Beginning, Previous Section, Section III
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Part 29
The silence with which Mr. and Mrs. Darcy was greeted at Longbourn was equally deafening. Mr. Bennet was the first to break it. "Lizzy?" he said incredulously. "Would you care to explain yourself?"
"Mrs. Darcy?" cried Mrs. Bennet, who, truth be told, was not as slow a thinker as some people assumed she was, for she immediately composed letters, conversations and the like in her mind to communicate to her acquaintances. Dear sister! The most wonderful news -- I have the most wonderful news to impart -- My Lizzy -- Mrs. Darcy -- Lizzy shall be living at Pemberley -- My daughter has married -- My son Mr. Darcy says -- Ten thousand a year -- What gowns she will have -- Lady Lucas, I have been invited at Pemberley and I regret to decline your invitation -- Such jewels as my Lizzy has -- Mr. Darcy's friend the Baronet, such a charming young man, has shown such an interest in Jane -- Lydia -- Kitty -- Mary -- No, Jane -- Or not. What of Mr. Bingley? -- Now that Lizzy is married to Mr. Darcy, I have great hopes of a marriage between his friend Mr. Bingley and Jane -- Come girls, we are going to Pemberley -- Mr. Bennet, I think new curtains are called for now that Lizzy is Mrs. Darcy --
"If you will allow me, sir," Darcy began.
"Later," Mr. Bennet waved. "I should like to hear the story from my daughter first. Come into the library, Lizzy."
Darcy was left alone with the wide-eyed sisters and Mrs. Bennet who suddenly felt herself to be extremely favourably inclined towards Mr. Darcy. All her previous ill feelings had melted away and she decided he was the most perfect son-in-law one could ever wish for if one could not have Bingley. He bore the exposure admirably well.
After an interview of about fifteen minutes Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth returned and Mr. Bennet even shook Darcy's hand. "I do not entirely approve and I would impress it on my other daughters' minds that they had better not conduct their marriage in a secret manner, for I might be tempted to cut them out of my will."
"You eloped?" Lydia cried. "Goodness Lizzy, I had never thought you would ever actually do something exciting!"
"Lydia!" he father admonished. "If I hear the word elope or derivations thereof spoken in this house, I shall cut the person who speaks them out of my will too."
"Derivations, Lydia, are words that --" Mary began helpfully.
"Yes, yes, yes," Lydia waved impatiently. "There is our own talking dictionary again."
"Lizzy, I wish you had invited us," Mrs. Bennet said regretfully when she realised that there would not be a great engagement ball nor a great wedding ball. "I do not suppose there will be any celebration?"
The remainder of the day was spent in telling everybody what had happened, and several times over, as especially Mrs. Bennet could not get enough of it. She had to know all the details of the elopement, so she could twist it into a slightly more respectable account for her friends. Elopement was not always looked on very favourably, and perhaps she could say that Mr. Darcy had been so overcome with love and affection that he had married Lizzy on a special license. It was almost the same, if one looked at it closely. Gretna Green was quite special too.
Mr. and Mrs. Darcy was consequently extremely fatigued when they undertook the journey to London later that day, but they were also glad to leave. They now had to return to Kent to pick up the rest of their belongings and to confront Lady Catherine, if necessary.
"Or," said Darcy pensively. "We could also send for our belongings and inform Lady Catherine in a note."
Part 30
Lady Catherine received the note that informed her that her nephew had secretly married Miss Bennet, written in his own hand, no less, and she was even more vexed than she had been when her brother had told her in no uncertain terms that his sons would never marry Anne. However, there was one big difference and that was that her brother was her brother and she was a little afraid of him, but Darcy was merely her nephew and she was not afraid of him at all.
"And what does he mean?" she cried. "He is not ill? He is not in this house? He left Rosings? Without saying anything?" Leaving Rosings was nearly unpardonable as it was, but leaving Rosings without expressing the deepest regrets about it, was completely and utterly unforgivable.
Darcy's valet was sent out of the house, as if he had been the driving force behind the soiling of her Ladyship's family connections. Anne kept to her rooms and Maria Lucas, who was just visiting, was too frightened to show herself, because Lady Catherine repeatedly mentioned her name during her ravings. Maria had not known anything about the scheme and at Anne's instigation, she hid in a broom cupboard with one of the footmen, who had also been shouted at for having carried messages between Darcy's valet and Lady Catherine herself, and who appreciated Miss De Bourgh's concern for his well-being.
Fortunately for Maria, it was the footman she particularly liked.
Unfortunately for Anne, she had no idea that she had just given orders to create another scandal under the sacred roof of Rosings.
"Where is he now? Is he at her house?" The letter had indeed been written from Longbourn. Immediately Lady Catherine ordered her carriage to be made ready to drive to Longbourn to give the Bennets, and certainly Darcy too, a piece of her mind. She would no longer be his aunt. She would no longer know him or Georgiana. That would teach him.
But more so it would teach the Bennets for thinking they could set their caps at Lady Catherine's nephew, someone who was above their station in all of the ways conceivable. Lady Catherine did not doubt that there was a Bennet conspiracy and that all Bennets had collaborated to ensnare Darcy and that they were now celebrating their victory.
Lady Catherine imagined whole village fêtes and rejoicing and dancing farmhands, just because the Bennets had succeeded in capturing a member of the ruling classes. The peasantry should be kept ignorant and in their place and they should be firmly ruled by a strong hand, such as her own. They should not be allowed to aspire to such privileges as belonged to Lady Catherine's class. And Darcy was a privilege. If they dared to be celebrating anything, she would tell them. Even if they were not celebrating, she would tell them.
Darcy was lost -- lost forever. What had gone through his mind when he had done this horrible deed? He must have been mentally incapacitated. Lady Catherine could not accept any other explanation for it.
The carriage passed Witches' Hill.
Miss Bennet had bewitched him. The peasant classes still believed in witchcraft and they still practised it on Witches' Hill, why else would Witches' Hill be called thus? And then, when the Bennets' potion lost its power and waned, Darcy would slowly regain his senses and start realising just what he had done.
Perhaps Mrs. Collins had also employed a potion. She was also from Hertfordshire. Hertfordshire was probably rife with witches and potions. But then Lady Catherine became confused by her own thoughts. Mr. Collins was of course not to be placed on the same level as Darcy. He would be several levels down from Darcy's level. Or rather, the level that Darcy used to occupy before he chose to debase himself. Or rather, before he was bewitched into debasing himself.
By the Bennets.
Lady Catherine mentally underlined these words, as she was wont to do on paper in her letters. Her underlined wisdom and pieces of advice made her letters as easy to read as Bingley's, and in fact if one took all the underlined words and inserted them wherever Bingley had forgotten or blotted or merely written a word in a toddler's scribble, one obtained an extremely amusing result, but Darcy would never admit to such practises.
The Bennets. Lady Catherine added another mental line to make it doubly underlined now, to stress its extreme importance.
The Bennets probably lived in a shabby dwelling, even though Miss Bennet's uncle was in trade. Lady Catherine knew that people in trade were not poor, but being rich was completely different from being well-bred. Even if the dwelling -- she could not bring herself to call Longbourn an estate since Rosings Park was an estate too and it would be blasphemy to place Longbourn on the same level as Rosings -- was not shabby, it would be tasteless. It would undoubtedly be tasteless. After all, Miss Bennet's uncle was in trade.
Someone had to stand up for the rights of the aristocracy, Lady Catherine thought, and she felt a great sense of duty. She would tell them and she would set an example that would deter all mercenary trade and peasant families from even so much as aspiring to set their caps at someone like Darcy.
Or Anne.
After all, she had Anne to consider. Anne should not be allowed to fall prey to an ill-bred son of a tradesman.
Anne had always been destined to marry a future Earl. But that scheme had fallen through and so had the scheme which included the Earl's younger son and the scheme which included the Earl's nephew. Logical reasoning would tell Lady Catherine to start looking at the remoter branches of the Earl's family tree, because it was obviously not Anne's destiny to marry anyone intimately connected to an Earl. However, Lady Catherine did not believe in the virtues of reasoning Anne away from anything less than an Earl and she stubbornly explored other countly family trees in her mind. But she was in a carriage and she did not know many by heart, so she was forced to give up the hunt.
Longbourn.
The mere thought of the name was enough to make Lady Catherine boil and she started the whole circular thought process over again. The trip was long and whenever she had run out of things to think about, she would say "Longbourn" and she was occupied for another thirty miles.