Chapter 15 #3
Georgiana and Mrs Darcy arrived home just in time for Mr Gardiner to leave, having neglected his own business for too long.
I shall miss my uncle Gardiner, not only for his business acumen and steady good humour but for his confidence in me.
He seemed to conceive of no reason why I should not manage, so I have told myself there is no reason why I should doubt myself.
The colonel is ordered to return to London, and we shall all miss him.
Luckily, his father, or Uncle Alfred as he told Georgiana and me to call him, will visit regularly, and he assures me that I can request his assistance at any time.
Colonel Fitzwilliam undertook to take this latest letter to London and have it sent through Admiralty channels, so she ended it:
We have not heard from you for several months, and though there is no bad news in the Chronicle, I cannot help but grow anxious. I know you will not keep us unnecessarily in suspense, but I look to hear from you that you are safe and well and on the way home to those who love you.
Amongst whom are numbered your devoted wife,
Elizabeth
PS Your cousin is to take this to London. I hope it will not be delayed because I did not send it by Lieutenant Grace.
Weeks passed, and still there was no word.
The house and gardens were approaching their original magnificence and even Mrs Reynolds was almost satisfied.
“If you could only have seen it when Lady Anne had the running of it,” she said one day as she and Elizabeth were going over the household accounts. “It is almost there now, but still…”
“Did you know my husband when he was a boy?” asked Elizabeth, setting down her pen.
“Oh yes, madam. I was stillroom maid then, but I used to see him about the place. Handsome lad he was, even then and so sweet natured. I don’t think I ever heard him say a cross word.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me why he went to sea so very young. I confess I have always wondered.”
Mrs Reynolds pursed her lips. “I don’t hold with gossip, ma’am, as well you know,” she said. “And they do say you should never speak ill of the dead.” It was obvious to Elizabeth that she was only waiting to be persuaded, so she did her best.
“Well,” said Mrs Reynolds after several minutes of appeal to her knowledge of the family, “Mr Darcy—old Mr Darcy that is—was never what you’d call an affectionate man.
I don’t mean he was cruel or vicious, not like Mr George—God rest his soul—just not tender or considerate to his family or anyone else for that matter.
He was one of those men—Mr Tanner of High Farm is another—who don’t need any pleasure or comfort or affection in their lives.
And don’t see why anyone else needs them either.
” She settled back in her chair and got confidential.
“Someone offered Master Fitzwilliam a place on a ship, so off he had to go, for all Lady Anne was heartbroken. He was terribly severe with Mr George too—had to be always moiling at his books, no hunting, no going to assemblies, no going to London. It was hardly a surprise he cut loose as soon as he could.”
“And my husband’s mother? I’ve seen her portrait upstairs; what was she like?”
Mrs Reynolds considered. “She was beautiful, but…well, she was sad. The marriage was not of her choosing, and he was not the husband for her. She should have had someone gentle and good-humoured, and he was neither. She loved her boys though. I used to see her sitting at that very desk, writing to Master Fitzwilliam and drawing him little pictures.” Then, obviously thinking she had said too much, she added, “Now, about the music room, do you want me to send for the piano tuner?”
Haymaking came and went, and still there was no news. Colonel Fitzwilliam and Lord Matlock visited and expressed their surprise at how much had been done. She continued to write her letters and send them off, but no reply came, and she scoured the newspapers for word from the Mediterranean.
She did receive one strange letter, however, from the office of the Bishop of Derby. It requested Mr Darcy to appoint someone else to the living at Kympton in view of the
...absence of the previous appointee who, I understand, has not been seen for several months, having left on a visit to London and not returned.
All enquiries in the capital have produced no news as to his whereabouts, and the bishop feels that it is inadvisable to leave the parish without spiritual direction.
Elizabeth’s own inquiries at Kympton revealed that no one had seen the Reverend Mr Wickham for some time, and the potboy at the King George in Lambton told Anderssen that no one had seen him since ‘he climbed into the London coach in one of they driving coats with the extra shoulder cloaks’.
Although that sounded an awful lot like the ‘driving coat’ who had taken part in the attack in Hatfield, Elizabeth decided that there was no way to be certain and, in the meantime, they would continue to take precautions.
This meant that, although she greatly disliked it, either Anderssen or Haslam followed at a distance every time she walked in the woods.
She was returned from one such walk when she saw an express rider galloping towards the house.
She picked up her skirts and ran as fast as she could, arriving in the great hall to see Mrs Reynolds paying off the rider.
It was indeed a letter in her husband’s dear, familiar writing.
She hurried into the library and sank down on the window seat to read it.
She tore open the cover and thought her heart would stop. It began Dear Madam.