Actually, now that Elizabeth thought it through, Jane would not be the right person, for that would be her first child, and what if Elizabeth gave birth to a boy child? That child could not rightly be Mr. Bingley’s heir.
No, no, she must see if there was someone else.
Her Aunt Gardiner seemed the most likely. She had four children under the age of eight as it was, and there would be no reason she might not have another. After the babe was born, Elizabeth could go and live with the Gardiners as a caretaker for all of the children and might then even be like a mother to her babe.
It seemed perfect.
Yes, so, what she must do was to get to see her aunt, as soon as she possibly could.
Well, she might have some time. She knew that with a first babe, it was common for a woman not to appear to be increasing until the fifth or sixth month.
At any rate, her aunt and uncle were on their summer trip to Derbyshire, now. They would not be back for several weeks. They had taken Jane along instead of Elizabeth, since Elizabeth had been obliged to go to Brighton. They would bring Jane back to Longbourn on their way back to their house in London.
Elizabeth must be there when they arrived, even though she knew that the regiment would be stationed here until the end of September and Lydia had every intention of staying that long.
She tried to think of a way to get home.
Her first idea was to feign illness, but that was not a good idea because it would mean she would be confined to bed here and not able to be moved.
Her next idea was simply to beg to come home, but she was not sure if that would be adequate.
Her final idea was that something here, in Brighton, must prove to be absolutely unbearable for her, and so that she must leave immediately. And it would have to be something that had changed recently, because she had been here for so many months as it was.
To this end, she was on guard for anything she might use.
One day, happily, she found it. A family had come to let the house next door to where she and Lydia and the Forsters were staying. They had children who brought out crusts of bread to feed the gulls, and Elizabeth began to have a “reaction” to the gulls.
She would wheeze and cough and claim she could not breathe, and say that she could not abide it. She did this for three days, each time with increasing vigor, making quite a bit of noise and throwing herself about dramatically—in this, she need only put herself in mind of her own mother, and she was quite able to perform.
After the third day, Colonel Forster suggested she might wish to be away from those gulls, and she said she did fear that it might be getting so serious that she perhaps should go home, though she had been having such a wondrous time there with them all.
Lydia protested that she was not having any trouble with the birds, and Elizabeth assured her Lydia might say, that Elizabeth would take a post coach herself, and that there would be no worries about any of it.
And this was how it came to pass, though the coach made her queasy, and though she feared she would cast up her accounts, though she embarrassingly grew so tired that she dozed on the way, slumping into the passenger next to her. Since realizing she was with child, she had been remarkably tired much of the time.
She had already resolved that she would not tell anyone in the household that she was with child. She had decided thatsuch a thing would be best kept secret from everyone. The more people that knew, the more likely it was that a secret would get out, after all. And this secret could tarnish her entire family’s reputation.
Her mother, as conscientious of reputations as she might be, would most certainly throw a dramatic fit over the news. She would go up and down the stairs, exclaiming that she did not understand why God saw fit to punish her, why she was forced to endure so much suffering in this world, and generally making the entire affair her own tragedy and not Elizabeth’s.
This would mean that the servants heard and this could likely mean the secret would get out.
She could trust her father, of course, but she could never speak of this to him. The thought made her shudder. She did not wish her father to think of her in that way, on a bed, her skirts pulled up, Mr. Wickham’s body inside her body. No, that was insupportable.
Jane, she would tell, but likely at the same time as her Aunt Gardiner.
So, she had only to wait at Longbourn for the few scant weeks until the Gardiners returned with Jane. The house was oddly quiet, with only her, Mary, and Kitty there. Indeed, Elizabeth’s father was very satisfied to have had the house down to only two daughters, saying it was a much less shrill environment, and chortling.
Elizabeth was beginning to feel real dislike for her father at times.
It wasn’t his fault she had gone to Brighton and been taken advantage of by Mr. Wickham, Elizabeth knew.
It was only that it wasn’t her own fault.
None of this was her own fault. She did not like it when her mother went about, claiming that she suffered needlessly, through none of her own doing, but Elizabeth felt that way.
She spent much of the time waiting for the Gardiners feeling rather sorry for herself. It all seemed dreadfully unfair.
She told herself that she was likely not losing out on much, even though all was ruined. She’d had two marriage proposals in her life, had turned them both down, but there had been little hope she would ever have another, even if she had not been bred with Mr. Wickham’s babe, and being with child meant, of course, there would be no marriage for her. Ever. But that had likely been the case, anyway, she knew. So, there was nothing lost there.
