: it seems Mr Wickham approached her and proposed that they run away together!
Before you imagine the worst, I must tell you immediately that Lydia refused him.
But she refused him, I am sorry to say, not on grounds of principle or propriety, but because with dear Papa still away, there was no one she could apply to for money for wedding clothes, and she was not prepared to be married without them.
Elizabeth stopped.
She read that sentence again.
Elizabeth looked up at the roses for a moment, and a single laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
Nor was it a laugh of amusement, but rather of the kind that arrives when something is both terrible and genuinely absurd at the same time, and the only honest response contains both things at once.
She read on.
Mr Wickham made the proposal at a party held by Colonel Forster.
He had taken Lydia a little apart from the others, which might have been privacy enough for an indecent suggestion, but proved not to be for a noisy argument.
The refusal led, in a manner I shall spare you the full detail of, to Mr Wickham being struck forcefully on the head with Lydia’s reticule.
This produced a scene of considerable note among the officers present, several of whom have apparently not stopped talking about it since.
Mr Wickham’s shame did not end there. It subsequently came to light that Lydia was not his first object, but rather only intended to provide amusement for his flight.
Certainly, he did not really intend to marry her.
He had been attempting to leave Brighton with some urgency in any case, there being several gambling debts of considerable weight pursuing him rather closely.
He has now gone, and no one is quite certain where, and the debts remain behind him as debts so often do.
I confess I find it difficult to know whether to be more relieved by the outcome or more alarmed by how nearly it was a very different story. I can only shake my head at it all.
Lydia, for her part, seems entirely satisfied with herself and has been describing the incident to anyone who will listen with great enthusiasm. I am glad she is safe. I am less glad about the principles, or the lack of them, which led her to this point. But I suppose one cannot have everything.
We shall be back at Longbourn within the week.
Your ever loving sister,
Jane
Elizabeth folded the letter and held it in her lap for a moment.
The relief was real and enormous. She felt it in the way one feels the full weight of a fear only at the moment it is lifted, understanding only then how much had been resting on it.
Wickham had tried. He had looked at Lydia, who had no fortune and no father present to defend her, and he had tried to ruin her, and the only reason it had not worked was Lydia’s entirely characteristic refusal to be married without adequate fripperies.
She thought about Georgiana in the rose arch at Rosings, telling her about Ramsgate in the careful, steady voice of someone who has decided to say a difficult thing and is going to say it properly.
She thought about what Georgiana had said about Wickham’s reasons, the money and the revenge, and felt the cold clarity of understanding exactly who he was and exactly how little had stood between Lydia and disaster.
Elizabeth shook her head, as Jane had shaken hers. Then she picked up Charlotte’s letter.
Charlotte wrote as she always did, with great economy and considerable good sense.
Dear Elizabeth,
I write to you in confidence, as Mr Collins does not know I am doing so, and I must ask you to treat it accordingly.
It is a painful truth that your father has now been absent since last autumn, and that no word has come from him.
Mr Collins has not been unaware of this.
He has consulted at some length with Lady Catherine, and has now engaged a solicitor.
It is his intention to bring a legal claim on the grounds that Mr Bennet must be presumed dead, and that Longbourn therefore passes to him as the rightful heir.
He has told me himself that the estate cannot go unmanaged, and that it is his duty as the heir to step forward.
I pointed out to him that the law requires seven years before a man may be legally presumed dead. He replied that Longbourn needed a man at its head now, not in seven years, and that he considered it his duty to his family and to the property not to wait.
I have tried to reason with him, and I have failed every time. Lady Catherine is behind the idea entirely, and when she is behind him he becomes considerably harder to move than he is otherwise, which is saying something.
I must tell you plainly, Elizabeth, that I believe he intends to act very soon.
I do not say this to alarm you unnecessarily.
I say it because I think the situation is serious.
You are my oldest friend, and I could not in good conscience say nothing and go on about my business as though everything were ordinary.
I was reluctant to go behind my husband in this way. My dear friend, I am sure you will understand that it was not an easy decision. But there are some things that matter more than domestic loyalty, and this is one of them.
Your devoted friend,
Charlotte Collins
Elizabeth folded the letter carefully and set it on top of Jane’s.
She looked at the roses. The morning sun was warm on the bench.
The bees moved through the flowers with their usual indifference to human troubles.
From somewhere in the upper part of the house, she could hear the faint, carrying notes of the pianoforte.
It was Mary and Georgiana working through a passage together, stopping and starting, making the comfortable sound of two people absorbed in something they both cared about.
She thought about Mr Collins intending to take Longbourn. She thought about Charlotte, who was not a woman who panicked, and who was frightened.
She also thought, with a fresh burst of irritation, that the entire thing was absurd.
How could Mr Collins simply decide that her father was dead? Mr Bennet had vanished, certainly. His absence was frightening and increasingly difficult to explain. But absence was not death.
Perhaps Charlotte was mistaken. Perhaps Mr Collins would make a great deal of noise and accomplish very little. It would not be the first time he had mistaken his own importance for authority.
But Charlotte did not alarm easily. Charlotte did not write secret letters behind her husband’s back because she had misunderstood a passing remark. If Charlotte warned her, then Charlotte believed there was something to fear.
And underneath it all was the same dreadful fact that had sat beneath every other anxiety since autumn: her father had been gone for the better part of a year.
She did not know where he was. She did not know whether he was safe.
She had not known since the bright October day he had left without explanation, and she was no closer to an answer than she had been then.
Elizabeth sat with all of it and tried desperately to think clearly.
She could write to her uncle. Mr Gardiner was sensible and resourceful, but he had already tried to trace her father once, following the trail as far as London before losing it entirely.
She could write to Jane, would need warning about the threat that loomed over them, but could hardly be expected to prevent it.
She could write to a solicitor of her own, though she did not know one, and had no money to pay one, and could not imagine what she would say.
The honest answer was that she did not know what to do, which was the same answer she had arrived at every time she had turned this problem over since the previous autumn, and which had not improved with repetition.
A footman appeared at the entrance to the pergola. “Forgive the interruption, Miss Bennet. An express has arrived for you.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said in surprise, hardly knowing what to expect. She took it from him. He bowed and withdrew, leaving her to read it in privacy.
The handwriting on the outside was Jane’s. The same neat hand as the letter she had just read, but different, though she could not have said precisely how. She broke the seal.
Elizabeth drew in a quick breath. The absence of any salutation beyond her name told Elizabeth to expect disaster before she read another word.
Lizzy,
I write in great haste. We have returned to Longbourn to find Mr Collins already here.
He arrived, it seems, the day before us.
He says that in Papa’s continued absence, he has come to act as caretaker of the estate, to manage things until Papa returns or until the situation is otherwise determined.
He has brought papers of some kind from a lawyer.
I have read them, and they seem to say what he says they do, but I cannot judge their validity in the least.
He has been very civil about it, which somehow makes it worse. Mama is beside herself. Kitty has been crying. I do not know what to do, Lizzy. I do not know who to write to, or what to say, or what our rights are in any of this. Please, if you can think of anything at all, write to me at once.
Your Jane
Elizabeth sat very still.
Charlotte’s letter had warned her. She had read it twenty minutes ago and realised this seriousness of the matter, how it could happen soon, if not what she should do about it.
But it was not a problem that was coming soon. In the time Charlotte’s letter had taken on the journey north, it had already happened.
Elizabeth stared at the page. Charlotte had been right.
Not eventually. Not in a few weeks. Not after further discussion and threats and consultations with solicitors, but right now.
Mr Collins was already sitting in Longbourn. He had moved when the family was away from the house, likely thinking that possession was nine-tenths of the law, and now he was at Longbourn with his papers and his civility and Lady Catherine’s full approval, and Jane was alone trying to manage it.
She stared at the express. Her thoughts moved in circles.
She needed to find her father. That was the answer to all of it, the only answer that actually resolved anything.
Mr Collins had no claim, no argument, no case, if Mr Bennet was alive and came home.
Everything collapsed the moment her father walked back through his own front door.
But she did not know where he was. She had not known for months. She had turned it over from every angle she could think of, had written letters and asked questions and followed the few threads available to her, and she had got nowhere, and she could not see how that was going to change.
Her thoughts went around again, arriving at the same place, and began to circle once more.
“Miss Bennet.”
She looked up.
Mr Darcy was standing at the entrance to the pergola, looking down at her. He did not have his customary look of reserve, the careful neutrality he wore in company. He was simply looking at her, with something in his face she had not seen there before.
He looked at the letters in her hands, and then at her expression.
“Elizabeth,” he said quietly. “What has happened?”