Chapter Two
Homeward Bound
The day he learned his father was dead, the fiery-copper Calcutta sun was hammering down upon heads more accustomed to a softer British spring.
It had rained at dawn, and the sun got to work the moment the showers were over, making the ground steam worse than a hundred kettles.
Darcy sweated in discomfort, the punkah fans in his office swirling hot air into his face.
It was a welcome relief when John Reid, the former army sergeant assigned as guard/house-steward/general factotum, arrived with fresh water, cool from the deep well in the courtyard, and the latest letters brought by a fast courier from London. Two weeks late.
“Courier’s arrived at last. Said he caught a fever in Cairo on the way.
” Reid laid a pile of sealed letters in front of Darcy, his Scots burr stronger in his disapproval of dilatory couriers.
He offered another collection of letters to Charles Bingley, whose desk was side on to Darcy’s across the small office. “Here’s yours, Mr Bingley.”
Darcy and Bingley exchanged grins when Reid left them. The courier would wait long to gain any sympathy from Reid.
Darcy flicked quickly through the correspondence.
One was from his uncle, the Earl of Ashbourne; he recognised the elegant looping letters immediately.
He hesitated. Duty first. Uncle Ashbourne’s letter would wait until official business was done.
Instead, he opened the despatch from Lord Liverpool, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and hence learned of his father’s death.
Liverpool offered brisk condolences and ordered him and Bingley to return to London forthwith. Darcy had to read it twice before he fully comprehended the news.
His father, three months dead. Robert George Darcy, as solid and unyielding as one of the rocky hills of the Peak District near their Derbyshire home. Dead.
He pulled in one long breath to dispel the odd feeling that his ears were ringing and the humid air had thickened to dull every other sound. Another breath, more steadying.
The last letter he had received from his father was in his desk drawer, alongside the half-drafted reply.
Dating from the previous autumn—his father not having access to Government couriers, letters took a six-month to reach Darcy when they arrived at all—it was full of news of a family he barely knew: his stepmother’s latest social success at a dinner for the three MPs for boroughs owned by the Darcys (I cannot imagine how I would hold my temper without her skill in flattering even the most foolish politician into something resembling intelligent discourse); Hugh’s prowess at a shoot, bagging a dozen pheasants and three brace of partridge (I may be boasting, Fitzwilliam, but your brother is the finest shot I know.
Never misses); Georgiana’s progress with her music (My little girl delights all who hear her); the whole family planning to amuse itself by staging short plays in the drawing room of a winter’s evening (I swear both my wife and Hugh could make an excellent living at Drury Lane, they are such skilled actors!).
Small, inconsequential things that would mean more if he were closer to his father’s second family.
It was neither their fault nor his that he was not.
Circumstances had kept them apart to begin with, and now the width of the world stood between them.
His father had also hinted that he was not in perfect health. Darcy pulled the letter from the drawer and reread it quickly. Yes. There.
… I am not feeling quite the thing of late.
It is not serious, I am sure, other than a loss of appetite and more difficulty sleeping.
Though my wife is pleased to see my return to the lither figure of my youth, she convinced me to consult with Dr Barrow in Buxton.
He is more travelled than you are yourself, and spent many years in India and China.
His brother wrote a capital account of their China travels.
Barrow brought home some odd notions and nostrums that he uses on his patients despite their reluctance to try such strange, oriental concoctions.
He assures me the Chinese powders he gives me to help me sleep are better than opium, and I believe him.
The powder thankfully lacks laudanum’s bitter taste, and I do not need to increase the dosage constantly to get the same effect.
I find I am sleeping well these days, and feel much refreshed and reinvigorated.
More like my younger self indeed! It is a reminder of the marvels existing in other parts of the world, and perhaps one day I will persuade my wife to journey to India to visit you, and see those wonders for ourselves…
Robert Darcy was beyond his reach now, beyond all hope of achieving the easy affection he shared with Uncle Ashbourne.
He had respected his father deeply, of course.
On reflection, it was as much as most men could boast. Fathers of the Darcys’ sphere were not often closely involved with their sons’ upbringing beyond ensuring they understood their duty to the family, seeing them proficient in gentlemanly pursuits, and taking them to a court levée to make their bow to the king when they were old enough.
The first shock over, he reached for his uncle’s letter; a less dry account of his father’s death than Lord Liverpool’s, one with more detail and more natural sympathy.
…Robert was a good man and an excellent husband to my sister, God rest her soul: honest, upright, dutiful, and, in all things, an exemplary gentleman I was proud to call my friend and my brother. You are very like him. He was proud of you, my boy, and what you have done for your country…
…Liverpool is sending this letter to you with his own despatches, which will, I believe, order you home.
Your stepmother begs for your swift return.
Irrespective of your needing to take up the reins at Pemberley, your father’s will names you as guardian to any of your siblings who are not yet of age.
Hugh, of course, reached his majority last year, but Georgiana is now your ward.
This is a responsibility you cannot leave aside for long.
I am doing what I may in your absence to support Mrs Darcy and her children, but I am a poor substitute for you…
Yours etc
Darcy looked up from his contemplation of the letters spread upon his desk.
Bingley pored over his own correspondence, his chair tipped back and his feet resting on the pulled-out bottom drawer of his desk.
Younger than Darcy by three or four years, Bingley was a very gentleman-like man who had been persuaded to join the India mission as Darcy’s aide.
“Trade, but he is educated well enough, I suppose,” the principal secretary to the War and Colonies Secretary had told Darcy two years previously.
“Cambridge, would you believe? His uncle is a director of the East India Company, and Bingley will be of use to you in that regard. The Company is jealous of its privileges, and he can smooth ruffled feathers in Fort William while you make approaches to the various regional rajahs and princelings.”
Indeed, Charles Bingley had been of use.
He had been of immense use. Society in India was more liberal than at home, less harshly delineated on the grounds of birth and connections, and Bingley had embraced it with alacrity, building strong links with the Bengal trading set.
He had become more than an aide. He was a friend, whom Darcy had come to trust wholeheartedly.
“Darcy?” Bingley’s voice roused him from introspection. “Are you well? Not ill news, I hope?”
Darcy swallowed. Found his voice. “My father died in February. We are commanded home.”
Bingley dropped his feet to the floor and sat up at once, his expressive face showing genuine concern. “My dear fellow, I am so very sorry. Ill news indeed.”
Darcy smoothed his uncle’s letter back into its precise, neat folds, hesitated, then refolded his father’s last letter, too. He kept it in his hand for a moment.
“Yes,” he said at last. “It is.”
Lord Liverpool ordered them to take the most expeditious route, that used by government couriers who had the authority to claim swift passage with the Navy: hugging the Indian coast to its southern tip, a dash across the Arabian Sea, up the Red Sea to Safaga port in Egypt, a hurried traverse of the Nile to Cairo and hence to Rosetta to find passage on yet another ship across the Mediterranean, then north through the Atlantic and home at last. Not a journey for the faint of heart, it would still be more than two months before they could stand on English soil again.
Perhaps three, if they encountered bad weather on the way.
Still, it was better than the six months’ voyage around Africa that was the lot of the common traveller.
“I am quite breathless from our haste! I had hoped to see something more of Egypt,” said Bingley in mild complaint, as Reid hurried them to the Cairo wharf and onto the hired felucca that would take them through the delta to Rosetta.
“These old places are deuced fascinating, but we barely had time here to see the fabled pyramids.”
But Darcy could not, in all conscience, delay. They could only hope to return one day, when they were at leisure to view the ancient temples and explore the dark, wondrously decorated tombs hewn into the deep valleys in the hills bordering the Nile’s western bank.
“A Grand Tour of Egypt? I will hold you to that,” Bingley agreed, with undaunted blitheness of spirit, and contented himself with pointing out whatever ruins they passed as the river carried them north.
In Rosetta, they found passage on the naval frigate Laconia for the final leg of their journey. Captain Wentworth greeted his unexpected passengers with equanimity, though he studied their papers of authority closely before allowing them aboard.