Chapter 6
Aunt Gardiner finished her breakfast, folded her napkin with decision, and announced, “Your uncle has business in Mayfair and I should like to walk in Hyde Park today. He shall let us down at Grosvenor Gate. There is firm gravel there, as you know, and the wind usually blows behind one instead of directly into one’s face. ”
Within an hour of this pronouncement, Elizabeth was walking arm in arm with her aunt and Jane along the broad path next to the river. She tipped her face up towards the pale sun. It was a very fine morning.
She had slept little, risen early, and spent the greater part of the hours before breakfast thinking about Mr. Darcy. Why, she did not understand, for she did not like him, which was generally a sufficient motive not to think of a man unless he was standing before her.
But now the day was bright, the path was dry, and two of her favourite people were walking beside her. It helped her to remember that there were many things in the world that were not connected to Mr. Darcy.
The path curved beneath an avenue of bare chestnut and oak trees, and Aunt Gardiner slowed her pace to observe a party advancing towards them along the same path.
There were three of them, a tall handsome gentleman in a dark blue greatcoat, a young lady on his arm, and a servant in livery walking three feet or so behind.
Even at this distance the livery was distinctive—a clean dark blue with silver braid, darker than the gentleman’s coat, understated but very fine.
The young lady was taller than the usual. Elizabeth could not see her face beneath the bonnet, only a few fair curls and a small, lowered chin.
“I do believe . . . yes, I believe it is,” came the gentleman’s voice, which was warm and surprised. “Miss Applewood, as was!”
He had stopped four paces away and was smiling at her aunt.
“Mr. Wickham?” Aunt Gardiner asked, and then, with the higher pitch in her voice that meant a memory had just been placed, “Mr. George Wickham, surely. I must beg your pardon, sir. You have grown a great deal since I saw you last, but you do have the look of your father about you.”
He laughed, a broad laugh, brief and unembarrassed. “And the Applewood ladies possess a remarkable family resemblance.” He looked at the young woman with whom he was walking, and she nodded. “Miss Darcy, please allow me to present my friend Miss—”
“Mrs. Gardiner.”
“Forgive me, of course. Miss Darcy, may I present Mrs. Gardiner, who was a resident of Buxton Place near Lambton when last I saw her?”
Miss Darcy curtsied. Elizabeth’s aunt curtsied back, and then Jane and Elizabeth were introduced and the remaining civilities were deftly managed.
Mr. Wickham’s eyebrows rose when he heard their names, but he said nothing other than he was pleased to make their acquaintance. Miss Darcy, with a small fluttering smile, said the same.
Aunt Gardiner turned her attention upon Miss Darcy, asking a few warm questions and listening to Miss Darcy’s soft replies. After a few exchanges, the small chin lifted, and her aunt asked whether Miss Darcy had yet seen Mr. Bullock’s collection.
“Not yet,” she said.
Mr. Wickham smiled. “Miss Darcy has exhausted nearly every respectable amusement London can provide, and it is not yet Christmas.”
Miss Darcy looked faintly dismayed. “George.” She turned to Aunt Gardiner. “My brother says either he or my cousins shall take me this season if I wish it.”
“It is true,” Mr. Wickham insisted. “All autumn long you have been marched through galleries, concerts, a lecture on Roman antiquities, and—most heroically of all—Lady Grey’s musicale.”
At this Miss Darcy laughed despite herself.
Jane smiled. “Was it so very bad?”
“My dear Miss Bennet, no one can call an evening bad when the supper is excellent. It provides one the fortitude required to survive the entertainment.”
“You attended willingly, then,” said Elizabeth.
“Certainly,” Mr. Wickham said. “Of course there will be more events after the festive season. The real crowds will not amass until Parliament opens, and then half of Town will assemble every night determined to impress the other half. The results are often magnificent.”
“In what way?”
“In every way. One may witness ambition, romance, and occasionally the tragedy of a collapsed headdress in a single evening.”
“It sounds as though there would be enough characters to sketch even for you, Lizzy,” Jane said teasingly.
Elizabeth pretended affront, but they all laughed. “I would not even know where to begin.”
“Oh, the ambitious are the easiest to mark,” Mr. Wickham replied, “for they generally arrive covered in pearls and speaking too loudly.”
Miss Darcy shook her head fondly. “You promised my brother you would behave this season.”
“My dear girl, I am behaving. It is only that your brother likes the world kept in excellent order, and I prefer to disarrange it a little.”
Miss Darcy, shy though she remained, looked perfectly at ease with Mr. Wickham.
“Although we are both partial to Derbyshire,” he said, changing the subject, “I brought Miss Darcy here to persuade her that Hyde Park in winter possesses its own sort of elegance.”
“And have you succeeded?” Aunt Gardiner asked.
“Not at all. She maintains it is merely cold. I fear my literary skills are not up to the task.”
Miss Darcy shook her head and smiled a little. “You compared the Serpentine to a bowl of blancmange.”
“A striking image.”
“A ridiculous one. The river is not white.”
Wickham laughed outright. “There is no pleasing the Darcy family. They insist upon sense at the expense of simile.”
Miss Darcy was amused. “And yet you continue to associate with us.”
“Madam, loyalty is one of my very few virtues. Besides, the Darcys took me in hand so early that escape is now impossible.”
“Forgive me for the presumption, but you speak as I recall your father did, Mr. Wickham,” said Aunt Gardiner. “I remember him well, a kind man who knew his business. Lambton was very sorry to lose him. Four years now, is it not?”
“Next July, Mrs. Gardiner. You are kind to remember.”
Aunt Gardiner paused to consider Miss Darcy. “And Mr. Darcy was an excellent master and landlord.” She smiled at the girl. “He was also considered to be rather romantic. People always said of your parents that where one of them went, the other could not be far behind.”
Miss Darcy’s hand dropped from Mr. Wickham’s sleeve.
“My mother misses my father very much,” she said.
“He was very fond of us all, and though I was only eleven when he died, I remember that he and Mr. Wickham’s father were good friends.
He used to say,” she said to Aunt Gardiner, “that Mr. Wickham knew every tenant, every horse, every field boundary, and every secret at Pemberley except my mother’s age. ”
Wickham laughed. “My father was no more forthcoming about his own. Old Mr. Darcy maintained he subtracted five years whenever it suited him.”
“And did he?” Elizabeth asked.
“Constantly. Particularly after forty. It is one of the privileges of long service. Stewards may alter their ages just as ship’s captains exaggerate storms, I suppose.”
Miss Darcy laughed softly.
“There,” said Wickham. “Darcy would never forgive me if I allowed you to become solemn.”
Miss Darcy smiled; her hand returned to his arm.
“He has been a little out of sorts of late,” Mr. Wickham went on, in the easy tone of family talk. “You must be kind to him, my dear—”
He glanced, only for an instant, at Elizabeth.
“Miss Darcy,” said Elizabeth, “may I trouble you with a question of selfish interest? I have a private grievance against Miss Bingley, who informed us at Netherfield in November that you were the most accomplished young lady of her acquaintance. I have been waiting ever since for an opportunity to dislike you.”
Miss Darcy looked, for the breath of an instant, horrified—and then she laughed with a friendly sort of surprise. “Miss Bingley said that? I suppose I cannot prevent her, though it is very far from the truth.”
“Oh that is very well, then. If you are able to disappoint me, I shall be much obliged. What do you read? What do you neglect to practise? Have you ever been derelict in your studies?”
Miss Darcy paused a moment before she reeled off her answers.
“I have read Mrs. Radcliffe when I ought to read something more improving. I still have not finished learning a sonata that I was set to master three months ago. And I have been late more than once, for I forget the time when I am at the pianoforte.” She paused.
“Where I am practicing a sonata that I was not set to.”
Elizabeth had not expected such a delightful reply. “This is excellent news. I find I cannot dislike you at all.”
“That is a great pity,” said Miss Darcy gravely, “for I had begun to enjoy the idea.”
The solemn delivery was so like her brother’s that, for one disorienting moment, Elizabeth had almost missed the jest.
Mr. Wickham laughed outright, and even the footman behind them had to hide a smile.
“What a pleasure it has been to meet you again, Mr. Wickham,” said Aunt Gardiner, who had been listening to the exchange between Elizabeth and Miss Darcy with a smile.
“If you would allow me to call on you and your husband, Mrs. Gardiner, I should be happy to spend a little time reminiscing about Lambton and Derbyshire. My engagements are not so heavy that I may not present myself at Mr. Gardiner’s door within the week.”
“You would be very welcome.”
Aunt Gardiner produced her card; Mr. Wickham accepted it, and then they parted amicably. Mr. Wickham bowed to each lady in turn; Miss Darcy stood up straight and said, “I hope I shall see you all again,” then turned bright pink and looked at her boots.
They moved off along the gravel in the direction of Grosvenor Gate, the footman falling in three paces behind.
Aunt Gardiner took Jane’s arm, and Elizabeth stepped to her sister’s other side.
“Well,” Aunt Gardiner said. “That was a piece of luck worth braving the weather for. I had not expected to meet with another Darcy here in the park.”
“Miss Darcy was not at all what I had imagined,” said Jane.
“What had you imagined, dearest?” asked Aunt Gardiner.
“I do not know, precisely. Miss Bingley wrote that her brother was courting Miss Darcy, or that he wished to. But I begin to think that Miss Bingley’s letter revealed more about her desires than anyone else’s.
” She glanced at Elizabeth who was feeling very smug.
“Yes, you need not say it—you told me as much, Lizzy. I ought to have listened.”
Elizabeth, who had not enjoyed the satisfaction of being correct in her sister’s hearing very often of late, only nodded her head. “I wish you had, if only to spare yourself the distress the letter caused.”
“I only hope Miss Darcy will not be distressed should she ever hear of it,” Jane said.
“We need not spend our time concerned for Miss Darcy,” Elizabeth said. “For she has a mother who is the daughter of an earl and the sister of one. Not to mention Mr. Darcy as her brother and protector.”
Aunt Gardiner agreed. “And evidently Mr. Wickham as well. I shall be pleased to visit with him if he does come, for any connection to Lambton is precious to me.”
“What was he like as a boy, Aunt?”
Aunt Gardiner considered the question. “Bright-eyed and mischievous. He used to sing in the Lambton church choir and was uncommonly good at it. The vicar would not allow him any solo parts, however, because he often made up his own melodies. And he was a great favourite at Pemberley. I remember an afternoon when my father took me up to call upon old Mr. Wickham, and Master George was studying English grammar. He was perhaps ten.”
“Was he attached to it?” Elizabeth asked.
“To English grammar?”
“No,” Elizabeth replied with a little laugh. “To Pemberley.”
“I do not see how anyone could not be, once having seen it.”
They walked a few more paces.
“I did hear he had been in some trouble as a young man,” Aunt Gardiner said, “but he appears to have righted himself.”
“Mr. Darcy and Lady Anne clearly trust him to walk in the park with Miss Darcy,” Jane said.
“Indeed. And his father was greatly liked and deeply respected,” Aunt Gardiner said.
“When my own father died—I was nineteen then—he came down to Buxton Place to help my mother. He stayed all day, making many of the arrangements at my mother’s direction, because he had known my father as a good man. ”
“Mr. Wickham seems nearly a family member of the Darcys,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, if I recall, Mr. Darcy’s father did pay for his schooling, including university. And I shall never forget that while Mr. Wickham came to assist us that Mr. Darcy allowed him the time to do so. They were both of them excellent men.”
Jane, who had been silent for the past several exchanges in her quiet, gathering way, said, “Mr. Wickham was very kind to Miss Darcy. Perhaps he is like his father.”
Aunt Gardiner patted Jane’s hand approvingly. They turned at the boathouse and started back the way they had come.