Page 16 of Friendship and Forgiveness (Mr. Underwood’s Elizabeth & Darcy Stories #7)

It was only early in March that Elizabeth heard anything from Caroline, shortly after Caroline’s twenty-first birthday.

The response came in the form of Caroline coming directly from London to call. This was nearly her first action after achieving her majority, gaining control of her own fortune, parting with mutual satisfaction from Aunt Matilda, and heading straight to the capital to meet with her banker and establish matters for the regular payment of her quarterly income.

When her carriage arrived Caroline sent her card ahead, rather than coming to knock at the door — and this when it used to be a standing matter that she could enter their house without any announcement at all.

Mrs. Hill delivered Caroline’s card and the small, folded note to Mama, even though it was addressed to Elizabeth. There was a dismissing sniff from Mrs. Hill, who had never known Caroline except as the occasional supercilious visitor after the family had reoccupied Longbourn. “That sister of Mr. Bingley, the one who went bad, is waiting in her carriage for your response, Ma’am. Mr. Bennet. Might I send her off?”

“Lord! Poor Caroline? Charlie said nothing about her coming — dear,” Mama said to Papa, “whatever shall we do — we must invite her in. It is quite cold today. It ought to be warmer in March. However I do not know if it would be such a good thing for the younger girls to still associate with her. But what does the note say — ah, Lizzy, it is for you.”

So saying Mama handed it over without hesitation.

The creamy woven paper was familiar — it had a watermark of the Bingley family crest, a smooth feel beneath the fingers. It was the sort of paper that shouted about the woman who used it: “I am possessed of an ample fortune”.

On the front, in Caroline’s fine, drilled, practiced, and feminine looping hand was the words: For Elizabeth Bennet

She opened it, aware of the little crowd, that is to say Papa, Mama, and Kitty all watching her. At least Mary was in the breakfast room, making her extracts.

Dear Elizabeth,

I only was given your note three days ago, when I reached my majority. Please, I miss you too — if you will still speak with me and see me, I am still your devoted friend as well.

C Bingley

Elizabeth rushed out.

It was nearly the coldest March that Elizabeth could remember. Snow was still on the ground from an unexpected blizzard a few days ago, and Elizabeth felt her throat swell up with emotion when she saw Caroline stepping out of the carriage to greet her.

For an instant the two girls stared at each other.

And then Elizabeth rushed forward to embrace her, and Caroline embraced Elizabeth.

“Come in, come in.”

“Are you certain? Mr. and Mrs. Bennet do not mind? I can—”

Elizabeth grabbed her friend’s arm and dragged her in. “Come in.”

They all greeted her, even Mary, who rather than cutting Caroline, as Elizabeth had been afraid she would, hugged Caroline, and promised to copy out for her some of the best extracts she knew about Godly behavior. Mary added, seemingly aware that her sisters were looking at her with a little surprise, that forgiveness was after all the chief Christian virtue — and besides Jesus happily spent his time with the disreputable women and tax collectors.

Mr. Bennet laughed and said, “Tax collectors do an important job. Without them we’d have been conquered by Napoleon. I’ll hear nothing against the excise men here .”

He then studied Caroline down the nose of his glasses. “Dear girl. Are you properly repentant?”

“I did wrong. I don’t know if that means enough. But I know I did very wrong, and—” Caroline stood very stiffly.

“That is satisfactory to me .” He patted her on the shoulder. “Poor girl. You’ve learned a hard lesson.”

Mrs. Bennet said several times how happy she was to see little Lina again, and also that she could not like Mr. Darcy at all, not after he cut relations with Charlie over a matter that was not his fault.

The more Mama said that, the more miserable Caroline began to appear, so after a while Elizabeth begged, “Enough of that. Caro, you must be exhausted after such a trip. Are you staying in Meryton, or… with Charlie?”

Caroline shook her head. “I came to you first, and I do not believe he wishes to have anything to do with me.”

“He will if I have anything to say about it,” Elizabeth growled.

“No, no, no. I am very aware of how wrongly I acted.”

“I am too, but—”

“I hurt my brother, his honor, his standing, everything. I don’t deserve to be acknowledged by him. Not by anyone, I don’t deserve your kindness, and—” And Caroline started crying into her hands.

Elizabeth put her arms around her friend, and suddenly the drawing room emptied out as Mama shuffled everyone else out of the room to give them a bit of space and peace.

“I’ll send Mrs. Hill to bring tea and biscuits,” she said as she closed the door on them.

Caroline slowly stopped crying, and she was wiping her face with her handkerchief when the tray of tea was brought in.

Elizabeth poured and served the tea for both of them, while Caroline started speaking, “Aunt Matilda would not give me any of my correspondence, nor allow me to send any letters, saying that she would be party to no clandestine schemes during my remaining with her.”

Elizabeth laughed. “What did she anticipate you would do?”

“Whatever it was, I had not the heart. Aliette was dismissed immediately, though I gave her a small wallet full of guineas — I do not even know what the number was, and promised to reemploy her upon reaching my majority. Aunt Matilda intended that she be sent off with no references, and to be left without resources for her part as an accomplice in my crimes… I deserved all the punishment. Every time I become annoyed — I shared the downstairs maid for my toilette, and I believe she’d been instructed to pull at my hair—”

“Surely Aunt Matilda would not be so petty.”

Caroline wrapped her hands around the pretty filigree blue teacup, and just looked at Elizabeth.

“You were always her favorite.”

“I think that drove her anger. I disappointed her. If I was her favorite, then her judgement was shown to have severe deficiencies, and so severity in response was called for.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “You seem to have become as great a judge of character as I am.”

With a small choked laugh, Caroline flushed. “Not a worthy trade for… for what I lost from my soul by acting out such a crime. But still a praise I like — Charles sent me no letter.”

Elizabeth grimaced. “Even after his marriage with Jane, he is in no mood to forgive you.”

“My actions were far worse in regard to him than with regards to you.”

“And that you are siblings does not soften it?”

“We are nearly siblings as well.”

“I never imagined Charlie to be the unforgiving one.”

“Perhaps he will forgive me partially when I speak with him.”

“You do not sound concerned about the possibility that he will not.”

“I have said this so many times, but it remains true: That is nothing more than what I deserve. I have had months to do nothing but contemplate my own behavior. I acted… wrongly, and wrongly beyond the ordinary way.”

Elizabeth could not disagree, but she still took Caroline’s hand and squeezed it. No need to repeat the bored statements of those older and wiser upon growth, learning from mistakes, and “go forth and sin no more”.

They were already in Caroline’s mind, she knew.

“Do you intend to settle in London?”

“No.” Caroline shook her head decidedly. “I have no desire to be alone in the great city… if… if you would be willing to call on me from time to time, I think I shall take a house in Meryton. Hire a companion, and live in retirement for at least a year.”

A smile slowly spread over Elizabeth’s face. “I would like it very much to have you settled so near — you ought to try Pulvis Lodge, I believe it is still available to let.”

“That house on the far side of Meryton? — hmmmm. It is too large…”

“I am quite sure that on the income from twenty thousand you can easily afford it.”

“I do not mean to spend my whole income on myself — it is not…” Caroline made an odd shrugging expression. “I worried too much about income and how much I was worth, and how much everyone I knew was worth, and… I mean to dedicate at least half my income to some sort of good work. I shall look for some smaller house in the town — enough room for a companion and Aliette, and a maid of all work.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I hope you do not intend to convince me to give up all of my book money for stuffing the poor box and—”

With a soft shake of her head, Caroline said, “This is a personal dispensation, a personal need.”

Suddenly Elizabeth asked what had perhaps been on the top of her head the entire time Caroline had been in the room, even though it was not something that could have any practical consequence, “Are you still in love with Mr. Darcy?”

“What — no. I do not know if I ever was in love with him so much as I was in love with the idea of him. But I was… I adored him. But it was not… oh, how can I say this!”

Elizabeth waited.

“I paid little attention to him , to the flesh and blood, spirit and soul fact of him — the opposite of love as spoken of in the scriptures — and then when I saw… how little attention he paid to me . Lizzy, I think he liked you very much, and I apologize that I kept any such possibility from… flowering.”

“He asked me to marry him.” There was a bit of resentment in Elizabeth’s voice, despite her best efforts. “That night at the ball, a little before you tried to trap him.”

“No! — and you refused him?”

“How could I do anything else? — you are my dearest friend and —” Elizabeth cut herself off. “I would not do so again. Not in such a case… You had no proper claim on him. I see today that respecting that improper claim was not… wise of me. But — oh, I should have told you. I knew all along that your suit was hopeless.”

“You refused him for my sake? That is… Lizzy, you should not have. I am so… sorry to see another harm I caused.”

“I was not in love with him. I had refused to allow myself to think upon him in such a way. I have thought about it… we would have suited very well. That is my guess. But I do not know. I did not allow myself to fall in love with him, but I could have easily come to admire him. But there was no heartbreak, no love, no infatuation.”

“ He always looked at you. I seethed with jealousy, but I loved you so much that I could not admit that to myself, not until I saw how he looked at you during that dance before the supper. I was not a good friend to you.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I think that none of us, properly speaking, should look upon our behavior with complaisance.”

“ You ought. There is nothing in your behavior to give you such disquiet as in mine.”

“I will,” Elizabeth took Caroline’s hand, “freely grant you the right to think with abhorrence, distaste, and far more dislike upon your own behavior than upon mine. It would be ridiculous otherwise. But after… the theatrical extreme of such a night, it would also be ridiculous if I could not find ample grist for the mill of thought in the event.”

“I will then grant,” Caroline said, “that though I would have behaved abominably towards you if you had, and that it is in no way something that you should think about with regret, that were you perfect you might have made an attempt to force me to admit to myself the impossibility of my hopes. However, as the Holy Book says: None are perfect but God. Further, if you should ever have the opportunity to see Mr. Darcy again, you ought to assiduously pursue the chance to discover what your true feelings might be. Perhaps the worst outcome of my behavior is that I prevented you from forming a happy and advantageous marriage.”

“No, no, no! — I will take your advice. But you have no blame with regards to that . He would not have had enough interest in me to consider himself as having fallen in love, if I had not been most pointedly disinterested in him. What a strange and perverse man! But I do admire him.”

“And so I approached him in a manner which was perfectly aimed to repulse him.” Caroline laughed at Elizabeth’s description of Mr. Darcy. “Yet he is so handsome and tall!”

The two grinned at each other. They fell quiet and leaned back into the sofa. Caroline took one of the lemon tarts, and Elizabeth ate a biscuit.

That gloomy gray sky outside seemed to have a very happy countenance to Elizabeth. She could not dislike it any more.

Yes: Dark, windy, wet and near freezing. Yes: The gray hid the sun, soaked the birds, and there were no fluffy white shapes to identify as France, a lizard, and a carriage careening down a cliff with people falling out of it.

But it was a sunny day in Elizabeth’s heart.

She had missed Caroline.

“You intend to settle in Meryton,” Elizabeth exclaimed suddenly. “I am so happy!”

“London is no longer to my taste — and I am not to its taste.”

“You mean the scandal?”

“In chief. Besides you, only Lady Emily wrote to me from amongst our acquaintances.”

Elizabeth winced. “She has written to me with a long description of all the stories, and how she has heard about you from fifteen separate persons. And also how I fit into these stories. The general belief is that I did hope to steal Mr. Darcy from you — gossip. It does not matter.”

“It mattered to me once. It would have mattered a great deal to me. It is right that I am known as an untrustworthy person who will act wrongly — I gave certain proofs to that. I wish to be more like you, or at least to consider gossip as little as you do.”

“Ah, now I understand why you intend to settle in Meryton! I must enlighten you.” Elizabeth grinned. “It is my unique twists of mind, and not my settlement in the neighborhood which has given me such a sensible attitude towards the attitudes of others.”

Caroline batted at her. “You goose. I want to be near you. Charles as well, if he’ll speak to me. But you are the one true friend I feel as though I have.”

That made Elizabeth flush. “Even though I declared you to be lying.”

“A service, and one for which I shall be ever grateful — imagine if Mr. Darcy had been obligated to marry me — he would have despised me. I would have faced that coldness every morning over bread and butter. Eventually what liking I had for him would have been extinguished under that hatred. He is a determined man. I hardly can credit that I was such a dunce as to even wish to succeed in such a scheme.”

“Such is what I wrote, in the first version of my letter to you.”

“Oh?”

“I sat down to write, and then I found that every angry word that had been in my mind for the previous weeks flowed out, like steam exploding from a pot that had been too tightly shut. That letter was not fit to be read, and so it cannot be. I burned it immediately.”

“I am certain I deserved every word — but I am glad I received the kinder, if simpler note you sent.”

The two girls looked at each other and embraced.

“Oh, I am so happy! And we will have such fun over the summer — Lydia convinced Papa to remove her from school three or four months earlier than he planned, so she shall be here in another two weeks — Oh but did you know that Charlotte Lucas married my charming clerical cousin?”

“No, not Mr. Collins? — poor girl. I never liked her, but she deserves a better man than him.”

“I said as much to her, and she… in essence she told me to mind my own business, and to not judge her for making a choice I did not need to. I must confess that her choices are far more limited than mine, and her situation in life is much worse, with neither much fortune, nor any exceptional beauty.”

Caroline sighed and rubbed at her nose. “I was a snob, and I should have been kinder, and accepted that she had some wisdom. She tried to warn me. Perhaps not in the kindest way, but if I had listened to her, I would be happier today.”

“It is in general impossible to accept advice in such a case as that — which is why I made no great effort to give you any advice. Not until near the end.”

“And I was still in no fit state to take it then.” Caroline grimaced, then shrugged. “About Miss Lucas, I do wish we could have found a less…”

“Mr. Collins-esque man for Charlotte?”

“Precisely.” Caroline giggled.

“I must warn you, I have solemnly promised to visit Charlotte for at least a month over Easter — I’ll keep it to just a month, or five weeks at the most, now that you are to be here in Hertfordshire.”

“We will then keep the men of the post busy once more while you are absent.” Caroline sighed. “I am so happy you do not despise me. I do not deserve it, but I am very happy.”