Chapter Sixteen
Rosings
Darcy reached Rosings late on the following afternoon.
The house rose from its park in all its accustomed stateliness, and, to his present feelings, in all its accustomed want of true beauty.
There was no softness in its wide lawns, no surprise in its formal plantations.
Every thing about it spoke of consequence, nothing of home.
Lady Catherine received him in the drawing-room with as much ceremony as if he had come from the Antipodes instead of from Derbyshire.
She congratulated him on his punctuality, lamented, at some length, the badness of the Kentish roads, and ended with a catalogue of the parish’s deficiencies – the stupidity of the farmers, the negligence of the apothecary, and, above all, the endless blunders of “that foolish Mr. Collins and his very silly wife.” Mr. Collins, it seemed, had lately mis-quoted her directions in a Sunday sermon, to the infinite injury of her dignity.
“I do not know how he can be so tiresome,” she concluded.
“I was at the greatest pains to settle him well, and what is my return? A man who can talk of nothing but my own perfections in a manner that makes them ridiculous, and a wife who chatters of puddings and poultry when I am pleased to honour her with my notice. I declare I have never been so ill used by my own clergyman.”
Darcy made such civil answers as were necessary. He endured the remainder of the evening with a patience acquired by long habit. When at last the ladies withdrew and the port set before them, he and Colonel Fitzwilliam were left alone.
Richard filled his glass, then Darcy’s, and sat back to contemplate his cousin.
“You look more like a man fallen from happiness than risen to his duty,” he observed. “How is Miss Elizabeth Bennet, by the way?”
Darcy raised the glass to his lips but did not drink.
“Perfectly well, when I quitted Pemberley,” he said. “She and her sister are with Georgiana for a few weeks. My sister is much attached to them.”
Richard’s brows rose.
“Your sister,” he said. “I have seen Miss Elizabeth in company, if you recollect. I do not know when I have met a lady with whom it was so easy to talk nonsense and sense by turns.”
He watched Darcy closely.
“You leave such a woman at Pemberley,” he went on, more slowly, “your house full of life, with Georgiana the happiest I have ever seen her, and you ride into Kent to be scolded for a fortnight about chimneys and accounts. Are you quite sure you understand the meaning of the word happiness, Darcy?”
“My aunt has a claim upon me,” Darcy replied, rather more shortly than politeness required. “She expects me at Easter. It has always been so.”
“There are a great manythings that have ‘always been so’ in our family,” said Richard. “Not all of them are wise. Our aunt’s favourite among those follies is to talk of you and Anne as if you were already married.”
Darcy’s expression hardened.
“You are fully aware there is no such thing understood between us,” he said. “There never was. I shall tell her so plainly, if she presses me again. Anne has as little inclination to the plan as I have.”
Richard regarded him for a moment in silence, then nodded.
“Good,” he said. “You will oblige two people at once. Our cousin will be relieved of an expectation she has never encouraged, and our aunt will be forced, for once, to consider that the world does not move exactly in the path she traced for it.”
He leant forward, his easy humour giving way to a more earnest expression.
“As for you, my dear fellow,” he added, “if you mean to be happy, I should recommend that you spend less time in Kent and more at Pemberley. I saw your face often enough, when Miss Elizabeth was in the room, to know where your thoughts run. Do not tell me you came here to forget her. No man quits such a guest in his own house and calls it forgetfulness.”
Darcy coloured, though he would have denied it.
“You are talking at random,” he said. “Miss Elizabeth is my sister’s friend. I am grateful to her. That is all.”
Richard gave him a look that, from any other man, he would have resented.
“If you were only grateful,” he said, “you would not look as you do now when I say her name. You would not speak if she had taken your heart from your body and kept it there. You may choose to be a coward, Darcy, but you will not persuade me that your gratitude or Georgiana’s affection is the whole of the matter. ”
Darcy half smiled in spite of himself.
“You are impertinent,” he said.
“I am your cousin, and I have eyes,” Richard returned. “You told me once that when you found a woman you truly wished to marry, you would not hesitate. Very well. There she is at Pemberley. Here you are at Rosings. Which of you has broken your own rule?”
Darcy looked down at his glass.
“I am here today,” he said, “because my aunt summoned me, and it is not in my power to neglect her entirely. I shall not be here longer than I must. When I am once more at Pemberley—” He broke off.
“When you are once more at Pemberley,” Richard repeated, “you will, I hope, remember that opportunities are not like Lady Catherine’s lectures. They are not certain to be repeated.”
He spoke lightly, yet his glance was kind.
Darcy did not answer. Later, alone in his room, with the heavy silence of Rosings about him, he thought that his cousin had, perhaps, seen too much.
Tranquillity
Elizabeth passed the next days at Pemberley in a tranquillity she had never before possessed in any house not her own.
The first wonder of the place began to soften into familiarity.
She grew to know which rooms were warmest of a morning, where the sun lay longest on the library carpet, which window looked best upon the distant hills or the nearer sweep of lawn.
The house no longer oppressed her by its size.
It unfolded itself until she could almost fancy herself at home.
Mary took her chief pleasure in the library. She spent hours among the books, exclaiming on the excellencies of Mr. Darcy’s collection. Georgiana joined them there listening in silent amusement whilst Mary compared the moralists and poets at Pemberley with those at Longbourn.
One afternoon, as they left the library together, Mary paused at the head of the great staircase and looked about her with animation.
“I do not know when I have been so perfectly at ease,” she said. “Every thing here is ordered without fuss, and yet nothing is constrained. If I were to remain at Pemberley all my life, I do not think I should have reason to repine.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“You would soon have read the library through and be obliged to send to London for more books.”
“I doubt I could do so in a lifetime. But if I could, I daresay Mr. Darcy might be prevailed upon to augment his collection,” Mary replied with unexpected spirit. “Besides, there are worse fates than to be condemned to walk in such grounds and sit in such rooms.”
Georgiana coloured and smiled. “I hope you would not be condemned to it,” she said, “but that you would choose it—at least for a very long visit. I wish you would all stay for ever.” She hesitated, then added, with more earnestness, “Pemberley has never been so pleasant to me as it is now.”
Elizabeth was arrested by the sincerity of this speech.
She turned her face slightly away, as to shield it from view.
Georgiana spoke only as a lonely girl who had found companions she could love and be at ease with.
The word “for ever” her mind would not quite let go.
She turned the discourse to safer ground, by proposing that they should walk as far as Mrs. Littlewood’s cottage and enquire after her.
The day, though cold, was bright. The air was clear, and the distant hills stood out with a sharpness that delighted Elizabeth’s eye.
They followed a path that led from the formal gardens through a small belt of trees and along the side of a gentle slope, where a few sheep were feeding.
Georgiana, more familiar with the way, directed them with quiet pleasure.
The cottage, when they reached it, stood snugly sheltered by a rise of ground and a cluster of old elms. Smoke curled from its chimney, a small patch of garden, now showing early flowers, lay neatly kept before the door. Mrs. Littlewood met them with exclamations of pleasure.
“Miss Darcy, Miss Bennet, Miss Mary! What an honour!” she cried. “Come in, if you please. The room is small, but the fire is good.”
The low-ceiled parlour, though humble, was remarkably clean.
A bright fire burnt in the grate, a tea-kettle sang upon the hob, and a few treasured ornaments—china dogs, a framed sampler—spoke of long habitation and pride.
Georgiana enquired after her health with gentle concern.
Elizabeth added a few questions of her own, and soon Mrs. Littlewood grew talkative.
“I nursed Master Fitzwilliam from when he was no higher than the table,” she said, looking fondly at Georgiana, “and had the care of you after him, miss, till you were almost a young lady. A mighty serious child he was, too, even then—always watching, always minding what was said. He would come down here sometimes with me, to see my garden, and would ask the names of all the plants as if ’twas a lesson.
I used to tell him he knew more of my cabbages than many gentlemen knew of their tenants. ”
Elizabeth listened with increasing interest. “Was he always so attentive to every thing?” she asked, striving to make her tone no more curious than civility required.
Mrs. Littlewood nodded vigorously.