“But,” he added, “you will of course wish to have your humble respects delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you while you have been here.”
Elizabeth made no objection; the door was then allowed to be shut, and the carriage drove off.
“Good gracious!” cried Maria, after a few minutes’ silence, “it seems but a day or two since we first came! And yet how many things have happened!”
“A great many indeed,” said her companion with a sigh.
“We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice! How much I shall have to tell!”
Elizabeth added privately, “And how much I shall have to conceal!”
The first ten miles of their journey were performed without the slightest bit of conversation or alarm. But when they came upon the old white church in St. Ezra Parish, Elizabeth at once recognized the scent of death in the air, and ordered the coachman to stop.
It was a grand church for so small a village, built upon a frame of shaved tree trunks, and covered with hundreds of whitewashed planks. The denizens of St. Ezra were a notoriously pious lot, and they packed the pews every Saturday and Sunday to pray for deliverance from the legions of Satan. Stained glass windows ran the length of each side, which told the story of England’s descent from peace into chaos; the last window portrayed a resurrected Christ returning to slay the last of the unmentionables, Excalibur in hand.
While the coachman and servant waited nervously with Maria, Elizabeth ascended the steps toward the church’s splintered doors, sword at the ready. The scent of death was overwhelming, and several of the stained glass windows had been shattered. Something terrible had happened here, but how recently, she knew not.
Elizabeth entered the church ready to fight, but upon perceiving the inside, she sheathed her Katana, as it could do no good here. Not now. It seemed the whole of St. Ezra Parish had barricaded themselves in the church. Bodies lay everywhere: in pews; in aisles-the tops of their skulls cracked open; every last bite of their brains scraped out, like pumpkin seeds from a jack-o’-lantern. With their Parish under attack, these people had retreated to the only safe place they knew; but it hadn’t been safe enough. The zombies had simply overwhelmed them with superior numbers and insatiable determination. Men still clutched their pitchforks. Ladies still huddled with their children. Elizabeth felt her eyes moisten as she imagined the horror of their final moments. The screams. The sight of others being torn to pieces before their eyes. The horror of being eaten alive by creatures of unspeakable evil.
A tear fell down Elizabeth’s cheek. She was quick to wipe it away, feeling somewhat ashamed that it had escaped at all.
“A house of God so defiled!” said Maria, as their journey continued. “Have these unmentionables no sense of decency?”
“They know nothing of the sort,” said Elizabeth, staring mindlessly out of the coach’s window, “and neither must we.”
With no further alarm, they reached Mr. Gardiner’s house, where they were to remain for a few days. Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.
It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy’s proposals. To know that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish Jane was such a temptation to openness as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate; and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister further.
CHAPTER 39
IT WAS THE SECOND WEEK in May, in which the three young ladies set out together from Section Six East for Hertfordshire; and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet’s carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman’s punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining-room upstairs. These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed in amusing the sentinel on guard with immodest displays of their proficiency with a throwing star, much to the consternation of the carriage horse which served as their unwilling target.
After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming, “Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?”
“And we mean to treat you all,” added Lydia, “but you must lend us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.” Then, showing her purchases-“Look here, I have bought this bonnet.”
And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect unconcern, “Oh! But there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it will not much signify what one wears this summer, after the soldiers have left Meryton, and they are going in a fortnight.”
“Are they indeed!” cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction; for not only would her sisters have one less distraction from their training, but the very fact of the decampment meant that Hertfordshire had been much relieved of the unmentionable menace while she was away.
“They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme; and I dare say would hardly cost anything at all. Mamma would like to go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall have! With hardly any balls to be had in Meryton!”
“Yes,” thought Elizabeth, “a summer with so few balls would be miserable indeed for a girl who thinks of little else.”
“Now I have got some news for you,” said Lydia, as they sat down at table. “What do you think? It is excellent news-capital news-and about a certain person we all like!”
Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told he need not stay. Lydia laughed, and said:
“Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse things said than I am going to say. But he is an ugly fellow! I never saw such a long chin in my life. I nearly ran him through for thinking him a zombie. Well, but now for my news; it is about dear Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it not? There is no danger of Wickham’s marrying Mary King. There’s for you! She is gone down to her uncle at Liverpooclass="underline" gone to stay. Wickham is safe.”
“And Mary King is safe!” added Elizabeth; “safe from a connection imprudent as to fortune.”
“She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him.”
“But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side,” said Jane.
“I am sure there is not on his. I will answer for it, he never cared three straws about her-who could about such a nasty little freckled thing, with not a skill to boast of?”
As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their boxes, weapons, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition of Kitty’s and Lydia’s purchases, were seated in it.