Chapter 14 #3
“The ones Miss Georgiana has never done talking of? Miss Elizabeth and Miss Mary, I think she called them – the friends that made her so loth to come away?”
Darcy bent his head.
“The same,” he said, quietly.
Mrs. Littlewood nodded to herself several times, as if confirming some conjecture.
“Well now,” she said, “I am not so old but I can sit in a carriage and say I am glad to see the sun. The hens will not break their hearts if I leave them for a few weeks. If Pemberley wants me, Pemberley shall have me. I nursed you when you were no bigger than that teapot, Master Fitzwilliam. I can sit by two young ladies and see they take no harm.”
“I knew you would not refuse me,” he replied.
She looked at him again, directly.
“I would not refuse you in any case,” she said, “though I confess I am glad to hear more of these Hertfordshire ladies. Miss Georgiana’s eyes shine whenever she names them.
As for you—” she paused, then added, with a certain rough tenderness, “I have seen you heavy enough in my time, sir. It does my heart good to see you troubled with something so natural at last.”
A blush of colour rose in his face, a sensation he had not known since he was a boy under that very gaze.
“You think me troubled?” he said, forcing a lightness that did not convince her.
“I think you as restless as a man who hears a carriage coming before it turns into the avenue,” she answered.
“You speak of this visit as if it were a matter of drains and hedges, yet you ride out of your way to ask an old woman to sit with the ladies in the coach. I am not such a simpleton as I was when you used to steal jam from the cupboard, Master Fitzwilliam. I know when a thing is worth the trouble you take for it.”
“Mrs. Littlewood,” he said, half in reproof, half in unwilling amusement, “you will render me quite ridiculous if you persist in imagining romances where none exist.”
She smiled, with a mixture of respect and obstinacy that had often defeated him in childhood.
“I imagine nothing,” she replied. “I see a gentleman who has had the pick of half the ladies in town and country, and who never yet came to his old nurse to ask her to travel with them. I shall say no more. It is not my place.”
“It is very much in your character,” he said, rising. “I am obliged to you, ma’am, for consenting. I shall write to Mr. Bennet and present you as a guarantee that his daughters shall be as safe upon the road as if they were still in his parlour.”
“They shall be safe enough,” she said. “I shall keep a sharp eye on them – and on you if need be.”
He bowed over her hand, whilst she curtseyed again, more from habit than necessity.
As he mounted his horse and rode back towards the house, he was conscious of a strange mixture of mortification and relief.
Mrs. Littlewood, in her blunt way, had said more than he allowed to himself, yet the very fact that she saw it, and did not condemn, gave him a courage he had not possessed before.
He would bring Miss Elizabeth into the circle of those who had loved him longest.
The Road North
The day fixed for their departure came at last, cold and clear, with a pale sun lying low over the fields.
Pemberley’s carriage looked strangely out of place before the modest door of Longbourn.
It was not ostentatious, yet its well-kept paint and the neat livery of the coachman and footmen made every other vehicle in the village seem shabby by comparison.
Mrs. Bennet, stationed at the parlour window, had been in a fever of admiration and agitation from the moment it turned in at the gate.
“Such horses!” she cried. “Look at their very harness, Mr. Bennet. I protest, Elizabeth, I shall be positively ill when I see you sitting inside such grandeur. Pray take care you do not dirty your gown in getting in. I should die of shame if you looked the least thing countrified at Pemberley.”
“The danger lies rather in my being too countrified to be improved,” said Elizabeth. “You will not have that upon your conscience, ma’am.”
Mary, who stood straight with her hands folded, noted that “outward distinctions of rank and equipage were of small consequence compared with the real dignity of the mind,” yet even she had to glance once or twice, with some awe, at the shining panels and well-matched greys.
Kitty and Lydia ran in and out incessantly, bringing conflicting reports from the hall: that Mrs. Littlewood had arrived, that she had not, that she was amazingly old, that she was not so very old after all, that she had brought a basket of eggs for Hill, that it was only her own cloak rolled up.
When at length Hill announced that “Mr. Darcy’s people” were ready and waiting, the whole family crowded into the hall. Two sober-looking footmen stood by the open door, beyond them, in a plain dark cloak and bonnet, was Mrs. Littlewood.
She curtseyed, with old-fashioned respect, to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet.
“Sir, ma’am, I am very happy to see your again,” she said. “Mr. Darcy was so good as to ask if I would have the honour of attending your young ladies on the journey. I have been with his family, man and boy, these five-and-thirty years. You may depend on my doing my best for them.”
Mrs. Bennet, whose fears for her daughters’ propriety had been much increased by the sight of the Pemberley liveries, was instantly struck with this new security.
“A person who has been with Pemberley so long must know everything that is proper,” she exclaimed. “I am excessively obliged to you, madam. Nothing could be more satisfactory. Mr. Bennet, did you hear? Five-and-thirty years. I shall be quite easy now.”
Mr. Bennet bowed.
“I am very much indebted to you, Mrs. Littlewood,” he said. “My daughters could hardly be in safer hands, unless they remained at home, which, it seems, nobody intends them to do.”
Mrs. Littlewood’s eye travelled kindly over the young ladies.
“They will be as safe with me as ever your master was,” she answered. “I taught him to keep his seat on a pony. I shall take care your daughters keep theirs in the coach.”
Lydia giggled.
“You must tell us all about him when he was a boy,” she cried. “I am persuaded he was as solemn then as he is now.”
One eyebrow lifted as Mrs. Littlewood regarded her.
“He was a very good child,” she said. “And a very busy gentleman at present, with so much on his hands that I wonder he has time to think of bringing any young ladies to Pemberley at all.”
A flush spread over Elizabeth’s face. She could not be sure whether Mrs. Littlewood’s glance at her had been designed or accidental.
The leave-taking, when it began, was confusion itself. Mrs. Bennet embraced Elizabeth and Mary again and again, recommending health, prudence, and a hundred other things in the same breath.
“Remember to write the very first night,” she insisted.
“Let me know how they receive you, how large your rooms are, what dinners you have, and whether there is a proper number of servants. Do not let them put you into any back corner. Mind you take care of your cloaks. Lizzy, do not run about in the parks till you have a cold. Mary, do not sit reading when the company is in the room.”
“We shall remember as much as we can, ma’am,” said Elizabeth, laughing. “I cannot answer for the parks.”
Jane’s farewell was quieter, yet not less affectionate. She held Elizabeth a little longer than the rest.
“You will be happy,” she said, in a low voice. “I am sure you will. Pray observe every thing with discernment, and let me know all that gives you pleasure.”
“If I write all that gives me pleasure, you will have a very long letter,” replied Elizabeth.
“I shall not complain of the length,” Jane answered, with a smile that trembled.
Kitty and Lydia were divided between envy and delight.
“I shall think it excessively unkind if you forget to admire every thing for me,” declared Lydia. “Above all, you must take notice whether there is any one handsome and agreeable among the gentlemen that visit there. I insist upon particular descriptions.”
“You may be sure,” said Elizabeth, “that I shall not go to Pemberley in search of gentlemen for you, Lydia. It will be enough if you can keep from making mischief in Hertfordshire whilst I am gone.”
“Mrs. Annesley would say that mischief never yet made anybody truly happy,” observed Kitty, with an effort at virtue. “We ought to try to remember what she taught us.”
Lydia tossed her head.
“I shall remember what pleases me,” she said. “Yet I dare say Mrs. Annesley will be there to scold you if you are not proper, so I shall be satisfied.”
At last there were no more delays that could, with any decency, be made. The trunks had been fastened on, the footmen stood ready, the coachman waited only for the young ladies to be seated. Mr. Bennet offered his arm to Elizabeth.
“I must take charge of you as far as the carriage, Lizzy,” he said. “After that, you belong to Mr. Darcy.”
She smiled, though her heart beat fast.
“I hope not entirely, sir,” she replied. “Longbourn must retain some right in me.”
“Longbourn will retain more than you suspect,” he answered. “Remember that, if Pemberley should grow too fine for you.”
He handed her in. Mrs. Littlewood followed more deliberately, taking her place opposite, and Mary, having curtseyed her last to her mother and kissed Jane, mounted after.
“Good-bye, my dears!” cried Mrs. Bennet. “Write – remember to write! Oh, Mr. Bennet, call them back. I am sure there is something I have forgotten to say.”
“If you have forgotten it, my dear, you will remember it in your next letter,” he replied. “Hill, shut the door.”
The door was closed, the steps were put up, the coachman touched his hat and set the horses in motion. The Pemberley carriage rolled slowly down the drive, with all the Bennets at the door to watch it, then it turned into the lane and took the road towards Meryton and the north.