By Force of Instinct (15 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner looked at her in alarm, fearing from her tearful affect that she was ill, but satisfying them instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their summons by asking her uncle to read Jane’s letters. Though Lydia had never been a favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply affected. not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it; and after the first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner readily promised every assistance in his power.

elizabeth, though expecting no less, thanked him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit, every thing relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to be off as soon as possible.

But wishes were vain; or at best could serve only to amuse her in the hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had elizabeth been at leisure to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was impossible to one so wretched as herself; but she had her share of business as well as her aunt, and amongst the rest there were notes to be written to all their friends in Lambton, with false excuses for their sudden departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed; and Mr. Gardiner meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, nothing remained to be done but to go; and elizabeth, after all the misery of the morning, found herself, in a 90

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shorter space of time than she could have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to Longbourn.

“I have been thinking it over again, elizabeth,” said her uncle as they drove from the town; “and really, upon serious consideration, I am much more inclined than I was to judge as your eldest sister does of the matter.

It appears to me so very unlikely that any young man should form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or friendless, and who was actually staying in his colonel’s family, that I am strongly inclined to hope the best. could he expect that her friends would not step forward?

could he expect to be noticed again by the regiment, after such an affront to colonel Forster? His temptation is not adequate to the risk.”

“Do you really think so?” cried elizabeth, brightening up for a moment.

“Upon my word,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “I begin to be of your uncle’s opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, honour, and interest, for him to be guilty of it. I cannot think so very ill of Wickham, although I must admit that his reports of Mr. Darcy’s pride and disagreeability have certainly not proven to be true in my experience. can you, yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him up as to believe him capable of it?”

“not perhaps of neglecting his own interest. But of every other neglect I can believe him capable,” said elizabeth with bitter regret for her failure to apprise her family of what she had learned of Mr. Wickham. “He is not what he seems; I have known for some time of his true history, and it is one of deception and dishonour. He is not a man to be trusted.”

“Lizzy, if you are aware of anything which we are not, I would urge you to share it,” her uncle said.

Without revealing her source, elizabeth briefly related the principal of what she had learned of him from Mr. Darcy’s letter, neglecting only the intelligence regarding Miss Darcy. Her audience was shocked, but after her immediate distress subsided, Mrs. Gardiner could not help but wonder as to the source of her niece’s information, which only added to her previous suspicions.

It may be easily believed that, however little of novelty could be added to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting subject by its repeated discussion, no other could detain them from it long, during the whole of the journey. From elizabeth’s thoughts it was never absent. Fixed 91

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there by the keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find no interval of ease or forgetfulness.

Her fears for Lydia were compounded by an anxiety for her own sake of how Mr. Darcy would accept this evidence of familial weakness. His words of scorn for her family at Hunsford returned to haunt her, and she dreaded facing him knowing that he had proven to be correct. she could not believe that his opinion of her would not suffer, and regretted her past behaviour with him which would only serve as confirmation of her own lack of decorum. It was a poor way to begin an engagement, and the connection with Mr. Wickham could only worsen matters. The thought that she would soon see Mr. Darcy again provided some consolation for her, though—his calm, assured presence, she knew, would help assuage her own worries and pain, however little he could do to ameliorate the actual situation.

They travelled as expeditiously as possible; and, sleeping one night on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner-time the next day. It was a comfort to elizabeth to consider that Jane could not have been wearied by long expectations.

The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were standing on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock; and when the carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise that lighted up their faces, and displayed itself over their whole bodies in a variety of capers and frisks, was the first pleasing earnest of their welcome.

elizabeth jumped out; and, after giving each of them a hasty kiss, hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running down stairs from her mother’s apartment, immediately met her. As she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled the eyes of both, elizabeth lost not a moment in asking whether anything had been heard of the fugitives.

“not yet,” replied Jane. “But now that my dear uncle is come, I hope every thing will be well.” she hastened to inform elizabeth of all that was known of Lydia’s situation, of their father’s presence in London, and of their mother’s greatly shaken spirits. on showing her the note which Lydia had written to colonel Foster’s wife, Jane’s tumult became visible.

“oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!” cried elizabeth when she had finished it. “What a letter is this, to be written at such a moment. But at least it shows that she was serious in the object of her journey. Whatever he 92

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might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her side a scheme of infamy.

My poor father! how he must have felt it!”

“I never saw any one so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in such confusion!”

“oh! Jane!” cried elizabeth, “was there a servant belonging to it, who did not know the whole story before the end of the day?”
And everyone else
in Meryton—and at Netherfield—by the fol owing morning,
she added to herself despairingly.

“I do not know.—I hope there was.—But to be guarded at such a time, is very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I endeavoured to give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid I did not do so much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen, almost took from me my faculties.”

“your attendance upon her has been too much for you. you do not look well. oh! that I had been with you, you have had every care and anxiety upon yourself alone.”

“Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in every fatigue, I am sure, but I did not think it right for either of them. Kitty is slight and delicate, and Mary studies so much, that her hours of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Philips came to Longbourn on tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till Thursday with me. she was of great use and comfort to us all, and Lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters, if they could be of use to us.”

“she had better have stayed at home,” cried elizabeth; “perhaps she meant well, but under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see too little of one’s neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence, insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied.”

It had been too much to be hoped for, she thought, that the news should not have spread throughout the neighbourhood. she wished dearly that she could enquire of Jane as to Mr. Darcy’s response to it, but her past secrecy now forbade it. Her anxiety grew as Bingley continued to pay his daily visits with no word of Darcy. elizabeth could well understand that under the circumstances he would not be comfortable calling at Longbourn, but knew not how to manage a meeting with him otherwise. Finally after two 93

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days with no word she took the desperate measure of inquiring of Bingley how his friend was amusing himself at netherfield.

“He is not amusing himself there at all,” Bingley said. “He returned to London on urgent business a week ago.”

Until this moment elizabeth had not dared to allow herself to entertain the suspicion that in this situation Mr. Darcy might no longer choose to honour his unspoken commitment to her. A shaft of fear went through her, and she had to force herself to inquire further as to whether he planned to return to Hertfordshire soon.

“From the letter I just received, I do not believe that he plans to return this season at all, although I hope to persuade him to attend the wedding,”

replied Bingley. “He spoke of returning to Pemberley once his business in London was concluded.”

It was difficult for elizabeth to believe that pain as acute as hers at that moment, was not evident for all to see. The message could not be clearer; he was renouncing any connection with her, and in truth she could not even blame him. even if he were willing to weather the scandal for himself, he could not expose his sister either to the possible damage to her reputation nor to any risk of contact with Wickham. she was very close to tears when she finally managed to escape to her room where she sat in silent anguish, clutching the book he had given her.

she passed the next few days in a daze, alternating between agony and numbness. she replayed in her mind every moment she had ever spent with him, reconsidering opportunities missed as well as chances taken. The memory of his tenderness and kisses had the power to bring tears to her eyes, and she was thankful that she had an acceptable excuse in Lydia’s situation to be severely out of spirits.

she began to feel that she was behaving like the heroine in one of Kitty’s romances—pining to death over her love. Her situation and her helplessness were nigh intolerable to her, and she vowed that she would never again give any man the power to hurt her like this. It was in many ways a promise with no grounds—she could not imagine that she would ever marry or love another man. As to what her future would be, she found it best not to think—the natural choice would be to live with Jane following her father’s death, but how could she live with the Bingleys with the knowledge that
he
might appear at any point?

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neither the return of her father, nor even the news contained in a letter from Mr. Gardiner reporting that Lydia had been found and that she and Wickham were to be married could provide much balm to elizabeth’s spirits. Poor Lydia’s situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it was no worse, she had need to be thankful. she felt it so; and though, in looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity could be justly expected for her sister, in looking back to what they had feared, only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had gained, yet for herself she knew that there would be no solution of this sort.

she could barely stand to hear her mother’s raptures over Lydia’s new status, sharing the mortifying news freely as if it were a subject for pride. And these were the surroundings in which she was condemned to pass her life, listening to endless conversations between Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Philips, Lady Lucas, and all the other women of the neighbourhood—she, who might have been Mistress of Pemberley! It pained her even to think of it. But she could not avoid the commotion over the news of Lydia’s engagement; she received her congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, took refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom.

she knew that there was no one to whom she could turn with her sorrow; she had learnt early not to rely on either of her parents for support in times of pain—her father would tease rather than sympathize, and her mother would fly into fits of nerves when troubled by her least favourite daughter. And were she to know any of elizabeth’s history with Mr. Darcy, the punishment of being forced to hear her bemoan the loss of his ten thousand pounds a year would be equalled only by the blame she would heap on elizabeth for failing to secure him. At such times she found it hard to argue with Mr. Darcy’s early estimate of her family. As for the soon-to-be Mrs. Bingley, it would do her no favour to place her in the position of awareness that her husband’s closest friend had jilted her dearest sister.

eventually elizabeth began to reach a resigned equanimity of a sort; she began to immerse herself into her everyday activities, and tried to teach herself not to think of Darcy, as those thoughts only brought her pain. It was not to last, though. Mr. Gardiner had written again to his brother, the principal purport of which letter was to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved on quitting the militia, and contained in which was a request by Lydia to be admitted into her family again before she set off for the north.

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This request was received at first with an absolute negative from Mr.

Bennet, a decision which elizabeth silently but heartily endorsed. Although she could wish for Lydia’s sake that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents, elizabeth knew that she herself would have difficulty remaining civil to her, knowing that Lydia’s impulsive behaviour had directly cost her the opportunity for her own felicity. It came as an unpleasant surprise when she discovered that her father, under the influence of Jane’s gentleness as well as his wife’s persistence, had sent his permission for them to come; and it was already settled that, as soon as the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn.