“I have to trust you in turn that when wealth and power come into your control that you will not abuse your position or attempt to extend your advantage beyond the boundaries of what we have agreed.
“You must be clear, Miss Bennet, that I would not have had it so. Had we been socially connected and met in a different situation, as ridiculous as it will seem, I believe that I might still have made a proposal to you and the prospect of the union could even have been pleasing and agreeable to me. Of course, nothing on earth would have caused our social worlds to interconnect and so the idea is laughable, I know, but you have confessed an enthusiasm for novels of fiction with the frivolities of romantic forms and so I am sure that this turn of events would entertain you.
“Miss Bennet, these circumstances would not be of my choosing and I’m sure that they would not be yours either.
“All that being as it may,” his eyes were anguished, “I wanted only for you to be in possession of the facts. I do not want it said that I have deceived you in any way. As you know, I must have a completion of our business and the need for us to conclude all aspects of our transaction is both pressing and urgent so, Miss Bennet, now I must formally ask that you give to me your hand and you consent to be my wife.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. She planned to take three slow breaths, but she found herself speaking straight away. “Sir, while you are certainly a man who has his faults, you have also much to recommend you. I would wish to understand better why it is that you would seek an marriage in this form, and why at the same time you have such haste.”
His eyes narrowed, “As your quick mind has obviously detailed an inventory of my considerable failings in the few hours you have known me, I’m sure that it would delight you to instruct me in them, point by point. As to the need for urgency, Miss Bennet, I can only tell you that I have my reasons.” As his eyes burned into hers, his jaw clenched a number of times. “I do require your answer, Miss Bennet. As soon as is possible, if you would be so very kind.”
“No delay is needed, sir. I am sure that your words are aimed purposely to cut and to wound me. Cruelty is evidently your favorite sport as you showed when you confined my poor sister in that darkened room like a prisoner. I strongly suspect that your motive is not only the care of poor Georgiana but that it pleases you to keep keeping Jane apart from Mr. Bingley. If your wish is to hold me to our contract then I shall not renege. I will consider myself compelled by the terms we agreed. Understand though, sir,” Elizabeth spoke slowly and with firmness, “that anything, the slightest thing beyond those bounds you must put from your mind entirely.”
His face flushed as Elizabeth continued, “I will complete our bargain, but with the deepest resentment and the most profound wish that I had never consented to you as I did. Indeed, I wish that I had never traveled here, nor seen or laid eyes upon the man that takes such pleasure in misery.”
After pacing some long moments, he stopped again and confronted her. “Thank you for your candor. I will arrange for your return passage on the earliest possible sailing. I hope that your pleasure in departing will not be too long delayed. In the meantime, I hope that you will take every opportunity make yourself as much at home in Pemberley as it is possible for you to be.”
He strode across the room with the force of a storm. Holding the door open for her, he did not look in her eye as he said, “Good morning, Miss Bennet.”
18
Downcast and glum, Elizabeth took herself to the library. She pulled a few volumes from the shelves and brought them to a small table with a view to the front of the house, of the drive and the fountains. Outside, the sky darkened.
She felt now that she truly was in a place where she did not belong. As if she had been expelled from school and now had to wait for her parents to have her collected, to be carried home in disgrace.
The pains and discomfort of the journey to bring her and Jane here, all to be endured over again but now to return home with nothing but failure to show for the trip.
Elizabeth felt most deeply for poor Jane. Dragged halfway around the world, now Jane would surely now have no chance to explore the one happy association she had made. Now they were only to be cast back aboard ship. Would Jane sicken again? Elizabeth could hardly bear it.
Reading took her up a little but she could not settle into it. Her mind kept drifting and finding thorns and barbs to taunt her. How could she ever have been so idiotic as to put her fate and that of her sister in the hands of a man with such a haughty profile and such an arrogant nose?
Distracted again, she heard the hurried clatter of horse’s hooves. Dashing past the window, the figure of Colonel Fitzwilliam flew by, on a fast chestnut mare, and pulled up at the stone steps under the portico. Elizabeth’s spirits began to rise, and she was halfway out of her seat when she heard boots stamp in a hurry across the entrance hall, then Mr. Darcy’s voice in an urgent greeting, followed by the slam of a door. Doubtless the heavy study door.
Another horse, a tall black hunter was brought out, saddled and ready to stand by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s mount. After a few minutes more, a rush of boots came again. Colonel Fitzwilliam emerged under the portico. With him, the figure of Mr. Darcy in white riding breeches and a frock coat jumped to swing into the saddle of the black hunter.
While Colonel Fitzwilliam was still climbing onto his own horse, Mr. Darcy pulled on the reins. The great hunter turned and began up the drive at a trot. As soon as Colonel Fitzwilliam moved and turned his horse to follow, Mr. Darcy spurred his hunter into a galloping dash and the colonel was forced to chase to keep up with him.
The horses raced away, through a cloud of dust. A rumble of thunder rolled in the distance like faraway bowling balls.
Although she wished very much that she could have spoken with Colonel Fitzwilliam, knowing that Mr. Darcy was now out of the house left an unexpected vacancy in Elizabeth’s spirits.
Unsettled and unable to remain indoors, Elizabeth ran for the front door. Two servants were there to swing the double doors open for her. She kept her head down and murmured her thanks, not wanting to see or be seen by anyone. Hurrying down the steps, she dashed along the side of the house and made for the rear. A moist chill blew lightly on the air and the horizon was shaded with a slate gray mist.
On their walk the last evening, she had seen an ornamental garden, large and square, bordered with high, impenetrable privet hedges. That would be a place she would not be observed.
A parting in the center of one straight side led into a privet corridor that led off in both directions. She chose one direction and rushed along, anxious to be as deep in the garden and as far from view as possible. At the first turn, the passage led to a shorter corridor with three more portals deeper into the garden. Elizabeth took the first.
She found herself in a rectangular space with small benches on each side and a charming sundial in the center. The little outdoor room was sheltered from the coolness in the air and the seclusion suited her.
As she settled herself down on the bench she was struck by an almost physical sensation of familiarity, as though she knew this place. She remembered this very view. It was not possible, she knew without a doubt. Yet, as she sat on the bench. She knew that it was true.
She did know this spot. Her memory of it was an image from this exact spot, with two young girls holding paper lanterns, glimpsed in evening light from this very bench where she sat. It was one of the watercolors that Colonel Fitzwilliam showed to her and grace at their aunt and uncle’s dinner table.
The younger girl, holding up her red lantern to peer inside, Elizabeth now realized, was Georgiana. And could the older girl have been Miss Caroline Bingley? Elizabeth was sure that she saw a resemblance.
How long ago that seemed now. She thought of Jane and herself, how much they could have resembled the girls in the picture at that age.
Without her being aware, her hand had slid into her purse to find the other picture, the one she now carried with her everywhere.
The thought of Mr. Darcy was disturbing. He was uncomfortably like so many of the characters in her most cherished stories. Mr. Rochester, Heathcliff, Sergeant Frank Troy, they all were men with dark and troubling aspects. Jane often teased her about it. ‘Their badness is all goodness to you, Lizzy.’
Now she had been confronted with a man who seemed troubling in all those exact same ways. Was she being true to her feelings in putting him off, or was she running from herself? When presented with as fine an example as there could be of the kind of man she believed she really desired, did her little heart fail her?
She touched his picture, as though she could see him through her fingertips. She tried to think seriously about her position. Was she right to refuse his terms? Was she really moved to refuse him only because she feared the depth of her own feelings?
The sky had darkened and she realized she must have dozed or drifted into a daydream. Even in this shaded nook, Elizabeth felt the moisture in the air signaling rain.
When she stood to take herself back into the house, she was unsure which way she had come in. With all of the hedges being so alike, she saw how easily the paths and passages could be confusing.
19
The rain had not yet started but the air had a distinct mist and a damp chill. Elizabeth rubbed her shoulders as she returned to the cozy warmth of the library. The servant who had held the main door open for her asked if she would like a towel and a shawl. When she declined he offered coffee or tea.
“Perhaps some soup?”
Still, she refused, politely, but as she began to nest herself back into the seat by the window she decided to ring for some coffee. The rain began a steady and growing patter on the glass and it added to a sense of containment and isolation for Elizabeth. Her reading absorbed her at last. When she was drawn back by the sound of a carriage outside, she realized that some time had passed. The coffee in her cup was stone cold and what remained in the pot was cold, too.
Crunching the shale drive at the front of the house, a small carriage delivered Colonel Fitzwilliam back to the front entrance. Elizabeth thought it odd that he returned without Mr. Darcy.
Presently, after a polite tap on the door to the library, the colonel came in and Elizabeth rose to greet him. He brought with him a maid with a tea tray. “I see you had coffee.”
“It was some time ago and I neglected it. Now I’m afraid it is quite cold.”
“I have a liking for cold coffee in some weathers, but not on a day like today.”
Elizabeth realized that he had asked the maid along primarily for the sake of propriety, to act in the place of a chaperone. Nonetheless, he asked her to serve tea. He smiled as he took a chair opposite from Elizabeth at the small table.
“I hope it is not out of place for me to say so, Miss Bennet, but I am very sorry to hear that you will be leaving us. You and your sister are such a welcome arrival here, I cannot begin to tell you.”
Elizabeth said nothing and he went on, “Mr. Darcy has told me something of the situation, although only what is necessary for me to know, of course. He has asked me to help in making the arrangements, though, as I did for your journey here.”
He looked up at Elizabeth and said, “I couldn’t hold out hope to you of a return trip that would be any more comfortable than your voyage here.”
“I understand, colonel. Mr. Darcy’s wish is not to confide in me the smallest detail of his urgent need for a bride and a wedding. I feel that I can talk to you but, as you asked me if I speak out of turn you must say at once, Colonel. I would not offend you for anything and would not want to put you in any awkward position.”
“I hope that you can speak frankly with me, Miss Bennet. I am retained as Mr. Darcy’s lawyer, but I am also his longtime friend and I hope that I am a friend to you, too.”
“Thank you, colonel. I know next to nothing about Mr. Darcy and what I have seen, frankly does not encourage me to want to know more, yet he wants me not only to go through with our arrangement with some haste, but he seems set on insisting that I be eager and enthusiastic about it. He wants my compliance but he also appears to need my approval. And, as well as refusing to tell me why, he can not even allow me some days to become accustomed to him.”
The colonel was smiling as she finished. “You have given as perfect a description of my friend Fitzwilliam Darcy as I have ever heard,” he said, “Although from one view only, I must stress that. You have captured one side of him so perfectly if it were bottled it could be named ‘Essence of Darcy.’ But there is much more to him, and there is more to his situation. I am severely limited in what I may tell you, but I can say this, that his circumstances absolutely forbid him from explaining himself very much more than I believe he already has, on pain of the law.”
He lifted his teacup for a sip. “Although, if it were not so, he may act in the same way.”
Elizabeth felt easier. It seemed as though she had an ally in the colonel or, at least, someone she could confidently trust. Knowing that much made her burden lighter.
He said, “As Mr. Darcy asked of me, I have made inquiries but it happens that I am pretty familiar with the shipping agents and the sailing schedules in the region.”
He consulted a small black notebook. “A steamer departs tomorrow on the morning tide.” Elizabeth had a rush of mixed feelings. He went on, “But that ship will sail only to San Francisco and then farther down the coast where no other boats to take you further are to be had. So, in San Francisco, there will be a delay of some days. Nine days in all before a clipper that will be able to take you back to Boston docks there.” His eyes drooped as he looked up. “The steamer would not, quite frankly, be a pleasant or a comfortable journey for your sister and yourself.”
Elizabeth sat back, disheartened.
Colonel Fitzwilliam looked in his notebook again. “The first sailing that I can be sure of from San Francisco will be a clipper about nine days later. Mr. Darcy has said that, of course, he will see that you are accommodated in the finest rooms that San Francisco has to offer but, he asked me to implore you and, frankly, I would do so in any event: Even the very finest rooms that San Francisco has are not places where I would want decent young ladies to be and, I’m quite sure, they are not where you would want to be.
“Furthermore, the clipper that you would be awaiting passes on its way, from the port here at Portland before she sails to California. So, in short, if you can stand to be accommodated here for the next nine days, you can at least take a single journey and in no worse conditions than you had on your trip here.”
Elizabeth hesitated.
After only a brief pause, the colonel said, “But, of course, you will want to discuss the matter with your sister. Please, I insist, you must not allow me to hurry or distress you. take all of the time that you need.” Elizabeth realized with some surprise that she had not even discussed the matter with Jane. Perhaps Jane would prefer to stay.
“Colonel, I understand perfectly that you can tell me nothing about Mr. Darcy’s business but my not knowing makes it so hard to be sure what is the right thing to do.”
“Of course it does, Miss Bennet, I understand completely. For that reason, although I cannot tell you any of the important details of what is at issue here, I’m sure that there is no reason why I should not tell you of certain events that took place, many of which occurred in this house. I have given a great deal of thought to what would be permitted and proper for me to say and I believe that I can tell you this.”
Leaning forward, Elizabeth listened intently. As the colonel recounted the circumstances, she hardly dared to breathe.
“The older Mr. Darcy, who was my client, was a man I considered to be a friend and was also one of the best men who ever walked the earth. A man with the heart of a lion and the strength of an ox, he had given a lifetime of service, to his country, his business and estate and, mot of all, to his dearest passion, his family.
“As a young man he was fond of cards, and of cognac and he was pleased to hav
e the company of bright and handsome young women. He gave all of that up when he took his commission in the army and never looked back through his long and happy marriage. Through their marriage and especially in the dreadful times of Mrs. Darcy’s awful illness, Mr. Darcy’s devotion was tireless. After it was over he was grief stricken. He spent a full decade in mourning. When he came out it was only to find himself in the throes of a merciless and incurable disease
“He then resolved to enjoy his last years as best he could and however he could and young Mr. Darcy made no objection, even when the old man regularly kept particular company with a man who Mr. Darcy mistrusted and despised. Often enough Miss Bingley was here, too, playing cards and drinking late into the night. She and the one other. Thick as thieves those two were.”
“That seems like a choice phrase for a man of the law, Colonel Fitzwilliam.”
“And, as I suspect you well know, Miss Bennet, an attorney does not choose a phrase lightly. Especially not one like that.”
Elizabeth saw a mist in the colonel’s eye as he went on, “And so it was, after a very long evening at cards and cognac, that the senior Mr. Darcy came to my offices with a determination to make his will anew.”
“Do you believe he had been influenced? Perhaps by Miss Bingley?”
“Not by her, certainly. But when he came to my office, a gentleman accompanied him. As his attorney, Miss Bennet, it was only appropriate for me to ensure that he was of sound mind, that he understood what he was doing, and that the decision was his own. And you can be sure that I pressed him but, all of those things he assured me were the case.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s forehead folded into a frown. “What I do know, and I am free to say, is that from the time of Mr. Darcy’s death, a certain Mr. Wickham paid a great deal more attention to Miss Bingley than he had ever done before.”
Urgently, Darcy Page 8
