Dear Georgie,
Of course Mrs Annesley must come, if that is your wish and hers. I shall write to our cousin Richard, and if he is able to get leave and has no other plans, I hope he will escort you here and join us for the holidays. If he cannot, I shall come up to town to fetch you myself.
I am very glad to hear that you are feeling more equal to being in company, dearest. I blame myself for your recent troubles, as it was I who failed to warn you of Wickham’s character. In shielding you from the disappointment of learning from me that the boy I grew up with had grown into a despicable man, I opened you to the greater disappointment of learning it from him. I hope that you may forgive me; I do not know when or if I shall forgive myself.
You are kind to offer to do my shopping, and I will gratefully ask you to bring a few things with you. For Bingley, please have Harding retrieve a bottle of the French brandy our father laid by before the war—he will know what I mean. Mrs Hurst is, as I believe you know, a great reader of novels, and as she is to be here longer than she expected I hope you may find one or two that have been published very recently, such that she will not yet have acquired them for herself. If the oranges have arrived from Pemberley before you depart, which they ought to have done, please bring three crates of them; we shall have one at Netherfield, and give one to the Bennets and the other to Mr Jones, whose excellent work I have related in previous letters.
It will be so very good to see you again, my dearest sister. I count the days,
Fitzwilliam
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Having acquiredtheir father’s permission to use the carriage, Jane and Elizabeth asked Mary and Kitty if they should like to join them in a call on Mrs Hurst. Mary preferred to stay with Lydia rather than visit a lady she hardly knew, but Kitty was delighted by the prospect of a jaunt, however sedate. So it was that three black-clad Bennets joined the similarly garbed Mrs Hurst in the bright morning parlour at Netherfield on the appointed day.
They spent a pleasant hour only rarely interrupted by thoughts of their recent losses, and in the carriage on the way home Kitty remarked to her sisters that she was sorry she had not earlier taken the trouble to know Mrs Hurst.
“That is a regret I believe we all share,” remarked Elizabeth. “But we have each of us been changed by recent events, and I think it probable we would not have liked her, nor she us, half so much six weeks ago. Well, except for Jane, who likes everyone!”
When they returned home, Elizabeth was pleased to discover the early arrival of a much-anticipated reply from her aunt.
My dear girl,
Though I shall be with you in only two days, I will send this by express, for in every line of the letter I received from you today I felt your distress. We shall of course speak of this when we are together, unless you truly do not wish it, but for the nonce:
Darling Lizzy, has it not occurred to you that you see no changes in yourself because you lived every moment they came upon you, whereas in others it is marked because you were separated while these events did their work upon them? For I assure you, the Elizabeth whose letter I have just received is not the Elizabeth who visited me in June.
Yes, you were more fortunate in your situation while you cared for Jane than your sisters were when they cared for Lydia and your poor mother, but that was none of your doing. I am certain you would have rather been together at Longbourn than separated from all your family save Jane, and surrounded by those who, though they proved themselves good friends, were not well known to you when it all began. Had you been at Longbourn, I am certain you would have risen to that occasion as well as you rose to the one that was before you. Those weeks could have been more difficult, but I do not for a moment believe they were easy.
Forgive me if what I relate next pains you, but you asked for my honesty and you shall have it. I saw in your words more than one instance in which you revised your opinion of someone on further acquaintance. You have long placed far too much reliance on first impressions, my dear, and now I think perhaps you have learnt the folly of that? You have not often made allowances for circumstances, or for the ability of others to learn and grow, or even for the simple fact that one’s first meeting with another might by happenstance occur when they are not at their best, or conversely, when they are in unusually good form, which may lead them to appear better than they are.
Even from one letter, Lizzy, I do think you changed. In those lines I saw an introspection I have never known in you before, and that alone is a fine thing. We cannot grow if we do not consider ourselves, our actions, and our motivations. You have admitted you were wrong about your new friends when first you knew them, and that those you have known all your life, or theirs, were not entirely without mystery. But it is not only in acknowledging and beginning to correct your flaws that I see your alteration. Until life tests us, we cannot know our own strength. Life has tested you, my darling girl, and you have emerged victorious. You did not falter when many would have. You did not flee, or collapse in despair, though I am absolutely certain there were times when you must have wished to. I hope I should have done as well as you, in your place.
I shall see you soon, and until then I remain,
Your proud and loving aunt,
Madeline Gardiner
* * *
Two days later, as Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, and Kitty were sat in the parlour attending to their needlework while their father read aloud to them from Milton, and the maid attended Lydia upstairs, Mr Bingley, Mr Darcy, and Captain Carter were admitted.
“Mr Jones has declared the neighbourhood free of smallpox!” announced Mr Bingley, his delight so great as to make him rather loud. As the ladies quietly exclaimed amongst themselves over the news, Mr Bennet stood and bowed to his guests. “We thank you for the information, sir. Would you and your friends care to stay for a cup of tea?”
The invitation was accepted and Mr Bingley fairly flew to the seat nearest Miss Bennet, while Mr Darcy joined Elizabeth and Kitty and the captain sat by Mary. Mr Bennet was left to play the role of observant father—one he found he rather enjoyed, at least while it was yet a novel experience.
What the all-but-acknowledged couple spoke of, he did not know, for though their postures were proper their voices were pitched low for privacy, and the only certainty was that both were enjoying themselves. Nearby, Mary and Captain Carter spoke together easily, and smiled often. Mr Bennet could only suppose that the soldier’s frequent stops at Longbourn on Mr Jones’s behalf had been sufficient to put his most diffident daughter at ease in the man’s company.
The conversation between the other three started and stopped awkwardly for some moments; Mr Darcy was uneasy in most company and Kitty was rather intimidated by the tall, taciturn gentleman, but when a chance comment revealed that she was newly awakened to the pleasures to be had in the less traditionally romantic forms of poetry, the talk became rather lively. Though Elizabeth certainly helped them along, Mr Bennet was pleased to see Kitty was as interested to hear Mr Darcy’s recommendations in the genre as he was pleased to offer them. They spoke then for a while on Wordsworth, a favourite of all three, and Mr Darcy was brought to confess to having met the poet himself, briefly, one summer at the Lakes between terms at university.
Mr Bennet was somewhat surprised to see the gentleman unbend, though his opinion had been greatly improved by Mr Darcy’s efforts on behalf of the neighbourhood of late. He noticed, too, that the young man seemed to look at his Lizzy more often than called for by the conversation, even as his inscrutable expression left his motivations a mystery. That gentleman would bear watching, thought Mr Bennet, if only for the stimulation to be had in unravelling an intricate character.
* * *
Darcy was lost in his own thoughts on the journey back to Netherfield, not that Bingley’s incessant chatter on the subject of Miss Bennet’s many perfections required his attention, and Carter was doing a splendid job of nodding and agreeing at all the right moments. It had been a mere five days, not even an entire week, since Miss Bennet and Miss Elizabeth had left Netherfield, but to Darcy that first sight of Miss Elizabeth had felt like being offered water after wandering the desert. If he had hoped that separation would dim his affections—and the part of him still concerned with status had hoped exactly that—it had been for naught. He had been raised to view eligible women in a certain way: through the lens of wealth and connexions. Affection was of course greatly to be desired, but was understood to rank well beneath dowry and lineage.
Such concerns seemed so trivial to him now. He had, in these last weeks, seen families torn apart by death. He had seen some of those who remained turn from each other in despair and even anger. But he had seen other families, among them the Bennets, begin to knit themselves back together through the kind of love which allows grief to unite rather than sunder.
