CHAPTER 14
The Revolt of Cotton Lane
Darcy had spent part of the previous evening with Cotton Lane spread across his desk.
Copies of leases. Mr. Beaker’s rent schedule.
Arrears. Repair clauses. Yard rights. Renewal dates.
Every paper, considered alone, was defensible.
That was almost the difficulty. Nothing leapt up with the courtesy of being plainly unlawful.
Each irregularity had its explanation; each exception, taken separately, could be excused.
Together, they formed a street held by string.
He had made preliminary notes until the candles burned low, then read them again in the morning with an attention that was not, strictly speaking, required by the size of the matter.
Cotton Lane mattered because Miss Bennet had brought it to him.
That was an unprofessional conclusion. He therefore concealed it beneath diligence.
By ten minutes before eleven he had the lease copies tied, Mr. Beaker’s schedule folded inside his memorandum-book, two pencils sharpened, and his gloves laid out beside them.
His coat had been brushed twice. He had no memory of ordering the second brushing.
His boots, too, had acquired an unnecessary degree of polish.
At eleven, Miss Bennet’s carriage arrived.
It was the same dark, well-sprung carriage, handsome without restlessness, drawn by the same matched bays.
Darcy disliked the satisfaction he felt at recognizing them.
The equipage had the quiet assurance of money long settled into use: no vulgar brightness, no ornamental shouting, only leather, polish, sound horses, and good keeping.
The door opened.
Miss Bennet sat within, with Mrs. Doddridge beside her and Lord Pomington established between them in a manner that suggested no one had dared to assign him a lesser place.
The dog wore a magnificent blue coat lined with thick wool. It fitted his narrow body from shoulders to tail and fastened under the throat with great seriousness. The colour matched the small reticule at Miss Bennet’s wrist so exactly that Darcy could not persuade himself it was accidental.
The reticule was not his concern. Neither was the dog’s coat, nor the curve of Miss Bennet’s gloved hand resting beside it, nor the loose curl near her cheek that had already escaped her bonnet.
He noticed all of it.
Miss Bennet followed his glance to the dog.
“He would not be left at home.”
“I see.”
“He made his objection known before breakfast, during breakfast, and after breakfast.”
“A comprehensive protest.”
“Mrs. Albright said that if I meant to inspect disobedient property, I might as well begin with him.”
Mrs. Doddridge said, “Lord Pomington was very decided.”
Lord Pomington accepted the tribute without visible gratitude.
Darcy entered the carriage.
“You have the papers?” Miss Bennet asked.
“I have the copied leases, Mr. Beaker’s schedule, and a list of inconsistencies already observed.”
Her eyes brightened.
“Excellent. Then Cotton Lane may attempt deceit, but not surprise.”
The satisfaction he felt at having exactly what she required was disproportionate and therefore unwelcome.
He opened his memorandum-book. “I cannot promise it will not attempt both.”
“Then we shall disappoint it twice.”
Cotton Lane was not large, nor was it wretched.
That was perhaps the most irritating thing about it.
It had not the misery of a place abandoned, but the air of a place tolerated too long: modest shops, small dwellings, divided houses, back rooms, uneven yards, patched shutters, and brickwork darkened by weather.
A coal cart stood badly against one kerb. Washing hung from an upper window. A boy with no hat watched the carriage arrive as if London had sent him an entertainment. One shop sign had faded unevenly. One gutter sagged. Two doors had been painted within living memory; several had not.
Miss Bennet descended, surveyed the lane, and said, “Cotton Lane has been allowed opinions.”
Darcy stepped down after her with the papers under his arm.
“It appears to have formed several.”
They began not with complaint, but comparison.
That was where the trouble sharpened. Cotton Lane did not contradict the papers. It explained them, which was worse.
Number Three paid quarterly. Number Four monthly, by arrangement after an old illness which had never been formally ended.
Number Five included use of a rear shed; Number Six used a shed by sufferance and spoke of it as right.
One shop tenant was responsible for his own shutters; another was not.
A dwelling-house had repair obligations no prudent owner would impose upon such a tenant; a better commercial premise had been left to vaguer language than any shop deserved.
Two arrears were real, one was old, and one had become less an account than a local tradition.
Miss Bennet listened, asked, compared, and became still.
Darcy had seen men become still before a severe decision. In her, stillness did not cool the air. It sharpened it.
Mrs. Bell’s complaint was the first to survive inspection.
She was a thin woman with reddened hands, anxious courtesy, and a back room whose wall showed an unmistakable bloom of damp.
A child’s bedding had been moved away from the plaster.
Two chairs stood at an odd angle because the driest part of the room was not where the room had been designed to be used.
Miss Bennet looked at the wall, then at Darcy.
“This is not complaint. This is evidence.”
“It appears so.”
Mrs. Bell clasped her hands. “I did mention it, miss.”
“To whom?” Darcy asked.
“To Mr. Beaker’s office first, sir, or rather to a clerk. Then to the man who came about the tiles. He said it was old weather.”
“Old weather,” Miss Bennet repeated.
Darcy made a note.
“The roof line and rear gutter must be examined. This may not be wholly Mrs. Bell’s wall.”
Mrs. Bell’s eyes moved to him, then back to Miss Bennet, uncertain whom to thank.
Miss Bennet saw the movement.
“Mr. Darcy is advising me, Mrs. Bell. You may answer him where the fact concerns him, but you need not apply to him for relief. That is my responsibility.”
Mrs. Bell flushed and curtsied.
“Yes, miss.”
Darcy kept his eyes on the damp patch and wrote very carefully.
She had not hidden behind him. She had not displayed him. She had placed him exactly where he belonged for the work, and nowhere else.
The precision of it went through him like heat.
The next interview was less damp and more shame.
Mr. Greeves was old, lame, clean, and three payments behind.
He had kept every receipt he had ever been given, tied in string, and produced them with the offended dignity of a man who has been poor but not careless.
His arrears had begun with illness, worsened with the death of a married daughter who had sent him money, and then been made obscure by irregular indulgence.
“I did not mean to fall behind, miss,” he said, looking at the papers rather than at her. “I paid all my life when I could.”
Miss Bennet did not soften visibly. Darcy admired that. Visible softness could become a cruelty when it made a poor man feel watched in his humiliation.
“No one has accused you of meaning it,” she said.
Mr. Greeves looked up.
Darcy turned a page.
“A written arrangement would serve better than repeated indulgence. A smaller payment at fixed intervals, until the arrears are cleared or reviewed.”
Miss Bennet considered.
“Yes. If I am to be merciful, I would rather be merciful in writing.”
Mr. Greeves blinked.
“That sounds a hard sort of mercy, miss.”
“Not so hard as a mercy no one remembers correctly.”
Darcy wrote the substance of the arrangement. He wanted, absurdly, to hear her say more. Not softer things. More exact ones.
Mr. Harding was another matter.
He occupied a shop and rooms above, and possibly half a yard, though the word possibly did more labour in his papers than any respectable word should be asked to do.
He was a confident man of middle years, with neat cuffs, a polished manner, and a talent for making imprecision sound like local knowledge.
“The yard has always been so used,” he said.
“By whom?” Miss Bennet asked.
“By the shop, miss.”
“This shop?”
“This concern.”
“Your concern?”
“My predecessor’s, and now mine.”
“Was the yard included in your lease?”
Mr. Harding smiled as if the question were rather too narrow for life.
“It has never been objected to.”
Darcy saw his glance move, briefly, from Miss Bennet to himself — one gentleman seeking another against the inconvenience of female ownership.
The impulse that rose in Darcy was not professional.
He made it so before he spoke.
“That was not Miss Bennet’s question.”
Mr. Harding recalculated.
“It has been understood, miss.”
“By whom?” she asked again.
The smile thinned.
A cart behind them rattled over loose stones. Lord Pomington, who had been standing beside Mrs. Doddridge in his blue wool coat and disapproving of Cotton Lane by inches, gave a short, sharp bark.
Mr. Harding started.
Miss Bennet looked down at the dog. “Yes. I agree.”
Darcy covered the lower half of the page with his hand and made no visible expression.
The yard, when examined, proved worse than the conversation. A cracked gate, stored crates, an old barrow, several items which belonged to no known tenant, and a drain that seemed to accept water from every property while being claimed by none.
“Custom,” said Mr. Harding, recovering a little, “is often the simplest rule in such places.”
“Custom,” said Darcy, “is not title.”
Miss Bennet turned to him with quick approval.
It was only a look. It lasted no more than a second.
Darcy felt it like reward and despised himself for wanting another.
At the far end of the lane the matter altered in scale.