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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Elizabeth

E aster morning dawned over a bleak and sober household.

Mr Collins’s state could only be described as severe.

At the breakfast table, Charlotte sat unsmiling, and Maria subdued, as the silence fell heavily over us.

Tension—boiled, fried, and tough as shoe leather—was the course upon which we were to break our fast.

Mary and I served ourselves quietly, and aside from, “Pass the cream, please,” nothing was said.

For such an outspoken girl, I suddenly could not think of anything to say.

But after a silence of five minutes that was so uncomfortable I could hardly swallow my food, I knew exactly what I should say—what I needed to say.

I cleared my throat. “Charlotte, I have put you and Mr Collins in a terribly inconvenient position. I believe it would be best if Mary and I return to London tomorrow. I shall walk to the village first thing and secure a post chaise or perhaps tickets on the mail.”

“Oh Lizzy!” she began, and she might have suggested we only remain inconspicuous until the worst of Lady Catherine’s ire had blown past us, but Mr Collins had altogether different plans. His tone, when he spoke, was wrung dry of all sympathy.

“You may go today. The coaching inn does not close on the Sabbath.”

Taken aback, I asked, “They do not even close for Easter service, sir?”

“Surely Monday morning is soon enough, Mr Collins,” Charlotte said quietly, and then she looked at me with all the discomfort, apology, and condemnation she must be feeling towards me, her guest who had ruined our visit, cut up her husband’s peace, and now forced her to ask us to go.

“I am very sorry,” I said with genuine remorse.

What hubris to go at Lady Catherine! I should have seen how my perversity would fall upon my friend.

“I should never have let my tongue get the better of me yesterday. Now, you will be more comfortable if Mary and I sit in the back of the church during service. We shall go ahead of you this morning so you need not be seen walking with us, and this afternoon we shall pack. A tray in our rooms will do us very well, Charlotte. I am sure, sir,” I said directly to my bitterly aggrieved cousin, “that once we are gone, Lady Catherine will call for you to visit her as she always has.”

Once we had gone upstairs to ready ourselves to walk to church, I also apologised to Mary.

“My lord, I have caused you such a miserable time here. I am truly sorry.”

She stood behind me, fussing with my lace fichu. “Never mind, Lizzy. Do you not always say, ‘Think only of the past as it gives you pleasure’?”

“You will excuse me from ever thinking upon this morning again, Mary. Poor Charlotte! At least Mr Collins is not a man to beat his wife for the sins of her company. We shall, all of us, have a very long day, I am afraid.”

“Will you really secure us tickets on the mail?”

We were not of the first stare to be sure, but we had never been reduced to any mode of transportation so common. My bravado was all we had to see us through and so I spoke bravely.

“If I must put us on the mail coach, of course I shall. Surely, you see we cannot stay long enough to send a note to our uncle to have us collected.”

My sister’s discomfort did not abate, and I shifted into a tone of reassurance meant to convince myself as much as Mary.

“We shall be safe enough, you know. We have each other, and if we do not have to hire our own post coach, which I doubt we can on short notice, we shall be free to go to the shops in London and buy trinkets for our sisters.”

The church service was no less miserable than our breakfast had been.

Mr Collins, possessed of the emotional depth of a clam, did not know how to ingratiate himself with a patroness who glared daggers at him.

In consequence, he spoke his homily in accents so stringent and with a feeling so acrid as to make the glories of the Resurrection sound rather tawdry.

Mary, who loved church as a rule, sat beside me in a state of revulsion at his execution of the season’s most celebrated story and stared down at her hands.

In contrast, I looked around me with dispassionate curiosity.

The parishioners of Hunsford looked to be in varying degrees of somnolence, dreaming of their inevitable release from worship, and of their dinner to come, no doubt.

Charlotte took up her position in the front on the right.

Maria sat close as though for shelter, and they both looked to be on their most pious behaviour to mollify Mr Collins.

Lady Catherine, her daughter, Anne, and her dutiful companion Mrs Jenkinson sat in the principal family box on the left.

The great lady’s expression was a mask of contained rage, and I could not help but wonder how and why my little challenge of yesterday could so affect her.

My eyes went at last to Mr Darcy, Miss Darcy, her companion Mrs Annesley, and Colonel Fitzwilliam. One would expect they would sit in the family pew directly behind the de Bourghs, but they were in fact one row behind even that. What, I wondered, had happened in that quarter?

While I pondered this curiosity, I noticed that Miss Darcy held her head up rather prettily. In fact, their party displayed such casual dignity throughout Mr Collins’s dreadful preaching that some of my natural dislike of Mr Darcy’s arrogance fell away.

He had a wee right, at least, to be above his company, did he not?

He was a cut above those of us who sat behind him in rows of ordinary imperfection.

Even his flaws were spectacular. Who else in this church would dare to be so bluntly uncivil in a lady’s parlour?

Who would unapologetically refuse to reply to a stupid remark and look incredulous at being applied to for such a response?

There sat a superior man. And beside him sat his superior family.

I straightened my spine to emulate their general stateliness and whispered to Mary, “Look how Miss Darcy bears up.”

My sister then also sat up, and after a moment, she rearranged her face from a scowl of disgust to one of placid forbearance. Our new dignity served us well when the interminable ordeal shifted into the ritual of departing.

Lady Catherine, whose precedence demanded we stay standing in our pews until her party walked outside, gave me a look of such unadulterated malice as she passed by that I might have staggered without the example set for me by Mr Darcy’s party.

They passed directly after Lady Catherine.

Both gentlemen tipped their hats, and Miss Darcy looked imploringly our way as though to say she did not hate me as did her aunt.

My sister and I waited until Mr Collins was seeing out the last of his parishioners before we slipped out the side door to walk through the village towards my cousin’s house.

As we went down the square upon which the church is located, I suddenly became aware of a carriage coming up behind us and pulling to a stop.

Fearing Lady Catherine would open her window to spit at me, I was most pleasantly surprised when the coach door opened, and Mr Darcy stepped out.

“Good day, Miss Bennet, Miss Mary. My sister asked if she might walk with you.”

“Of course, sir,” I replied with a helpless smile. “We would be very glad of her company.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam stepped out then and handed down Miss Darcy and Mrs Annesley, a plump and pleasant faced woman who carried herself with genteel confidence.

“We shall send the carriage on ahead to Rosings and take a leisurely stroll if we might impose,” he said.

I replied with a light laugh. “I wonder if you should be seen with me. My cousin Mr Collins is wiser and hangs back until we are out of sight.”

The colonel let out a chuckle. “Oh, but we too are in the dogbox, Miss Bennet.”

“What? All of you? For my impertinence you are made to pay?” I asked in surprise, looking up to Mr Darcy for confirmation.

He nodded gravely, but there shone a light in his eye I could not name. “We leave at first light,” he said.

“Do you? But so do—please tell me, sir, that my poor manners of yesterday have not caused you to go.”

“Your manners of yesterday were rather what mine should have been all along where my aunt is concerned,” he said as Miss Darcy came forward.

His words perplexed me. What was he saying? But by then we had begun to walk, and I could not ruminate on his meaning.

Because the path narrowed once it left the square and pointed towards the entrance to Rosings Park, we went two by two.

Colonel Fitzwilliam stepped ahead with Mary, Mr Darcy went with Mrs Annesley, and Miss Darcy and I took up the rear.

When she began to walk slower, I fell back naturally to match her stride, and soon enough we were a few paces behind the others.

“Pray do not let our aunt’s behaviour reflect badly on us in your estimation,” she said in a small voice wrung with anxiety

I laughed aloud. “Oh my dear Miss Darcy, were you to visit me at Longbourn, I would have to ask you to walk out with me, and I would turn to you in earnest application and say, “Pray, Miss Darcy, do not let my family’s behaviour reflect badly on me and my sisters Jane and Mary.” She looked at me wonderingly and I added, “Might we call it evens and say no more about it? For who has relations that one and all do a person credit? No one! There is always a witch, an ogre, a drunk, or a fool hung somewhere on the family tree.”

“We have the witch,” she said with a shy smile.

“And I have a harvest of fools of which to boast. My cousin Mr Collins just proved my point by preaching such a sermon today.”

“It was dreadful. Forgive me, I should not have?—”

“But it was dreadful. I thought Mary would walk out of the church in a huff! But look at her talking to your cousin, the colonel. He brings out a conversant side to her that I have not seen. He is an admirable plum on your family tree.”