The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy

by Marsha Altman

  Christmas, it had been decided, would be at Longbourn this year—no one would be missing, no one abroad, no one ill (aside from Mrs. Bennet, but they were all adjusted to that reality), no one dying, and no one ready to give birth. For that, everyone was grateful. All five former Bennet sisters under one roof, with their children and husbands, were quite enough. Lord and Lady Kincaid had returned to Scotland, taking Grégoire with them for a time. The Hursts and Dr. Daniel Maddox and Caroline Maddox, along with their children, were at Brian and Princess Nadezhda’s estate.

  Some of the children were not happy with this news. They loved their crazy aunt and uncle and their crazy guest. “Christmas comes every year,” Bingley reminded his children. “If you got everything you wanted one year, then the others wouldn’t be special.”

  The Bertrands returned in time to complete the party. Charles and Eliza Bingley turned eleven, and Charlie Bingley seemed surprised that he did not wake up taller that very morning. He was evidently jealous of Geoffrey, who was now starting to look what was deemed “adult-size.” Georgie gave Geoffrey an occasional cold look, as she had always been taller and now it was no longer so, and probably would never be again. She did not verbalize her feelings; he understood it perfectly well without a word. And George, of course, was only a year or so away from officially being welcomed into the parlor, and an additional year from being a man of great wealth. All he had to do was hold any of his cousins’ foreheads at arm’s length and they would be unable to touch him, to the amusement of everyone but the person trying to do it.

  “George, stop showing off!” his sister said. He smiled, which was a rare thing.

  So great was the confusion with so many children and so many nurses that the older ones managed to liberate themselves from authority while their parents dined and the younger ones wailed. They gathered in the library, mainly because it was available and no one would likely come looking for them there, and feasted on all of the Christmas pudding that Charles and Geoffrey, in a concentrated effort, had managed to sneak from the kitchen.

  “Monkey, no! Not for you!” Eliza Bingley screamed as he leaped into the pudding.”

  “Oh, now we can’t eat it,” Geoffrey said. “I’m not eating monkey pudding!”

  From his position, an inch deep in the pudding, Monkey just howled at him.

  “You have to be nice to him,” Charles said, “or he’ll—” and that was when Monkey, half covered in chocolate pudding, leaped right onto his arm, ran up his shoulder, and made a nest of his blond hair. A muddy, chocolate nest. “Make a mess.”

  “I’ll get him off,” Georgiana offered.

  “It’ll make it worse,” Charles said. “Might as well let him sit there until I find somewhere to dunk him. Monkey! Sit!” And Monkey lay down on his head, which took some grappling. “Mrs. Murrey is going to be so mad.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Murrey?” George asked.

  “Our governess,” Eliza said. “And she wouldn’t be as mad at you as she would at us.”

  “I didn’t know you had a governess.”

  “It’s for Georgiana,” Eliza said, at which Georgiana Bingley sneered. “And for me. And for Charles, because his penmanship is so bad that even his tutor can’t get him to correct it.”

  “Hey!”

  “Enough.You know it’s true. And you don’t even try.”

  “I am trying!”

  Isabel said to Geoffrey, “Do you have a governess?”

  “I have tutors.When Anne turns ten my parents said they’ll hire one. They’ve been putting it off.”

  “Because governesses are royal pains in the—”

  “Georgie!”

  Georgiana just frowned and slumped into the armchair.

  “Georgie doesn’t much care for Mrs. Murrey,” Eliza announced.

  “The feeling is mutual,” her older sister said with a grumble.

  “Well, if you’re just going to complain all night, I’m going to enjoy myself,” George said and pulled back what was apparently a false set of books to reveal a bottle of port and several small glasses.

  “George!” Eliza cried in shock!”

  “How did you even know this was here?” Geoffrey said, transfixed.

  “I used to live here, remember?” he said as he poured himself a glass. “Why are you all looking at me? I’m not three and ten for nothing.”

  “I want some!” Charles said, jumping to his feet.

  “Absolutely not. Would be terribly irresponsible of me,” George said, towering over his cousin.

  “He can have a sip and see how foul it tastes,” Georgiana said to their surprise. She was normally protective of her younger siblings.

  She was correct in her assumption, however, as George let Charles take a tiny sip of port, which he spat out. “This is terrible!”

  “When you have an adult tongue you won’t think so,” George said.

  “Adult! You’re lording your year over us just because your mother got a head start,” Georgiana said. “Give me a glass.”

  “A glass!”

  “C’mon! ’Snot like I’ve never had whiskey before.”

  He held up the bottle. “This is port. You can tell by the color.”

  “Well, how would I know?”

  “You just said you were a scholar of the spiritual arts!”

  “Spiritual arts? What is this nonsense? One glass and you’re cup-shot!”

  “How would you even know?” George spat back. Geoffrey took the bottle out of his hands. “No, I really want to know!”

  “Good Lord, you are a toper,” Geoffrey said, pouring himself a half shot glass of port and downing it with a frown of distaste. “We got slightly drunk on her last birthday, when everyone else had gone to sleep and her father was in India. She said she was lonely.”

  “I was!” Georgie said.

  “Where was I?” Charles asked, leaning for the bottle, but Geoffrey put it way on the top shelf, far out of his reach. Monkey finally leaped off Charles’s head and went right up on the top shelf with the closed bottle.

  “Asleep in your cradle,” Georgiana said.

  “I do not have a cradle! Edmund has a cradle.”

  “Well, the point is, you were asleep. And so was Mama. And the Darcys were over, remember? To make it seem as though Papa weren’t gone. But then they went to sleep and we got drunk.”

  “You did,” Geoffrey said. “I could still—pronounce things. And stand.”

  “Stand!”

  “I had to carry you back to your room,” he said, and Georgiana colored. “Sorry. I wasn’t supposed to tell, was I?”

  She just turned away from him and crossed her arms.

  “I—I think it’s lovely,” George said, smiling. Unlike Geoffrey, he had had a full glass on an empty stomach.

  “What do you mean, lovely?” Geoffrey replied, confused.

  “You’ll understand—when you’re older,” George said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “You drunk,” Georgiana said. “You’re going to turn into your father.”

  It was not the right thing to say in front of George Wickham. Geoffrey could only move fast enough to barely keep George from getting his hands around Georgiana’s throat. “Don’t you ever say that!”

  “George—” Isabella pleaded softly.

  “Let me go!” he shouted, in a louder voice than they had ever heard from him. He was taller than Geoffrey, but he lived in Town and his main preoccupation was reading. Geoffrey fenced, rode, and shot, and he had inched upward from his growth spurt, too, so he was fairly successful at knocking George against the bookshelf and holding him there. “She has to take it back! Let me go!”

  “I will not let you touch her,” Geoffrey said calmly and quietly as he held him back. Books were coming down off the case now.

  “Geoffrey!” Georgiana said.

  “My father may have been a drunk,” George said, “but your father is a murderer!”

  There was no one who could move quickly enough to stop Geoffrey Darc
y from dropping his hold on his cousin and instead punching him in the chest. George doubled over and dropped to his knees, to be caught by his sister just in time.

  No one said a word. There was just Geoffrey’s heavy breathing, the girls frightened in their seats, and George coughing up alcohol.

  “Geoffrey Darcy!” Georgiana said. “What did you do?”

  He rushed to explain himself, “He—he called my dad a murderer; what was I supposed to do?”

  “Your father is a murderer!” she said, rising to George’s defense. Perhaps out of a bit of guilt. “And my papa is a sop. And George’s father was a drunk and a gambler and now he’s dead. So what? It doesn’t matter to us.” She turned to George—who could get his head up only with the help of his sister—and curtsied. “Mr. Wickham, I’m sorry I called Uncle Wickham a drunk.”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” Charles said.

  “Or the living, if they’re relatives,” she said, and turned to Geoffrey. “You’ve got all your tutors telling you things. What’s the master of Pemberley supposed to do when he punches his cousin?”

  “I—he’s supposed to apologize, I suppose,” he said, trembling. Georgiana’s disapproving stare could do that to him. “George, I’m sorry. I got upset.”

  George just nodded. He had stopped coughing up things, and Geoffrey picked him up and helped him into an armchair.“I know,” George said quietly. “I—got upset, too.”

  “I’ve never seen you attack anyone,” Isabel said. “What were you thinking?”

  He was too rattled to answer anything but the truth: “I don’t want to turn into my father.”

  “For God’s sake, you’re nothing like your father, and we all know it, even if we don’t remember him very well,” Georgiana said.

  “Or at all,” Charles said.

  Monkey squawked and leaped from the shelf. Actually, it was not so much a leap as a drop; only Georgiana’s reflexes saved him as she caught him. “Monkey! You’re drunk!”

  They looked up, and indeed, the bottle cork had been removed, and the port spilled out onto the shelf.

  George was the first to start laughing. It was not long before they all joined in. Monkey was passed to Eliza, who held him like a doll. “Monkey?” But Monkey just squealed and pawed for a strand of her hair but failed to grasp it. “Monkey! Oh, what if he has a headache in the morning? We don’t have any monkey medicine!”

  They laughed until their sides hurt, because it felt good, even with their sides actually hurting. Then the night really set in, with the fire going low, and Georgiana told her younger siblings to go to bed. “I am sorry,” she told George, kissing him on the cheek before carrying off a sleeping Monkey in her arms.

  “I’ll be fine,” George told his sister, and she hurried off to bed. He stayed in his armchair for a bit while Geoffrey played with the fire, bringing it back up a bit.

  “I am sorry,” Geoffrey said, wringing his hands. “Very sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I know my father is a murderer. He feels bad about it, but he is.”

  “I know. I mean, I know he feels bad.” George’s head lolled to one side. He was still clutching his stomach as Geoffrey pulled up a chair across from him. “And I know my father—had it coming. My mother won’t stop talking about it.”

  Geoffrey couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a mother like that. His mother never said anything that didn’t seem to be funny or clever or comforting. “You’re not like him.You’re like Father—quiet, respectable, intelligent. No head for alcohol.”

  George smiled. “True, I suppose. But that’s just because I’m not—I don’t have friends beyond my family. I’m not sociable.”

  “Like Uncle Gregory?”

  “You mean Uncle Grégoire? You can’t pronounce his name?”

  “No, I mean—Oh, God. He said he was going to tell you.”

  “Who?”

  “Father,” Geoffrey said in a panic. “He said he was going to tell you about Great-Uncle Gregory. But—I guess he hasn’t had a chance.”

  “I did just get here. Who’s this Gregory?”

  “God, no. I shouldn’t be talking about this.”

  “Now you have to. You’ve said it.You can’t leave me there.”

  Geoffrey stood up, collected what was left of the bottle, and poured himself another half glass. “You did not hear this from me.”

  “Then who did I hear it from?”

  He ignored the comment. “Father came home from this trip and just announced that he had this uncle that nobody knew about. Our grandfather’s elder brother. He lived in some kind of island asylum. He was mad, and they covered up his existence so that Grandfather could inherit Pemberley instead and find a good prospect for marriage. You know, he couldn’t do that if anyone knew there was illness in our family.” He finished the glass and put it aside. “Great-Uncle Gregory left all these journals—and Father and Grégoire found them and read them and decided to bring his bones back to Pemberley. But they couldn’t bury him in the graveyard proper because he committed suicide.” He squinted. “What sort of nonsense is that?”

  “Which part?” George said, intrigued. “The leftover papist nonsense or the nonsense about worrying about marriage prospects?”

  “I don’t know,” Geoffrey said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you this. Father probably has an appropriate speech prepared. He wasn’t going to tell Isabel. I don’t even know why—”

  George interrupted him. “No. I know why.” He shook his head. “My mother said that your father—they almost put him away after he came home from Austria.”

  “I don’t know—maybe—they kept me out of it. I just know that Father was sick, but he recovered.” He said, “Aunt Bradley talks too much.”

  “I know. But she says interesting things,” he replied. “I don’t want to fight with you over our fathers. Or our grandfather. Or anyone else.”

  “I know.” It was Geoffrey’s turn to say that.

  “They were all fools and it’s in the past. Can we leave it at that?”

  “Yes.” Geoffrey offered his hand. “You need help to your room?”

  “Do you?”

  They shared a laugh, and slowly meandered back to their quarters, both a little tipsy. And leaving the mess behind them.

  “Charles?”

  “Mmm?”

  “What did I say about Monkey in my chamber?”

  It took him a moment to recall. When she said his name, after all, he had been fast asleep, and waking up beside his wife the day after Christmas, he didn’t wish to be alarmed by anything. He snaked his arm across her belly. “Why do you ask?”

  “Open your eyes, dear.”

  Reluctantly he complied, and his eyes came to focus on Monkey, sleeping on their pristine white sheets in the space between their legs. He was mostly covered in something brown that looked like mud and his trail to the bed was obvious by the tracks. “Monkey?”

  No response.

  He sat up and picked up his animal, who stirred with a little squeal and then settled into his chest, and he lay back down.

  “Charles?”

  “What? Oh, come on, he’s been so good as of late, we can’t—Is that chocolate? It smells like it. And something else, too.” He picked off a mushy lump and licked it. “It’s Christmas pudding. And…port, I think.”

  Jane cracked a smile. “Do we even want to know why our animal is covered in Christmas pudding and spirits?”

  “So you admit he’s our animal?”

  “Only if you will bother to notice he’s staining your lovely Indian bedclothes.”

  He patted Monkey on the head.“I would, but as it seems I will be spending the day interrogating our children as to how this came to be, which is not something I relish, I will enjoy this moment, in bed with my wife and a chocolate-covered, possibly hung-over monkey.”

  Many hours later, when it was all sorted out that some of the children had gotten into the port and the pudding and then
let Monkey into both (the last being hardly the least of their crimes), the children were sent to their respective chambers to sit (on pillows) and think about what they had done, and their parents were left to endure the laughter from the parents of the children who had behaved.

  “The first time I was drunk was with Wickham, and I was but nine,” Darcy said. “So we must keep a sense of perspective.”

  Eventually, the animosity between parents and naughty children receded, and life returned to normal as they awaited the approach of the New Year. It was during that period that it snowed at Longbourn, to the delight of the children. While most of the staff were outside, making sure that the children didn’t hurt themselves or get sick, Darcy noticed that George was alone in the library (where the mess had been thoroughly cleaned up and the port moved), staring out the window as his younger cousins played.

  “George,” he said, “there is something I should tell you.”

  George did his best to hide that he knew something of what was coming. Fortunately, it turned out that there was enough new information to intrigue him. Either Geoffrey did not know the half of it, did not understand it, or had not been told the contents of Great-Uncle Gregory’s journal. Each possibility could be real, but he did not speculate. There was too much to think on.

  His Uncle Darcy’s unspoken message was clear; he understood Gregory Darcy’s suffering and he knew that George did, too, on a level that the others didn’t. It was just too painful to actually say.

  “Our conclusion,” Darcy said, “was that what could have been a minor social handicap was exacerbated by incompetent doctoring. Many people would be driven mad by the treatments he describes. He even wrote that he begged your grandfather to stop the treatments, and he agreed.” This was not an easy subject for either of them. Darcy mostly looked away, out the window or toward the fireplace. “For all of my father’s faults, which are detailed in the journals, I believe he did learn from watching his brother suffer, and could not bear to subject me to the same thing.Which is why I am here today, a family man with a wonderful marriage, a healthy estate, and a horde of screaming children. And not on some island.”