Sunset found Jane and Richard peeking in the door to observe the amusing sight of Snoring Darcy asleep on the bed with Lizzy's head resting on his arm. Naturally, they closed the door and backed away slowly without making a sound, which was not difficult since Simpson had fixed the two porch boards that had squeaked since Sir Lewis' childhood. With huge grins, they returned to Cecil and Scriven to report what looked suspiciously like at least partial success, then dug into their evening meal.
Dawn found Jane and Mrs Buxton sitting beside the bed watching Elizabeth sleep. When she finally awoke, Jane whispered, "Is it done?"
"It is done, and done for the best," Elizabeth said with a shy smile. "You?"
"Same"
With that, Elizabeth smiled and fell back into a light sleep for another hour, only to awaken to find Jane still knitting, but Mrs Buxton absent.
"What are you making?"
"Mrs Buxton calls it a leg-warmer, though I am sceptical. She says you might feel cold more on your injured leg, and since Derbyshire is in the Wilds of the North —"
Elizabeth laughed lightly. "Never would I dispute Mrs Buxton."
"You like her, then?"
"Very much so. I was even wondering if we could offer her a position, though I have given it no real thought."
"Too late!" Smug Jane answered. "She is already joining our household, though in what capacity is yet to be determined. She likes the idea of being a nursemaid and governess in her later years, though the idea is somewhat precipitous."
"By 'precipitous', you are subtly telling me you will not have an early surprise?" Elizabeth asked, somewhat shocked at herself.
"Just barely," Jane said with a blush that nearly set her hair afire.
"I see. I suppose there is nothing I can tell you about being in love then."
"Oh, I doubt that! We are all taught by our society that there is but one way to love, but that is even sillier than it sounds. Just like you love Lydia different than you love me or our parents, your love for William must be quite different from mine."
"I am not certain I love Lydia or our parents at all," Elizabeth grumbled.
"Then why did some part of your mind spend the first portion of a very painful convalescence worrying about them? Why did you endure the pain required to beat our father into submission? You may not like them, but you will always love them."
Elizabeth had no answer, so asked for some tea. Jane had asked Cecil earlier and he appeared right then by happenstance. Jane poured out the tea, and Elizabeth refrained from adding brandy (just barely).
Jane continued laughingly, "Do not be eyeing Cecil either. He has been taking care of Max and has ambitions to be a kennel master or gamekeeper one day. He and his sister will join us as well."
"I am happy about that. He is a good lad, though his ambitions may change over time."
"We will give him opportunities and see how he proves himself."
"That is all a boy could ask."
They continued their tea for a bit, until Elizabeth said, "You asserted that there were many paths to love. Care to speak about yours?"
"If you will reciprocate."
"Of course, though mine makes no sense at all. One minute I despised him, the next I was indifferent but feeling pressured, and seemingly the next I was in love."
"It will make sense in time," Jane averred with a gentle smile. "As for Richard and me, when you said he was taken on that second day, you were not wrong. We were neither committed nor in love at that time, but we had begun."
"At least yours makes sense."
"Perhaps I can help you understand yours."
Elizabeth gave a great sigh and was inordinately grateful it did not create any more than a twinge.
"William showed his love every day in big and small ways, and even in a laudanum induced haze, I could recognize it when I was in better moods, but I was still terribly worried it was just a facade, like a child being on best behaviour until he gets a toy. Then of course —"
She sat in thought for some time, and finally sighed.
"As I was discussing yesterday, fever and laudanum is an odd mixture. I feel like I recovered most of my memories, but in all that time, I can find not a single word of approbation or encouragement for him. The best I can remember is a few things that were perhaps less terrible than usual, so why did he stick it out? Why did my feelings change when all I had done is express my displeasure with my situation and my suitor, but then one day it seemed to be all resolved?"
She thought some more while Jane just let her do so.
"It has only been a day, but I am already feeling some doubt."
"About what?" Jane asked gently, though she had a reasonable idea.
"That I just accepted the inevitable, picked the easier path, decided to make the best of it, and then convinced myself it was love," she asked in a whisper.
"Do you really believe that?"
"Not truly, but I cannot be certain either. As Fitzwilliam observed yesterday, my last man in the world rant, is not so far in the past."
Jane stared at her hands for a moment in deep thought. "I might be able to help you, but I have to tell you something about my courtship for it to make any kind of sense."
Elizabeth quickly expressed her pleasure at the idea of discussing someone else.
"We started out rather oddly, because we both understood that, regardless of how carefully we all worked to maintain propriety, there was always a reasonable chance we would be obliged by circumstances. We both knew at some level it behoved us to get to know one another expeditiously. Taking care of you did not take all that much time, and there was nothing else to do, so we had plenty of chances to know each other as fast or as slow as we chose. It seemed a golden opportunity, offered to very few couples."
"That makes sense. Sometimes I feel guilty for not even considering such things."
"Why would you? It is no more your business than it was Mama's to promote me to every man who wandered through. I was in this position because of Miss de Bourgh, not you. I would be distressed to learn you spent even a minute worrying about it, and I might even define it as the dreaded officious interference."
Elizabeth laughed. "You may rest easy then, because I did not."
"Excellent! At first, as you know, his manners superficially resemble Mr Bingley, which did him no favours."
"Nor did they with me, although I can imagine it might have had I met him earlier."
"I feel the same. It took a couple of days to get over that, and by then, I think William probably gave his observations from both Hertfordshire and the night we came here, so I imagine he had to adjust his own ideas. That took a couple of days to sort out, and we then found ourselves ready put some effort into getting to know each other. When he became your guardian, it seemed clear to me that he was likely to be my husband eventually, one way or another, so the matter gained some urgency."
"I had no idea I was making things difficult for you. It was quite selfish of me."
"It was not! I would beg you to discard that thought immediately. I think you recognized something I did not, and you simply helped us along. I do not think it was selfish at all. In fact, given how much you liked Richard better than Darcy, I thought it was the most unselfish thing any Bennet ever did."
Elizabeth harrumphed in disagreement but thought she should just allow the point to rest, since nobody ever beat Jane in an argument.
"I can see you getting wiser by the minute, Elizabeth. You may eventually know when to give up when you cannot win."
"I wish I might have seen this impertinence before."
Jane sighed and frowned. "Mama could only manage one impertinent daughter, I fear."
"Probably true."
"Back to the story, and I promise I will bring it back to you soon enough."
"I have at least a month to hear it, so there is no particular hurry."
"Now we come to the heart of the matter—the turning point, if you will."
"I am on pins and needles," Elizabeth said with a laugh and wiggle that demonstrated it was true both figuratively and literally, so she took a bit of medicinal brandy from the flask. She was happy she managed it without Jane bursting into flames and wondered if their husbands would discourage them from strong drink (or at least try).
"One night, perhaps a fortnight or three weeks in, we shared confidences. For my part, I shared what my parents did, the enormous expectation they put on my head, and how I felt about it all. Our upbringing is not all that shocking, but you must admit that our mother borders on the singular."
"Borders? HAH!" Elizabeth nearly shouted and was not even sorry about the coughing fit that followed, finally gasping, "If she is borderline, it is from the wrong side."
Serene Jane, who had been conspicuously absent from the streamside gave her a good smile, then turned serious and continued.
"For his part, he told me some of what happened in the army. More specifically, he told me an instance or two where he did something terribly wrong."
"That hardly seems surprising," Elizabeth replied in perplexity. "The army does great wrongs every day of the week. That is war."
"No, they were mistakes he made… him specifically… not duties. They were not dishonourable and had no evil intent; but they were both wrong and preventable, and people suffered."
Elizabeth's head was clear as a bell, and she finally asked, "Was it a test?"
"Not as such—more an opportunity."
"The distinction escapes me."
"A test is something you do deliberately to see what happens and judge the results on some predetermined criteria. In a case such as this, an opportunity is a way to stress the relationship and see if it strengthens or weakens."
"What if it stayed the same?"
"No relation stays the same… ever. I believe you are either getting stronger or weaker every day. Our parents were presumably strong one day long ago, but they allowed indifference to set in, and that causes decay. A couple decades on, you can see the result."
That thought took quite some time to work through, but Elizabeth finally just accepted it. "Test or opportunity, what did you do?"
"I told him he was, in fact, as wrong as he supposed. I said he would have to live with it, just as he has been, and then decide if there was anything he could do about it."
"What could he do at this late date?"
"Improve his character… do not repeat the mistake… try to do something kind for someone else to improve the balance on his soul… that sort of thing. Mostly I just asserted that the past is the past. He need not, and should not forget, but he also need not dwell on it."
"So you took him to task?"
"I did, but I also said I would carry some of the burden if he would allow it, so long as that did not require complete absolution."
Elizabeth thought about that for some time, and then, as gradually as the sun rising on a misty day, the answer came to her, and a soft smile of wonder graced her face.
"I think I see. He had to KNOW if you would take him seriously, if you could be trusted with difficult disclosures, and if you would handle the problem properly. It was not a test, per se, because he did not know the right way in advance, but hoped he would recognize it."
"Perhaps"
"Netherfield Jane would have assumed he overstated the offense and offered forgiveness immediately. Most of the ladies of the ton would file it away to use for future advantage. Lydia or Mama would blab it all over the neighbourhood before supper. Mary would quote Fordyce then swoon. Darcy would listen gravely, ask if he thought he had done his best, then absolve him and tell him to forget it since the past cannot be changed. Some of his superiors, who probably never saw real battle, would have chastised him for failure to follow their preconceived ideas of what a soldier should do. There are few who would handle it just right."
"Exactly! He needed to accept his responsibility, and he need to know that I could hear the worst thing he might have to say and act appropriately."
Fascinated, Elizabeth asked, "What did you say next? I am dying to know."
"Not very much."
"Why ever not?"
Jane blushed furiously but did not back down (as was appropriate for a soldier's wife). "Because he was flat on his back being kissed something fierce."
Furious laughter rang out, and it was quite some time before the sisters managed to regain their good regulation.
Eventually, their mirth died down, and Elizabeth asked shyly, "Did you know you loved him then?"
"I did! It has grown steadily since our engagement, and now I have been practically bursting to tell you about it for some time."
"When did you become engaged?"
"I just told you," she said with a radiant smile.
She thought there must be something in the Gardiner blood, because her the latter parts of Jane's engagement story sounded suspiciously like Elizabeth's, and that made her wonder at which wiles her mother used on her father when she was younger. That thought gave her the shivers, and she abandoned it immediately.
Fortuitously, Cecil knocked on the door a minute later and offered to bring some luncheon, which the ladies happily accepted. They were both quite pensive during the repast, so neither said much of anything.
Much to Cecil's chagrin, there was no pie that day, so once they had some after-lunch coffee with brandy for both ladies, they got back to it.
Elizabeth began, "I imagine you see some connection between my journey and yours, but I cannot fathom it. I can think of nothing I have said in the past month that was anything short of nasty. Sometimes, I hope there was some kindness hidden in those days that I have forgotten, but I am not naïve enough to believe it."
"Perhaps. Allow me to postulate something. I have two ideas, actually."
"Be my guest."
"First, let us take your last man in the world assertion. When you said that, William thought it was a case of in vino, veritas—in wine, truth, but I talked him out of it by telling a story about Sir William."
"Yes, I think I remember you telling me that."
"I do not read like you, but I have learned a thing or two. There is another rather obscure saying: Vinum docet—Wine Teaches, meaning sometimes the influence of wine allows you to learn things you might not see in your sober state. Of course, what you learn may be good, in the form of insight, or bad, as in the form of a tendancy toward violence, as is the case for Sir William."
"So you are saying the right answer is for Charlotte to come down and knock Darcy out with a chair?"
Jane laughed gaily, but got right back to business.
"Suppose the laudanum was teaching you what you feared the most."
"Which is?"
"An inconstant man, of course! With a father like ours, how could you fear anything else?"
Elizabeth thought about it some time. "So my assertions that one of us was insufficient for the other made me —?"
"Exactly. It made you create a test or opportunity. Perhaps, under the influence was the only way you could stress both of you at once, and see if anything survived?"
"It sounds… more manipulative than Mama, to be honest."
"It does if you take it too literally, but in the context of finding out if a couple has what it takes, can you suggest a better way? For that matter, can you think of any question more important?"
Elizabeth gave it some serious thought, and continued doing so until her head started aching. Jane helped her with some willow bark tea, and suggested a nap was probably not the worst idea in the world.
As she lay back and closed her eyes, Jane left the room with one last thought.
"Rightly or wrongly, deliberately or accidentally, subtly or blatantly—you did test both your love and his, Elizabeth, and you both passed. Now you need only accept what you have already proven."
