Chapter Nineteen
The difficulties of the evening began just as the soup course was being served.
Charles Bingley would have been horrified by the thought that he might distress his guests in any way, especially given how disturbing the past weeks at Netherfield had been.
If anything, he meant to help. As soon as the tureen of mulligatawny had been put in front of him, he said to his nephew—not speaking too loudly, even in this way attempting to be polite!
—“I say, we have neither seen nor heard from your father for days, not since the last night we all dined together. He is neglecting us most shamefully, and I intend to have a word with him.”
By this, he meant that he had sensed the tension between the Darcys, recognized that the matter must be of some seriousness, and intended to speak with Darcy as a friend.
(Mr. Bingley recognized that Jane’s story that night had weighed heavily upon the considerable pride of Fitzwilliam Darcy, but he also knew the man well enough to be certain Jane would not be resented for having told the simple truth.)
However, the comment had quite a different effect on Jonathan than Bingley had intended. “You mean, you have not spoken to my father at all since that night? You have not even corresponded?”
“No, we have had not a word from him,” Bingley said.
Miss Tilney had taken a great interest in this as well. “That is very strange, sir,” she said, “for just this morning, Mrs. Hurst told me she had overheard you talking about correspondence you had with Mr. Darcy—one that apparently never occurred.”
Bingley’s first thought was that his eldest sister had misheard him, though he could not imagine what she had actually heard instead.
However, Mrs. Hurst’s face had taken on an expression he recognized all too well, even from the days when she had been guilty of no worse than stealing biscuits from his plate.
She huffed, “It is very rude of you, miss, to bring up a private conversation at dinner.”
To Bingley’s surprise, Miss Tilney showed no sign of chastisement.
“If I have erred against etiquette, no less so have you for telling me of this supposed conversation between the Bingleys. I would also point out that you had erred more gravely by eavesdropping, had the conversation ever taken place, which I now doubt.”
The Allerdyce girls and their father were openly staring in amazement; Mr. Lofton seemed amused; Mrs. Lofton alone seemed to take little interest. As for Mrs. Allerdyce, she swiftly interjected, “Regardless, the dinner table cannot be the appropriate place for such remarks as these. Please, Miss Tilney, reserve your questions for my brother’s study. ”
Jonathan said, “You will not silence me, however, for it is my father who was spoken of falsely.” He spoke so seriously that all at table were taken aback, and Bingley remembered with unease that Jonathan had recently felt the need to duel for someone’s honor. God forbid such would happen again!
Mrs. Hurst blurted out, “Caroline told me to.”
“I did no such thing!” Mrs. Allerdyce exclaimed.
“Yes, you did,” Mrs. Hurst insisted. “We agreed that—well, that Miss Tilney must go, and soon. That she and her wiles must be kept far away from Mr. Jonathan Darcy. So I told her that he was to be disinherited, knowing that when there was no more chance of a fortune, there would be no more efforts at entrapment.”
“Mother!” Frederica exclaimed. “How unkind!”
Mrs. Allerdyce had gone white. “That is not at all what we agreed to, Louisa. You were to speak to my husband about the unfortunate match between Frederica and Mr. Lucas. To make him see sense.”
“That is no better!” Frederica looked as though she might weep, and her father reached over to hold her hand.
Mrs. Hurst simply shrugged. “Then we did not understand each other. I apologize to those concerned. I believed I was doing my sister a service, one she was very much set upon.”
“It was Mrs. Hurst who suggested she speak to my husband,” Mrs. Allerdyce protested. “And she asked for a favor in return—that I might deliver secret correspondence to Mr. Brooks.”
“It seems,” said Miss Tilney, “that Mrs. Hurst is fond of secret correspondence.”
After what seemed to Bingley an interminable pause, Mrs. Hurst rose from her chair and left the table. Jonathan said, “Aunt Jane, please do excuse Miss Tilney and me. It is imperative we speak to Mrs. Hurst immediately.”
“By all means,” said Jane.
By this time Frederica was weeping openly and left the room as well. Mr. Allerdyce said, florid with anger, “Mrs. Allerdyce, will you join me for a moment?” She did not seem delighted by this suggestion, but she moved to obey it.
“I cannot,” Mrs. Lofton said faintly. “It is too much. It is too much.”
Mr. Lofton took her arm and helped her up. “My wife is overexcited. Forgive us, please.”
With that, Bingley was left alone with his wife and only one guest, his niece Priscilla. After a long and uneasy silence, Priscilla ventured to say, “The soup is delicious.”
Let us first follow the Allerdyces to their bedchamber, the only room Mr. Allerdyce trusted for their privacy. As soon as he had shut the door behind them, Caroline began, “I meant only for her to have a conversation with you. No more than that.”
“That alone is more than you should have done,” he replied.
“To deliver secret correspondence? You have to have known that this was wrong, that there could be no moral justification for this sort of message between your sister and Mr. Brooks. Yet you were willing to do so, all because you hoped she might interfere in a match that has already been made for our eldest daughter, a perfectly respectable match that has rendered her very happy. Does your pride truly extend so far? Or does it stretch back even farther, so that you still feel yourself deprived of the title of mistress of Pemberley?”
“It is not that,” Caroline said, hoping it was true. “Yet Frederica can do better. You know that is so.”
“Here we differ, my dear.” The tone of Mr. Allerdyce’s voice made the last word less affectionate than Caroline had imagined it could be spoken.
“I believe that a match that satisfies both prudence and passion to be the best possible. For so many years, I had believed we made such a match. I do not know whether I can believe this any longer.”
Caroline felt as though the floor kept dropping beneath her, settling lower and lower, an unending sense of sinking. “What do you mean?”
Suddenly, Mr. Allerdyce seemed very weary.
“I mean, Caroline, that after Frederica has been wed to Mr. Lucas, I intend to travel for a time. Perhaps I shall bring Priscilla along, to broaden her mind and her interests past the trivialities to which you have limited her. I know only that you will not be joining us.”
“For how long will you be gone?”
“Months,” he said. “At least.”
Then he departed to go to Frederica, and Caroline was left alone, her only companion the bitterest of remorse.
Meanwhile, Jonathan and Juliet had followed Mrs. Hurst to her room, where she had barricaded herself nearly as well as the besieged city of Orléans.
It took some minutes of persuasion to convince her that her dignity would be more greatly assaulted by questions shouted through a door than by another conference in Mr. Bingley’s study.
“I do not wish to speak of it,” Mrs. Hurst began, rather unnecessarily in Jonathan’s opinion, given how reluctant she had been to quit her bedchamber. “The correspondence between Mr. Brooks and myself is of a private nature.”
Jonathan replied, “We have had to ask many questions regarding private matters in this investigation, ma’am, which I will remind you concerns the death of your late husband. Had you told us the truth from the beginning, we might know his killer by now. Or is that precisely what frightens you?”
Mrs. Hurst drew herself upright, despite everything still capable of righteous indignation. “I will not sit here to be accused!”
“Then help us, Mrs. Hurst.” Juliet spoke more gently than the events warranted. Why should she suddenly behave so sweetly toward one who had behaved so poorly toward her? “We only want to understand. If you will but give us the truth, then we need trouble you no longer.”
This achieved the amazing effect of calming Mrs. Hurst, if not entirely, at least to the point of rationality. “If you must know,” she said stiffly, “Mr. Brooks and I have had occasion to correspond because he has won more money at cards than I have had in my possession.”
“May I ask how much?” Juliet said.
“Most recently, I lost eight hundred pounds to him.”
Jonathan was very much startled. Such a sum was more than he had ever considered risking at a table; he had once won one hundred pounds at Oxford, in a game where the others had urged heavy betting, and his reward had been not only the money but also the severance of the few strands of friendship he had formed there.
Yet his surprise was not so great that he failed to notice how Mrs. Hurst had qualified her statement.
“ ‘Most recently,’ you said. Will you tell us how much you owe Mr. Brooks, in total?”
Mrs. Hurst winced. “Twelve thousand pounds.”
That was more than Jonathan’s father had as income for a year! Juliet’s gasp revealed she was equally surprised as he. “How?” she asked. “How is such a thing possible?”
“It began with a few hundred here or there,” Mrs. Hurst said, careless that this alone was a sum greater than most people saw in a year’s time.
“Mr. Brooks is very good at cards, you know, a cold and disagreeable man but very good indeed. Yet I am good, too! In London, at my friends’ tables, I am rarely the poorer.
And I know that someday, I shall surely beat Brooks, too.
He gives me a tick for my whole debt and lets me bet that as well.
More than once, I have cleared my debt to him so—once when it had got as high as fifteen hundred pounds! That was a fine evening.”