Page 19 of The Marriage Articles

“My living connexions are all on my mother’s side,” he said. “My uncle, Lord Matlock, her brother, is at his estate in the North, and my aunt with him. The distance is considerable, and at this season the roads are what they are. My aunt Lady Catherine, my mother’s sister, is in Kent. She does not travel easily, and,” he hesitated, “she does not approve of the match. I will not pretend otherwise. The wedding falls in Lent, which gives her a respectable excuse to stay away, and she means to take it.”

“I am sorry for it. Not for myself, but for you.”

He shrugged, as though the matter were settled and there was nothing more to be said. “My sister resides in London, at my house, with her companion. She is young and I should prefer that you meet her there, where you may be introduced without the whole neighbourhood looking on and passing its opinion of our marriage. I hope you approve.”

“That is considerate of you.”

His uncle, his aunt, his cousins, his sister. None of them would come. She had counted the cost of this marriage to herself, measuring her independence, her sisters’ reputation, and the loss of her former liberty. She had never counted the cost to him. He was a man whose whole life had been anchored in the solidarity of his family and the unassailable consequence of his name. In choosing her, he risked the goodwill of the very circle that defined his place in the world. Whether this absence was a passing displeasure or the beginning of a lasting breach she could not tell, but he was standing alone today, facing the coldness of his own blood, and bearing the possibility of their estrangement without a single word of complaint.

Chapter Eleven

There is a great deal of nonsense talked about a bride’s gown, Elizabeth thought, holding her arms out while Jane worked a pin into the new ribbon at her waist. Any gown will do, provided the woman inside it has decided what she is about. The sprigged muslin was her best, made finer by Charlotte’s ribbons and Jane’s patient hands, and the bonnet sat ready on the bed. She had decided what she was about. She had decided it on that quiet morning in the garden, with a paper of seven articles between them, and yet her hands would not keep still.

Charlotte set down the last pin, surveyed her work, and pronounced it adequate, which from Charlotte was high praise. “I will see that your mother has not fainted in the passage,” she said, and slipped out, closing the door behind her.

“Jane.” Elizabeth looked down at their joined hands. “You truly do not mind that Charlotte stands up with me? It ought by rights to be you.”

“I do not mind it at all, Lizzy. Charlotte was the only one who stood by us when everyone else seemed ready to look down upon our family. I am quite of your mind, and that most heartily.”

The door opened without the ceremony of a knock. Mrs Bennet burst into the room with the breathless haste of a woman determined to be heard first. She gathered her breath, smoothed her apron, and announced with immense solemnity that she had something of the very first consequence to impart regarding the duties of a wife.

“Mama,” Elizabeth said, in a tone designed to cut short any public lectures.

“There is nothing to be frightened of, my dear, and I beg you will not look at me so crossly. That is the whole of it. A husband naturally expects a certain compliance, which any sensible woman can supply while her thoughts are entirely elsewhere, I assure you, for I have supplied it these five and twenty years and your poor father never the wiser. There is a little awkwardness at first, which a candle blown out does away with altogether, and after that it is all a matter of keeping the account of it to oneself and never, on any consideration, giving way to laughter.” She surveyed her two eldest daughters with immense satisfaction. “There. I have done my duty by you both, and my poor nerves are quite fluttered with the exertion.”

She went out with the same impetuosity with which she had entered, and the door clicked shut behind her.

Elizabeth stared at the wood. “Did you comprehend a single syllable of that, Jane?” she whispered.

“Not one,” Jane said, remaining fixed in astonishment upon the closed door.

Jane’s laughter broke first, a sound she tried to stifle behind her hand and could not, and Elizabeth’s followed it, helpless, until they were both holding onto the bedpost. It was the last thing she expected to do that morning, and it broke the strange mood the morning had put on her.

The walk to the church was short. Inside, the church was cold as it always was, the pews full, her mother already audible in the front. Darcy waited at the altar rail with Mr Bingley beside him. He was entirely still, a tall figure in dark cloth.

The service began. She heard her own voice make the responses in a register she did not recognize as hers. When the clergyman asked who gave the woman, her father answered, “I,” in the dry tone he kept for occasions he declined to enjoy, and placed her hand in Mr Darcy’s.

His hand was cold. Under the stillness, under the composure she had been reading as indifference since the first look of him, it trembled, unmistakably, once. Something in her chest loosened at the discovery. He was as afraid as she was. The great Mr Darcy of Pemberley stood at the altar of Longbourn church with trembling hands, and the knowledge steadied her as nothing else could have done.

They signed the register in the vestry, the clergyman’s pen spluttering over her name, which was no longer her name. Charlotte signed below Mr Bingley as witness, brisk and exact. It was done.

The breakfast at Longbourn was everything her mother had promised the county it would be. There was tongue and ham, eggs and chocolate, a bride cake of a size to feed the militia. Mrs Bennet held forth to the whole table on the subject of the common licence, its cost, and how she had always said Lizzy would marry the best of them all.

Elizabeth sat at the centre of it and maintained an air of perfect composure. It was not difficult. She had been keeping up appearances for her family all her life.

At two o’clock they changed into travelling dress and took their leave before the guests, as was proper. At the door, her father took Mr Darcy aside. “You have taken the one daughter who argues,” Mr Bennet said.

“I had noticed,” Darcy said.

“Then you cannot say you were not warned.”

“I should not dare.”

Jane was waiting by the carriage steps. They embraced, and the composure Elizabeth had maintained since morning very nearly went where her mother’s advice had gone. “Every week,” Jane whispered against her shoulder. “I shall write every week, and you must write twice, for you will have more to tell.”

“I shall miss you,” Elizabeth said, and embraced her again.

Charlotte came last, squeezed her hand, and said, in the brisk tone of a woman settling an account, “You will be very well, Elizabeth. I have a talent for these predictions, and I am very seldom wrong.”