Chapter Eighteen

“Do you by any chance still have the Shakespeare?”

“I am afraid not.” Mr. Morris shook his head apologetically at Elizabeth’s question. “It was from a famous edition, and I sold it at a good profit to a collector in London who believed he could resell it more easily.”

“Oh, well,” Elizabeth said with some sadness. “Papa was always proud that he had it. I remember paging through it once I’d become old enough that Papa did not worry about me hurting the book.”

Hearing that, Darcy turned from leafing through a book while keeping half an eye on Emily to say, “Give us the man’s address. I’ll have my man of business see if he can chase the tome down, and if whoever presently owns it is willing to sell.”

“I think,” Mr. Morris gestured at a pile of about thirty books neatly stacked on the counter, “that this is all that is left in my stock of your father’s library.”

Emily started screeching and shouting, “Run! Run!” as she ran around the tables in the circulating library. She waved a piece of bread like a war banner.

Putting down his book Darcy chased after her, going intentionally just slow enough that his daughter could stay ahead of him and shouting, “Me eat you, me eat you!”

When Emily turned to face Darcy with a sparkling and heart stopping smile, he picked her up and gnawed at her belly as she giggled.

“Could you,” Mr. Morris said to Elizabeth in a low voice, “I cannot bring myself to ask him, but the bread! Must she eat it here?”

Elizabeth laughed. “I forgot — Emily, give me your bread. You shall have it again once we are done.”

The bread was stuck in Elizabeth’s hand. Emily said, “Lizzy. Bread.”

“Thank you, sweetpie — can I have a piece of paper to wrap it in?”

Mr. Morris instantly handed over one of the brown pieces that he wrapped sold books in, and Elizabeth wrapped the bread in it, and deposited it into her reticule.

After watching this, Emily of course reached towards the bag, and said, “Baby.”

“No, no. You can wrap bread in paper afterwards.”

This brought on an immediate flood of tears. “Baby!”

Darcy grabbed his girl and flipped her upside down, which did not improve her mood, and then offered, “Let’s look at the pictures of the tigers again!”

This did improve Emily’s mood, and the two of them sat down around a table to reread, for likely the thousandth time, One hundred and one animals .

Mr. Morris let out an audible sigh of relief at the bread being placed safely away.

Elizabeth laughed. “He is not so difficult.”

“Ah, easy for you to say. You are to marry him tomorrow — and my sincere congratulations once more, Miss Bennet. We all are overjoyed to hear that you will be settled so well.”

“Thank you.”

“It is difficult with a gentleman who spends so freely to say anything against him.”

Elizabeth laughed. “And let me see if I can remember what else from my father’s library I was particularly fond of that is not here. Ah yes, his collection of Jonathan Swift’s works. Do you know who you sold it to?”

“That was Mr. Darlington. But I fear it was a present for his son.”

“Ah. Fine lad, I shall not quibble then with his chance to enjoy the great humourist’s work — Papa’s Tristram Shandy ?”

“Sold to a gentleman in London. A bookshop. But it is a high traffic item, I do not think the chances are good that you will be able to find the same copy.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I will not give Mr. Darcy’s man of business work to do for no purpose, in the case of books that neither my Papa nor I held in any great affection, but where there is sentiment, I have been assured the man will do his best.”

“The gentleman could not have offered a finer present to you for your wedding, nor one that shows he knows you better,” Mr. Morris said.

That of course brought a broad grin to Elizabeth. “I must say, I have been extremely fortunate.” She lowered her voice, and said with delight, “He is not only rich and handsome, but also generous and considerate.”

“The book with the Pompeii plates was purchased by Sir William, given your close friendship with the family, I imagine—”

“Charlotte already presented it as a gift. She had her father purchase it chiefly for my sake in the first place.”

“Let me think… it is not so easy to remember every purchase over the course of nearly a year.”

“The fate of the Greek books? — oh yes, Darcy himself bought half of them I believe.”

“I’m afraid the rest went to a scholar in London. I shall give you his address.”

After some further twenty minutes of discussion, Elizabeth and Darcy left Mr. Morris’s establishment. Elizabeth glowed with happiness. As soon as they were outside, she took Darcy’s face and kissed him soundly on the mouth, right on the open street.

The delight in his eyes was quite evident. “A good notion I had then?”

“The very best.”

They smiled at each other, and then Elizabeth sighed.

Darcy nodded seriously and gave her a soft embrace. “It is never an easy matter.”

“I want to show you what is left of him.” Elizabeth clenched her hands to fight off tears, suddenly recalling so much of how she had loved her father. He would have been delighted to know that she was recreating his library.

“Have you gone often to your father’s grave?” Darcy’s voice was soft and kind.

“In one sense I have. He is buried in the churchyard where we attended. I passed by Papa’s remains at least weekly the whole time I was still at Longbourn. Just…”

“You honoured him in your heart.”

Elizabeth nodded. “When I think about the grave, I see him cold and dead. The way he looked before they closed the lid.”

Darcy squeezed her hand, and she took comfort from that.

“Yes,” Elizabeth smiled back at him. “I should introduce you to him.”

“That is what a dutiful daughter would do,” Darcy replied with complete seriousness. “I must ask for his blessing.”

“Oh, I miss him! — you would have liked him very much. And he would have liked you.”

“You have said as much,” Darcy replied.

It was not a long distance from the middle of Meryton to the chapel near Longbourn where Papa was buried. But it took them a rather long time to travel the whole distance as Emily was engaged in a game of hopping. It was a fine day, warm enough to be one of the first days of summer, with a pleasant breeze, and the sun shining down.

A good sort of day.

Elizabeth cradled Darcy’s arm in her own as they strolled along, only occasionally shouting for Emily to get out of the road so that a farmer’s cart might pass.

A familiar countryside, and she would leave it behind, not forever, since they were sure to visit, likely once or twice a year when they came to London for the season. But she would never live here again. She had not for months in any case.

There was a deep poignant feeling in her chest, and around her eyes. “Look,” Elizabeth exclaimed, “That is the tree Lydia broke her arm falling out of when she was nine.”

Darcy grimaced. “Emily is too adventurous, she’ll break an arm when she is eight.”

Elizabeth laughed.

The old well. The water was particularly cool and sweet in the midst of summer. That old wilderness that she’d run around and around a thousand times as a child, making up stories to herself, playing games with the village children, swinging a stick about as though it were a sword. Mr. Potter’s cottage, which had been newly built only five years past.

A collection of swallows nests that had been reoccupied each summer for as long as Elizabeth could remember.

They came to the churchyard from behind. At the gate they paused for a long time as Emily assessed the integrity of the old fence. It was only when she proved the weather beaten wood wanting and made clear that she would very much like to wholly disassemble the structure so that it might be replaced, that Darcy picked her up, soothed away her tears at the interruption of her destructive task, and carried Emily into the little graveyard.

There were others Elizabeth had loved who lay here with Papa.

Her grandmother. The housekeeper before Mrs. Hill. A variety of cottagers and tenants. A dear friend from an estate half Longbourn’s size who had died from an ear infection when Elizabeth was thirteen.

Flowers in bloom all around, and Elizabeth brushed her hands over them, while Emily ran about and sniffed each set.

Elizabeth found the gravestone. It was still fresh, built of solid granite, and with etchings that had not been worn down by only one changing of the seasons. The little area was kept clean and well maintained. Mama must have arranged that. Though her parents’ marriage had been in many ways flawed, and wholly different from what Elizabeth hoped for herself with Mr. Darcy, it still had been of long duration, and there had been affection between the parties.

Angels flew over the top of Papa’s name, and each of the bottom corners of the gravestone was an hourglass. In the middle the family crest.

The name: Thomas Bennet.

The two dates.

In remembrance of Thomas Bennet

A man of letters and refined taste

His love for his dear wife

And for his five cherished daughters

Shall never be forgotten

“Papa.” Elizabeth sat by the grave, caring nothing for her dress. Mr. Darcy sat next to her.

Seeing that this was the thing to do, Emily of course sat as well, saying, “Baby, sit.”

“Papa,” Elizabeth pointed at Darcy, “this is the man I shall marry, his name is Mr. Darcy.”

Emily pointed at herself, perhaps understanding something of what Elizabeth was doing, but more likely not.

“And this is his daughter, Emily,” Elizabeth added. “He is as clever as you, and he loves to read just as much. He is kind and generous and able to think and change his mind. I love him so dearly. Oh, Papa, I wish you were here, and that you could meet him.”

Darcy squeezed Elizabeth’s shoulder as she wiped the tears away.

“I miss you, Papa. I miss you so much.”

Emily pointed at the grave, and said, “Papa?”

“Yes, dear,” Elizabeth said, “this is where my Papa is now.”

“Liz-e Papa?”

“Yes.”

Emily made a small formal bow, as she’d been taught to when greeting people the other day, “Hello.”

Elizabeth giggled wetly at the girl’s antics, and Darcy put his arm around Elizabeth and kissed her hair.

“Mr. Bennet,” he said, “I know you are looking down on us from up above in heaven, and I wish you to know that I shall treasure and love your daughter and hold her in the deepest respect and affection. Please give us your blessing on this marriage.”

There of course was no reply, but the day was warm and pleasant, the breeze blew sweetly over their cheeks, and a small bird hopped from gravestone to gravestone — until of course Emily saw the bird, and chased it away laughing and shouting, “Shoo, shoo!”

Elizabeth turned to Darcy and kissed him, and they both stood. They called Emily over, since it was not quite the thing for a child to joyously run about the churchyard, and then strolled onto the lane and over to Longbourn. All of her family were gathered there — except Jane, since Bennet was still much too young to travel.