He hurried into the cemetery, stepping carefully around the maze of gravestones.
“One of the maids came rushing into the house, claiming she saw a young woman sitting on old Mr. Bennet’s grave!”
Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “How shocking! But I have seen no one here except myself!”
Mr. Collins frowned. “Surely she could not have meant you.”
“That would be very scandalous behavior for a dutiful daughter, not to mention the wife of Fitzwilliam Darcy,” Elizabeth said. “You see I have come to put flowers on my father’s grave. I think he would have enjoyed my visit.”
“Yes, you are a dutiful daughter,” replied Mr. Collins, though with an edge of skepticism that made Elizabeth like her silly cousin a little more than she ever had before.
“I should have let you know I was coming,” said Elizabeth, leading him out of the cemetery, “but did not know myself that I would be here until early this morning. In any case, I did not want to disturb you or Mrs. Collins. How is she?”
“Your forbearance is admirable, Cousin, though it would have been more thoughtful for you to have waited until you could send word. Still, I understand how sentiment sometimes moves ladies to act in ways irrational.” Mr. Collins sighed deeply. “And I suppose you are too distraught to think clearly, in any case.”
“Distraught?” Elizabeth glanced back at the cemetery, which in the sunlight looked too fresh to be home to the dead, and thought she felt more at peace than she had once supposed possible.
“Miss Lydia,” whispered Mr. Collins, as if the dead might hear.
Elizabeth glanced at her cousin. “Then you have heard the news.”
“Heard the news? Why, I received a letter from Lady Catherine de Bourgh only two days ago, telling me of how your sister has ruined you all. ‘Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?’ she asked in her letter.”
“Quite a poetic line,” Elizabeth commented. “I can see why you might have remembered it so well.”
“Yes, Lady Catherine has a way with words—but that is hardly the point, Cousin!”
They had reached the gate separating the meadow from the park, and Elizabeth stopped to look up at the house she had once called home. The faded yellow plaster, the scraggly green vines of ivy, the rows of windows, reflecting the bright blue sky overhead—nothing had changed except the occupants within. Out of the front door came not her mother and father, leading a line of giggling girls to church, but Charlotte Collins, smiling and holding out her hands.
“Lizzy! It is so good to see you!”
Elizabeth reached for the gate, but before she could open it, Mr. Collins put a hand firmly on the latch.
She looked at him, her lips parting in surprise and her cheeks burning with anger.
“It would not do,” he said, stopping Charlotte with a glance before turning back to Elizabeth, “for you to visit—not at this time. Lady Catherine de Bourgh wrote quite clearly in her letter…”
Elizabeth looked to Charlotte, who lowered both her hands and her gaze.
So many feelings rushed through her in that moment, but perhaps the strongest (and most unexpected) were relief and pity. Oh, she was angry enough at being barred from entering the house where she had been born and raised, and even more disgusted that her cousin would turn his back on his family, all because of a letter from a spiteful woman who should no longer have had any sway with him. He was no longer her vicar, but Master of Longbourn (as he had pointed out several times in his letters to her)—and as such, he ought to have at least shown respect to its former inhabitants. But it struck her then that he had not once called on her mother or written to ask what he might do to aid in this troubled time.
For all her anger, though, she could not be unaware of Charlotte, who stood on the other side of the gate, barred from welcoming a former friend home. I might have stood where she now stands. This thought caused her to shudder—not with disgust (though she did not envy Charlotte having to spend her days or nights with Mr. Collins) but with the guilty relief that comes from knowing one has been given a different and better path in life.
Elizabeth supposed she now knew enough of marriage to understand that all such unions required some measure of sacrifice. Two individuals, born to separate families and raised under different habits, could not form a single household without some alteration of the component parts. That the bride was expected to give more of herself to this effort than the groom was an unavoidable reality; yet surely an ideal marriage changed both bride and groom so that they might look back at themselves, some years later, and laugh at the people they once were. Such, she hoped, would be the case for her and Darcy.
Yet for Charlotte, who wore her wife’s cap on a bowed head, how much of herself would she be forced to abandon to the will of her husband? From what Elizabeth had heard from her mother (hardly an impartial source, to be sure), Charlotte ran her household with little interference from Mr. Collins, who spent most of his days puttering about the garden. Yet at what price had she established this domestic independence?
Charlotte glanced up, met Elizabeth’s eyes briefly, and then turned to her husband. “Lady Catherine’s advice is of course admirable, and yet I fear what our neighbors might say regarding our hospitality.” Glancing back at one of the maids, who stood in the yard beating a rug, she lowered her voice. “They do not know yet the cause of your caution, dearest, and would only think you proud and cold, if one of the servants should chance to mention Mrs. Darcy’s abbreviated visit.”
Elizabeth hid a smile; perhaps Charlotte would not have to give up so much of herself, after all.
“You are too kind to invite me in, Mr. Collins,” Elizabeth said loudly enough that the maid (who had stopped beating the rug and stared quite openly at the three of them) might hear, “but I really must be returning to Purvis Lodge. Another time, perhaps?”
Mr. Collins cleared his throat, offered a bow, and said, “Good day, then, Cousin.”
As he returned to the house, Charlotte reached across the gate and, this time, took Elizabeth’s hands in her own without hesitation.
“You are looking well, dear Lizzy! I am sorry,” Charlotte added quietly, “that we could not welcome you as you deserve.”
Elizabeth squeezed her friend’s hands. “I understand, truly.” Then she laughed. “Though I have not met the esteemed Lady Catherine—and do not know when or if I will ever do so—I have encountered her brother Lord Matlock. I quite understand your husband’s terror of alarming such distinguished individuals.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I cannot imagine anyone frightening you, Lizzy.”
Thinking back to that moment at Matlock House when she had said nothing on behalf of that poor nursery maid, Elizabeth knew that she was more capable of spineless behavior than she would once have believed possible. To Charlotte, she only smiled and said, “You must know as well as I do that marriage produces all manners of tests to one’s character.”
“Certainly to one’s patience,” muttered Charlotte, before flushing bright red.
Laughing, Elizabeth dropped her friend’s hands and said, “I ought to return before my family fears I, too, have gone missing.”
Charlotte’s face grew serious. “I was very sorry to hear of Lydia, Elizabeth. If I might do anything…”
She said no more, for they both knew there was nothing Charlotte—or perhaps anyone else—could do to repair the damage Lydia had wrecked on the reputations of so many associated with her.
Elizabeth sighed and looked up at Longbourn. “You have cared well for this place, Charlotte. For that, I am grateful.”
They spoke quick adieus, each eager to be out of sight before they might be seen shedding tears for a past that could not be reclaimed.
The five miles back to Purvis Lodge seemed less arduous, if only because Elizabeth allowed herself to forget her worries and enjoy the sights of fields and woods she had never had cause to explore when a girl at Longbourn. Then her favorite walk had been to
Oakam Mount, and she was surprised to find that she had no desire to take that journey on this visit to Hertfordshire. There would be other occasions—perhaps the birth of Jane’s first child—when she might return and revisit the places that had once represented the world to her. Now, though, she was only too glad to be Elizabeth Darcy, explorer of parts unknown.
Whatever might happen with regards to Lydia, however much Darcy’s love for her had waned, she could not help but glory in the beauty of a June afternoon. And so she took longer to return, turning down paths she knew would lead her no where, and stopping at the stream to take off her stockings and wiggle her bare toes in the water.
As she finally rounded the bend that would lead her back to the Lodge, she heard behind her on the drive the rumble of carriage wheels. With a glance at the sun, suspended halfway between the zenith and the horizon, Elizabeth wondered what brought Jane and Bingley to Purvis Lodge so early in the afternoon, for they usually waited until just before dinner (a decision she thought wise, as Mrs. Bennet’s company was best taken in small doses). Moving aside so that the carriage might pass, she turned and raised her hand, only to freeze mid-wave.
The door of the slowing carriage had opened, and out jumped not Bingley or Jane —but Darcy.
He landed with only a little unsteadiness and said, “I am not sure how you managed that maneuver last winter.”
Her startled laugh echoed through the woods surrounding the drive. She had no time to wonder if perhaps they were at the very spot where she had broken down with grief that terrible day in early January; she had no time, either, to ask what he was doing here, or why he was jumping out of carriages. She had only time to take an involuntary step toward him before he was in front of her, his hands in her hair, kissing her.
“How I have missed you,” he murmured against her lips.
“So it would seem,” she replied in that laughing tone she knew would inspire him to kiss her a second time.
“Come,” he said eventually, pulling her toward the carriage.
“Lydia?” she asked, and had only to wait one second before her sister’s dark curls appeared in the window of the carriage. Lydia laughed and blew a kiss at the glass before saying something Elizabeth could not hear from the other side of it.
She looked to Darcy, whose half smile seemed at odds with what must wait for them within the carriage: either an unmarried (and ruined) Lydia, or a Mrs. Lydia Wickham, accompanied by the cad himself.
“Prepare yourself,” he murmured, as he lifted her up.
And she believed herself fully prepared for either of those distasteful outcomes. She was not, however, ready for what she saw.
Lydia giggling—well, that was to be expected. Lydia sitting next to Ana—this was a surprise, but not so terribly shocking, as Darcy must not have wanted to leave her alone in London. No, it was who sat on the other side of Lydia that caused Elizabeth to gape.
“Well, what do you think, Lizzy!” Lydia turned to a man Elizabeth only vaguely recognized. “Is not my husband even more handsome than yours?”
He might have been handsome, but Elizabeth could only see that he was not George Wickham. Under her startled gaze, the man blushed and stuttered something incomprehensible, to which Lydia responded by laughing and kissing his cheek.
Elizabeth turned first to Darcy, who had just climbed into the carriage, and then to her uncle Gardiner, who sat across from Lydia.
Her uncle merely shrugged. It was Darcy who said, in that dry tone she now knew was his way of laughing when he believed he should be serious: “Allow me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Denny.”
“Denny?” Elizabeth sank into the seat next to Darcy, remembering now why she had some recollection of the man’s face; he had been so often with Wickham, but always in the way a shadow followed a man—present but rarely noticed.
“Well, is this not an amusing joke I have played on you all?” asked Lydia, laughing still.
Elizabeth looked at Ana, who was trying to hide a smile behind her hand. Darcy was exchanging an amused glance with her uncle Gardiner, and Lydia had snuggled herself closer to Mr. Denny, who trembled and turned red as a beet. Could the Elizabeth of six months ago ever have believed such a scene to be possible?
“No, Lydia,” she replied, “it is not amusing.”
Still, she could not help but laugh with all the gratitude and relief of one who knows things might have been much worse indeed.
*
“The end of something,” George Darcy had once said to his eleven-year-old son as they sat astride their horses and surveyed the late winter fields of Pemberley, “is only the start of something else entirely.”
Darcy was not astride a horse; the fields in view were thick with summer crops; and he was hundreds of miles away from Pemberley. Still, as he stood outside the small church in Meryton, his father’s words came back to him so strongly that he could smell the grass and manure of those long-ago, faraway fields. Confused by this sudden, out-of-place memory, Darcy had no wish to spend the next half hour in a cramped carriage.
“Walk with me,” he said to Elizabeth, pulling her away from the coach that waited to take them, along with Ana and the Bingleys, back to Netherfield.
It had been nearly a week—six long days—since he had come into Hertfordshire. One of the better (and least expected) side effects of having found Lydia and her rather surprising husband was that there was no room for Darcy, Elizabeth or Ana at Purvis Lodge, which had only two good guest rooms. And so the Darcys had gone to Netherfield, happy enough to see the Bennets at dinner each evening and even happier to drive away a few hours later.
As he led Elizabeth away from the carriage, Darcy tipped his hat to his sister, Jane, and Bingley; the latter waved and called out, “Enjoy the fresh air!”
Miss Bingley, who was just stepping into the carriage, turned and looked down her nose at them. “Oh, but surely you cannot mean to walk, Mr. Darcy! The fields are so muddy!” Her tone was so simpering that he felt another tug from the past, this one the much more unpleasant memory of how she had once fawned over him. The obsequious version of Caroline Bingley had been absent for much of Darcy’s marriage, and he would have been content for her never to have returned. Indeed, he found the sulking, rebellious Miss Bingley a good deal more interesting (though hardly any more likable) than her former self.
And yet, with a disastrous end to the Season, Miss Bingley had been forced to return to her brother’s household—on rather strict terms, too. When he learned that it had been Jane, rather than Charles, Bingley who had threatened to have Miss Bingley sent to a spinster aunt in Scarborough if she ever again acted with malice toward her family, Darcy realized he ought never underestimate a woman, even (or perhaps especially) those who smile too frequently.
“You ought to be more thoughtful toward your dear wife,” Miss Bingley added, with only a trace of sarcasm, just before the footman closed the carriage door.
“Miss Bingley’s consideration knows no bounds,” Elizabeth said as they watched the Bingley carriage roll away. “But then, I suppose being threatened with exile and a greatly-reduced allowance might inspire good behavior in almost anyone.”
“Oh, Lizzy, Mr. Darcy!” called Lydia, half hanging from the window of the large coach that Darcy had brought from London. “I hope you do not think you can ride with us! We will not all fit, not with Kitty and Mary taking up so much room. My dress is almost completely crushed as it is, though his lordship, my dearest husband, would buy me another one if I asked!”
It was no use replying to this speech, which Lydia had clearly given for an audience wider than Darcy and Elizabeth. The rest of the churchgoers—particularly Mrs. Philips, Lady Lucas, and Mrs. King—were no doubt the real target of Lydia’s comments, for in case they had not yet heard the news (and they had, at least four times already), Mr. Denny was not only Lydia’s unexpected husband, but the wealthy younger son of a Marquess.
That the quiet, diffident Denny was in fact Lord Henry Rutherford, son of th
e Marquess of Dedham, had come as such a shock to everyone in Meryton that Lydia’s elopement seemed, by comparison, dull and commonplace. “How could we not have known?” Mrs. Philips asked Mrs. Bennet, who was so overcome by the idea that her daughter, her Lydia, was now a Lady that she was rendered, for one of the few times in her life, speechless.
The mystery of Lord Henry Rutherford was, as if often the case with mysteries, less interesting than the various theories that sprang up regarding him: “He is an aristocrat who dabbles in piracy and therefore requires a secret identity!” claimed Kitty, who seemed unbothered by the fact that Denny was in the army, not the navy, and had absolutely no experience with ships of any kind; “I heard he was exiled by his father Lord Rutherford and forced to take on a new name because the poor young man has a lisp,” said Lady Lucas, who really had heard something about a lisp. The idea of exile was her own, and she desperately hoped it was true, for if she had to spend the rest of her life listening to Fanny Bennet crow about her daughter, Lady Lydia, she was sure to be quite miserable.
The truth was, Henry Denny had in fact been Henry Denny when he had joined the militia the year before. His father, Sir Marcus Denny, was an unimportant baronet from Devonshire. In the time it took for Colonel Foster’s militia to relocate from Devonshire to Meryton, Sir Marcus had inherited the lands and titles of Dedham through the unexpected death of a childless distant cousin, Lord Adam Rutherford. Sir Marcus mourned his unknown cousin on the long carriage ride from Devonshire to London, and then, upon arrival in town, promptly ordered his solicitor to change his name to Lord Marcus Rutherford reflect his new station in life. Denny, the youngest and most inconsequential of Marquess’ children, had seen no reason to change his name; the trouble it would take (for he would have to speak to so many people) was an inducement to remain plain Mr. Henry Denny.
Then, there was the fact that pretty, exuberant Lydia Bennet seemed to prefer him—stuttering, shy Denny—to his friend, the dashing George Wickham. Though she laughed and danced with Wickham, she always looked at Denny. She even began seeking him out, finding ways to be alone with him at her Aunt Philips’s house. Denny could not immediately deduce the reason for her preference (he would later discover that she grew bored with men who liked to talk about themselves, as they made it quite difficult for her to talk about herself), but he was flattered, and naturally did not wish to ruin the charm of her affections by admitting that he was in fact a greater personage than she assumed.
This Disconcerting Happiness: A Pride and Prejudice Variation Page 40