Chapter Twenty-Two
Wandering The Desert
“I am not sure,” Elizabeth said to George the next day, when he arrived after breakfast and they met by chance in the Great Hall, “whether I pity Hugh or Miss Bingley the most.”
“Does either require your compassion? Hugh is a chucklehead who should behave better and accept he may not have everything his heart desires. What has Miss Bingley to bemoan?”
“There is a certain commonality. Hugh yearns for Jane, and as for Miss Bingley…” Elizabeth allowed her mouth to twitch.
“You should have seen her at Hardwick, clinging to Mr Darcy as a vine twining around an oak, paying him every attention and so diligent in flattering him. He looked most uncomfortable.”
George snorted. “Well, my compassion, then, is for Hugh. He is a chucklehead, but a sincere one. He has admired Jane for a long time. I suspect Miss Bingley’s admiration is for Pemberley.”
“Yes. As I think on it, my sympathies are all with Hugh.” Elizabeth tucked her hand under George’s arm.
“Come and walk with me for a few moments, and tell me what came about with him yesterday. No one has seen him since that dreadful scene in the garden, and I would be glad to learn something to comfort my aunt. She has been quite anxious about him, as I think you must know.”
“Ten minutes, and no more. I have much to do this morning. Fitzwilliam has me looking for estates for lease or sale in the area—oh, not for him, but for Mr Bingley. I must review the responses from land agents.” George steered her in the direction of the garden door.
“As for Hugh, I let him rant and rave about his love for Jane until he ran down like an unwound clock. When he was reduced to the odd splutter, and had kicked several plant pots to flinders, I suggested he visit Tom Lackenby.” George gave her a strange smile.
“Young Tom has his own tendre for a Bennet girl, and will sympathise. It is an affliction quite widespread in the district.”
“George.”
He laughed, though it had an unhappy ring to it.
“Hugh has a standing invitation to Hucklow, and old General Lackenby will not cavil at finding him at breakfast this morning. Treats Hugh as an extra grandson, and though he can maunder on about barley blight with the best of them, the old man hands out good advice. With luck, the general and Tom between them will send him home with the pleasing sense of having had his grievances listened to, and hence he will be less of a bear to the rest of us.”
“That was well done of you. And of Tom. Perhaps someone might tell him Mary will attend the next Lambton assembly?”
“I will make a point of it,” George promised. “We owe Tom that much if he has tamed our young cawker’s temper.”
“Poor Hugh. Do you know, I cannot decide if he is more cut up about Jane’s liking for Mr Bingley, or for Pemberley going to his brother and not to him. He loves the place so much.” Elizabeth sighed. “I do sympathise with him. Longbourn still tugs at me.”
George winced visibly. “Yes. We are wandering homeless like Israelites in the desert, are we not—you, Hugh, me? Though I hope not for forty years.”
Oh, that had been badly done of her, to remind him of his foolish uncle losing the Wickham family estate at cards before blowing out his brains. “You show great fortitude, George.”
“Walkmill was never mine in truth. I visited, but did not live there the way Hugh lives here or you did at Longbourn. I suppose that is the difference.”
“Still, you had expectations.”
“And now I do not. Now, I have only obligations.” George held up one hand to signify something.
A measure of self-deprecation, perhaps. “Oh, do not think I am sour about the Darcy family. I was born and raised here, and I am grateful for old Mr Darcy’s kindness in allowing me to take the steward’s place when my father fell ill, ensuring I can still call Pemberley home.
After all, it is all I know, and I love Pemberley every bit as much as any Darcy could.
There cannot be a finer place in the world. ”
George stopped and when she turned to face him, he took both her hands in his.
One glance at his face and her chest constricted sharply, as if held in a carpenter’s vice with the carpenter spinning the wheel to tighten the vice’s iron jaws.
Quite suddenly, every bone in her body weighed her down.
She could not have felt more burdened if she had been Atlas himself, bearing the whole world upon her shoulders.
No. Oh, not that. Not now. Her breath caught in her throat, but he spoke before she could prevent him.
“Lizzy… oh, Lizzy. I… my dear girl, you must know I grieve for the loss of Walkmill not for myself, but because I cannot offer you what you deserve. I am employed here, at the whim of Pemberley’s master.
I cannot offer a fixed home or a certain income, and to ask you to settle on so little, so far below your worth and value, to accept such uncertainty and insecurity…
Oh God, Lizzy, if I could but see a way through it, a way to offer you the world instead! ”
His anguish cloaked him like a second skin, crinkling around his eyes and mouth, until his face was no longer his own but the ancient Greek mask of Melpomene, with his mouth, his usually merry mouth, open in distress yet still pulled down at the corners, and his eyes hollow and empty.
“Oh, George.” She could not look at him.
“You know I love you, Lizzy.”
The lump in her throat was as big as Pemberley itself, burned hotter than pitch. She swallowed it down somehow. Nodded, because she did know, despite all her efforts to pretend she did not.
“But you do not love me, do you, my lovely girl?”
“I do! I do, but not the way I think you wish me to. I rely on you, esteem you, admire you, owe you so much. You are the brother of my heart, George, more even than Hugh. I cannot imagine my life without you in it, but… but not as I suspect you want. I am so sorry. So very sorry.”
He closed his eyes, those dreadful hollow eyes, and pressed his lips together, and after a moment was George again, Melpomene’s awful face gone.
“Do not cry.” He released one of her hands to run his thumb under her eyes, brushing the tears aside.
“Do not, Lizzy. I beg you.” He raised the hand he still held to his lips and kissed it. Then stood back, looking at her.
“George.”
He shook his head, bowed, and turned on his heel, marching off through the autumnal flowerbeds, head up and back straight.
She stared after him, long after he was out of sight.
Hugh returned mid-morning, and after subdued greetings, went off to his rooms to change his clothing.
The general and young Tom came with him, and though it was outside visiting hours, the general was ushered away into Mr Darcy’s makeshift study.
Tom cooled his heels in the parlour connected to the music room where, by chance, Mary was undergoing her weekly lesson with the music master.
Elizabeth bore him company for a short while, taking some comfort from both his besotted expression while he listened to Mary’s playing, and, when Mary emerged from the room to make way for Georgiana, his red-faced, stammering imbecility in the light of the greeting she offered him.
Mary was almost as incoherent, and the smile she bestowed on Tom reduced the pair of them to blushing silence.
It was too much, to see burgeoning felicity in others. Far too much. Elizabeth left them to each other’s company, carefully leaving the door open and sending in one of the maids as chaperone. She could not bear to do it herself.
It was a relief when Mr Darcy came looking for her, inviting her to join him in his study.
“The general and young Tom have gone,” he said as they walked towards the room. “The general has turned out to be an interesting man with much good to say.”
“Something more than his favourite remedies for blight, then?”
He paused, frowning, and looked at her closely. “Are you quite well, Miss Elizabeth?”
“Yes. Perfectly.” She forced a smile. Had she misjudged her tone and expression? How mortifying. “What did the general say?”
He looked doubtful, but allowed her the grace to keep her own counsel and did not press.
“He was full of advice, as it happens, both to me and, I gather, to Hugh. He has reminded Hugh that I have always been heir to Pemberley. It grieves me that Hugh’s discontent is becoming so obvious, the general felt constrained to intervene.
I wish Hugh would be more moderate. But let us leave it aside for a moment or two.
” He nodded towards the study door as they approached it.
“Hugh is within. He has proffered his apologies and regrets to me, and now wishes to offer you the same, if you are willing.”
“Oh. Of course.” Elizabeth forced a smile.
Hugh stood before the window, hands behind his back, and so stiff that he might have been one of the statues brought back from Italy by his grandfather the century before.
He turned when Elizabeth and Mr Darcy entered, and offered a jerky bow quite lacking his usual careless, boyish grace.
His face was pale, but for spots of red high on his cheekbones.
He did not look well, and Elizabeth suspected he and Tom had ended the previous day in their cups.
He was probably nursing a sour head as a result.
“Lizzy,” was all Hugh said, but she smiled and went to kiss his cheek.
“I am glad you are home, Hugh. You were missed.”
“Come and sit.” Mr Darcy beckoned Elizabeth to a comfortable chair and held it while she sat. He gestured to its companion as invitation for Hugh to join them.