Pemberley (22 page)

‘Thank goodness there will only be Kitty now, to wear out my nerves,' said Mrs Bennet, ‘and I have told Lydia she
must
see that Kitty gets suited in Bath – with whomsoever it may be! And for all the sorrow you have brought to our family, Elizabeth, I can at least rejoice that my visits to Pemberley will continue regularly.'

‘What do you mean, Mama?' said Elizabeth, who was startled to hear this.

‘Why, with the marriage of dear Mary and Master Roper, to be sure! It is as much like two book-worms meeting in the binding of an old folio as anything I have ever come across! He will change his name, I suppose – I have not asked him this, but I think Roper-Darcy would be fine, do not you, Lizzy? For Mr Darcy goes to the Continent – so Mary wrote to me, from Barlow. He must have told Charles Bingley. And Mary and Thomas will live at Pemberley.'

‘Oh,' said Elizabeth – and could say no more, for she wondered that Jane had told her none of this; and then the thought that she would never see Darcy again came in on her painfully.

‘Mary is young – but it is a good age to start a family,' said Mrs Bennet, ‘and I shall wait on Mrs Roper-Darcy for as long as she wishes me there.'

Elizabeth went to the study, where a bed was put up by the maid with a good deal of grumbling, and she sat long there, contemplating the ruin of all she had most desired. Darcy going away! Pemberley with Mary as its mistress! She could console herself only on the correctness of her discoveries about Darcy. He goes to France, she thought miserably – and doubtless he takes the child with him.

Her reveries were interrupted by a tap at the door, followed by Mrs Bennet coming in greatly agitated.

‘Lady Catherine de Bourgh is here, Lizzy! I expect she brings a letter of reconciliation from her nephew! You cannot receive her in here – you shall have the sitting-room – it looks out on the park – which is smaller even than the park at Longbourn, I am aware. But that must be laid at the door of Mr Darcy, for it was he who fixed up this accommodation!'

Elizabeth was sickened, both by the news of Lady Catherine coming to find her here; and by her mother's chatter. She went into the sitting-room, as there was nothing else to do about it, and found Lady Catherine standing with her back to the fireplace. Elizabeth greeted her formally and asked her to take a seat.

‘I shall do nothing of the kind! I am here to inform you that you must go to Mr Darcy immediately!'

‘And why should I do such a thing?' said Elizabeth.

‘I see you are as impertinent as when I first came to see you in your father's house. Your departure for Hertfordshire without informing your husband of your destination was ill-considered in the extreme!'

‘He did not inform
me,
before he went to London.'

‘My dear Mrs Darcy, that is quite different! My nephew was informed of the whereabouts of his wife by some upstart at St James's.'

‘Sir William Lucas,' said Elizabeth, smiling.

‘You must mend your marriage – or at least be seen trying to do so. It is understood that you will not bring an heir to Pemberley – '

‘Understood by whom?' said Elizabeth.

Lady Catherine stopped, and stared hard. ‘Do you tell me you are with child?'

‘What if I am?' replied Elizabeth.

Lady Catherine was for a while speechless; then she asked if Elizabeth would come with her, to meet Mr Darcy.

‘I am sorry if there has been awkwardness at court. There is nothing I could wish less on Mr Darcy,' said Elizabeth sweetly. ‘But I intend to pursue my own plans, as before.'

‘And what may they be?' cried Lady de Bourgh.

Elizabeth would not, however, divulge her intentions to Mr Darcy's aunt, and showed her to the door.

Mrs Bennet's exasperation with Elizabeth was soon forgotten, when Miss Mary Bennet came from Barlow. As future mistress of Pemberley, she was greeted with open arms, and a splendid repast was laid out in the dining-parlour.

‘You may join us, Lizzy, I suppose,' said Mrs Bennet. ‘Oh, how I do wish Mr Bennet were here, to compliment you on your engagement, Mary.'

‘He would be sorry to miss seeing his prospective son-in-law. Thomas Roper,' said Elizabeth gravely.

‘And tell me, when will dear Thomas come to Hertfordshire?' cried Mrs Bennet, on whom this irony was lost.

Mary said he would come south soon. He would go to Rosings first, and she was invited there by him, in a few weeks' time.

‘Lady Catherine was here only today,' said Mrs Bennet.

Elizabeth half listened to the chatter which followed; but she became alert suddenly, when Mary alluded to the poor state of their sister Jane's health.

‘It is a fever of some kind – that follows childbirth, Lizzy. Poor Jane was ill ever since her return to Barlow, but she did not wish you to learn of it.'

‘Lizzy certainly does not know of the dangers of giving birth,' cried Mrs Bennet. ‘My poor Jane – she has puerperal fever. Oh, this is dreadful!'

Elizabeth thought it was dreadful, too, that Mary only now alluded to her sister's dangerous condition. But she had also to acknowledge her own feeling of unease. Was this illness of Jane's not a direct consequence of her anxiety about her sister? Was her constitution, robust enough when not weakened by childbirth,
now endangered by the secrets concerning Darcy and his departure for the Continent – secrets she felt she must keep from Elizabeth for fear of causing her even greater distress?

‘I shall go to her,' said Elizabeth, rising.

‘But my dear Lizzy, it is quite dark!'

‘I go at daybreak. Jane may be very ill,' said Elizabeth, who was distraught with fear for Jane. ‘I shall make my arrangements and then go to the study and wait until it is light.'

‘If it were not for my nerves,' cried Mrs Bennet, ‘I would come with you! But I cannot bear another journey when I am so lately down from Manchester!'

Elizabeth said she knew Jane would understand; and she left the room.

The journey north at this time of year was even more hazardous and cold than the journey south; and Elizabeth's thoughts were correspondingly dark and troubled. What if poor Jane were to die? How could life be borne, without her? How could Charles go on, with no sweet presence at his side? And now I know, thought Elizabeth bitterly, how Darcy felt, when his lover died, and he was bereft. I must learn to forgive; and to pray for Jane without thinking of him.

Elizabeth was admitted to the Bingleys' house by the house-keeper, who wept as she led the way to Jane's room.

‘She is so much weaker, today, Ma'am. The doctor comes again, but it is all to no avail.'

Elizabeth went softly into her sister's bedchamber, and knelt by the side of the bed. Jane was weak and ravaged, indeed; but a smile spread over her face when she saw Elizabeth; then was chased away again, as if the phantoms of fever had precedence and could not be banished even by the arrival of the sister she loved most.

‘She took a little broth earlier,' said the housekeeper, ‘but she raves – do not hear what she says.' And Elizabeth saw the poor woman was alarmed at her mistress's state. As Jane began to speak, she understood further the alarm just expressed. For surely Jane spoke from madness – or fever – her words came from nowhere, and yet she spoke with such conviction that it could only be the truth.

‘The child – oh, if only you knew, Lizzy!'

‘But I am here, Jane,' said Elizabeth in a low voice.

‘The woman was taken from the battlefield – oh, she was
wounded, I have no doubt – they brought her here. He loved her; I know that, too.'

‘Of what do you speak?' cried Elizabeth; and the agitation in her voice caused Jane's eyes to open and to look at her, for a moment, with the old candour.

‘You
are
here. I did not dream it! Go to the door, Lizzy, and open it and go through. Stand at the top of the stairs. You can hear well, there.'

‘But what shall I hear? I will not leave you, Jane.'

‘You will hear of the Frenchwoman – who was the mistress of Charles Bingley – who bore him a child. Whom Mr Darcy so kindly protected, after the Frenchwoman's death. You know, Lizzy, when Darcy tried to prevent Charles from marrying me – he did it for this reason! He did not think Charles properly recovered from grief at the death of – ‘Here, Jane's head fell back on the pillow, and she raved again, strange words and conjunctions with the sense and nonsense of nightmare.

Elizabeth's colour came and went; she laid a hand on her sister's brow, and cooled it with lavender water; she went at last to the door, and out to the top of the stairs. Her mind was in turmoil. Did Jane ramble, and invent? Or did she know the truth? Did Jane suffer, as Elizabeth, believing herself deceived, had suffered? How could she be saved?

The door into the hall was opened by the housekeeper, and the doctor – known to Elizabeth, for he had long attended Jane and little Emily, and Elizabeth had many times conferred with him on the subject of the health of her sister and her niece – came in from outside. Then another door – into the sitting-room – also opened. Mr Bingley, accompanied by Mr Darcy, came out.

‘Jane has accepted the boy,' said Mr Bingley. ‘She is conscious and coherent sometimes, and she wishes you to know this, Darcy. She is the sweetest angel I have ever had the privilege to spend time with here on earth – '

‘She will not die!' cried Elizabeth, for she could not bear these
words. She ran – as the three men looked up at her – to come down the stairs, from the landing. Her thoughts were clear, and radiant. Mr Darcy had been much misunderstood. Mr Gresham had misinformed her absolutely – or rather, as she must confess, she had prised information from him that he had never once tried to give. She had been more than prejudiced, in her reaction to the affair: she had been blind. The child was Bingley's, and Darcy had wished only, in those days when he had so eagerly tried to persuade Elizabeth of his conviction that Jane did not love his friend, to save her sister from an unhappy alliance. Once they were wed, he took care of Bingley's child with the Frenchwoman, in the village, and spared Jane the suffering Elizabeth had so foolishly, in her invented case against her own husband, assumed.

Elizabeth, in her haste – for she must show Darcy now that she understood his actions, that she must be the one to beg forgiveness from
him
– slipped on the topmost stair, and fell. She knew nothing more, for all was blackness. When she woke, it was to find the doctor at one side of her, and Darcy at the other.

‘You are never to leave me again, do you hear me, Eliza,' said Darcy – but in a rough voice that was scarcely audible to her. ‘You are too precious to me – loveliest Elizabeth, forgive my stupid pride, in abandoning you! Please do so!'

Elizabeth found no breath to reply; but she looked up at Mr Darcy with eyes so fine, smiling and full of love, that Mr Darcy knew he had the answer.

‘Mrs Darcy was fortunate in the way she fell,' said the doctor as he rose from his examination, ‘for she is unharmed. And she needs only a day or so at home in bed, to recover completely.'

The look which then passed between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth ended only when Charles Bingley came down the stairs from his wife's bedchamber. ‘She sits up! She has colour! She says, dear Elizabeth, that your visit has returned her to health!'

The doctor soon was able to confirm the improvement in Mrs Bingley; and plans were made for Charles and Jane to visit
Pemberley when she was fully recovered, in the way all four truly enjoyed – with no one else in the house but themselves.

That soon there would be an addition to the Darcy family was not told to the Bingleys until they had been several days at Pemberley, in the finest May weather; for Elizabeth and Darcy had so much to talk about, that they liked to keep their secret between them, for a while. Though one secret Elizabeth
did
keep from him: that Dr Carr at Longbourn had suspected she was with child; and that it was with all the agony of this dilemma that she had travelled north to her sister's bedside. That Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine would soon be acquainted of the happy news, and demanding they visit Pemberley in August when the garden was at its finest, could not be doubted at all. Mr Darcy, however, assured his wife that Miss Caroline Bingley would on no account be included in any future invitation to Pemberley; and gravely exacted a promise from
her
that no prospective suitors of Mrs Bennet would be permitted access.

An artist should also be commissioned – so Mr Darcy insisted, even though Elizabeth felt alarmed at the prospect – to paint the portrait of Jane Bingley in a white dress with green ornaments, and Elizabeth Darcy in yellow.

Discover books by Emma Tennant published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/EmmaTennant

Confessions of a Sugar Mummy
Heathcliff's Tale
Hotel de Dream
Pemberley
The Autobiography of the Queen
The Colour of Rain
The Crack
Wild Nights