Chapter Five — Mrs Harrow’s Silence #2
“At first, Margaret was liked. She read beautifully, wrote a fine hand, understood music, and could be trusted not to flirt with gentlemen in any manner society might be obliged to notice. She had one fault.”
“Only one?”
“She saw too much.”
Elizabeth waited.
Mrs Harrow’s hand moved to a leaf and then withdrew without touching it.
“Sir Edmund’s affairs were always confused.
Debts, notes of hand, promises of settlement, money expected, money borrowed before it arrived, small sums taken from one account to quiet another.
It was all spoken of as imprudence. In gentlemen, Miss Bennet, wrongdoing becomes imprudence when enough people have dined with it. ”
“That is very true.”
“Margaret found something. I never knew at first how much. She wrote to me saying that a settlement had not been paid as it ought, that a portion meant for a woman in the family—perhaps for Portia’s mother, perhaps held in trust through Lady Vale’s line—had been diverted.
She believed Sir Edmund had used money that was not his to settle debts which most certainly were. ”
“And she told you?”
Mrs Harrow’s face tightened. “She wrote to me. I was recently married then. My husband was ill, though none would yet say how ill. I was young enough to fear scandal and old enough to understand that fear was sometimes sensible. Margaret begged me to come, or to write to Lady Ashbourne, or to preserve the copy of what she had found if she could send it. I thought—” She stopped.
Elizabeth remained silent.
“I thought there would be time,” Mrs Harrow said at last. “That is the most unforgivable phrase in the English language, I believe. There will be time. Time to think, to be certain, to act without rashness, to choose the safest person to trust. I delayed. Only days, perhaps. Not long enough to seem monstrous when measured by a calendar. Long enough when measured by consequence.”
The orangery felt warmer. A bee moved uselessly against the glass, unable to understand why brightness was not escape.
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked gently.
“The story changed before I could help her. Margaret was accused of having formed an improper attachment to Sir Edmund. Not by formal charge, never that. Formal charges may be answered. It was suggested, regretted, whispered. She had misunderstood his kindness. She had imagined a preference. She had threatened to expose him when he would not reward her presumption. She had, perhaps, attempted to entrap a gentleman whose only fault was generosity.”
Mrs Harrow’s voice did not break, but the steadiness of it was painful.
“And because she had no fortune,” Elizabeth said, “her pride became ambition.”
“Yes. Because she was dependent, her fear became manipulation. Because she had written letters, her words became proof against her. And because Sir Edmund was charming and well-born and in debt, everyone found it easier to believe she had invented a scandal than that he had concealed one.”
“Where did she go?”
“I do not know.” This answer was barely above a whisper.
“That is part of my punishment. I do not know. She was sent away. To relations, they said. To a situation in the north. To a friend. Every person had a version, and each version had the same purpose: she was gone, and therefore no one need ask where.”
Elizabeth felt a cold anger settle beneath her ribs. It was not the quick indignation that flared and spent itself in speech, but something harder.
“And the letters?”
“Vanished. Hers to me, mine to her, any copy of whatever she had discovered. Or so I believed.” Mrs Harrow looked toward the door, though no one stood there.
“Years later, I heard fragments. That Margaret had died. That she had married badly. That she had lived quietly under another name. That she had been seen in Bristol, then York, then nowhere. Stories multiply most readily around women who cannot contradict them.”
“And you were implicated?”
“Never plainly. That would have required courage. It was said only that I had known more than I admitted. That Margaret had trusted me. That I had chosen my husband’s family connections over friendship. That my widowhood had been made comfortable by my discretion.”
“Was it?”
The question was blunt. Mrs Harrow looked at her sharply, then gave a small, bitter smile. “No. But I understand why you ask. A false accusation often borrows its strength from a question which might reasonably be asked.”
Elizabeth inclined her head. “Then I ask it plainly rather than leave it to grow in corners.”
“My husband left me little beyond debts arranged more neatly than Sir Edmund’s and a name respectable enough to make poverty private. I did not profit by Margaret’s ruin. But I survived it. Some days that has felt like profit enough to be ashamed of.”
Elizabeth heard in this not guilt of the kind society desired, not the elegant wickedness the altered letter had attempted to manufacture, but the older, sadder guilt of survival: fear, youth, dependence, delay, all hardened by time into something resembling self-accusation.
A woman had been frightened, and because her fear had coincided with another woman’s ruin, the world had found it convenient to call fear malice.
“The letter in the music book,” Elizabeth said, “uses your silence as if silence were one thing only.”
Mrs Harrow’s eyes lifted.
“But silence may be fear,” Elizabeth continued. “Or helplessness. Or misjudgement. Or the consequence of having no person safe enough to hear speech. It is not innocence, always. But it is not necessarily betrayal.”
Mrs Harrow looked away quickly, as if the kindness of the distinction hurt more than condemnation would have done.
“I did fail her,” she said.
“Perhaps.”
Mrs Harrow looked back, startled by the honesty.
Elizabeth met her gaze. “But failure is not the same as treachery.”
For a moment neither spoke. Outside the orangery, the gardens were bright and formal. Inside, the air was too warm, scented by fading blossom and damp leaves. The bee had stopped struggling against the glass and crawled along the frame.
At last Mrs Harrow said, “If you are wise, Miss Bennet, you will not make yourself my advocate.”
“I am not always wise.”
“So I begin to suspect.”
“But I try to be just.”
Mrs Harrow’s expression softened, though only slightly. “Justice is a dangerous ambition in houses built on memory.”
“Then perhaps such houses should be better ventilated.”
This time Mrs Harrow laughed properly, and though the laugh was brief, Elizabeth was glad of it.
While Elizabeth remained in the orangery, the pressure upon Jane was taking another form in the drawing room.
Jane had accepted a seat near Mrs Gardiner, with Bingley standing at a respectful distance by the window, when Mrs Lyndhurst approached with that expression of tender consequence which Elizabeth would have disliked even had it been directed at a vase.
Miss Trent followed half a step behind, carrying a work bag and the burden of listening.
“My dear Miss Bennet,” Mrs Lyndhurst began, lowering herself into a chair with a sigh that suggested the weight of compassionate thought, “I hope you are not too much distressed by yesterday’s unfortunate occurrence.
It must have been very unpleasant for you, to be made the instrument of such a discovery. ”
Jane folded her hands. “It was certainly painful.”
“Painful, yes. But not your fault, of course. No one could possibly think so.”
Jane’s eyes rose. “I should hope not.”
“No, indeed. Though these things do attach themselves in odd ways. A young lady on the edge of happiness must be careful, I think, not to be drawn into every sorrow merely because her heart is good.”
Bingley, at the window, turned slightly.
Mrs Gardiner looked up from her work.
Jane said nothing for a moment. She understood perfectly. Elizabeth, had she been there, would have admired the steadiness with which her sister allowed the implication to reveal itself before answering it.
Mrs Lyndhurst continued, “Mr Bingley, for instance, is so open-hearted a gentleman. Such a trusting nature. It is one of his greatest charms. One would not wish him troubled by matters of old scandal and doubtful recollection. Men of such goodness do not always suspect evil where more worldly persons might.”
Jane’s colour rose, but not with embarrassment. “Mr Bingley’s goodness does not make him blind, Mrs Lyndhurst.”
Mrs Lyndhurst blinked.
Jane went on, her voice gentle but unusually firm. “Nor does an open heart prevent a person from recognising cruelty when he sees it. Indeed, I have sometimes thought the best people recognise it most clearly because they do not expect it and are therefore more grieved when it appears.”
Bingley’s face changed.
Mrs Gardiner’s eyes softened with pride.
Mrs Lyndhurst gave a small laugh, but it had lost some of its confidence. “Of course. I meant only that one must protect happy prospects from unhappy connections.”
Jane’s hands tightened, but her tone remained composed. “If happiness requires one to step away from an unjustly injured person before the truth is known, then it would not be a happiness I could esteem.”
Miss Trent looked at her quickly. The glance was full of something like astonishment.
Mrs Lyndhurst, finding herself unexpectedly opposed by the mildest woman in the room, rearranged her expression. “My dear Miss Bennet, how very beautifully you feel these things.”
Jane did not reply.
Bingley did not immediately intervene. This, in him, was an act of real growth.
The older Bingley might have rushed forward, eager to defend Jane and thereby made her the centre of precisely the attention she disliked.
The present Bingley waited until Mrs Lyndhurst had turned to include Mrs Gardiner in some safer remark about needlework.
Then he crossed the room with apparent ease.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, “Lady Ashbourne mentioned that the first roses are beginning near the south walk. If Mrs Gardiner permits, might I show them to you before luncheon?”