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“That is a charming scene,” said Elizabeth pointing at a little stone cottage from which a tendril of smoke was rising from its chimney. The smoke was the only sign of life, and without it, Elizabeth thought, the cottage would’ve looked more like a painting than a place where people lived.
“It is our first stop,” Darcy said, and he turned the carriage onto a nearly invisible lane so covered with snow that Elizabeth wondered at how he could navigate it.
“Mr. Darcy! Merry Christmas to you!” an elderly woman wrapped in a tattered knitted shawl said as she opened the door. “Please do come in.”
Elizabeth and Darcy, who was carrying a large box, entered the tiny cottage.
“There is a fire on, so you will soon warm up,” she said this to Elizabeth. “I made a large fire because I thought well, it is the season and I should celebrate it as best I can.”
Elizabeth saw that the large fire consisted of a couple of small branches, and she couldn’t help but recall the huge Yule log that burned in Rosings’ hearth.
“Remind me to have Mr. Biddle deliver a load of firewood here,” said Darcy, lowering his voice.
He needn’t have lowered his voice, Elizabeth realized, as the old woman was almost completely deaf.
Mr. Darcy introduced her to Elizabeth as Mrs. Rose, but Mrs. Rose did not hear him properly, and she exclaimed, “I am so pleased to meet you, Mrs. Darcy!”
They could not disabuse her of the notion that Elizabeth was Darcy’s new bride. She met every protest in that regard by lifting her hand to her ear and then nodding vigorously with a happy expression.
“I knew that when you took a wife, you would choose a pretty one,” Mrs. Rose said. She beamed at Elizabeth and then turned to look in the box which Darcy had set on her small table. “Look at all these things! Oh, Mr. Darcy, you really shouldn’t have. You are too generous.”
There was a ham, a pork loin, jars of jams and preserves, and bags of tea and sugar—there was enough, thought Elizabeth, to feed an entire family.
Mrs. Rose prepared tea for them with the tea that was in the box – although they said that they had other calls to make, and did not have time for tea she literally could not hear them – and they settled down before the small fire to drink it.
Elizabeth appreciated the warm beverage, but she declined to take a biscuit though she was hungry. She realized that Mrs. Rose had not, although it was Boxing Day, yet had a Christmas visitor.
Mrs. Rose regaled them with stories of Mr. Darcy; all the things she remembered about when he visited Kent as a boy.
Elizabeth gleaned that she was a widow without children and that Darcy had done a great deal of work for her, helping her with her garden and her livestock.
“He is so good with animals, you would not believe it, Mrs. Darcy,” Mrs. Rose said at one point. “He can calm the wildest thing. And I always said animals can judge people, who is kind and who is not. They see past appearances. Do you come from Kent, Mrs. Darcy? No, I think you’re a Derbyshire lass—”
“Mrs. Rose thinks very highly of you,” Elizabeth said when they were getting back into the carriage.
“She thinks highly of you as well, Mrs. Darcy,” Darcy replied, with a laugh.
Elizabeth lost count of the number of people they visited that Boxing Day bearing gifts of food, and woolens, and money.
And everywhere it was the same. Mr. Darcy was treated like a long-lost relative, and Elizabeth—though she was never again mistaken as his wife—was regaled with stories of his boyhood during the summers he had spent in Kent.
Elizabeth was struck by the fact that the poor—unlike Meryton society—did not find him proud, or aloof, or haughty. And Mr. Darcy himself displayed no sign that he felt himself to be superior to their company.
He was a puzzle, Elizabeth decided.
Boxing Day sped by like a whirlwind, and Elizabeth was exhausted, and happy all at the same time when the carriage returned to the manor house.
She was disappointed that the day was over, and more disappointed still that Mr. Darcy excused himself, explaining that he had some other duties to which he had to attend.
But she was delighted to see her friend Charlotte who had just arrived with Mr. Collins to pay their respects to their patroness, Lady Catherine.
“It’s so good to see you, Elizabeth,” Charlotte said in her ear as the two friends hugged.
“And you too, Charlotte,” Elizabeth whispered back.
“Merry Christmas, cousin,” said Mr. Collins, as though he did not wish to be left out.
Elizabeth smiled at him. “It is indeed. Merry Christmas to you.”
