by Lucy Tilney
It turned out that he had learned from a friend while in Brighton about a party at which one of Georgiana's so-called friends (another of his 'conquests') would introduce him to Georgiana most probably in exchange for cocaine. I suppose he was in a rush to get back to London to retrieve his evening dress from the pawnbroker or weasel someone else out of theirs.
Unfortunately, Georgiana blames me for ruining what she imagines was an excellent plan for having filched her passport from my safe she was going to marry George, keep him at arm’s length for the entire voyage, and have her grandfather arrange an annulment once in India. The point of this would be to release herself from my guardianship while acquiring a significant amount of money. George's motive I am sure you realise was simply the money.
I hope you understand this is why I did not contact you. I have spent the entire time at Pemberley fighting with Georgiana. When Anne told me you were expected to visit Miss Lucas I bundled Georgiana into the car and took her to Alndale Castle, the home of Lord and Lady Fitzwilliam, and went on directly to Rosings to see you.
This, Miss Bennet, is a faithful narrative of my feelings regarding your sister and my dealings with Mr. Wickham. If you would like further verification on the subject of George Wickham I can refer you to my cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was both George’s commanding officer in France and is co-guardian with me of Georgiana.
I can only add, God bless you.
Yours sincerely,
Fitzwilliam Darcy.
GOODBYE TO LONGBOURN
Elizabeth read and reread the letter until her eyes blurred. How could George be such a… a… ugh… there wasn’t a word in the vocabulary she permitted herself that would describe him. And she had been so wholly taken in - she had found him charming and funny, she had enjoyed his conversation, she had had lunches and afternoon teas with him, and she had considered him a friend. She thought she had been a good friend - she had been loyal, patient, and listening; she had shared secrets and hopes and dreams and trusted him with them. His response had been to lie to her about being in her home town at Christmas, lie to her about socialising with her family and, finally, to seduce her sixteen year old sister. It was odd, she thought, that despite knowing all that already it was now, reading it in Darcy’s letter, that it actually hurt.
She sat on her bed at home with a cup of tea that rapidly became cold along with reflections on George’s perfidy and Lydia’s idiocy. What of Annette? Clearly, Georgiana hadn’t said a word despite all her threats unless she had gone straight to Lady Catherine who would have immediately removed Annette from Hunsford. As Lady Catherine had said families like the Darcys, the de Bourghs, and the Fitzwilliams had reach and no matter what the likes of a Bennet or a Turner or a Pringle might think there was no question of their suspicions overturning a conspiracy at the highest levels.
She read it again.
Oh, the wretch, he criticised my parents for not realising Lydia was going to run off with Wickham then his own niece did the self-same thing!
And George accused me of melodrama, could anything be more melodramatic than him being able to play on all Georgiana’s hopes and fears to the point where he persuaded her on a ship to India within a couple of weeks? Yes, it must be. It must all be true. Darcy must realise that I’d be quite prepared to go to Colonel Fitzwilliam.
He can say he doesn’t agree with his aunt but won’t stand up to her because of Anne. Substitute sister, indeed. How can he not know about Annette? The thoughts swirled and crashed in her head like overlapping flocks of birds until she developed a headache.
What if he doesn’t know? What if it was all effected through Lady Catherine? Annette said she thought her family didn’t want her because of her disability but perhaps it was only her father and with her mother dead he saw a way to get rid of her by enlisting his sister-in-law? She rubbed her hands over her face. But why pretend she was dead, why not just ‘farm her out’ as the royal family did with Prince John?1 She used the cold tea to swallow an aspirin and wondered if the fly in the ointment was Darcy’s older half-brother.
Darcy was twelve years old at the time and you can tell a twelve year old anything. Your sister is dead, sorry. What else would he do but believe? His brother, on the other hand, would have been in his twenties and perhaps he would have protested having her sent away. Lady Catherine with her ideas on eugenics, however, would have been an ideal ally. She had kept Annette in Sittingbourne with Mrs. Younge, close enough to know everything that was happening and far enough from her husband and then, the year after he died on the Titanic, brought her to Hunsford to keep the situation further under her control.
She moved and hunched up in the window seat still clutching the letter. If Georgiana hadn’t told Darcy, would she tell anyone? What a fool she had been to be taken in by Georgiana. All it had taken was a few expensive hats and jewels to disguise another Lydia; another self-centred, over-imaginative, ridiculous adolescent girl! What now could she believe of anything Georgiana had said? No, there would be no point in lying about how Darcy and Charles met or the mackintosh factory, those things were easily verifiable. What Georgiana was up to was not so clear and quite possibly not clear to Georgiana either.
A fresh cup of tea, she decided, would help but she was so anxious and jittery that she couldn’t concentrate long enough to boil the kettle. Who was the real Darcy? Was he the Darcy George described or the charming man from Gunter’s whose niece said he ran a factory just to keep war widows and ex-servicemen in employment? Would a cruel, arrogant man have bothered to write such a letter to a woman who had turned him down? Regretfully she found she had no qualms about his account of his relationship with George. George had lied to her by not telling her he’d be in Meryton for Christmas, he’d ingratiated himself into her community and her family behind her back, taken advantage of Lydia’s foolishness, and there was no way on God’s green earth Elizabeth believed he was in love with Mary King. No, everything Darcy said fitted in perfectly with what George had done. George who had been courting Mary King whilst seducing Lydia and preparing to elope with Georgiana.
Jane. Jane is the crux of this, she told herself as with trembling hands she spooned tea into the little pot. One eye welled up and then the other and before she knew it huge tears of relief and regret were flooding down her face. Of course, he was telling the truth. Their wretched mother had made such a drama out of poor Harry’s death and Jane’s ‘broken heart’ and even after five years Elizabeth knew perfectly well that when her mother wanted to create a little pathos she’d whisper to someone that Jane wasn’t ‘over it’ yet.
And, she said aloud to the empty rooms, am I any better than my mother? Until this moment I would have said all I had inherited were a pair of fine eyes and a robust constitution and now - now I don’t know what to think because I have to admit that I have inherited her overwrought imagination and her propensity to believe in first impressions and mercilessly judge someone on these impressions forever.
Oh, if only I knew his heart! How easy it would all be!
Gilbert Bennet was perfectly sanguine about leaving Longbourn as long as he could keep the income from the estate and found ‘setting up’ in Cambridge so absorbing that he co-opted Elizabeth to pack the contents of his study relieving himself of any need to return to Longbourn. His office in college, his favourite spot in the library, and the various public houses where he could spend hours on his pet subjects or marvelling at the latest news from Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter in Egypt were far more attractive than any duty to his home or family.
His wife’s condition was altogether more pitiable. Phoebe had loved being the lady of the manor and had thrived on the status it gave her in their small town and so the prospect of moving into an ordinary house in an ordinary street, however prestigious the address, was grievous. Mary and Elizabeth attempted to console her with the idea that in Cambridge the wife of a head of a department had definite status but Phoebe who had left school at seventeen and read nothing but ‘G
ood Housekeeping’ and ‘Tatler’ since could not feel much short of terror at the thought of other dons’ wives.
Elizabeth went to Longbourn to help with ill grace. If she didn't she knew Jane would and it would be a short step from that to being persuaded her place was in Cambridge. She took Darcy's letter intending to answer it in the first hour of peace she was allowed.
Lydia was in an even worse state than her mother. She hadn’t had the capacity in the first place to realise how scandalous her actions had been or to foresee their long-term consequences so like a child had expected to have a scolding and it all blow over in a week or two. She had written in her diary about George and her ‘adventure’ and now she wanted to move on. Her coming out party, she thought, should coincide with the start of the summer festivities and the pain on realising there would be no coming out party and all the fun - the strawberrying, punting, garden parties, and evening dances where young couples spilled out on to dusky verandahs out of sight of their chaperones - would happen without her was agony.
“Harriet came back and didn’t even call,” she wailed at Elizabeth on her first night back, “Maria threw over Martin Henry and I didn’t even know until mother told me, and I’m not invited to Mabel Harrington’s engagement party. I was supposed to be a bridesmaid!”
Elizabeth had gone looking for Lydia feeling short-tempered because she was refusing to pull her weight and found herself feeling genuinely sorry for her. Lydia had retained some connections when she first returned from Brighton but gradually these had trailed off and she was now almost in solitary confinement. Nothing Elizabeth could say, however, had much effect and so she left her to it assuming that she would find a way to reinvent herself in Cambridge but Lydia barely ate and hardly slept. Elizabeth whose room was next to hers heard her padding about half the night and Mary worried about the possible odour of sherry from a teacup she’d found on Lydia's nightstand.
Phoebe was sitting on the last sofa in the drawing room determinedly knitting lace.
Elizabeth sat beside her. “Mother,” she began, “about Lydia…”
Phoebe leapt up her intricate work falling to the floor, “No, Lizzy, no more interfering! You do not know what is best for this family. Look, Mary wears spectacles now because of all that legal reading and has abandoned us to live with Florence and Arnold, Jane is in London when I desperately need her here, Cousin William never calls and, yes, Lydia is unwell, and it’s all your fault because you won’t stop interfering. Do not tell me how to manage my own daughter and don’t go running to your father either because I’ve already spoken to him.”
Elizabeth slumped back on the sofa and put her hand on her stomach. Uncle Edward said you got ulcers from worry and she seemed to be developing something. Upstairs her mother’s bedroom door slammed.
In the event, it was only Mrs. Bennet and Lydia that Elizabeth saw on to the Cambridge train two weeks later. Kitty had announced she was staying in Meryton with their grandmother and no-one, not even Phoebe, had the energy to argue with her. Elizabeth had thought it would be better for her to forge a new life in a new place even if only, to echo Lydia’s words, regarding the Meryton ‘fish pond’ and the fact that there would be a better selection of prospective husbands in Cambridge but Kitty was adamant.
She walked back to Longbourn through the back lanes instead of the Netherfield road delighting in the hedgerows full of flowers and the persistent, joyful peep-peeping of chaffinches. The house was let for five years but in her heart, she knew her parents would never return and after she locked up the next time she would enter it would be as a guest of William’s after her father’s death.
And there he was, wretched man, puffing along on his bicycle crushing dog violets under his wheels and ruining her last Longbourn ramble.
“Ah, my dear cousin,” he managed to raise his hat and teeter precariously to a halt at the same time, “I don’t believe I’ve seen you outside church since Christmas.”
“January” she replied, sotto voce.
“I’m on my way to the Combes’ farm so I’ll walk with you as far as the crossroads. I say, all that white stuff is dreadful, the farmers should cut it back.”
“If they cut back all the flowering blackthorn they wouldn’t have time to grow wheat,” she said while asking herself why she wasn’t running in the other direction.
“Is that what it is? My dear cousin, as dear to me as any sister could be, I need your advice,”he paused and peered around for a moment as if he expected Mrs. Long or Mrs. Phillips to pop out of the rambling blossoms, “why is it do you think that women find me so undesirable as a husband? I fell to thinking about it when Mrs. Combes telephoned me about Rosie getting married and I cannot find a satisfactory explanation. Why am I uninteresting to the fairer sex?”
Let me count the ways, thought Elizabeth. Aloud she knew not what to say. Although not handsome he was not ugly although needing to lose forty pounds and forty pounds, she mused, would not put off a woman who actually loved him or even someone who simply wanted a comfortable home and some status. She who prided herself on a way with words had no words to explain to him that women tend not to want self-centred oafs.
“Perhaps,” she said tentatively, “you might consider choosing one lady and making yourself worthy of her. It isn’t seemly when half the young women in the congregation can claim to have been courted by the rector. ”
He flushed to the roots of his hair or what she could see of them beneath his hat, “I see. Yes. Yes, I see. Thank you, Elizabeth.”
And he wobbled off in the direction of the hamlet of Little St Mary without as much as a backward glance.
So with the bizarre experience of giving courting advice to William as her final memory of Longbourn, she set off to lock up the house and leave the key under a flower pot for Uncle Arnold.
1 Prince John was the youngest child of King George V and Queen Mary. He suffered from epilepsy and learning disability. When his condition became too difficult to deal with he was sequestered with his nanny in a cottage and largely cut off from the rest of the family.
GOOD NEWS AT LAST
A weary Elizabeth arrived at the little flat at the top of the Gardiners’ West Hampstead house that evening. Jane had kept the flat comfortable and cheerful. A fire hissed in the grate like a convocation of baby dragons, a pot of tea and a cake sat atop a gingham cloth, and her cosy slippers had been placed by the biggest, comfiest chair. And Jane had news. Sitting on the sofa with her stockinged feet tucked under her she began, “Remember that Caroline told me to get in touch if I was ever in London? Well, I did. I met her for tea in Maison Lyons which seemed to be beneath her and I listened to her talk incessantly of Mr. Darcy and a plan to visit Pemberley although, to be honest, it didn’t sound as if Mr. Darcy had even invited her. She told me at length about Charles spending time with Mr. Darcy’s cousin and how that cousin was almost as dear to her as Louisa.”
Elizabeth grimaced, “I think she…”
“Mmmmmm,” Jane’s mouth was full of cake, “she voices her wishes. Anyway, the important bit of all this is that she was in such a rush to leave me she left the ring she’d been fidgeting with on the table.”
Elizabeth recalled Caroline doing the same thing at Netherfield when she was under strain.
“I waited a while to see if she returned and when she didn’t I put it in my bag and telephoned when I got home. And Charles answered the phone! I almost hung up but he sounded so pleased to hear me that I arranged to meet him to return the ring.”
“What excuse did he give for leaving Netherfield so abruptly?”
Jane hugged a cushion and thought for a moment, “I was forward enough to ask, you would have been proud of me, Lizzy. He fluffed and blushed and finally told me that he had been told that I was so in love with Harry Woodhouse that I would never love anyone again. He knew our mother was anxious for me to marry and he didn’t want me to feel under pressure. You know, he even went to the War Memorial and ‘had a word’ with Harry, asked
him not to mind and to sort things out if he could but eventually the pressure became too much.”
Her lip began to tremble and Elizabeth dived on to the sofa to put her arms around her, “Is all well now?”
“Sort of,” Jane rummaged in her yarn bag for a handkerchief, “I did feel a little let down, he could have asked me instead of listening to silly local gossip, but if I can stay here in London I am going to give him another chance.”
“Of course you can stay! Heavens, there’s no way I’d have you go to Cambridge.”
“Just as well,” smiled Jane because Uncle Edward and Aunt Marianne have offered me a job looking after the twins.”
Elizabeth laughed, “Hello, Nanny Bennet!”
Her heart was overjoyed to know that Charles hadn’t implicated Darcy in his explanation.
Jane’s romance simmered along nicely helped by the fact that her doting mother was kept entirely ignorant. A full two months later they asked her to join them for dinner in the Royal Automobile Club. Charles’ choice of venue, of course. They settled at their table where Elizabeth, happy with her surroundings and even happier with her companions, smiled sweetly when Charles took over ordering the wine. It was doubtless safest for women not to make these decisions for themselves.
“Oh, look,” cried Charles who obviously wanted to look at nothing other than Jane’s blonde head bent over the menu, “it’s Darcy! Halloooo… waiter, waiter, another setting please…”
Elizabeth’s heart plummeted. How could she bear to eat with him after that letter that she had never been brave enough to reply to? Fervently she hoped he was here with a party and unable to join them but unfortunately not.