Elizabeth Newark - The Darcys Give a Ball

Letters circulated between the Meryton contingent and the sisters whose homes were farther away. Mrs. Bennet had always planned to live with her favorite daughter, Lydia, but this was not to be.

“La, Mama,” said Lydia, shrugging a plump and careless shoulder, “That would not be at all the thing. You know my dear Wickham and me are always on the move. You would find it prodigious unpleasant.”

Captain Wickham was at that time stationed in Bristol. Mrs. Bennet was reluctant to accept this dictum, but a short visit to Lydia in her latest Bristol lodgings with her six children (one teething), her constantly changing servants and nursery maids, the visits from the bailiff, and her often-absent husband, changed her mind. Jane Bingley and Elizabeth Darcy conferred anxiously with Aunt Gardiner on the degree of their duty to their mother, but luckily Mrs. Philips came to her sister’s rescue, inviting Mrs. Bennet to share her home in Meryton.

The partnership throve. The two widows (their caps a miracle of black lace) gave whist and loo parties for their numerous acquaintance (a goodly number of widowers and rackety retired army officers among them) and enjoyed themselves hugely. Mrs. Bennet found her new way of life so much to her liking that she almost forgot to resent the Collinses. Mary and Kitty were within easy reach and were frequent visitors, Lydia and Wickham came when no one else would have them, and Jane and Elizabeth sometimes broke a journey in order to spend a night. The only time Mrs. Bennet became conscious of her nerves was when her grandchildren stayed too long.

Once this move was made, the way was open for Mr. and Mrs. Collins and their family to move to Longbourn. It was a fateful day. Despite a light drizzle,Mr. Collins paced his new possession foot by foot, outdoors and indoors, rejoicing in every shrub and tree in the grounds, and every handsome piece of furniture and elegant drapery in the house. He had, in the past, enjoyed criticizing Mrs. Bennet for her extravagance and love of show; now he felt there was nothing that was not due to his own consequence. The one fly in his ointment was the marked absence of books in the library, which had been established by Mr. Bennet; the books had been his own to do with as he willed, and he had chosen to leave them to his favorite daughter, Elizabeth. They now rounded out the already splendid library at Pemberley. Mr. Collins seldom read and had no interest in literature, but this did not prevent him from feeling disgruntled every time he eyed the empty shelves.

Eliza Collins was four years old when the move to Longbourn was made, and she grew up on terms of friendly intimacy with the families of Mary Shrubsole, née Bennet, and such of Charlotte’s brothers and sisters, now married, who lived nearby. By the time she was seventeen, she was lively, loving, imaginative, and amusing. She would never be a beauty, but only strangers commented on her lack of inches and pointed little face. Her father was uncomfortable with her; he preferred his eldest son, recently made Vicar of Highbury and married to a Miss Eugenia Elton, and his elder daughters, who were prim, plump, and self-righteous.

But Charlotte rejoiced in her changeling.

It was about this time that Henry Darcy, Elizabeth Darcy’s second son, came down from Oxford.

Mr. and Mrs. Darcy had been blessed with three children: a son and heir, Fitzwilliam, known in the family as Fitz, now twenty-five; a second son, Henry de Bourgh Darcy, twenty-two; and a daughter, Elizabeth Juliet, at eighteen one of the recognized beauties in the County of Derbyshire (rivaled only by her cousin, Amabel Bingley). Fitzwilliam was a stalwart young man, in appearance resembling his father, concerned with the management of the estate, with horse breeding, and the excitement of the hunt. Ever since he had reached his majority he had been in love with his cousin, Amabel Bingley. The younger son, Henry, was quite different. He was studious, literary, thoughtful, of a slighter build than his brother but strong and active and a skillful wrestler. He was a notable horseman. Juliet, the only girl, loved dancing, parties, and admiration (not necessarily in that order).

Elizabeth’s marriage had prospered. Secure in Mr. Darcy’s love and support, her courage had risen with every attempt by County society to intimidate her. His pride in his “dearest, loveliest Elizabeth” had fortified her against such snobberies and attempted put-downs as came her way, and Mr. Darcy had his own ways of letting such impertinent people know that if they wished to be invited to Pemberley, their behavior towards its mistress must be impeccable. Her own intelligence and sense of humor had helped her to make a success of her life as chatelaine of Pemberley. She loved her husband, her children, and the estate, in that order, and blossomed with the years. She had kept her slender figure, to the envy of Jane, who was beautiful still but, after five children, much fuller in body.

Henry Darcy’s father presented him with a splendid thoroughbred gelding for his twenty-second birthday, celebrated at Oxford, and Henry chose to make his way home on horseback. Riding across country to reach Pemberley, he decided to break his journey and visit his mother’s old home and his Longbourn relations, whom he did not know. He had been only eight when he last stayed there with his grandfather, a crusty old man with an odd sense of humor. Fitz, the high stickler, already at Eton, had thought him eccentric, but young Henry had enjoyed the old man’s company, and spent hours with him in the library, Henry on his stomach on the rug, picking his way through a book of myths, maps, and monsters, and Mr. Bennet reading Addison, Swift, or John Donne. Henry was sorry when his grandfather died.

Since then the question of visiting Longbourn had never arisen. Henry knew the house had been inherited by a Mr. Collins, a distant relative, whose wife was a dear friend of his mother’s. Mrs. Collins had visited Pemberley on one occasion, without her husband. But this, he thought, was while the Collinses still lived near Cousin Anne at Rosings. Henry vaguely remembered a quiet pleasant woman, dressed in black (had she lost a child? he did not quite remember), not fashionable, with a manner that expected obedience from the young. But no one suggested paying a return visit to Cousin Collins.

It was late afternoon when Henry rode up the driveway at Longbourn. The day was fine, the sun shone low in the sky, a blackbird sang in the shrubbery. As he dismounted at the front door, and looked about for a groom, his eye was caught by the slight figure of a girl in a flounced muslin dress, seated on a swing beneath an oak tree. The dress was of white muslin with blue dots, the full skirt spreading gracefully round her. A book and a tabby cat rested on her knees, but her attention was on him.

A groom arrived and took the reins. Henry walked toward the girl, and bowed.

“Hallo,” she said, looking up at him and smiling. She saw before her a young man, handsome, eager. He was tall and dark, his face thin, his eyes very alive; his mouth, with something sweet in its curve, seemed ready to laugh. He reminded her of one of the miniatures on the wall in her father’s study. Yes, of course. It must be. “You have the look of my cousins, the Darcys. I am Eliza Collins.”

Her voice was clear and musical. Henry met her eyes and found himself unable to look away. He, the Oxford graduate, the self-possessed son of a notable country estate, stumbled in his response to this slip of a girl with laughing gray eyes. How astonishing, he thought, the very great pleasure a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow. Henry, in the past year at Oxford, had begun to write poetry; at this moment phrases, luminous phrases, began to stir in his mind.

“I am Henry Darcy,” he admitted. “But we have never met,” he said. “I should surely remember. How can—how do you know the way we look?”

“My father has copies of the miniatures at Rosings of all Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s relatives. They hang in his study.”

A green and yellow caterpillar descended on a silken thread from the oak leaves above. It settled on a muslin sleeve and began to crawl earnestly towards a fair and slender neck. Henry knew exactly how his sister, Juliet, would react to such a visitant. He bent forward.

“Forgive me,” he said. “An intruder.” He carefully picked the caterpillar from Eliza’s sleeve; he wished it were a dragon. She looked quickly down and his hand brushed her cheek. At once he was scarlet.

“Oh, just a caterpillar—an oak moth, I expect. Perhaps we should save it to frighten Catty.”

“C-C-Catty?” stammered Henry.

“My sister,” said Eliza gravely. “They terrify her.”

“They terrify mine, too.”

He pulled himself together, and offered her his arm as she pushed the reluctant cat from her knees, slid from the swing, and stood by his side. The cat wound itself round their legs in a figure of eight, mewed pitifully, and bounded suddenly away across the grass.

“Oh, what a beautiful horse,” said Eliza, as they walked down the drive, and he felt for a brief moment jealous that her attention should wander so easily from him.

“Do you ride? Should you like to try his paces? He is very gentle.”