Chapter Thirteen
Willowbrook Somerset
Darcy
Richard’s response to Darcy’s letter came later than Darcy had expected, and it was only upon finally holding it that Darcy realised how little satisfaction its arrival afforded him.
He had told himself, while breaking the seal, that he was pleased to have word from his cousin at last. Yet almost in the same instant, he was obliged to acknowledge that, when the servant announced the post, some part of him had expected to see Elizabeth Bennet’s hand upon the direction rather than Richard’s.
It had been a week since her last letter arrived. Without ever determining that another must come upon a particular day, Darcy had nevertheless begun to expect one. Now that the post had brought him nothing from Hertfordshire, he found himself wondering why she had not written.
With some impatience at the direction of his own thoughts, he unfolded his cousin’s letter instead.
Darcy,
Your letter reached me this morning, and I confess it occupied me for the better part of an hour, chiefly because I could not determine whether you had gone entirely mad or had merely discovered something in Somerset more diverting than timber accounts and a cottage.
You told me you meant to give Georgiana some space and yourself a little peace, yet the first account I receive from you concerns eighteen letters belonging to a stranger.
Let me understand you correctly. You opened one from necessity, or what you were pleased to call necessity, discovered the writer’s direction, composed a perfectly proper letter informing her of the Hardings’ removal, and then, instead of sending it, proceeded to read the other sixteen.
Then the latest came and you read it too?
My dear Darcy, I cannot help you defend this.
There was, however, something else in your letter which gave me pause.
You say that you feel you know this Miss Bennet better, in some respects, than women with whom you have danced a dozen times in London.
I do not quite know what to make of such an acquaintance, though I understand what you mean.
She has written without knowing you would ever see a word of it.
There can have been very little inducement to disguise herself.
I had intended not to tease you upon that point, but I have reconsidered.
You have spent half your life complaining that a gentleman of your fortune cannot easily know whether a woman esteems himself or his consequence, and Providence has at last supplied you with a young lady who has no notion of either.
Better still, according to your account, she appears to have dismissed a gentleman of considerable fortune from her consideration because she disliked his conversation.
I cannot decide whether this is justice or extraordinarily bad luck on your part.
Do not look so severe. I know perfectly well that you are not in love with a woman you have never met. I merely observe that you have devoted an astonishing quantity of paper to assuring me how interesting she is.
Georgiana continues tolerably well. Mrs. Annesley has settled into the household with considerably less disturbance than I expected.
Your sister remains much within herself, but she spoke with me when I last called and appears comfortable enough with her new companion, though there is more politeness than affection between them at present.
That may improve with time. She asked after you, which I mention in case Somerset has caused you to forget that younger sisters occasionally expect letters.
London offers nothing worth carrying into Somerset.
My mother continues to enquire whether I have found a lady I would consider taking for wife, and I begin to resent the comparison you have unwittingly provided me.
Here am I in London, going to dinners, assemblies, and every other place at which an unmarried gentleman might reasonably be expected to encounter an eligible woman, and I have found no one.
You, meanwhile, retire to the wilds of Somerset expressly to avoid company and contrive to discover a lady upon eighteen missives.
I beg you never to tell my mother of it.
She would consider it proof that I have not been trying hard enough.
Write again when you have news, whether it concerns Harding, Somerset, or Miss Bennet, who appears to have intruded rather considerably upon the peace you went there to find.
Yours, etc.,
R. Fitzwilliam
Darcy set the letter down. There was nothing wanting in it.
Richard had answered precisely as Richard always did, with ridicule enough to be provoking and affection enough to make offence impossible.
More importantly, the account of Georgiana brought genuine relief.
She was still withdrawn, but she was settling with Mrs. Annesley and had asked after him.
He ought to write to her, Darcy thought, and resolved to do so before the day was out.
His attention returned nevertheless to the rest of Richard’s letter.
I know perfectly well that you are not in love with a woman you have never met.
Darcy almost laughed.
Of course he was not in love with Elizabeth Bennet. The notion was absurd. He admired her, certainly, and curiosity had carried him much further into her acquaintance than propriety could defend, but admiration was not love.
Yet Richard had been right about one thing.
Darcy did know her. Not her face, not her voice, nor the particular manner in which she moved through a room, but he knew something of the turn of her mind.
He knew what amused her, what provoked her, whom she loved, what she valued, what she could forgive and what she could not.
He had met women in London whose names he could scarcely summon a week later.
He doubted he would soon forget anything Elizabeth Bennet had written.
But Richard’s letter was not the one he had been waiting for, and Darcy could no longer pretend to himself that he did not know the difference.
He rose from the desk and crossed to the back window, where the timberland stood dense and unmoving beneath the afternoon sun.
A week was hardly an extraordinary interval between letters, particularly when Elizabeth had never promised to write upon any fixed day, yet he found himself considering possibilities all the same.
Perhaps some engagement at Longbourn had prevented her.
Perhaps she had written and the letter was delayed upon the road.
Perhaps, after five months of addressing a woman who never answered, she had at last decided there was little sense in continuing.
That possibility ought to have pleased him, for it would spare him both the impropriety of receiving further correspondence and the necessity of explaining Julia Harding’s absence.
Instead, Darcy discovered that he disliked it exceedingly.
He wanted another letter to come. More troubling still, he wanted it not because it might reveal something further of Julia Harding, but simply because he wished to hear from Elizabeth Bennet again.
~
14th September 1811
Within the next two weeks, Darcy received another letter from his sister and a further report from Mr. Humphrey.
His attorney had discovered nothing of Mr. Harding's present whereabouts, though he assured Darcy that his enquiries continued.
He reminded him that Harding had not been a longstanding tenant of Willowbrook, having taken the house only five years before quitting it.
Harding had earned his living as a fisherman, working from one of the smaller ports along the coast. His occupation frequently kept him at sea for several days together, and those who had worked alongside him could tell Mr. Humphrey very little beyond the particulars of his trade.
Harding, by every account, had been a reserved man, little inclined to speak of his private affairs and apparently content that others should show him the same consideration.
The information went some way towards explaining what had puzzled Darcy from the beginning.
A man who formed few attachments and spoke little of his affairs might remove from the neighbourhood without leaving many people able to say where he had gone.
It explained less satisfactorily how Elizabeth, after an intimacy of such evident closeness with Julia, had known so little of her family or of the place she called home.
Mr. Humphrey could offer no assistance upon that point aside from the promise that he would continue his enquiries.
Georgiana's letter was filled with smaller and more welcome intelligence.
She had been practising a new air upon the pianoforte until Mrs. Annesley pronounced it fit to be heard; an afternoon at an exhibition of watercolours had made her regret leaving her sketchbook at home; and she asked, with a diffidence Darcy could easily imagine, whether he meant to return before Christmas.
Through these ordinary particulars, however, ran something which troubled him.
Georgiana apologised for the anxiety she had caused him that summer and feared that even his retreat to Somerset had been made necessary by her conduct.
Darcy read that portion severally. He was grateful that she had tried to write so freely, but the apology pained him.
Georgiana had been deceived, and he had no wish for her to spend the remainder of the year persuading herself that his absence was a punishment she had deserved.
His reply to her was begun almost immediately.
There was, however, another absence which had become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Three weeks had passed without a letter from Elizabeth.
At first, Darcy had tried to think little of it. After a fortnight, however, he found himself returning to her last letter with increasing frequency. By the third week, he could no longer pretend that he was merely curious.
Had she finally abandoned the hope of hearing from Julia?
Six months of silence would have exhausted the constancy of most people, and Elizabeth herself had admitted that she no longer knew whether her letters were read at all.
Perhaps she had at last concluded that there was nothing to be gained by continuing them.
Darcy ought to have found the explanation reasonable.
Instead, his mind supplied others.
Perhaps some circumstance at Longbourn had occupied her. Perhaps illness had entered the household. Perhaps Elizabeth herself was unwell.
His thoughts stopped there.
The sudden force of his uneasiness startled him. He knew of no reason to suppose anything had happened to her. Three weeks without a letter was evidence of nothing except three weeks without a letter, and he had neither right nor cause to imagine the worst.
Yet the thought had already occurred, and once admitted, proved difficult to dismiss.
Nothing must have happened to her.
Darcy became still at the realisation.
He had no claim upon Elizabeth Bennet. She did not know his name, his face, or even that the letters she had written to Julia had been read by another.
Yet somewhere in the course of those eighteen letters, concern for a woman he had never met had ceased to feel altogether like concern for a stranger.