Page 18 of The Marriage Articles

Elizabeth smiled at that, and read on.

The letter turned, as she had known it would, to the marriage itself.

I will say to you on paper what I have said to your uncle across the breakfast table. The world has hurried you into this before your heart had any vote in the matter, and I shall be angry with the world on your behalf for as long as it is entertaining to be so. But I have known you since you were a great girl of twelve who corrected my French, and I have never once known you to be deceived when your eyes were open. You have chosen with a clear head, Lizzy, and I would rather see you married on a clear head than on a giddy heart, whatever the novels may say to the contrary.

Elizabeth lowered the page a moment. A clear head. It was a characteristically unflattering blessing, and she was grateful for it precisely because it was unflattering. Her mother had praised the match in terms of carriages and pin money. Her aunt praised it as one praises a sound investment, which was, from her aunt, the highest praise she could offer.

The next paragraph made her sit down after all.

You will think it very strange that I have never told you what every person in Lambton knows, which is that the Darcys of Pemberley are not five miles from the town where I was born. I was a great walker in those days, as somebody I could name is now, and the park was the boundary of all my rambles. I do not know the family, you understand, for we were not of that sphere, but a name is a kind of currency in a small place such as Lambton, and the Darcy name passes there for its full weight. The old Mr Darcy was as good a man as the county ever held. I heard that said by people who had no reason to say it and nothing to gain by saying it, which is the only testimony worth a farthing in such matters. The son I have not met, but the talk in Lambton is that he is a fair master, if a little reserved. I daresay a wife of your temper will soon enough remedy that deficiency.

Elizabeth set the letter on her knee and looked out at the drive, where the gravel was still wet from the night’s rain. Something in her chest, which had been held at a certain careful pitch for weeks, eased. Relief would have implied she had been afraid, and she had no intention of admitting to anything so unbecoming. Confirmation was the word she chose, which was respectable.

Her aunt finished in her usual fashion.

When you are settled, you must come to us in London, and bring your husband, for the house in Gracechurch Street is open to you both. And if the future Mrs Darcy should ever find herself in Derbyshire with an inclination to walk, I should very much like to see Pemberley. Five miles is nothing to a Bennet. I have it on the best authority.

With love, Your aunt Madeline.

Elizabeth folded the letter along its creases and sat with it a while longer. The family she was leaving was downstairs, growing louder by the minute. The family she was joining had been merely a name to her three weeks ago, and now it had a county, a good man’s reputation, and a small town where her aunt had once walked. That was very near to having a home.

❧ ❧ ❧

Elizabeth woke to her mother’s voice before she woke to the light. It came up the stairs and through the door with the persistence of water finding a crack, telling Hill, who had presumably asked for no such information, that there had never been any scandal at Longbourn, only a lovers’ quarrel, now most happily mended.

A lovers’ quarrel. Elizabeth lay still and listened to the phrase complete its journey down the corridor. Her mother had been repeating it all week, to the maids, to the callers, to the butcher’s boy if he lingered, and each telling had burnished it brighter. By the time Elizabeth came down to breakfast, the story had acquired the couple’s hurry to marry as proof of the violence of their attachment. Mrs Bennet was dabbing at her eyes over the butter dish with the satisfaction of a woman who had composed the history herself.

“A love match,” Mrs Bennet said, the moment Elizabeth sat down. “That is what I have told Lady Lucas, and Mrs Long, and everybody. Ten thousand a year, and a love match besides. There is not a mother in Hertfordshire who would not give her right hand for such a story.”

“You have been busy, Mama.”

Elizabeth could trace the week’s campaign in the way her mother counted it off, family by family, and she kept a quieter ledger alongside it. Lady Lucas, who a fortnight past had forbidden Maria the house. Mrs Long, who had crossed the street in Meryton with such sudden interest in a shop window. The draper, who had served Kitty last and taken his time about it. Every one of them had now received the revised history at full volume, and every one of them, her mother reported, had been quite delighted with the match.

At church that delight was arranged in pews. The whole parish had come, or so it appeared to Elizabeth, who walked in beside Jane with her mother before her and her sisters behind, and found every head already turned. Mr Darcy was in the Longbourn pew beside her father, where he had sat since the engagement was known. He rose as they came in, bowed, and sat again. The congregation spent the length of the sermon examining the back of his head. Elizabeth examined it too, when the psalms allowed. It was a well-shaped head, held very still. She could not have said from the evidence what the stillness meant, and she had begun to want to know.

The rector preached on charity, which she thought either very pointed or very fortunate. Then it was over, the yard filled, and the county came to pay its respects.

They came family by family, and Elizabeth stood under the church porch and received them. Lady Lucas took her hand in both of hers and declared that she had always said it would end well, always, from the very first. Mrs Long pressed her fingers and pronounced it the greatest match the county had seen in living memory. Elizabeth smiled, not in approval, but in obedience to the small laws of politeness.

Mr Darcy stood a little apart with her father and received his share. He had called three times since the engagement was announced. Short visits, all of them. He had been civil with her mother, patient with her father, and forbearing with her sisters, even Lydia.

When the yard thinned they walked home, she and Mr Darcy ahead, the sisters strung out behind at a distance her mother had calculated to the yard, near enough for propriety, far enough for her mother’s notion of romance. For a little while neither of them spoke. The lane was wet from the morning’s rain and the hedges were beginning to green.

“I have had a letter from Bingley,” Mr Darcy said at last. “He will attend the wedding. He means to stand as my witness.”

“I am very glad of it.” She was. Mr Bingley’s good nature was one of the few uncomplicated articles in the whole business.

“His sisters remain in town.”

“I shall endeavour to bear the disappointment,” Elizabeth said, and meant it so entirely that she had to check her face.

Mr Darcy glanced at her, and something moved at the corner of his mouth, quickly suppressed. “You are very forbearing.”

“I am a marvel of forbearance. You may ask anybody in that churchyard.”

He walked on a few paces with his hands hooked behind his back. “I should tell you,” he said, “that you will have no family of mine to forbear with. None of my relations will attend.”

She looked at him. He was watching the lane ahead.