Posted on 2009-06-14

May 17, 1812

After a dismal Easter at Rosings, Darcy trusted London would help him forget Elizabeth Bennet. He should have known it a vain effort. If London had not made him forget her between November and April, what would another week, another month, do? London brought no delight. Concerts struck the wrong note. Theatre was insipid; his club, a bore, and not one single woman of his acquaintance seemed accomplished. Even Bingley was dour. Within a few weeks, Darcy found himself heading north, to home, to Pemberley.

The portrait gallery of Pemberley, which ran the length of the east wing of that mansion, captured the attention of many visitors to Derbyshire. One May afternoon, however, it was not a traveler but the travel-weary Master of Pemberley who stood in that gallery. His eyes were fixed on the portrait of a woman dressed in the fashion of twenty years before. He remembered the dress, white with a full ruff and a patterned lilac ribbon at the waist. She had floated like a cloud in it.

Her eyes were so kind he could no longer bear to look into them. Would she be disappointed in him? Pity him? Closing his eyes, he saw see her again in his mind's eye. Sitting in her dressing room, she would open her arms whenever he needed her--when his tutor reprimanded him, when a horse had thrown him, when his belly ached. One day, flushed with pride after he jumped his first fence, he bounded into her room to seek her praise, and knocked aside the young maid, Reynolds.

"Fitzwilliam, " his mother gently scolded, "a gentleman apologizes for such an act."

"But she's only a maid, Mother," he had protested.

"Listen carefully, my son, a gentleman is a gentleman to all."

He'd gone in search of Reynolds, and his apology earned him a plate of cookies and his mother's warm embrace. It must have been May because he remembered lilacs on the dressing table when she folded him in her arms. Every spring, he left Kent before the lilacs bloomed. For years, he had avoided Pemberley in May. Longing for some sort of peace, he had fled London and come home to his mother's scent, the heady smell of lilacs. It had followed him across Derbyshire. It filled the house. And there on a table beneath his mother's portrait sat a vase of the purple flowers left by the efficient, but sentimental, Mrs. Reynolds. He could sense the woman behind him.

"Sir, we did not expect . . . "

"Just a bath, and whatever the staff is having for dinner will suffice."

She curtsied, but hesitated. "Sir, if I may presume--"

"Speak freely."

"Your mother, sir, would be pleased to see you here today. Lady Anne would be so proud of you."

"I wonder," he answered softly, but Mrs. Reynolds did not hear. She had already moved along the corridor to hasten his bath.

Only then did it occur to him that the day was his mother's birthday. Not once in the fifteen years since her death had he been at Pemberley on May 17th. Your little boy has come home, Mother, tail between his legs, for you to chasten and console, and he has failed to be a gentleman to all. He felt lighter for that admission. He had been trying to forget when he should have remembered the lessons his mother had taught him. Nor could he forget Elizabeth Bennet any more than he could forget his own mother. He could not undo the past, but from this day forward he would be the gentleman his mother wished him to be, a man who would not insult the woman he loved, nor slight a woman at a dance, a man who would treat all with respect.

That night, he opened wide the windows of the Master Suite in Pemberley and let in the scent of lilacs. In his dreams, he saw Elizabeth Bennet's portrait hanging besides his mother's in the gallery, and for the first time in months, his slumbers were sweet.

May 17, 1819

"Softly," their father admonished the two small children beside him. "We do not want to wake your sister, but your Mama is anxious to see you." The two, a boy of five and a little girl of two or three, waited impatiently at the door for their father to usher them in to their Mother's presence. She seemed so still and far away in the great bed that the children were suddenly shy. Then her smile propelled them forward, and they hurried to her side. When she had kissed them both, she pulled back a corner of the blanket, and showed them the precious newcomer.

"Come see your sister Anne," she whispered. "She came a bit early, so she is quite small, and you must help protect her."

The little girl placed a kiss upon her sister's brow, and whispered, " I will protect her, Mama, I promise."

"Thank you, Jane, I knew you would." "Bennet?" the mother turned to her son.

"I already have one sister. Why couldn't I have a brother?" he pouted.

"Bennet!" the father hissed, but the mother answered in more measured tones.

"My son, sometimes we cannot have what we want when we first want it. Sometimes we must wait, and other times, we come to love what we did not want at first. Until you love Anne for her own sake, will you love and protect her for mine?"

He nodded his acquiescence, and placed the small floral tribute he carried on the table by his mother's bed. Several kisses later, the children departed, shepherded by their nurse who had come to fetch them.

The father remained behind. "You decided on the name," was all he could say huskily.

"Well, she was born on your Mother's birthday--however early in the morning she decided to make her appearance."

"--And early in other ways too. Elizabeth. I was so worried for you both. So afraid--" It was the one confession his wife would never let him complete.

"Will, you know I am a sturdy country girl, so cease worrying. Didn't my own mother bear five living children with only her nerves as a consequence?"

"No nerves, Madam, no nerves," he joked in mocking allusion to her father.

We will never know what might have happened next between the two parents, for Mrs. Reynolds entered with the baby nurse to carry young Anne away to the nursery, and the Housekeeper stayed behind to admonish the mistress to get more sleep.

The Mater of Pemberley sighed. He knew it was the gentlemanly thing to do to allow his wife to sleep and to recuperate from the ordeal of the previous night, but he hated to leave her. Luckily, the former Elizabeth Bennet knew her husband well. She pointed to the small vase of lilacs her son had brought her.

"Fitzwilliam, if you hurry, this year, I think you might place lilacs beside your Mother's portrait before Mrs. Reynolds places her flowers. I think the poor woman is a bit distracted this morning."

Fitzwilliam Darcy, Master of Pemberley, father of three, husband of Elizabeth, son of Anne, stood before his Mother's portrait in the long gallery that ran the length of the east wing. He placed the vase of lilacs before the portrait of Lady Anne Darcy, and he glanced lovingly at his wife's portrait beside it.

"Are you proud of me now?" he asked both portraits, and the scent of lilacs in the air seemed to answer, "Yes."