Fearful Symmetry - Chapter Nineteen

Dear readers (and Roxey and Liz Spears), thank you for your patience! I’ve been teaching a class and chasing a toddler. Sad excuses, I know. I am struggling a bit with the chapter that follows this one. Strange, isn’t it? I tore it apart, put it together a new way, and didn’t like how its seams matched up with the chapters that flow towards the end of the story. It just feels like an out-of-place *jaunt*. But then, what else is life, I ask myself, but a series of odd episodes as we creep towards our own happy ending? Send me an email, those of you who might wish to enquire and discuss.

Thank you for continuing to follow this tale. Elizabeth and Georgiana have waited long enough for this day… so, on to the story!

-Abbie C.



Chapter Nineteen

The hour for callers arrived, and Elizabeth listened with no little anticipation for the sounds of reception in the front hall. In these moments of quiet, she thanked her good fortune that only an hour earlier, her mother had seen fit to take Jane shopping for wedding clothes with her sisters in tow.

In due time, she heard her guests announced. She stood and turned to receive them and was glad to find her aunt rising with equal alacrity at her side.

And, there, at last, she saw Miss Darcy.

It was an odd thing, after so much correspondence, to behold her long-imagined friend standing very real and solid within the aperture of her aunt’s parlour door. Miss Darcy was, and was not, as Elizabeth had pictured her: that she was somewhat tall and that her eyes would likely be dark, Elizabeth had well-conjectured; but the golden tones of her light brown hair, the delicacy of her brows, the straight, yet unremarkable line of her nose, and the round, doe-like eyes of the girl came unexpected, for they were fashioned so unlike her brother’s. But as the young lady held her brother’s arm and stood with some uncertainty while she glanced between the two women before her for the face she could identify as Elizabeth’s, the object of her search saw in her seeker’s posture an endearingly familiar stiffness which bespoke apparent aloofness — an aloofness softened by the near-inscrutable tightness betokening the anxiety of shyness about the girl’s eyes. She was, indeed, Mr. Darcy’s sister, in more ways than one.

Elizabeth could be nothing but warm to her.

“Miss Darcy, what a true pleasure!” she declared, coming forward as Mr. Darcy offered the introduction. She gave her newest friend her hand, which was accepted and squeezed with evident delight. The two ladies curtsied as one to each other whilst thus connected.

“Miss Elizabeth—I mean, Miss Bennet. I am so pleased, so delighted to meet you at last,” she managed to say around a smile and a slight blush at her own eagerness. Her entire being seemed to beam and tremble as her stiffness flowed away from her in a rush of relief and happiness.

“It seems as though I have known you a long time,” Elizabeth observed, “but yet, how good it is to see your face at last!”

“I feel the same,” returned Miss Darcy.

“Am I, then, as you imagined me?” asked Elizabeth playfully. “Your brother, I am sure, did his best to warn you that I am nothing remarkable to look at, but I should hope, at least, that he has prepared you for my tendency towards impertinence, which is my most distinguishing feature.”

Silent and smiling in his observance until now, Mr. Darcy shook his head, while Miss Darcy looked up at him in alarmed confusion as she haltingly exclaimed, “Oh, no! My brother certainly never said — and he would never say anything of the sort — and it is not so, in any case! I declare, you are very pretty!”

Elizabeth, still holding Miss Darcy’s hand, squeezed it again in comfort and apology before she released it. She had to stifle an urge to chuckle. “I was only teasing you, Miss Darcy. But I shan’t do so again until you have gotten used to my ways, if it makes you uneasy. I am sure your brother would never say anything ungentlemanly of me to you.”

“Indeed not,” seconded Mr. Darcy innocently.

Elizabeth favoured him with a raised brow, but let further opportunity to vex him pass. Her heart was too much in bloom to offer thorns, so glad was it to see him.

With a breath, she turned back to her new friend. “Well, Miss Darcy, now I shall endeavour to prove to you that I can be perfectly well-bred, since I have already shown myself at my most incorrigible. Allow me, please, to introduce you to my aunt.”

In a few moments this was done, and Miss Darcy was invited by Mrs. Gardiner to sit between herself and Elizabeth on the sofa, while Mr. Darcy settled himself in Mr. Gardiner’s reading chair to observe them with pleasure.

Miss Darcy — due to Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth’s considerable gifts of animation, and herself being in possession of a share of knowledge of the family through Elizabeth’s and her brother’s letters — entered into conversation more readily than she had hoped. In surprisingly easy spirits, she found herself a quarter-hour later relating to Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth a little of her recollections of her earliest lessons at the piano (begun when she was the age of Mrs. Gardiner’s eldest daughter, Meredith, who had quietly joined them) when Mrs. Bennet returned with Jane, Kitty, and Lydia in a flurry of bright muslin and woolen wraps.

“Oh, my dear sister, I do not know how you manage these London streets! They are something frightful!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed, before coming to a halt in the middle of the room at the sight of Mr. Darcy in the chair and a young lady on the sofa. “Why, forgive me, I did not know you had company,” she said a little stiffly.

“Ah, my dear sister and nieces,” said Mrs. Gardiner smoothly. “You find us with a delightful pair of callers. May I introduce Miss Darcy to you? Her brother, Mr. Darcy, I believe you know.”

Upon the requisite introductions, Miss Darcy was greeted and curtsied to, and then the Bennet ladies sought places to roost in order to better admire the expensive cut and fabric of Miss Darcy’s mint-colored gown.

“I adore the trimming on your sleeves,” declared Lydia, studying her new acquaintance with an unmistakable mixture of envy and awe.

“We have just come from the modiste’s, Miss Darcy,” explained Jane, blushing a little for her sister. “We were looking at trimming for my wedding gown. With my sister and Mr. Darcy as your informants, I am sure you must have heard: I am to marry your brother’s good friend, Mr. Bingley.”

“Yes, my brother did tell me of your happy news,” said Miss Darcy softly. “I heartily wish you joy. I am sure you will be very happy; Mr. Bingley is a very good man and has been such a steady friend to my brother.”

Jane replied with all that was in pleasant agreement, and Mrs. Bennet, too excited by the subject of the wedding, found she must put in, “He is an amiable man indeed, and so good to my dear Jane! So patient, too, with all the arrangements we must make. For it is hard to plan a wedding, being so far from home.”

“I might imagine so,” replied Miss Darcy, not knowing what else to say. After a moment, she exerted herself and added, “I was very sorry to hear of the fire at your home. Are you all in good health?”

“Are you not the sweetest child?” exclaimed Mrs. Bennet brightly, making Miss Darcy blush. “Indeed, you are very kind to ask. We are all well, although there have been discomforts and shifting about here and there, as a consequence of being taken in by friends and family alike. I find it all so unsettling, but then Mr. Bingley and my dear brother Gardiner and his wife have been so good to us.”

“It has been a joy having the house so full of company,” answered Mrs. Gardiner, rising for the pot to refresh Miss Darcy’s tea. “There is no shortage of companionship to be found under the circumstances, and it is so agreeable to have family with us during the holidays.” Turning again to Miss Darcy, she poured a little more and asked, “Do you and your brother often entertain family and friends during the winter Season?”

Miss Darcy blushed. “I am not a great hostess, but I do have an aunt that is very much inclined to host parties with family and friends, which we are often invited to, and we of course have our relations to dinner. My brother sees many friends as well. I am not yet out, and so am not much in company.”

“Not yet out!” exclaimed Lydia, offended at the injustice. “Why, you must be at least a year older than me. I cannot imagine the fun you are missing, and what fine beaux you could have.”

“Miss Darcy must be presented at Court before she can come out, Lydia,” said Elizabeth with some frustration, as she watched Miss Darcy blushingly retreat into silence. “That is a process that takes preparation and time; there are many girls in London who are above eighteen before they make their curtsey.”

“Oh,” Lydia replied dully. “It is not so simple as it is in the country, then.”

“No,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “it is not. There is a great deal more ceremony here than what is required in a small country society like Meryton.”

Lydia seemed puzzled, and Miss Darcy, seeing the confusion and disappointment in that girl’s face, offered out of kindness, “How I dearly do wish it could be a quieter process. I am quite terrified by the whole ordeal of it here in London. You must tell me what it is like to come out in the country, Miss Lydia.”

Such an entreaty could not but charm Lydia immensely. “Oh! It is not a thing to be thought of,” she answered with her natural assurance. “One only has to dress for, and attend, a local assembly, and then prepare a dance card. The ladies who are out will introduce you around the hall, and if you greet the men you meet with a smile they cannot fail to read, you need only wait for your card to fill!”

“Lydia!” whispered Elizabeth, her cheeks suffusing with warmth.

“I thank you, Miss Lydia,” said Miss Darcy in a subdued tone, her own cheeks coloring a little in surprise at such candor, although she was smiling a little at it, too.

Mr. Darcy cleared his throat. “Mrs. Gardiner, Mrs. Bennet, I am glad we could visit you today, but I can see that some in your family may desire to rest after their outing this morning,” he said evenly. “It might be best if we were to take our leave of you until a more convenient time.”

Miss Darcy submitted to his cue and rose at once. “It was a pleasure meeting all of you,” she said. She turned to smile at Elizabeth as she dropped into a curtsey, which was returned by each of the ladies in the room. Her brother bowed in his turn, then sought his sister’s gaze.

Catching her brother’s eye, Miss Darcy turned one last time to Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner and demurely offered, “You must know we would be glad to receive you at any time at Wyeswell House. You are very welcome.”

“And you are very kind. I know we would be glad to call on you, Miss Darcy,” replied Elizabeth with warmth. She and her aunt both curtsied again in acknowledgement of the honour.

Miss Darcy received their promise with a smile and gave her farewells, and then took her brother’s arm.

So ended this first visit, and Elizabeth was left to repine the embarrassment her mother and youngest sister might have caused Miss Darcy, and to wonder about the look Mr. Darcy had given to Miss Darcy which seemed to prompt their further invitation to call at the Darcys’ home.

Elizabeth would be left to wonder, for when she and Mrs. Gardiner returned the call on Wednesday at the Darcys’ grand, yet tasteful, townhome, Mr. Darcy seemed most eager to further the budding friendship between his sister and herself.

He at once introduced the topic of theatre, which could not but lead to the comparatives which such a subject invites: plays seen and read by some and not others in the company, comedies versus tragedies and their effects, actors of differing merits and acclaim, and the storylines which appealed to each.

“I confess myself surprised to hear you are a lover of some of the tragedies, Miss Bennet,” said Miss Darcy after Elizabeth had named a few among her favorites. “You seem like someone who would love comedies instead, as you have said you dearly ‘love to laugh.’”

Elizabeth was thoughtful for a moment. “There is something rather more real in the tragedies, I think,” she replied. “Although I do own that comedies often make me laugh, I find the lovers’ quarrels and the absurd plot lines in so many of them to be jarringly contrived in comparison to real life.”

“How so?” came a challenge from Mr. Darcy.

“Need I mention an example like A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” she answered wryly, as she turned her face towards his. “The constant interference of fairies renders the story completely ridiculous — including that memorable moment when one character grows a pair of donkey ears — all of which seems aimed to court laughter rather than to portray an accurate tale of courtship and its follies.”

Mr. Darcy folded his arms. “Is not revelry in the ridiculous the essential point of comedy?”

Elizabeth lifted her chin, but smiled at his casual confidence. “Comeddia, as I understand it, was first presented in poetic form and was meant to depict the real foibles of humanity as they are, Mr. Darcy. Farce twists it to the point of the absurd spectacle, which is what I see in many plays, especially the newer ones which I have come to read.”

To Miss Darcy’s great alarm, her brother huffed and seemed to meet her friend’s sportive challenge with one of his own.

“Comeddia, being of the Italian,” confirmed Mr. Darcy with a nod, “was much bandied about as a word by Dante in his time; yet, it has a still older definition: komoidia, from the ancient Greeks. It refers to an ‘amusing spectacle.’ And so there you have it from its inception — farce, as you call it, and comedy are one and the same. I cannot see the discrepancy.”

Miss Darcy gave a timid sigh of relief as her brother seemed to settle back in his seat in satisfaction. She was about to change the topic to something else, when Elizabeth exerted herself for one last sally aimed towards her brother.

“I may not be able to call upon ancient Greek etymology in my defense,” Elizabeth rebutted with a tart look, “but I believe that Aristotle could. I have read my father’s translations of his work. Could we not trust his reasoning and assert that comedy as an art ran parallel to that of tragedy, and had its purpose in purifying us of certain faults of our nature through ridicule, rather than the pity and terror utilized in tragedy? Would it not then follow that those faults which are ridiculed should at least bear some semblance to our everyday reality?”

The dimple in his cheek twitched as Mr. Darcy responded, “I daresay I could never know. I have never met Aristotle, but I would fear to debate him on such a particular, given his formative views on drama as an art.”

Elizabeth sat a little taller on the plush sofa as she sensed her success. “Sic probo, Mr. Darcy,” she concluded.

Miss Darcy looked a little pale, and Mrs. Gardiner began to say something, but Mr. Darcy laughed. “Now you throw about Latin to crow your victory!” he objected in the midst of his mirth. “That cannot be admissible, if my Greek must be banned. I urge it of your justice, especially since you have bested me again.”

Elizabeth, having now seen the looks being given her by her female companions, at once retired with a soft demur: “I know nothing of the sort, sir.”

“Well, Miss Darcy,” said Mrs. Gardiner in a decided change of topic, “you mentioned yesterday that you have a beautiful pianoforte that was your mother’s which you practice upon here at Wyeswell House. Might we importune you, perhaps, to see it?”

“What a lovely idea,” said Miss Darcy with alacrity. “Let us go there now. Brother, I hope you might excuse us. We ladies may tarry there some time, as there is music I should like to show to Miss Bennet; I know you are very busy today.”

Mr. Darcy opened his mouth to object, but realized that he could not with all grace protest his sister’s surprising dismissal while she acted as hostess. Masking his disappointment, he rose with the ladies, bowed to them, and wished them good day. But as he turned from the room, he determined that he would inquire later of his sister as to why she had sought to separate him from their company.

In the coming days, his own concerns of estate often detained him, greatly due to his long autumn sojourn in Hertfordshire; he was therefore bound to bear the burden of frustration when he could not take Georgiana to Gracechurch Street for a call, as his own appointments of business seemed to swarm upon his calendar at every acceptable hour. But his sister gave him to know that, while she felt perfectly comfortable calling herself with Mrs. Annesley, Miss Bennet had also offered to call again at Wyeswell House later in the week. This intelligence yielded a prospect which he looked forward to as much as his sister.

Having Elizabeth in his home — perching on his sofa, sipping her tea from his mother’s favorite china — had given him a strange, filling pleasure. And by contrast, her departure from his house after that first visit had unsettled him more than he should like; her continued absence from his view created a discomfiting sensation of hollowness that permeated his being, a loss alarmingly impossible to ignore.

He could not fail to recognize within these pangs the symptoms of a growing appetite for contact with her. When they had been at Netherfield together after the disaster, he had an opportunity nearly every day to not only draw near to her, to speak to her exclusively and to linger closely in her company, but also to find ready excuses to make a physical connection: to offer her his arm as they walked; to brush his shoulder against hers when they sat at table; and twice, to take her up in his arms to assist her. And there was that one, unforgettable occasion, when he had been able to caress her bare arm in order to awaken her in the library. From these interactions, his senses had gained pleasing knowledge of the softness of her skin, the intoxicating scent of her hair, the arresting suppleness of her figure, and the delicate, fine-boned lattice of her frame coupled with the surprising strength she had gained from her active country lifestyle. He was hungry for the chance to touch her again, or at the very least, for an opportunity to indulge in the thrill of her nearness.

So then, on Friday, when he arrived home from his solicitor’s office to discover that Elizabeth had visited that very morning to call on his sister while he was out, it was too much to conceal his disappointment. He had missed a chance meeting.

“Brother? You are not unhappy that I spent the morning with Miss Elizabeth, are you?” asked his sister, wondering how she had misstepped.

“No, no, dearest. Not at all,” he rejoined. “I am glad you are friends. I only wish I could have seen the two of you together. I am sure you had an enjoyable time.”

“We certainly did! I introduced her to Mrs. Annesley, and we were delighted to find that Miss Elizabeth has a beautiful singing voice, and so we made up some rather clever arrangements for duets for her to practice with me. She insisted I do most of the playing, for she swears her skill at the pianoforte is not equal to mine, although I see nothing to the assertion: our styles differ, is all. But I was pleased not to have to sing in company, for her voice is by far the superior to mine in sweetness and expression. I daresay we had some rather beautiful moments when we rehearsed, which pleased us both.”

Darcy could scarcely conceal his surprise at his sister’s breathless enthusiasm. “You shall have to contrive a way to perform together some time for me, Georgiana, for I am so sorry to have missed it,” he said with real regret.

“But of course! I am sure Miss Elizabeth will not mind indulging you. She did ask after your health, and was so kind as to wish you a good day, if I would convey it, which I have,” his sister babbled happily.

“That was thoughtful of her,” intoned he, swallowing and casting about for a change of subject.

His sister’s questing gaze seemed to speak sympathy, but when she spoke next, he was surprised by what she said.

“I thought such attention to you very kind indeed, since I know she seemed upset during your last conversation with her.”

He felt an immediate stab of alarm somewhere near his middle. “Upset?”

“Yes! Why, she even went so far as to argue with you when you spoke against her. I could see she was upset; that is why I took her to the music room with Mrs. Gardiner.”

“I did not — I had not thought that anything I said was upsetting,” he said, as much to her as to his baffled self. Reviewing their last debate, he recalled Elizabeth’s sly smiles and her cheerful victory, and said with greater assurance, “Dearest, you mistook her response. I think you mistake her nature. Elizabeth loves a good debate as much as I do.”

His casual use of her name, which he unthinkingly overlooked, gave Georgiana pause as she remembered that her brother had the advantage of a much longer acquaintance with her friend. “She does?” she asked.

“She does indeed. Hers is a very lively nature, and such debates please her spirits and exercise her mind, which, as you have seen, is oftentimes more nimble than mine.”

“So, you were not – you were not arguing?” she asked in confusion.

“No, we were merely taking up a debate with an understanding that we both have an affinity for the amusement. She has sometimes endeavoured to strike up such debates with me before, merely for our mutual entertainment.”

“So — she was never angry with you? And you were never angry with her?”

“Not at all! I confess to you, Georgiana, that all I ever felt towards her was admiration, even as she all but threw Aristotle in my face.”

His sister’s thoughtful gaze returned, and with it came a slow smile of understanding. “You do admire her, do you not?” she asked, rather boldly.

He could feel himself colouring. To discuss such a thing with his little sister! And yet, as he looked at her, he realized that he could do far worse than to take Georgiana as an ally.

“Yes. Well — no, that is not the word,” he replied, rising from his chair and pacing to the window. For a moment, he was silent. When he turned back to his sister, he saw her brow crinkled in confusion. She looked up at him in silent appeal, desiring him to speak his truth plainly.

He could not hold back his answer: “I do not admire her. I utterly adore her.”