Chapter Sixteen #4
“Your ladyship is all goodness,” he stammered.
“To be so concerned for the—er—future of my parsonage! Mrs. Collins is, indeed, in the way to add to the population of Hunsford, which, I must submit, is a blessing—an inestimable blessing—though I confess I had not supposed—having only been married these two months—that such an increase—such an early manifestation of your ladyship’s benevolence, I might say—”
“Silence, Mr. Collins,” Lady Catherine said. “You will stand there talking till the child is born, and learn nothing from it. Your wife should have more sense. I shall speak to her myself.”
Richard’s eye met Darcy’s. There was, for one instant, a spark of downright mischief in it.
“Dear aunt,” he said, with all his accustomed ease, “I am persuaded Mrs. Collins will regulate her family exactly as you would wish. No doubt the next child will be born promptly when your ladyship considers it proper. In the mean time, even Rosings cannot command the course of nature.”
Lady Catherine, disconcerted by this union of apparent deference with real mockery, turned from him to Darcy again.
“You hear your cousin,” she said. “You see what I am obliged to endure. Everybody is against me. Everybody presumes to tell me I am wrong, in my own house, about my own clergyman. I declare I am quite ill-used.”
Darcy, who was inclined to say something sharp indeed, was suddenly visited by an image so incongruous that it checked him.
He saw, in fancy, Elizabeth Bennet in that room, her eyes alight with suppressed amusement, her lips scarcely steady as she listened to Mr. Collins’s absurdities and his patroness’s arrogance.
He the quick intelligence with which she had once, translated his own arrogance into harmless laughter instead of anger.
The recollection cooled his anger more effectually than any argument.
“Aunt,” he said, in a tone much milder than before, “you are not ill-used. You are obeyed and attended to more than any one of my acquaintance. But you have been offended merely because you cannot govern the world’s conduct by your wishes.
We must each do our duty as we see it. If we differ, it need not be with ill-will. ”
Richard looked genuinely impressed. Lady Catherine, though far from conquered, was momentarily at a loss.
“Well,” she said at last, with the air of one making an immense concession, “if you are determined to be obstinate, I cannot help it. Remember, when you are sorry for it, that I warned you.”
“I shall remember that you were very kind to be concerned,” he answered.
Lady Catherine rose and swept out, Mr. and Mrs. Collins in her train.
Mr. Collins, in endeavouring to bow to everyone at once, entangled himself in his wife’s gown and nearly overturned a small table of china which had stood in the same spot for twenty years and would, Darcy suspected, sooner be sacrificed entire than moved an inch from its appointed place.
A catastrophe was only averted by Richard’s quick step.
The door closed at last upon the whole procession.
There was a moment’s silence. Then Richard began to laugh.
“Darcy, you have behaved in a manner that would satisfy any writer of tales. You have defied a tyrant, protected the oppressed, and borne, with very good temper, the sight of a clergyman who has been married but two months and already has a wife halfway to her confinement. What has become of the man who used to be ready to quarrel with the world for less than half of that?”
Darcy, in spite of himself, smiled.
“He has gone to Derbyshire,” he said. “Or perhaps he is at this moment walking in Pemberley’s woods, listening to a lady who laughs at him when he is absurd, and will not let him be a greater fool than he needs.”
Richard’s glance sharpened. “If that is the case,” he replied, “I would advise you to finish those leases as quickly as possible. My aunt will never be satisfied regardless of your efforts.”
Darcy turned back to his papers with renewed vigour. He had a clear idea of where he wished to be, and with whom. Whatever remained to be settled at Rosings would be concluded with all deliberate speed.
That night, he wrote, folded, and directed.
When the last sheet was sealed, he did not at once rise.
His hand strayed to a half-finished note to Mrs. Reynolds: some direction respecting the steward’s stores, some enquiry after Georgiana.
He looked at it, but the words that formed themselves in his mind were not for his steward or his sister.
He saw, instead, Elizabeth Bennet walking beside him on Pemberley’s lawns, listening, with that bright, attentive air.
The image was so clear that, for a moment, the study at Rosings, with its ill-drawn landscape and its smell of Lady Catherine’s pomades, seemed to recede.
Every account he settled at Rosings, every mile that lay between him and Derbyshire, now seemed only so much time and distance to be overcome before he could see Elizabeth in his own home and learn, at last, whether she would allow it to be hers.
Every sentence he had spoken to Elizabeth there, every look he had given her, every attention he had shown – what had it amounted to?
A host’s civility. A brother’s thanks. Nothing that could not be answered with a smile and a few words of politeness.
The truth struck him with force. She could not know.
He had never told her. All his attentions—she must think them gratitude for what her family had done for Georgiana, not a wish for her to remain at Pemberley as his wife.
He had contrived a hundred moments to be near her, to watch her move through rooms that suddenly seemed made for her – and not one of them had contained the words he now knew he should have spoken.
I love you. Marry me. Be mistress here.
When he took up his pen again, the sentence he added to Mrs. Reynolds ran: “Do oblige me by letting me know whether the walk along the east bank was kept clear this winter, and whether the mistress’s chambers are in tolerable order for company.”
He told himself that he revealed nothing by mentioning them—that Pemberley should be kept ready for any visitor of consequence.
But the letter had nothing to do with walks or wall papers, and everything to do with a dark-eyed lady who had, without design, taught him what sort of man he wished to become.
Ill Used
Darcy had forgotten a room at Rosings could feel pleasant.
Anne's sitting-room bore none of the suffocating grandeur of the state apartments—only open windows, comfortable chairs, and air that moved freely.
His cousin sat by the hearth, a book open upon her lap.
She was thinner than he remembered, yet there was a composure in her countenance which owed nothing, he suspected, to her mother.
“You are very busy, I hear,” she said, when he was seated. “My mother complains that you live among your papers.”
“I am endeavouring to set your estate’s accounts in some order,” he replied. “It is work that should have been done long ago.”
“It is work that would never have been done, had you not come,” Anne said, with a faint smile. “You are always the one who put every thing right at Rosings.”
He hesitated.
“We have spoken often enough, you and I,” he said at last. “Of all her plans—for Rosings, for Pemberley, for you and me. These have been so long in her head that she thinks them settled because she has talked of them. But talking of a thing does not make it so. I have been thinking, of late, that it is cowardly to go on letting her suppose it.”
A flicker of amusement crossed Anne’s face.
“Cowardly—but prudent,” she said. “You know very well what a scene she would make. I have never had the courage to begin it. I have been glad to let the matter sleep, so long as she did not insist on waking it.”
“I believe she means to insist now,” he answered. “She has spoken more plainly this visit than ever before. She talks as if your fate were fixed, when you have no such intention.”
Anne looked down at her hands, then up again with quiet resolution.
“Yes,” she said. “We have never meant to be forced into it. If she presses you, tell her the truth. I shall not raise the matter, but I will support you.” She was silent for a moment, staring into the fire.
“We are agreed,” he said. “If my aunt raises the subject again, I shall answer her plainly. I will take the blame upon myself.”
Anne shook her head. “She will blame us both,” she said, with a touch of dry humour which startled him. “She will say that you have been led away by some designing woman, and that I have been weak and failed to cause you to fall in love with me.”
He could not wholly repress a smile. “She will be wrong in both particulars,” he said.
“You need not fear for me, Fitzwilliam. I am not so useless as you suppose. I will endeavour to ensure my mother knows you are not at fault.”
He coloured slightly. “You are very generous,” he said.
“I am selfish,” she answered. “I should be very sorry to see you unhappy, and very sorry to be unhappy myself. To be married, merely to please my mother, to a man who did not want me, and whom I did not want, is insupportable. We have known that much these many years. What is new is only your wish at last to say it aloud.” She hesitated, then added, with a shrewd smile, “You have, I reckon, some better prospect in view. Tell her the truth. Or so much of the truth as is necessary to silence her.”
He smiled a little. “You have more courage than any one gives you credit for,” he said. “You will have my support, in whatever you choose for yourself.”
“And you, in yours,” she replied. “You have borne my mother longer than any one. You deserve to please yourself once.”
There was a brief knock at the door. A servant entered to say that Lady Catherine desired Mr. Darcy and Miss de Bourgh’s presence in the drawing-room. Anne’s lips compressed almost imperceptibly.