Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (35 page)

She was roused from her reflections by some one’s approach. She scarcely had time to fold the letter and remove it from sight before a pair of servants entered the dojo carrying Mr. Wickham on his traveling bed. They set him down on the floor beside her and took their leave.

“I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?” mumbled he through a shattered jaw.

“You certainly do,” she replied with a smile; “but it does not follow that the interruption must be unwelcome.”

“I should be sorry indeed, if it were. I thought the peace of the dojo a most refreshing change from my little corner of the breakfast parlor.”

“Are the others coming out?”

“I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage to Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley.”

She replied in the affirmative.

“I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much for me in my sorry state. And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of me—to see me thus affected would be quite a shock to her. But of course she did not mention my name to you.”

“Yes, she did.”

“And what did she say?”

“That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid that—that you had not turned out well. At such a distance as that, you know, things are strangely misrepresented.”

“Certainly,” he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she had silenced him; but he soon afterwards said:

“Did you see Darcy while you were there? I thought I understood from the Gardiners that you had.”

“Yes; he introduced us to his sister.”

“And do you like her?” “Very much.”

“I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.”

“I dare say she will; she has got over some rather extraordinary challenges.”

“Did you go by the village of Kympton?”

“I do not recollect that we did.”

“I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A most delightful place! Excellent house! It would have suited me in every respect.”

“I have heard from authority, which I thought as good, that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron.”

“You have. Yes, there was something in that; I told you so from the first, you may remember.”

“I did hear, too, that you were a most disagreeable child, exceedingly cruel to the elder Darcy’s servants, and disrespectful of his wishes. As to your more recent behaviour, I have heard nothing that would persuade me of your having improved; whether it be your debts of honour, or the countless bastards strewn about His Majesty’s empire.”

To this, Wickham could find no reply other than a fresh, aromatic soiling. Elizabeth stood and grabbed one end of his traveling bed, lifting it to her waist. Then, with a good-humoured smile, she said:

“Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one mind.”

She dragged his bed across the dojo floor, through the grass, and towards the house.

CHAPTER 53

MR. WICKHAM WAS SO PERFECTLY DISMAYED by this conversation that he never again provoked his dear sister Elizabeth by introducing the subject of it; and she was pleased to find that she had said enough to keep him quiet.

The day of his and Lydia’s departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet was forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no means entered into her scheme of their all going to Ireland, was likely to continue at least a twelvemonth.

“Oh! My dear Lydia,” she cried, “when shall we meet again?”

“Oh, Lord! I don’t know. Not these two or three years, perhaps.”

“Write to me very often, my dear.”

“As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for writing. My sisters may write to me. They will have nothing else to do.”

Mr. Wickham’s adieus were no more affectionate than his wife’s. He said little as his traveling bed was hoisted into the carriage, accompanied by spare linens and feeding jars.

“He is as fine a fellow,” said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of the house, “as ever I saw. I dare say I much prefer him in this relaxed state.”

The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for several days.

“I often think,” said she, “that there is nothing so bad as parting with one’s friends. One seems so forlorn without them.”

“This is the consequence of marrying a daughter,” said Elizabeth. “It must make you better satisfied that your other four are single.”

“It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married, but only because St. Lazarus happens to be so far off. If it had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon.”

But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into was shortly relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of hope, by an article of news which then began to be in circulation. The housekeeper at Netherfield had received orders to prepare for the arrival of her master, who was coming down in a day or two to inspect his new staff, and the reinforcements made to the kitchen. Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and smiled, and shook her head by turns.

“Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down. Not that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us, you know, and I am sure I never want to see him again. But, however, he is very welcome to come to Netherfield, if he likes it. Is it quite certain he is coming?”

“You may depend on it,” replied the other, “for Mrs. Nicholls was in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was going to the butcher’s, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”

Jane Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without changing colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said:

“I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don’t imagine it was from any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment, because I felt that I should be looked at. I do assure you that the news does not affect me either with pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes alone; because we shall see the less of him.”

Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen Mr. Bingley in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming there with his friend’s permission, or being bold enough to come without it.

“Yet it is hard,” she sometimes thought, “that this poor man cannot come to a house which he has legally hired, without raising all this speculation! I will leave him to himself.”

In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them. No longer did she suggest morning games of Kiss Me Deer or evening games of Crypt and Coffin. So occupied were her thoughts that Mary was able to pin her during afternoon grappling for the first time.

The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.

“As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “you will wait on him of course.”

“No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool’s errand again. Not by a fool such as yourself, anyhow.”

His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to Netherfield.

“’Tis an etiquette I despise,” said he. “If he wants our society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back again.”

“Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait on him. But, however, that shan’t prevent my asking him to dine here, I am determined.”

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could. She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent; hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressing-room window, enter the paddock and ride towards the house with his French musket.

Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went to the window—she looked, she saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down again by her sister, suddenly alarmed beyond the capacity for rational thought.

“There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” said Kitty; “who can it be?”

“Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not know.”

“La!” replied Kitty, “it looks just like that man that used to be with him before. Mr. What’s-his-name. That tall, proud man.”

“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy! And so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of Mr. Bingley’s will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”

Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be civil to him only as Mr. Bingley’s friend, without being heard by either of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to reveal her aunt’s letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him. To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and whose head she had sent crashing into a mantle; but to her own more extensive information, he was the person to whom the whole family were indebted, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at his coming—at his coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered behaviour in Derbyshire.

The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.

“Let me first see how he behaves,” said she.

She sat intently at work whittling blowgun darts, striving to be composed, and without daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen’s appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.

Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He looked serious, as usual; and, she thought, more as he had used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother’s presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but not an improbable, conjecture.

Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs. Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed, especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of her curtsey and address to his friend.

Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill applied.

Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner fared in the collapse of the east gate, a question which she could not answer, said scarcely anything. She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to him she had hardly courage to speak. “Me!” she thought. “Who fears no man! Who fears not death itself! And yet unable am I to summon but a single word.”

“It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away,” said Mrs. Bennet.

He readily agreed to it.

“I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People did say you meant to quit the place entirely; but, however, I hope it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood, since you went away. The number of unmentionables has been happily reduced to but a fraction of what it was when first you came. Miss Lucas is sent to her grave by the plague. And one of my own daughters is newly married. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in the
Times
and the
Courier
, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, ‘Lately, George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without there being a syllable said of her father, or her service to His Majesty, or anything. Did you see it?”

Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could not tell.