Page 18 of Dear Friend

Jane had no answer to that.

Elizabeth turned back towards the window. Hurt had begun to mingle with fear, and she was ashamed of it. If Julia were dangerously ill, what right had Elizabeth to feel injured because Mrs. Tunley had neglected her? A woman fearing for her niece could hardly be expected to remember the feelings of a friend left behind.

Yet Mrs. Tunley had known how dear Julia had become to her. In seven months, their acquaintance had passed beyond ordinary friendship into something Elizabeth had never thought to name. Jane was her dearest sister and always must be, but Julia had somehow made a place for herself beside that affection without diminishing it.

“Julia may not have known they were going,” Jane said softly.

Elizabeth looked at her.

“If she is delirious, Lizzy, she may have known nothing of the arrangements. She may not even have understood that they were leaving Meryton, much less thought to ask her aunt to send word to you.”

The thought struck harder than Elizabeth expected.

Until then some part of her had been imagining Julia leaving the cottage, however ill, with an understanding that she was going away. Now she saw instead a very different picture: Julia carried out without knowing where she was being taken, perhaps scarcely sensible of Mrs. Tunley beside her.

Elizabeth turned away, but not before her eyes betrayed her. She pressed her fingers briefly against them and attempted to command herself.

Jane slipped her hand into hers and said nothing.

For several moments Elizabeth could not trust herself to speak either.

“It still seems difficult to believe,” Lydia said at last, unusually subdued. “To think she was with us at Christmas.”

Elizabeth looked towards her youngest sister.

“She danced twice with Mr. Goulding at the Lucases’ ball. Do you remember?” Lydia continued, almost absently. “She said his dancing was almost tolerable so long as he did not attempt conversation at the same time.”

The memory came with painful clarity. Julia had been flushed from dancing, her eyes bright with amusement as she leaned towards Elizabeth to deliver the observation where Mr. Goulding could not hear it.

A small, unsteady laugh escaped Elizabeth. “I remember.”

How could that have been scarcely three months ago? Julia had seemed so well then, so full of animation, that Elizabeth could almost hear the laugh which had followed the remark. Since then there had been nothing but the cottage, the apothecary, Mrs. Tunley’s reports, and letters sent into a sickroom Elizabeth herself was forbidden to enter.

“Do you think she will die?” Kitty asked softly.

“Kitty!” Jane said.

“No.” Elizabeth had answered before she knew she meant to.

Every face turned towards her.

She drew a slow breath. “No. I will not suppose it. Not until I am given reason to do so.”

Whether she believed the assertion mattered less than the necessity of making it.

Mrs. Bennet sank into a chair. “Poor girl. I cannot think what her aunt must be suffering.”

Elizabeth looked away.

“Do you know her father’s direction?” Jane asked after a little while. “If they have truly gone to Somerset, you might write there.”

For a moment Elizabeth could not answer. Then she remembered Julia mentioning the place months before, during one of those long conversations in which one subject wandered into another until neither could have said how they had arrived at the last. A village in Somerset, and her father’s house there. Elizabeth had scarcely attended to the direction at the time, but she thought she could recall enough of it to discover the rest.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I believe I do.”

“Then you may write.”

Elizabeth’s gaze fell upon the letter Polly had returned. Only that morning she had written Julia’s name upon it with the certainty of habit. For two months her letters had gone to the same cottage, through the same door, and into Julia’s hands.