Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CALLING CARD
T he following morning was predictably hectic. Mary, Kitty, and I rushed around in a frenzy to help Jane pack for another stay in London. Doors slammed, children cried, and the servants bit back their grumbles as they laboured over the flatiron and ran up and down the stairs under the competing and sometimes contradictory demands of my mother, my aunt, and my sisters.
At last the house fell silent. The dust of three carriages bumping down the drive had been swept away by a cool breeze that hinted of the deeper autumn to come, and those of us remaining behind fell into our chairs in relief.
Soon enough, Kitty and Mary, who had necessarily deferred their table decorating on account of company, begged for permission to visit Maria Lucas to plot out their next project—a fire screen discovered in the guest room of Lucas Lodge much in need of rehabilitation.
My father, hearing the subject of decorative painting thus resurrected, had retreated with unseemly haste to nap in his book-room, while my sisters put on their bonnets, took up their sketchbooks, and left the house. Thus, my mother and I were the sole occupants of the parlour, and there we sat, slumped in our chairs under a thick haze of lethargy. A few moments passed before Mama roused sufficiently to call for a pot of tea before we again fell into a stupefied silence.
It was no small wonder then that we were slightly irritated when Mrs Hill came into the room, not with the tea tray, but to announce a caller.
“Mr Darcy!” I exclaimed, leaping out of my seat with more surprise than was seemly. “Do come in, sir. Might you join us for a cup of tea?”
He handed his hat and cane to Mrs Hill and came into the room, greeted my mother politely, and took tea with us.
We had little to say to one another. I could not speak to him as freely as I did privately, and I struggled to think of a benign topic of conversation. Meanwhile, my mother did not try to disguise her dislike of the gentleman and made little effort to entertain him. As for Mr Darcy, in my experience, he was never talkative in social circumstances, particularly when at Longbourn. Thus, I braced for a miserable quarter of an hour.
Mr Darcy had upon his brow a faint frown of concentration. Seeming to dig deep into his paltry reserves of polite conversation, he managed to ask after the Gardiners, express his hopes they enjoyed fair weather on the road, and remark the Netherfield Park party would depart on the following morning.
What next? I wondered. Would we soon resort to talk of fields and farriers while my poor mother struggled to keep her eyes open? In fairness to my parent, not only had we been up late the night before, but she usually partook of an afternoon rest—a pleasure thwarted by this unexpected visit.
Perhaps the gentleman noticed my mother’s increasingly weary affect, for he then asked after my pony’s hock as if she had been lamed only yesterday, not weeks ago. Upon my answer that she seemed to have recovered the sprightliness of her gait, he begged my mother’s pardon, asking if he might take his leave of her before seeing for himself if my horse was ready to gallop.
Anxious to be rid of him, she suddenly became polite, graciously bid him farewell, and in doing so, she waved me away to see our guest out the door.
Mr Darcy and I walked slowly around the house to the yard. After a few moments in which the gravel beneath our feet crunched loudly in counterpoint to our fulsome silence, he said, “Is your mother perhaps annoyed with me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“She has never been overjoyed to see me, but I do not believe I have ever received indifference from her.”
“As you did today?”
He smiled with a hint of chagrin as his answer.
“She thinks you are a rake,” I said with a merry chuckle.
“Me—a rake!” he cried.
“You were once friends with Mr Wickham, you know, and in her mind, the two of you likely fell out because of a rivalry over a mistress, not because of any differences in your characters.”
He stared at me, incredulous.
“And now you have called upon us, which is a rather pointed attention, is it not? What do you mean by coming here today? Did you suppose my mother would be delighted to see you arrive this afternoon so she could throw one or other of her daughters under your nose? Those days are behind us, sir.” I had been speaking lightly, for the subject was still quite amusing to me given how much Mama had changed.
His silence gave me leave to pause for effect. “Men of privilege,” I then continued, now no longer smiling, “like you and your friend Mr Bingley are free to toy with a woman’s heart and shred her reputation with little, if any, consequence to their own.”
He stopped abruptly, and we turned to face one another, but since he was still speechless, I pressed on.
“We may be provincials, Mr Darcy, but we can and do learn from experience. My mother’s reservations with regard to you and your set are not unfounded.”
“Your elder sister…” he murmured before straightening to confront me. “I am aware—you have hinted—that Bingley may have raised expectations.”
My reply was firm. “I do not speak of Jane’s feelings.”
Our conversation at an end, we turned uneasily towards the stables and again began to walk. I expected a strained farewell after a cursory look at June’s hoof, but as we entered the dark and musty barn, Mr Darcy abruptly broke our silence.
“Have I also raised Mrs Bennet’s expectations?”
“Do not flatter yourself,” I replied with more tartness than he deserved, but for some reason, it stung to explain the case so plainly. “No one expects you to marry outside your sphere.”
“Yet, I am still regarded with suspicion?”
“Surely, you are not pretending you do not know!”
“Know what?”
“That the entire neighbourhood has speculated publicly on the nature of our association. Do you suppose for one moment that our every stolen conversation at the windows of Lucas Lodge has gone unremarked? Mary has cautioned me to have a care for my reputation, Miss Bingley would gleefully put a dagger between my shoulder blades if only she would not have to go to prison for it, and even Mr John Lucas, who is hardly astute, teased me only yesterday for being a shameless flirt.”
“Are you in earnest? He is?—”
“Callow.”
“You are generous. I would call him far worse.”
“You are too harsh. He is a harmless boy and made me laugh, particularly when he claimed I would be ‘left for dead by my lover’ and did I not think you have bigger fish to catch than a country girl with nothing to her name save a rickety little Zephyr?”
“Which will be taken from you by the ogre you marry.”
“Certainly!”
He seemed to consider all I had said and made what looked to be either some sort of internal resolution or a conscious effort to relax.
“Do you place me in the ogre class?”
“You, my good sir, are at the very top of the ogrish heap.”
He regarded me with the shadow of a smile before sobering and looking deeply into my eyes. “If I have raised your hopes?—”
“Please do not embarrass me by finishing what you were about to say. I may be pert, but I am also realistic. And as to what people say of matters they know nothing about, do you not know by now that I refuse to be intimidated by such talk?”
This time, his slanted smile was tinged with regret. “I know it well enough, but that does not lessen my distress at hearing what they think so unjustifiably with regard to you. Nor do I care for how this stupid speculation paints my own character.”
“Let us at last shake hands then, Mr Darcy,” I said kindly. “We have this in common: we are both, through our own wilful indiscretions and propensity to poke at one another for the sheer pleasure of it, the subjects of idle speculation. Meanwhile, be assured you have not injured me. You have borne admirably all my teasing and allowed me to delight in abusing you to your face. I hope I do not seem the kind of lady who withers and dies from false hopes?”
He grasped the hand I offered him, gently touched my cheek with one finger, and spoke in a low, wistful murmur.
“Are we to be friends at last then, Swiftling?”
My lips parted in wonder at the flood of sensations unleashed by the throb in his voice and the intimacy of his question.
“Yes,” I said breathily.
He took my hand to his lips and stepped back to look at me with his frank, appraising gaze. “I did not take my leave of you properly the last time I was here,” he said solemnly.
I resorted to teasing in order to recover from the overwhelming vulnerability I felt in his presence. “Ah, but you have done so this time and are nearly halfway to making amends.”
“Then I shall have to see you again if only to take my leave and earn full redemption.”
I stood silent before him. What in God’s name were we about? In the short distance between the front door of the house and the stables, we had ventured into something closely resembling promises .
“My address,” he said, his eyes never leaving my face as he pulled a card from out of his breast pocket and handed it to me. “Write to me.”
“Write to you!” I gasped. “I cannot!”
He continued as though I had not spoken. “Write for any reason, but also if you have need of my help, and most particularly to let me know if Wickham returns to Meryton and threatens your peace.” Then suddenly examining my face too closely, he said in a cajoling tone, “Do not cry.”
“I am not crying,” I said, sniffing back tears. “Only, there is so much chaff in the air this time of year my nose runs.”
“I would never urge you to write to a rake or a philanderer as your neighbours believe me to be. But to a friend, which I surely am, you must do so with impunity.”
It was unaccountable how moved I was by his words, by his sincerity, his unspoken assurance that I could not easily lose his respect, and as a result, a profound silence descended over us.
“Do not cry,” he said again with aching tenderness before he again kissed my hand. Then we were blinking in the strong afternoon light—he was in his saddle—and suddenly he was galloping far into the distance.