“Sir, I want for nothing. I have no need for more than I currently possess. I wish only to put this to rest. If you”—and here, he colored, lest he say too much—“find the contentment you seek with Miss Bennet, then that is all I could ever desire.”
Silence filled the room. Finally, Mr. Darcy, with one eyebrow raised, said, “For this, I fear I am to remain most ignominiously in your debt. However,” he added, a trace of a smile undermining his austere expression, “as at least partial repayment, perhaps I may refrain from asking how you happen to know of Mrs. Younge’s location.”
Meeting his eyes at last, Preston replied evenly, “Yes, sir. I thank you as well, sir.”
Part 2
A valet (or, as Preston himself preferred, a gentleman’s gentleman) lives out his existence providing whatever small satisfaction he can to his master through his own attentiveness and conscientious care. It was, therefore, an unexpected bonus for Samuel Preston to be able to do so outside the realm of his usual duties.
When supplying Mr. Darcy with the direction of Mrs. Younge, he’d had little idea that such information might be so vital to his master’s future happiness. If he had, the knowledge would surely have frozen his lips together with profound trepidation.
As it was, the results of his reluctant disclosure were not immediately apparent. Mr. Darcy, still tense and preoccupied, did not confide any ensuing success or failure to him, and despite his personal curiosity, Preston could not fault him for it. The days following their “talk” passed, at least for the valet, with only slight variations to their master–servant routine.
Mr. Darcy continued to arise early, and other than reappearing for an occasional meal, returned only after many of the servants were already retired—excepting Preston, of course. And once those evening needs had been attended to, he would fall into bed with no more than two words to his dutiful attendant.
This, Preston knew, was as it should be. Indeed, as it must be. Still, he would occasionally catch himself wondering how Mrs. Younge’s whereabouts might be of so much import to the eminent Mr. Darcy. The fact that he, Samuel Bard (his mother had held a certain sentimentality about poetry at the time of his birth) Preston, an unassuming servant, could offer any help whatsoever in the case, had been purely coincidental; but afterward, he’d been most grateful for the happy accident.
The facts of the matter were that the infamous Mrs. Younge, after being unceremoniously dismissed from the Darcy household, had removed herself to her sister’s establishment in a less than impressive section of London. There, food, lodging, and even a particular type of female companionship were available (for a price) to idle sailors on shore leave.
Although Preston would not patronize such a place, there was a woman of his close acquaintance employed in the kitchen of that establishment. She, a Miss Clara Foster, spent many a backbreaking hour cooking vast quantities of stew, kneading and fashioning endless mounds of dough into loaves of bread, and laundering the linens from the abovestairs rooms.
How he came to be familiar with this humble individual, surprising as it might be to any who knew him, was not so very unusual. For, some years earlier, when both were yet between the ages of eight and eighteen, they had been quite good friends, sharing confidences as well as lessons in servitude from his own, dear parents. She was his cousin on his maternal side. Six months his junior, she had trained to be a lady’s maid in much the same way as he had trained to be a valet.
But something had gone awry. Following ten years of faithfully serving the elderly woman by whom she had initially been engaged, that lady had suffered a seizure so severe as to render her no longer in need of such attention. Thereafter, the woman’s nephew had employed her. He had turned out to be an empty-headed dandy whose youthful wife would not, or could not, be pleased. Three years of growing dissatisfaction on both sides finally led to Clara’s services being terminated and then taken up by a widow of questionable reputation, a Mrs. Bates. This, as it so happened, was Mrs. Younge’s elder sister.
Preston’s consternation at Clara retaining this lowly position was severe, but he had nothing better to offer her. There was no appropriate situation available at any of the Darcy estates, or at least nothing he could request on his cousin’s behalf.
In the few hours each week that he was not needed by Mr. Darcy, he would sometimes visit her, using the back door of the place so as not to be noticed, and often sneaking a few shillings into her apron pocket, despite her protests. It worried him to see how the work had aged her. Anyone meeting her would add at least five onto her thirty-two years.
Yet in spite of her red hands and care-worn face, she still retained the open, affectionate nature that had endeared her to him, even when they were both children.
“Worry not for me, Sam,” she’d urged him recently when he scowled at Mrs. Bates’s shrill voice in the front room. “I have prospects. Why, only yesterday, I heard a fellow mention a position in King’s Cross that might be available very soon.”
“Clara,” he returned, unmollified, “it’s always, ‘Some fellow says,’ or, ‘Someone’s heard.’ Meanwhile, you’ve been here nigh on two years, and that’s far too long. You’re too fine a person for this.”
“Perhaps not,” she argued calmly. “Who can say what we’re put on this earth for? Maybe I can do more good working here than if I were waiting on the queen herself.”
And so he left her. Each occasion that he saw her became a heavier burden upon his conscience. Until he could promise her something better, however, he was helpless to alleviate her condition.
Mr. Darcy, after several weeks of almost frantic activity, at last settled down to a more reasonable schedule. Unfortunately, this alleviation of urgency did not mean any complacency on his part. He began to relapse into the melancholia that filled Preston’s heart with concern.
One morning after having been shaved, Mr. Darcy grimaced at his reflection in the mirror, an expression so rare as to cause his valet to scrutinize his master’s face.
“Is something wrong, sir?” he inquired when no wound could be found. “I did not effect discomfort, I hope.”
Ignoring the question, that gentleman announced, “I shall require a formal coat today, Preston. I am to attend a wedding.”
“A wedding, sir?” the valet repeated, relieved that it was not he with whom Mr. Darcy was vexed. “A happy occasion, indeed.” Carefully, he considered the array of frock coats hanging in the wardrobe. “Perhaps the blue?”
“Happy occasion!” was the scornful reply. “That remains to be seen. Yes, the blue is fine. As a matter of fact, Preston, you are acquainted with one of the party.”
Pausing from brushing barely discernible lint from the coat, he questioned doubtfully, “Am I, sir?”
“I imagine you must recall Mr. George Wickham,” his master went on, his voice thick with disgust. “He is to be the bridegroom.”
“Indeed?” Moving to check the lay of the coattails, Preston kept his own voice inscrutable. “Should I recall the bride as well?”
At this, Mr. Darcy made a noise slightly resembling a laugh. “Not only have you never had the privilege of meeting her, Preston, it is likely you never will.” Closing his eyes at some painful image, he murmured, “God help me. By this single act, I am linking his name with her family’s forever, but…there is truly nothing else to be done.…”
Tactfully turning away with the pretense of collecting his master’s gloves, Preston was stung with pity. He did not understand what Mr. Darcy was speaking of, and never, so long as he lived, would he ever dare speak the words aloud, but at that moment, Mr. Darcy was pitiable.
In the evening, Mr. Darcy returned, his expression somewhat more relaxed than previously.
“I shall be dining out, Preston,” he stated, tugging at the neckcloth before the valet could do so.
“Yes, sir.”
Mumbling to himself, Mr. Darcy stood before the mirror, trying to work through the stubborn knot placed there so many hours earlier
. At last, he turned impatiently and allowed Preston to do his job.
“The Gardiners are fine, honorable people,” the gentleman remarked after a moment, causing the valet to pause, although only infinitesimally, in his task.
“I cannot understand how…” he continued with evident mystification, “although, I suppose it is hardly important. The Bennet sisters are all so very different themselves. The two eldest must have inherited their sense from someone…not their mother, surely. Their father…?” But here he stopped, pursing his lips thoughtfully.
The neckcloth conquered at last, Preston assisted him with the removal of his coat and shirt.
After splashing water on his face and drying it vigorously with the towel handed him, Mr. Darcy donned a clean shirt and waited while his servant tied a fresh neckcloth around the stiff collar.
“The question remains,” he pondered just as a black evening coat was brought to him, “where am I to go from here? I have seemingly solved one problem, which hardly improves the prospect of the other. She will never know the effort I’ve expended, nor do I wish her to. Yet…” Here he sighed deeply. “But no, of all the sensibilities I would seek, it cannot be her gratitude. Dear God,” he breathed, “how she haunts me still.…How is one to recover from such an illness?”
As the question lacked any possibility of an answer, Preston gave none, but stepped back so that Mr. Darcy could survey his image in the mirror, and either approve the result or not.
However, the gentleman’s attention was so engrossed by his private dilemma that he merely turned away dismissively. Picking up his hat from where it waited on the bureau, he hesitated long enough to muse aloud, “Perhaps the irony of this is that if she should discover my part in sealing her sister’s fate, it may only encourage her to despise me further.”
With that, he shook his head and quit the room.
Several weeks passed, with little change in the household. Preston remained concerned for his master, but, of course, could offer no words of comfort. He had no idea what event had occurred to check the blossoming relationship between Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Obviously, it had something to do with that scoundrel Mr. Wickham—but what?
In spite of his usual avoidance of tittle-tattle, he found himself listening (while pretending not to—a difficult practice) as the other staff members exchanged idle gossip in the kitchen.
“I hear he compromised the young lady,” Tilly, one of the upstairs maids, asserted on one such afternoon, her eyes round with delight.
“I hear,” the cook, Mrs. Watson, returned in a conspiratorial whisper, “she was some wild thing who followed the militia around like a…well, you know what I mean.”
“No!” Hattie, the parlormaid, gasped. “Mr. Wickham forced to marry one of those? Oh, the poor man!”
“Poor girl, you mean,” Bert, the second footman, contradicted as he carried in a load of wood to stoke the fires. “That gentleman was bound to receive his just rewards sooner or later. After all of the unlucky servant girls he’s ruined…”
“Bert!” his wife, Jenny the laundress, stopped him with a sideways glance at Tilly, who was just sixteen.
“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Watson puzzled, “is why Mr. Darcy saw the need to step in. I thought we’d washed our hands of Mr. Wickham long ago.”
“Maybe he felt sorry for the girl,” Hattie suggested. “Maybe he knows her family…”
“Well, he is such a good, unselfish man. I’m sure he had his reasons,” Jenny declared firmly.
But Mrs. Watson was far from satisfied. “Perhaps the father of the girl came to him for help,” she mused. “There has to be a practical reason for it.” Turning her gaze upon Preston, who was polishing a pair of riding boots, she asked, “What do you think, Preston? You see more of him than we do. Why would Mr. Darcy interfere in Mr. Wickham’s affairs?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t confide in me, madam,” Preston answered, rubbing harder at a smudge on the left boot toe.
“I heard her name was Benton or something like that,” Hattie reported as Jenny handed her a bundle of clean linens to fold.
“Well, it hardly matters what her name was,” put in Tilly brightly. “She is Mrs. Wickham now.”
“Imagine being Mrs. Wickham,” Jenny marveled, applying a heated flatiron to a dampened shirt.
“I always thought he was most handsome,” said Hattie.
“What about what he did to poor Miss Georgiana?” Jenny chided her. “Why, the man’s incorrigible.”
Hattie frowned. “What exactly did he do? I don’t recollect hearing any details…Just that he tried to take advantage of her position somehow…”
“And that is all any of us need to know,” Jenny said firmly as the pressed shirt was replaced with another. “Mr. Wickham’s always been out for whatever he can get, and fortunately, Mr. Darcy has trimmed his sails for him.”
“Yet again,” Mrs. Watson said and chuckled as she stood up to peek beneath a towel concealing a rising mound of bread dough. “So long as Mr. Darcy’s around, Mr. Wickham doesn’t stand a chance. Bert!” she called, “have you seen that lazy lout Nigel? I need those hares cleaned and dressed for supper, and he’s made himself plenty scarce.”
No, it was unlikely that Preston would ever discover the details of the affair, but he could at least be satisfied that his master had been in the right.
As summer waned, he fully expected Mr. Darcy to remove himself and Miss Georgiana to Derbyshire, but he heard nothing of such a plan. Instead, one afternoon, Preston was informed that a party of gentlemen would be organized to accompany Mr. Bingley to Hertfordshire for the hunting in that neighborhood, and that they would remain for several weeks.
Mr. Darcy did not mention an intent of seeing Miss Bennet while in the country. Although no hint was dropped, Preston could not help feeling that there was more than a single motive for the excursion. Netherfield appeared much as it had nearly a year earlier. Because Mr. Bingley’s sisters were absent, it was far less inflexible in schedule.
Mr. Bingley’s valet, Roster, was five or six years younger than himself, and seemed a friendly young man who did not mind advice from someone with greater experience. On the other hand, Underwood, the valet employed by Mr. Hurst (Mr. Bingley’s brother-in-law), was somewhat older, more close-mouthed in company, and not much willing to exchange even pleasantries.
In the pursuit of sport, the gentlemen—Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Hurst—fell into the habit of leaving the house each morning before full sun (accompanied by several baying hounds and enough servants to fetch the multiple kills), not to return until almost luncheon.
On the very first afternoon of their being in Hertfordshire, Mr. Darcy reluctantly submitted to escorting Mr. Bingley as he paid visits to several of his nearest neighbors. And because those neighbors were so pleased to have such distinguished guests, they could take their leave only after partaking of a substantial evening meal, followed by musical exhibitions given by any marriageable daughters of the household.
On the fourth day of this arrangement, Mr. Bingley must have suggested that they make their way to Longbourn, the Bennet home, for, as Preston assisted him in his usual morning routine, Mr. Darcy appeared to be in a state of no little distraction.
Several times he would begin to speak, and then stop himself before the sentence could go anywhere. All the while, he stared out the window at what appeared to be nothing of particular interest.
Finally, just as he was handed his hat and gloves, he said aloud, “In spite of the sense that I am entering the lion’s den, every nerve, every thought is alive in anticipation of it.” Then, with a bemused lift of one eyebrow, he added in a voice almost unintelligible, “There can be little doubt that I am the most shameless of frauds.” Turning away, he gave his head a slight shake. “Yet any remorse I ought to feel is overcome by feelings far more powerful than that. Whether I am prepared or not, today may very well be the end of everything for me.”
Later, Roster veri
fied Preston’s supposition.
“Mr. Bingley has said that he is eager to renew his acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,” he supplied blithely.
“Oh?” Preston answered, looking up from a book on ancient Greece, which he had borrowed from the rather limited Netherfield library. “Then that was their destination this afternoon?”
“Oh yes,” replied the younger man. “In fact, so far as I am aware, the Bennet estate was to be their only object today.” He paused for a moment before confiding, “Mr. Bingley also anticipates meeting the eldest Miss Bennet again.”
The most scrupulous part of Preston wanted to change the subject. But a tiny bit of him wished to be enlightened. “Have you had the pleasure of seeing Miss Bennet yourself?” he inquired in a nonchalant voice.
“Not near enough to address her, of course,” was the quick reply. “Only from a very great distance. I recollect that I was able to admire their dancing together at the ball given here in November. From the servants’ gallery, of course.…My master has excellent taste, if I do say so myself.”
“Have you any idea,” Preston inquired, “why he did not make her an offer?”
“All I know is that we left the following morning in unseemly haste. Yet,” he shrugged as he leafed with little interest through an ornately embossed volume of sonnets, “one does what is expected without comment.…I had assumed, as taken with her as he appeared to be, he would return to Hertfordshire soon to do that very thing.”
Rising from his chair, Preston tucked the book under his arm to read when he was alone. “Apparently, Mr. Bingley had his reasons.” Offering a bow of farewell to the younger man, he added, “Gentlemen such as Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, who are fortunate enough to claim impeccable credentials, must consider any and all circumstances before undertaking matrimony.”
“Which circumstances, pray?”
“As gentlemen of those very gentlemen, my dear sir, we shall probably never know.”
The Road to Pemberley Page 37
