Postscript from Pemberley

by Rebecca Ann Collins

  I wonder, would he expect us to be married right away or would it be a long engagement? I do not believe he will wish to wait too long.

  Will he choose to settle here at Pemberley? I think not; having relinquished his inheritance to Anthony, it may prove awkward for him to live here.

  Perhaps he may wish to move to another part of England, though it is unlikely that will be Cambridge—too many harrowing memories there! Maybe he would return to France and travel again to Africa or the South Pacific colonies, and when we are married, he could take me with him. I think I should like that, very much.

  She mused upon the prospect, and it excited her a great deal. Jessica had never left England, not even to visit Scotland or Wales, and having read widely about foreign lands and their people in the ample collection of traveller's tales available to her in the library at Pemberley, she had journeyed far in her imagination and longed for some real experience.

  It would be good to live somewhere that was not confined by the fences and hedgerows of a farm or the walls of a rectory in Derbyshire, where the trees, flowers, and creatures were exotic rather than familiar, she wrote, for much as she loved her home and enjoyed the grace and elegance of Pemberley, Jessica's vibrant spirit yearned for new horizons.

  Yet, she worried about her work at the school and wrote an aide-memoire to herself, underlining the necessity to recruit a suitable teacher, who if the need arose, could take over the administration of the school in her absence, were she required to accompany Julian on his travels.

  I owe that to Mr Darcy and to the pupils. She must be capable as well as personable, else the children will not pay any attention to her, she noted, wondering even as she did so, how and where they would find such a person.

  Putting away her diary, she rose and stood before the looking glass in her room, surveying herself with a critical eye. Slender, of medium height, with pleasing features, a well-formed figure, and a warm smile, Jessica was not a great beauty, but then neither was she plain.

  Like her mother Emily, whose intrepid, generous nature had won her universal admiration, Jessica paid not a great deal of attention to fashion; her clothes were mostly simple and unfussy, but there was about her an extraordinary quality that caught the eye, no matter how simply she was dressed. Quite free of affectation, she possessed an intensity of purpose and a guileless honesty, which was quite disarming.

  Young Darcy Gardiner had noticed and admired it since she had come to live and work at Pemberley, and Julian Darcy had found it irresistible.

  Writing later to Julian, she mentioned her desire to travel and her hope they could do so together.

  Would it not be exciting to taste the dust of the desert, experience the heat of the African sun and the warm tropical rain on one's skin, while observing those graceful birds you have described, skimming the surface of the water? I can think of nothing I would like better. I have seen so little of the world, I hardly feel I have lived at all, and I should love to see it with you…

  Stirred by her words and grateful for the exhilaration they brought him, Julian responded usually in like manner, sending her detailed descriptions of the myriad of matters that occupied his days, as well as the hopes and dreams that filled his nights. Unable to confide in anyone else, they poured their thoughts and feelings into letters, which became gradually more openly affectionate, until neither could endure the thought of separation for much longer.

  Do you know when your work in Africa will be concluded? I pray it will not be long, for it is such an agony to keep a secret, even such a wonderful, joyous secret as ours is, when I want to tell everyone I meet how happy I am, she wrote, and he concurred, declaring that their separation was fast becoming intolerable.

  Understandably, Julian wrote more discreetly than she did, for she knew her letters were for his eyes alone and could write as she felt, while he was aware that his may well be delivered to her at breakfast and would have to be opened and probably read aloud to the family; every scrap of news would have to be shared. Which is why his warmest, most tender sentiments were usually well-embedded in the midst of a letter filled with descriptions of the African landscape—its sudden storms and stunning beauty. No detail was too small, no incident too trivial, but she would share and enjoy it, knowing he was both safe and happy. The brief, personal lines she treasured and read over and over again, having mastered the art of skipping over them as she read her letters to the family.

  For Jessica, Julian's letters brought a fresh sense of purpose, as she thought of him and their love for one another. They promised a more mature, deeply passionate life than the predictable pleasures that marriage to Darcy Gardiner would have offered her. Though he had said not a single word against Josie, Jessica knew from the comments of Cassy and Mrs Darcy that Julian had been deeply wounded by his wife's conduct; the thought of loving him and healing that pain appealed to her and imbued her with a very special happiness.

  However, Jessica knew also that she had to be cautious; it would not do to arouse the interest of others in the family before his return. She was devoted to Elizabeth, yet feared that Mrs Darcy may not view her relationship with Julian in quite the same light and strove to maintain the impression of an easy friendship, which would not arouse any suspicions.

  She was confident that once Julian returned from Africa and declared his intention to marry her, all would be well. It was an indication of her modest nature that it never occurred to her that Mr and Mrs Darcy may welcome the prospect of the marriage as being beneficial for their son.

  For Darcy Gardiner, the return of his sister and brother-in-law from their wedding tour of Ireland had brought both relief and a new dilemma.

  He had missed them and welcomed them back, but how to keep Jessica's secret and yet explain with any credibility his own melancholy mood caused some considerable soul-searching. Even though he had accepted without rancour the fact that Jessica was out of his reach, he could not forget the mortification her rejection had caused, leaving him dispirited and averse to indulging in those popular pastimes that he had enjoyed so well. Picnics and parties were suddenly far less attractive than they had been before, and an explanation would be called for. It would not be plausible, he knew, to lay the entire blame for his dejection upon the recent accession of Mr Disraeli to the Prime Ministership!

  His brother-in-law Mr Carr had detected the condition and diagnosed it correctly as a more personal malaise. Having questioned Darcy, he elicited at first some evasive answers, followed by a full confession and some friendly counsel.

  “You will promise never to breathe a word of this, Michael,” he had pleaded, and Mr Carr had given his word.

  His sister, who had long teased him about the need to “settle down,” seemed suddenly to have grown tired of the game, and Darcy assumed that Lizzie, who was to have her first child within the year, must have turned her attention to more practical matters and decided to leave him to his own devices. For this relief, Darcy was profoundly grateful.

  When Summer arrived, his sense of deprivation increased as he looked forward to a rather dull season, enlivened only by the first cricket match on the calendar and Caroline Fitzwilliam's chamber music concert.

  It was at this point that two events occurred to compel his attention to the exclusion of all else.

  The first came without warning on the day that Camden Park hosted the cricket match between the teams from Pemberley and Ripley. On what was a picture-perfect day in early Summer, with all of the families and many of the workers from the two estates gathered to cheer them on, Darcy Gardiner led his team to an unexpected victory.

  As he walked off the ground to the applause of the spectators, he was unaware that an urgent message had been received from Oakleigh and his father, Sir Richard Gardiner, had left the match to travel to Lambton to the bedside of Mrs Gardiner, who had suffered a spasm.

  Dr Gardiner had asked that Darcy, who was batting at the time, be not informed until the match was over, and had left with the servant f
rom Oakleigh. When Darcy, flushed with success, came seeking his parents' approval, he found only his mother waiting for him.

  Seeing her countenance, tense and pale, he knew at once it was bad news.

  Cassandra spoke urgently, “Darcy, we must go at once—Mrs Gardiner has been taken ill, and your papa has gone to her, about an hour ago. I have the carriage waiting.”

  Darcy did not wait to hear more; returning instantly to talk to his team and make his excuses to the visitors from Ripley, he rejoined his mother and they set out at once for Oakleigh.

  Elizabeth had wished to accompany them, but the weather was changing and a cold breeze presaged rain on the way, which prompted Cassandra to persuade her mother not to venture out that afternoon.

  “Darcy will return and bring you word, Mama, and you can go over to see Mrs Gardiner tomorrow morning,” she promised, and together with her husband's persuasion, it was sufficient to change Elizabeth's mind.

  Arriving at Oakleigh, they found that Dr Gardiner had already successfully treated his mother, and having revived her spirits as well as her body, he had sent for the physician from Littleford to provide a second opinion. Mrs Gardiner, who had not been in the best of health ever since the death of her husband, was still rather weak. Richard was concerned to ascertain that the problem was not with her heart.

  “I do not know what came over me,” she said, as they gathered around her bed. “There I was, one minute writing a letter to Robert, and then without any warning, I found myself falling out of my chair… It was most peculiar…”

  Cassy and Richard exchanged glances as Darcy poured his grandmother more tea, which had always been her panacea for all ills.

  Mrs Gardiner was especially partial to this grandson among all her grandchildren, and it was clear that she enjoyed his attentions.

  When Cassy and Richard left the room for a few minutes, she said, “My dear Darcy, there is some thing I would like you to do for me,” and as he attended upon her, added quickly, “The letter I was writing to Robert, when I was taken ill, it is on my bureau over by the window. It is almost finished, but I had not written the direction. Could you please complete it and have it sent on tomorrow? There is no need to trouble him unnecessarily by mentioning this little problem of mine—poor Robert has troubles of his own, and I do not wish to add to them.”

  Darcy agreed. “Of course, I shall attend to it right away. But are you sure you do not wish me to tell him? I could add a line or include a note explaining you were quite recovered. My uncle may wish to know surely…”

  “No, no, he will want to rush over to England to see me, and that will make matters worse between him and Rose; they are rather short of money, and the expense will be too great,” she said, then added cheerfully, “Besides, as you can see, I am quite well now, right as rain. Just send him the letter, and, Darcy, I have written out a cheque—it is under the note pad? Would you fold it in and enclose it with my letter, please?”

  Darcy did as she asked, but noting the cheque was for a sum of two hundred pounds, he could not help wondering what had prompted this largesse. He was surprised, too, that Mrs Gardiner had asked him and not his father to attend to the matter.

  That night, despite the victory in the cricket match, Darcy's mood was sombre when he returned to Pemberley. Mrs Gardiner, like her husband, was much loved, and both Mr Darcy and Elizabeth were anxious about her. When Darcy arrived, before he was allowed to go up to his room to bathe and dress for dinner, he had to satisfy their concerns and reassure them that she was out of danger.

  “My father has asked a colleague to give him a second opinion,” he explained, “but my grandmother has declared that she is perfectly well and requires no further medication. She seems to have made a remarkable recovery, and Mama believes it was probably a fit of dizziness or fatigue.”

  Elizabeth agreed, pointing out that her aunt was always busy whether in the house or the garden at Oakleigh and may have become over-tired.

  At dinner and afterwards, the conversation was dominated by many reminiscences. Elizabeth and Mr Darcy were feeling especially nostalgic; the Gardiners meant a great deal to them. Mrs Gardiner's devotion to her family and especially to her sons was well known. When someone mentioned Robert, the youngest of the Gardiners' four children, Jessica's mother, Emily Courtney, who was dining with them, advised that she had despatched a note to her brother advising him of their mother's sudden indisposition.

  This piece of news left young Darcy speechless for a moment, as he recalled Mrs Gardiner's particular instruction that Robert was not to be told. Having pondered for a moment whether he should mention the matter, he decided against it. If what Mrs Gardiner said was right, and Robert was short of money, it was unlikely he would consider travelling to England at short notice, he thought, and decided to despatch Mrs Gardiner's letter to Robert on the morrow, by the earliest post.

  No doubt it would reassure him on the question of her health.

  Despite Darcy's best efforts, however, Robert Gardiner, alerted by his sister Emily's note, arrived unannounced at Oakleigh the following week, accompanied by his wife Rose, their children, two servants, a small dog, and a carriage full of luggage.

  It was the very thing poor Mrs Gardiner had sought to avoid.

  Jessica awoke to the sound of rain.

  It had been raining all night long. She had heard it drumming on the roof and the window panes, and looking out of the window at the small sodden garden of the Kympton rectory, she sighed. It was the same little patch of ground, with the clump of blue bells under the apple tree, she had looked out on every year since childhood. Over the years, nothing had changed.

  Nothing, that is, except herself.

  In the months just gone, since admitting to herself that she was in love with Julian Darcy, Jessica had changed to such an extent that what had been to her familiar and ordinary was no longer. Even the people she had known and lived with all her life seemed rather remote from her, because they had no knowledge of her present situation and could not share with her the multiplicity of feelings that flowed from it.

  As she turned away from the window, she caught sight of herself in her mirror, stopped, looked, and shook her head, as she contemplated her parents, her siblings, and Mr and Mrs Darcy.

  “If they knew how I feel, they would not know me!” she said to herself.

  Having regarded the bleak scene outside, she went back to bed, recalling that her mother had returned from Oakleigh the previous evening, with news that her uncle Robert and his wife Rose had arrived together with their servants and children. Jessica was not at all certain that a visit from Robert and Rose was what Mrs Gardiner would welcome just now. While she was quite partial to her younger son and had often protected him from the consequences of his own foolhardy conduct, her daughter-in-law was quite another matter.

  An attractive, aspiring young woman, Rose Fitzwilliam had surprised many people when she had accepted Robert Gardiner's offer of marriage. Not that there was any doubt she was fond of him, but equally there was no question that she completely dominated him. She was ambitious for her husband and expressed her disappointment in no uncertain terms when circumstances did not always fall into place as she had hoped.

  Jessica had memories of the recriminations that had followed the death of Mr Gardiner a few years ago, when Caroline Fitzwilliam had inherited control of her father's business. It had seriously discomfited both Robert and his wife, and to her even greater chagrin, Rose had discovered that she was not to become the mistress of Oakleigh either.

  Rose's mother, now Lady Fitzwilliam, had declared that Rose and Robert had been unfairly dealt with in Mr Gardiner's will.

  “It is not fair, surely, that not only should Robert be deprived of the right to run the Commercial Trading Company, for which position he has the best qualifications, but to add insult to injury, Rose and he must rent expensive apartments in London and Paris because the future of Oakleigh is left up in the air,” she had declared.

&n
bsp; It was of no use whatsoever to point out that Mr Gardiner had purchased Oakleigh for his wife, who had been born and raised in Lambton, and he had wished that the house should be hers until her death, when she could will it to anyone she chose.

  Lady Fitzwilliam had been overheard to say that Mrs Gardiner was in such excellent health, she may well live to be a hundred, and then where would Robert and Rose be? Caroline's comment that it mattered not a fig, since they lived chiefly in London, Paris, or Timbuctoo, had not been very well received.

  The recollection made Jessica laugh, but then quite suddenly, she sat up again, and this time she was not amused.

  “Good Lord, is it possible they have arrived so suddenly because they think Mrs Gardiner is at death's door?” she asked herself, as she pulled on a robe and ran downstairs. She found her parents having breakfast and, begging their pardon for her dishevelled state, she asked, “Mama, is it possible that my Uncle Robert and his wife are here in the hope of occupying Oakleigh until they can take possession of it?”

  Emily smiled and shook her head, “Jessica, you do surprise me, my dear; one minute you do not seem to hear what I say, and the next you are racing in with some dramatic notion in your head,” she said. “I did point out last night that I thought they had arrived with a very particular purpose in mind and that was to ensure that Rose could establish herself in the household, while Mama was too ill to attend to her duties. I have no doubt that she thought it would be a good opportunity to take charge, and I am certain she must have been exceedingly disappointed to find Mama quite recovered and well able to manage her own household.”

  “Do you suppose they will stay, regardless?” Jessica asked, and when her father, in his customary charitable way, suggested that perhaps Mrs Robert Gardiner was genuinely concerned about the state of her mother-in-law's health, both mother and daughter exploded with laughter.