“I know, I know,” he said, slumping back down into his chair. “Jones came by last evening and said he detected much improvement. I thought…I thought perhaps she might answer one of my notes. She refuses to see me still, does she not?”
“She is improved, yes. However, she is not yet recovered. She lost her breakfast this morning; her belly is still tender, and she is weak. You must give her time.”
“Why will she not see me?” He met Elizabeth’s eyes with his own red-rimmed, pale blue ones.
Elizabeth decided that perhaps Mr Darcy’s suggested reasoning might help him understand, even if it was not the whole of it. ShehopedJane felt some sort of fondness for herhusband, but if she did not, Elizabeth was certainly not going to point it out.
“You are afraid for her, are you not? You require reassurance that she is improved, and now that she is, at least to some degree, you require reassurance that she cares for your feelings. However, Jane has been very ill, and is definitely not recovered yet. She cannot yet summon the strength to deal with your feelings and her own. And you must admit, your feelings are somewhat… overpowering.”
“My wife holds my deepest affections. Is that so wrong?” he asked, with no little resentment.
“Of course not,” she said gently. “Can you call upon that affection to give her a bit more time, even though you do not understand her reasoning just yet?”
He hunched forward and sighed heavily. “Certainly I can. Will you tell her…will you tell her that I only want to gaze upon her for a few moments, to see her as she is convalescing? Will you ask that she let me know whether she requires anything at all, and if it is within my power, I shall obtain it for her?”
For once, nothing out of his mouth was foolish or ridiculous. He was in earnest, and it was troubling.
But she and Jane were no longer close, and although she had wanted Elizabeth with her as she suffered an illness in a strange household, not much had changed. Jane had not protested her insistence upon remaining, despite Fanny’s not-so-subtle pressure to separate them; it hadnotmeant that her sister was ready to traverse the distance between them and seek full reconciliation. In a way, Elizabeth found Jane’s feelings towards herself as much a mystery as they were to Mr Collins. She could sympathise with his distress.
“I will tell her,” Elizabeth promised.
After his departure, she found she could not easily return to her place at Jane’s bedside. Her patient was slumbering; the skies beyond the window were sunny, for once. It was an opportunity for a walk around Netherfield’s gardens, to exorcise this spirit of restlessness that had settled upon her after the conversation with Mr Collins.
In order to reach the walking paths, she had to first pass through a folly resembling a gothic temple—a triangular shell of a building of two storeys, with a pentagonal-shaped tower at its corner rising another floor higher. At its peak, the ironstone tower was an enclosed balcony framed by three arched apertures, a space barely big enough for one or two persons to look out upon the house, the gardens, or the maze, depending upon which direction one faced.
The view probably made the climb up the steep, curving staircase worthwhile.
When Elizabeth reached the top, however, she could not really pay attention to the shrubberies below her. Instead, only her worries seemed visible. What if the investment ship was truly lost, her money with it? Her uncle had advised her against such an outlay. “Only invest what you can afford to lose,” he had argued. “To do otherwise is to act in desperation, and you arenotdesperate.” Then he had begun his usual lecture about her moving out of the cottage, coming to them in London. “You have proved your ability to live independently, Lizzy. Will not you consider another way?” When he believed she would again refuse, he had made the generous offer sparking what could only be called, in retrospect,desperation.
Her uncle, good man that he was, was a fountainhead of charitable works, and she had become the first object of his charity. Feeling that pity to her soul had increased herimpatience, despite her gratitude for his measured, steady actions on her behalf. Knowing it would take several years to betrulyindependent at this pace, knowing he would continue to expend his own money and time on her needs—at the expense of his own—had been a blight upon her happiness. Living in the shadow of Stoke, being subject to Fanny’s manipulative viciousness, had further worn her down. The hole that Jane’s absence of friendship had left in her heart was an open wound.
“I know you disagree with my decision to stay here, rather than move to Gracechurch Street,” she had begun, ready to confess that she had changed her mind.
“I will not have it, Lizzy,” he had interrupted, his voice holding equal measures of love and his own impatience. “My latest scheme, if it pays half what I expect, shall give me money to spare. If it does, Iwillbe fixing the roof on this house, and youwillnotstop me.”
All those feelings of weariness and defeat had shattered in an overwhelming burst of frustration. Subsequently, she had risked nearly all her savings into one recklessly impulsive investment.
Now it seemed that the only ‘other way’ was to admit he had been right from the beginning, and that living in the cottage was stupidity wrapped in foolishness.
Why had she done it?
Yes, she hated being an object of pity. Yes, she was desperate to be out from under Fanny’s thumb. And yet, she had remained in that awful cottage. It was true that learning Jane did not want her to return to Longbourn had hurt dreadfully; it had also fired her pride, a desire to take care of herself and not depend upon family to do it for her.
Was she trying to punishFanny,perhaps evenJanebyliving in a draughty, falling-down cottage? It had not seemed so at the time, but why had she rejected going to the Gardiners instead?
These thoughts twisted round in her mind, distracting and confusing, until she was abruptly called to herself by the sound of voices in the garden below her.
“If you can compass it, do cure the youngest girl of running after the officers. And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses.”
It was Miss Bingley’s voice, at its most sarcastic.Your lady?But to whom could she possibly be expressing such mocking opinions? While eavesdropping was certainly not Elizabeth’s habit, the sudden surprise of overhearing such a conversation took her aback enough to attract her attention, and instinctively, she turned to look in the opposite direction, peering down out of the aperture.
“Have you anything else to propose for my domestic felicity?”
It was Mr Darcy! Did he evenhavea lady? She had not thought so. But if he did, why would he not reprove such callous speech regarding someone dear to him? Talk of impertinence!
“Oh yes! Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Philips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great uncle, the judge. They are in the same profession, you know, only in different lines. As for your Elizabeth’s picture?—”
“What?” Elizabeth cried aloud, astonished thatshe, unbelievably yet patently, was the subject of such open derision.
