CHAPTER 8 #10
Mr. Darcy, who had been maintaining a vigil near the head of the staircase with an impatience rendered respectable only by his genuine concern, stepped forward the moment she appeared.
Mrs. Fairfax stood a pace behind him, grave and silent in her professional capacity, while one of the footmen remained at a proper distance, preserving that careful invisibility expected of domestic staff when the dignity of a great family requires witnesses who possess no outward curiosity.
For a moment, Lady Catherine remained entirely silent, her eyes passing briefly from her nephew to the housekeeper with a peculiar stillness that follows a humiliation too recent and too deep to be named.
“At present,” she said at last, though her voice had lost some of its usual iron, “I find myself somewhat indisposed. It is an inconvenience I do not approve of, but nature rarely consults rank.”
She adjusted the lace at her cuff with hands that did not tremble, though her gaze remained fixed on the air just above Darcy’s shoulder.
“I shall retire to my room for the space of an hour, and I require neither the attendance of a physician nor any further argument upon the propriety of the subject.”
“My dear Aunt, I must insist that you allow some small measure of care,” Darcy began, his expression altering at once to one of deep-seated anxiety, yet he was silenced before he could complete the sentiment.
“No,” Lady Catherine said, raising one hand with an authority that, though quiet, was nonetheless absolute and final.
“Do not offer me the comfort of your sympathy, Fitzwilliam; I should dislike the sensation excessively, and you would undoubtedly perform the office quite badly from a sheer and inconvenient sincerity of heart. I am not currently dying, I assure you; I am merely profoundly disappointed in my own judgment, which is a far less dramatic illness and one that is generally more curable than the alternatives.”
There was enough of her original dry wit in this statement to permit Darcy a faint, reluctant smile, though the concern in his eyes did not entirely dissipate as he watched her.
“If you are certain that you require no immediate assistance from the household, I shall respect your desire for privacy, Aunt,” he replied, bowing his head in acknowledgment of her will.
“I only require a period of solitude, which is near enough to the same thing for our present purposes,” she countered, turning her gaze toward the drawing-room below, where the house seemed to hold its collective breath.
“Anne must not be left to the mercy of her own melancholy thoughts, nor to the well-meaning but tedious attempts of Mr. Collins at consolation, which I suspect would finish the destruction that Wickham merely began.”
She paused, drawing a breath that seemed to steady her entire frame before she continued her instructions.
“You will go to her at once and reassure her as far as the truth allows; and if Miss Bennet and her father are willing, you might invite them to take some air in the park with Anne and Mr. Collins, for a walk improves almost every family crisis by placing a sufficient number of trees between people and their opinions.”
Darcy inclined his head once more, his mind already turning to the delicate task of managing the effects of such a scandal.
“Also, you will retain our guests for dinner, as I had originally intended,” Lady Catherine replied, her jaw tightening as she resumed the full authority of Rosings.
“I shall speak to them myself this evening, for certain matters must be clarified before the day concludes, and I prefer that Rosings govern its own narrative before the gossips of Kent presume to do the office for us. Miss Bennet has shown both discretion and sense throughout this unhappy business, and I will not have her leave this house with uncertainty where explanation is properly owed. Her father, whatever his taste for irony, has conducted himself with the composure and judgement of a true gentleman.”
Beneath the sternness of the command, there was a quieter acknowledgment—a confession of respect for Elizabeth Bennet that Lady Catherine would never have voiced under ordinary circumstances.
Darcy understood the weight of the concession and answered simply, “It shall be done exactly as you wish, Aunt.”
She then turned her attention to Mrs. Fairfax, whose face still bore the grave offense of a woman to whom a household dishonor had become a deeply personal and stinging injury.
“Mrs. Fairfax, you will see that Mr. Wickham, Mrs. Younge, and the stableman who facilitated this treachery leave Rosings with the least possible delay and with no opportunity for farewell speeches or dramatic apologies.”
Her eyes flashed with a momentary fire that revealed the depth of her restrained fury.
“I care nothing for explanations or scenes. If they are reluctant to leave immediately, their trunks may follow them by cart tomorrow, but I will not have their presence polluting my house for another hour.”
Mrs. Fairfax gave a short, dignified bow of loyal approval, her mouth tightening into a thin line of satisfaction. “It shall be exactly as your ladyship wishes; they shall be escorted from the grounds immediately,” she promised.
“Also, they are owed nothing further from this family,” Lady Catherine added, her expression hardening into a mask of cold finality.
“There shall be no final payment, no indulgence of travel expenses, and certainly no letter of recommendation to haunt another household. Mr. Wickham has already enjoyed more generosity from the de Bourgh and Darcy families than either his character or his profession deserved, and I will not continue to finance my own public humiliation.”
Mrs. Fairfax and the footman entered Wickham’s room to ensure the order was carried out with all possible speed.
Lady Catherine rested one hand for the briefest moment upon the polished banister, not from any sudden physical weakness, but from the immense effort of continuing to stand as though the foundation of her world had not shifted.
“One thing more,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, commanding register.
“Under no circumstances am I to be disturbed in my chambers; if Rosings should happen to catch fire, I trust it will have the decency to burn quietly until I ring my bell. If I require anything, I shall send for it, but until then, I prefer the absolute absence of company.”
Even the footman, whose profession demanded the expression of no opinion whatsoever, looked as though he considered such a stark instruction to be perfectly reasonable given the gravity of the hour.
Darcy stepped nearer to his aunt, lowering his voice so that the servants might not catch his words. “You need not bear the full weight of this discovery alone, Aunt; we are your family, and we are here.”
For the first time that day, something softened in her face—not a surrender of her pride, for she was a de Bourgh to her marrow, but a brief recognition of being understood by someone whose good opinion she still truly valued.
“My dear nephew,” she said with a weariness that was too honest to be a mere performance, “I have spent half my life ensuring that I must bear everything alone, and I do not think we should begin experiments in vulnerability at my advanced age. Go to Anne now; that, at least, is a kindness I know how to accept without losing my dignity.”
“As you wish, Aunt,” Darcy replied, stepping back to allow her passage and bowing with a deep and sincere respect.
Lady Catherine gave the smallest possible nod, gathered the remains of her formidable dignity about her like a heavy cloak, and turned toward the corridor leading to her private chambers without looking back.
Yet as she disappeared behind the closing door, the entire house seemed to feel that something in Rosings had altered irrevocably, and that whatever followed would not be governed quite as it had been before.
***
When Mr. Darcy returned to the parlour, he found that it had acquired the peculiar, brittle stiffness which invariably belongs to grand rooms where every occupant is determined to appear perfectly at ease while privately absorbed by one singular and uncomfortable subject.
Mr. Collins, seated upon the very edge of his upholstered chair with the rigid posture of a man prepared at any moment either to defend the foundations of British morality or to faint from the sheer exertion of it, had been delivering a strained and repetitive reflection upon the unusual mildness of the season.
Mr. Bennet, whose interest in the caprices of the weather had never extended beyond whether it might inconvenience his afternoon walk, appeared to listen with the weary civility of a gentleman who had long ago accepted that human suffering occasionally arrived in the form of tedious conversation.
Elizabeth sat beside Anne de Bourgh near the great mullioned window, and if their own discourse had also been relegated to the weather, it was only because the sky, unlike the gentlemen of their acquaintance, could be discussed at length without causing immediate injury to a lady’s dignity.
Anne’s composure had returned to her in some measure, though not entirely; there lingered about her a quiet, tense alertness, as though she were listening for distant sounds from elsewhere in the house even while obliging the present company with perfectly ordinary replies.
At the moment of Mr. Darcy’s entrance, every conversation within the room ceased—not with enough abruptness to be termed a rude interruption, but with sufficient suddenness to prove that no one present had cared very much for rain, sunshine, or the general condition of the Kentish roads.
Mr. Collins rose from his seat so quickly that he nearly overturned a small rosewood table laden with delicate porcelain, his face flushed with the heat of nervous agitation.