Chapter 4 A Test of Fire

Four days after the fire, Mr. Darcy again called on Longbourn. The household that was once silent as the grave, deep in mourning, bustled with activity. One of the Bennet sisters practiced piano, albeit, not well, somewhere on the first floor. For numerous minutes after being seen in by the housekeeper, Mr. Darcy and Dr. Stevens stood dumbstruck by the number of household members who passed them without a second thought.

The two youngest Bennet daughters giggled as they came down the stairs to see the two visitors waiting for Mr. Bennet.

“So good to see you again, Mr. Darcy,” one said, bobbing a curtsy that Mr. Darcy returned with a silent nod of his head. He grimaced as he could not properly recall which sister was which one, apart from Jane, who he craned his neck to see if she might be coming to rescue them from their awkward position.

“If you’re here for Jane, you’re too late. Mr. Bingley is with her in the parlor,” the other sister stated, narrowing her eyes in careful observation of the tall man from London. 

Mr. Darcy cleared his throat at the surprising information that Mr. Bingley was present. Still, he settled on a way to address the young girls without needing a name.

“Pardon me, but would you be so willing as to find your father? We are here to see him.”

One Bennet sister made a face.

“He won’t like that,” she started, pointing down the hall to where the study was that Mr. Darcy was very familiar with. “He never comes to get visitors, if people are welcome, they know where to find him.”

Mr. Darcy groaned. He was quite familiar with the strange behavior of his host, but had believed the lack of greeting and social graces before were the result of the dire circumstances. He looked to his friend, Dr. Stevens, who stiffled a laugh at Mr. Darcy’s predicament.

“And forgive me for speaking without an introduction Miss?” Dr. Stevens asked the girl he believed to be younger because she was shorter.

“Catherine. Catherine Bennet.”

“Don’t put on airs, Kitty!” the other sister said, flippantly.

Dr. Stevens ignored the sibling rivalry. “I am looking for a Miss Elizabeth Bennet. I am told she was gravely injured in the fire.”

“Oh, Lizzy, yes, but she’s all better now. She’s down playing chess with Papa,” Kitty Bennet explained, again pointing down the hall the same as what Lydia had done just before.

The two men shrugged and supposed the housekeeper at least by now had alerted Mr. Bennet as to their arrival. Without thinking about it, Mr. Darcy glanced over his shoulder at the closed doors to the parlor, wondering if Mr. Bingley was in fact visiting with Miss Bennet and how very odd the entire household was every time he visited.

After knocking on the door, both men entered the study to find the younger Bennet sisters were in fact correct. Mr. Bennet and his second eldest daughter were playing chess. Mr. Darcy stood arrested by the sight of Miss Elizabeth so entirely lovely, sitting in the sunlight from the early afternoon in the window seat, her legs propped along the cushions with the game table obscuring view of them.

“Mr. Darcy, forgive me I do not stand,” she said, with a laugh and Mr. Darcy stood there dumbstruck by the tableau.

Beyond an uncomfortable silence, Dr. Stevens jostled his friend to break him free of his stupor. Swiftly, Mr. Darcy turned to his physician and introduced him.

“Yes, I traveled to London to fetch my personal physician, Dr. Stevens. To help, help,” he gulped and finally looked again at Elizabeth, “you heal.”

“Well, that is very thoughtful of you, sir,” Mr. Bennet exclaimed, jumping from his chair to shake the hand of the man who had rescued his favorite daughter. “When we had not seen you in a few days, I worried that you no longer enjoyed my company!” Mr. Bennet teased, earning a sudden bewildered look from Mr. Darcy. This prompted Dr. Stevens to roll his eyes as he lifted his doctor’s bag and took a few steps towards his patient.

“Miss Elizabeth?” he asked, bowing his head until she acknowledged his presence. “Frederick Stevens. Might I see the injury in question?”

Sighing with consternation, Elizabeth began to lift the edge of her gown, wincing at the fresh pain of pressure against her injuries. 

Dr. Stevens began to protest, looking back to Mr. Darcy, “Perhaps Madam, that is—”

“Oh your friend cannot claim false modesty now, hand him a copy of Hamlet to calm his nerves,” Elizabeth said, gritting her teeth through the pain of reaching down to lift the soaked bandages from her badly blistered skin.

“Hamlet?” the doctor asked, confused, until the sight of the injury attracted his full attentions. The skin above Elizabeth’s ankles bubbled in a devilish red with numerous bulging blisters. “My Gods, we must lance these immediately!” he cried, looking back to Mr. Bennet and Mr. Darcy.

Elizabeth protectively waved her hands over her skin, shaking her head.

“Mr. Jones was very explicit that I am to leave them be,” she said.

Mr. Bennet frowned.

Dr. Stevens protested. “Mr. Bennet, the risk of infection is quite high with burns this extensive. I have seen too many a maiden scalded by the stove on a Monday, well by Wednesday, in the grave by Sunday.”

Mr. Bennet closed his eyes.

“Are you insinuating I am at risk of dying, sir?” Elizabeth asked with her eyebrow raised. She didn’t want to insult Mr. Darcy’s friend and physician, but truly she had been burned before in her life. If she was a foot away from death’s door, then so were the lot of them!

Dr. Stevens nodded gravely. “‘Tis a tragedy, but it happens.”

Mr. Darcy cleared his throat. 

“In my own household.”

Mr. Bennet nodded understanding as the pallor of his family’s would-be benefactor paled most noticeably.

“Ah, that is why you hurried so fast to London.”

“But Papa, Mr. Jones—”

“Who is Mr. Jones?” Dr. Stevens interrupted.

Mr. Bennet eyed his daughter and looked down at the unveiled blistering skin. Mr. Jones’ treatment had carried her thus far, and she was very much back to her old spirits by any account.

“You’ve truly seen people succumb to burns this late?” he interrogated Mr. Darcy.

Mr. Darcy swallowed hard the lump in his throat. “Too often. It’s a wicked false hope.”

Mr. Bennet turned back to Dr. Stevens and gave a quick nod.

The man took off his coat and handed it to Mr. Darcy, then pointed to the chess pieces for silent permission to move them.

Elizabeth protested.

“Mr. Jones is our local apothecary and he saved me, I’ll have you know,” she began to plead, looking to her father. When Dr. Stevens pulled out what appeared to be a long hairpin with a garishly jagged tip to it, Elizabeth grew agitated and tried to leave. “Father, this is madness. If we must do this, let me retire to my room. Jane will assist me,” she bargained as it was one thing to humiliate Mr. Darcy as he had humiliated her, but quite another for him to witness the horrific display of fluids leaving her person.

Mr. Bennet stepped forward and pressed a firm hand to Elizabeth’s shoulder to still his daughter. 

“Be brave, my Lizzy. If you cannot bear to look  . . .” he said, offering his handkerchief to her but she waved it away as Dr. Stevens seemed fully prepared to begin the procedure. 

Dr. Stevens pushed his spectacles up that had slid down his nose, leaning closer to inspect the largest blisters. “If the liquid is clear, we have caught it in time.”

“And if it’s not?” Mr. Bennet asked.

Dr. Stevens didn’t say anything but rolled up his sleeves to get to work. Elizabeth watched the first puncture, that felt like a sharp prick, and then nothing. The pressure of the cloth applied to catch the oozing liquid stung severely to the burned skin around each blister. She sucked in her breath and turned away, cursing an oath against her own pride. Her foolishness had saved no one and she suffered acutely for the folly.

Opening her eyes as Dr. Stevens and Mr. Bennet spoke on the condition of the fluid, Elizabeth caught the eye of Mr. Darcy. The man had hung back to the middle of the room. The most vulgar display of the procedure remained shielded from him by the backs of the two men administering the treatment. But his eyes were not in that direction at all, but squarely staring at Miss Elizabeth’s face. 

She again found herself lost in the brown, pained eyes of a man who stood nearly as a mystery to her. Yes, she had been foolish to run into that fire to seek her sister, the same sister escorted out the back by Mr. Bingley it turned out. But what had been his aim?

Elizabeth found herself no longer registering the pricks and prods as her body numbed the response as it had since she ceased taking the laudanum. Pain functioned in that way for her, a mild nuisance to her that would send her sister’s howling. She watched Mr. Darcy’s face and smirked. The man had insulted her nearly to her face and then risked his life for hers. 

Just as the last blister had been lanced and Dr. Stevens offered a numbing balm for her afflicted skin, the study door opened and Mrs. Bennet entered in a gown newly dyed black.

“Mr. Darcy! So good to see you and your   . . . ” she trailed off, as she could not at first place the man sitting next to her husband. “Friend,” she finished, unsure how to mark the man’s identity. “Will you be joining us for dinner?”

Flummoxed at Mrs. Bennet’s sudden request and her attire, Mr. Darcy did not offer the woman an immediate answer.

Dr. Stevens put away his ghastly instrument of torture. “They may fill with fluid once more. Each time, you must lance it. Do not let the fluid build up.”

Elizabeth looked down at the doctor’s handiwork immediately repulsed by the sight. Her skin once strained and stretched by the size of the blisters was now marred by large flaps of translucent skin hanging limply where the largest blisters had been. Quickly, she covered her wounds with her skirts, seething at the slight pain from the touch. To her surprise, the constant ache of pressure was gone, and she looked at Dr. Stevens with a new appreciation.

“Will you be staying for dinner?” she asked the doctor who had aided her affliction, against her better judgment.

“I believe we are to stay at a place called Netherfield Park? It is not far from here, I am to understand,” Dr. Stevens explained to his patient. 

“You ought to stay here, in case Elizabeth has any ill-effects. May I persuade you to trouble our guest room?” Mr. Bennet asked.  “We shouldn’t need it for at least another fortnight,” he added.

“I am . . .” Doctor Stevens looked to Mr. Darcy for assistance in what he should do, and to his surprise, Mr. Darcy nodded. “I am delighted by the invitation. Let me have my things removed from the carriage,” he said, standing up to leave the study.

Mr. Darcy turned around to Mrs. Bennet, and accepted the hospitality. Then to the woman’s surprise, he walked across the room to take the chair in the corner, closest to Elizabeth and began to set up the chess board once more.

Finding she wished to know more about this man who ignited her senses, confounded her expectations, and irritated her thoughts, Elizabeth addressed him. “Do you play, sir?”

“Indeed. I am sorry we spoiled your game with your father.”

“Hopefully, I will benefit the greater from it,” she said, nodding towards her feet. “Would you like to play a game?”

Mr. Darcy offered a thin smile. “It would be my honor.”

“Lovely, so long as you don’t mind moving my pieces,” she said, holding up her hands that were gloved. “They are still painful to use.”

Mr. Darcy agreed that he did not mind moving Elizabeth’s pieces to the squares she called out, and to a passerby, it appeared that Mr. Darcy was playing a game all by himself. A few moves in, and he quickly realized Elizabeth’s skill surpassed his usual opponents, including Mr. Bingley and Dr. Stevens.

“How often do you play, Miss Elizabeth?”

She gave a move for her knight to take one of his bishops. “Father and I play a few games per day, ” she said, feeling the heat of a blush as he responded to her play by moving his rook. She sighed and ordered a pawn to the final row on his side to get back her queen. “I also solve the chess puzzles in his weekly sporting paper when he cannot. Check.”

Mr. Darcy smirked as he tried to escape her clutches. “It’s rare for me to meet a lady who would feel no compunction about boasting better wits than her father,” he commented and Elizabeth laughed.

“Queen to F7, check mate. And I don’t boast that I have more skill, Mr. Darcy, for the man taught me.”

Mr. Bennet came over to inspect the board after his daughter’s dazzling display of warfare. “She holds an infinite amount of more patience and youthful exuberance, as well. Sometimes an old man just can’t be bothered with a puzzle of meaningless solution.”

“Again?” Mr. Darcy asked and Elizabeth, stifling a yawn agreed, then said after the next game she would need to retire to prepare for dinner. 

This time, Mr. Darcy took the position of aggressor, and Elizabeth found herself struggling to parry his attacks. She wished to focus on the game, but she was beginning to feel the exertion of the day draining her, loathe as she was to admit that she needed to rest. Mr. Bennet left the study for a few moments, with the door open, to help his wife settle Dr. Stevens into his room. As Mr. Darcy swapped one of his pieces for hers, he found the courage to ask her a question he had been meaning to ask for days.

“Why did you run back into that building?”

Elizabeth caught his stare and lost her ability to breathe for a moment. When she inhaled deeply, her normal answer of saving Jane just didn’t seem to suit the real question he was asking. The one he really wanted to ask was why was she so different from all of the other ladies that he knew. Likewise, she wanted to know why Mr. Darcy was so different from the other gentlemen she knew. It took Mr. Bingley days to come and see if Jane was well. 

Just like their chess match, where she realized her error was three turns before and there was nothing she could do to save herself, she turned the question back on him.

“Why did you run in to save me?”

He acknowledged the silent understanding they now held between the two of them, survivors of a great tragedy, bound by the unthinking actions of each other. Instead of giving her a swift answer, he moved another piece, also recognizing the game was mated in just a few moves. They were both spared by an interruption by Jane and Mr. Bingley who had wandered and found them in the study.

“I heard you had arrived, straight from London,” Mr. Bingley pronounced with a sound of shock to his voice. Elizabeth tilted her head towards Mr. Darcy, rather baffled the man hadn’t stopped at Netherfield Park before visiting.

“If the good doctor is finding his moment to refresh himself,” she offered, “do you need to return to Netherfield Park before dinner?” Elizabeth asked. But Mr. Darcy shook his head, rather uncomfortable at the sudden interests into his well-being. The man shifted his weight in his chair and set the abandoned game aside.

“We stopped the village before Meryton now that the inn . . .” he began, and then stopped as all four of them could not quite accept the tragedy that had befallen the village less than a week ago. 

“Jane, how did you escape?” Elizabeth asked, suddenly realizing that during her recovery, no one bothered to fully explain how foolish her folly had been.

Jane blushed. Mr. Bingley blushed. Elizabeth looked to Mr. Darcy for an answer but he was just as confused as she was. Believing her to be asking him a silent question, he answered the obvious:

“I had run in after you, I did not look for Miss Bennet.”

The air hung with silence until Elizabeth prodded her sister again. This time, gesturing with her gloved hands to urge Jane to speak. The physical reminder of her sister’s injuries appealed to Jane’s sense of guilt.

“I was dancing with Mr. Bingley,” she started and Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“Yes, yes, and I was dancing with Mr. Lucas—” Elizabeth gasped, suddenly fighting back sobs as another part of the night flooded her memory. Her voice choked out to a whisper, “Charlotte?”

To her surprise, Mr. Darcy reached out and gently touched her arm, close to her elbow in comfort. When she looked down at his hand, he immediately withdrew it.

“I’m sorry, Lizzy, she did not survive,” Jane said.

“Nor did her sister,” Mr. Bingley added, earning an incredulous stare from both Jane and Mr. Darcy. “Oh, my apologies, I should have considered . . . “

Elizabeth began to struggle with her emotions as the night played out in a ghastly memory. Fuzzy images of laughing at Mr. Darcy’s arrogance, the context so wholly meaningless now. Then they were all dancing in a circle, taking turns, and someone yelled “Fire!” Gasping for air to breathe, Elizabeth hyperventilated as she finally remembered spying Charlotte’s body, unmoving in the smoke and oppressed by the heat. She felt as though she were there again, resigned to meeting the same fate. Only she hadn’t.

Finally, Elizabeth counted to five as the others called her name and steadied her breath, then braved looking to her right at Mr. Darcy, the man who had saved her from a certain death of her own making. Crushed by the debt she owed, his presence forced her mind to think of too many things at once. As her head throbbed in pain, from the crying and overthinking, new voices joined the study.

“Lizzy! Lizzy!” her mother called out. 

Doctor Stevens pushed Mr. Bingley aside to get closer to Elizabeth. He pressed his hands to her forehead which was burning up with fever. 

“She is ill,” he pronounced and suddenly Jane and Mr. Bingley left the small room so that Doctor Stevens and Mr. Darcy could help Elizabeth stand up. When the sudden change in position made her feel lightheaded, she staggered a moment and it was quick action by the two men grasping her arms that kept her upright.

“Darcy?” his physician inquired.

With a whisper to her ear begging her forgiveness, Mr. Darcy placed one arm across the back of her shoulders and the other under her thighs to effortlessly scoop her up. Feeling safe and secure, Elizabeth wrapped one arm around his neck.

Mr. Bennet appeared cross, but did not further his daughter’s indignity by trying to take over carrying her above stairs. He commented on the convenience of young men when ladies swoon, trying to avoid the seriousness of the development.

“Send for Mr. Jones,” Elizabeth muttered.

Mr. Darcy shushed her as he wordlessly carried her to the room he knew to be hers from before. After laying her chastely upon the bed, Jane shooed him away and explained that with the burns, it was very difficult for her sister to walk.

Mr. Darcy nodded and realizing that he could not bear to see her again in pain, retreated from the room. Dr. Stevens remained behind with Mr. Bennet and Miss Bennet, and Mr. Darcy found Mr. Bingley down in the parlor, pacing before the fireplace.

“Perhaps we should stay another night for dinner,” Mr. Darcy suggested.

Mr. Bingley ran his hands through his hair, highly agitated about what he had just witnessed.

“Can you leave her in this state?” he asked, but Mr. Darcy remained stoically still. So Mr. Bingley implored him further, stepping close enough to his friend for a physical confrontation if necessary.  “Darcy?” His friend turned away. “Darcy! I don’t know what you are playing at. I merely helped Miss Bennet out of the inn—”

“So that is why she did not wish to answer?”

“I did nothing ungentlemanly! I certainly didn’t carry her out for the whole world to see!”

“Charles,” Darcy warned, calmly, “please lower your voice. We can discuss this elsewhere,” he said, suddenly fearful of one of the younger sisters lurking about and spying.

“You’re the one who always warns me not to show any certain preference. To not raise hopes.” Mr. Bingley stormed away to the other side of the room. “Even when this time, it’s I who desperately hope . . .”

As Mr. Darcy stared at the back of his friend, another had joined the parlor without a word. But it was not one of the sisters.