Chapter Ten

It has been frequently claimed that the affections and passions are not easily governed by reason.

Taking the advice of such wisdom, Elizabeth made no attempt.

Over the days after the Netherfield ball, she luxuriated in the sadness that came from that brief burst of hope followed by its awkward and disastrous denouement.

Elizabeth did not blame herself for precipitating the conversation. She fully believed that it was better to have such matters canvassed and talked around. It was like lancing an injury so that the poison might drain and allow the wound to heal. She hoped that she and Darcy might remain friends, though she believed it would be difficult for them to speak in quite the same terms of intimacy as they had become used to.

When Charlotte called the next day, she confirmed Mr. Sykes’s supposition that Mr. Darcy had given her information about Mr. Sykes’s reputation that helped stiffen her resolve to not in the end accept the offer made by him. However, Mr. Sykes own behaviour had been likely enough — he was no Mr. Collins, according to Charlotte. Mr. Collins could be married safely and managed well enough. Not Mr. Sykes.

As it happened Charlotte received no difficulties from her family about the matter. Both Sir William and Lady Lucas were in fact relieved that their daughter’s anxiety to be married had not caused her to marry a man whose poor character was evident to any who observed him.

It transpired that the question of whether Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy could still converse as friends would not be put to a test quickly.

Two days after the ball, Mr. Bingley called on them with his sisters and Mr. Hurst. He had just returned from business which had taken him briefly to London.

Upon seeing that Darcy was not in the party exiting the carriage, Elizabeth’s stomach spasmed with disappointment.

Even though Darcy had made clear to her that she could expect nothing from him but friendship, she dearly wanted to keep that friendship. She was a fool. She wished to keep the man who she admired more than all the rest of the world so close, even though it was impossible for their connection to ever become closer.

Papa would have laughed at her, and rightly so.

When Mr. Bingley entered the drawing room, he immediately looked towards Jane, who did not look up from her sewing. Elizabeth felt an anxiety at seeing them in the same room together.

Though Elizabeth thought she could perceive a little disappointment in Bingley’s manner at finding that Jane would not look at him, he happily greeted everyone, settled on a divan, and stretched his legs out. “I am glad to see you all. You all enjoyed the ball very much, I hope?”

This seemed to be aimed chiefly at Miss Bennet.

Lydia was the one to reply, “It was such a joke! You must hear of it! Lizzy refused Mr. Sykes, and then he stomped off to ask Charlotte Lucas to marry him, and even she refused him, as plain as she is. And he came back, slammed all the doors, and then left in a drunken huff. Fell off his horse twice on the way to the turnpike. Oh, I never laughed so hard.”

“What a to-do,” Bingley replied, though he looked at Elizabeth with actual concern. “I hope you did not suffer from this tumult. While I only met him on two or three occasions, that fellow did not strike me favourably.”

With a nod and a shrug Elizabeth indicated that she was well. The difficulty of managing Mr. Sykes was nothing next to the pain of knowing that Mr. Darcy did not wish to marry her.

Mr. Collins said, “Mr. Sykes was profane, and he spoke disparagingly of the clergy. It is an unfortunate situation that he is the possessor of such a large estate and that he cannot easily be ignored by the neighbourhood in Kent.”

“I’d ignore him,” Bingley replied, “if it were my place. But that is easy enough for me to say.”

“Is everything well with you all?” Elizabeth asked Bingley’s party, hoping to hear news of Mr. Darcy.

Miss Bingley snorted and nudged Mrs. Hurst.

“We are. Mr. Darcy left abruptly, while I was in London yesterday.” Bingley shrugged. “I do not know what made him behave so.”

“Rude of him, no matter what the situation was,” Miss Bingley said. “To leave with only fifteen minutes notice. But then this is what I have come to expect from him. I do not know that it does you well to have such a friend.”

Elizabeth sat straighter. Had Mr. Darcy left to avoid seeing her?

Yet another stab into the chest.

Bingley glared at his sister. “The deuce. How many times must I tell you that he must have sufficient motivation. There was no rudeness. You are just offended that he made it clear that he’d no interest in you.”

“He would not say why he left. A true gentleman would have made a proper apology.”

“A sudden family emergency. He’ll tell me the details someday or another.”

So that was his excuse. A mysterious family emergency. Elizabeth felt as though she was drooping into the couch, and if lucky, she would melt through the floorboards and have a chance to congeal back into human female in a day or two on top of the foundation stones.

“Oh, Lord! A family emergency,” Mama exclaimed. “I do hope that it is not anyone dear to him who has died.”

“The afternoon following the ball?” Elizabeth asked. She had a sunk feeling. “So fast.”

“There is a great scandal with Miss Darcy, count upon it,” Miss Bingley said in a delighted tone. “He received a letter from his sister, perused it for half a minute, and went pale as a sheet, and then he—”

“We will not spread gossip,” Mr. Bingley said sharply. “And certainly not when it is uncertain and unsubstantiated. Of course, he was reading a letter from a family member, since it was an urgent family matter.”

“Why else would he repeat ‘that blasted man’ three times under his breath, if she had not eloped with someone?”

Bingley glared at his sister in a way that Elizabeth frankly would never have expected from the always cheerful and personable gentleman.

“Hear, hear.” Mr. Hurst said for the group, “No speculating. Reputations can be wrecked easily enough.”

Miss Bingley made an unsatisfied grunt.

From the way that Mrs. Hurst and Mama looked at each other, Elizabeth rather suspected that this scandalous speculation would be shared, but only when the more scrupulous gentlemen were not present.

“He’s barely shown me courtesy over the past weeks.” Miss Bingley sourly ground her foot into the rug. “I’ll not pay him more consideration than he gives me. There are others he paid some attention to, even when they seemed quite unworthy to me .” Miss Bingley glanced at Elizabeth as she said that. “And now I can forget his pretentions to being the perfect parent. The man simply left the little beast and her nurse with us. Said that he would send word in a few days if she was to be sent north to Pemberley, or back to London.”

This made Elizabeth’s eyes widen. “He left Emily behind?” That dispelled any remaining suspicion Elizabeth had that his departure had been precipitated by her . He had been required to be somewhere as fast as he possibly could.

“I’d been driven to distraction by the way he gave the creature the run of everything when he was here. I shall not let her wander the drawing room with a servant, no matter how much she screams for Papa.”

“Caroline!” Bingley exclaimed. “Emily is the dear child of my dearest friend.”

Miss Bingley pasted a smile on her face. “Of course, she is a darling creature. Even if she has refused to sleep for the past two nights for more than a half hour at a time.”

“Perhaps if I visited… I believe she likes me,” Elizabeth said. “I might distract her, or help her sleep. Though I know what she needs is for Mr. Darcy to return.”

“Anything!” Miss Bingley exclaimed. “We’ll take you back with us to see if it might help. I believe her poor nurse is half as ragged as I am. When I have a child, I shall not permit them to have the slightest affection for their father until they are sufficiently aged to manage their own emotions.”

Now Mr. Collins stood up. “Mr. Bingley, you do not believe that Mr. Darcy shall return soon to Netherfield?”

Bingley shrugged. “I would guess not. But he is welcome if he wishes. Perhaps he shall retrieve Emily in person, but we have reached the end of the period that he had planned to visit in any case.”

“Then it is time for me to return to Lady Catherine, to give her what information I have assiduously gathered about the way her august nephew has behaved. Mrs. Collins, we shall return tomorrow.”

“We shall?” Jane now looked up from the sewing work that she’d kept herself assiduously focused on. “So fast?” She then looked at Mr. Bingley, who was looking at her.

After a moment they both looked away from each other, Elizabeth thought because they knew they had an audience.

“What purpose remains for us here?” Mr. Collins waved his hands grandly. “Mr. Darcy is no longer present. Cousin Elizabeth shall not marry Mr. Sykes, and I begin to believe that was for the best, and I have met all the neighbours, most of them twice. The management of the house has been set back into a good course. Nothing remains.”

“Oh,” Jane replied. “Oh. It is for the best, I think.” She then looked up again at Mr. Bingley who had a sad expression.

Bingley then forced his usual cheerful air and said, “I am glad to have met you. Very glad. And I shall miss you and think often of our conversations.”

Jane’s cheeks filled with colour.

Mr. Collins replied, “That is very kind. I had no notion that you were so affected by the times we’ve spoken. But I too have received pleasure from our acquaintance, and should you ever be in Kent, I would be happy to have you for dinner at my humble parsonage. Though it be so humble, I think we would not be shamed were you to sit down at our table.”

It was impossible for Elizabeth to not smile at that misaimed response from her cousin.

Mr. Bingley though shook Mr. Collins hand heartily, and he promised that should he visit that section of the country, that he would dine with them, and he received in turn a promise from the Collinses to dine at Netherfield the next time they were in Hertfordshire.

A few more greetings, Bingley shaking Jane’s hand, and then the Bingley party made to leave now that the time of their call was completed.

As they stood to go, Miss Bingley asked Elizabeth eagerly, “Shall you come now?”

“Come where?”

“To Netherfield, to help with Mr. Darcy’s wailing banshee.” Miss Bingley rolled her eyes. “You have forgotten your offer already.”

“Oh, yes. Of course I shall. Let me grab my bag.” Elizabeth then looked at Jane, not wishing to lose the whole of the last day she would have with her sister before she returned to Hunsford.

Jane took Elizabeth’s hand, gripped it, and said, “My dear Lizzy, do give my greetings to that sweet little child.”

“I doubt they shall mean a great deal to her,” Elizabeth replied laughingly. “But I shall.”

“We shall talk a great deal tonight.” Jane smiled.

At Netherfield Elizabeth found a tiny red-eyed girl, constantly rubbing her eyes and moaning, “Papa, Papa.” The girl of course screamed and struggled desperately to escape each time Nell picked her up to bounce her.

For her part, it was clear that Nell was also desperate for a chance for a nap. Nell’s own child, who was a year older than his milk sibling, explained to Elizabeth with a great deal of pointing that Em was very sad because Miter Dar had disappeared.

The nurse for her part said that she’d never seen a child so attached to their father, and that while she admired Mr. Darcy enormously, perhaps it was a little much.

It took Elizabeth twenty minutes to convince a sobbing Emily to look through the illustrations in Tommy Thumbs Pretty Song Book, but once the girl had settled into doing so, she delightedly turned the pages for fifteen minutes. When she began to turn fussy again, Elizabeth picked her up, and sang to her Baa, Baa Black Sheep, then Mary Mary, Quite Contrary, and finally Little Tommy Tucker .

By the time Elizabeth needed to decide on a fourth song, she suspected strongly from the way the girl lay on her shoulder that she was asleep, and as Emily made no complaint upon Elizabeth’s not continuing to sing, she determined to act as though such was true.

After a few minutes of continuing to hold her while walking about, Elizabeth settled herself in the rocking chair. That involved a little difficulty as she had to manage the dead weight of the baby without waking her. Then for the next two hours Elizabeth only sat there, enjoying the weight of the baby and the chance to let her mind wander over the joys and far more severe pains of the past days.

At last, Mr. Sykes was gone from the neighbourhood.

When Emily woke, she was wholly pathetic, and repeatedly called out “Pa, Pa.” She cried for a minute.

However, after being carried about by Elizabeth for five minutes, she happily dressed to adventure out in the garden and little wilderness around Netherfield. The whole had dried sufficiently that it required of Emily a diligent effort to find puddles and mud, though find them she did eventually.

After the outerwear had been taken off, and the need to clean it all tutted over by the maids, they returned to the library to look page through Tommy Thumbs again.

When the evening came, Elizabeth returned home, wishing to see Jane. From the alacrity with which Miss Bingley offered to have the carriage sent for her the next day, if she would have the kindness to visit the child again, it was clear that Miss Bingley would much have preferred to have Elizabeth settled in place as a second nurse for the little girl.

Elizabeth also came the next day, after tearfully seeing Jane off in the morning, and then the next.

During her visits, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley shared with Elizabeth all the details of their theory that Miss Darcy had eloped with a worthless fortune hunter. A great variety of evidence, supports, conjectures, logical deductions, and references to their memory of Miss Darcy’s character were suggested.

The whole convinced Elizabeth that they were likely right, though this possibility did not please her at all, as she felt keenly for Mr. Darcy in such an unhappy situation.

While Elizabeth did not think warmly of Bingley’s sisters, she pleased herself with the notion that Miss Bingley’s view of her was even worse than how she thought of Miss Bingley. That was a victory of a sort.

When well pleased, the two of them really were not so bad. As long as they were not required to spend more than an hour or a day in the company of the child, and so long as it was not their duty to calm her and serve in the role of nurse or mother, they were good enough at entertaining Emily and themselves in the nursery.

Likely Elizabeth could only tolerate Miss Bingley, as she was tolerably assured that while Mr. Darcy’s scruples had prevented him from making an offer to Elizabeth, she was still much preferred to Miss Bingley. A fact that Miss Bingley clearly had become, at last, aware of.

On the fifth day after Mr. Darcy departed, a letter from him came to Mr. Bingley. He had also sent another directly to his servants who still remained in the house.

The news that a letter had been sent was delivered to Elizabeth by Miss Bingley as soon as she’d entered the house. “Ha! Ha! Darcy at last sent a letter to Charles. I was right!”

“Oh, my,” Elizabeth said, feeling a hollow pit in her stomach. Poor Mr. Darcy! “His sister did marry a fortune hunter? The steward’s son as you thought?”

“I do not know if she did,” Miss Bingley said. “My brother is too stubborn to tell us what the letter says. Much more of a barred gate than his usual manner. The postmark is from Carlisle. That can only mean one thing.”

Elizabeth pressed her hand to her mouth. “Poor Mr. Darcy. I know it is not likely, but I do hope he was drawn so far north for a different reason.” In an attempt at humour she did not feel, Elizabeth lightly said, “I insist it could mean more than one thing.”

“Not likely at all.” Miss Bingley laughed. “Had he asked me I would have advised him to never permit his sister to be out of his sight for a whole day.” Then there was a pause. “And to think I once fancied that I might have become the second Mrs. Darcy. All of us women here are fortunate, are we not, that he had determined to never marry. I would be a laughingstock if I’d become engaged to a man whose sister promptly married a steward’s son.”

“I dare say,” Elizabeth replied with her own smile, “that you could imagine nothing worse.”

Miss Bingley tittered. She had an air of complete satisfaction with herself. “I always knew there was something amiss with Georgiana Darcy’s morals.”

“Poor Mr. Darcy.” A man determined to keep himself from having any one to care for him as he deserved to be cared for.

Of those two decisions, at least one had been wise.

“Hello, Miss Bennet.” Bingley and Hurst joined them, stepping into the hallway, and out of the billiard room. Mr. Hurst was still buttoning up his coat, as presumably they’d stripped to their shirtsleeves for easier play. “Have you heard any news from Mrs. Collins?”

Elizabeth shook her head. She of course had not yet — sending a letter a mere three days after having departed from an extended family visit would be… not precisely odd, but not wholly in the ordinary.

“I’ve told Miss Bennet our tale of the morning,” Miss Bingley eagerly said. “But can you really not tell us if Miss Georgiana is still Miss .”

“I’ll not gossip about my friend,” Bingley said severely. “And you ought not either.”

“Did he not tell you?” Miss Bingley suddenly had a fit of pique in her voice. “Horrid man. He cares nothing for us. For you. But he’s happy to dump his child on us, and take advantage of our hospitality, but in the end, he thinks himself better than he is. We are the intimates of Lord Blakesdale, Lady Carver, Sir Montague, and—”

“Caroline. I can assure you that Miss Darcy has done nothing untoward and that she is still Miss Darcy.”

“Of course, the monster is still Miss Darcy. She’s here screaming day and night — except when Miss Bennet takes her in hand.” Turning to Elizabeth, Miss Bingley said, “God meant for you to have been poor enough to become a child’s nurse. If you ever wish to become a governess, I promise to recommend you to all my acquaintance — but, Lord!”

That was… a speech rather offensive, and different than Elizabeth had ever received. On the other hand, perhaps one day she still might determine that her best course forward was to seek such employment. “I thank you kindly, and should I ever wish to enter such a dependency, you may depend upon it that I will ask you for your help in advertising my services.”

“Oh, of course. We are friends are we not?” A cheerfully false smirk. Miss Bingley then added, “It would be such a joke if you did become a governess. I thought you’d imagined that Mr. Darcy might take the notion into his head to marry you.”

“Did you now.”

“Nonsense, of course. We all know better than to think he’d marry any of us.” Miss Bingley paused, frowned, and then hurriedly added, “And since Miss Georgiana Darcy has eloped, no respectable woman would wish to have him for another twelvemonth.”

“Bingley, did you mean to say that they were caught before the border?” Elizabeth asked. Though she did not know Miss Georgiana Darcy, and she did not actually know if she would be better off married to her lover or separated by her brother. But she trusted Mr. Darcy to make sensible decisions that paid some attention to the girl’s happiness, in addition to his own reputation.

Elizabeth almost laughed at seeing Mr. Bingley’s betrayed expression now that she had also begged to hear a share of the gossip: Et tu Brute?

Elizabeth coughed. “I mean to say that I am relieved that Mr. Darcy has assured you that there is nothing to the rumours, and that his sister is there with him, nearly to Scotland, attending him as he manages their wholly respectable family emergency.”

“Rumours? There are no rumours.” Bingley groaned. “Women. Your whole sex is too clever by half. By two thirds. I shall say nothing. But Miss Georgiana Darcy, is still Miss Darcy—” To his sister he said, “ You shall spread no stories if you wish to keep the liberty of my house.”

If the mask of Miss Bingley’s face was taken then, it would have made an excellent basis for a sculpture upon the subject: Indecision.

To be the one who might spread the gossip now that it was as good as confirmed — a postmark from a city so far north was proof enough in the absence of a compelling counter explanation — that would have been a delight. But at the same time, Miss Bingley must not actually wish to damage her brother’s relationship with Mr. Darcy. Further, while Mr. Bingley was the sort of man whose threats rarely deserved serious consideration, his current manner must give Miss Bingley reason to suspect that he would do something unpleasant if he found her to have disobeyed him in this.

At last Miss Bingley nodded submissively.

“Will Darcy return south to retrieve Emily?” Elizabeth asked.

“No, no,” Bingley replied, “She goes off tomorrow to Pemberley.”

It took Elizabeth three heartbeats. “Off tomorrow.” She almost made herself laugh. “I can hardly imagine that he would wish to return all the way to London from so far north this far from the season.”

Miss Bingley said something. Elizabeth thought it was rather cruel from the tone, but she did not make out the words due to the sudden sense of pain in her chest.

A beautiful arrangement of flowers in that vase on that Chinese style table. Miss Bingley, despite her defects, had good taste and managed appearances excellently. Thin sunny day. Cold and windy. The windows rattled when a particularly hard gust hit.

She was not to see Mr. Darcy again.