Posted on: 2009-07-10
Fitzwilliam Darcy leaned cautiously over the railing in the gallery at Netherfield Park and studied the swirling crowd below him in the hall. He held himself apart from the festive air of the rest of the revelers, registering their flushed, beaming countenances only enough to recognize that he had not yet found the one face he sought. Try as he might to fight it, an attraction had grown within Darcy for a certain young lady, and though he knew that as he could not possibly marry her it would be ungentlemanlike to ever allow her to realize the depth of his attraction by paying her too much attention, thereby giving rise to expectations that he could never meet, not to mention the danger to his own equanimity in spending unnecessary time in her company, Darcy had wrestled with his feelings sufficient to decide that to dance one set with her at his friend's ball could do no very great damage to either himself or the lady. As she was the one lady in the neighborhood he felt well enough acquainted with to ask to dance, and he must dance at least a little at his friend's ball to fulfill his obligations as a guest, Darcy rationalized that to stand up with Miss Elizabeth Bennet could not be construed as too particular an attention to her. And so, he ignored all of the other guests arriving at Bingley's house, sharing their obvious hopeful anticipation for the evening in his own reserved way, and waited for the object of his present interest to make her appearance.
Darcy recognized Elizabeth immediately when she entered the hall, and she took his breath away. He had long come to realize that his initial assessment of her charms had been a grievous understatement, but he had never seen her like this! Her gown was simple and flattering, though, as a man, he must admit to himself that it looked exactly like the white gowns worn by every other lady in attendance, as if they had all agreed in advance on a uniform for the evening. No, what struck Darcy as he watched Elizabeth Bennet make a slow twirl in the middle of the room, her face showing the same joyous expectation as those surrounding her, and her eyes bright as they peered upwards, clearly seeking someone, but not ever registering his presence in his secluded corner, was her hair, which usually reflected her independent spirit by seeming always a bit unruly, but now framed her face so bewitchingly, arranged in tiny curls and looping braids, and sprinkled with delicate pearls. Though he knew it could not be so - and he reviewed every meeting he had ever had with Miss Elizabeth in his mind to confirm it - he had an overwhelming, uncanny feeling that he had seen her look that way before, and that he had been, at that elusive moment, just as overcome with love for her as he found himself at present.
One dance, he reasoned again, could do no harm to either of them, and he made his way down the stairs.
London was sweltering, even for August, and Fitzwilliam Darcy was anxious to leave it. He was thankful that society in town was rather thin; he had been little inclined to company of late, and was relieved to have had few evening obligations, although on the evening in question he would have welcomed an excuse to go out, thus to avoid the unseemly bustle in the house as preparations were made for his journey to Pemberley two days hence with his sister and a party of friends. Or, at least, one friend, and the unfortunate relations attached to the man. Once amenable to the company of Mr. and Mrs. Hurst and Caroline Bingley, Darcy had for some months come to feel that they were only to be tolerated on behalf of his good friend, Charles Bingley; Bingley he had invited to Pemberley because he enjoyed his company and had a particular matter to discuss with him, but the rest he had only invited out of a sense of obligation.
Darcy paced in his study, wishing he could go to bed, early as it was, but knowing that his valet was engaged in packing his things in his dressing room, and not wanting to be bothered by the activity, he had taken refuge in his study instead. Indeed, Darcy had his own affairs to see to before he could leave town, if he could only settle his mind to the task. But the heat of the evening was more conducive to encourage the restlessness of his mind than his wonted orderly thoughts, and so he paced.
He paced, and thought of Her.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet had been a constant presence in Darcy's mind for so many months he scarcely remembered what it had been like to not know her. Surely he had had other things to think about, and other motives for the things he did each day besides trying to live up to her standard of 'gentlemanlike behavior.' For Fitzwilliam Darcy was a man reformed; having been rejected by Miss Bennet as a potential husband due to his 'arrogance, conceit, and selfish disdain for the feelings of others', not to mention his 'ungentlemanlike behavior', remembered words he still could not recall without pain, he had spent the months since then attempting to improve in civility. He did so without the hope of reward, as there was little chance he would ever see Her again, but he did not like to think that she was alive in the world and thinking ill of him without at least attending to her reproofs. Circumstances may not allow him to have her, but he would endeavor to deserve her nonetheless.
Still, months of practice had not made the exercise of civility entirely second nature to Darcy, and he was weary. Truthfully, he could not see how men like Bingley and Sir William Lucas managed to be so very agreeable to everyone all of the time. At times, he almost felt that he was not himself, like he had entered into some kind of topsy-turvy version of his normal world, and yet, he could honestly say that there had been dividends to his improved attitude. He was not yet possessed of completely open manners, but he could perceive that his more... pleasant manners were appreciated when he was in company. He realized that he had been used to give offense often, wherever he went, and that people accepted his slights without reproach because of his position in life. However, having discovered that there was at least one person who was not impressed enough with his wealth and consequence to accept his ungentlemanlike manners, Fitzwilliam Darcy had, at the age of eight and twenty, set out, with what success he knew not, to be a better man for her sake.
Yet, when the city was festering in the heat, it was just as well not to have to put his new manners to the test in company, and so, avoiding even his dear sister Georgiana, whom he could hear practicing the pianoforte across the hall, Darcy paced in solitude.
A strong sense of duty cannot allow a man to shirk his responsibilities for very long, however, and in time Darcy settled down at his desk, pushing his thoughts of Elizabeth Bennet to that special corner of his mind that they inhabited when he needed to concentrate on other things, and proceeded to sort through the papers laid out neatly in stacks on his blotter, determining which must be stowed in the leather portfolio that would accompany him to his home in Derbyshire. Missing a certain collection of correspondence that he wished to share with the steward of his estate, Darcy opened a drawer to retrieve the letters, and was momentarily halted in his actions by the sight of a certain object that lay underneath the letters in the drawer.
It was not anything unusual which gave Darcy pause, nor even something that was out of place in his desk; it was merely a volume of his own journal, the pages of which he had filled a number of months ago, and which he had placed in the desk drawer himself against the time when it would be needed for him to peruse. Absently setting aside the letters without further consideration, Darcy pulled out the journal and set it on the desk in front of him, and simply sat and stared at it for a while. It had been a matter of some curiosity for him at one time, more than one's own journal ought to be, but he had managed to put it out of his head for months now, its importance severely diminished in light of certain events that had taken place in the spring.
Eventually, however, Darcy opened the leather-bound book, and the automatic tendency of the volume to open to a particular place gave witness to the number of times that portion of the book had been studied. Darcy studied it again. A number of pages had been bound together with a sheet of paper, and sealed with wax, Darcy's own seal imprinted upon it, though he had no recollection of ever doing so. The page had, in fact, been sealed twice; it was evident that the seal had once been broken and resealed, although the notes he had apparently made next to the two seals indicated both had been placed on the same night in the middle of the previous November. Darcy had written a message to himself on this cover page, and again, though he did not recall having done so, he had proof of it in recognizing his own hand, though he had obviously written the words with uncommon haste as they did not reflect his usual careful deliberation in writing. Though not incomprehensible like his friend Bingley's scratch, it was clear that Darcy had been in something of a hurry as he wrote,
'Note to self - read the enclosed before making any
decision to propose marriage to anyone.'
The bundle of sealed pages was bulky, as if Darcy had sealed something else inside them; from the feel of it, it was a letter; he could feel the wax seal through the encasing pages. Darcy flipped past the enclosed pages to the entry written afterwards. It had apparently been written the day after the mysterious installment, based on the date noted on the paper that had been used to secure the pages. That subsequent entry gave no hint of what lay within the sealed section, but instead intensified the mystery of them - it was obvious from what Darcy had written only that next day that he had no recollection even then of having written himself what appeared to be several pages of marital advice and then sealing them up to hide them even from his own eyes. Thinking back, Darcy was surprised and a bit impressed at his own forbearance in having left the pages sealed; he certainly felt enough curiosity about them at present. But Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley was nothing if not a man of discipline, and if he had, for heaven knew what reason, deemed the information inside those pages better left unread until a certain time, he could not have broken the seal without severe self reproach.
Self reproach, sadly was an emotion Darcy had become all too familiar with in the months since his disastrous proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, and he wondered if reading the pages in his journal that were obviously meant to convey some important knowledge related to his choice of wife would have changed anything that had happened that day at the parsonage at Hunsford - in particular he wondered if his journal contained anything that would have helped him to a more felicitous outcome. But Darcy had not expected to need such advice on his journey to visit his aunt in Kent, not expecting to meet any eligible young lady there besides his cousin Anne, and knowing that he would never propose to her, in spite of his aunt's frequently aired wishes, Darcy had not thought it necessary to bring along a volume of his journal whose pages were already filled, even if it purported to carry vital information within it. By the time Darcy realized that he could no longer avoid declaring his love for Miss Elizabeth Bennet there was not time enough to send to London for the book, and so he determined that whatever the book had to say to him, he could do without such advice - his mind was made up.
Sadly, Miss Bennet's mind was made up as well, and once she had refused him, the secrets of his journal became immaterial. When he returned to London he no longer wished to know what he had written the previous November, suspecting, as he had been thrown into Miss Bennet's company for some days at that time, that whatever he had written might pertain to that lady. If that be the case, to read it would only give pain, and Darcy had put the book away at once - casting it violently into the drawer in anger, he clearly recalled that moment - never to look at it again until that hot night in August as he prepared to go home to Pemberley, where, had he only done everything differently since that fateful assembly in Meryton, Miss Elizabeth Bennet would by that time be Mrs. Darcy, mistress of Pemberley.
Darcy shook himself out of such thoughts and turned again to the entry in his journal written the day after he had sealed the pages. Aside from his stated curiosity regarding the hidden entry, Darcy had written little of note; he mentioned having something of a headache, the result of insufficient sleep and continuing rain, in addition to the continuing annoyance of Miss Bingley's attentions. He noted that the Hursts had returned from having spent a night visiting a friend of Hurst's from University. He made two remarks of interest; one to the effect that he was beginning to feel a danger in paying too much attention to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and another about Bingley's insistence that they had all played a game of sardines the previous afternoon when it had been raining, which none of the rest of the party seemed to remember. Darcy had written scornfully that he would never have played the game in such company, and he wondered at Bingley's insistence that it had occurred - but then he had suggested to Bingley that he had dreamt it, which Bingley laughingly seemed to accept. Miss Bingley had grown surly when her brother had mentioned the game, and Miss Elizabeth had looked pensive. Darcy had apparently, by his account, been both amused and irritated by his friend's nonsense. All of these things Darcy remembered quite well, but of what was secreted within those sealed pages he could form no conjecture.
Almost unconsciously, Darcy made a decision. He needed to know what he had written that night, what kind of warning or advice he had meant to give himself about choosing a wife. After all, he had fulfilled his duty to himself in waiting until he had made his choice before opening the message, and whatever was written inside was immaterial now, since he would never marry anyone if he could not marry Elizabeth Bennet. Swiftly, Darcy broke the seal on the pages and removed the sheet that had hidden his writing from view for all those months. In doing so, he dropped the item enclosed inside onto the floor, and in bending to pick it up, was confronted with an even more peculiar mystery. It was a letter, as he had conjectured, directed, most curiously, to The Great Darcy, in a hand he did not recognize. Puzzled at such a ludicrous appellation, Darcy turned the letter over to look at the seal; it was intact, the letter had not been opened before being sealed up inside the pages of the book. The seal was unfamiliar to Darcy as well, and rather than an initial or a crest, depicted a crude rendering of a mythical creature - a centaur.
Deciding that the letter would best be tackled after reading his own words, Darcy, with something of nervousness, took his journal into his hands and, settling himself back into his chair, began to read.
Posted on: 2009-07-17
For reasons that will in due course be explained, I find it incumbent upon me to record in this journal the very strange events that have taken place here at Netherfield Park on this day, -- of November 18--. For reasons that will shortly be stated, I must preserve this account before it is lost to memory, and though I am aware that when I finally chance to read these pages, which I hope will be when I am preparing to offer my hand to Miss Elizabeth Bennet, the events herein recorded will seem impossible to be true, I hereby state that I, Fitzwilliam Darcy, am sound in mind and body, and that such proofs as can be proffered to support this extraordinary account will be found in the hands of my solicitor, Mr. Xavier Wells, of -- Street, London.
This afternoon, in order to stave off the boredom that has beset us all due to yet another day of rain, I, Bingley, Miss Bingley, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet decided to play a game of sardines. I will recount honestly in these pages that I only agreed to play when Miss Elizabeth consented to join the game; having recently begun to develop an admiration for that lady, I, with a combination of reluctance and fascination, decided that I would take advantage of the possibility of being afforded some time alone with Miss Elizabeth, for what purpose I still know not. Miss Elizabeth was selected to hide, and I listened carefully when she left the room in order that I might detect some clue as to her destination, having a very great desire to find her before the others did. In a manner of speaking, I succeeded...
The tale continued with an extraordinary account of an adventure that Darcy experienced with Miss Elizabeth and Miss Bingley when Miss Elizabeth's chosen hiding place of Miss Bingley's wardrobe led all three into the strange world of Darcinia. Darcy had written a very detailed account of having been abducted by centaurs; having feasted with myriad creatures of myth; discovering that Miss Bingley was the queen of that peculiar land, and that she and Darcy were the cause of the volatile climate there; hiking across the countryside to confront the deranged Miss Bingley, and try to find a way home; Elizabeth having been abducted by flying monkeys; and Darcy having to slay a magical serpent in order to rescue her from certain death. Each event Darcy had recounted was more incredible than the last, but more intriguing than all the strange adventures was Darcy's account of his blossoming love for Miss Elizabeth Bennet. The atmosphere of Darcinia, or so his message declared, intensified his feelings for her and decreased the inhibitions that in the real world hindered his expression of them for so long. According to his own account, not only had Darcy confessed his love to Elizabeth, but they had actually married in Darcinia, and she had subsequently confessed an affection for him, as well!
Darcy's mind reeled as he read his written testimonial - it all seemed so impossible, and yet, at the same time, so real. Tantalizing images played at the back of his mind as he read, and yet, he questioned himself as to how such things could have occurred without him remembering them - or either Miss Bingley or Miss Bennet remembering either, for that matter, because he was convinced by their behavior since then that they were as unaware of the events he had recorded as he was. His forgetfulness was explained at the end of the tale, however. A certain sphinx named Moira, the orchestrator of all that had happened to them during their time in Darcinia, had compelled them all to drink a potion to erase their memories of the events. Darcy felt an intense pang of regret. He could not but grieve when he considered the events of the last eight months, and how they would have been different if he and Elizabeth had only been allowed to remember that they loved each other, and had acknowledged it openly, not only to themselves and each other, but to the world at large. He would not have fled Hertfordshire after the Netherfield Ball; Elizabeth would not have been so ready to believe the lies of George Wickham. He was even certain that he would not have interfered in the relationship between Bingley and Jane Bennet, and might even have turned a blind eye to the impropriety of the rest of the Bennet family. At the very least he would have been wary of Miss Bingley, and would not have trusted her motives in desiring to separate her brother from Miss Bennet!
Darcy was near despair when he reached that part of the tale that told of Miss Elizabeth's confession to him, when they had returned to the wardrobe, that she loved him, and of her kiss upon his cheek; he was desperate to know if it could really have happened, and then, the last part of his account gave him hope.
'This is a faithful narrative of every event which occurred when I followed Miss Elizabeth Bennet through Miss Caroline Bingley's wardrobe into the land of Darcinia (now, I hope, Lizziland); and if, in reading this, I do not absolutely reject it as false, this will, I hope, assist in any decision about the future course of my life. For the truth of everything here related, there are, for obvious reasons, no other witnesses to offer testimony. I am not, however, a man known for flights of fancy, and must trust to my own personal belief in my sanity and rationality. There remains but one means of proof - I will send the two rings, inscribed as I have above noted, and sealed in a dated note relating their provenance, to my solicitor, with the instructions that he is neither to open the packet, nor ever mention its existence to me, but to give it to me only when I ask for it, which I shall most assuredly do immediately when I have read these pages once again.
Fitzwilliam M. Darcy
-- November, 18--
Netherfield Park, Hertfordshire
Darcy's heart quickened as he read the words that offered his proof - the existence of the rings would confirm the tale's veracity, and Darcy resolved to pay a visit to his solicitor in the morning to collect the packet and see for himself if the story was true. Darcy then noted that a 'p.s.' had been added to the bottom of the page, the note said that before he left Darcinia, a centaur named Fitzwilliam, who had figured prominently in the tale, had given him a letter. Darcy had apparently chosen not to open it at the time, but had put it in his pocket and then forgotten it until he retired to his room for the night and found it as he was undressing for bed. He had then, according to the note, for of course, he could not remember doing it, unsealed the pages of the journal that he had enclosed earlier that evening and sealed the letter inside without reading it; apparently he had decided that, as he was soon to forget the entire episode, there was no need to read the letter at that time. This accounted for the fact that the pages had been unsealed and then resealed on the same evening, and Darcy, filled with wonder and burning curiosity, turned his attention to the letter and broke its seal with alacrity - and trembling hands.
As he began to read the words contained in the centaur's letter Darcy's heart wrenched in disappointment.
To the Great Darcy,
I am aware, sir, that you do not wish to be addressed thusly, but after the events that have recently unfolded I find that I cannot do otherwise; you are, sir, the greatest hero to ever walk our land. I cannot properly express my deep admiration and thanks to you for what you have done for all of Darcinia, nor my regret to have discovered that we Darcinians have been so grievously deceived by one of our own, and you and the Beloved Eliza have been so needlessly endangered on our behalf. Your bravery and sacrifices for the people of Darcinia will never be forgotten by any of us.
I must now state the true purpose of this letter, which Moira would stop me giving to you if she knew; I am surprised that she does not seem to suspect that I intend to circumvent her commands, but she sometimes suffers a kind of blindness to the failure in others to share her opinions of what is right. I disagree with Moira's insistence that you and the Beloved Eliza be required to drink the forgetfulness potion before you leave here. I can see why Miss Bingley would desire to forget everything that happened here, but I do not comprehend that you and the Beloved Eliza can have any regrets; nor do I think that there can be any harm, for either the people of this land or for yourselves, in the two of you returning to your home with your memories of this place intact. You should both be allowed to retain the memories of your noble deeds on behalf of all Darcinians, especially as you have both been treated abominably by one of our own. Therefore, I am going to offer you the opportunity to retain your memories of Darcinia, even after drinking Moira's forgetfulness potion.
There are several methods by which you may retain these memories, and the most affective and foolproof one would be to take an antidote when you have returned to your own land, before you go to sleep, thereby negating the effects of the forgetfulness potion before it takes hold...
Darcy felt numb. A chance had been offered for him to retain the memories of the events of that day, of his changed feelings for Elizabeth and her love for him, and he had neglected to read the letter from the centaur in time to prevent the loss of those memories. Darcy nearly decided to throw the letter into the fireplace and set it alight without reading the rest, but, in spite of feeling discouraged, he chose to read on. Fitzwilliam the Centaur proceeded to instruct Darcy in the concoction of an immediate antidote to the potion that had robbed him of the memory of Elizabeth's kiss - a kind of tea made from herbs that he could easily have acquired at Netherfield that night. Darcy set the letter aside to look again at the journal, and as if trying to exasperate himself further, reread his account of Elizabeth's tears that evening as she bid him goodnight, knowing that she was going not just to sleep, but to a kind of oblivion where their love for each other would be lost. Darcy scoffed at his own optimism at that time, that having discovered their love once, they would discover it again. He had certainly done so, but in the interim he had treated Elizabeth and those she loved so badly as to ensure that she did not experience the same reawakening of affection. Anger welled up inside him as he picked up the letter again to continue; Fitzwilliam the Centaur had written more beyond the receipt for the antidote, and Darcy was determined to know all. It was not long before the centaur's words began to excite him with hope once again.
If the potion is allowed to take full affect, I am afraid that there is nothing that can be done to reverse its effects, but if, by chance, it is not given the chance to reach its full potency, your memories might be recovered by another method...
Darcy's hands shook as he read on.
As was explained to you, Darcinian potions work in one of two ways; either they take effect immediately and wear off when the imbiber sleeps, or they do not take effect until the imbiber sleeps, but are then permanent. The forgetfulness potion is of this second kind, but there is a caveat involving such potions - they will only take effect permanently if the imbiber sleeps soundly and continuously for at least ten hours after drinking it. If the sleep is disturbed, or not of the requisite time, the potion's effects can be counteracted later by an antidote, though one of more difficult concoction than the one I told you of already. It is perhaps useful to note that the effects of an antidote are always permanent, and that they do not follow the same rules; when an antidote is ingested, its effects will be immediate, but gradual, and enduring. In your own case, for example, you will be hit with a rush of fragmented memories, but not all the memories of your time here will come at once; the rest will slowly regain their place in your mind. I will here include the receipt for this antidote as well, but it will only work if you do not allow the forgetfulness potion to take permanent effect with a long, undisturbed night's sleep. You will know, I think, if the forgetfulness potion was fully activated because if not, you will retain fleeting portions of memories of your time here in Darcinia...
Darcy was stunned, excited, and bewildered by this new information. He thought back to the last several months, and remembered a number of times, particularly when he was in the company of Elizabeth Bennet, when he had been teased by images in his mind that were like memories, but of events that at the time he did not believe could be real. He even remembered having been surprised on meeting the Bennets' cousin, Lady Catherine de Bourgh's vicar Mr. Collins, by having felt as if he had seen the man before; Darcy now wondered if the first head of the serpent he had described in his journal, that of a clergyman, had perhaps been that of Mr. Collins.
Recalling his shock at being rejected by Elizabeth when he had proposed to her, and his utter disbelief that when he had been under the impression that she welcomed his attentions, affections, and proposals, she had really despised him all along, Darcy began to wonder if it was the latent memories of Elizabeth's decidedly more positive feelings after their adventure in Darcinia that had caused him to think that she felt for him the way he felt for her. Could those memories have done that, could they have affected his outlook on their relationship? If, that is, he still retained any of those memories.
Suddenly remembering something else from his journal, Darcy flipped to the pages written the day just after his extraordinary account of the adventure in Darcinia, and in stark black ink, right there in the pages of his own journal he had noted that on the night in question he had not slept well - and even if he had, Darcy was certain that in the whole course of his life, except in times of illness, he had never slept ten hours in one night. His heart skipped a beat when he realized the portent of these facts - he would be able to use an antidote to recover his memories of Darcinia, where Elizabeth Bennet had come to love him. And if he could recover his memories, perhaps... But it was too soon to think of any other possibilities, other hopes. Time enough to consider what may happen if he should chance to meet Elizabeth Bennet again. Fleetingly wondering if there was any civil way to ascertain if she had slept well on the night after their adventure all those months ago at Netherfield, Darcy grabbed the centaur's letter once again to read the instructions on how to recover the memories he was now certain were retained somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, waiting to be freed.
The instructions to brew the potion were fairly straightforward, but were indeed more difficult than simply brewing a cup of herbal tea - if indeed the steps the centaur had told him he must take were even physically possible; he had, at least, every incentive to try. It could not be accomplished in London, however, that much was clear, with the ingredients he would need to acquire - he would have to do it in the country. Darcy became anxious to return immediately to Pemberley, no longer willing even to wait one more day to make the journey. He decided on the instant that he would not wait, he would leave for his home in Derbyshire at the earliest possible hour in the morning. He would stop to see Bingley before he left town on the morrow, and arrange for Georgiana to be included in his friends' traveling party. To reach Pemberley as soon as possible was now everything to him, as Pemberley, always his beloved home, was now become a place of hope.
Georgiana Darcy found that when she concentrated on her music, she could forget much of what troubled her, whether it be the oppressive heat of the city or her brother's melancholy, and so she played with diligent attention whenever her brother chose to secrete himself in his study of an evening. Never a gregarious man, Darcy had always at least enjoyed ease in his sister's company, and so it concerned her when he chose to isolate himself from her; it filled her with guilt, too, as she worried at such times that her indiscretion of the previous summer had made him think ill of her and filled him with a disgust for her company. And yet, he was at all other times so kind and gentle with her that Georgiana could not believe it of him, and so, she conceded, after all, elder brothers who are also guardians of young ladies more than ten years their junior do not tend to confide their problems to their sisters. Such ponderings were unprofitable, therefore, and so, while Darcy brooded, as on the night in question, while her companion, Mrs. Annesley sat quietly stitching, Georgiana played, and played, and played.
Suddenly the two ladies were startled by the master of the house bursting into the music room in a state of unusual agitation that might almost be called excitement. Georgiana could see that her brother clutched a letter in his hand. She had not heard any kind of messenger arriving, but she knew that when she became absorbed in the difficult fingering of a piece of music she was apt to become insensible of the things that went on around her. She would have been alarmed at the meaning of the missive if she did not detect more of hopefulness and, perhaps, happiness in her brother's countenance than she had seen there in many a month. Before she could ask him anything of the contents of the letter, however, he made of her an urgent request.
"Georgiana, I have a very great favor to beg of you."
"Anything, Fitzwilliam, you know you have only to ask."
"I find that I must leave for Derbyshire sooner than I had planned; first thing tomorrow, in fact. Would you mind terribly if I left you and Mrs. Annesley to travel with the Bingleys and the Hursts and went on ahead of the party a day early? I am informed that I have some very important business at Pemberley, and I am loath to leave it even for one additional day longer."
Darcy could see that his sister was anxious at the prospect of traveling without him in such company, but he knew she would voice no objection - it was not in her nature. He did not like to take advantage of her compliant disposition, but he could not bear to spend another day in London simply waiting to depart when he could be acting on the extraordinary information he had just received.
"Of course, Fitzwilliam, we shall do as you wish - I would never want to interfere with your responsibilities. We shall be perfectly well attended to with the Bingleys and Hursts, do not you think so, Mrs. Annesley?"
Mrs. Annesley could have no objection, as she was paid to acquiesce to Mr. Darcy's judgment in such matters, and so Darcy, with a guilty pang of regret for his sister's likely mental discomfort on her journey, thanked both ladies for their understanding under the circumstances and moved with haste towards the door. His progress was arrested by an anxiously voiced question from his sister.
"I hope you have not received bad news?"
Darcy turned and saw that her attention was focused on the letter in his hand. He moved quickly to where she sat at the pianoforte and impetuously kissed the bewildered young lady on the forehead, aware that his behavior was odd and likely exciting questions in both Georgiana and Mrs. Annesley, though he did not think it probable that they would discuss it. Mrs. Annesley was too correct for that, and Darcy was grateful for it.
"No, not bad news at all," he reassured, and, without another word, quit the room.
Thinking quickly of what needed to be done to facilitate his early departure for the country, Darcy rushed to his own room to inform his valet that he would be traveling in the morning, and instructed him to pack a bag with the necessities of a rapid journey on horseback. As soon as he had made these arrangements, Darcy hurried back to his study to begin pacing anew, hardly able to contain his impatience to be at Pemberley, having a task to perform there that could alter the entire course of his life, and in the most wonderful way imaginable.
The mysterious entry in his journal, and the letter than had been secured therein, fueled Darcy's extreme agitation. The story recounted there, in his own hand, was one that was too sensational to be believed, and yet, some faint echo in his memory told him that it was true. Still clutching the astonishing letter in his hand, Darcy reached for the journal once again and flung himself into a chair to consider the wondrous intelligence he had encountered within its pages. He thought back to what his world had been only an hour before, before he had read, with growing amazement, the tale recording the strange adventure he had experienced in a land called Darcinia.
Opening the leather-bound volume again, Darcy flipped through the pages - the journal was filled with Elizabeth. Darcy laughed bitterly to himself as he read the things he had written at various times during his stay at Netherfield - he could see through hindsight how he had been deceiving himself. It was painful to read. He began to reread the pages that had brought him such wonder and hope, but as he read, his certainty that the events recounted could be real began to flag. He wished it were possible to retrieve the promised proof, in the shape of the two rings, from his solicitor that very night. It was, he realized, technically possible; if Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley were to write a note to Mr. Xavier Wells, Attorney at Law, and direct him to find the mysterious packet and have it delivered to his townhouse immediately, his order would no doubt be obeyed with alacrity, but excitement and hope had not yet caused him to abandon all civility. He had at least learned from Miss Elizabeth Bennet's harsh assessment of his character that consideration was due to all persons, no matter their rank, and therefore he could not hope to hold the proof in his hands until morning. If only there was another way to know if the story was true...
Darcy returned his attention to Fitzwilliam the Centaur's letter. There was another way; Fitzwilliam had given it to him. Darcy slowly folded the letter and placed it inside the book, marking the pages of his tale. He placed the book on the table by his chair, and after a moment's hesitation, moved to the door of his study. He opened it quietly and looked out. There was no one in the hall; the house was quiet. No more music issued from the drawing room where Georgiana had earlier been playing; a glance at the clock told him that she and Mrs. Annesley had likely retired for the night. There were candles lit in the hall, to light his way when he decided to retire himself, but no servants were in evidence. Darcy quietly closed the door and turned the key in the lock, pocketing it when he had done so. With a deep breath, he turned, and with resolute steps, crossed the room to the fireplace, his gaze never leaving the mirror that hung above it, though in his determination he registered his own reflection not at all. He saw beyond his reflection, beyond the surface of the mirror, and wondered, 'Can it be true?'
Posted on: 2009-07-24
Three nights following the disclosure of the stunning events in his journal found Fitzwilliam Darcy in his bedchamber at Pemberley, staring out at the moonlit night with a tumult of emotions swirling in his head and roiling his insides. The enormity of what he was about to do overwhelmed him.
He had seen Elizabeth. Darcy had discovered her, along with her aunt and uncle from London, the very relations he had scorned months ago, walking on the grounds of Pemberley when he arrived the day before; they were on a Northern tour, and, thinking that he would be from home, had come to see the house and grounds, as many tourists did in the summer months.
The appearance of Elizabeth Bennet in the neighborhood at just that moment added a new sense of rightness and urgency to Darcy's determination to recover his memories of Darcinia, and her obvious softening of feelings towards him gave him hope that she no longer despised him, which opened to his mind a world of new opportunities. When he had first discovered that he might be able to reclaim the lost memories of Darcinia, he had been excited about the prospect, and hopeful for the future, but it was not until he was alone on his journey to Pemberley from London, when he was really able to think about the situation, that he realized that it would do him little good to recover the memories if he was not to see Elizabeth again. At best they could be a comfort to him, but they could not help him to win her. But if she was in Derbyshire, and he managed to successfully concoct his antidote...
Elizabeth had agreed to allow an introduction to Georgiana when Darcy had asked her, and he had performed that ritual that very morning when his sister arrived from London. And now, Elizabeth would be dining at Pemberley in two days time, giving him two days to prepare the antidote to the forgetfulness potion so that both she and he could imbibe it and begin to remember the adventure they had shared, and the love they had both confessed.
Darcy moved away from the window and picked up a satchel and a lantern with a lit candle inside it from a table. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves. The weather was on his side; a propitious moon shone over the grounds of Pemberley - Darcy had consulted almanacs to ascertain the time of rising and setting of the moon, and even with having waited until after midnight, he had several hours to complete his task, which he felt assured would be sufficient. All the same, he had watched the progress of the moon in its ascent since it had risen that afternoon with a certain degree of anxiety. His anticipation had already been increased by one day when the previous night had turned rainy; the receipt for the potion clearly stated that all the ingredients must be gathered by moonlight, and though it sounded like a silly, superstitious requirement, Darcy would not risk failure by neglecting to follow the instructions to the letter. Besides, the entire notion of the antidote was preposterous in the extreme, but Darcy was willing, determined, desirous even, to believe in it.
From somewhere in the house, Darcy heard a clock chime the hour - half past midnight. He was relieved that his sister and all of his guests had claimed fatigue from their journey and gone to bed early. He did not want to encounter anyone and have to explain where he was going, dressed as he was for outdoor activities. Checking one last time to be sure he had the list of items he needed to collect, he left his room, pausing in the doorway to make sure no one would witness his departure.
Darcy did not head for an outside door however, when he left his room; having descended the stairs he took himself quietly to the grand ballroom of Pemberley. Pleased to be unobserved, Darcy crossed the parquet as noiselessly as his booted feet would allow, halting at the far side of the room in front of one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that ran the entire length of the wall, producing a magical effect whenever there had been a ball held at Pemberley, an event which had not happened in many a year, nor even many times within the current master's lifetime. Pushing away the fleeting thought that if his mission worked out as planned, there may soon be reason to open the doors of his home for such a gala once again, and surprised to find that he would welcome such an occasion, Darcy put his lantern down on the floor and stepped up to the mirror, spreading his hands flat against the cold glass.
The trip through the mirror was easier on this second attempt. In spite of the fact that he had already successfully tried the technique in London on the night he read the instructions how to do so in Fitzwilliam the Centaur's letter, Darcy was still nervous that it would not work. But it did work, and it was a much simpler thing to pass through the mirror into the Looking Glass World from a position standing on the floor than from a perch on the mantelpiece in his study. As he had crouched before the mirror three nights previous, Darcy had developed a sudden appreciation for the absurdly large chimney pieces his aunt favored in her rooms at Rosings, and chuckled at the thought of her using them for the purpose he was attempting. But balancing on the mantel was the hardest part of the operation; following Fitzwilliam's instructions, Darcy had quickly found himself on the other side of the reflective glass, and was so astonished to be there, he had promptly fallen off the mantel, landing hard on the floor and acquiring bruises he was still feeling three days since. That particular journey to the Looking Glass World, as the centaur had called it, had been brief; picking himself up off the floor, he had not even taken a look around 'his' study before climbing back onto the mantel and returning to his own world, taking care, in spite of his haste, not to repeat his fall. The brief expedition had been enough to convince him that everything in his journal could be real, and that if he did everything the letter told him to do, he would soon be reveling in the memories of his adventure with Elizabeth and her confession of affection for him, rather than merely trusting to the hearsay of his own testimony.
The technique was rather simple, and consisted in flattening one's hands against the mirror while focusing not on one's own reflection, but on some other point in the room beyond the glass. A gentle, gliding push was then all it took to break through the barrier to the other world. Darcy performed it with ease and stepped through the glass.
Once safely on the other side of the looking glass, Darcy picked up the lantern he found there on the floor, the mirrored reflection of the one he had placed just so before entering the Looking Glass World. Though he should have expected it to be so, he marveled when he noticed that in moving the lantern on his side, the one he could see through the glass did not move. He paused there in the ballroom in the Looking Glass World's version of Pemberley and consulted Fitzwilliam's letter once again by the light of the lantern.
"You may be concerned about the consequences of meeting yourself on the other side; do not regard it. As soon as you have broken through, your Looking Glass self will cease to exist. If you turn back to the mirror after you pass through, you will be able to see back into your own world, but you will not see a reflection of yourself there."
Darcy had not put this idea to the test on his first foray; the truth of it was evident now, and he could not help looking back into his Pemberley, which was more like looking through a window than into a mirror. He could see the room, or what little there was to see of it, shrouded as it was in darkness, lit only by the single candle he had left on the floor, but he could see no image of himself. A shiver ran down his spine and he turned his attention back to the letter.
You will, however, likely meet other people with whom you seem to be acquainted while you are in the Looking Glass World, even many whom, not being near to your location in the real world, you would not expect to meet in the corresponding location of the Looking Glass World, but you must remember that these are only reflections of the people you know, not the people themselves. When people in the real world are not within view of a mirror, their reflections live a life of their own, and it can be a decidedly peculiar existence they lead. Therefore they may act in a manner foreign to your experience of them, and perhaps you are assuming that as the mirror shows images in reverse that you are therefore seeing people opposite to the way they are in reality - this is not necessarily the case. The Looking Glass World will actually show you a slightly distorted reflection of their true selves. You may be surprised to learn that they are fully aware of what they are, and that there are rules to their existence that they must follow - they may not appear within a mirror if their real world counterparts are not in view of a mirror, and they must appear when their counterparts are in view of a mirror. How they know when they should and should not be in a given place is known only to those of the Looking Glass World.
Other than the two rules I mentioned, there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to the ways of the Looking Glass World. In no way should you expect anything beyond the view of a mirror to be the same as it is in your world. You may even find yourself changed. I do not know why; in my world, which you have come to know as Darcinia, there are those who have studied it, but no one can say the true nature of what you will find through the looking glass...
The warning intrigued Darcy. He wondered whom he might meet, and in what way they would behave that would appear strange. He wondered if he might meet an image of Elizabeth, and whether that 'reflection' of her would meet him as a friend or an enemy, and whether he would be able to discern anything of the feelings of the real Elizabeth from her Looking Glass World self. Darcy read on.
The places you may go in the Looking Glass World may also be altered. Anyplace that is not reflected in a mirror somewhere in your world will not be guaranteed to look the same, or be in the same location, or even exist in the Looking Glass World. Hopefully this will not impede your ability to find the ingredients for the antidote, but not having visited your world, I can offer no advice to you on this matter.
No one you encounter in Looking Glass World can do you any real harm, nor is it clear that any harm you do to them, or that the inhabitants of that world may do to each other, will have any discernible effect on their counterparts in the real world, but there is one very important restriction you must place on your behavior, and that is that you must not eat or drink anything while you are there that you did not bring there yourself.
That instruction was explained no further, and it worried Darcy. As it was only a warning without any intimation of the consequences of disobeying it, he was determined that he would take it very seriously, for which reason his satchel held both food and drink against the possibility that he should become hungry during his quest, which seemed to him very likely, his nervous excitement having kept his appetite at bay during dinner with his guests, a circumstance he was very chagrined to find had been noted by Miss Bingley, who affected concern for his well-being throughout the entire meal. Still, he appreciated the warnings and reassurances Fitzwilliam had given him - it was a far sight more information than he had had when he entered Darcinia, and he would have benefitted a great deal from a few warnings of what to expect from that somewhat treacherous locale.
You need not fear that the ingredients which you bring back to your world will harm you, however, when you make the potion and consume it on your side of the mirror. The effect they will have once removed from the Looking Glass World will be to counteract the potion you took in Darcinia - as mirrors reverse images, if one wishes to reverse the effects of a potion, the ingredients for the antidote must, I reiterate, come from the opposite side of the mirror. The antidote will not have any effect unless every single one of the ingredients comes from that opposite world.
Quickly skimming the rest of the letter, which contained various hints and warnings of what he might encounter, and what he ought to avoid, Darcy found only one more note that he felt needed his especial attention: 'for the sake of the sanity of those who might see you on the other side, try to avoid being near any mirrors while you are in the Looking Glass World.' It made him smile, as he could not imagine who among those in the house would even be awake to be looking in a mirror at such an hour. Darcy pocketed the page, and taking a deep breath, made his way across the darkened room to the glass doors that led out to the terrace. As he pulled aside the curtains, opened the door, and stepped through, he failed to hear the gasp of the young lady who had just followed him through the looking glass.
Posted on: 2009-07-31
Georgiana Darcy was not precisely worried about her brother, it would be more accurate to say she was intrigued by the unusual changes in his behavior since the night before he left London, the night he had come bursting in on her as she played the pianoforte and announced that it was imperative that he return at once to Pemberley. He had received some sort of letter that had obviously called for his immediate return to his estate, but he had given his sister no hint of what the letter contained, or whom it was from. "Important business," he had said.
Then when Georgiana had arrived at Pemberley that very morning, she had found a brother very unlike the one she had been living with in London for the past few months, for the brother who greeted her as she emerged from the carriage, who, indeed, had barely waited for the carriage to come to a complete halt before opening the door and seeking her attention, was as different from that somber, withdrawn man as night differed from day. Fitzwilliam was suddenly... cheerful. He was obviously positively bursting to tell her something, but for all his impatience to impart his stunning news, he waited until all of his guests were inside and being led up the stairs by a series of servants to refresh themselves in their rooms before he pulled his sister into the library and announced that as soon as she had freshened her attire and enjoyed a late breakfast, he wanted her to pay a call with him, to see a young woman who was visiting in Lambton.
As if such a request, and the eagerness with which he presented it to her were not astonishing enough, the revelation of the name of the lady in question came as a positive shock. Georgiana had long known the name Elizabeth Bennet, and long wondered about the woman who had so obviously fascinated her brother in both Hertfordshire and Kent, and yet about whom her brother was so reluctant to speak to her, even though his letters from both of those places were filled with mentions of Miss Bennet. That he had apparently rushed from London to Derbyshire to meet with her - for Georgiana had concluded that it was news of Miss Bennet's presence in the neighborhood that had been imparted by the letter - was both gravely important and perfectly delightful to Georgiana, confirming what she had suspected for months, that her brother was head over heels in love with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
The conviction of Fitzwilliam's great affection for Miss Bennet added greatly to Georgiana's nervousness in meeting the young lady, but feeling assured that they would soon be sisters provided her with a powerful impetus to make a good impression on her brother's love, and she could only hope that she had succeeded; her brother had been more than usually gregarious himself, and had forwarded every least attempt at conversation between the ladies, though at least equally occupied in making himself agreeable to Miss Bennet's relations. The later addition of Mr. Bingley, who had discovered their errand and insisted on joining them, to their party made everything easy, and when Fitzwilliam reassured his sister on the ride back to Pemberley that he was convinced that Miss Bennet (he nearly slipped, Georgiana noted, and called her Elizabeth) had liked her very well indeed, she found herself able to accept his assurances with a certain degree of cautious confidence.
For the rest of the day, Georgiana had observed her brother carefully, and was both pleased and amazed at the changes in him. Indeed, the only thing that seemed to cloud his enjoyment of anything was the sour disposition of Miss Bingley, who acted most displeased to find where they had gone, and when Georgiana expressed a regret that Miss Bingley had been unaware of their visit and therefore unable to join them, turned still more disagreeable. In fact, Georgiana had been almost fearful of the expression on Miss Bingley's face when that lady was informed that Miss Elizabeth Bennet and her relations, the Gardiners, were to dine at Pemberley in two days time.
However, as the evening had worn on, Georgiana noticed that Fitzwilliam had become increasingly agitated, and she did not believe it was from the excess of Miss Bingley's solicitous attentions. She knew better than to ask him about it, however, knowing as she did his propensity for keeping his own counsel. Therefore, when she finally grew weary of Miss Bingley's stifling attentions to herself, Georgiana claimed to be feeling the fatigue of her journey and took herself off to her own rooms at an early hour.
She did not, however, go to bed. Georgiana had led a very solitary life, and was well able to keep herself amused for the remainder of the evening on her own, and with the new developments between her brother and Miss Bennet, Georgiana had plenty to occupy her mind once a separation from Miss Bingley provided her with leisure to do so. The subject proved so intriguing, in fact, that Georgiana was startled when the chiming of a clock alerted her to the late hour, and was just about to ring for her maid to help her undress when she heard a door closing out in the corridor.
The guest quarters at Pemberley were in a very different wing than the family chambers, and though Miss Bingley had hinted repeatedly that she would very much like to stay in that wing of the house, Georgiana knew that the only other occupied rooms in that hallway was were her brother's and Mrs. Annesley's. Mrs. Annesley had gone to her rooms when her young charge had retired, and it did not sound like it was her door, and Georgiana knew that Fitzwilliam had also already retired to his room at least an hour before, and so was curious about his reason for leaving it so late at night. Deciding on the instant that she would like to speak to him about the events of the day, giving herself the excuse that she wanted her brother once again to reassure her that Miss Bennet had been pleased with her acquaintance, Georgiana decided to intercept Fitzwilliam as he was leaving. Slipping quietly to her door, she opened it, but her hail to the man in the hall died on her lips as she noticed that he was dressed for the outdoors, with some kind of satchel slung over his shoulder and a lantern in his hand, and proceeding along the corridor in what could only be interpreted as a stealthy manner. Her curiosity, not to mention a good deal of alarm, were aroused, and almost without thinking, Georgiana reached for her cloak and, without even taking a candle, followed her brother into the darkness.
Shod in her light indoor slippers, Georgiana had no difficulty in trailing her quarry undetected across the lush carpet, nor even down the marble stairs. She expected Fitzwilliam to proceed to the front door of the house, and was puzzled when he instead turned away from that portal and proceeded to a most unexpected room - the ballroom. In the whole course of her life, Georgiana did not think she had seen her brother enter that room above five times - why would he suddenly decide to visit it in the dead of night? A shiver overtook her, but the moment Fitzwilliam had slipped through the door, Georgiana hurried after him. She waited a few moments before venturing to follow him into the room, planning, she thought, to alert him to her presence and ask him if there was anything amiss, but when she had slipped through the door herself, the sight that greeted her eyes was so curious, she found herself unable to speak. There, on the other side of the room, was her brother, his lantern on the floor beside him and his hands slowly caressing the glass of the mirrored wall. But that was not nearly as astonishing as the sight of her brother disappearing through the mirror and vanishing into the darkness on the other side.
Had anyone stopped her and questioned her, Miss Caroline Bingley could have offered no account of herself, nor her reasons for lurking in the shadows of the family wing of Pemberley after all the house had retired for the night. She had been driven there by emotions she would not have cared to admit: jealousy, curiosity, avarice, and boredom.
Caroline had only retired early because everyone else in the party had done so. She was not the least bit tired. But when she had finished scolding her maid for the manner in which her things had been unpacked and stowed in the wardrobe of her very elegant guest suite, Caroline found herself with nothing to do. She had no facility for amusing herself; she only pretended to enjoy reading when in the company of those who were inclined to think that a woman who read was an accomplished woman, and there was obviously no instrument in her bedchamber on which she could practice her music, though her musical endeavors she also employed more as a means of attracting the attentions of others than as a means of amusing herself. She had attempted to visit her sister's chamber to share some conversation with the one person in the house whom she thought might be willing to commiserate with her over the disastrous coincidence of Eliza Bennet appearing in Derbyshire at just that time, but Louisa, a poor traveler even in a carriage as well appointed as Mr. Darcy's, had been sincere about wanting to retire, and when Caroline entered her room without knocking, Louisa was discovered to be already soundly sleeping. That she did not waken her elder sister and demand her attention can more rightly be attributed to Caroline's knowledge that it would be nearly impossible to rouse Louisa once she had begun to snore, than from any sisterly consideration on Caroline's part.
Before she had taken more than a few steps back in the direction of her own room, a tantalizing idea presented itself to Caroline. She had long wished she could stay in the family quarters at Pemberley. All of her hinting to that end had never garnered her so much as a tour - not that her visits to that great estate had been as lengthy or numerous as she allowed her general acquaintance to think, one three-day stopover on a journey with her brother and sister to visit relatives farther north being the extent of her tenure there, and here she was, on a visit that was to last a number of weeks - longer, if she could manage it - and all she wanted was to sleep where the family slept, believing as she did that she was destined some day to be a member of the family - and not just as sister-in-law to Georgiana due to a match with Charles, either. She could not wait for that - Georgiana was not yet even out, it would be years before Caroline could hope to get her brother married off to Darcy's sister. No, Caroline meant to be mistress of the house, and the idea that she would be was so firmly fixed in her mind that she felt entitled to be sleeping in the family wing even now - and all of her hints about the kind of view she would dearly love to see out of her window (as if Caroline Bingley wasted any of her time looking out of windows at views!) when she woke in the morning, a view that coincidentally, one might only obtain from windows in that particular wing of the house, had fallen on deaf ears - and that no one had ever even shown her the rooms rankled her.
Caroline had, of course, seen the family wing, in spite of the reluctance on the part of the Darcys to admit her there. She had made good use of her time on her previous visit, and had managed to slip away to view a few of the rooms undetected. One particular suite she had studied in such minute detail that she was able later to recall it perfectly enough to have the rooms reproduced exactly - a feat Caroline could attribute to her excellent memory. She had nearly been caught twice - once by a housemaid, and once by Mr. Darcy's valet, but she had ultimately returned from the expeditions unscathed, resisting the overwhelming temptation to take away a souvenir from her adventure only because she did not want to cause suspicion. Her observation of Darcy's man's meticulous counting of cravats convinced her that to remove any item would not go unnoticed. Caroline had wondered at the time whether to have such a particular personage in service to one's husband would prove to be a blessing or an annoyance, and further speculated on how difficult it would be to convince Mr. Darcy to dismiss the man if the latter proved to be the case.
Still, her examination of the rooms had never been completed, and her desire to spend the night in one of them suddenly became overwhelming, and the combined forces of curiosity and covetousness drew her away from her assigned quarters, led her astray, as it were.
Or perhaps it was all the wine Caroline had drunk at dinner that urged her down the corridor. Or the sherry she had sipped afterwards. After all, how else was she to be expected to endure a conversation that so frequently included mentions of the presence of Miss Eliza Bennet not five miles from Pemberley, and that insufferable chit's impending descent upon the house as an invited guest - and with her relations in trade, no less? Really, it had been all Caroline could manage to remain civil and keep turning the conversation to more congenial subjects, such as her affection for Georgiana, her admiration of Mr. Darcy's home, her admiration for Mr. Darcy, her perfect delight in Derbyshire, and her lifelong dream of living in that county, infinitely superior to Hertfordshire, and with such superior company of a non-confined, pleasantly varying kind - though she would of course be perfectly happy to spend several months of every year living in a fine house in town. In fact, she would have been happy to live anywhere Mr. Darcy liked to live. She would trust his judgment and taste implicitly, once he finally agreed to be guided by hers.
Remembrance of some of the things she had said at dinner, and in the parlor afterwards, caused Caroline to cringe with inner mortification, her only consolation being that every other member of the company seemed entirely oblivious to her hints about her future position in the house. At least, she hoped so. At the very least, they all gave very convincing performances of not attending to a single word she said. Hurst, of course, had fallen asleep on a sofa within minutes of the gentlemen's return to the parlor, Louisa had sat stupidly playing with her rings and bracelets and complaining of how fatiguing it was to travel, Georgiana had sat near her brother and answered his excessively detailed questions about her last day in town and her journey from London, with frequent diversions to the irritating topic of Georgiana's meeting that morning with that dreadful Eliza Bennet - really, Caroline wondered, why would Mr. Darcy even consent to a meeting between his charming, sweet sister and one of those Bennet hoydens? Was he lost to all sense and decency? - and Charles, well, Charles could talk of nothing but the remembered pleasures of his time at Netherfield, though Caroline was reasonably sure that no one had been paying his conversation much mind, either.
This disturbing train of thought had accompanied Caroline away from Louisa's bedchamber, not in the direction of her own room, but right through Pemberley's impressive gallery to the family wing of the house. It would, perhaps, reflect more credit on her character had she stopped there and reconsidered the impropriety of invading her hosts' privacy by wandering there in the night as the family slept behind those alluring doors, but Caroline did not even pause, deserving, one might conclude, to suffer through whatever misadventure might befall her as a result, and Caroline Bingley was, to her great mortification, and unbeknownst - she hoped! - to anyone else, prone to suffer misadventures when she let her avarice rule her actions. It had happened before. However, Caroline expected no misadventures in the corridors of Pemberley, and so, suffering not a single doubt, Caroline strode straight into the corridor where the Darcys, or so she assumed, were sleeping. Her steps slowed as she reached the approximate center of the long hall. There were many doors, leading to many bedrooms. The wing could certainly accommodate a large family, a thought that caused Caroline to shudder violently. She had heard enough about that side of marriage to know that she intended only to give Mr. Darcy an heir, and then leave all the rest of those many bedrooms for favored family when they came to visit.
But Caroline was not content to stand in the corridor thinking about the future occupants of all those rooms, she actually wanted to look into them, to see what they were like, to know if she would have to redecorate after her marriage, and more to the point, to claim one as her own for the night. But there was one small deterrent to her exploration of the various chambers. Caroline was perfectly aware of which room was Mr. Darcy's, and which room, connected to his, would one day be his wife's - hers, rather - but she did not know which one belonged to Georgiana. Her journeys of exploration on her last visit had not revealed where the young lady of the house slept, and in any case, there was no guarantee that her room had not been changed since then - Darcy had done over a sitting room for his sister's particular use in recent months, who could say whether or not he had made other changes as well? And then there was Mrs. Annesley to consider, Georgiana's companion. Did she have a room in that wing of the house? Caroline did not know. All of a sudden there seemed to be hundreds of doors leading off of the corridor. Caroline could not risk detection by randomly entering rooms and examining the furnishings. (That the dead of night, when unused rooms would not only be shrouded with holland covers, but have their windows shuttered, was not a propitious time for examining the decor had not, at any time during her expedition, occurred to Caroline, nor the thought that the beds were not likely to be made up, if she managed to even find a room with a bed in it).
As she pondered her dilemma, Caroline continued her slow pace along the lush carpet. Thus, she was quite a distance from the door of Mr. Darcy's bedroom when his grasp of the door handle produced a sound that both alarmed Caroline and gave her a brief warning that she was in danger of discovery. She quickly and silently blew out her candle and took refuge in an alcove in the wall that housed a very improperly dressed statue of a man. Peeking out between the marble gentleman's forearm and thigh, Caroline was presented with a curious vision of Mr. Darcy, clearly dressed for an outdoor excursion, emerging cautiously from his bedchamber, a lit lantern in his hand, and some sort of lumpy bag slung over his shoulder. Stunned by his appearance, Caroline knew not how, or if she should act, but before she could move from behind the statue, another door opened, on the opposite side of the corridor, and Georgiana's head appeared only long enough for the young woman to take note of her brother's retreating figure. Mr. Darcy did not notice that his sister had seen him, and Georgiana retreated almost immediately into her room, though it seemed to Caroline that she had wanted to say something to Darcy, and had been checked, perhaps, by his rapid and furtive egress, or perhaps by his questionable attire. Not that there was really anything unusual about his raiment; he was not even dressed all in black, as he had used to in the past, and as a person up to mischief or miscreancy in the night very likely would. Wherever he was going, it was not his intention to make himself invisible. It was that he was dressed and going out at all that was notable.
Before Caroline could decide if she should perhaps go to Georgiana and pretend that she had just that moment come to the family wing to see her, and in doing so, find out what Georgiana might know about her brother's peculiar behavior, Georgiana herself emerged from her room once again, wearing, to Caroline's astonishment, a dark cloak. Then, like her brother had, just seconds earlier, Georgiana, too, departed down the corridor into the darkness.
Caroline was, to say the least, nonplussed. She could think of no respectable reason for Mr. Darcy to be sneaking out of his own house in the middle of the night, nor for Georgiana to be joining him, though it did appear that Georgiana was following him without his knowledge. Questions and answers crowded Caroline's mind - was Mr. Darcy engaged in some criminal activity? Was he not what he seemed? Did that matter to Caroline's future plans? Was there any madness in the Darcy family? Was he - and this thought made her positively ill - going to meet someone, perhaps, Miss Eliza Bennet? Was Miss Eliza the kind of woman who would meet a man in the night? Even Caroline, who despised her and thought almost as ill of her as a woman could think of another woman, did not believe her so abandoned that she would have that kind of an assignation with a man, and however much Mr. Darcy's head appeared to be turned by the chit, Caroline could never bring herself to believe he, complete gentleman that he was, would behave in that base manner either. Eliza was, after all, the daughter of a gentleman, and Mr. Darcy was nothing if not honorable. But then an even more hideous idea occurred to Caroline, one that made her knees go weak. She leaned back against the wall in her little hidden nook and slowly sank towards the floor. What if Mr. Darcy and Miss Eliza Bennet were... eloping?
It took Caroline only a few seconds to completely reject that idea, on the grounds that it was too horrible to be true. And with that conviction came a rapid conclusion that she must find out where the Darcys, in particular, Mr. Darcy, were going in the middle of the night while he had a house full of guests whom one must assume he believed to be peacefully dreaming in the guest wing. Caroline scrambled to her feet and raced after the siblings, pleased that she had not yet changed into her nightclothes, not giving any consideration to the fact that it was unlikely that she would have ventured out of her room to visit Louisa, much less take an impromptu tour of the family wing, if she were clad in her night rail. With but a moment's regret that she did not have the time to explore further, now that she knew which room was Georgiana's personal chamber, Caroline sped as fast as the darkness would allow her, her useless, unlit candle left behind - forgotten, really, to be discovered by a bewildered housemaid in the morning - the gloom broken only by stray beams of moonlight through the drapes when she reached the gallery. She reached the top of the staircase just in time to see Georgiana's shadowy figure turn away from the bottom and move stealthily away. Caroline quickly reviewed in her mind which rooms were in the direction that Georgiana, and presumably Mr. Darcy, had gone. It was not a part of the house she had frequented during her previous visit, but it did include some public rooms which she had seen when Mr. Darcy had given her and her siblings a tour of the house on her first visit, and which she had furtively explored and examined on her own while making her plans for the future, and storing up details with which to regale her friends and allow herself to project the image of having spent a great deal of time at Pemberley, details she had once used for a more sinister purpose, one that she could remember only with the deepest mortification, and which she swiftly dismissed from her mind in favor of the object at hand, the mysterious actions of her host.
The elegantly appointed Pemberley ballroom was the prominent feature of that part of the house, but the thought that Mr. Darcy had snuck off in the night to visit the ballroom seemed entirely ludicrous. 'The man has never voluntarily entered a ballroom in his entire life,' Caroline mused, thinking of how her own hints that he ought to host a few balls in advance of his sister's coming out in order to give her opportunities to observe the proceedings before being expected to take part were completely ignored. She chose not to reflect on the fact that Darcy very likely knew that she made such suggestions out of her own desire to attend a ball at Pemberley, rather than out of concern for his sister's comfort on her coming out. Yet again Caroline was assailed by an unpleasant notion - perhaps Mr. Darcy was contemplating a ball during Eliza Bennet's sojourn in the neighborhood, a thought to both anger and worry. She wished she had paid more attention to the conversations about the insufferable Eliza earlier that evening - was she even going to be staying in Derbyshire long enough for such a plan to be put into action? Georgiana, meanwhile, had disappeared in the gloom of the corridor as these possibilities were being considered. Caroline sped down the stairs after her.
It was with no little surprise that Caroline then observed Georgiana's cautious entry in to the ballroom. Fortunately for that furtive observer, Georgiana left the door ajar some few inches, so Caroline was able to see not only Georgiana, who had halted but a yard or so inside the door, but Mr. Darcy as well, when she pressed herself carefully against the opening to spy inside. Her eyes were well adjusted to the darkness by this time, and so, though she did not credit the evidence of them, she was just able to make out the form of Mr. Darcy passing through the mirrored wall on the instant she looked his way.
Caroline could not suppress the gasp which escaped her at that moment, and she knew Georgiana had heard her when the young girl turned a frightened face towards her; Georgiana hesitated a moment, eyes wide, darting alternately between Caroline and the spot from whence her brother had disappeared, as if she did not know which way to turn, and then fled across the ballroom towards the mirror with the lonely lantern standing sentinel beside it. Caroline quickly pushed her way into the room and followed her.
"My dear Georgiana," she began, but then did not know what to say next. Caroline preferred to plan what she would say, and was not at her best in unexpected situations, and she could not voice the horrid thought that had entered her mind the moment she saw Mr. Darcy pass through the glass, out of their world and into another - 'He has found a way to return'. Georgiana was not listening, in any case; she had reached the mirrored wall where her brother had vanished, and had both hands pressed up against the glass as she strained to see into the gloom reflected there.
"Fitzwilliam! Fitzwilliam!" Georgiana cried frantically.
"Come now, Georgiana, your brother is not there -"
"He is! I saw him go through -"
"Yes, I was watching too, and it did appear that your brother went through the mirror, but there must be some other explanation for his disappearance. There must be a hidden door, or... do you know where your brother was going at this late hour?" Caroline desperately hoped there was another explanation, different from her own disheartening assumption.
"He is there! I can still see him, he is... he is inside the mirror, I... OH!"
Georgiana's desperate cries were suddenly silenced when, to the extreme surprise of both ladies, she suddenly fell through the mirror to the other side. She had found the way to the Looking Glass World the way most people do - by accident. Caroline was forced to admit that it now seemed very likely, however much she had wished to disbelieve it only moments before, that Mr. Darcy had, in truth, passed through the looking glass to the other side, into... And now Georgiana was there as well. Caroline could see her bewildered expression as she sat on the floor on the other side of the glass, though it was darker there; the lantern which sat on the floor beside the mirror on Caroline's side did not appear where it should have on the opposing side, though the remaining lantern did cast some light through the strange portal. She watched as Georgiana scrambled to stand, obviously torn between following after her brother, whom Caroline could not see anywhere in the area visible to her in the glass, and trying to return through the looking glass to where she belonged. Caroline did not know which would be the better choice; all she knew was that she had no idea how to assist Georgiana, and that she must not pass through the glass herself.
And yet, the questions persisted in her mind of what Mr. Darcy was doing, and why he was doing it so late at night - and why he wanted to go back there. In fact, the event she had just witnessed, Mr. Darcy's startling passage through the looking glass into another world only gave rise to new questions; had he been visiting there all along? Who told him how to get back? What were the consequences of his return? Was she angered by his return? Was she even still there? How much time had elapsed there - it must be centuries by now! How was he able to still remember? Would it be safe for Caroline herself to return - not that she had any desire to! Did Eliza Bennet know about it? Was he meeting Eliza there? Were they ruling there together after all? Caroline shuddered - was Eliza Bennet now Queen of Darcinia? The possibilities that swirled in her head only made the entire enterprise even more strange and unnerving, and made Caroline ever more desperate to discover Mr. Darcy's purpose. If, by some chance, he was not able to remember what had happened during the lamentable affair of the previous November, and had managed to discover that place by some other means, returning there for some other motive, it was imperative that he be prevented from recalling earlier events at all costs. But if he was presently traipsing through that place, no doubt something would happen, or someone would encounter him to inform him of those regrettable events - even if a great deal of time had passed, surely the citizens would remember The Great Darcy, their national hero. Which meant that Caroline simply must return to... that place, must dare to face the dangers that would await her if she were to be caught, to bring Mr. Darcy back to their rightful world and impress upon him (without revealing what had happened there previously when she, and he, and Eliza Bennet had suffered an adventure together) the necessity of keeping his promise to avoid... that place forever, while not allowing him to know why he had ever made such a promise in the first place. Or not. To go there would be too dangerous. But she had to stop Mr. Darcy - surely to enter Darcinia for a few minutes to get him out would not be too bad?
It was pointless speculation, Caroline realized, as she had no idea how to pass through the looking glass anyway. She returned her attention to Georgiana, whom she could see, staring at her through the glass as if she were merely on the other side of a window, with a panicked look on her face. She looked quite pale, and young, and frightened, in the dim light. Caroline affected a calm she did not feel and tapped on the glass.
"Georgiana, dear, you must let me through the glass." Caroline could see as Georgiana neared the glass that she had tears in her eyes.
"I... I do not know how, Miss Bingley. I must go after my brother!" Georgiana's muffled voice came back at her.
"Yes, of course, we will go after your brother, but first you must help me through the glass, as I do not know how to pass through it." Caroline spoke slowly, and in what she thought was a calming manner, as if she were speaking to a rather stupid and fretful child. She did not, however, speak very loudly.
"What?" Georgiana asked, her distress tempered by confusion. "I cannot hear you!"
"You must help me through, and I will join you to find your brother!" Caroline shouted in her condescending voice.
"But I do not know how!" Georgiana wailed, her despair clear even if her voice was muffled.
"You must know how, you have done it yourself," Caroline said, trying to maintain an air of patience, with great difficulty.
"But I did not do it on purpose, I was just looking through, and leaning on the glass, and suddenly, here I was!"
Caroline realized that she could do no worse than to try that as well, so she placed both hands on the glass as she had seen Georgiana do, and pushed. As she did so, she noted how lovely her complexion was looking, and how becomingly her hair framed her face, but she did not find herself on the other side of the mirror as she had hoped. She frowned at her reflection, and detected a tiny wrinkle on her forehead between her two perfectly arched brows. Immediately, she assumed a less wrinkle-inducing expression, and vowed to frown no more - she did not want to end up looking like Louisa before she even managed to catch Mr. Darcy as a husband. The thought of Mr. Darcy reminded her of what she was trying to do, and she dropped her hands and stepped away from the glass, frustrated, and irritated with Georgiana for not helping her.
"You must have done something else, Georgiana, because I cannot seem to come through, and if you want me to help you, dear, you are going to have to think of what it was you did. Did your brother tell you how to do it, and you have just forgotten something?"
"No, Fitzwilliam never told me he could do this! I just put my hands on the glass like this -" Here Georgiana stepped close to the glass and demonstrated, and Caroline followed suit, matching her hands up with the younger woman's. It was a little disorienting to see her image superimposed over Georgiana's, and she could not help comparing their features, and looking for some family resemblance between Georgiana and her older brother. It was easy enough to do, even in his absence; Caroline had studied Mr. Darcy's countenance often enough that she could - and frequently had - draw a nearly perfect likeness of it even without the subject before her. She saw little resemblance in the young lady gazing plaintively at her through the glass. Caroline had often praised the beauty of her young friend, usually in the presence of one or both of the Darcys, but she had privately always felt that Georgiana was not nearly as handsome as her brother. Caroline took note that if she and Mr. Darcy were to have a child together, it might be allowed to look like its father if it were a boy, but if a girl, it would be best if it resembled its mother. She noticed a puzzled expression on Georgiana's face, and hoped that her thoughts could not be read upon her own features, and while she was thinking all these things, she unconsciously moved her hands against the cool glass, and the next thing she knew, she was lying in a most undignified and unladylike heap atop Georgiana on the other side of the mirror.
"There now, that was not so hard, was it?" Caroline cooed with feigned nonchalance as she struggled to right herself. "But you might have warned me, dear Georgiana, before you opened the way through."
"I did not do it, Miss Bingley. I told you, I do not know how it happened when I came through myself. And I do not know how we are to get back!" Georgiana was on the verge of tears again, so Caroline stood up, brushed herself off, and held out a hand to help the young girl to stand as well.
"No need to cry, now, all we have to do is find your brother, and he will show us how to go back through the wall. Now, dry your tears -" Caroline realized that she had not got a handkerchief, and that she had come through to this strange new place with nothing but the clothes she had worn for dinner that evening, and hoped that there would be no need for smelling salts or extra hairpins, or any other such trifle before they managed to find Mr. Darcy - which she hoped would be immediately, anyway. Realizing that he had by now been granted a respectable head start, she took Georgiana by the arm and guided her towards the door to exit the ballroom. "We will find your brother -"
"This is not the way he went," Georgiana interrupted, and unconsciously shaking off Caroline's grip on her arm, rushed towards the doors leading out onto a terrace.
"Please do not run, dear. A true lady never runs," Caroline admonished, but Georgiana did not seem to hear her. She had gained the doors and slipped outside, and all Caroline could see was the curtain swishing back into place behind her. Careful not to compromise her standards and run herself, she hastened her own steps. Caroline found Georgiana standing on the terrace, looking around her at the moonlit landscape with a bewildered expression on her face. Mr. Darcy was, as might have been expected, nowhere in sight.
"I do not think we are at Pemberley anymore," Georgiana stated matter-of-factly.
'No, I am sure we are not,' Caroline thought grimly to herself. 'And the sooner we can return there, the better.'
Posted on: 2009-08-06
Darcy had often traveled by moonlight, so it was no surprise to him that the moon, not full, but near enough to it, illuminated his surroundings enough that he did not need his lantern to see where he was going. But he was not of a mind to bask in the beauty of the silvery light on the trees, or the surface of the lake below the terrace; he had a mission to complete, and desired only to fill his satchel with the items on his list and return to his own world, preferably without meeting anyone on this side, or being missed by anyone on the other, however unlikely the latter should occur. The former he did not consider the least likely, either. It was past midnight no matter which side of the looking glass one referred to a clock, and no one would be walking the grounds to meet him.
Darcy did not need to consult his extensive list of ingredients to know which was first on the list; he had rewritten it from Fitzwilliam's letter so that the items were in the order he would find them by the route he had predetermined to traverse for maximum efficiency, and he had planned it well enough that he knew where he wanted to go first. Darcy turned towards his right - and then, with a chuckle, made an about face to head in the other direction. He had for a moment forgotten that in the Looking Glass World, everything would be backwards to the way he was used to see them. The kitchen gardens, where he had several herbs to collect, were in the opposite direction. He hastened his footsteps there.
While he walked around the perimeter of his house, not an inconsiderable distance, after all, Darcy had some time to think about the reason he was doing this, and allowed his thoughts to return to the train they had been following as he waited in his room to start out on his quest. It could not be because he thought it would win him Elizabeth's hand, because he had determined to return to Derbyshire at once in order to procure what was necessary to regain the memories of the forgotten events in his journal. He had not, even then, had any delusions that he could somehow make Elizabeth love him simply by knowing himself that the incident he had written about was true - he had no reasonable expectation that chance - fate - would throw her in his path for a third time. And yet, his heart, which had broken into a million pieces when Elizabeth not only refused to marry him, but did so by telling him that she despised him above all other men on earth, wanted to know of a time when Elizabeth had returned his affections. If he could not have her in his life, he wanted to at least have the memory of her lips bestowing a kiss on his cheek ever so lightly and quietly as they stood in Miss Bingley's wardrobe waiting to be discovered by Bingley.
But having met her again, chance having been kind to him, his purpose had changed - within about a half an hour of finding her on his grounds just the previous afternoon. Darcy was so struck by the change in her demeanor towards him that hope could not but creep into his mind. She had seemed awkward and embarrassed, but she did not look at him with hatred, and she had accepted his attentions, and agreed most graciously - he might even venture to say with alacrity - to meet his sister. Then when the meeting had taken place, he detected a self-consciousness in her that he thought might indicate a desire to please - and he felt certain that she had been pleased to see him; she must also have been aware of the significance in his desire to introduce his sister to her, and she had welcomed the acquaintance.
Yes, Darcy had decided that he must win her. Yet, it was not his intent to merely give her the potion in the hope that returning to her the memories of having loved him once would make her love him again. Rather, he wanted to know what he had done to make her love him in the first place. That particular cause for curiosity his journal entry had not been able to completely satisfy, though he had by that time read it enough times that he was well on his way to remembering certain passages by heart. He had, of course, saved her life, and there was also the matter of the potion that would have intensified any emotions either one of them were feeling - though Elizabeth had not taken nearly so large a dose as he had, according to his writings. But somehow Darcy was sure that there was more to it than that, that her love had sprung from more than simple gratitude for having done her a service in rescuing her from a giant serpent, and if he could remember exactly what they had said to each other (for his account of their conversations could at best be described as sketchy, in one case amounting only to the sentence, 'We talked of books and other things'), and exactly what he had been feeling, perhaps... perhaps he would understand how best to woo her now.
He would try to give her the potion eventually, too, of course, but Darcy was determined that now he would do properly what he had failed miserably to do at all in Kent, which was woo Elizabeth and truly win her affections. Presuming that her current cordiality was due to his letter having improved her opinion of him, or at least removed some of her prejudices against him, he was still starting from the beginning - in essence, Elizabeth could not know him, not really, and having done away with her earlier impressions, that he was the villain Wickham had painted him, he wanted to show Elizabeth at the very least that he was not mean enough to resent the past, and that he had taken her condemnation of his character to heart and made an attempt to improve his manners and civility to others. He hoped that his attentions to her aunt and uncle had made a start, and he intended, given a chance, to improve his manner to her, and make it the manner of a lover - within the bounds of propriety, of course.
Darcy sighed as he reached the kitchen garden, bounded on three sides by a high wall, and on the fourth by the outer wall of the great house where the doors to the kitchens opened to the outside. It was a place he had visited only a handful of times in his nearly three decades of life, it not being the domain of the family at Pemberley. He cautiously opened the gate and entered, noting that the night air within the walls was considerably warmer than it had been without; his knowledge of the estate told him that it was by design, to protect the growth of the plants that supplied the kitchens during cooler times of year, but he had never experienced the phenomenon himself; his rare forays into the kitchen gardens had never taken place in the middle of the night.
The physics of domestic gardening was not a subject to interest him for long, and Darcy returned to his musings on his favorite topic - Elizabeth. He recalled a conversation he had once had with Elizabeth at Rosings, in which she had turned his aunt's advice to her back on him, and adjured him to practice his conversational skills. If only there was some way to practice wooing, flirting. Darcy had never been a flirt, and scarcely knew how to do it, if Elizabeth's surprise to learn of his affections when he proposed to her was any indication. He had been under the impression he had been flirting with her for months, since almost the very beginning of their acquaintance, even though at the time he had done so against his better judgment. But she had evidently been unaware of it. Naturally, he could not very well begin to practice now on any other lady, for the very same reason he had never done so in the first place - he did not want to excite any expectations in such quarters. Caroline Bingley, for example, had great enough delusions about winning him, without the least encouragement on his part. What might she think, what might she do, if he suddenly began to flirt with her? She would likely set to ordering her wedding clothes at once!
Darcy shuddered in disgust. No, Caroline Bingley was the last woman in the world whom Darcy could be prevailed on to flirt with.
"What do you mean we are not at Pemberley? Where else would we be?" Caroline asked her companion with mingled apprehension and annoyance, and an uncomfortable conviction of where they might be, and an equally uncomfortable dread at the thought that Georgiana might know where they were, too - though how she could know...
"Everything is backwards," Georgiana said.
Caroline looked around her. The moon was high and bright; she had never noticed how much moonlight could illuminate the night. Though it made the shadows seem forbiddingly impenetrable, every object touched by the silvery light appeared perfectly clear to the eye, and Caroline was able to understand immediately what Georgiana meant. Everything was backwards; even having only visited Pemberley once before, for a very short stay, she could feel how disorienting it was to be looking at a landscape that seemed to have been flipped around. Or, rather, that appeared as if she were looking at it in a mirror. Darcinia had not been like this before... but then, entering Darcinia through her wardrobe had placed Caroline in a completely foreign landscape, one completely unlike the surrounds of Netherfield Park. She stored the anomaly away in her mind for further consideration. Caroline instantly began to regret her decision to follow the Darcys through the looking glass, her previous fear of what might happen to her if she were to be discovered in a place where she was considered persona non grata by a dangerously disgruntled populace reviving.
"Yes. I see what you mean. But I am sure that need not concern us. The only thing that need concern us is that we should not be here. More particularly, I should not be here. We need to return at once, before anyone discovers that I am here." Caroline looked at Georgiana's cloak, and realized that she herself was not dressed for the outdoors, and felt terribly exposed out there in the open - and not just to the weather. "I wish I had known we would be coming out of doors. I have no cloak - what if it should start to snow? We should go back inside."
Georgiana turned and looked at Caroline with a curious expression that made it obvious she thought Caroline to be speaking unreasonably. "Why should it start to snow? It is August - we do not have snow in Derbyshire in August. It is a very warm night, in fact - I do not think I shall need my cloak at all. You may wear it if you like." Georgiana shrugged out of the warm garment and graciously held it out to Caroline.
Caroline was embarrassed to have made what must sound to her companion like such a ridiculous suggestion, but she could not very well explain to Georgiana the origins of her concerns about the climate. "Of course not," she huffed. A change of subject was in order, and quickly. "Now dear Georgiana, shall we try to return?"
"But Miss Bingley, I thought we were going to find Fitzwilliam. We need him to show us how to go back."
"There may be another way back. We should return to the house and examine all of the closets," Caroline urged. She sighed when she saw that Georgiana was regarding her as if she had gone mad, and it struck her that, not knowing who or what might be occupying the mansion presently, it could be awkward, or even dangerous, to attempt to search all of the closets and wardrobes for a portal back to her own world. And there existed a slight possibility, from what she had learned in Darcinia, that such a portal might not lead her to where she wished to be at all. "... Or not. Where was your brother going, dear?"
"I told you, I do not know. He never told me he was going out tonight - I was going to speak to him about something and saw him leaving - I followed him because... I... Miss Bingley, what are you doing here?"
The question intermingled curiosity and accusation.
"I could not sleep, so I thought I would visit with you if you were still awake, and we could have a nice, girlish chat. I know it must be difficult for you, not having a sister, needing a woman's companionship at such a crucial time of your life. Not that your brother is not a wonderful companion, of course, I enjoy his company a great deal, and he is so generous - the new pianoforte he gave you is such an exquisite instrument -"
"But you cannot have even tried to sleep - you have not even dressed for bed."
"Well, I knew that I would not be able to sleep, as I was not tired -"
"But you retired for the evening. You said several times this evening that you were tired."
"Only because I thought I should be tired. After our long journey, you know - though traveling in your brother's fine carriage, one would hardly know that one was traveling at all..." Caroline sensed that she was babbling, and that her lavish praise of all things belonging to Darcy was not having a conciliatory effect on her auditor. She changed tack. "You are not dressed for bed either, and you retired before I did."
She would not have sworn to it, the moonlight not giving colors their due, but Caroline suspected that Georgiana was blushing, and of a sudden a mortifying conviction that she might be the reason the young girl had abandoned the assembled company for the solitude of her own room made Caroline blush as well, in humiliation as well as anger. After all she had done to try to make Georgiana feel like her sister, after all the praise she had lavished on the chit, and all her condescension towards a mere child who was not even out! Caroline was forced to bite back an angry retort. She took a deep breath and tried to regain control of the situation. She adopted a bright, cheerful tone.
"Well! I do not suppose it matters why anyone might not be tired. I am only here to help you. Shall we try to find your brother, so he can help us find our way back through the mirror?"
Linking arms with a visibly wary Georgiana, who placed her cloak on the terrace railing to be retrieved when they returned, Caroline turned to the right and led the way down the steps from the terrace.
Searching the rows of herbs in the neatly laid out, and, mercifully for him, well-labeled garden, Darcy considered Miss Bingley. As his friend Bingley's sister, Darcy had always tolerated her presence, and even, when she was not blatantly hinting that she desired a union with him, enjoyed her company at times. He was ashamed to remember the occasions when he and she had together joked very unkindly about other people of their acquaintance, including the entire Bennet family when they had first met them in Hertfordshire. Darcy could not help but realize that if he had ever taken her to task for it, or indicated the least displeasure in such jokes, she would be a much kinder lady now, at least on the surface. But he had gone along with it, more than that, had actively encouraged it with his participation, disdaining so many people merely for being outside of his circle of friends and relations. He flattered himself that he was a loyal and generous friend to those he considered his equals, but he knew he was dismissive of his inferiors in social standing. He knew now that he had been doing it his whole life, and had practically been raised to do it. Thus much Elizabeth's admonitions had taught him. Darcy knew that he had influence with Miss Bingley; if he had behaved more charitably, more liberally towards others, she would have done so as well.
There was still another reason to be disgusted with Caroline Bingley, and yet, his mind had been so full of other ideas, he had scarcely given it a moment's thought, but the part Miss Bingley had played in the perilous adventures in Darcinia ought not to be ignored. She had ruled despotically over an entire nation, she had plotted in a most shocking manner to trick him into marrying her, and worst of all, she had almost had Elizabeth killed - all due to her lust for Pemberley (for Darcy held little illusion that it was his person she so coveted, though his vanity did protest that he must hold some appeal to a lady). When he had read of her cruel machinations in his journal, Darcy's instinct had been to cast off her acquaintance entirely, but for the fact that it would be impossible to explain to her, or Bingley, or anyone else who asked why he would no longer see her. After all, it would excite notice among their circle. He chuckled to himself as he imagined telling Bingley or his other friends that he had cut Miss Bingley because she had attempted to have the woman he loved devoured by a giant shape-shifting serpent. But the truth of the matter was, in his heart he was strangely grateful to her for having provided him such an opportunity with Elizabeth, and so he could not hate her, even while he held her in contempt. In his account of their adventure, he had noted that in the end of it all, he had felt nothing for Miss Bingley but the same indifference he had always felt for her, and he now felt exactly the same. Curious that it was difficult for her to excite any greater emotion, although since her arrival at Pemberley that morning she had been testing his equanimity in the extreme, not for her usual annoying fawning over himself, his house, and his sister, but for her unkind allusions to Elizabeth and her relations. Darcy made note that Miss Bingley would have to be made to understand that continued friendship with him would preclude further enmity to Elizabeth. He would no longer abide any aspersions against any of the Bennets.
By the time Darcy had come to this resolution, which brought a slight, satisfied smile to his lips, he had also completed his errand in the herb garden. Wrapped in separate clean handkerchiefs in his satchel (and he had to smile as he wondered who would be the most vexed to discover how his supply of handkerchiefs had been plundered, his valet, or the maid who would have to report the loss to Mrs. Reynolds) were the first six ingredients for the antidote: mint, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. 'From these ingredients, one might hope that this potion will taste better than the other did,' Darcy thought, and then stopped short. Did he remember the taste of it? He wracked his brain. No, he was only remembering what he had written about it, which was that it tasted unpleasant, like water in which Brussels sprouts had been boiled. The thought reminded him of the next ingredient on the list, and he made his way to the section of the kitchen garden where the vegetables were grown. Darcy did not like Brussels sprouts, but his sister did, and so they were grown in the Pemberley gardens for her sake. It was too early to harvest them in the real world, but as he pulled a number of perfectly plump, little, green orbs from the stalk and wrapped them in his handkerchief, Darcy remembered another bit of reassurance from the centaur's letter:
'Worry not about times or seasons when you set out to seek the plants that will comprise the ingredients to the antidote. The mind has a powerful effect in the Looking Glass World, and you will always be able to find what you seek there.'
Darcy wondered if this applied to more than just flowers blooming out of season. At the very least he fervently hoped that the hideous little globes would be sufficient to make the potion work - and that they would not dominate the flavor of the brew.
Consulting his list with the aid of his lantern, and checking off the acquired items with a small pencil, Darcy was pleased to contemplate how easy his mission would be to complete, a stark contrast to his purported expedition in Darcinia. Comparing the manner of entry into Darcinia with his more recent arrival in the Looking Glass World, Darcy chuckled to himself. Without a doubt, getting into Darcinia had been easier, easy enough that they had all done it accidentally, but clearly, he would be able to depart from the Looking Glass World with much less difficulty than when he had escaped Darcinia.
" -And with no adventures!" Darcy muttered quietly, as he exited through the gate of the kitchen garden for the next place on his list, absently breaking off a sprig of lavender as he passed those fragrant plants and placing the tiny stem in his breast pocket after enjoying its aroma and the memories it aroused. It was not a requirement for the potion, but it was a reminder of why he had come.
All conversation seemed to have dried up between the two ladies who walked arm in arm in the moonlight. One of them, the younger one, was too absorbed in noticing how beautifully enchanting her home was in the light of the moon, the other was too disgruntled to speak, and was wishing she had just stayed in her own room if she was to be treated to impertinence as thanks for helping her dear friend in her moments of distress. Suddenly, both women became aware that they, and presumably Mr. Darcy, were not the only ones wandering the Pemberley grounds that evening.
"Louisa?" Caroline cried incredulously, espying her older sister, whom she had personally seen - and heard - asleep in her bed less than an hour before.
Mrs. Hurst did not give any indication of having heard her sister call out to her, as she continued doing what she had been doing when Caroline and Georgiana had first seen her - scolding a large lump on the ground. Caroline and Georgiana exchanged glances, and by mutual unspoken agreement, advanced cautiously towards the eldest of the Bingley siblings. As they drew near, they realized that it was not a lump she was scolding, but something infinitely more frightening, and they exchanged looks again, each one's eyes asking the other the same question - should they run away? For the lump Louisa Hurst was berating was, in actuality, a bear.
Now, Caroline had never seen a bear, but everyone knows what a bear looks like, and she had no doubts that it was a bear curled up and snoring on the ground before her. What she had never before realized was how much bears resembled her brother-in-law Hurst. For this particular ursine specimen bore a striking resemblance to her sister's indolent husband. Suddenly, the bear gave a great yawn, stretched, and uncurled from his sleeping position, standing up on his four paws and shaking his head from side to side.
"Enough!" the bear cried, and Caroline was forced to admit that the bear sounded a great deal like her brother-in-law as well. She heard Georgiana gasp, and felt her tighten her grip upon her arm. It was somewhat painful - evidently constant practice on the pianoforte rendered one's fingers exceptionally strong. Caroline patted the younger woman's hands reassuringly before attempting to pry the grasping fingers off of her flesh. She then held Georgiana's hand, dragging her reluctantly along as she approached her sister and the bear.
"Louisa! What is the meaning of this?" For a younger sister, Caroline was always inordinately forceful with her older siblings.
"Ah, dear Caroline, there you are! You disappeared - you vain thing, spending all this time admiring yourself in the mirror, and so late at night, when we have been waiting for you to have tea!"
"I have not been admiring myself in the mirror!" Caroline retorted indignantly, before she remembered that she had been, a little, just before she had ended up falling through the mirror - but how could Louisa have known that? And what did she mean by accusing her of disappearing when she had not been there earlier? In fact, what was Louisa doing there? Caroline returned her attention to her sister, who had been prattling on while Caroline indulged in her own petulant reverie.
"... And I was just telling Hurst here that it was all his fault! Was I not, Hurst?" Louisa rattled on, not minding, or perhaps not noticing that Caroline had not been heeding what she said.
"Yes," the bear said, with a mighty yawn. "And now she has returned - may I go back to my hibernation?"
"No! You have been hibernating long enough, and it is not even winter! Why must you constantly embarrass me? And in front of the Darcys, too! Honestly, do you do anything but eat, sleep, and play cards? You live off of others as much as you can, you -"
"Louisa!" Caroline interjected, "What do you mean I disappeared? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night, when I saw you asleep not an hour ago - and why is Hurst a bear? And how did you both come through the looking glass?"
Louisa stopped haranguing her husband, and both husband and wife - that is, bear and woman - turned their faces towards Caroline, mouths agape.
"What is she talking about?" Hurst asked.
"I have no idea. Caroline, have you gone mad?" Louisa asked, her eyes wide with concern.
"Of course, she is mad. We are all mad here," the bear said with a shrug.
"No, I am not mad! I demand to know what is going on here!" Caroline said with the peevish whine she customarily employed with her older sister when she did not get her way, or when Louisa actually dared turn her cattiness against her younger sister.
"Well!" Louisa huffed, "If you are not mad, you are abominably rude, and to your own sister, too! We shall go to tea without you." And with that, Louisa climbed onto Hurst's back, and Hurst turned and lumbered in the direction of the woods some hundred yards away. Then, to Caroline's very great astonishment, her sister transformed, right before her eyes, shrinking and contorting, until it was not the familiar form of Louisa Hurst who sat upon the back of the bear plodding into the line of trees, but a large, fluffy, white cat, with fur that positively gleamed in the moonlight. She sat up very straight on the bear's back - for all her faults, Louisa always had admirably elegant posture - her tail swishing back and forth in what Caroline took to be an insulting manner.
"Did you see that? Did you hear the way she spoke to me? My own sister! And fancy accusing me of disappearing! Why, she is the one who -"
"Miss Bingley," Georgiana interrupted, "I do not think that was really Mr. and Mrs. Hurst."
"Well, of course not!" Caroline sputtered. "Louisa would never do anything so decidedly improper as to climb on her husband's back - well, never mind her, I do not want tea right now. I am always the one to be ill-used. Come now, Georgiana, we must find your brother. Perhaps he can explain what is going on here." She took Georgiana's arm once again and returned to their previous course walking around the house. "The audacity of her, asking if I am mad! Really! She is the one whose husband has turned into a bear!"
Georgiana smiled weakly, privately thinking that Mrs. Hurst may have had the right of it, that Miss Bingley might actually be mad. She fervently hoped that they would find her brother quickly, and that, his peculiar action in entering this odd land through the mirror notwithstanding, he would not be showing signs of madness himself. In fact, Georgiana was forced to consider the possibility that she herself was mad. Would a person in full possession of her senses not be more ... incredulous after having seen what she had just seen? Georgiana was having trouble believing her own eyes, but Miss Bingley seemed to feel nothing but offense at her sister's unkind words. Georgiana had an overwhelming desire to either giggle or scream, and it was only her good breeding, and her conviction that Miss Bingley would not react well to either outburst that kept her silent. After all, she seemed to remember hearing somewhere that mad people should be humored, lest they turn violent. At any rate, she fervently hoped that Miss Bingley would not suddenly take it into her head to transform into an animal, though Georgiana could not help but wonder what kind of animal Miss Bingley would become. A bear seemed to suit Mr. Hurst, and Mrs. Hurst had always been, well, catty. Georgiana smiled to herself. Perhaps Miss Bingley would become a leech.
Suddenly Georgiana's amusing reverie was dispelled by the sound of hoof beats; someone was rapidly approaching on horseback from somewhere behind the two ladies, and Georgiana, hoping it was her brother, turned to hail the rider, but found Miss Bingley gripping her arm and attempting to hide behind her, out of view of the approaching horseman.
"Is it a centaur?" Miss Bingley asked with a quivering voice.
"A centaur? No, of course not! Miss Bingley, what in the world...?" But Georgiana did not finish, as the rider had now approached close enough for her to identify him. "It is my cousin, the Colonel!"
Georgiana was surprised to see her cousin, as he had not been expected at Pemberley, and she hoped that he had not been brought there by some emergency. He saw her wave, and rode straight towards her and her companion, drawing his horse to a halt not many feet from where the ladies stood. Georgiana was somewhat embarrassed by Miss Bingley's childish antics, as Caroline continued to hide behind her, and Georgiana could just hear her whispered admonition, "Do not let him see me!"
Georgiana's greeting for her cousin and guardian died on her lips when she noticed the strange appearance of the man and his steed. The Colonel was entirely clad in armor, minus the helmet, which was strapped behind his saddle. But the armor did not look as if were made of metal, rather, it seemed to be carved out of stone, a smooth, milky, white stone. The horse, too, seemed to be carved out of the same stuff, and both rider and mount gleamed in the moonlight. Georgiana peered closely at her cousin's face, trying to reassure herself that he was still flesh and blood. She was relieved to see that he was, but she drew the same conclusion about him that she had drawn about the Hursts; Georgiana was not convinced that he was really her cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. Surely no real person could wear armor made of stone? The weight would be crippling! Becoming aware, to her great embarrassment, that she was gaping at him in what Mrs. Annesley would have reminded her was a most unladylike manner, Georgiana curtsied and greeted him.
"Good evening, Cousin. Have you met Miss Bingley?"
The Colonel alarmed his cousin by waving a stone sword wildly around his head. "No time for niceties, or damsels in distress! Have you seen a black pawn pass this way? The rascal ran right off the board - bad form, bad form, a complete disgrace! That is not he hiding behind you, is it? Come out, you cowardly rogue, and accept defeat like a man!"
Caroline gave a little terrified squeak, and Georgiana forcibly dragged her forward, fearing that her cousin, or the odd apparition on horseback who looked like her cousin, might do them a harm if it appeared they were hiding something - or someone - from him.
"This is... my friend, Miss Bingley. She is not a black pawn - we have seen no one but... but a cat and a bear."
"Ah, Miss Bingley, how do you do? I have heard much about you. You look nothing like a red-haired ferret."
Caroline colored and angrily sputtered out some sort of unintelligible reply, while Georgiana quickly interjected a question into the exchange.
"Cousin, have you seen my brother? We have been looking for him, and we did not see which way he went."
The stone horse pawed the ground impatiently, his rider's agitation becoming infectious.
"Darcy? Have not seen him. And I do wish he would turn up - the game will be forfeit if we do not have a king. A marble bust cannot stand in for him forever! His opponent may be a simpleton, but he will eventually notice the difference - Darcy is not that stiff! But I must not dally here, there is a pawn to be captured. Farewell, fair maids!"
The Colonel's steed was already at a full gallop before he finished his leave-taking, and the two ladies stared after him in wonder and consternation, each according to the comments that had been directed at her by the strange knight.
"Humph. Younger sons. Hardly worth an introduction, unless the elder brother is sickly," Caroline sniffed.
"He is not usually like that," Georgiana defended her cousin timidly, not knowing what else to say to such a condemnation. "Shall we... shall we continue our walk, Miss Bingley?"
"Do I look like a ferret to you?"
"No, of course not," Georgiana replied soothingly, keeping to herself the speculation that if anyone had described Miss Bingley to her cousin as a ferret, it was not necessarily her appearance they were referring to. But on thinking further, and examining the pinched face of her companion, Georgiana thought maybe it was...
"He implied that someone had told him I do look like a ferret. Did your brother say I look like a ferret?"
Georgiana felt that she had never seen Caroline look so indignant before, and indignation was a sort of hallmark of Caroline Bingley's character. She looked almost frightening. Georgiana hastened to reassure her.
"No, of course not! My brother would never say such a thing about you! He... he... he..." Georgiana stumbled over the words; upon reflection, she thought it was something her brother might say, if he thought no ladies were around to hear him. But how was she to know what men might say to each other when there were no ladies present? Still, he had said similarly unkind things about Caroline Bingley, for whom his regard seemed to have diminished in recent months... but better not to mention them to her. "He would have too high a regard for you, I am sure." Georgiana was nervous that the consoling smile she offered to reinforce her words was unconvincing. Her brother had always taught her to abhor disguise, and she was always hard pressed to be insincere.
"Well, who else could have said it?" Caroline appeared slightly placated.
Georgiana reflected that it was probably a very good thing that Miss Bingley was unaware that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was acquainted with her cousin the Colonel, as that lady had mentioned when she had been introduced to Georgiana that morning. Not that Georgiana could imagine Miss Elizabeth saying such a thing about Miss Bingley, she was too kind a lady, but given Miss Bingley's obvious antipathy for her, it was a subject best left unmentioned. And yet, there were likely many among the ton who could have noticed Miss Bingley's resemblance to the vicious animal, in both character and appearance. Truly, there are some questions it is best not to answer, and Miss Bingley's last was firmly ensconced among the list.
"I... I... well, no one I know..."
"And another thing - if I were a chess piece, I would not be a pawn. I would be a queen. But I would not expect a mere knight to be able to recognize such superiority. Especially not a younger son, even the younger son of an Earl - whom I have never heard was even a knight - Mr. Darcy never said so! Everyone here is so rude. I cannot wait to leave this place."
"Of course," Georgiana sighed, taking Caroline's arm and leading her on the way once again.