“You are not at all silly. I think you are cautious with your feelings. In your own way, you are as reserved as Darcy, though you are livelier and your manners more welcoming. Although others freely take you into their confidence, you do not seek out the like. I know Darcy has become less severe for knowing you, but do not tease him for this. I imagine he has suffered enough and wants to be assured of your affection.”
Jane kissed the top of her sister’s head and left with one last reassuring smile. As she settled in for the night, Elizabeth repressed the thought of what her life would hold should Wickham kill Darcy. Elizabeth looked at Georgiana’s drawing of him longingly for some time before setting it aside and blowing out the candle.
The next morning,Elizabeth awoke ready to let Jane’s assurances remove every doubt of Darcy’s never returning. It was a cool day, and a thick summer rain blotted out the few objects to be discerned from the windows. The sound of the post being brought in was a welcome distraction.
There was a brief letter from Lydia to her mother that was read to a disinterested room. Lydia had parted from the Gardiners and was making her way to Darcy’s small estate in Ireland. Then her mother dropped a letter on her lap as she fluttered by in her usual noisy attitude.
“You have had a letter as well, Lizzy. I believe it is from Mr Darcy, although why it looks trampled, I do not know.”
Elizabeth eagerly caught the letter and noticed its poor condition. It was written in his familiar hand in neat, sharp pen strokes, but the hot-pressed paper looked as if it had been trod upon.
“Darcy’s other letters were sent by his own rider. Why did this one come post?” Kitty asked as she sat in the window seat, blowing on the glass and lazily drawing shapes on the pane.
“Perhaps Mr Darcy is anticipating the expense of providing for all of you when I die.” Mr Bennet did not glance up from his newspaper. “He is practising his economy.”
“As if Mr Darcy would ever need to economise,” said her mother. “How could they exceed their income? The man is worth ten thousand a year!”
Elizabeth happily tore the seal to read news from her beloved. News from him in his own hand would end her doubt and suspense. The letter was from Camden Place and dated the previous Friday evening.
My dearest Elizabeth,
I have melancholy news to relate and sincerely lament for your feelings under the shock of it. I wish I could better prepare you, but there is no way your mind could forestall the event I have to communicate. Mr Wickham was not only unrepentant but eager to ruin us all, and my only recourse to preserve our dignity and our family’s reputation was to challenge him to defend his conduct in an affair of honour. If this letter has been placed in your hands, it is because I was mortally wounded in the attempt.
All that was undertaken by me was necessary and done out of a desire to protect you and your family from being further maligned. I am remedying an evil brought on only by myself, and I accept the possibility of paying the ultimate of sacrifices. My one regret in meeting Mr Wickham is that I have taken the chance of never returning to your side. I do not regret challenging Mr Wickham; however, I do regret that righting this wrong has cost me a future with you.
Your affectionate heart will be greatly wounded, and I wish the shock of this could be lessened. I have made arrangements for your future security, and I beg you to accept them. See them not as the actions of a proud and dominating master, but those of a love-struck man who wants to care for you in the only method now available. I have done all that I can to see you become an independent woman. I wish for you to have the opportunity to be someone of great importance in the world, as you have always been so valued by me. I have placed my trust for arranging these affairs in Colonel Fitzwilliam, and I ask that you do the same.
Please remember my sister as your life moves forward, as I know that it must and it will. Nearly everyone who loves her best is now lost to her. Perhaps she might be of some solace to you, and there is little doubt in my heart that Georgiana would thrive if fortunate enough to have your friendship and devotion.
Before I departed for Bath, you charged me with composing poetry in your honour, and I fear that I once again must disappoint. I find myself thinking only of Shakespeare’s words, a sonnet, wishing I could name the beauty of your eyes, and in fresh numbers number all your graces. I selfishly wish the final lines of that sonnet may hold true, knowing full well what such a blessing would cost you. Once again, I ask that you consider allowing Colonel Fitzwilliam, who admires and esteems you, to aid and comfort you in years to come, now that I am gone.
I remain thankful that we encountered one another in Mrs Collins’s drawing room on that April morning. You are most cherished, and the short time in which you have loved me has been my happiest on this earth.
Yours in love and devotion,
Fitzwilliam Darcy
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Elizabeth sat with her arms wrapped tightly around her, Fitzwilliam’s crumpled letter still in her hand. She soon realised she was making quiet keening sounds, but no one was paying her any mind. Elizabeth focused her gaze and looked at her family. Mrs Bennet was arguing with her husband about Lydia; one parent was fretful, the other patronising. Mary was furiously copying extracts that would never be incorporated into her knowledge of the world. Kitty sat languid and dull by the window, and Jane half-heartedly offered an idea to amuse her.
Not one soul in this room has the emotional capacity or the strength of mind to console me.They would first consider their own concerns upon hearing the news. Her father would be glad that his favourite daughter would stay at home. Mrs Bennet would take to her rooms and loudly lament what sad fates might befall them now that Fitzwilliam would not provide for them. Mary might offer some commonplace proverb to condole, and Kitty would cry by her side until it became tiresome. Jane would offer uplifting words, but Elizabeth could not bear to hear Jane compare their grief, as if her loss of Mr Bingley was in any way the same as facing the death of Fitzwilliam Darcy.
“Are you ill, Lizzy?” Jane asked.
Elizabeth answered in some distress that she was. The walls of the room crept in toward her. Her grief could not be spoken; there were no words available to do them justice. She was not equipped to speak of Fitzwilliam’s death to anyone in this room. Somehow, Elizabeth stood and placed one foot in front of the other and hoarsely said she was going for a walk through the grounds.
“But Lizzy, it is only just stopped raining. You will be dirty and…” Mrs Bennet talked on about the imprudence of having one’s shoes and stockings become wet.
Elizabeth stopped listening and raised her eyes to the window in time to see a chaise and four driving up the lawn. She did not recognise it, but her heart stopped cold when she saw Colonel Fitzwilliam alight. Her stomach turned, and she immediately withdrew from the window. What reason could he have to call at Longbourn other than to tell her of Darcy’s death? She was unprepared to meet with him, irrationally hoping to make the wretched truth less real by not speaking of it.
“I have no patience for a visitor and am going for a walk,” she cried before running from the house.
She walked over the grounds to the most distant part of them where the trees were oldest and the grass was the longest. Elizabeth had waited for days for news of Fitzwilliam, and she had known from Mr Bingley that he would duel Wickham, but nothing could have prepared her to cope with the letter she grasped in her hand. Her thoughts became more chaotic, jumping from one miserable idea to the next.
Fitzwilliam is dead.
All I have left of him are two letters: one bitter and the other tragic. Two letters to capture all that I was to him.
