Under the thin pretense of speaking with Mr. Bennet, but all involved knew it was to call on Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy had visited Longbourn at least twice a week since his entrance into the neighborhood.
In any other circumstance Darcy knew that a man who called upon a woman who was extremely attractive and beautiful, and charming, and in truth, perfect in all important respects — except those which were objective matters of reputation, connection, and fortune — such a man would be considered to be courting her.
But he might consider himself free to cultivate this valuable friendship, one coming to mean as much to him as connections of far greater duration, because they both had a perfect understanding that it was a platonic relationship betwixt them.
That is, one which only involved speech.
Darcy, though he was not a man with an excess of self-understanding, he knew that his feelings towards Elizabeth had long since left the romantically disinterested and entered the territory of a strong infatuation.
However, a week's ceasing of this discourse was upon him. Even Elizabeth agreed that delicacy towards Jane's feelings must be observed, and that the widowed lady must be given chance to recover from her loss before being crowded with a crush of visitors and new acquaintances. And the appearance would be decidedly improper if Elizabeth or her parents went calling about on their friends while leaving their widowed family home with only her memories to comfort her.
The first two days of this interruption in seeing Elizabeth went easily enough. The third day Darcy rode round the neighborhood near Longbourn several times, and he haunted the bookseller and his circulating library for several hours more.
In the end Darcy purchased another eight guineas' worth of books which he had no intention to read for several weeks more, and which he did not particularly want because they had already been bound.
At least he finished another one of Elizabeth's novels. There was only one left for him to enjoy for the first time.
He should have arranged with Elizabeth for them to meet, as if by chance, at the bookseller. He was quite sure she would have agreed to such an assignation. But perhaps shopping would have also been contrary to appearances — no, Elizabeth could have claimed she wished to buy a volume of melancholic poems to comfort the bereaved. That was an entirely proper quest for a loving sister to embark upon.
But if they had made an arrangement to meet, Darcy would have needed to abandon the pretense he still made to himself that nothing which was not innocuous and innocent existed in his connection to Elizabeth.
He hardly knew himself anymore.
On Saturday evening an expedient at last came to mind, though he was not certain this scheme would work. Mr. Darcy was a religious man who always attended church services, while Mr. Bingley and his family only attended every second or third week. Always since he had settled in the neighborhood, he had chosen to attend services at the parish nearest Netherfield, but he had heard from Elizabeth that her family had habitually attended the church services in the parish chapel at Meryton.
It would not appear particularly strange if Darcy, a stranger to this neighborhood, chose to observe out of curiosity a different rector's preaching on one Sunday. For purposes of comparison.
This scheme unfortunately showed every possibility of leaving him nothing but the pleasure of a several mile long ride in the morning cold. Despite her ample other virtues, Mr. Darcy did not think Elizabeth to be a particularly religious woman.
They had spoken a little on the topic, and she did agree to having the belief that all ought in the creed and confession of the high church. Darcy did not see any confusion between the sinful behavior she had engaged in when yet nearly a girl, and this belief. After all, a great many great men professed the most passionate devotion to the Christian faith, especially in comparison to the godless beheaders of their ordained rulers in France, but they yet lived in the most open and hideous sorts of sin.
However, he knew Elizabeth did not like clergymen. It was no surprise; she had been treated harshly by at least two of them, and likely more.
More likely than not she made it her habit to stay home on Sundays, and to perhaps engage in some private prayers.
Further, the delicacy that suggested the Bennets call upon no one, nor be home for visitors, due to the unhappiness of the family's now returned eldest daughter also gave an additional excuse for the family to not attend Sunday service — but set against that Jane Bennet had been married to a man of the cloth.
She might wish to go to service, even after only having been settled again in Longbourn for four days. Or she might desperately not wish to go, because a church building itself would trigger recollections of a loss too fresh to be anything but painful.
Every speculation pointed the same direction.
There was a chance.
Sunday morning Darcy went to the parish church in Longbourn, and having no reserved pew, he sat near the back of the church. The building had been built in the style of the early Tudor period, likely when England still lived under the Romish church. Fine buttressed arches, and stained glass windows of a better quality than any other art he had seen in this town.
Darcy waited.
When the choir went to stand up, with no sign of the Bennets, Mr. Darcy felt crushed. It was irrational, but he had desperately wanted to see Elizabeth again. Five days now since he had laid eyes upon her.
What would he do when he returned to Pemberley? He would need to spend such a long time without hearing her laughing rushing voice, without being able to ever see her pretty form, without being dazzled by her light brown eyes. Without being able to hear any speech from her. And he would have no right to ask Mr. Bingley for news of her.
There would be no chance of communication with her until he was in town again, if she had returned there, or until he had come south to stay once more with Mr. Bingley. And he wouldn't even know which he ought to do to see her again.
There was something in Darcy's guts, like a dully sinking rock of anxiety.
The smaller church door opened. Darcy's stomach leapt when he saw her enter the fine, old parish chapel.
Elizabeth wore a somber dress in a dark purple that seemed entirely out of character for her. She shuffled past him and into her family's pew which stood at the front and at an angle to where Darcy sat. But as she went in, watching her sister, she had not noticed him sitting by the side.
Mrs. Hawdry was a woman well worth watching.
For a moment Darcy almost blinked in surprise. Mrs. Hawdry had a pale quiet face, but her cheeks and nose were delicate, and her face was a perfectly shaped, beautiful oval with vibrant clear skin. Her hair was long and the color of ripe wheat. The heavy black dress flowed with her form, revealing just enough of a woman's curve to entice a man. Mr. Darcy thought that she was, in the sort of objective sense that men in clubs would discuss which woman was the greatest beauty, possibly the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
That thought was a distant thing, because Darcy barely spent two seconds glancing at Mrs. Hawdry before he turned back to frown in worry at Elizabeth. She did not look well — her usual spring was missing from her steps. Her eyes had dark circles as though she had not slept well of late. And the dark colored dress did not match her looks, making her look more somber and unhappy.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet sat together, and then Mrs. Hawdry. Elizabeth sat next to her sister, stiffly, keeping herself a little apart. She looked around unsmilingly, as if a great additional weight had fallen upon her.
Then by chance Elizabeth's eyes lighted on Mr. Darcy. She lit up happily, smiling as if the sun had risen, and he smiled happily back at her.
"Mr. Darcy! Oh, Mr. Darcy!" Mrs. Bennet exclaimed when he approached them after the service. "Lord! — never so shocked as to see you here."
"Yes," he replied a little stiffly. Much as he wished otherwise, he found it difficult to enjoy conversation with Mrs. Bennet. "I am glad to see you as well."
"Most polite!" She smiled at him. "Jane, come here. Jane. This is a new friend — he has become a dear friend to Lizzy and your father. Mr. Darcy, my daughter, Mrs. Hawdry."
Darcy bowed to Jane. "My deep condolences on your loss."
There was something lost in Mrs. Hawdry's eyes. She replied in a soft voice that was very sweet, and yet only barely audible, "Most kind, sir. Most kind… pleased to meet you."
Darcy now permitted himself to fully turn to Elizabeth.
She smiled at him widely and spoke with a teasing voice, as though she understood exactly what his scheme had been. "A little far afield, Mr. Darcy, from your normal Sunday pastures."
"I merely wished," he said unembarrassedly, "to see a different service."
"Oh! Poor Mr. Oversteegan," Mrs. Bennet said. "He shall not be happy to hear you have found his service so dull."
Elizabeth smiled at him, and he thought there was something grateful in her eyes, something which suggested that she felt a feeling similar to his own — whatever that was.
"Mr. Oversteegan gives a perfectly serviceable service, but I never miss a Sunday, and it can at times be interesting to see how a different speaker deals upon the same topic."
"I confess I was delighted to see you seated in those shadows, with just a single beam of pink light from the windows falling upon you," Elizabeth said, her eyes bright. "So for my part, I hope you liked our service enough that you might betray Mr. Oversteegan again."
Darcy noted from the side of his eyes that Mrs. Bennet looked delighted at this speech, Mr. Bennet rolled his eyes, and Mrs. Hawdry started looking between him and Elizabeth with more interest than she had shown towards anything else since she had entered the church.
"Your vicar has a…" Darcy was not sure what to say, especially as Elizabeth looked at him directly again with those dazzling, beautiful, bright and gold flecked brown eyes of hers. Eyes he could stare at endlessly. Also he had not heard a single word said by the vicar as he had spent, to his discredit, the entire service so arranging himself as to look at Elizabeth without being obvious to everyone in the church that he was staring at his friend.
"Yes?" Elizabeth queried. "What did you think of Mr. Walton?"
"Mr. Walton has a fine look about him. Yes. I shall come again next week."
Mr. Bennet snorted as Darcy said the vicar who was a fat man with ample ear hair and an unkempt beard, and who was closer to seventy than sixty had a fine look about him.
They really were being quite obvious about… something.
Darcy insisted once more to himself: They both knew that they only were connected in friendship, and there was no possibility he would forget himself so far as to offer marriage to her, so he could keep Elizabeth with him when he returned to Pemberley, and not be so endlessly lonely, as he now realized he had been these past years.
He had to marry a woman who was…
"I myself have always admired Mr. Walton's homely smile and rheumy eyes," Mr. Bennet said.
"Papa!" Elizabeth frowned at Mr. Bennet, blushing.
"Sit in our pew next week — with most of the girls long gone, and my parents much longer gone, there is ample room next to us," Mr. Bennet offered gallantly.
Darcy knew that he had to decline the offer, because if he accepted it, he would have halfway made a declaration towards Elizabeth. He absolutely could not sit next to her in church, even if he intensely desired to.
"Thank you, sir. I most certainly shall."
"You must call," Mrs. Hawdry then said, suddenly speaking. Her voice was soft and quiet, but this time there was something about her timber and manner that made them all quiet enough to hear her. "You and your friend. Tomorrow if you are not otherwise occupied. You have called often, I have heard — do not refrain on my part. I would much… much rather—" She choked with emotion for a moment.
"Jane?" Elizabeth said to her, with a manner of both being desperate to comfort her sister, and yet still unwilling to do so.
Mrs. Hawdry waved off her sister's and parents' concern. "I am well enough. I would rather, far rather company and noise, and new acquaintance to remaining seated at home with nothing to do. The memories… I need distraction. Please do say you will call, soon as you may."
Mr. Darcy had no way to refuse a request which reflected his own wishes so perfectly. Especially not one which came from a woman with such an appealingly defenseless manner as Mrs. Hawdry's.