CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Life Well Used
Sir Thomas was sixty-eight. His hair had gone silver, his left knee objected to wet weather, and he still rode the estate three mornings each week because Morris's successor required correction.
The newspaper lay beside his breakfast plate.
Lady Bennet saw the black border and stopped speaking.
Sir Thomas read the notice once. The King had died at Windsor after years lost within illness. The nation mourned a sovereign many had not seen in public for nearly a decade. The Prince Regent was now George IV.
"He is gone," Lady Bennet said.
"He has been gone from himself a long while."
"I know. Yet now he is truly gone."
"No."
She came around the table and stood behind his chair, both hands upon his shoulders.
For much of the day, Sir Thomas answered letters.
The Queen had died in November 1818, so no familiar hand would write from Windsor.
A secretary to the new King sent formal acknowledgment of Sir Thomas's old service.
Colonel Fitzwilliam wrote with personal sympathy.
Darcy's letter promised the family would come south as soon as winter roads permitted.
By evening Sir Thomas had said little of grief.
Lady Bennet found him in the library beneath the framed message.
A life well used is thanks enough.
"You should eat."
"I shall."
"You said that at noon."
He looked at her. "I remember his face when he breathed again. Not the portraits. The surprise. As if air had become something miraculous because it was briefly absent."
Lady Bennet sat beside him. "I remember your face when the swords touched you."
"I made a joke in the carriage."
"A poor one."
"Most are."
"Not most. Some."
He covered her hand. "I was afraid to admit I had nearly left you."
"Then you spent eighteen years admitting it differently."
The first family members arrived two days later from Hazelwood and London. Pemberley's party reached Netherfield after a week. Elizabeth entered the library without announcement, as she had from childhood, and found her father at the window.
"Papa."
He turned. She crossed the room and embraced him.
Darcy followed with Anne and Eleanor. Anne, now eight, understood death enough to become solemn. Eleanor, five, understood that Grandpapa was sad and offered him a biscuit saved from the carriage.
Sir Thomas accepted it.
"The King saved your life," Anne said.
"Your mother has confused the story."
"She says you saved his, and then he saved yours by making you wake up."
Sir Thomas met Elizabeth's eyes.
"I used simpler language," she said.
"Apparently not."
The whole family attended the memorial service in Meryton. Mr Lucas had died the previous year; his son delivered no public account of the rescue. For once, the assembly rooms and church held the story in silence.
After the service, Sir Thomas walked to the old oak with Darcy and Elizabeth. The iron rail was rusted. One plaque still claimed the dislodged sugar plum travelled twelve feet.
"It fell near Mr Lucas's shoe," Sir Thomas said.
"History prefers distance," Darcy replied.
Elizabeth touched the tree's rough bark. "Do you regret the attention that followed?"
"Often. Never the result."
"Netherfield?"
Sir Thomas looked toward the road leading home. "You. Jane. Mary. Kitty. Lydia. Your mother. The result was time I ceased throwing away."
They stood beneath bare branches while church bells tolled for a king.
That night the family dined without formal mourning speeches. Children moved between chairs. Emma asked Sir Thomas to tell the sugar-plum story and was corrected by Anne whenever embellishment contradicted prior versions.
"Were you afraid of the swords?" Thomas Charles asked.
"Very."
"Did you know the King would give you a house?"
"I hoped he would allow me to keep my head."
"Did you become good that day?"
The adults quieted.
Sir Thomas considered the question.
"No. I decided to try that day. Becoming is slower."
Anne nodded as if this accorded with her experience.
Later, Darcy joined Sir Thomas in the emptying dining room.
"The new King may invite you to Court."
"I shall decline unless duty requires it. I have received enough kings."
"And enough gifts?"
Sir Thomas listened to his grandchildren overhead. "More than enough."
* * *
The King's death did not end the life his gratitude altered.
Netherfield continued beneath Sir Thomas's management, then increasingly under Kitty's supervision when she discovered that drawing landscapes taught her to read land as well as render it.
She did not surrender art. She built a studio over the old orangery and travelled to exhibitions with a respectable widow as companion.
"You require an heir in practice if not law," she told her father. "Lizzy has Pemberley, Jane Hazelwood, Mary London, and Lydia expects to follow the army. I am here. Teach me."
Sir Thomas did.
He showed her leases, crop records, drainage maps, and the mistakes hidden in old accounts.
Kitty's eye for proportion made her excellent at boundaries.
Her patience with people exceeded his. In time, the family agreed Netherfield would pass principally to Kitty, with financial shares equalized among the sisters according to the grant.
Lady Bennet mourned that Kitty might remain unmarried until Kitty received an offer from Mr Edward Alden, the widowed younger son of a neighboring family and an amateur botanist who admired her work before her portion.
Kitty accepted after a year's friendship and refused to leave Netherfield. Mr Alden came to her instead.
Mary and Mr Avery had two sons and a daughter.
Mary published under her full married name after the success of her fifth collection.
Her music was performed at Pemberley, Court, and occasionally by young ladies who ignored the difficult passages.
She remained quiet in large rooms and no longer mistook quiet for absence.
Lydia married Samuel, by then Captain Carter, after making him wait long enough to satisfy herself rather than Sir Thomas. Their marriage travelled between ports. Lydia wrote vivid letters, managed charity funds with fierce honesty, and still overspent on ribbon once a year.
Jane and Bingley filled Hazelwood with children, guests, and improvements. Bingley became a respected landowner without losing the warmth that once made him vulnerable. Caroline visited twice yearly, spoiled the children, and criticized the drawing-room curtains as proof of affection.
At Pemberley, Anne and Eleanor grew among music, books, estate rides, and letters from every Bennet relation. A son, George Thomas Darcy, was born four years after Anne—not as replacement or rescue, but as another beloved child.
Darcy did not become easy in every company, nor Elizabeth right in every argument. He still withdrew when worried; she still defended a quick judgment too long. Marriage gave them practice in returning to the conversation.
On their tenth anniversary, they returned to Oakham Mount alone.
"My feelings and wishes are unchanged," Darcy said beneath the oak where he had proposed.
Elizabeth looked at the silver beginning at his temples. "You are not."
"Neither are you."
"Then we have kept one promise."
He took her hand. "Do you regret the changes?"
"Some. I regret every child outgrowing sleep. I regret Pemberley's north roof in winter. I regret allowing your aunt to choose the blue drawing-room curtains."
"She was right about the color."
"Do not ruin the moment."
Darcy smiled and kissed her.
Below them, Netherfield and Longbourn remained visible. Hazelwood lay beyond the western trees. The map had changed, but the family crossed it continually.
When they returned to the house, Sir Thomas sat beneath the new oak with three grandchildren around him and a book closed upon his knee.
He was listening.
* * *
The idea for a school began with a leaking cottage and Lydia's account books.
During one of her visits from Portsmouth, Lydia accompanied Sir Thomas on an estate ride and discovered that three tenant girls walked nearly four miles to the parish school in winter.
The boys attended more reliably because farm carts carried them part of the distance.
The girls remained home when roads were bad.
"Build a school near the southern farms," Lydia said.
"Buildings require teachers, fuel, books, and continued income."
"You say that whenever an idea is good but expensive."
"I say it whenever an idea is expensive."
Lydia returned the next morning with figures.
They were imperfect, blotted, and surprisingly complete.
She proposed using proceeds from the annual militia charity concert, a contribution from Netherfield, and subscriptions from neighboring landowners.
Mary offered royalties from one composition.
Kitty designed a schoolhouse with high windows and a small room for drawing and music.
Jane promised books from the Hazelwood school.
Elizabeth and Darcy offered a yearly sum large enough to secure a teacher.
Sir Thomas reviewed the plan.
"You have all conspired."
"We cooperated," Lydia said. "Conspiracy sounds more interesting."
The Royal Oak School opened eighteen months later near the young tree planted for the King's anniversary.
It admitted the daughters and sons of tenants without fee.
Reading, writing, arithmetic, household accounts, and practical agriculture formed the common lessons.
Music and drawing were taught twice each month when Mary or Kitty could attend, and by local instructors otherwise.
Sir Thomas refused to name it for himself.
"You saved the King," Lady Bennet argued. "People will expect the Bennet School."
"Then they may practice disappointment."
The new King permitted use of the word Royal after receiving the school's plan through an old secretary of Queen Charlotte. The letter of approval mentioned Sir Thomas's service but praised his daughters' design.
He framed that letter in the schoolhouse rather than his library.
At the opening, Lydia gave the speech.