CHAPTER 8 #7
Darcy unfolded the paper, though he scarcely needed to consult it. The contents had already fixed themselves too clearly in his mind. His voice, when he spoke, was perfectly controlled, and therefore infinitely more severe.
“The writer was under the impression that one tenth of Anne’s dowry might be secured within the fortnight, in order to establish certain investments which Mr. Wickham had represented as advantageous.
He further understood that your confidence, Aunt, was complete, and that Anne’s future settlement would remain under what he called proper guidance—”
He had not finished the sentence before Lady Catherine crossed the distance between them with an abruptness that startled even Mr. Collins into silence. With a movement so swift that dignity barely had time to accompany it, she snatched the letter from Darcy’s hand.
“I will read my own humiliation, if humiliation there is,” Lady Catherine said sharply. “I do not require it softened for me like bad news delivered to an invalid.”
A complete stillness fell over the parlour.
Even Wickham, whose talent for composure was rarely unequal to the moment, seemed for the first time uncertain whether charm could still be of service.
Anne sat motionless, one hand resting against the arm of her chair so firmly that the knuckles had gone pale.
Elizabeth scarcely breathed. Mr. Bennet, for once, had no irony ready enough to be useful.
Lady Catherine read rapidly at first, with the impatience of a woman accustomed to finding most written things beneath the dignity of her attention; but before she reached the middle of the page, her pace slowed.
She returned to one sentence, then another, as though disbelief required repetition before it could become insult.
The colour in her face altered—not the quick flush of temper, but something colder and far more dangerous.
At length she lowered the paper, though she did not release it. Her eyes lifted slowly and rested upon Wickham with a scrutiny from which favour had entirely vanished.
“My daughter’s dowry?” she repeated, and each word was sharpened by disbelief. “My daughter’s dowry? One tenth of Anne’s dowry to be conveniently secured within the fortnight, and my confidence so obligingly complete that the remainder might afterwards be managed with less observation?”
She took one step nearer the new vicar.
“And by what extraordinary miracle, Mr. Wickham, were you to acquire access to my daughter’s dowry? Through my patronage? Through my house? Through my hospitality? Or had you already advanced so far in your own imagination that Rosings itself had begun to appear transferable?”
Now, at last, every eye in the parlour turned fully upon him. The first true thread had caught, and everyone present felt it tighten.
Wickham bowed, though the elegance of it had become effort rather than instinct. His smile remained, but it no longer possessed ease.
“Your ladyship, this is some vulgar misunderstanding. Men in the City write with an insolence proportioned to their need of money, and if some broker has presumed to use my name in support of his own schemes, I am as much offended as anyone present. A gentleman may discuss expectations without intending villainy, and idle speculation is hardly proof of crime.”
Mr. Darcy’s expression remained unchanged, which made the answer seem weaker rather than stronger.
“A gentleman may also refrain from discussing a lady’s dowry as though it were already under his management.
You have shown a very particular concern for Hunsford, for Rosings, and for every arrangement by which access becomes easier and oversight less immediate.
I find that concern less accidental now than I did yesterday. ”
“I should be very interested to hear by what path my own hospitality was expected to finance my own humiliation, Mr. Wickham,” Lady Catherine demanded.
Anne spoke then, and the quietness of her voice commanded more attention than interruption would have done. She did not look at Wickham when she answered, but at her mother, as though truth belonged there first.
“Through habit, Mama. By being permitted to arrange what should never have required his hand—household accounts, inventories, keys, and every small authority which appears insignificant until it is quietly surrendered. He relied upon the convenient belief that attention to practical matters must always be mistaken for usefulness.”
Lady Catherine turned to her daughter with an astonishment so complete that, for a moment, it seemed almost to suspend even anger.
She had expected contradiction from Darcy, irony perhaps from Mr. Bennet, but from Anne—whose silence had so long been mistaken for compliance—such directness carried the force of rebellion.
“Anne,” Lady Catherine said, and in that single word were equal parts disbelief and warning, “I hope you understand the seriousness of what you are suggesting.”
“I do, Mama,” Anne replied, with a steadiness that made the softness of her voice more striking rather than less.
“I understand it better, perhaps, because I have long been expected not to speak of it. Mrs. Jenkinson was persuaded to leave with extraordinary haste, and Mrs. Younge arrived almost immediately afterwards. Since then, Rosings has been altered in ways that have little to do with comfort and much to do with convenience. Small things disappeared first—silver cutlery, candlesticks, pieces easily misplaced if one prefers not to look too closely. Later, objects from Hunsford were said to be missing as well, though the alterations there provided an excellent excuse for confusion.”
Mrs. Younge, who had thus far preserved the discretion of a woman determined to be overlooked, coloured visibly, and the change did not escape Lady Catherine’s notice.
Mr. Collins gave such a look of moral suffering that Elizabeth thought he might genuinely expire from the impropriety of the occasion.
Wickham, however, stood very still, and it was in that stillness that danger became most visible.
Lady Catherine’s voice, when she next spoke, had lost all ornament and become merely commanding.
“Why have I heard none of this before?”
“Because,” Anne answered, and there was no bitterness in it now, only truth too long delayed, “contradiction has never been encouraged in this house, and because comfort is often preferred to disturbance, even when disturbance would be safer. I did not wish to accuse without certainty, and certainty was made difficult.”
She paused only a moment, then continued with the same calm exactness.
“One of the maids believed she saw Mrs. Younge carrying laundry through the hall at an hour and in a manner that made little sense, though such duties are not hers. It was suspected that some of the missing silver and the candlesticks might have been concealed that way and taken first to her own room. Nothing was found there when Mrs. Fairfax and two maids quietly looked during her absence. But there remained one room in which no servant was permitted to enter, and which, for reasons of privacy, was treated as exempt from ordinary attendance.”
No one in the parlour required the name to be spoken. Lady Catherine’s eyes moved, slowly and with gathering severity, toward Wickham.
“My room,” he said at last, with a smile too carefully composed to be easy, “if we are now to abandon implication for direct accusation. I confess I had not imagined that the privilege of privacy would be considered so criminal an indulgence.”
“It is not privacy that troubles me,” Anne said, turning her eyes upon him at last, and there was in her gaze something colder than anger. “It is exemption. Every room in this house has been searched in quiet except yours, vicar. Every explanation ends at your door and refuses to proceed further.”
Mr. Darcy stepped nearer to the table, and the force of his composure was now more formidable than open anger could have been.
“There is, however, a very simple way of ending uncertainty,” he said.
“If Mr. Wickham objects only to suspicion, let certainty replace it. Let the inventories be brought. Let the household accounts of Hunsford and Rosings be examined properly. And let the one room which has thus far remained beyond ordinary scrutiny cease to enjoy so singular a privilege.”
Mr. Collins made a small choking sound, as though the phrase itself had endangered the sanctity of a clerical residence.
Lady Catherine ignored him completely. Her pride had now passed beyond embarrassment and entered that colder region where insult becomes intolerable because it threatens dignity rather than comfort.
“You mean,” she said slowly, never taking her eyes from Wickham, “that while I have been defending my household from gossip, disorder, and supposed inconvenience, there may have been reason to defend it from within.”
Mr. Bennet, who had wisely judged silence the most useful contribution for several minutes, inclined his head with grave civility.
“We mean only, madam, that inventories were invented precisely because trust, though admirable, has never been considered a sufficient system of accounting.”
Lady Catherine drew herself to her full height.
“Very well,” she said. “Mrs. Fairfax shall be sent for immediately. The inventories will be brought, and Mr. Wickham’s room will be opened before witnesses. I will not be made ridiculous in my own house by ambiguity, and if innocence is so confidently claimed, it ought not to fear a key.”