Chapter Sixteen #2
“Lord, yes, ma’am. When the old master died, Mr. Darcy could not have been more than two-and-twenty, but there was never any doubt who was head here.
He pored over the accounts himself, he did, and walked the farms with Mr. Andrews, and talked to the men about their fences and their wages as if he had been doing it for twenty years.
Some young gentlemen would have thought only of horses and balls, begging your pardon, miss, but he thought of roofs and drains.
There’s many a widow, like me, as blesses his name of a winter.
He never forgot his old nurse. This cottage, my pension, every comfort I have—I owe it to him and to his good father before him. ”
Georgiana’s eyes shone. “My brother has always been very good to his people,” she said softly. “We should not have borne our losses half so well, had he not taken such care for everyone.”
“Aye, that he has,” Mrs. Littlewood agreed.
“Mind you, he’s not one for many words. He’ll sit a horse as straight as any gentleman in Derbyshire, and look as solemn as if the whole county were on his shoulders—but I never was afeard of him, not I.
I had him in my arms before he could stand, and I always knew what was under that grave face.
When my John died, and I was left alone, he came himself, not sending only the steward, and sat in that very chair you are in now, ma’am, and told me I should never want whilst Pemberley stood.
He said little enough, but his face—well, I knew he meant it, as I knew it when he was a boy with a scraped knee, trying not to cry for fear of troubling his mother. ”
Elizabeth felt, in that moment, as if the walls of the great house had become transparent.
She saw, not only its present comfort and splendour, but the years of care and constancy by which it had been preserved.
The grave reserve which had so often offended her pride appeared less like arrogance than like the natural habit of a man who had early learnt to think more of his duties than of his amusements.
He had been loved, from his infancy, by those who understood that his silence concealed feeling rather than want of it.
Georgiana drew out a small parcel from her reticule—a flannel waistcoat which she and Elizabeth had made up. Georgiana’s skilled embroidery showed in the tiny rosebuds around the neckline.
“We brought this for you,” she said. “Elizabeth—Miss Bennet—chose the pattern. We hope it will keep you warm.”
Mrs. Littlewood protested and thanked them by turns.
“You are all goodness, I am sure,” she said, taking Elizabeth's hand as she spoke.
“Mr. Darcy will be right proud to know how kind his sister and her friends are to his old nurse. He was always particular, even as a boy, that no one at Pemberley should be forgotten.” She paused, still holding Elizabeth's hand, and added with quiet significance, “Now I see he has chosen friends who think as he does.”
When they took their leave, Elizabeth walked for some minutes in silence. Georgiana, perhaps suspecting that her friend was engaged in reflections of more consequence than the state of Mrs. Littlewood’s rheumatism, did not interrupt her.
At length Mary said, in a tone of conscious philosophy, that a well-regulated estate, like a well-regulated mind, produced its effects in every part. “Mr. Darcy appears to have succeeded in both,” she concluded.
Elizabeth could not disagree. She only said, with a smile that did not entirely disguise her emotion, that Pemberley certainly owed much of its prosperity to its master.
She wondered how much happiness might belong to a woman admitted to share a home so beautifully ordered, and a regard so steadily fixed on the comfort of everyone connected with it.
That night, when Elizabeth was alone in the chamber assigned her, she did not, as was her habit at Longbourn, fall asleep the instant the candle was extinguished.
She lay awake, listening to the unfamiliar silence of a great house at rest. There was a subdued stillness, broken only now and then by the faint crackle of the fire or the distant sound of a door closed softly by some watchful hand below.
Her thoughts turned, to Mrs. Littlewood’s account of Pemberley’s master.
The picture it had given—of a very young man taking up heavy cares without complaint, of a boy who had early learnt to feel much and say little—accorded ill with the proud, indifferent character she had once fixed upon him.
She had acknowledged, long since, that she had been unjust. But there was a difference between her error in judgement and feeling instead how entirely a man’s conduct justified the good opinion of those who best knew him.
The remembrance of his former behaviour at Meryton rose for a moment, in opposition, but even there, the very faults she had condemned—his reserve, his officiousness—seemed more like the excess of a scrupulous temper than the disdain of an insolent one.
She turned upon her pillow, half vexed with herself.
“This will not do,” she said softly, into the darkness.
“I shall be making a hero of him next, and that would be insufferable. He has faults enough, and I must remember them.” Yet the last image that visited her before sleep came was of an anxious, very young master walking the farms with his steward and listening, in that grave, intent way, to the complaints of men and widows who had early learnt to trust him.
Trust
The following morning brought a letter from Jane. Elizabeth knew the hand the instant it appeared on the breakfast-table and seized it with haste. She broke the seal whilst Georgiana poured out the chocolate and read as much as she could before civility obliged her to communicate the chief news.
“There is every prospect,” said Jane—whose phrases could not quite hide her happiness— “of Mr. Bingley’s remaining at Netherfield for some months longer.
He has taken Netherfield over and intends to spend the summer at least among us.
My mother is in raptures. I do not know what I ought to expect.
I only know that my heart is very full.”
Elizabeth’s eyes grew damp as she read. She could almost hear, between the lines, the gentle agitation with which Jane had taken up her pen.
“Jane is very happy,” she said aloud, when Georgiana enquired. “Mr. Bingley is still at Netherfield, and every thing goes on much as one could wish.”
“I am glad,” Georgiana replied warmly. “Your sister has the sweetest countenance. I thought her quite angelic when I first saw her.”
Mary allowed that Mr. Bingley had always appeared an amiable young man.
She observed that such attachments, when founded on good sense, might greatly promote a woman’s comfort in life.
As she said this, her eyes met Georgiana's for the briefest moment.
Some understanding passed between them that Elizabeth could not interpret.
Elizabeth folded the letter, but it was some time before her thoughts returned to the conversation.
She pictured her sister walking in the shrubbery at Longbourn, listening for a familiar step, feeling her heart quicken at every sound.
Jane, who had always been so diffident of her own attractions, was learning to acknowledge, if only to herself, that she wished to be asked, to be loved and chosen for life.
Was it so great a presumption? Was it wrong, in a woman, to own such a wish?
Elizabeth had always laughed at romance, and prided herself on resisting the follies of sentiment, found, to her surprise, that she quite envied Jane her feelings. Jane knew her own heart and knew the object worthy of it. She did not dare to examine her own.
She rose from the table and wandered down a passage that led to one of the south-facing windows.
From thence she could see the sweep of the drive and the park beyond.
No carriage was in sight, no horseman appeared between the trees.
She stood there longer than the prospect required, the folded letter in her hand.
It occurred to her, with a sort of startled humility, that she had begun to order her hours by an expectation.
A sound in the courtyard, the opening of a distant door, the approach of footsteps along the gallery—all were enough to send her thoughts, unbidden, to one image: a tall figure entering the room, a voice whose reserve she had once so much disliked.
When, later in the day, Georgiana spoke of her brother and guessed at the time of his return, Elizabeth listened with an attention that betrayed her.
Pemberley was insensibly weaving itself into her affections.
The thought crossed her mind that it would be remarkably easy to be happy there always.
She hastened to banish it as a dream in which she had no right to indulge.
A day or two after Jane’s letter arrived, the weather softened, and Georgiana proposed a short walk before dinner. Mary pleaded a treatise she was “uncommonly engaged” in. The two therefore set out alone, taking a path which wound gently down towards the river.
For some time they walked in silence. Georgiana’s reserve made silence easy rather than awkward.
At length she said, “You must think me terribly foolish, Miss Bennet, to speak so much of my brother. I am afraid I am for ever talking of him, or thinking of him, when I ought to be endeavouring to grow more independent.”
“If your fault is loving him too well,” Elizabeth replied, smiling, “it is one the world will readily forgive you.”
Georgiana coloured. “He has borne a great deal on my account,” she said simply.
“When I had most reason to be ashamed, he never made me feel that his regard was lessened. My fear of his displeasure was so great I could scarcely speak. But he was not angry at all. He never has been, though I have given him cause. I have often thought I did not deserve such a brother.”