Page 40 of Dear Friend

Darcy's attention sharpened at once.

“Two?”

“Yes, sir. They came together.”

For one absurd instant, he wondered whether both might be Elizabeth's. Perhaps one had been delayed upon the road and another had followed it, the post correcting in a single morning the silence of the preceding weeks. The thought arose so readily that Darcy was annoyed with himself before the servant had even placed the letters in his hand.

One glance disposed of the fancy.

The first bore Bingley's familiar direction. The second was addressed, as always, to Miss Julia Harding.

Darcy's annoyance disappeared instantly.

He turned the letter over, though there was no need to examine the hand. After seventeen letters, he knew it immediately.

Elizabeth had written.

“Thank you.”

The servant withdrew. Darcy remained where he was for another moment, conscious of a relief altogether disproportionate to the mere arrival of a letter. A month of increasingly unwelcome conjecture had been answered by a few lines of ink upon folded paper.

She was well enough to write.

Whatever Bingley wanted could wait.

Darcy went directly to his study and had scarcely reached his chair before he broke Elizabeth's seal.

Longbourn,

Hertfordshire

27th September 1811

Dearest Julia,

I owe you an apology, and I find no better way of beginning it than plainly. I have not written in over a month, though I have thought of you every day of that silence. I know this makes the neglect worse rather than better, but I cannot help the manner in which my mind has behaved upon the subject.

I told you in my last letter that I meant to write directly to your aunt. At the time it appeared the most sensible course, indeed so obvious a one that I wondered why I had not taken it months ago. I sat down three times to do it but I could not.

I am afraid, Julia.

I did not understand how much until I attempted that letter and found myself unable to continue it. If I write to your aunt and she does not answer, I shall know no more than I know now, and ignorance, however miserable, is at least something I have learnt to bear. But if she answers...

There. Even upon paper I cannot finish it.

God forbid that I should open a letter one morning and find the very words I have refused these seven months to imagine. I know there is cowardice in preferring uncertainty merely because uncertainty still permits hope, but I cannot persuade myself to exchange one for the other.

Our vicar preached upon faith last Sunday, with the most inconvenient timing imaginable. He spoke of trusting where we cannot see and of the folly of demanding certainty merely because uncertainty pains us. I sat through the whole sermon thinking of you.

Perhaps I have misunderstood him entirely. I dare say he would be very distressed to discover his sermon had been employed to justify my refusing to write a perfectly reasonable letter. But I have decided, for whatever it is worth, that I would rather continue writing to you and believe you are somewhere growing stronger than seek an answer which I am not yet brave enough to receive.

It is not courage. I know that.

But I have ceased being ashamed of it.

Now I must tell you something of Meryton, or you will accuse me of filling an entire letter with my own fretting.

Mr. Sotherton has become considerably more determined since I last wrote. Mr. Kingsley gave a ball a fortnight ago, where Mr. Sotherton sought me out with such perseverance that I began to suspect discouragement serves only to encourage him. He remained beside me through two entire sets without once appearing to wonder whether his company had been requested.