Chapter Nine
Willowbrook Somerset
Darcy
Darcy finished the letter from Mr. Humphrey and laid it upon the desk with a dissatisfaction its contents scarcely warranted.
His attorney confirmed that Mr. Harding had left no forwarding direction upon quitting Willowbrook.
His final communication had concerned the termination of the tenancy, and Mr. Humphrey had received nothing from him since.
He would make further enquiries, the letter concluded, and would inform Darcy should anything useful be discovered.
It was not much, but neither was it entirely unexpected.
Darcy folded the letter and set it aside. His attention almost immediately strayed to the small collection of correspondence occupying the opposite corner of the desk.
Five days had passed since he first discovered the letters, and in that time they had acquired an irritating ability to draw his eye whenever he entered the room.
Willowbrook had provided all the solitude he had desired and rather more than he knew what to do with.
He had ridden over the surrounding country, walked the boundaries of the timberland, read several books brought from London, and spent one particularly uninteresting morning examining accounts which required no immediate attention.
It ought to have suited him perfectly. Instead, five days with little to occupy him had done a great deal to sharpen an interest in seventeen letters which did not belong to him.
Darcy drew the pile nearer.
He was not a busybody. He had never possessed any particular interest in the private affairs of strangers, and he had still less patience for those who considered curiosity sufficient justification for intrusion.
The letters were addressed to Julia Harding.
Whoever she was, and wherever she had gone, their contents remained hers.
Yet the same correspondent had written faithfully for nearly five months without receiving sufficient response to learn that Miss Harding no longer resided at Willowbrook.
Darcy picked up the most recent letter and turned it over in his hand.
There was no name upon the outside by which the writer might be identified, nor any direction to which the letter might be returned.
If Mr. Humphrey's further enquiries produced nothing, another might arrive next week, and another after that.
Whoever continued sending them must believe, perhaps indefinitely, that they were reaching Miss Harding.
They could hardly believe otherwise. Whatever these letters contained, their writer plainly did not require a response before sending the next, for no response could possibly have come from a woman who had never received them.
Seventeen unanswered letters had not discouraged the correspondence yet; there was little reason to suppose an eighteenth would.
There could surely be no great impropriety in discovering the writer's direction and informing her of the truth.
He need read nothing of the contents. A direction at the head of the page and a name at its conclusion would be sufficient.
He could explain that the Harding family had quitted Willowbrook in March without leaving any forwarding direction and spare the writer the trouble of continuing to send letters into silence.
It was, Darcy decided, no more than a small kindness owed to a stranger.
He broke the seal before he could examine that reasoning too closely.
The first thing he saw was the direction.
Longbourn, Hertfordshire.
Darcy paused.
There it was. Half his purpose had been accomplished without his reading a single private word. He needed only the writer's name, which could easily be obtained from the final page. His eyes ought to have gone directly to the signature.
Instead, they fell upon the date and salutation beneath it.
14th August 1811
My dearest Julia,
Despite every intention of doing otherwise, Darcy lingered. After seventeen letters written without response, he wanted to know what could possibly keep their author writing so faithfully.
He read on.
Tomorrow makes five months since you left, and I find I have kept the account without ever meaning to. I do not know why I continue to mark the weeks so faithfully. Perhaps it is easier than admitting how very long five months can feel when one is waiting for news that never comes.
Meryton, I should tell you, has quite recovered from the great excitement of discovering that you and I looked enough alike to be twins.
No one stops me now to enquire after the young lady who so remarkably resembled me, and I believe even my aunt Phillips has exhausted the subject, which is an achievement I had not thought possible.
Your aunt's failure to return has helped matters considerably. Between the two of you disappearing at once and offering no fresh particulars for Meryton to discuss, everyone was eventually obliged to find some newer curiosity.
I confess I resented them a little for it at first. It seemed very strange that something which had occupied half the town could be forgotten merely because a few months had passed.
But perhaps that is because they remember the novelty of you, while I remember you. There is a considerable difference.
Meryton has gone on precisely as Meryton always does.
Kitty and Lydia have found other matters over which to quarrel and reconcile themselves, Mama has discovered fresh concerns to occupy her, and Papa remains happiest whenever the library door stands between himself and the rest of us.
Nothing has altered very much, and yet I continually encounter little things which seem altered simply because you are not here to share them.
I walked past the milliner's this morning, the very one outside which we first stood staring so foolishly at one another.
I still maintain that you stared first, whatever account you afterwards gave of the matter.
The woman inside glanced at me as I passed, and for one ridiculous moment I wondered whether she remembered there had once been two of us standing there, each trying to determine whether the other was some trick of the glass.
I do not suppose she did.
That is the strangest part of your being gone.
It is not the great things which remind me of you, but the smallest. I passed Oakham Hill three days ago and remembered our argument there, though I shall not revive it merely to give you another opportunity of being wrong.
Jane said something at breakfast yesterday which I knew would have made you laugh.
You would accuse me of growing sentimental, so I shall immediately rescue us both by telling you that Lydia has purchased another bonnet.
It is hideous.
She insists it is becoming. Kitty insists upon agreeing with her because she wishes to borrow it on Sunday.
Mama has declared it very elegant, which settles the question entirely against them, and Papa has refused to express an opinion upon a subject which he says has already consumed more of his household than Bonaparte.
There. You see how necessary you are. Jane will smile when I say such things, but she will not agree with me, and Mary would explain at considerable length why I ought not to say them at all. You, at least, possessed the charity to laugh first and correct me afterwards.
Jane asked me last week whether I meant to continue writing when I have received no response.
I told her that I do. These letters have become rather like the conversations I should have had with you had you remained in Hertfordshire, and I see no reason to surrender those merely because I must presently conduct them alone.
I do not know where you are, Julia, or whether these pages ever reach further than whatever hands first receive them. I only know that I would rather continue writing into uncertainty than discover one day that you returned and I had allowed your silence to persuade me to forget you.
I hope that will be the reason I eventually cease writing, because you have returned and there is no longer any need of paper between us. I cannot bring myself to consider the other reason there might be.
Wherever you are, I hope you are well. I hope someone is kind to you. And if these letters ever do find you, I hope you will know that Meryton's forgetting you did not mean that I had done the same.
Yours, always,
Elizabeth
Darcy reached the end and remained there for some moments, the letter still open between his hands.
Elizabeth.
No surname followed it.
He had meant only to discover a direction and a name. Yet he had read every word.
Worse still, his first feeling upon reaching the end was not regret, but disappointment that there was no more.
The realisation brought Darcy abruptly back to himself. He folded the pages along their former creases and placed them upon the desk. He had gone looking for a direction and come away instead with the peculiar, entirely unearned sense of having listened to one half of a conversation.
From one letter he had gathered surprisingly much.
This writer, Elizabeth, lived at an estate called Longbourn, near a town called Meryton in Hertfordshire.
There were parents, several sisters, an aunt Phillips, and a Jane to whom she appeared particularly close.
Julia Harding had gone to Hertfordshire at some point before March, had formed an attachment to Elizabeth, and had resembled her so remarkably that an entire neighbourhood had apparently entertained itself with the likeness.
That alone was curious.
Darcy glanced again at the letter. He might have dismissed the claim as an exaggeration had Elizabeth not written of it with such complete familiarity. She seemed less interested in the resemblance itself than in the fact that everyone else had ceased to care about it.
They remember the novelty of you, while I remember you.
That sentence remained with him.
Five months without an answer, and she still wrote. Whatever Julia Harding had been to the rest of Meryton, she had plainly been something very different to Elizabeth.
But there were other things in the letter which Darcy did not understand.
Oakham Hill.
An argument Elizabeth refused to revive, though she had evidently not surrendered her claim to having won it.
A first meeting before a milliner's window.
Julia's habit of laughing at Elizabeth before correcting her.
Small references to conversations and incidents which meant nothing to him but had required no explanation between the two women.
Darcy's gaze moved to the sixteen sealed letters beside the one he had opened.
The earlier half of the conversation lay there.
He caught himself almost as soon as the thought occurred.
That was curiosity, pure and simple.
He had opened one letter upon the pretence of discovering its author's direction.
He could manufacture no such excuse for opening another merely because he wished to know what had happened at Oakham Hill, or how two women who apparently looked enough alike to astonish an entire town had first come to stand opposite one another outside a milliner's shop.
He gathered the correspondence into a neat pile, placed Elizabeth's letter on top, and pushed the whole to the far end of the desk.
Mr. Humphrey had promised further enquiries. Darcy would wait. If Harding were found, the letters could be forwarded and the matter would cease to concern him. If he were not, Darcy now possessed an address by which Elizabeth could be informed that Julia Harding no longer lived at Willowbrook.
That was the proper course.
He reached for the book he had abandoned earlier and found his place. His eyes passed over several paragraphs before he realised that scarcely a word had made an impression upon him. With some irritation, he returned to the beginning and tried again.
This time he managed nearly a page.
You, at least, possessed the charity to laugh first and correct me afterwards.
Darcy looked up.
There was something rather backwards in considering laughter a form of charity.
He returned to his book.
A few minutes later another question presented itself, entirely without invitation.
What had happened at Oakham Hill?
Darcy shut the book.
His gaze settled upon the sixteen unopened letters at the opposite end of the desk.
For several seconds he merely regarded them.
Then he rose and left the room.