A Private Performance (3 page)

T
HE LITTLE CHURCH AT
L
ONGBOURN
was crowded with guests and spectators. The congregation felt properly satisfied with the solemnity of the two bridegrooms. Patches of coloured light shone on them, from a stained-glass window above. The demeanour of the groomsmen varied somewhat. Bingley's brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, displayed his usual tired blandness, while Colonel Fitzwilliam's feelings appeared more complex.

“Of course, his feelings must be mixed,” murmured a widow to her friend. “This is not a good marriage for his family.” She nodded discreetly in the direction of Miss Georgiana Darcy.

“There is Miss Darcy, an heiress, the young lady in velvet, seated by Miss Bingley.” Georgiana was modestly, though fashionably, attired in a pink coat with a matching bonnet that screened much of her face.

“Poor thing. For all her wealth and connections, what is she but an orphan, with no mother to take her side?”

“She has her pride to sustain her,” the widow replied, for Georgiana bore the scrutiny of these strangers by pretending they did not exist.

Mrs. Bennet was joyfully fluttering in her pew. She cast her mind back over the breakfast preparations. Nothing was short of perfection there. What could go wrong now, ever?

The sound of footsteps at the door caused a hush. Dark against the stream of light from outside, Mr. Bennet entered with a daughter on each arm. Jane, in a pelisse of the palest green, fairly floated on her father's arm. Her eyes were modestly cast down. Sunlight ignited Elizabeth's yellow coat in a haze. As she moved into the gloom of the church, all could see her dark gaze was straight ahead and quite impossible to interpret.

Followed by the younger sisters, they moved up the aisle to join the group before the altar. A golden light from the window lit up the
lovely Jane, while Elizabeth was obscured by motley splodges of colour.

 

There was a jostling for space as the gentry poured from the church and met with the crowd of villagers and farmers' families who had been unable to find room inside. As they passed under the yew arch, Mr. Darcy caught his hat, and the crowd laughed. Elizabeth glanced up at him as a flash of pained hauteur stole his smiles. She pressed his arm and looked teasingly up at him, and he laughed ruefully. The groomsmen handed bags to the bridegrooms, who sent handfuls of coins raining down among the spectators.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet led the guests into the house for the wedding breakfast.

After the celebrations, Jane and Elizabeth retired upstairs to ready themselves for their journeys. Elizabeth and Darcy would be on the road for some days, while Jane was to travel but four miles.

Elizabeth was very fashionable in an emerald green velvet coat and bonnet, with pale satin lining that matched the green of her gloves.

“My darling girl, just look at you! You do my heart proud!” shrieked her mother. She kissed Elizabeth on both her cheeks.

“Oh, Mama!”

“Yes, oh, yes, you do.”

Mrs. Bennet's eldest daughter came into the room.

“There you are, Jane! See how well your sister looks! Not so well as you, of course; there has never been so lovely a bride as you, in the whole county. What a good girl you are.”

Elizabeth laughed as Jane demurred.

Their mother interrupted, “Lizzy, Mr. Darcy will be impatient to be gone, I dare say. Both of you wait upstairs for a moment. I want to go down and watch you appear.”

“Oh, Jane,” said Elizabeth. “We will be very far from each other.”

“Lizzy, you will make me weep. We will meet very soon in London.”

At the bottom of the stairs, they turned to each other. As the footman moved to open the doors of the drawing room, Jane gestured to Elizabeth to precede her.

“No, Jane.”

“Dearest Lizzy, you have precedence now, and I begrudge it not at all.”

Elizabeth hesitated. All her life she had paid due courtesy to her elder sister and to upset this pattern seemed disrespectful. She would accustom herself to precedence, due to her because of her husband's greater consequence. Yet it seemed too soon. She linked arms with Jane; the doorway was wide enough for them both.

Elizabeth took her father's arm as they all went out onto the drive.

“How can you leave me, Lizzy?” said Mr. Bennet. “Your conversation is my sole source of comfort.”

“You must come to us very often, Papa. You know you will always be welcome.”

“I hope I shall be welcome as often as I will desire to come.”

They had reached the carriage. Elizabeth kissed her father and her sisters.

“Goodbye, Kitty.”

“Goodbye, Mary.” She turned to her mother. Mrs. Bennet was surprised by a pang of desperate maternal feeling and seized her daughter in her arms.

“Goodbye, my dearest girl. How I shall miss you! I know not how I shall get through the days!”

“Much as you always have, I daresay,” Mr. Bennet suggested, helpfully.

Heedless of her worthy spouse, her awe overcome by anxiety, she turned to Darcy and said: “You will take good care of my girl, Mr. Darcy?”

“Madam, there can be no charge that gives me greater joy,” he replied and kissed her hand. Was it this gallantry that brought tears to Elizabeth's eyes?

She entered the carriage and her husband got in beside her. She
looked at her father, so very dear, at her suddenly concerned mother, at all their friends.

“You are ready?” Darcy said softly. She laughed and waved.

“Drive on,” he called.

They were away.

 

That evening, Mr. Bennet knocked at the door of his wife's dressing room, where she sat in her armchair gazing into the fire. Mrs. Bennet was unused to seeing this visitor in her sanctum. She looked at him. ‘Gracious!' she thought. ‘What a number of wrinkles he has to his face.'

“Mrs. Bennet,” he said, “I declare you appear pensive. What has brought about this extraordinary state, at the end of such a day of incident and triumph?”

“Oh, Mr. Bennet. Lizzy is gone so far off and her husband so taciturn. Will he be severe with her? Lizzy does so love a joke. What will they find to talk about? Will she be happy?”

“‘O! Call back yesterday, bid time return,' saith the bard. Mrs. Bennet, is it not late to be considering such problems? I had thought you were delighted with the match.”

“So I am, of course. It was a triumph to see her drive away in such a splendid carriage with such livery! They did look so fine. Mr. Darcy is a handsome man, to be sure, and Lizzy was quite the fashionable lady in her new velvet.” She adjusted the ribbons on her nightcap. “What congratulations and compliments we have been receiving. I know our guests were most impressed.”

Unconcerned by her husband's silence, Mrs. Bennet fiddled with the ruffles of her wrap, and smiled complacently to herself, as she added, “All our neighbours must be envious, especially those with daughters. The mothers will be glad Jane and Lizzy will be out of the way. They always were the handsomest girls in the district, though I do say it myself.”

“Quite comforted, are you, Mrs. Bennet? Our daughter cannot but be happy with such carriages, livery, velvets and envy as you describe.”

“Oh, Mr. Bennet, that was not my meaning at all. Lizzy, indeed, has married better than one could dream. Mr. Darcy must love her very dearly or this match could never have taken place. What a clever girl she is! Yet, think you that she will be happy?”

“I dare say she has as fair a chance as anyone, my dear.”

Mrs. Bennet was comforted by this optimistic view.

“Of course, Derbyshire is not so very far off, is it, Mr. Bennet? They will visit often.”

“Perhaps, my dear, perhaps. Goodnight, Mrs. Bennet. Tomorrow begins a quiet life, indeed.”

He stood at his bedroom window for a time, recalling his own youthful hopes of matrimony, and it seemed that his daughters were still driving far into the moonless night.

 

It was no night for travel. Half a day's drive to the north, profound quiet had settled over the inn. Only the watchman was awake. The landlord had long ago made his final round, his good lady already sunk in sleep. From the kitchen floor to the attics, the house was full of slumbering bodies.

Elizabeth awoke. She stretched and turned. He felt for her face in blackness and encountered the tumble of her curls, and touched her cheek. She opened her lips, but words did not come. He felt her eyelids close.

“I have disturbed you. Goodnight.”

 

By the third day, not ten miles from Pemberley, the rain clouds were blown away by a stiff breeze. Elizabeth drank in the stark beauty of the Derbyshire uplands, as the road skirted around the base of a craggy hill.

“Beautiful!”

“There is a splendid prospect from that next rise,” Darcy said.

The carriage creaked up around the base of a peak and stopped. They alighted and walked over to the edge. The ground dropped away before their feet, and the wind gusted furiously up from below. Elizabeth's gaze roamed over the swell of the hills and sweep of the
vales. Her cheeks were flushed in the wind, and her eyes lustrous with joy.

“Oh, this is magnificent.”

The horses snorted; their breath was blown away in great clouds of steam.

The coachman gave his opinion that this was a mistress such as Pemberley had not seen before.

His young assistant smirked. “Nor such as maister has seen, neither.”

“Thee hold tha tongue, young'un. 'Tis a fine way to speak for a jumped-up blacksmith's son.” Clink held his tongue.

The wind tore at the hem of his mistress's coat and blew her curls around her face, while she only laughed. She let go of Darcy's arm as she skipped up onto a boulder; then took his proffered hand to jump lightly down. She could have done it alone with ease. She picked her way surely among the rocks in her boots, wondrous dainty they seemed.

“Maybe she'll gi' boots to Annie, for they be too small for her maid.”

“Much good it'll do thee, Albee Clink, for Annie will ne'er look on thee more, now she is riz to chambermaid.”

The boy stared off into the distance, blinking hard.

The footmen were fixing in place the white wedding rosettes and ribbons, removed after the carriage had passed through the district where Elizabeth was known. Once she was safely back in the carriage, Elizabeth's maid bustled over from the vehicle behind to adjust her lady's curls once more.

“Will I pass my examination, Wilkins?” she said.

“Indeed, you will, ma'am,” replied Wilkins, with utmost seriousness.

The horses kept to a slow trot through the little town of Lambton, while children ran ahead, shouting, drawing the lower orders to their doors and the upper to their windows.

Only one did not stop to gaze, for he leapt on the horse that stood waiting and galloped off at speed with the news. The carriage
horses picked up pace on the road to Pemberley. The great wrought iron gates stood open, and they turned in. The gatekeeper's wife and children stood by the lodge and the gatekeeper himself stood in the doorway, holding a stick in one hand and the doorframe with the other. He nodded.

“I have not seen the poor fellow on his feet these eight months,” said Darcy. “What effort has this taken him? I shall come and thank him for it tomorrow.”

“I shall come with you,” Elizabeth said.

They journeyed through a wood, then turned a corner on the drive. The old yellow stone of the mansion glowed in the light of the waning sun. By the front door, the house staff was ranged in lines, according to seniority.

“Oh dear,” laughed Elizabeth. “Some of them look terrified!”

“I daresay those who do not are dissembling. It will do them no harm.”

He alighted from the carriage and turned to hand Elizabeth down.

Georgiana came forward from the hall onto the steps and stopped in dismay. She watched her elegant new sister move up the steps.

‘How could Elizabeth have changed so in four days? My sister is become so cold,' she thought.

Elizabeth came up the steps to Georgiana and kissed her.

“Dear Georgiana.”

Her husband introduced the upper servants. With cool graciousness, Elizabeth acknowledged the housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, the butler and the cook. In a slow sweep of her head, Elizabeth then acknowledged the nervous bows and curtsies of the other servants. The housekeeper said:

“This is Annie, your chambermaid, madam. Step forward, gel.”

Annie, scarlet-faced, stepped forward and curtsied, mumbling, “Good day to you, ma'am.”

There was the briefest nervous giggle from a footman, extinguished by the butler's glare. Elizabeth nodded to the chambermaid, not unkindly.

The family passed into the house and entered the drawing room. Mrs. Reynolds bustled off to supervise tea preparations, in honour of the day.

At the door of the kitchen, Annie caught up with her.

“What ails you, Annie? You are creasing your apron.” Annie pulled her hands from her pockets.

“Mrs. Reynolds, ma'am. I canna' do it.”

“Do what, you silly girl? Why are you not in your mistress's chamber? Her maid, Mrs. Wilkins, will be looking for you.”

“I am afeard.”

“What nonsense. Mrs. Darcy will not eat you, though I may. Now go.”

 

Elizabeth may have been a little shocked had she known how effective her appearance of sang-froid had been.

“Were you impressed with my performance?” she asked Darcy, rolling her eyes.

“Congratulations, Duchess,” replied Darcy. “The servants will not immediately forget your arrival.”

“By the time they do, I should have some idea of what I am about.”

She sat on a settee next to Georgiana.

“Dear Georgiana, did I frighten you? I confess I quite frightened myself.” Georgiana laughed uncertainly. “Can you forgive me?” said Elizabeth.

“Oh, yes. That is, there is nothing to forgive.”