Chapter One #3
He could never say that to him. It would not help the boy to strive, it would not prick the sides of his proper ambition, if he knew how delighted his father already was with him.
No, Fitzwilliam must always think that he was not quite what he ought to be, that there was something missing that he must acquire in himself.
Mr. Bennet seemed in no way impressed with George, as the lad was not clever like Fitzwilliam or Elizabeth.
But Mr. Darcy did not want his godson to be clever and brilliant—such a person would not need his aid to find a way in life.
No, he liked that George was what he was: Friendly, companionable, loyal, mischievous, and always eager to please.
Besides, Jane Bennet also did not display the signs of any excess of cleverness.
Mr. Bennet would put no block in the way of such a connection. Though he clearly had no notion that Mr. Darcy meant to encourage such a thing.
Mr. Darcy perceived that Mrs. Bennet recognized what Mr. Darcy hoped to encourage, and that she thought that the steward’s son was below what she hoped for her daughter. After all, George’s father had the same sort of position in life that her own father had.
The wife of Mr. Bennet was a beautiful woman who had married well, but not exceptionally, for her station and birth.
Her father had been of a saving mindset, and the five thousand that was her portion was certainly sufficient that no one would argue about her right to marry an estate of two thousand a year.
However, at the same time, Mr. Bennet’s position was decidedly above that held by her father.
Mr. Darcy thought that Mrs. Bennet had too high a notion of herself, and of the desserts of her daughters.
They were wellborn and raised as gentlewomen, but in its most fundamental way, the world ran upon money—or rather upon force and threats of force.
If it was not for the threat of punishment, men would not pay their taxes and their rents.
Why else did they trade paper and metal for things instead of simply taking or having it taken from them?
This was why a king was necessary for a happy and well-organized society.
In any case, sensible gentlemen, and also those lacking sense, found it enormously preferable to marry a woman whose breeding was a little inferior to one whose dowry was substantially inferior.
Mr. Darcy, as the Darcy of Pemberley, had married a woman who united birth, fortune, and character.
But Mr. Bennet’s daughters had modest birth, little fortune, and their most notable connections were a country lawyer and a young fellow still establishing himself in his trade.
Even if Jane Bennet remained a particularly enchanting and appealing creature when she reached womanhood, there would not be a crowd of titled and rich suitors beating down the door for their chance at a portion of thirteen hundred pounds, to be received after the decease of the mother-in-law.
Two years later when Mr. Darcy made his annual descent upon the estate of his friend, it seemed that the birth of a fifth daughter had made Mrs. Bennet aware of the dangers of the situation which faced her family.
Now she was eager to support the scheme when Mr. Darcy suggested that he take Jane with him to live in his household for the several months that he would be in London.
Mr. Darcy was delighted to have the girl about his house. He loved the presence of children, and Jane was soft, sweet, and always correct in her opinions and behaviors. Lady Anne found her husband’s goddaughter as delightful as Mr. Darcy.
For her part, Jane Bennet enjoyed enormously the time spent in the company of her godfather. The house was bigger, the servants more numerous, and the food and entertainments more varied than what she ever experienced in Longbourn.
Jane Bennet was a sweet soul, but it was impossible for her to not to see herself as in some important way more special than her sisters, even Elizabeth.
Elizabeth made Jane feel as though she were dull.
Even though her sister was almost two years younger than Jane, Elizabeth was far more advanced in French, mathematics, and understanding of the natural sciences.
Jane had been made by the tutors when she visited Mr. Darcy’s house to memorize far more history, but the one time she had attempted to claim superiority on the basis of knowing the names of most of the emperors of Rome until Constantine in order, Elizabeth returned two days later with the whole line of them until the fall of the Western Empire memorized, and then a dozen of the Byzantine emperors after Justinian.
Elizabeth always talked circles around Jane when they argued, and Elizabeth always was the favorite of her father.
And Jane knew that her mother’s insistence that she was better than Elizabeth, since she was prettier, was a form of superiority that it was not respectable to take too seriously.
Jane was a girl who always did what she was supposed to do (very unlike Elizabeth!), so it was impossible for Jane to develop a strong sense of superiority based on that.
But she was the very great Mr. Darcy’s goddaughter, and she was the one who was taken away from the family to spend delightful months in London—this was a surer foundation upon which to admire herself.
The pleasure of George Wickham’s company made no small part of the delight that Jane found in the time with her godfather.
He participated in all her games and drew her into his.
He spent time with her. He made jokes for her benefit, he gave her gifts of ribbons and toys, he provided a partner for her when the dance instructor came around, and he praised every drawing that she made, and the efforts that she knew were of little account at the piano.
Mr. Darcy considered Mr. Bennet to be negligent in managing the education of his daughters.
Elizabeth would do well enough—she was the sort of clever girl who delighted in reading and whose conversation would always provide entertainment for a certain type of man, and whose wit would give an impression of being well educated, even if the substance was lacking.
But Mr. Bennet made no effort with the other girls, allowing them to wander about and do whatever they wished.
Ridiculous!
Before sending him off to school, Mr. Darcy had ensured that Fitzwilliam rarely had an hour of time free from studies, exercise, and practice. The boy thrived under this regime.
Of course, Jane was to be the wife of a prosperous country cleric, and not the master of one of the greatest estates in the land. She had no need for any great store of accomplishments. But, by George, she should at least play the piano and draw a little.
Despite this burden upon her time, Jane Bennet returned from London delighted to have spent four months in town. After this it became a settled thing that she would spend a significant part of the year with Mr. Darcy. Sometimes this happened in London during the season, and sometimes at Pemberley.
The death of Lady Anne along with the child when she was brought to bed with a third child in the year 1801 left Mr. Darcy grief stricken for months, in a way that surprised him.
He had not truly known how much he had delighted in his wife’s presence and calm manner until she was gone.
On this account he determined to never remarry, because he did not wish to risk feeling such grief again.
But it also made him the more insistent in having those he already cared for near him.
So it was that Jane was at Pemberley when the awful tragedy befell the rest of her family.
When Mr. Darcy received the news of the death of Mr. Bennet’s family, he was deeply struck.
He stared at the letter for a full ten minutes without moving.
It was a matter such that he could hardly know what to think, and wholly unexpected.
In a state much like a trance, he wrote a note to his housekeeper ordering her to make a thorough inspection of the household for possible fire risks, and to strictly enjoin all of the servants to follow proper practices to avoid any such possibility.
He pushed the paper away from himself and stared out the window, and he possibly would have stayed in that state for a great duration of time if he did not recall that he needed to inform Jane about the tragedy.
That interview was one of the most painful conversations of Mr. Darcy’s life. It was made worse by how Jane attempted to remain calm and collected as she absorbed the knowledge that her entire life had changed in such a way, and yet the girl could not, and she broke into sobs.
Mr. Darcy had been chosen by his friend as the principal guardian for his children in the case of his untimely decease.
At the time that Jane was born, the closest male relations were a cousin of Mr. Bennet’s upon whom his estate was entailed—Mr. Bennet and this man shared a mutual feeling of profound dislike—Mrs. Bennet’s brother who at the time was not yet twenty, and who had not yet begun to build what would eventually become a substantial fortune from trade, and finally Mrs. Bennet’s father who was named as the second guardian with Mr. Darcy.
A few years after their marriage, Mr. Bennet’s father-in-law died, and when this happened, Mr. Bennet neglected to make any changes in his will to add a second guardian.
In the first letter that Mr. Darcy received from Meryton after the disaster at Longbourn, he was told that the entire family had died, except little Elizabeth who would die within a few days, long before he could arrive.
While Mr. Darcy felt a great deal of grief, the notion crossed his mind as he went to sleep that in the long run this might prove beneficial for Jane.
Five thousand pounds was an almost respectable fortune for a woman (and far, far preferable to one thousand to be inherited on an uncertain and possibly distant date).
This calculation proved fallacious, as a following letter a few days later informed Mr. Darcy that there was a small chance that Elizabeth would live, and then a letter a week after that one informed him that the crisis was past, and that the doctors thought there was little current reason to fear for her.
Unfortunately, it would have been, as already noted, better for her if she had died, as Elizabeth had been left horribly disfigured and utterly blind.
Mr. Darcy felt a slight twinge of disappointment at hearing of the girl’s survival—he was amongst the madding [GB1]crowd who held to the notion that a life bereft of sight, a life in which the person would be an useless burden upon their friends, their family, and society in general, and a life without many of the principle joys, such as watching a sunset and the circling birds, looking at the face of a loved one, and freely riding a horse, could not be a life worth living.
Beyond that consideration, Mr. Darcy’s chief affection and strongest sense of duty towards the Bennet daughters went towards his goddaughter, and not towards Mr. Bennet’s second child.
It would have been far preferable for Jane to not have the burden of such a sister, and if she’d inherited the full fortune of her mother, that would have almost been a respectable sum, but half that was certainly not.
This notion though had no importance: Mr. Darcy knew his duty. He must raise Elizabeth along with Jane. He would do so, and he would do so properly. He was now their guardian.
Thus, now that her survival was assured, having Elizabeth speedily brought to Pemberley was a matter of some importance.
Initially Mr. Darcy had intended to journey south himself to retrieve her, after completing business of some urgency the next day.
However, it transpired that the dispute between his tenants and one of his neighbors was not so easily resolved, and it would have been injudicious and impolitic to absent himself from the neighborhood immediately.
For a full week he continuously hoped to be at sufficient liberty to travel south the following day, but at last he decided that the uncertainty of the matter was such that it would be irresponsible to continue waiting.
While the term had not yet begun, Fitzwilliam’s enthusiasm for his studies had already drawn him back early to Cambridge to receive private tutoring from some of the dons.
This placed him close to Hertfordshire. Mr. Darcy felt no compunctions about sending his carriage to his son, with the order to go to Meryton and retrieve Miss Elizabeth.
Naturally, the day after Mr. Darcy sent off his carriage, the matter of business resolved itself sufficiently that he now could have gone, but as the arrangement had already been made, Mr. Darcy instead focused on preparing the house for the arrival of a blind girl, and the many other matters which could benefit from his attention.