Page 70 of The Marriage Articles

Chapter Forty-Four

Elizabeth stood in the Longbourn church with a sprig of holly in her hand, her thoughts a near twelvemonth behind her, in another church, on another morning. The holly had been Jane’s idea, and Jane’s hand had tucked it into Elizabeth’s hair an hour ago with fingers that trembled only slightly. Now Jane stood at the altar rail in pale muslin, the Colonel beside her in a gentleman’s dark coat. The church smelled of greenery and damp wool, and of old stone in winter.

The progress of the attachment had been slow and deliberate. Elizabeth had noted its lingering pace more than once, receiving always in return that serene resistance with which Jane met every attempt to hurry her, and from which even their mother could extract nothing.

The rector’s voice filled the little church. Colonel Fitzwilliam spoke his vows without the cane he had leaned on through the summer, his footing steady, his voice carrying to the back pew where the Gardiner children sat in a row of diminishing heights.

“I, Richard, take thee, Jane,” he said, and then, quieter, so that Elizabeth thought perhaps only the front rows heard it, “and I am sensible of the honour.”

Jane’s answer was soft and entire. “I, Jane, take thee, Richard, and I am very glad of it.”

It was not in the prayer book. The rector did not appear to mind. Elizabeth, who had stood at this same rail and recited words she had not then believed, found that her eyes had filled, and that she did not care who observed it. Beside her, Darcy produced a handkerchief and placed it in her hand without looking at her, a manoeuvre so well practised it ought to have been insulting.

The breakfast at Longbourn was everything Mrs Bennet had promised it would be for six weeks running, which was to say it was excellent, and Elizabeth was the first to own it. The tables in the dining room groaned under cold ham and raised pie and a bride cake of such ambition that it required its own sideboard. Every neighbour of consequence, and several of none, had come to congratulate. The house, furnished for use and rearranged for show, held them all with a warmth past comfort that nobody complained of.

Mrs Bennet moved among her guests in a state of triumph so complete it had left no room for her nerves. “Two daughters married within the year,” she said to Lady Lucas. “And such marriages. Though I always said Jane would do well, did I not always say it, Mr Bennet?”

“You said it so often,” Mr Bennet replied from behind his plate, “that I had begun to suspect you of arranging the weather for it.”

Lord Matlock, standing at what he plainly considered the correct distance from the company, pronounced the breakfast very creditable, and the match very suitable, and the county fortunate. Lady Matlock said less, and said it precisely, yet there was a warmth in her manner that belied her reserve, and she was seen to take a second slice of the bride cake. Mrs Gardiner sat with Elizabeth for a quarter of an hour and said nothing of consequence, which was its own kind of tenderness. Mr Gardiner congratulated the Colonel with the plain warmth of a man who had taken his measure and found no fault in it.

It was Jane who drew Elizabeth aside at last, into the little passage between the drawing room and her father’s study, where the noise of the breakfast came muffled and the light came thin through one small window. For a moment neither of them spoke.

“Well,” Jane said. “I am married.”

“So I am given to understand.”

“Lizzy.” Jane took both her hands. “You will write to me. You will write every week.”

“I will,” Elizabeth said. “Though I warn you, Netherfield in winter affords very little news. I shall be reduced to reporting on the Gardiner children, and they are already beyond satire.”

Jane stepped forward and embraced her, and for a moment they stood so, as they had done a hundred times in the past year, sisters and confidantes and partners in every scheme of happiness. When they parted, Jane’s eyes were bright.

“And in the spring you will come north to us. Livingston Hall is not half a day’s ride from Pemberley. Fitzwilliam has promised it, and Richard has promised, and I shall hold them both to it.”

Returning to the drawing room, Elizabeth’s eye was caught by the corner near the window, where Charlotte Lucas stood in conversation with Mr Collins, and stood, she noted, rather closer than the width of the room required. Mr Collins was saying something about the south field, and Charlotte was listening with an expression of genuine interest, and Mr Collins, listening back, had the look of a man who could not quite credit his own fortune in the listener.

The whole family had come to like Mr Collins. He had arrived at Longbourn the heir to it, a circumstance which had disposed three separate Bennets to hate him on principle, and had disarmed them all by being plainly, indefatigably decent. A man in trade, with a tradesman’s useful habits. He had come to Mr Bennet of his own accord to close the old quarrel his late father had left standing with Longbourn. He had closed it by the radical method of behaving well on every occasion offered him. Even her husband liked him, and her husband’s liking was not a crop that grew in every field.

“I am told the pasture on the far side of the lane answers best to clover,” Mr Collins was saying. “Though I confess I am still learning which side of the lane is the far one.”

“The far one is the one Mr Bennet is not standing on,” Charlotte said. “He has an arrangement with the nearer field and declines to enlarge it.”

“Then I shall ask you,” said Mr Collins, “whenever I am lost. If I may.”

“You may,” said Charlotte, and did not move away.

Elizabeth passed on, well pleased. Charlotte had waited a long time with her good sense intact. If good sense was to be rewarded at last with a capable, congenial man and the prospect of one day running Longbourn, Elizabeth could think of no woman who would run the house better, and no ending that would please her more.

Her husband found her near the empty end of the table, where she had gone to be unobserved for a moment, and stood beside her in the companionable silence of two people at a wedding they have survived before.

“Jane,” Elizabeth observed, “appeared remarkably composed this morning. It was quite indecent of her. I was in a state of absolute wretchedness at our wedding, as you may recall.”

Darcy considered the room, the tables, his cousin at the centre of them with his new wife on his arm. “They are less frightened than we were,” he said. “I do not know whether to congratulate them on it or pity them. The fright was, in retrospect, instructive.”

She did not answer that, and he did not require her to.

The farewells at the door took the better part of an hour, because Mrs Bennet’s farewells had a way of spawning further farewells, and because every neighbour present had a blessing to bestow and meant to bestow all of it. Jane bore it beautifully. The Colonel bore it like a man who had stood review before less forgiving commanders. When the carriage at last pulled away down the drive, with Jane’s gloved hand at the window, the assembled company stood in the cold for a moment longer, reluctant to declare the day over.