CHAPTER 42
A Fortune Properly Filed
On Tuesday morning, Darcy wrote the letters which made happiness official enough to be dangerous.
There were, he found, fewer persons who must be told than society would have supposed, and more than peace would have preferred.
Necessary people were not always the loudest. Indeed, in his experience, the loudest were very often best delayed until the arrangements had acquired enough paper to defend themselves.
His first letter was to his uncle.
My dear Uncle,
I write to inform you, before any rumour can be so obliging as to improve upon the truth, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet has done me the honour of accepting my hand.
The engagement is not yet public. Proper settlements and notices are being arranged with Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker, and I must ask your discretion until those matters are further advanced.
You know enough of my circumstances to understand why I have hesitated where another man might not have done. I can only say that Miss Bennet knows more of me than I had any right to hope she would hear, and that her judgment has been kinder than my deserts.
I am very happy. I do not know that I have written those words before with any great confidence in their truth.
Your affectionate nephew, F. Darcy
He sat with the pen in his hand after the last sentence was written.
It was too bare. It was also true. There was nothing to be done with truth, once it had put itself down in ink, except to let it stand.
Richard’s letter took longer, not because the fact was more difficult to communicate, but because Richard had a genius for finding weakness in every restrained line and turning it into amusement.
At length Darcy wrote:
My dear Richard,
I write before rumour can make itself useful. Miss Elizabeth Bennet has accepted me. The engagement is not yet public, and I must ask you to keep it to yourself until the necessary arrangements are settled.
You may congratulate me, but I beg you will do so without inventing expressions of rapture on my behalf. I am happy enough without assistance.
Yours, F. Darcy
He sanded the page, sealed it, and was obliged to admit that the last sentence would do him no good whatever. Richard would read happiness in it as readily as if Darcy had underlined the word in red.
Mr. Brentwood’s note was shorter and more formal. Darcy informed him of the engagement, acknowledged the propriety of limiting any future professional involvement in Miss Bennet’s principal affairs, and expressed his gratitude for past confidence.
When the letters had gone, Darcy found himself standing at the window with no object in view.
The day was grey, the glass cold, the street below occupied with ordinary London business: carts, servants, mud, horses, men in coats too thin for the weather and others in coats too fine for work. It was a morning like any other.
He was to marry Elizabeth Bennet.
The fact did not become smaller with repetition. If anything, it enlarged itself each time his mind touched it, until the narrow room, the papers on his desk, the ledgers awaiting answer, and even Jenkins’s quiet movement beyond the door seemed to exist under a changed climate.
Portman Square would be their home. Elizabeth had said it so simply that he had almost failed, at first, to understand the magnitude of the gift.
She had not said he might be received there.
She had not said rooms could be found. She had not said his comfort would be considered, or that Mrs. Albright might be instructed to make some accommodation tolerable.
She had said their home.
Darcy left the window before the thought could make him useless for the whole morning.
He had employment. He had papers. He had clients. He had, by long habit, the kind of discipline which could command a man’s hands even when his mind proved less obedient. He used it.
The rest of Tuesday passed with almost respectable order.
He wrote, answered, copied, reviewed, and corrected; and if Jenkins observed that two drafts were finished with unusual speed and one client’s memorandum received a severity of punctuation beyond its deserts, he was far too well trained to mention it.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hartwood’s note arrived.
Jenkins brought it in while Darcy was reading a deposition so ill-arranged that it might have been designed to make falsehood look unsteady by association.
“From Mr. Hartwood, sir.”
Darcy took it at once.
Mr. Hartwood presents his compliments to Mr. Darcy and would be obliged by Mr. Darcy’s attendance at eleven o’clock this morning, if convenient, upon matters relating to the proposed settlements. Mr. Beaker will also attend. Miss Bennet’s presence is not required.
Miss Bennet’s presence is not required.
There was nothing improper in it. Indeed, there was everything proper in it.
Monday had settled principles; Wednesday must produce papers.
Settlements required signatures, figures, restrictions, acknowledgments, and the dry admission that marriage, however happy, was also a legal rearrangement by which one person might be injured if all others were careless.
Still, he disliked it.
He disliked being summoned into a room where Elizabeth would not be. He disliked the cold little phrase by which her absence was made reasonable. He disliked, most of all, the instant and irrational suspicion that some objection had been found.
He folded the note.
“Is there an answer, sir?”
“No. I shall attend.”
Jenkins withdrew.
Darcy sat for one minute more before the deposition, and then pushed it aside. Whatever injury the document meant to do to sense must wait. Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker had contrived to make settlements sound more alarming than litigation.
At eleven precisely, he was shown into Mr. Hartwood’s office.
It was not the same room in which he and Elizabeth had sat on Monday.
That, Darcy thought, was deliberate. Mr. Hartwood, who could make a chair appear morally significant merely by placing it at an angle, had selected a smaller room, less suited to general conference and better suited to documents which did not ask permission to exist.
The papers had advanced from principle into offence.
Mr. Beaker was already there, long, black-coated, and aligned with the table as if he had been measured for it. Several documents lay before him in ordered groups. There were columns. Darcy had faced worse things than columns. At least, he believed he had.
Mr. Hartwood rose.
“Mr. Darcy. Thank you for coming.”
“I understood the matter to be necessary.”
“Necessary, yes. Not alarming.”
Darcy was not reassured. Men only said a matter was not alarming when they had first considered whether it might be.
Mr. Beaker inclined his head.
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Mr. Beaker.”
They sat.
Mr. Hartwood placed his hands together upon the table. “Monday settled the principle. Today requires your signature and your full knowledge of what the signature refuses.”
“That is plain enough.”
“I hope it will remain so.” Mr. Hartwood drew one document forward. “You have already agreed that Miss Bennet’s fortune should remain protected from marital interference, direct or indirect.”
“I have.”
“And that you will not enter, by marriage, into any control over her principal capital, investment direction, legal settlements, or trustee instructions.”
“Yes.”
Mr. Beaker’s eyes flickered over him. Darcy had the uncomfortable impression of being weighed and not found objectionable, which was not the same thing as being approved.
“In order to draw such protections cleanly,” said Mr. Hartwood, “and in order that you may sign them with full understanding, Mr. Beaker and I must put before you the scale of what is being protected.”
Darcy stilled.
He had known this must come. He had known Elizabeth was wealthy.
He had seen Portman Square, its quiet command, its servants moving without noise, its plate, its fires, its governed rooms, its machinery of letters and tradesmen and repairs.
He had examined leases, rents, arrears, properties, shops, warehouses, bank premises, and the stubborn little tyrannies by which tenants taught owners humility.
He had known enough to be careful.
Mr. Hartwood looked at him with a kindness that was not soft enough to be mistaken for comfort.
“You are not being shown these figures in order to direct them. You are being shown them because you are to sign papers which prevent you from directing them.”
Mr. Beaker turned one page.
“A man cannot properly disclaim what he has not been told he might otherwise claim.”
That, Darcy thought, was a sentence designed by nature to be true and unpleasant.
“I understand.”
“Very good,” said Mr. Beaker, and began.
Darcy prepared himself.
“Miss Bennet’s ordinary rental income,” said Mr. Beaker, “allowing for vacancies, arrears, repairs, and ordinary inconvenience, is generally between three thousand and thirty-five hundred pounds per annum.”
Darcy looked up.
“Ordinary?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Beaker. “I have not yet come to capital.”
Mr. Hartwood said nothing. This was perhaps kindness.
Mr. Beaker continued, “Her ordinary annual expenditure has generally fallen between one thousand and fifteen hundred pounds.”
Darcy was silent.
“This year is somewhat higher, owing to renovations.”
Darcy, who had himself been consulted upon paper, curtains, carpets, light, tone, chairs, and the melancholy tendencies of old rooms, could hardly dispute the charge.
“Even so,” said Mr. Beaker, “the difficulty is not expenditure. It remains accumulation.”
Darcy had heard each word distinctly. He was less certain that he had understood the whole sentence. The difficulty was not expenditure.
“Mrs. Marwood approved comfort,” Mr. Beaker added, “but disliked evaporation.”
“Evaporation?”
“Money leaving the room without returning in improved form.”
Darcy had the absurd impulse to laugh, and restrained it because Mr. Beaker did not appear to have made a joke. Or, if he had, it was of a species which had been dried and filed before use.