Chapter 3
An upstairs maid was dispatched to inform Mrs Darcy that her nephew had slipped away while the nursemaids were occupied tending to little Charlotte, who had skinned her knee and fallen into hysterics at the sight of her own blood.
They had searched all the rooms in that wing of the house, but he was nowhere to be found.
Elizabeth arrived at the nursery to a scene of chaos.
Maids ran up and down the corridor, repeatedly inspecting the rooms and hallooing down the hidden passages to the servants’ stairs.
All three of her children were crying, having absorbed the agitation of the adults.
“Is George gone forever?” William wailed as she appeared.
“Certainly not,” she replied firmly. “He is within the house, and we shall find him.” She knew very well that George might have left the house, but she would not increase the children’s anxieties by saying so.
It was very cold out of doors; she hoped and believed that if he did venture out, he would turn about immediately and come back in.
She spoke to her children for a moment more, reassuring and soothing them, before marching forth to direct the servants in an orderly search of each floor and wing in turn.
He had, she concluded, obviously left the second floor of the east wing.
She also directed that several footmen make a tour of the grounds closest to the house.
He was found half an hour later, on the first floor in the north wing, curled up asleep on a settee in what had been Georgiana’s own parlour—a place that would, no doubt, receive Jane’s and Charlotte’s friends in years to come.
When questioned, George told her he wanted to see more of the house, not seeming to understand the uproar he had caused.
She had promised him that he would not always be confined to the nursery and the schoolroom, but that he must wait until she, his uncle, the tutor, or the nursemaids took them from the part of the house that was given over to the children, and that he must on no account go wandering alone again. To this, he cheerfully agreed.
Less than a week later, he vanished again.
This time, he escaped from the schoolroom.
The tutor, Mr Brooke, had left George to practise his letters upon a slate while he quizzed William on the monarchs of the previous century.
He had looked up, he said, and the boy was gone.
He was found on the same floor but in the west wing, contemplating some porcelain figurines on the mantelpiece of a guest chamber.
He was spoken to again about wandering off on his own, and again happily agreed that he should not do so.
To assuage his curiosity about the house, the Darcys took all the children on a tour on Sunday afternoon, relating not only the purpose of each room but also some little titbits of the manor’s, and the family’s, history.
Despite their efforts, he threw the household into chaos again on Tuesday, when the other children woke to find his bed empty.
He was located after an increasingly frantic search of two hours, rummaging through the many trunks stored in the attics.
When found, he seemed to have no consciousness of wrongdoing, cheerfully showing off the little pile of treasures he had accumulated.
As discussion and information had not produced the desired effect, the Darcys spoke to him quite sternly on the subject and also took possession of his general, telling him that he might have it back in a week if there were no further incidents.
At this, he wept and shouted and stamped his feet upon the floor, but they remained resolute.
Even their own children were not always above such displays, and they recognised that George had been reared with little in the way of discipline.
When he had been escorted back to the nursery by Hannah, Elizabeth sighed and said, “I know we must impress upon him that he may not defy us without consequence, but I felt like the lowest worm, taking away the only toy that belongs to him alone.”
Darcy nodded glumly. “I cannot understand it. He is so complying whenever anything is asked of him. He applies himself most readily to any task suggested, be it playing a game, answering a question, or learning his letters and numbers. But in this, he will not mind.”
“I suppose we ought not to be surprised that Lydia’s child might be led astray by the lure of novelty,” Elizabeth replied. “I do hope he will learn his lesson now, however.”
“I shall tell Brooke to increase the time he spends on exercise with the boys. My tutor always said ‘a tired boy is a well-behaved boy’,” he recalled with a nostalgic smile.
Elizabeth had been wondering whether they ought not engage a second tutor to help George catch up on his education.
If he were more William’s equal in the schoolroom, Brooke would be able to teach them the same lessons, giving both boys less opportunity to grow weary.
Until it was decided with whom he would live after the Christmas season, however, it was not an idea worth raising.
The Darcys’ Christmas guests began arriving the following day.
First came Lord Michael and Lady Georgiana Nolton, Baron and Baroness Ellsworth, with their three-year-old daughter, Anne.
Elizabeth had written to her and to General Fitzwilliam to alert them to the fact that young George Wickham was resident at Pemberley, which, as she had anticipated, deterred neither of them.
Darcy bore Lord Ellsworth off to the library for a restorative brandy after their journey from Warwickshire, while Elizabeth and Georgiana personally escorted Anne to the nursery to become reacquainted with the cousins she had not seen since midsummer.
“Are you one of my aunts?” George asked Georgiana when they were introduced. “I have ever so many.”
“Not exactly,” she answered with an indulgent smile. “But you may call me Aunt Nolton all the same.”
“He seems a happy little soul,” she commented to Elizabeth when George had run off to rejoin William at spillikins.
“By and large he is, thus far,” Elizabeth agreed.
“I expect some turbulence when he begins to realise his parents will not return soon, and he has been rather defiant on one point in particular.” She explained his habit of evading his minders’ notice.
The circumstances of his being at Pemberley she had conveyed in her letter.
It was good to have another lady, another mother, to commiserate with.
General Fitzwilliam’s family arrived two days later.
Mrs Fitzwilliam was well liked by the other ladies.
Granddaughter of a duke and an heiress of considerable fortune, she had been everything Fitzwilliam wished for in a bride and had preferred him to her numerous other suitors due simply to the fact that they had thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company from the moment of their meeting.
With them came their two children, four-year-old Edward and two-year-old Matilda, known as Millie.
Not an hour behind them came another carriage, this one unexpected.
“Papa!” Elizabeth exclaimed as Mr Bennet was shown into the parlour where the Darcys had just sat down to tea with the Noltons and Fitzwilliams. “One day, you will astound me by announcing your arrival ahead of time.”
Mr Bennet laughed as he bent to kiss her cheek.
“Your mother spends all her time clucking over Mary and young John, and I thought I should have a merrier Christmas at Pemberley than at Longbourn.” In this sixth year of her marriage, Elizabeth’s sister had only the previous month produced a child at last. “You need not go to any trouble for me, you know,” he added.
“A cot in that little library of yours will suffice!”
He joined the party for a cup of tea while a room was prepared for him and learnt all the latest news from the Darcy, Nolton, and Fitzwilliam families.
He and the general had become fast friends during the Darcys’ wedding celebrations—they shared a humorous cynicism and a seething contempt for a certain faction of Parliament—and Mr Bennet had assumed something of an uncle’s role in Georgiana’s life early in his daughter’s marriage, which had further endeared him to Fitzwilliam.
He received the news of his youngest daughter’s departure from England and her disposition of her only child with a sardonic, “How very like Lydia. Well, I shall be interested to know my grandson. I have not seen him since he was a squalling babe.”
As she personally escorted her father to his room a little while later, Elizabeth explained how neglected little George’s education had been, suggesting that if Mr Bennet should like to help him during his visit, it would be much appreciated.
He had saved on the cost of a governess by teaching all his daughters to read and write, his success never more apparent than in the fact that even Lydia, the least dedicated scholar of the bunch, wrote in a fair hand and without errors.
“It has been many years since I last awoke a young mind to the pleasure of the written word,” he mused. “Very well, I shall see what I can make of George in the space of three or four weeks.”
“Thank you, Papa. William will be happy to have Mr Brooke to himself again for a time.”
“You are still teaching your girls?”
“I am, but now that Jane is five, we shall engage a governess when we go to London in February. I expect to be rather busier by Midsummer Day,” she confided.
“Am I to anticipate another grandchild to delight me, Lizzy?”
“You are. I have not yet felt the quickening, but the signs are unmistakable, and we have agreed to tell our guests a little early, as I am once again entirely repulsed by fish, and we shall not be serving it until that passes.”
He chuckled. “Your mother was the same way. The moment she turned her nose up at cod, I knew.”