A/N: Our finish.


Balter

Chapter Twenty-Nine: The World Attuned


Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced.

— Hugo von Hofmannsthal


For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics


Lydia Wickham arrived at Longbourn in due course the next day, the Gardiners with her.

She was dressed in black and was both in mourning and much aware of herself in mourning. Elizabeth found Lydia's dual attitude of deep sadness and high pleasure in being the center of attention and solicitude difficult to bear, especially as it was now accompanied by the postures and accents of a jaded, and indeed, a world-weary woman. Elizabeth made an effort to respond to Lydia's bereavement and to ignore the affectations.

Mrs. Bennet was, for some hours after Lydia's arrival, inconsolable, and so, of course, Lydia was too, and they wept bitterly together in the drawing-room, daubing at their eyes and keeping watch for any visitors who might arrive. And some did come, since word of Lydia's arrival was carried by servants, and spread through the neighborhood. Some came to gawk at the same-day wife-widow, some to pay their respects and speak out their sympathy. Lydia received these attentions with languishing, black-crepe ceremoniousness, seconded by Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet hid in the library.

The Gardiners were visibly relieved to have Lydia home and no longer their responsibility. While Lydia and Mrs. Bennet received Sir William and Lady Lucas, and Mr. Gardiner in the library with Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Gardiner asked Elizabeth to walk in the garden with her.


"So, Elizabeth, I find you very much in bloom despite all that has happened. Why is that?" Her soft, merry tone of voice was suspicious, not just curious.

Elizabeth looked around them and then whispered to her aunt. "I have accepted a proposal from Mr. Darcy, Aunt." Elizabeth could hear the thrill of pleasure in her own words.

A slow smile overtook Mrs. Gardiner's still-attractive face. "Really? You are to be Mrs. Darcy?"

Elizabeth nodded happily. "Yes, it is all settled, but we will wait to announce it out of respect to Lydia."

"So the man who you accused of holding your hands a year ago holds them now — literally, and not in a figure?"

"Yes," Elizabeth sighed, surprising herself and Mrs. Gardiner with the open delight of her sigh.

"He is a most remarkable man, Lizzy. If he had only himself to offer, it would be much more than enough, but he has much more. To think — my niece Mistress of Pemberley! The scene of my girlhood daydreams now a part of my family!"

They walked together quietly for a moment, happy. "Do you have any advice for me, Aunt? About marriage. I admire what you and Mr. Gardiner have together."

Mrs. Gardiner stopped and smiled. "Thank you, Lizzy, that pleases me greatly. But I have little advice except this: pay attention. Never let your married life sink into self-concern or be consumed by concern for the children, should you be blessed with children," Elizabeth blushed and Mrs. Gardiner's smile deepened, "pay attention to your husband as your husband.

"Exert yourself to understand his mind, his reasons, his feelings. You do not have to agree, you will not always agree, but try not to argue before you understand. — And of course, he should do the same: pay attention to you as his wife." Mrs. Gardiner underscored the point with a gesture, then went on. "We all have a regrettable tendency toward marital sloth, a tendency to believe, thoughtlessly, that being married to us is the other person's privilege — while also believing, thoughtlessly, that being married to the other person is our burden.

"But the truth always is that your husband is both privilege and burden. As are you, his wife. And if each of you pays attention to the other, and recollects often that you are burden as well as privilege, the burdens become so much lighter for you both."

Elizabeth pondered this for a moment. She began to walk again as she pondered it, and Mrs. Gardiner walked with her.

"Thank you, Aunt. I will remember. — Since you mentioned children, I should mention something about Lydia, a worry," Elizabeth's voice quieted, "might she be with child?"

Mrs. Gardiner pursed her lips, then frowned. "It is possible, given events, but I have seen no sign of it. Of course, it is very early, and I have not asked her directly about...anything. Time will have to tell."


A few days later, Mr. Shotwell arrived at Longbourn, on a brief furlough from his duties in Brighton. Mary was overjoyed at his arrival, as were Elizabeth and Jane. A few hours later, he went into the library with Mr. Bennet. When Mr. Shotwell emerged, Mary went in. Darcy and Mr. Bingley and Georgiana visited that evening. Darcy's respect for Mr. Shotwell was obvious, and Mr. Bingley came to like him immediately, as did Georgiana. They brought word of Miss Bingley's return to London; she had gone to visit friends in the city.


As it turned out, only Charlotte Collins was expecting a child. Lydia was not. Elizabeth soon wrote Charlotte a long letter, full of excitement for her friend and her husband. Elizabeth also shared her good news, as well as Jane's and Mary's. Charlotte wrote back, happy to have found Elizabeth so happy for her (and her condition), and equally happy for Elizabeth, — as well as for Jane and Mary.


Charlotte also included news of Rosings. Darcy wrote to his aunt not long after Mr. Bennet's approval, feeling that he needed to be the one who broke the news to her. She did not write back. Charlotte related the fury that shook Rosings' foundation and the surrounding ground after Darcy's letter arrived. "Mount Catherine spewed lava by day and night."


Anne Shotwell and her husband returned to his home not far from Rosings, and they were decisively and haughtily ignored by Lady Catherine, but they endured her snub with equanimity, lost in each other and their work. Anne wrote to Elizabeth upon hearing about Elizabeth's engagement, happy and excited for Elizabeth and Darcy, and again inviting them to visit. Both Anne and Dr. Shotwell were surprised about the news of Mr. Shotwell and Mary, but it pleased them greatly to know that their families were thus more tightly intertwined.


Lydia accepted the news of her sisters' engagements with some pique, disappointed to have to share the attention with them. But she also believed she was in a position to dispense advice on passion and marriage, and she assaulted her sisters with it often. The advice was of limited value. Lydia managed soon enough mostly to forget Mr. Wickham, despite having his name.


A new family moved into Meryton with two marriageable sons, a prosperous but not rich merchant family, and soon Lydia's primary occupation was plotting with Mrs. Bennet about which of the two sons might prove, once her mourning clothes could be respectfully put away, to be the best husband for Lydia. Their afterthought seemed to be that the other would also do for Kitty.


Lydia mostly forgot Mr. Wickham: but despite her return to many of her old ways, there was less silliness in Lydia, less carelessness in her behavior, especially when she was not with her mother. When she put away her mourning clothes (early, shocking the neighbors) she flirted, of course, but she seemed to be less profligate in her flirting, more aware that her actions would always have consequences, both for herself and others. Georgiana had talked with her and that talk affected Lydia. She did not become sober — how would such a thing have been possible? — but her silliness knew occasional restraint.


Kitty profited from Lydia's plight, and she did become sober. Not as sober as Mary had once been, but sober enough. She applied to Mr. Bennet for help with a schedule of serious reading, and she was now and then to be glimpsed with a copy of Milton in her hands, a book her father seemed quite concerned that she read. It took her a long time, but she read it, and others. She rather liked the younger of the two brothers that had moved to Meryton, the more handsome of the two, and, despite it annoying Lydia, Kitty settled into a slow-moving flirtation with him that had a promising look. — Or so Mrs. Bennet told the neighborhood.


A little more than two months after the events in London, Jane and Elizabeth wed.

Mr. Bennet seemed glad and sad at the event, particularly the second; Mrs. Bennet found in the blessed day a justification of her life and her choices. She gloried in the marriages, the matches, lording them over Lady Lucas and the neighbors, and regarding each as her own, the product of her exertions, claiming as much to have made the match of Elizabeth and Darcy as of Jane and Mr. Bingley.

Mr. Bennet had come to know Darcy much better in the intervening weeks. They talked and argued about books together in the library and went out, with Mr. Bingley, to walk and to shoot. Mr. Bennet came to hold both in high regard, but it became clear that he not only liked Darcy but that he deferred to him, to Darcy's judgment. There was no doubt he liked Mr. Bingley too and found him agreeable, but in Darcy, Mr. Bennet found (he used this Boswellian phrase in a private conversation with Elizabeth) bark and steel for the mind. Elizabeth took great pleasure in this, and the similar opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.

In the days leading up to the wedding, Darcy had not only gone out of his way to know Mr. Bennet, but he had also done so with Mrs. Bennet. Elizabeth knew what a sore trial to him this sometimes was — it was to her too — but he bore up under it manfully, and eventually Mrs. Bennet managed a few moments, here and there, of nearly rational conversation with her future son-in-law.


A short note eventually arrived at Longbourn from Miss Bingley, congratulating Elizabeth. Beyond strained congratulatory phrases, it was full of hints about being invited to Pemberley, and Elizabeth realized that it was had always been Pemberley that attracted Miss Bingley to Darcy. Darcy himself would only have been an accessory to his estate. Elizabeth was not pleased by the prospect of a visit from Miss Bingley, but when, a few months later, Mr. Bingley bought an estate only thirty miles from Pemberley, and since he and Jane visited Pemberley regularly, it seemed impossible to avoid an occasional visit from Miss Bingley. Elizabeth reconciled herself to it.


Lady Catherine eventually found her own company insupportable. To be admired only by oneself is almost not to be admired at all. And Mr. Collins, whose admiration was so formulary, did not change that fact. She first tentatively reestablished a more cordial, less resentful relationship with Charlotte Collins, then some weeks later, she wrote to Anne. She would not condescend to visit Anne at her home, but she invited the Shotwells to dine at Rosings. Dr. Shotwell encouraged Anne to accept, and a stiff but regular visitation of Rosings began, visits that soon included Mary and Mr. Shotwell. Over time, Anne managed to convince Lady Catherine that Elizabeth had not been involved in her elopement, and that led to an invitation for Elizabeth and Darcy to visit Rosings. They went, but stayed with one or the other of the Shotwells, managing to escape Rosings except for evening engagements. Lady Catherine continued to be dismayed by Elizabeth's pert opinions, but she managed to suffer them. Elizabeth suspected that somewhere, deep inside, deep inside, Lady Catherine was ashamed of dismissing Elizabeth from Rosings as she had, ashamed of her serious breach of civility, and she was grudgingly trying to make it up to Elizabeth without ever acknowledging it or actually apologizing.


Mary married Mr. Shotwell a few months after the weddings of Jane and Elizabeth. He left the militia soon after that, and they bought a house near Anne and Dr. Shotwell. Mary settled into a life of reading and music and gardening, and Mr. Shotwell into a life of writing. He wrote books of difficult poetry that were admired at Oxford and Cambridge but ignored by everyone else. But then, with no preamble, he became famous for a series of popular magazine stories about a poor, tall, out-at-the-elbows Londoner, a top-hatted man in black who solved crimes with the help of an extensive, city-wide network of disadvantaged folks. The magazine, Bartsch Street, eventually brought out the stories in beautiful, leather-bound editions.


Darcy put Mr. O'Brien on permanent retainer, and although he, fortunately, had little need of O'Brien's peculiar talents, he always visited him when in London, and Mr. O'Brien became dear to Elizabeth and then to Georgiana too. Mr. O'Brien began to visit Pemberley, and he slowly became friends with Mrs. Reynolds. She had been puzzled by him at first; he was not at all the sort of man even she imagined a houseguest at Pemberley. But she accepted it initially as an eccentricity of Mr. Darcy's. As she got to know O'Brien, she warmed to him. When he visited, the two spent much time together, talking over cup after cup of tea in the kitchen (O'Brien would drink tea with her), and walking around the estate, she in her slow, upright dignity, Mr. O'Brien in his urgent, ground-covering stride (he would step, wait for her, step, and wait for her). When Mr. Shotwell's stories became popular, Mrs. Reynolds delighted in reading Mr. O'Brien his fictional adventures, although he teased her by always denying that he was the basis for Mr. Shotwell's character. "London is full to bursting of such tall-hatted men as Mr. Shotwell describes."


Elizabeth found in Georgiana a friend and sister almost to equal Jane. Georgiana was truly accomplished: she played the piano forte beautifully; she could sketch with a rapid, responsive hand. She improved Elizabeth as a musician but could do little for her sketching: Elizabeth's talents with a pen ran more toward caricature. Her nonsensical, satirical drawings delighted Georgiana and Darcy, but they were rarely shared with anyone outside the immediate family circle, other than Jane and Mr. Bingley — and Mr. Bennet, when he visited (which was often, and typically unannounced). Georgiana was content at Pemberley with her brother and sister-in-law. Given her mind, her beauty, and her fortune, there was no doubt she was going to be the recipient of much attention, and that slowly came to be true — but she seemed in no hurry. Her experience with Wickham had not left her afraid, but it had left her cautious. And the models of marriages most often around her, Elizabeth and Darcy, first, but also Jane and Mr. Bingley, and the Gardiners, made her believe a good man was worth taking time to find.


Elizabeth pulled her light shawl tighter around her, a quiet thrill passing through her.

It was not yet cold but an early-autumn chill was in the Pemberley air. She was still getting used to being there, living there, to being Darcy's wife. The wedding seemed like it was just a day ago instead of a few weeks ago. She was so overflowingly content on that beautiful evening she had to leave the house and walk.

She was standing beside the pond, in the exact spot where she had been seated the day Darcy rose from it. Dusk, periwinkle-grey, closed slowly around her. But then she felt Darcy's arm encircle her shoulders; he pulled her against him and into his warmth.

"I could not find you when I finished my letter. Mrs. Reynolds told me you had stepped out, and I guessed I would find you here."

"I like her; I like her very much. And I knew you would find me. — I like this spot, Fitzwilliam. For many reasons, but mostly because it is where I first saw you."

"And where I first saw you. — We made quite a pair that day, did we not?"

"I was insufferable," Elizabeth said. "I have no idea how you did not dislike me permanently."

"And I was imperious," Darcy added quickly. "It is amazing we ever found our way to each other."

She laughed as she nodded. "You know, as I stood here just now, the stars beginning to show, the moon just clearing the trees, it occurred to me that it was as if I caught you that day, as if I was fishing, angling, for you, if that can be done unintentionally, indeed unconsciously."

Darcy chuckled. "Perhaps it can. On the day of my first proposal, you accused me of accusing you of angling for Pemberley, now that I recall it."

Elizabeth turned to him and hugged him, pressing her face against him and inhaling the scent of him. She leaned back to look up at his face. "I said a lot of words that day, far too many. But you are right; that is one I said."

"I know you were never angling for Pemberley — but were you angling that first day, here? What do you say to your question? Can a person angle unconsciously?"

Elizabeth suddenly remembered her uncle, reading that day from The Compleat Angler. Elizabeth quoted the line. "'Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.'"

"Is that Izaak Walton?" Darcy asked.

"Yes. My uncle read that line to my aunt that very day. Perhaps that is the answer: maybe there are mysteries in angling, as in mathematics, mysteries that we may never solve."

"Perhaps, dearest Elizabeth." Darcy leaned down to kiss her softly. After he did, he gazed into her eyes, holding her. "Mrs. Darcy, if you would, may I have the honor of the next dance?"

Elizabeth nodded, remembering. "It has been a long time since we danced, Fitzwilliam, my love — oh, but what a dance that was!" She rose on her toes to kiss him; after the kiss, she whispered: "Yes, I would love to dance — but we have no music."

"Then we make our own." Darcy began to hum. Elizabeth recognized the tune. It was the one they danced to at the Netherfield ball. Enchanted, she smiled up at Darcy — and they began to move together in time.


The End of Book Four: Movements in Time


The End

of

Balter


A/N: I planned to append a list of author's notes, but I doubt that many care about them. If that's wrong, tell me so in a review or a PM. I might come back to this chapter and add more.

For now, I will just note that Elizabeth's final speech in Chapter 27 is a borrowing, altered, from one of Austen's letters (Letter 81 in R. W. Chapman).


A/N2: (October 13, 2020) Enough of you asked for these so I thought I would supply them. If you aren't interested in writerly stuff, ignore them.

Keep in mind that, to save words, I speak here in the language of the deed, not the will — but I am actually talking about the will, about what I was trying to do. Whether it worked or not I leave up to the reader.

A few thoughts.

I write for the fit reader, fitly read, and for a reader who is willing to exert himself or herself to deliberate attention. If you don't have some acquaintance with the Bible, you will miss much of what happens in the scenes with Mr. Collins, who is not only constantly misquoting and misattributing, but also choosing contextually wrong passages, inappropriate or inapposite. And, if you are unwilling to peek at items like Marvell's poem, you lose an important disclosure of Mary's feelings for Mr. Shotwell. Etc., etc.

The story's structure is contrapuntal throughout, across chapters, not just internal to chapters. One example: the second proposal scene (Chap 27) cannot be fully understood without seeing its formal similarities to Elizabeth and Darcy's dance in Chap 7 and to the penultimate scene of Chap 7, as well as (more obvious) its relationships to the first proposal scene (Chap 13). These contrapuntal relationships criss-cross the story and provide one crucial principle of its unity.

I use individual words and phrases to build density and resonance. Repetition is a powerful tool, rightly handled, and almost a necessity if contrapuntal structures attract you, as they do me. (Austen loved them, and tended to use them ironically, although that is not the only use of them she made).

I employ what I think of as low-relief POV throughout the bulk of the story. I do not differentiate Elizabeth's and Darcy's POVs by any particular, insistent syntactical markers — although Elizabeth talks more often in syntactically complex sentences than Darcy does. She is to be understood as thinking as she speaks; he, more often, as thinking before he speaks. (That does not make her always wrong and him always right, not close: it is just a difference between them: she is (more) spontaneous where he is (more) deliberate.) For the most part, their POVs contrast in terms of preoccupations, turns of thought, different kinds of internal struggles. But there are broad similarities: each is struggling with his or her education and miseducation, with the good and the bad in their respective upbringings, and each has to come to terms with that before they can come to terms with each other.

I push the POVs into high-relief in three places: first (for Elizabeth) in the crucial Yellow Bonnets chapter (18), and second (for Darcy) in the (answering) tree-climbing scene (19). Elizabeth, preludial to and as a foretelling of her decisive insight into herself and her feelings, experiences Lady Catherine's outdoor party as an excursion into (what has been called) Shakespeare's Green World, a place of magic, shaped by emotion and desire. That's one reason for all the Shakespeare in and around that chapter (e.g., the title of Chap 19) and the heightened descriptions of the natural scenery. Think of it as an Austenian garden-party-variation on the wilder woods in Shakespeare's Midsummer. Darcy's changes (in response to the first proposal and refusal) settle on him and are owned by him, as he gazes at Pemberley from atop the yew tree.

The third place where POV is in high-relief is during Darcy's visit to London. No doubt many of you picked up on the way Dickens seems to be just off-stage in those chapters, and the degree to which O'Brien stands midway between an Austenian secondary character and a Dickensian one. The narrative shift in tone and manner in those chapters is to capture Darcy's dislike of the city, his distaste for his errand, his profound disapproval of Wickham. Darcy's grip on himself is tight in those chapters and it registers in a tightening of the prose.

Where the story departs from Austen, it mostly does so as variations on Austen. Anne's unasked-for sharing of her secret with Elizabeth is a benign variant on Lucy Steele's malignant unasked-for sharing of hers with Elinor Dashwood. Lady Catherine's expulsion of Elizabeth from Rosings is an edgier variant on Catherine Moreland's expulsion by General Tilney.

I fretted over the fate of Wickham despite setting it up in the middle of the story (in Darcy's letter). That whole business highlights the problem of just how much tragedy, in a sense, an Austenian comedy can house — without transmuting from comedy to something else. Austen knew that and so she carefully kept the disturbing facts mostly out of view, and she was willing to sacrifice Lydia (and her future) for the sake of staying within comedic bounds, and willing never to have Wickham turn his true face to the reader. Darcy undoubtedly saw it, but he tells nothing. (If you know Pemberley Digital's The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, you will know the problem here well enough. Their handling of the Lydia/Wickham subplot threatens to turn their comedy into something else, and they know it and struggle with it.)

As I said in an earlier A/N, working in Darcy's POV and telling the story as I did, meant that my reader had to see Wickham's true face, and, once seen, it is hard to leave Lydia in the man's clutches. — So, I did what I did, wrote it as I wrote it, trying to use the form of the narration itself to exhibit Darcy's reluctance and distaste, and the lengths to which he was willing to go for Elizabeth (and her family). Internal to the story, I used the first section of the next chapter (27) to change Darcy's state of mind and to transition back into the regular narration of the story, into his normal, low-relief POV. The punning throughout on mourning/morning is meant to touch on this transition too.

As I said very early, my stories build in a peculiar way. The central case here is the pond scene in Chap 1, to which the story returns repeatedly, and which gets restaged, in a way, at its close. The scene is an emblem, a compaction, of the entire story, and both Elizabeth and Darcy spend the story coming to understand that encounter with each other, its fateful effect on their lives, what it meant and means to them both — and will mean to them in the future. It is like the fabled pool of ink in the saucer of the Egyptian conjuror — the more it is studied, the deeper into it one can see. I signaled that for the alert reader when Mr. Gardiner quotes the Walton line about angling and mathematics, and when Mrs. Reynolds treats the scene as of such (Biblical) significance.

Samuel Johnson left a massive imprint on Austen's understanding and imagination, and so on her stories. I think that imprint has been more noted than explored. I more or less make Johnson a character in the story as a nod to that influence, and many of my epigraphs from him speak not only to the chapter and to my story — but also suggest Austen's creative fidelity to Johnson.

I wove scenes or variations on scenes from various on-screen adaptations of Austen into the story.

I wrote this to amuse myself, but also as part of my preparation for teaching an Austen class in the spring. To understand a writer, it helps to set yourself some of her problems and force yourself to respond to them.

Thanks for reading!

— Zettel