CHAPTER 63
In What Capacity
By the third morning, Pemberley had acquired the unnatural composure of a house in which all visible alarms had been mastered, and none of the invisible ones dismissed.
The servants moved more quietly, but they moved.
The kitchen had ceased to wait upon terror before sending up breakfast. Mrs. Reynolds had restored the household bells to their proper authority, and Bell, who had the great advantage of being disliked by Mr. John Wickham, had contrived to make the estate office look less like a room lately abandoned by a guilty man and more like a place where guilty men might be discovered by degrees.
Mr. Grant had pronounced the elder Mr. Darcy stronger, though not strong; more able to endure speech, though still not fit for agitation; improved enough to be watched with hope, and weak enough to make hope an impertinence if it presumed too much.
It was a report which satisfied no one and restrained everyone.
Fitzwilliam stood at the library window with Bell’s first estate-office list in his hand and did not read it.
The park lay in full morning light, green and severe and beautiful, with the indifferent beauty of things which had survived all human folly.
He had not yet accustomed himself to seeing it from within.
There was no horror in the prospect. That was almost worse.
Pemberley did not look like a place from which a man had been cast out. It looked like Pemberley.
Elizabeth sat at the table, where she had been making notes from Mrs. Reynolds’s reports.
Mr. Grant had his patient. Mrs. Reynolds had the house.
Bell had the estate office under temporary limits.
Mr. Latham had what had been taken from Mr. John Wickham’s desk.
Mrs. Wickham had been removed from the steward’s house.
Darcy House had been instructed by express.
Georgiana was with Kitty and Mrs. Doddridge, and no one, for one blessed hour, was asking her to be brave.
Pom-Pom was also with them, which meant that Georgiana was safe, Kitty was useful, Mrs. Doddridge was composed, and Lord Pomington was probably ruling three females with the tyranny of a prince.
That, at least, was settled.
So much was settled.
That was the trouble.
Elizabeth laid down her pencil. “Then the emergency has altered.”
Fitzwilliam turned from the window.
“Not ended,” she said. “I do not mean ended. But altered.”
He did not answer at once. That was answer enough.
“You acted because there was no one else who could act in time,” she said.
“There was no leisure to ask leave.”
“No. But there is leisure now to ask what is expected.”
Fitzwilliam placed Bell’s list on the table. “You think I should speak to my father.”
“I think you must not be expected to labour here under unclear conditions and unclear authority.”
The words struck too near the place where his own thoughts had been moving all morning and refusing to arrange themselves.
“I do not labour here for reward.”
“I know. That is why the terms must be clearer, not less clear.”
“Nor for possession.”
“I know that too.”
“Elizabeth—”
“We have a home,” she said.
He stopped.
“In Portman Square. Whatever happens here, whatever is discovered, whatever your father can or cannot say, no one can take that from us. If your father wishes Georgiana’s care to be placed with us while he recovers, we may undertake it.
Gladly. Properly. With every paper Mr. Latham thinks necessary, if papers will make the matter easier.
But I do not want you kept here because the house has discovered it needs you. ”
He looked away.
She rose then, and came to him. Not close enough to persuade by nearness. Elizabeth was too just for that. She only stood where he must see her if he turned back.
“You have done your duty in emergency,” she said. “You have protected your sister. You have protected your father. You have protected this house as far as any one man could. But emergency is not a settlement.”
“No.”
“If you are to remain, you must know whether you remain as son, guest, heir, steward, or penitent. I will not have Pemberley make all five of you according to convenience.”
That almost drew a laugh from him, but it failed before it reached breath.
“If I ask,” he said, “it will sound as if I ask to be restored.”
“No.” Elizabeth’s voice was firm. “It will sound as if a man has the right to know what service is being required of him.”
He had argued questions of leases, settlements, disputed rights, poor wording, uncertain clauses. He had advised men who feared to speak plainly because plainness might offend those who profited by confusion. He had never disliked clarity as much as he disliked it now.
“What if he cannot answer?”
“Then Mr. Latham can answer what the law permits, and your father can answer what he means.”
“What if those are not the same?”
Elizabeth’s face changed, very slightly. “Then it is better to know it.”
Fitzwilliam looked past her to the open door, to the hall beyond, to the house which had learned his steps before he was old enough to think of inheritance. “I thought leaving had been punishment.”
“Perhaps remaining without terms would be another kind.”
That was Elizabeth at her most merciless: she told the truth as if truth were a form of care, and expected him to survive it because she meant to stand beside him while he did.
He took her hand.
Her fingers closed around his at once.
“You may ask where you stand,” she said more softly, “without begging for a place.”
He bent his head and pressed his lips to her hand. He did not trust himself to answer.
Mr. Grant admitted that the elder Mr. Darcy might endure a little business, provided the business was brief, the speakers were few, and no one supposed that force of feeling could be medicinal merely because it was natural.
He spoke chiefly to Fitzwilliam, with the air of a man who had learned that sons were among the most difficult species of visitor.
“No long argument,” he said. “No legal expedition. No family history if it can be helped.”
Fitzwilliam’s silence may have been answer enough, for Mr. Grant sighed.
“If it cannot be helped,” he amended, “then less than the whole of it.”
Mr. Latham was already in the small room adjoining the bedchamber, with papers in a locked case beside him and a countenance too controlled to be reassuring. He stood when Fitzwilliam entered.
“Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
Fitzwilliam inclined his head. “Mr. Latham. I may need you.”
“I am at your service.”
His father was propped higher than he had been on the first evening.
Illness had not made him gentle. It had only stripped grandeur from him and left pride where it had less room to hide.
His right hand lay upon the counterpane; his left remained more useless, though not wholly still.
One side of his mouth had not recovered its old command.
His eyes, however, were clear enough to make pity difficult.
Fitzwilliam bowed. “Sir.”
His father’s gaze fixed upon him.
Mr. Grant withdrew no farther than the door, where he could disapprove at once if required.
Fitzwilliam remained standing. Sitting would have implied a visit. He had not come to visit.
“There are matters I must place before you,” he said. “I will be as brief as I can.”
His father’s fingers moved once against the linen.
“Mr. John Wickham has been formally dismissed from the stewardship. He is not to enter the estate office, the house, the stables, or any tenant property on Pemberley business. His keys and books have been taken into Mr. Latham’s keeping, except those presently required by Bell for immediate estate work. ”
A faint tightening passed over his father’s face, but it was pain, not protest.
“Mrs. Wickham has been removed from the steward’s house.
Mr. Latham informs me there is no lease, settlement, or binding promise protecting her occupation.
Mrs. Reynolds has been instructed that she is not to be received as family, nurse, messenger, or adviser.
No servant is to admit her upon old habit, Lady Anne’s name, or any claim of kindness. ”
His father’s breathing altered.
“Directions have gone to Darcy House. Mrs. Reynolds has written in her own hand, and I have added mine. Mrs. Younge is to have no further access to Georgiana’s rooms, papers, keys, accounts, correspondence, or any servant acting under this family’s authority.
George Wickham is not to be received there under any claim of business, dependence, kinship, old favour, or confidence. ”
He paused.
“I have done these things because immediate safety required them. If you object to any part of it, your objection may be conveyed when Mr. Grant permits business.”
His father’s eyes remained upon him. The silence lengthened until Mr. Grant half-stirred.
Then George Darcy forced out, “No.”
Fitzwilliam stood motionless.
His father breathed, gathered effort, and managed, more distinctly, “No objection.”
It ought to have relieved him. It did relieve him, practically. It did nothing to the older wound.
“Very well,” Fitzwilliam said.
The fingers moved again, as if his father wished to continue. Fitzwilliam did not help him. He had not come to rescue his father from the labour of meaning what he had done.
“Right,” George Darcy said, each sound dragged through effort. “Done.”
Fitzwilliam bowed his head once.
There. Approval. After years of disbelief, after banishment, after the trust of Pemberley had been poured out at Wickham feet, his father could approve what any honest man should have done before matters came to this pass.
The approval hurt more than he expected.
“There is another course,” Fitzwilliam said.
His father’s eyes sharpened.