Chapter 6
The quoits had at last been abandoned, though not before Lady Carstairs had secured a victory so complete that Colonel Fitzwilliam declared himself permanently altered by the defeat.
Elizabeth, who had laughed more than she had intended and thrown better than she ever had, returned to the rugs in excellent spirits. She had barely taken up her plate again when Miss Pelham settled beside her and offered up an apricot tart.
They had fallen into talk without difficulty.
Miss Pelham was the elder of the rector’s two daughters, sixteen or thereabouts, and the talk had travelled, as talk will at a picnic, from the weather, to the parish, to the people of the parish, and so at last to Miss Darcy, of whom she spoke with the ease that long affection affords.
“Oh, Georgiana has always been good at secrets,” Miss Pelham said, smiling down at her plate.
“Not alarming secrets, of course. Charitable ones. When we were little, we used to make lavender bags from the flowers along the south wall, and she would insist upon leaving hers on the doorsteps of anyone who was ill or cross or very old. She never would put her name to them, though once she tied so much ribbon round hers that Mrs. Harris knew at once it could only have come from the great house.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Was Miss Darcy mortified?”
“Dreadfully. She hid behind the yew tree until Mrs. Harris went in again.” Miss Pelham’s smile deepened.
“And once, when my youngest brother had the measles and was perfectly miserable, Georgiana sent him a basket with mittens for his hands, a little wooden horse, an orange, and a note saying that brave soldiers did not scratch.”
“Where is your brother today?”
“He is visiting our uncle in Shropshire.”
“And did the mittens work?”
“They did not stop him scratching, but the horse did distract him for a time.”
“That seems a very reasonable compromise.”
“It is the same in everything with the Darcys,” Miss Pelham said, finishing the last of her own tart.
“My brother Tom is uncommonly bright, but school fees and board are very dear. Mr. Darcy asked my father whether Tom would like to go, and within a fortnight, it was all arranged that he should attend Repton. Papa cried about it when he thought no one would hear him, he was so happy.” She pressed her lips together.
“I should not have said that last part.”
Miss Pelham glanced towards Miss Darcy, who now sat some distance away speaking with Miss Elinor and Mrs. Annesley.
“Miss Darcy has never been bold in the way some people are. But if someone is unhappy, she always finds a way to approach them. Quietly, of course, as if she had only happened to be passing with exactly the thing they needed. I think that in his own way, her brother is much the same.”
Elizabeth’s fork lowered to her plate.
Miss Pelham, unaware of having said anything remarkable, added, “I have always thought it a quiet, comfortable sort of goodness.”
Elizabeth said something agreeable. They both turned to watch Miss Darcy as she sat in the deeper shade with Mrs. Annesley and Miss Elinor, her hands folded, her chin a little lifted.
She was very much like Jane, Elizabeth thought, only Jane had always had her sisters about her and so never had the time for shyness.
She turned back to Miss Pelham, intending to carry on the conversation.
At the upper end of the lawn, beyond the rugs but before the slope fell away towards the river, the servants had raised a marquee and set the long table beneath it with more food—a ham, a raised pigeon pie, a dish of potted trout, tongue, Stilton cheese, rolls, butter, pickled walnuts, cucumbers, lettuces, gooseberry tartlets, lemonade, claret, Madeira, and a great cut-glass bowl in which strawberries floated in melting ice.
The wind was blowing up off the water and underneath the canvas so that it bellied and snapped above the table. One of the footmen had been appointed to keep a watchful eye on the pegs and to tap them back down if required.
It was a beautiful day. The only sufferer appeared to be Master Henry, who had been expected to behave rather better than a young boy out of doors on a summer day could reasonably be asked to do.
Elizabeth had watched as he inched closer to the river, but eventually he had been informed quite firmly by his nursemaid that the bank was no place for a small boy.
He had accepted this unjust pronouncement with an unwilling acquiescence.
As Elizabeth spoke with Miss Pelham, she could see that Henry had turned his attention to the next nearest body of water, which stood conveniently in the glass bowl upon the table and contained strawberries of a brilliant and tantalising red.
He glanced about him and found a hamper, which he began to drag over to have a better look.
Once the hamper was placed on the ground below the bowl and he stepped up on it, he yanked a loose thread off from the cuff of his little coat, tied it to one of the forks, and dangled it in the icy water.
Elizabeth caught his eye once and shook her head at him—not severely, only enough to convey that she had seen him.
Henry weighed her authority against his opportunity to fish for the strawberries, found it wanting, which it was, and returned to his calculations.
She bit back a smile and resolved to keep half an eye on him.
Twice he was interrupted. Once, his sister told him to come away and mind his coat, and once Miss Darcy, passing with a plate, crouched to his height and asked him something Elizabeth could not hear. Then both little Miss Atherton and Miss Darcy were called away.
For the moment Henry seemed contained, and Elizabeth let him be. He had a nursemaid, and there were other things to see. Indeed, what caught her eye just then was Miss Bingley.
Miss Bingley had discovered, after some delicate inspection of the heavens, that the sun had shifted. Therefore, she moved half a yard away from Mrs. Hurst to preserve her complexion.
A minute later, the breeze proved troublesome to Miss Bingley’s ribbons.
This required another adjustment, and another small advance.
Then her lemonade was found to be too warm, though it had been fetched for her not three minutes before.
She rose to replace it, paused to ask Sir Harold some question that did not seem to require an answer, and thus came away two feet nearer the head of the rugs.
Elizabeth watched with reluctant admiration. There was method in Miss Bingley’s movements—persistence too. There was even, if one chose to be generous, artistry, for Miss Bingley was attempting to cross the entire lawn without appearing to have taken more than three steps.
Colonel Fitzwilliam made some remark to Lady Carstairs and Mrs. Atherton, and Miss Bingley laughed at it from a distance.
It was not, Elizabeth was almost certain, a remark intended for her, but the laugh gave her cause to draw closer, and that brought her somewhat nearer to Mr. Darcy.
Mrs. Hurst, abandoned in the shade, followed her sister’s progress without comment.
A strong gust came up the slope, setting the canopy cracking like a topsail, and Miss Bingley discovered that the draught beneath it was rather cool. She said as much to Mrs. Atherton, who agreed that the air off the water was uncommonly cool for August and might give a delicate person a chill.
Having between them established the peril, Miss Bingley proceeded to remove herself from it—two steps, and then a third, every one of them, by the purest accident, carrying her towards the place where Mr. Darcy stood speaking with a footman.
Miss Bingley then dropped her handkerchief, but Mr. Darcy had turned back to speak with Mr. Pelham, and there was no gentleman near enough to retrieve it.
This was a miscalculation. Miss Bingley paused for a moment, allowing the handkerchief every opportunity to be noticed.
When no gentleman moved, she bent at last, slowly enough to suggest choice rather than necessity, caught it between two fingers, shook from it one blade of grass, and straightened gracefully, moving her head slightly one way and then the other to see whether anyone had been watching.
Elizabeth nearly forgave her the whole business for the neatness of the recovery.
A moment later, Miss Bingley turned her head towards the river. “How charming the water is from here,” she said.
No one answered. She took two steps, paused, and tilted her head. “Though perhaps the light is better a little farther on.”
It was not. Elizabeth could see this plainly. Miss Bingley, however, advanced another yard or so in pursuit of the improved prospect.
At the lemonade table she must have mentioned being thirsty, for her unsuspecting brother poured a glass for her.
She detained him with a question while motioning to the east terrace and then seemed to answer most of it herself.
By then she had nearly reached the shaded side of the rugs, where Mr. Darcy still stood speaking with a footman.
He was glancing towards the marquee and issuing some sort of instructions she could not make out.
Mrs. Atherton came to join her, and Miss Atherton arrived to make an inquiry of her mother. The girl apparently stood too near Miss Bingley’s silk dress, for that lady frowned and stepped back. Then she tasted her lemonade and held out her glass to her brother again. “Perhaps a little more sugar.”
Mr. Bingley obliged her. Miss Bingley stirred, tasted, smiled, and then turned towards the river. The view, once noticed, required admiration and a better place from which to admire. Three more steps carried her to where Mr. Darcy stood, and she pretended to be surprised that Mr. Darcy was so near.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, and smiled when he was obliged to interrupt his conversation to greet her. “I was just observing the view of the water.”
Elizabeth had to own it was very well done. And then her attention was recalled to Miss Pelham.