Rochester theatrically groaned. “No, no. Do not tellme,your brother, about how you flitter about with your gentlemen admirer. I hoped to think you were as chaste as a Vestal Virgin.”
“A great many ofthem,” Elizabeth replied laughing, “were executed for failing to live up to the ‘virgin’ portion of the title.”
“Oh, really?” Rochester replied in a tone that made it clear that this thought had been in his mind as well when he made the metaphor.
“Yes, buried alive after Hannibal’s victory at Cannae, as I recall,” Elizabeth replied.
“Well then, maybe notone of those pagan holy women. As chaste as a good Catholic nun.”
“I believe,” Darcy said, “that tales about the moral failings of nuns have also been, on occasion, bandied about.”
“AgoodCatholic nun,” Elizabeth replied for her brother. “The ‘good’ is what excludesthosenuns.”
All of them laughed.
They looked back at the house, and Darcy’s eyes, and perhaps Elizabeth’s and Rochester’s as well, were drawn to the window of that sitting room.
Rochester said, “Lizzy, I did not mean. I…I wanted to forget what he really was.” He pressed his hand against his mouth. “There was happiness and good mixed in. In some quantity. I remember when he taught me to shoot. It was over there, in that clearing. And he was so proud of me that day, because I hit my bird. And when the tutors praised my work, he was always happy, and he would order a special dinner served. And there was a time after you were born when we were all happy. Or maybe onlyIwas happy, but he in fact barely paid attention to any of us.”
Rochester’s easy tears fell again, and Elizabeth embraced him.
“I suppose I’ll need another black ribbon,” she said. “I don’t know that I want to wear that one again.”
“You don’t need to pretend to mourn his death,” Rochester said. “You do not say it, but the way you carefully do not mention certain things is clear enough. You are like Bennet. You chiefly think of him as the murderer of your mother.”
“Robert.” She wiped at her own tears. “I have something to mourn as well. I think—We do not share all of those childhood recollections that ought to tie a brother and a sister together. And I mourn…I mourn the good that was in our father. No man is wholly bad. I see things of him in myself. So odd—we were not raised together at all, but part of me wishes to live up to the image he had of me, to be someone with ‘stomach’.”
“You are such a person,” Rochester said.
“No, I am just myself. He saw me at my most dramatic moment, and he judged based on that. And when I met him again before he died, I played the role he wanted to see me play. Lord, is that not so odd? That I did him that kindness, to bring the gun and make a show of hating him, despite every reason I had to hate him?”
Both Darcy and Rochester chuckled at the way Elizabeth said that.
“You know what I mean.” She smiled at them both. “But I cry easily enough. And I am often frightened. Lord! I spent half my childhood terrified that Mrs. Bennet would transform into our father, even though I knew she could not.”
Two servants had entered the sitting room. They were pulling the curtains down and then switching each light chintz curtain with heavy black curtains.
The three of them watched.
Rochester said, “Let’s go back. Let’s sit in the drawing room, call for tea and a luncheon, and let’s all share those stories of our childhoods. Happy ones.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fitzwilliam Darcy did not permit himself to grin widely as he sat in the parish church in the village attached to Longbourn. But he felt deep satisfaction as he sat next to Elizabeth in the Bennet family pew, her leg pressing rather more than strictly necessary against his own.
The pew was crowded today, as Bingley and his Jane, along with Georgiana and the new Lord Rochester sat in it to hear the announcement.
The old vicar spoke smilingly, “I publish the Banns of marriage between Fitzwilliam Darcy of the Parish of Kympton and Lady Elizabeth Bennet, commonly called, otherwise Hartwood, of this Parish. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is for the third time of asking.”
Likely at nearly this very minute the vicar of Kympton was saying nearly the same words in Darcy’s own parish, except which person was a member of “this parish” was switched.
No one shouted about a previous marriage with a living partner or claimed that they had proof that Darcy and Elizabeth were siblings or stated any other reason why canon law prohibited the marriage. There was rustling as the village parishioners turned in their pews to look towards Elizabeth and Darcy in the half moment of pause after the announcement.
The vicar then said the “I publish the Banns of marriage” announcement for two other couples, and for both couples each of them were announced to be “of this parish”.
Having completed the banns, the vicar said, “And now I shall recite the Apostles Creed: I believe in God the FatherAlmighty, maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord...”
Though he ought to, and though he took religious observances seriously, and truly believed in the truth of the creed, Darcy found it difficult to pay attention to something he had heard many hundreds of times during his life, or to the sermon. He was filled with happiness, and Elizabeth had pressed herself as close to him as she could with propriety.
