The graveside service had its necessary psalm and was followed by its necessary lesson from 1 Corinthians. The priest said more words until Darcy was called upon to cast some earth on his sister’s coffin to commit her body to the ground. He supposed he said the replies and the Lord’s Prayer, but he could not honestly remember. He only knew the final blessing was complete when the priest and attendants walked away.
By now, Mr Collins and the neighbours were at the house where Mrs Darcy and the other ladies awaited the end of the funeral. She would distribute black handkerchiefs or whatever token she had selected to thank the mourners. Darcy was not ready to join these well-intentioned strangers, not when all he could think of was his little sister’s pain and suffering, and how she wanted to reunite with the baby whose existence he had found intolerable.
Who have I hated more during this sad affair: the poor child, Wickham, or myself?
The June sun was now directly overhead, and Darcy knew he could avoid the mourners—and his wife—no longer. Grief overwhelmed him, a grief so painful that he wondered for a few moments if he could survive it. His grief mingled with a righteous, burning anger, and anintense desire to put Wickham in a grave of his own. Somehow, he willed his feet to move from his sister’s open grave to leave the churchyard and walk home.
Darcy met the commiserating sighs, bowed heads, and pitying expressions of neighbours he did not care to know. Everything for Georgiana was concluded with the greatest tranquillity, and he was grateful when Mrs Darcy distributed the tokens and the curious mourners proceeded out of the house. He was soon left with only his wife’s family, and Darcy took it upon himself to express his gratitude to Mrs Bennet.
“I do not have the words to properly give voice to how thankful I am for the affection and respect you have shown for my sister. It was more than common kindness to take on so much for us.” Mrs Bennet had arranged the gathering at Netherfield Lodge after the funeral, indicating to the neighbourhood that the Longbourn family valued the Darcys.
“I would not have it said that I do not do what is right by my family.” As they shook hands warmly, it struck him powerfully in that moment that, for however long Mrs Darcy lived, hewasa part of the Bennet family. “I know Lizzy would have arranged it all—she is a capable girl—but she has been so distressed. Poor Miss Darcy! The same age as my Lydia!”
Mrs Bennet began to cry, and Miss Bennet gave him a sad smile and led her sniffling mother from the house.
Mrs Darcy sat on the other side of the parlour, looking wan and downcast. She had implied last week that he ought to show more care and respect for her feelings. He knew he had treated her coldly throughout his sister’s sad end, and he wondered if she now worried how she would live the rest of her own short life with him.I would condemn myself forever if the strain of my unkindness to her, added to the strain of Georgiana’s dying, hastened Mrs Darcy’s end.He had to somehow find a way to look past his own grief to be the friend she deserved.
“We have stayed long enough,” Mrs Collins said to her husband as they approached him. Now at his side, she then asked him, “I expect at her end your sister surrendered her soul in placid resignation?”
This woman taxes my patience!Was this supposed to condole him?Mrs Darcy rose and joined him. She had an expression on her face that matched his own feelings when she cried, “Mary, I hardly think your sermon extracts are appropriate. Mr Darcy has lost a sister!”
Mrs Collins shrugged as though the matter was nothing. “It is possible Miss Darcy’s death may be an object of lamentation, but she took leave of her sufferings and friends, I trust, to find repose in a better land.”
Mrs Darcy stepped in front of him as though to shield him from her sister’s callousness. “Maybe an object of lamentation?May?Mary, you have all the tenderness and kindness of a stone! Are you incapable of one tear of generous sorrow for a man who just buried his sister?”
Darcy did his best to keep his features under perfect control, but his wife was run away with by her feelings. She glared at Mrs Collins, and her breath came faster. He had to save her from speaking further to relations who only distressed her. The Collinses had neither compassion nor respect for Mrs Darcy, let alone him.
“Mrs Collins, my sister’s soul is at rest, but I am not yet reconciled to my devastating loss. I would give everything I have in exchange to have Georgiana restored to me in health and happiness.” He bowed and expected she and her husband would take their leave. Sadly, Mr Collins was incapable of both silence and sympathy.
“Not yet reconciled? Mr Darcy, you must not arraign the dispensations of Providence! They are founded in goodness and wisdom. No, you cannot mean you are not reconciled, I am sure.” Mr Collins gave a patronising little laugh. “If the will of God does not suit you, it would mean there is a fault in yourself that deserves chastisement, or perhaps a greater moral failing on your part.”
Darcy was struck silent. Pride had perhaps once been his failing, but now he was afraid it was wrath. Anger against an innocent child, and anger fuelled by a desire for vengeance.What is the divine retribution cast upon the wrathful?
“How dare you suggest that Mr Darcy has not the right to mourn his loss!” Mrs Darcy’s demeanour lost its dignified nature. “To feel grief and sadness at such a time is natural. Of course we feel outrage and sorrow at the death of a young girl we loved!” Tears streamedfrom her eyes, but neither Mr nor Mrs Collins spared her a particle of compassion.
She wanted me to better consider her feelings, but my detachment from her is nothing to the apathy and cruelty of these two.
Mr Collins wrinkled his nose. “I would not have thought you capable of anger at divine Providence, cousin Elizabeth. Such sinful pride for a woman to think she knows better than God!” Darcy watched his wife turn red in anger while Mr Collins continued his attack. “Thankfully, for your husband’s sake if not for your own, not every deadly sin, even willingly committed, is unpardonable. Mr Darcy, I am sure you are distressed that your wife is so acquainted with one of the seven deadly sins, but?—”
“We are both well acquainted with all of them,” cried Darcy. “In fact, I keep a strict calendar to make time for them all in every day.” He was not surprised by the uncomprehending expression on Mrs Collins’s face nor by the sputtering outrage of Mr Collins’s. Darcy strode to the parlour door, threw it open, and called for the maid to see the Collinses out. “However, that does mean I am quite busy and therefore have no time for sloth. Good day!”
He left them in the vestibule and went back into the parlour, slamming the door behind him, and looked immediately at his wife, expecting a wry smile at his sporting with her family. He had been so preoccupied by his frustration at the Collinses’ absurdity and his own mournful anguish that he entirely missed the signs that Mrs Darcy was suffering another crippling heart episode. Instead of grief, her face twisted in pain and fear.
“Mrs Darcy! What can I do?”
She shook her head, and she found her own way into a chair and pressed her forehead into the armrest. He watched her struggle to catch her breath. He could not imagine what a building pressure and pain spreading out from her heart must feel like. She flexed her fingers as though she could not feel them, and all Darcy could do was sit by her in compassionate silence for quarter of an hour until she, thankfully, opened her eyes.
“Has your paroxysm now passed? Can I get you anything?”
“Do you realise,” she said, her voice shaky, “that this is the first time you have spoken directly to me since Georgiana died?”
He knew it was true, that other than a few questions about the funeral or the keeping of the house he had not had an interaction with Mrs Darcy in days. She searched his eyes but must have found nothing admirable there because she sighed, and Darcy kept his silence.
“Well, I am sure you are pleased to be spared another funeral for the present. Although perhaps it might be better to have me die now. You could call back the mourners and be done with all the fuss at once.” She tried to be flippant, but her face was pinched as though her pain lingered.
He would try to match her attempt at levity rather than speak honestly and confess that he felt too wrecked by grief and guilt to engage with her. “Well... that would put me back in the presence of Mr and Mrs Collins, and I hope you have greater care for my feelings than to wish that upon us.”
“Your feelings?” Her words were completely flat. “I am not of a mind to care for Georgiana’s brother’s feelings right now. You have not spoken to me more than is necessary since Georgiana died, and you cared nothing for my feelings before then.”
