CHAPTER 16 #2
Darcy asked him then what he knew of leases, of repairs, of tenants, of tradesmen, of accounts kept plainly enough for one man of business and carefully enough for another.
Samuel answered without pretending to knowledge he did not possess.
He had not negotiated leases. He had copied them.
He had not managed property. He had watched property badly managed and occasionally understood why.
He had seen parish cottages where damp had been called tenant carelessness until the roof was mended.
He knew that old men with arrears generally remembered kindness more clearly than sums, and that shopkeepers remembered sums more clearly than kindness.
He had no taste for quarrels but did not think them avoidable where money was due.
Darcy found himself, against caution, increasingly satisfied.
“There may be a situation,” he said at last. “Nothing is promised.”
“I understand.”
“It concerns London property. Small shops, divided houses, yards, repairs, arrears, tenants who remember agreements no one wrote down, and at least one man inclined to mistake confidence for title.”
Samuel’s face, oddly, became less anxious.
“Then it may resemble a parsonage, sir, only with rent.”
Darcy nearly smiled.
“The work would not be independent at first. You would report. You would inspect, record, obtain estimates, and learn when to refer a question upward. You would not decide what belongs to the owner, the solicitor, or the man of accounts.”
“I would be glad to learn the difference.”
“You must also bear being disliked.”
“I have ten brothers and sisters, sir.”
“That may not fully prepare you for Mr. Harding.”
“No, sir. But it gives a foundation.”
There was, Darcy thought, something promising in a man who could answer lightly without losing the point. Elizabeth would like that.
The thought came too quickly and with too much certainty.
He corrected himself.
Miss Bennet would judge that.
“The final decision will not be mine,” he said.
“The owner’s, sir?”
“Yes. Miss Bennet’s. Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker may also need to be satisfied.”
“Then I shall hope to be more useful than impressive.”
Darcy looked at him.
“That would be wise.”
Samuel inclined his head, and for a moment the interview might have ended neatly. But the young man did not rise. His hands tightened once upon his hat.
“There is one thing more, sir, and I would not wish to say it if it seems impertinent.”
Darcy’s senses sharpened, though he gave no sign of it.
“Then consider whether it must be said.”
Samuel did consider. It was to his credit that he did not rush into either courage or retreat.
“My father was sorry when you left Derbyshire.”
Darcy’s hand stilled upon the paper.
“That was kind of him.”
“He did not believe all that was said.”
The room, which had contained ink, work, clerks, London, and Cotton Lane, seemed for one brief instant to contain only that.
Darcy looked at Samuel.
“No?”
“No, sir.” Samuel coloured, but did not look away. “He said there were stories he could not reconcile with the young gentleman he had known. I beg your pardon if I speak out of turn.”
“And you?”
Samuel’s fingers tightened again upon the brim of his hat.
“I thought as my father did.”
It was not vindication. It was not justice. It restored nothing. It did not open Pemberley’s doors, did not bring Georgiana within reach, did not undo his father’s disbelief or remove Wickham’s shadow from years that ought to have been easier.
Yet gratitude, when unexpected, could be almost as difficult to endure as insult.
Darcy folded Samuel’s letter with great care.
“You have not spoken out of turn,” he said.
Samuel’s relief was visible and quickly governed.
Darcy took up another paper and wrote several lines.
“These are notes concerning the duties such an agent would undertake. Take them away. By tomorrow noon, bring me a memorandum in your own hand setting out what you understand the situation to require. Do not improve the facts. Arrange them.”
Samuel rose.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Mr. Terling.”
Samuel paused.
“If you are to be considered, it will be because you are fit for the work, not because your father once thought kindly of me.”
“Yes, sir.” A little colour came back into his face. “That is what my father would prefer.”
Darcy inclined his head.
When Samuel had gone, Darcy remained at his desk longer than the hour required.
The work was not finished. It rarely was.
A solicitor’s day ended not because papers were done, but because candles cost money and clerks were human.
By the time Darcy left his chambers, the lamps were lit in the streets, the pavements shone with damp, and London had entered that evening state in which every shopfront seemed warmer than the air and every passer-by more purposeful than was likely.
He walked home.
Home was not the word he used. It was the word habit sometimes chose for want of a better.
His lodgings occupied the first floor of a narrow house in a street respectable enough to require no apology and modest enough to require no explanation.
Mrs. Naylor, his landlady, kept the steps clean, the brass bright, and the fires economical.
She had never asked him a question beyond those necessary to rent, coals, linen, and whether he meant to dine in; for this discretion Darcy paid promptly and valued her highly.
The maid admitted him, took his hat, and informed him that Mrs. Naylor had kept back a plate as he had not come in at his usual hour.
“Thank you,” said Darcy.
The girl bobbed and vanished downward.
His sitting room was exactly as he had left it: clean, properly kept, and furnished with objects good enough not to offend and worn enough to remind him that none of them was his.
There was a table near the window, another smaller one by the fire, two chairs, a bookcase too shallow for half his books, a grate that permitted warmth without encouraging extravagance, and a carpet worn thin in the places where a man must stand if he wished to think.
Mrs. Naylor’s rooms were clean, but they never forgot they were rented. The fire was honest, not generous. Warmth remained near the grate like a guest unwilling to circulate.
It was not poverty. Poverty, in rooms, had a smell and disorder these did not possess. It was compression. Everything fitted because everything had been forced to justify its place.
Darcy laid his papers upon the table.
Portman Square had made the room smaller.
He disliked the thought, and therefore sat down at once to work.
That was the difficulty. Not that Miss Bennet had asked too much of him, but that she had asked exactly enough.
A lease. A memorandum. A tradesman’s estimate.
A question of sequence. Each errand had been respectable; each return had been justified; and each had left behind some small warmth he had no right to miss.
He had been fed there. Consulted there. Expected there.
No impropriety had occurred. That was almost the worst of it. Nothing in his conduct required apology, and yet his imagination had begun to take liberties his conduct never would.
He saw again, with unwelcome exactness, Miss Bennet standing in the breakfast room with her hand upon the dark curtain, brave over a piece of household fabric because grief had strange territories and not all of them were reasonable.
He heard her say that the room called for brightness.
He remembered the colour rising in her face when she chose what Mrs. Marwood had not chosen.
He remembered the tea tray, the second patty, the warmth of being expected to eat, the familiarity of having his judgment accepted where it was useful and his silence understood where speech might have been clumsy.
He looked round his rooms: the careful fire, the rented chairs, the table too crowded with another woman’s business.
Service, he told himself. That was all he could offer.
It was not little. It must be enough.
A knock sounded below. Voices followed: Mrs. Naylor’s, careful and low, and then another voice, easy, gentlemanlike, and very much at home in its own presumption.
Darcy rose before the maid came up.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was shown in a moment later, bringing with him cold air, clean gloves, and the indefinable assurance of a man who had never yet found a threshold likely to defeat him.
Richard had been in those rooms before. Darcy disliked, every time, the first glance his cousin did not quite permit himself: the swift measure of rented furniture, moderate fire, stacked papers, economical comfort.
Richard never pitied him aloud. That was one of the reasons Darcy continued to open the door.
“I have interrupted dinner,” said Richard, looking toward the untouched plate Mrs. Naylor’s maid had placed upon the side table.
“You have interrupted papers.”
“Then I arrive as a public benefactor.”
Darcy rang for tea because hospitality, in lodgings, was a smaller operation but not a less necessary one.
Richard stripped off his gloves and took the chair nearest the fire without waiting to be asked. His scarlet coat looked almost violent in the grey little room.
“You are difficult to find at leisure.”
“I am not at leisure.”
“So I observe. Leases, repairs, memoranda—good God, Darcy, have you taken up governance of the kingdom?”
“Cotton Lane.”
“Ah. More serious.”
Darcy said nothing. Richard’s tone was light, but his expression was not.
“I came,” said Richard, “because I heard something today that you should know.”
Darcy stilled.
“Wickham is in town.”
The name entered the room like a draught no fire could answer.
“On whose money?”
Richard’s mouth tightened. “Whose do you think?”
“My father’s, then. Or his father’s. There is little difference now.”
“Not much of one.”
Darcy turned toward the fire. “Where was he seen?”
“Near St. James’s. Afterwards with two officers I do not know and one fellow I would not trust with a borrowed umbrella. He was dressed very well, very easy, and speaking of Derbyshire connexions as if they were coin he had minted himself.”