Chapter 26
DARCY’S DECISION
The Harringtons were, of course, absent from the dinner at Haye-Park the following evening, but their names, and Miss Harrington’s in particular, were on everyone’s lips.
Mrs Harrington had already sent notes around to announce that the family would not be hosting the musical evening on the eve of Christmas, and hearing of this, Mr Bingley impulsively announced that Netherfield Park had a fine instrument in the drawing room, and they were all invited to gather there.
Elizabeth was in conversation with the three younger gentlemen of Netherfield, Jane, and Charlotte at the time, and even from across the room, she was in no doubt of Mr Bingley’s sisters’ displeasure with his amiable generosity.
She did, after a moment’s reflection, admit that it was a little unfair to Miss Bingley to obligate her to make the arrangements without consultation, and in only four days’ time.
However, as it was likely that if approval were left entirely in Miss Bingley’s hands, none of the neighbourhood would have ever seen the inside of the house during the whole of his tenancy, she could not really blame him.
“Do you know the Harrington family well?” the colonel asked the ladies, when the general acclaim surrounding Mr Bingley had subsided and the original conversation resumed.
“As well as any other in the area, I should think,” Charlotte replied. “They have been here since Mr Harrington’s grandfather sold his brewery in Watford to purchase Woodvale Hall. We all grew up with Mr James Harrington and his sister.”
“It is to be hoped that everyone will kindly forget this trouble once Miss Harrington is married,” Jane said. “They are decent people, I assure you.”
Mr Darcy smiled kindly at Jane and said, “I think every family has at least one hasty wedding in its history. Once they are safely wed, Miss Bennet, I believe you may expect your neighbours’ memories to prove remarkably short.”
“Well said, sir,” Elizabeth replied. “But you surprise me. I should not have thought you quite so ready to forget the follies and vices of others.”
He turned his smile upon her. “When those follies and vices cause harm, Miss Elizabeth, I freely admit that I am not. Offences against myself or my family in particular, I find it almost impossible to forgive. But in such cases as the one of which we speak, where those I love best are not involved and the injury, if there is any, adheres largely to the participants, and where honour is restored by honourable action, there is naught for me to resent.”
“A sensible view, to my mind. I cannot disagree with it in any particular. I have a great sympathy for young Mr Harrington at present, as I think anyone with sisters must.”
The gazes of the cousins both slid towards Miss Darcy then.
She was not far away, laughing with Kitty and the Miss Longs.
“Yes,” Mr Darcy said, fixing her with an earnest gaze, “those of us with a young lady in our household, have we any sense at all, must feel how precious and delicate her reputation is, and how zealously we must guard it.”
Even to the point of concealing her indiscretions, thought Elizabeth, nodding to him in understanding.
“This, I believe, is the boundary with Longbourn,” Fitzwilliam said as he and Darcy stepped their horses through the broad, shallow wash of a stream.
Darcy looked about with interest, always curious as to the running of other estates.
They trotted along the paths around the fields, his critical eye noting a ramshackle fence here, an ill-ploughed furrow there.
He thought it would not take a great deal to increase the prosperity of the place, though it was hardly falling down about the family’s ears.
Perhaps now that the inheritance would be secured to descendants of Mr Bennet by the marriage of his daughter to Mr Collins, the man might find such improvements worth his time, Darcy hoped.
His cousin’s thoughts seemed to be running along an adjoining path, for he said, “A fair little place, this. I presume Bennet has implemented the Norfolk system.”
“His father did, as I recall. As has everyone who is not firmly mired in the ways of our great-grandfathers.”
Fitzwilliam laughed. “You will convince Lady Catherine one day; I am sure of it.”
“And I am not,” he retorted. “Longbourn is not a great deal smaller than Jordan Abbey, I think.”
“The Abbey is larger than Longbourn and smaller than Netherfield,” Fitzwilliam agreed. “Though it may well rival Netherfield in income once I have made my mark upon it.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose. “What plan have you hatched, Cousin?”
“The flocks are not profitable enough to justify their upkeep. As their wintering barn is, fortunately, close to the stables, I will sell the sheep, knock down the barn, expand the stables, and raise horses. Saddle-horses and hunters, to be precise. O’Leary and I shall train them ourselves, to begin with, and when the enterprise begins to yield a profit, I mean to hire a few old cavalrymen; let us hope this benighted war has ended by then. ”
Darcy nodded thoughtfully. “A man will pay a great deal for a good hunter, and there is always a market for a well-trained saddle-horse. Will you deal only in gentlemen’s mounts, or train some mares to the side-saddle?”
“I mean to train all the mares I do not keep exclusively for breeding to the side-saddle, for I recall how much trouble you had finding one suitable for Georgiana. Too many breeders put a side-saddle on a mare, trot it around a ring, and if it does not buck, they call it schooled.”
“Indeed.” Darcy patted his horse’s neck and said, “If you should like to put Zephyr here to stud, I would be pleased to oblige you in return for one of his offspring.”
“I will certainly take you up on that. I meant to ask once I had acquired a few mares, in any case.” His head swivelled to his right, where two ladies walking the path along the opposite side of the same field, carrying a large basket between them, had just appeared through an opening in the hedgerow.
“I do believe there are Miss Elizabeth and Miss Mary,” he said. “Shall we greet them?”
“The acuity of your vision continues to astound,” Darcy remarked, following Fitzwilliam onto the turning to skirt the south end of the field.
“Saved my life more than once on the Continent.”
They caught up to the ladies in short order, exchanging pleasantries and comments on the fineness of the morning. It was chill, but not near so cold as late December was capable of offering, and sunny. The ladies were pink-cheeked under their wool bonnets.
“What brings you so far afield?” the colonel enquired.
“A visit to a tenant family in need,” Miss Elizabeth replied. “There are seven children and insufficient funds, so we have made winter clothes for the little ones to add to our usual delivery of flour, cheese, and sundries.”
“You made the clothes yourselves?” Darcy asked. At Pemberley, such sewing as was required for tenants in difficulty was a task the maids undertook when the family was from home and their daily labours thereby reduced.
“We did. The servants at Longbourn are well occupied with the family’s needs,” she explained. “Mary does the greater portion of it, though Jane and I assist. I suppose we shall have to find more time for it when Mary leaves us,” she added with a smile at her blushing younger sister.
“I did not do much more than you and Jane,” she protested mildly.
“We ought not keep you standing out in the cold,” Fitzwilliam said. “May we escort you to your destination?”
The young ladies agreed and the gentlemen dismounted, leading their horses as the party walked a further quarter mile to a simple cottage, where they were met by a harried-looking woman with a babe in arms and a pair of little ones clinging to her skirts.
Her left cheek bore the fading remnants of a great bruise.
Yet more children spilled from the doorway to run about the yard.
Miss Elizabeth introduced them to Mrs Wallace and reduced the general clamour greatly by handing out sweets to the children old enough not to choke upon them.
The ladies then offered to carry the basket inside for her, but Mrs Wallace swiftly insisted that her elder children would do it.
Darcy noted Miss Elizabeth’s lips tighten for just a second before her cheerful demeanour reasserted itself.
Miss Mary reminded Mrs Wallace to send to the manor if her family had need of any assistance therefrom, and the visit concluded.
When they had gained a bit of distance from the cottage, Darcy remarked, “You were unhappy when Mrs Wallace would not admit you to her home.”
“Only because I know that meant Mr Wallace was within, nursing a sore head or possibly still inebriated from last night,” she replied in a clipped tone. He witnessed a simmering fury in the flash of her fine eyes, though she strove to conceal it.
“I see. And I imagine their family would require less aid from yours if he did not spend his coin on ale.”
“You imagine correctly.” She sighed. “Such cases are common, I know. I have no doubt you have encountered similar in your own neighbourhood.”
“On my own estate, in fact,” he agreed. “There is sadly little that may be done, so long as the land is being worked adequately. And it is worse when it is not, for one then has little choice but to refuse to renew the tenancy, which only puts the man’s dependants in a much worse position.”
“That is true. I should hate to see Mrs Wallace and her children turned from the estate, though it is no less than Mr Wallace deserves. I know very well that all I can do to alter their situation is appear with a basket from time to time, but that does not prevent me from fruitlessly wishing that I might discover some means of preventing him from indulging in drink.”
“One cannot cure all the ills of the world, however one might long to,” he agreed. “We can only do our best with the resources we have. I am certain Mrs Wallace takes comfort in the knowledge that you and your sisters are nearby and ready to assist.”
“I hope you are correct.”
Seeking a more congenial subject, he said, “I enjoyed meeting the Gardiners after church yesterday.” The tradesman and his wife had come as a bit of a shock, for Darcy had anticipated that the brother would echo his sister’s vulgarity, if not exceed it, but Mr and Mrs Gardiner had proved to be well-mannered.
Had he not possessed foreknowledge of the man’s business, he should have thought the couple well-to-do gentry.
This subject instantly raised a smile from Miss Elizabeth.
“They are among my favourite people in the world, and very dear to me. To Jane and myself, Mrs Gardiner has been the best and most constant example of what a lady ought to be; I have often wished she had been able to spend as much time with my younger sisters, but once she had children of her own, it was not possible.”
Darcy thought, but was sensible enough not to voice, that this went some way towards explaining the disparity in behaviour he had noted between the eldest two Bennets and the younger three.
“I look forward to knowing them better,” he said instead, and it was true, little as he might have believed it possible only days ago.
They parted at a stile over which the ladies must climb to return to Longbourn.
Mounted once more, the gentlemen turned their horses in the direction of Netherfield but kept them at a walk, both now in a contemplative mood.
“Fine ladies, those,” Fitzwilliam commented.
“Miss Mary surprised me, I must admit. I thought her the usual sort of prim and preachy girl, but she acts upon her professed beliefs, which I can only respect.”
“Indeed.” Darcy turned his head and watched as Miss Elizabeth followed her sister over the stile and disappeared from view behind the tall hedges.
All his doubts and confusion had melted away in the last half an hour.
He had been drawn to her liveliness and laughter, and naturally to her beauty as well, but now that he had glimpsed her heart, which could rage for the trials of a tenant woman, he knew he was lost. She would be the most excellent wife and mistress of his estate, and no doubt equally as fine a mother, if he could persuade her to accept the position.
Her foolish relations could be tolerated, perhaps more readily than his own, and his wealth would not suffer unduly from a bride without a large portion.
The treasure that was Elizabeth Bennet could not be valued in coin.
“How great a furore do you think would arise,” he asked his cousin with a blooming smile of delight at the rightness of his resolve, “if I were to marry Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
Fitzwilliam’s expression of stupefied surprise made Darcy laugh. “I think,” his cousin said after a moment, “that it would not be very great outside the family, and that if my own plans come to fruition, you would not bear the tempest alone. I am shocked you would seriously consider her, however.”
“I have thought of little else this past fortnight,” Darcy admitted. “But I am now convinced that there is no lady who would suit me or Pemberley better. The disadvantages attached to her situation are not so very great and may be managed.”
“I should say the mother and youngest sister are the greatest of those. They will both expect to be invited to London.”
“They will be disappointed, then. I cannot imagine Miss Elizabeth would wish to have them mortify her in society any more than I would. If I must receive them at Pemberley on occasion, I believe I can bear it.”
“Miss Kitty seems somewhat more restrained of late,” his cousin observed.
“With continued exposure to better company, she may prove rather delightful in time. In your position, I should leave the management of the Bennets to Miss Elizabeth—as you say, she will not wish to allow them to make a spectacle, either. This, of course, presumes you can win her. I sense your handsome face and sprawling lands will not be quite enough to convince her.”
Darcy knew that most eligible ladies would accept him should he deign to ask, and it had not truly occurred to him until that moment to question whether Miss Elizabeth would.
As soon as the question entered his mind, he understood that he did not wish for her to accept him merely because he was an excellent match; he wanted her to admire and cherish him as much as he did her.
He wanted that caring heart of hers to hold him above all others.
“Then I must woo her,” he replied firmly.
Fitzwilliam grinned. “I cannot express how much I anticipate witnessing that.”