Chapter 39 Back to Longbourn
Back to Longbourn
I fainted again for a time. When I woke again, I found I was being half-carried, half-dragged across the lawn. My left arm was flung across someone’s shoulders, my waist clutched tightly by an unknown hand.
No. Not unknown. Even under the smell of dirt and blood, I knew my benefactress. I mumbled her name.
She paused. “Can you stand?”
I tried, and immediately crumpled back against her.
“Right. Just hang on to me. Courage, Sir Gregory, we’re almost there.”
Indeed, I could see that Pemberley loomed in front of us, a dim outline against the rising sun.
“You saved me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I felt a little drunk. My head lolled against her shoulder, my feet stumbling in the morning dew.
“You are hurt,” she said. “Your mind is in disorder. No need to talk.”
We had made it to a door. A tradesman’s entrance, I believe, tucked in a stone alcove. She propped me against its wall so she could deal with the door. I promptly slid to the ground.
She tried the door, then sighed when she found it locked. “Dash it. Listen to me, Miss Bennet. We went for an early morning walk to catalogue mushrooms, and you slipped and fell. They will believe that. I’ve done it before. Can you remember that?”
I nodded, then winced. My neck felt like it was broken in eight places. “Mushrooms.”
“Mushrooms.” She would not look me in the eye. She raised her fist to knock.
“What mushrooms?”
“Oh, for— Agaricus arvensis , all right?”
I nodded again and then winced. With an effort, I looked up at her. Again, she was about to hammer on the door.
“Wait!”
“What now?”
I held up a hand. In it I clutched a soft white feather. “You’ll need this,” I said. “Next time.”
She bit her lip. For a moment I thought she might cry. Then, ignoring my proffered feather, she hammered on the door.
“Open up!” she yelled. “It’s Georgiana Darcy! Open up, Jenkins! There’s been an accident!”
There was a commotion within. The commotion grew louder, then the door opened, and the commotion enveloped me. There seemed to be dozens of sleepy maids and flour-covered kitchen girls around me. As they lifted me everything went fuzzy again.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed. Mamma was seated next to me, reading something.
“Georgiana?”
Mamma jumped. “Oh. Mary. Thank the Lord.”
“Georgiana…”
She tucked away her letter and took my hand. “Shh. Rest, little one.”
Against my will, I did.
The next few days passed in a haze of sleeping draughts, physicians, and Mamma and Lizzy arguing in hissed whispers about which physicians should be admitted.
I do not know what they made of the black and blue marks round my neck or of the scars down my arms, but I suppose a physician sees all kinds of things.
After a few days Papa turned up as well, though his visits to the sick room were brief—leeches make him ill.
As I regained my strength, I began pushing away the sleeping draughts.
Again and again, I asked for Georgiana, until finally my mother said, “She’s gone, child. ”
“Gone?”
Mamma was fidgeting with her apron, folding it into little pleats. “She is visiting her future mother-in-law. The visit was long planned.” She hesitated. “She left this for you.” She placed a folded letter on the coverlet.
I picked it up. My name, written in Georgiana’s hand. The seal was broken. “Open?”
“It was like that already,” she said quickly.
I opened it. Here it is.
Dear Miss Bennet,
It was terribly unfair of me, that last letter. Of course you did not believe me. No one with as fierce and fine an intellect as yours could believe such a fantastic tale. Forgive me.
I think it is best if you go on not believing me. I am sorry for not saying goodbye in person, but I find the thought too difficult.
When first we met, I could hardly believe my luck. We seemed so utterly alike, so utterly complementary in every way. But of course the opposite is true.
We were not really good for each other, were we? It felt as though we had created a world just for us—but that was an illusion. That kind of folie à deux ought to be avoided. However intoxicating it may be, the world will always shatter it in the end.
I believe the done thing at this juncture would be to return your letters. Forgive my failure to do so. I must have something.
Goodbye, Mary. Be well. I will picture you, always, happy among your phials and Leyden jars. May the world bring you a clear answer to your every question.
Your servant,
Miss GEORGIANA DARCY.
What am I to make of this? Is she saying that it was all a lie? But that night I saw—
I was concussed.
I suppose she is right. We are not good for one another.
We are to leave Pemberley soon. I am glad.
30 June, 18--
We left Pemberley as soon as I was able.
Before I was able, really, and Lizzy scolded Mamma and Papa roundly for it, but there was no more time to lose.
Papa was low on serum again, and he was wearing smoked glasses to keep anyone from seeing how black his eyes were becoming.
(Luckily his sideburns hid the worst of the black veinage.) Even when low on his medicine, he seemed to lack Pike’s propensity for arson—but his elderly body was unable to bear the strain.
His breathing would become labored, his speech garbled.
He would refuse food and drink and would not, or could not, walk.
It was only the serums that kept him alive.
We made our way back to Longbourn slowly, in care for my health. A journey that would normally take two or three days now took a full week. We were just in time. Had we not arrived in the dark, anyone could have seen what a sorry state Papa was in.
The next day I got up and made him another batch of serum. Mamma made a little noise when she saw me open a vein in my arm—but then she pressed her lips together and said nothing. What was there to say?
The days passed. I got up, I made serum, I rested. Papa drank it. I made more. It wasn’t enough.
Papa’s needs were still increasing. He became feverish. I made more.
Mamma, after an afternoon of gathering her courage, opened a cut on her arm. A good bleeder, and enough for several phials of serum for Papa.
He would not take it.
It was no mere freak of temper, either. When we made him choke some down, he was sick. The razor came back to me.
More, and more, and more. Cuts on my arms, on my legs, on my stomach and back.
Papa allowed me to extract his rib; it did not respond to the procedure, and he could not tolerate one of Harry’s, tearing the stitches open with his own hands.
More of my own blood, then. In between, I wandered Longbourn’s halls.
Ours. Still ours. Empty now of sisters, but I remained.
Sometimes my wanderings turned out to be dreams, and I would awake in bed, or with my head in my arms at my laboratory table.
One day, Mamma found me in such a daze. She was now an accustomed guest in my laboratory, so I was not surprised to find her shaking me awake. “Mary. Wake up, child.”
“Mmm.” I sat up, my head pounding. Even in my sleep, I had managed not to dislodge the basin my arm was bleeding into.
Except… Mamma was covering the wound in cotton. She was binding it shut. “Stop it,” I grumbled. “Can’t you see it’s not enough?”
“It is enough,” she said.
There was a strange tickle. She was stroking my hair.
“Such an odd girl you were, Mary,” she said. “I never knew what to do with you. So different from your sisters.”
I tried to shove her off. “Enough. I’ve got to make more serum.”
“No.”
“What? Yes I do.” I reached for the bandage.
She stilled my hand. “I said no.”
“I’ve got to,” I said. “Papa… Longbourn…”
“Would have both been lost years ago, without you.” She sighed. “We were only ever keeping it warm for the Collinses, anyhow.”
I finally focused on her. Was she saying what I thought? Everything Mamma had done since Jane was sixteen had been aimed at keeping this house. “You shan’t mind being a poor relation?”
“Poor relations! Us? The very thought!” She sniffed. “We are no such thing. Lizzy will set us up beautifully. I shall make her. Why, she never would have caught a Darcy had I not sent Jane to Netherfield on horseback in a thunderstorm.”
“Yes, Mamma.”
Papa died five days later. It was very peaceful, actually. The physician said it was blood poisoning, which I suppose was true in a way. He slipped into a coma, and then three days later he went. And so ends the tenure of the Bennets at Longbourn.