Mr. Bennet put on his dressing gown, grabbed a candle, and went below to see who would be demanding entrance at this time of night. His light shone on Mr. Hill who was peering out at an express rider. Above Mr. Bennet, lining the staircase, were his daughters Jane, Mary, and Kitty. His wife stood on the landing gripping her nightgown to her chest. “Oh, Mr. Bennet! Do not toy with me! I shall die of the suspense! What is it? What catastrophe is upon us?” she cried.
Mr. Bennet scanned the letter he had been handed while he absently reached for a coin in his pocket. Not finding any, he said abstractedly, “Jane?”
His eldest daughter slipped down the stairs and into his study, returning with his purse. Mr. Bennet folded the note, paid the express rider, and as Mr. Hill locked the door once again, looked up at his family.
“Papa,” Jane gasped, seeing the bewildered look on her father’s face, “what is it?”
And thus, the day broke on the Bennets of Longbourn at one o’clock in the morning. Lydia had eloped with Lieutenant Wickham the night before last.
The scene could hardly be described even by those present. There were cries and gasps, and everyone spoke at once. Mrs. Bennet could not be made to understand what had happened to her favorite. She had to be told over and over, and when at last some glimmer of understanding began to show itself in the density of her anxious mind, her wails were added to the general family din. Needless to say, no one slept again that night. Jane, seeking to return to her natural state of complacency, went to the kitchen and helped Mrs. Hill make tea. Mary searched through her books for some kind of homily she could read to her family, some manner of explanation for Lydia’s fall into sin, and a means whereby the sisters remaining could cling to Christian respectability. Kitty hung her head and fiddled with the sash on her robe, and she looked nervously about her until at last her father took note and demanded to be told what she knew of it.
Lydia, it seemed, had something like this in her mind when she went away to Brighton. “She was set on bringing home a husband,” Kitty whimpered as if she were accused of a crime. “She was determined to please Mama!” she ended defiantly.
“And you never once thought,” asked her father grimly, his voice rising with each word, “that perhaps Lydia’s plan was not a good one? That perhaps you might all, by association, be ruined as she has now ruined herself? That your youngest sister, were you not to alert me of her impending ruination, would be lost to decency and may never return home to see you again?” Mr. Bennet roared.
Kitty escaped to the corner, ill-used and weeping out her heart. Mrs. Bennet had to be helped by both Mary and Jane to her bed. She needed laudanum, her vinaigrette, and a cold cloth with lavender water. Even with these, it was many hours before her moans and lamentations ceased. Mr. Bennet closed himself in his study and snapped at Jane through the door when she tried to speak to him. Eventually, as dawn broke, Jane thought perhaps she should decide something at least, and so she sent Kitty and Mary up to their rooms before she went to the escritoire in the parlor and wrote out a letter to the next eldest sister, Elizabeth, who was on holiday in Derbyshire with their aunt and uncle Gardiner.
Ten o’clock the next morning found the house of Longbourn as still as a tomb. No one came down to breakfast, and no one asked for a tray. Mr. and Mrs. Hill sat huddled in the kitchen with the upstairs maid and the backhouse boy. Jane Bennet dozed fitfully in the chair by the cold hearth.
At last, Mr. Bennet came out of his library. He went upstairs for three quarters of an hour, came back down dressed, and said, “I expect Colonel Forster any time from this afternoon to the end of the week, Jane. He has, of course, gone after them. I suppose the delay of a day in notifying me was justified, for he must have thought he could find them quickly and spare himself the mortification of telling me he did not keep my daughter out of harm’s way.” He paused and looked over his spectacles at the tray in the hallway. “I see you have put a letter to Lizzy and my brother Gardiner in the hall for the post. I wish you would wait and see whether we have any further news. Perhaps the colonel has, even now, recovered her.” He then locked himself once again in his study.
Jane eyed her letter. She longed for her sister Elizabeth’s support as she sat alone in the parlor. Lizzy would know what to do—how to proceed. Lizzy would not have let everyone sink into such forlorn, pitiful despair. But Jane Bennet was not a young lady who could ignore her father’s direction, and she reasoned that it would be a shame to cut up Lizzy’s happiness with news of an elopement about which she could do nothing. It would be selfish to recall the travelers so they, too, could sit in the parlor and fret, and so she retrieved her letter from the tray. When Colonel Forster recovered Lydia, she would send the joyful news by express and spare Lizzy any distress at all.
Chapter 5
Lambton, Derbyshire…
Elizabeth Bennet, unaware of the disaster that had befallen her family, nevertheless suffered a restlessness of spirit from the moment her uncle Gardiner’s coach crossed into the county of Derbyshire.
Derbyshire was the home county of Pemberley, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s estate. And Mr. Darcy had completely overturned Elizabeth’s life. He began as an antagonist, arriving in Meryton with his friend Charles Bingley, determined to despise everything and everyone he saw. He was a wealthy man, and he acted accordingly. He brooded in the corner, spoke in dismissive bursts meant to depress the pretentions of anyone who approached him, and affected a kind of sneering perseverance during social calls. He had hardened Elizabeth’s opinion into an immoveable dislike when, within her hearing, he bluntly told his friend she was not handsome enough to dance with him and that he had no desire to lend her his consequence. As no other man had complimented her with an invitation to stand up with him, why should he, Mr. Darcy,stoop to do so?
As if he had sensed in Elizabeth someone who despised Mr. Darcy, Lieutenant George Wickham of the ——shire Militia, recently arrived in Hertfordshire, had poured salt on the wound. As the son of Pemberley’s land steward, he had grown up with Darcy. A favorite of old Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham had been sent to school with Darcy and had been promised a lucrative living in the church. Instead of honoring his father’s wishes, however, the proud and arrogant young Mr. Darcy had denied poor, young George the living and had sent him off to fend for himself.
While Mr. Darcy had stayed at Netherfield Park, an estate close to Longbourn that was leased by his amiable young friend, that same friend, Charles Bingley, reputed to have five thousand pounds a year, had begun to actively court Elizabeth’s sister Jane. Every expectation of the future happiness of her beloved sister had arisen in Elizabeth. These expectations had arisen in everyone else as well. The entire neighborhood had looked upon the match with benign good will. Netherfield Park would be the home of a most agreeable young gentleman, and one of Meryton’s most beloved young ladies would be well settled there. Not only would the good society thereabouts improve, but there would be employment and commerce aplenty in consequence.
These expectations, however, had not pleased everybody. Mr. Bingley’s snobbish sisters had deplored the match and done so quite obviously. They had not been alone. More than once did Elizabeth notice Mr. Darcy bending his gimlet eye upon Jane and Bingley as they stood in blushing conversation. And then, the very day after a ball at Netherfield, in which everyone had observed Mr. Bingley to be clearly in love with Jane Bennet, the young gentleman and his party abruptly left. The general dismay was nothing to the crushing pain that poor Jane felt or the simmering outrage that troubled Elizabeth day and night. She blamed the horrible sisters, of course, but she also blamed Mr. Darcy for his generally discouraging view of the matter.
Thus, some months later, when she visited her friend Charlotte Collins in Kent and discovered Mr. Darcy visiting his aunt at the adjacent estate of Rosings, Elizabeth was necessarily unimpressed. Her dislike of the man turned to downright enmity, however, when she learned quite casually that Mr. Darcy had actively intervened to separate his friend from her sister. She still was simmering with rage from having realized his perfidy when he burst in upon her at the Parsonage in Hunsford where she visited.
He paced and spoke in a lecturing tone. He stated, with a visible degree of affront, that he loved her in spite of her station in life, her family members, and her lack of title and fortune. He then ended his rant by suggesting he would have her as his wife against his better judgment, and he clearly expected her to be grateful for his monumental offer.
His shock at being sent to the right-about can only be guessed at, but sent he was. He wouldnothave Elizabeth Bennet as wife. She would never marry the man who had ruined her favorite sister’s chance at happiness, destroyed the prospects of his childhood friend, and looked down his nose at everybody!
The final wrinkle in this awful passage in Elizabeth’s life had been a letter—written by Mr. Darcy in the extremis of his rejection—that set her straight on the matter of his childhood companion at least. George Wickham was a perfidious lout, and she had believed him! Retrospect was all that was left to Elizabeth, and upon recollection of their multiple conversations, she could clearly see how well Mr. Wickham had insinuated himself into the comfortable pocket of her prejudicial feelings against Mr. Darcy. He had, with a clinical sort of precision, manipulated her feelings to align themselves with his specious tale of woe.
Mr. Darcy went further in his letter. He crisply explained his decision to remove Bingley from Meryton by suggesting that Jane, in attaching Charles Bingley, was being pushed to perform her duty. Mr. Darcy perceived no particular affection in Jane’s manners, but he could hardly escape noticing Mrs. Bennet’s marital aspirations for her eldest daughter. With a tinge of resentment, he explained bluntly that the behavior of Elizabeth’s mother, her three youngest sisters, and even her father, had besmirched his opinion of her general suitability. This opinion, though a formidable obstacle, had somehow been overcome by his feelings for her.
Reflection upon this bitter observation could only force Elizabeth to concede that he had a point with regards to her family. Jane’s future happiness had been blighted to be sure, but the blame for this must honestly be shared with the faulty manners of the Bennets of Longbourn.
Outright enmity against Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy was necessarily tempered with embarrassment, chagrin, and a litany of regrets. He must hate her thoroughly and unreservedly, Elizabeth mused, and she did not like it at all. Mr. Darcy had proven that he was not quite as awful as she thought he was, and Elizabeth was too fair minded not to be ashamed of the most unreasonable of her assertions against him. She traveled into his home county not disposed to like him—hehadseparated Bingley from Jane without apology, after all—but there was something else. She wished for his good opinion and dreaded an unexpected encounter in which he would show her the depth of his resentment.
These thoughts took up Elizabeth’s attention during the monotonous miles to Lambton. Once comfortably settled at the best inn in the middle of the village, however, she relaxed into the belief that she had a better chance of being struck by lightning than coming face to face with Mr. Darcy. Besides, her favorite aunt and uncle were excellent company, and they did not deserve her sulks. Her aunt Gardiner was eager to be in her home village after many years in London. Her enthusiasm for the visit was infectious, and Elizabeth soon entered willingly into all her plans. They went out for three days together to visit Mrs. Gardiner’s friends and relations, to take tea here and there, to browse the quaint shops that lined the principle street of Lambton, and to drive off to see ruins, churches, and great, beautiful hills.
Thus, Elizabeth was lulled into a state of complacency, only to be brought up short when Uncle Gardiner, on the fourth day, suggested they tour Pemberley. He said it was only five miles away! Elizabeth gasped. The blood ran from her face only to return in a full flush half a second later. She looked up to see her aunt and uncle looking at her in bewildered concern.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Well…I do not…that is to say, it would not do for us to appear so encroaching, do you think, Aunt?”
“Encroaching?” her uncle exclaimed. “But Pemberley is a great estate. They are used to visitors there any day of the week in summer, and we would hardly stand out. It would be much like our visit to Chatsworth. You did not objectthen.”
