Carrie Bebris - North by Northanger

Another pain seized Elizabeth, but the absence of Dr. Severn seemed to make this one easier for her to bear. When it had passed, she thanked him for banishing the physician. He was uneasy about the doctor’s medical expertise walking out the door, but the departure of the man himself had also removed considerable anxiety from the room.

Mrs. Godwin helped Elizabeth find a more comfortable position in anticipation of her next pain. Then she turned to Darcy. “I have things well in hand here, sir, and your wife needs to focus on the work she has ahead. Bid her farewell for now.”

He looked into Elizabeth’s face. The last thing he wanted to do was leave her. He kissed her deeply, then continued to hold one hand to her cheek. He tried not to let the spectre of his mother’s fate haunt him.

“You will see me again,” she said.

“Is there anything else I can do for you? Would you like your mother with you after all?”

“I think perhaps I would.”

“Lydia?”

She managed a laugh. “No. But if you would send for Jane?”

He should have thought of that himself. “Of course.”

“And—” She hesitated.

“Name it, Elizabeth. If it is within my power, it is yours.”

“It probably is not. But...” Beloved eyes, intense with the commencement of another pain, beseeched him. “I believe I would feel better if I had your mother’s ivory.”

The ivory that was even now speeding away. He could hardly bring himself to leave the room, let alone Pemberley. What if the unthinkable happened while he was gone?

Yet if he departed immediately and rode hell-for-leather, he might manage to overtake the fleeing carriage. He would be performing some useful function instead of impatiently pacing the gallery like a caged tiger. And if there were any truth in the family legends at all, he would be doing something to protect his wife and son through the danger of bringing him into the world.

Several servants entered, carrying in supplies. He turned to one of them. “Run to the stables as quickly as you can. Tell the groom to saddle Mercury.”

Darcy urged his mount across the Derbyshire landscape, bleak and forlorn in the winter moonlight. Surely the villains’ carriage could not be much farther ahead. He had stopped at Lambton to exchange Mercury for a fresh horse and enquire after the conspirators, and learned that they had just completed a stop of their own. They had paused to retrieve their luggage, and been further delayed by a quarrel amongst themselves as the trunks were loaded. Apparently, Wickham and Mrs. Stanford had been in favor of transferring to a post chaise, so as to benefit from the superior speed offered by a skilled postilion guiding rested animals, but their driver would not hear of it. He had insisted his horses could outstrip any post horses, that despite the short bait and additional encumbrance of luggage they should maintain a pace of fifteen miles per hour all the way to Gloucestershire, and that nothing ruins horses so much as rest.

Darcy was happy to let their driver attempt to prove his point as he gained on them with every mile. He now watched for the carriage to come into view. What he would do when he at last overtook it, he had not quite worked out yet, but somehow he would come away from the encounter with Elizabeth’s ivory in hand.

He reached the top of a rise and at last spotted a vehicle ahead. In the darkness, he could not at this distance identify it decisively as theirs, but the moon illuminated the road brightly enough that he could see it was no yellow bounder and carried no postboys. The carriage weaved across the road and back as it sped along, its driver apparently having trouble controlling the horses. He felt confident of its being the vehicle he pursued.

It approached a bend in the road. From his vantage point, Darcy could see a post chariot traveling from the opposite direction. This carriage seemed to be headed into the curve at a more sensible speed, under the control of a competent postilion. And thank goodness, for as the conspirators’ chaise reached the bend, it overturned, and the oncoming chariot narrowly averted becoming part of the accident.

The undamaged vehicle stopped. The postboy sprang toward the wreckage; his passenger emerged just as Darcy himself reached the chariot. He was surprised to recognize the traveler.

“Mr. Tilney!”

“Mr. Darcy! I did not expect to see you until I reached Pemberley.”

In all the distraction of the day’s events, Darcy had utterly forgotten that this was the date upon which Henry Tilney was to have commenced his visit.

“I am in pursuit of our imposters. I believe them to be in that carriage.”

“Oh, dear. Let us hope they have survived so as not to deprive the courts the pleasure of hanging them.”

They soon determined that the villains indeed lived to lie another day. Somehow, the two passengers managed to escape serious injury, though Mr. Wickham complained of an injured ankle. Darcy could not say he felt the slightest bit of pity watching him grimace as he dragged himself out of the wreckage. As soon as he emerged, Darcy demanded the ivory from him. Having no choice, Wickham relinquished it.

“Mr. Tilney, it gives me no pleasure to introduce you to Mr. George Wickham, to whom I have the misfortune of being related by marriage.”

“Fitz, you wound me.”

“Address me in that manner again and I shall force you to walk home.”

The other passenger had accepted the postilion’s aid and leaned on his arm for support.

“This woman is, I believe, Mrs. Stanford,” Darcy said, “also known as Dorothy the housekeeper. Mrs. Stanford, I understand you were acquainted with Mr. Tilney’s late brother.”

“Why—” Mr. Tilney peered at her intensely. And chuckled. “Isabella Thorpe!”

“Mr. Tilney!” She released the postboy and staggered to Henry with as much charm as one who has just been overturned in a carriage can muster. “How good it is to see you after all this time! I declare, it has been an age! How is your wife, my dear friend Catherine? I long to see her. Thank heavens you happened along when you did. I am sure you are wondering what Mr. Darcy can possibly be talking about. This is all the most frightful misunderstanding.”

Darcy glanced enquiringly at Mr. Tilney. “I gather you have already met?”

“Let us say that Mrs. Stanford’s interest in my family — and in Frederick in particular — considerably predates her marriage to the colonel. I see the years have altered you little, Mrs. Stanford. You are what you always were.”

The accident had loosed several locks of her hair. She tucked one of these behind her ear and smiled coyly. “You flatter me, Mr. Tilney.”

“Do I? That was not my intent.” He turned to Darcy. “Is Mr. Wickham the man who posed as my brother, then?”

“No, merely a conspirator in the plot. I have not yet identified who impersonated the captain.”

The driver of the overturned carriage had been thrown from the vehicle. He lay several yards distant, where the postilion found him.

“What the devil?” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Sneak up on a fellow in the dark, will you? Damn, but my wrist hurts!”

“I believe that is our imposter,” said Darcy.

With the aid of Tilney’s servant, the hapless driver stumbled toward their party. He was indeed the height and build of the false captain who had met them at Northanger. He appeared far less mysterious, however, with two eyes. “Devil take that curve! A hairpin turn if I ever saw one. A dozen coaches must roll on it each day. If I lived within a hundred miles of here, I would rebuild the road myself. I say — Tilney!”