CHAPTER 64 #2
Mrs. Bennet, upon receiving Elizabeth’s letter, had answered with seven pages of mingled gratitude, alarm, triumph, maternal tenderness, speculation about Derbyshire society, and a postscript asking whether Kitty would require a new gown if she was to be seen so much at Pemberley.
Elizabeth replied that Kitty was very well supplied.
This had the advantage of being both true and discouraging.
Mrs. Doddridge remained what she had always been: quiet, respectable, and impossible to deceive for long.
And Fitzwilliam had become useful to Pemberley again.
That was the danger of it.
The house had remembered him with shameful readiness.
Servants who had not known whether to bow too low or not at all now brought him papers, questions, keys, and deference.
Tenants sent word, cautiously at first, then with growing relief.
Bell consulted him before spending a shilling and after discovering that shillings had been spent by the dozen without cause.
Mr. Latham spoke to him as the heir and the acting judgment in the room.
Even his father, whose pride had survived illness more efficiently than his left hand, watched him with a look Elizabeth did not like to name.
Need was a powerful advocate. It could make repentance look like dependence and justice look like convenience.
Fitzwilliam knew it too.
The letters from his mother’s family arrived before the end of the first week.
Lord Matlock wrote first, and with such concern as might almost have been kindness, had it not been so carefully dressed in caution.
He had heard confused reports of illness, impropriety, and sudden movement north.
He trusted his nephew would understand that, as head of the Fitzwilliam family, he could not be indifferent to the condition of his late sister’s household.
He requested particulars of George Darcy’s health, Georgiana’s situation, and any reports concerning the Wickham family, whose name had apparently begun to move uneasily through more than one room.
As head of the Fitzwilliam family, I cannot be indifferent to the condition of my late sister’s household, nor to reports which touch Miss Darcy’s situation and the Wickham connexion.
Elizabeth read that sentence twice and handed the letter to Fitzwilliam.
“He wants to know whether danger has become unfashionable before he acknowledges it.”
Fitzwilliam’s expression was dry. “That is unkind.”
“Is it unjust?”
“No.”
Lady Catherine’s letter arrived the next morning and had no such difficulty with caution.
It was outrage from the first line and command by the third.
She had not been informed. She had not been consulted.
Georgiana could not possibly be safe under the government of a young woman who had entered the family under circumstances Lady Catherine still declined to approve.
Fitzwilliam had acted precipitately; Elizabeth had acted presumptuously; George Darcy’s illness was being made an excuse for irregular authority; and Lady Catherine must insist upon immediate explanation, for no one could be more entitled to speak on matters concerning Lady Anne’s children than Lady Anne’s own sister.
No person can be more entitled to speak upon the welfare of Lady Anne’s children than her own sister. I must therefore insist upon an immediate and complete explanation.
Elizabeth finished it with admiration.
“One must respect such economy,” she said.
Fitzwilliam looked up from Lord Matlock’s draft reply. “Economy?”
“Lady Catherine has used six pages and not one doubt.”
“She has always been frugal in uncertainty.”
The replies were civil and contained nothing that could feed curiosity into action.
Lord Matlock was informed that Mr. George Darcy remained under medical care; that Miss Darcy was safe and under her brother’s protection; that Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were at Pemberley for the present; that legal and estate matters were being reviewed by competent men; and that fuller communication would be made when it became proper.
Lady Catherine was thanked for her concern.
Elizabeth thought this masterly. It had the advantage of being polite, brief, and almost entirely untrue as a description of Lady Catherine’s feeling.
Fitzwilliam wrote separately to Colonel Fitzwilliam with warmer restraint, and to his uncle Edward with real detail.
Elizabeth wrote to Jane, Mrs. Gardiner, Hartwood, Beaker, and Mrs. Albright at Portman Square, each letter containing a different degree of truth according to the recipient’s usefulness and capacity for alarm.
Jane wrote back at once, full of tenderness, restraint, and so many hopes for everyone’s health that Elizabeth was forced to forgive the whole page.
Mrs. Gardiner’s reply was shorter and more useful: she would quiet what could be quieted, answer Mrs. Bennet when necessary, and trust Elizabeth to ask for help before pride made help too late.
Elizabeth put that letter in her pocket and did not examine why it comforted her.
By the end of the second week, Mr. Latham’s clerk system had begun to produce facts with a regularity more alarming than confusion.
Elizabeth first saw it in the breakfast parlour, where Fitzwilliam had brought one of the smaller bundles because, as he said, it concerned the household accounts only in part, and as Mrs. Reynolds said, it concerned the household accounts entirely if any fool had charged candles to a shut room.
The system was simple in principle and merciless in practice.
Every charge was copied on a separate slip.
One clerk copied from John Wickham’s ledger.
One checked against receipts. One checked against household or tenant confirmation.
Bell, or one of the under-stewards who had survived the first scrutiny without disgrace, verified whether outdoor work had been done at all.
Mrs. Reynolds verified household charges with the terrible memory of a woman who knew which rooms had been opened, which fires had been laid, which linen had been aired, and which footman had broken a dish in 1802 and tried to blame the cat.
Mr. Latham would not permit indignation to serve as evidence.
Fitzwilliam would not permit outrage to choose the first charge.
Bell would not permit any man to have mended a wall unless he could be taken to it and made to point to the stones.
Mrs. Reynolds would not allow three dozen candles to have been consumed in a room she knew had been shut for seven years.
Between them, Mr. John Wickham’s innocence suffered daily.
The first clean matter was almost absurd.
Three men had been paid for clearing a drainage ditch behind Wharton’s lower meadow.
Bell stood in the estate office with the slip between two fingers, his expression so offended that Elizabeth, who had come to bring Fitzwilliam away to luncheon, stopped in the doorway.
“There is no ditch behind Wharton’s lower meadow,” Bell said.
Mr. Latham looked up. “None?”
“No, sir.”
“Could there have been one formerly?”
Bell’s stare became colder. “Not unless Mr. Wickham paid those men to fill it before he paid them to clear it.”
One of the clerks made a sound which might have been a cough if hope were charitable.
Fitzwilliam said, “Who are the men?”
“That is the second difficulty,” Bell replied. “No one knows them.”
The names had been entered plainly enough: Thomas Kedge, William Broat, Samuel Hain.
Two days’ labour each, plus ale allowance and cart hire.
No tenant knew them. No foreman had hired them.
No alehouse between Lambton and the lower road admitted to having supplied them, though one landlord said he would willingly have done so had Mr. Wickham invented the men nearer to his door.
Elizabeth read the slip over Fitzwilliam’s shoulder.
“Perhaps they were very modest labourers,” she said. “They came, found no ditch, accepted payment, drank no ale, disturbed no meadow, and left no memory.”
Bell looked at her.
Then, after one solemn second, he said, “A quiet sort of villainy, ma’am.”
Fitzwilliam’s mouth twitched.
It was not the largest theft. It was the most useful one. It proved the method.
After that, the false men multiplied with indecent industry.
There were roofers who had not climbed roofs, masons who had not touched stone, ditchers without ditches, carters without carts, glaziers charged to windows still cracked, and a charge for repairs to a stable door which Mrs. Reynolds, with devastating calm, identified as having been replaced eight years earlier and not disturbed since, except by one grey mare with more temper than injury.
A labour gang had been paid for mending the north boundary wall in April.
The wall had not been mended in April. It had not, according to Bell, been mended in any month known to Christianity.
Another entry charged for lime delivered to a tenant cottage whose tenant swore, with three receipts and a temper much improved by vindication, that he had paid for his own lime and would like to know why Pemberley had charged itself for the privilege of not helping him.
There were widows’ allowances marked paid and not received.
There were rents entered as partial where tenants had receipts for the full amount.
There were repair estimates inflated, then altered, then paid against accounts which bore signatures too smooth to be honest and too similar to have passed through as many hands as they pretended.
There were charges for work never required, signed off as urgent, repeated as necessary, and hidden between real disbursements so that one honest roof concealed three invented drains, and a true bill for timber gave cover to six men who had never existed beyond Mr. Wickham’s ink.
One false charge might have been error. Five might have been negligence. Twenty became method.