To Teach the Admiring Multitude

by Eleanor Wilton

  Miss Bingley coloured deeply as Mrs. Thorney in all her rarefied beauty calmly quit the room. Miss Bingley turned her head and saw Sir Hamish quietly observing the exchange from his chair in the corner of the room. Mortified, she quit the room as well. Sir Hamish watched her leave. It had been some time since any young lady had aroused his interest, but he had no intention of seeking to take in matrimony a woman manifestly attached to another; twenty thousand pounds was not sufficient to sell his self-respect. As Darcy had so recently affirmed, gentlemen of their ilk need not sacrifice their hearts and he had no intention of disregarding such consequential direction. He resumed his reading. It was a most delightful piece of Franklin writing he had found in the library filled with witticisms and truisms. He began to read anew: Where sense is wanting. Everything is wanting.[16]

  In the garden the mood was proving more congenial.

  Darcy led Elizabeth to the rose garden with its neat closures that offered some privacy from observation. Immediately they were alone he turned to her with a most sincere apology. “I was exceedingly brusque with you earlier, very discourteous and in front of all our friends and family. You must allow me to apologize. I can offer no excuse for my boorishness.”

  “You were very abrupt.”

  “Such a commotion! You know I cannot abide to be gawked at so conspicuously. If a man cannot have peace in his own home, then where is he to find it?”

  Elizabeth found she could not maintain her displeasure in the face of such a boyish petulance. She lifted his injured hand and held it against her breast, shook her head and smiled forgivingly. “I was very concerned. Your hand! There appeared to be very much blood.”

  “It is no great injury; it does not merit such concern.”

  “You cannot expect that if I were to see you again in such a state that I would fret any less, if there be twice as many people standing about gawking and pointing and staring at the illustrious Mr. Darcy of Pemberley! Darling,” she added with evident grievance. “I was pained by your dismissal of my care, and to have you do so in front of so many certainly wounded my pride.”

  “It was not my intention to dismiss you, much less before others.”

  “I cannot deny it felt a stinging slight.”

  “Yet you forgive me?”

  “What would it serve to do contrariwise?” She inspected the bandaged hand she held within her own. “Will you not tell me what occurred? Is it very injured?”

  “You shall see for yourself when Hewitt changes the dressing it is nothing so grave. The underkeeper encountered a poacher early this morning and there was a scuttle. When I arrived it was all in hand. I cut myself carelessly on a trap. That is all. So you see, no need for such a great commotion.”

  “Fitzwilliam Darcy!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Do you truly not yet understand? You have always had a multitude of people to do things for you, but no one ever before to care for you. That is my prerogative, my privilege; regardless of any imperious protestations on your part, I shall always fuss and fret.”

  “Eliza,” he sighed. “My dearest, warm-hearted Eliza. How did a man so determinedly unforthcoming as I have long been, win the love of such a woman?”

  “You are the most generous, most loyal, warmest of men. Any person who has the privilege of truly knowing you will vouch for the truth of it. What harm if you did not keep it such a well-guarded secret from the world at large?”

  “Perhaps,” he replied with a small smile.

  They remained in the rose garden treasuring the sweet pleasure of reconciliation for a goodly time. Later that evening as the party of guests all gathered together before the meal, Mr. Darcy’s manner was finely altered and in the affection and solicitude towards his wife there was a new candour, as though he had at last learnt that he needn’t so carefully guard what was fortified from within.

  Mrs. Thorney, in a fit of petty meanness to which she was no stranger, could not resist the opportunity to further mortify Miss Bingley. “Such a charming pair they make, eh Miss Bingley; and they are so enamoured. To think, Mr. Darcy whisked her away this morning just so he could go kiss her in the rose garden. I saw it myself when I passed by as I was out earlier looking for my troublesome boys. Extraordinary, don’t you think?”

  “I cannot abide a gentleman infatuated,” Miss Bingley replied dismissively. “They lose all dignity.”

  “Nor can I. Infatuation is generally an inelegant and, as you say, undignified sentiment and whilst quite immediate, generally of short duration. A gentleman infatuated seems to me to have a singular sort of dementia.”

  “You surprise me, Mrs. Thorney,” Miss Bingley replied with evident satisfaction.

  Mrs. Thorney chuckled, gestured across the room. “Do not fool yourself, Miss Bingley. That is not infatuation. That is love, of a most absolute nature. And love should never be ridiculed.”

  “Love makes a pretty subject for a pretty sonnet, but beyond that it is just a sentimental distraction that leads people to make unwise and perilous choices,” she responded coldly.

  “Ah, Miss Bingley, I see you wish to be seen as no admirer of the finer sentiments. Be careful. I should not mock what is so influential. Entire dominions where armies and interests could hold no sway have been won or lost by love. And then, unrequited love seems to me particularly pitiable.”

  Miss Bingley made no reply, stared at Mrs. Thorney in disbelief and consternation.

  “You poor, misguided creature,” Mrs. Thorney murmured at last and went to join her husband across the room.

  “James, your wife is such a difficult creature, so petty and dissatisfied. How do you tolerate her with such equanimity?”

  “What now, Anne?” he replied listlessly, certain she was up to some mischief that served no purpose other than her own entertainment. She shrugged her shoulders and went to converse with Lord Enfield wondering, for not the first time, if it was indeed equanimity and not apathy that inspired her husband’s perpetual calm.

  Mr. Thorney watched his wife flirting openly and harmlessly with the Marquess. It troubled him not. She was a faithful, loyal woman and her flirtations were just another means of alleviating her constant boredom. He noted Lord Enfield looking at his wife with that indisputable admiration of her beauty to which she was so accustomed and so indifferent. He had once been powerfully under the influence of that beauty, marvelling at the harmony of her features and form, but her beauty had lost the ability to move him. He knew her too well now to mistake the outer perfection for a similar perfection of character. Concerned always with the impact of his father’s negligent management of Edgewood Hall it is true he had married the former Miss Anne Cartwright as much for her fine fortune as for her fine figure, but it does not follow that he married her without firm expectations of a warm and contented domestic life. Her charm had been less prickly in those early days and he had not anticipated that she would prove such a perplexing and contrarian woman, always so displeased with her situation and her options. She had, it seemed, an endless energy for studying her dissatisfaction.

  He recalled one afternoon when they had not long been married and she had come into his study at Edgewood Hall all pointed annoyance. His father had requested something of her that had displeased and offended. “James, I shall always do as is required without complaint and with sufficient poise and propriety to satisfy your reputation,” she had begun without preamble. “But do not expect me in the privacy of this Hall to subjugate my opinions to your father’s will or to tolerate with patient composure your tiresome and insipid sisters. This Hall may not yet be your own, but I will not, until that time, be silent, obedient chattel to the house where I am required to abide.”

  It had been the moment he had recognized that he had known nothing of her true character when they married and his visions of a cheerful, tranquil, contented existence at the Hall had begun to languish and dissipate. Her relations with his father and sisters were of perpetual strain, but between themselves they lived together well enough and he had no substan
tial complaints—she indeed always did what was required with poise and propriety. Yet there was that inescapable, quiet, persistent disappointment; a want of affinity between them; a poverty of true confidences; a nagging lack of peace and real harmony; a suspicion that at any moment indifference or enmity could replace the brittle amiability that existed between them now.

  He looked across the room to where Darcy sat conversing with his wife. Darcy’s friends had all been greatly surprised by his choice of a wife. If he did not acquiesce to marry the heiress cousin it was generally known his family wished him to marry, it had been expected by all that he would make a most brilliant match. He had always been so aloof and fastidious as regards the fairer sex—indeed had in recent years seemed never to look at a woman but to find a blemish. None could have anticipated he would be the one within their circle to succumb to a love match. He had seemed the least susceptible to passion’s persuasion. His friends had considered his marriage indisputably risky—a marriage purely of inclination with a woman from entirely outside their circle and quite lacking in any substantive advantages could not be viewed otherwise. Yet Thorney now believed the risk had been very much worth the taking. Whilst he had found Mrs. Darcy handsome and amiable when she was first introduced about town, it was only over these days at Pemberley, in which a greater intimacy with her ways could be learnt, that Thorney came to fully respect Darcy’s choice. Mrs. Darcy offered to his friend qualities his own indolent and spoilt wife lacked, qualities that seemed to ensure a sincere pleasure in domestic life completely wanting in his own case. She had intelligence and good-humour, unaffected grace, kindness, and an engaging, warm disposition that promised daily enjoyment of her companionship. Mr. Thorney desired nothing more from life than a peaceful, contented existence at Edgewood Hall with his sons and his horses; he saw that his friend was to have precisely that at Pemberley.

  Chapter 28

  A New Understanding

  Mr. Darcy could not recall a time when he had felt so light in spirit and he recognized within his manners and outlook a welcome improvement, as if he was releasing from his private, long cultivated restraints the very best of his nature. He felt charitable, generous, forbearing of the follies and imperfections that had once grated so powerfully against his patience. Indeed, Elizabeth had noted a winning, subtle softening of his manner of late and when she had last written to Dr. Hodgson, with whom she was now as regular a correspondent as Darcy himself, she had told him of the same with loving amusement. We are having a truly splendid summer, she wrote; I only wish your health allowed you to be one more of this delightful party. Could you but see our dear Darcy! You would be more than gratified to observe that in what I readily claim as his great happiness, his obstinate ‘Fitzwilliamness’ is in steady retreat and his beautiful Darcy heart is threatening at every moment to retire the same for evermore.

  On this morning he was in particularly high spirits. The doctor had seen Elizabeth and confirmed she continued in excellent health and her pregnancy progressing more than satisfactorily. The incident with the poacher had been quickly resolved, his hand was on the mend, and their summer party was proving as agreeable as one could hope for. What is more, he saw Georgiana every day becoming more confident and easy in company. Elizabeth had assured him that his sister needed only to be in more company to learn to be more confident, that she had been too much alone. He regretted that in his desire to protect her he had perhaps gone too far, but was grateful that it had not been too much for rectification. She was maturing into a very fine young lady and he now recognized how in need she had been of trusted female companionship. He was profoundly grateful that she had found in Elizabeth a true sister; he could not have been happy with his wife and sister in discord. He was only a little concerned for Lord Enfield’s intentions towards Georgiana. Although the Marquess’ presence was as entirely discreet as promised, Darcy could see that when in his company Georgiana became visibly discomfited and retreated to her hitherto customary timidity.

  He had just left the gentlemen at the stream fishing and was walking back to the house to meet with his steward. It was a lovely summer day, and all around him the grounds of Pemberley were verdant and blooming. As his long and graceful strides took him towards the house he was humming quietly under his breath, a habit he had as a young boy and which he did not recognize he had recently begun to recuperate.

  Darcy turned into the lane and he saw Kitty looking very lonely and forlorn sitting on a bench that sat under the shade of a large oak tree. She looked so small and lost under the branches of the noble tree that he was surprised by sudden feelings of sympathy. He approached her.

  “May I join you a moment?”

  She looked up and shrugged her shoulders. As he sat at her side, Kitty realized that in all the course of their acquaintance they had never sat in such close proximity. She was so uncomfortable in his presence she customarily placed herself as at great a distance from him as possible. He was taller than she realized, had a far more handsome profile than she had before admitted, and smelled of freshly laundered clothing.

  “It is a lovely day,” he offered. Again she made no response. “I trust you have been comfortable here at Pemberley.”

  “Who could not be, sir?”

  “And yet, you are not pleased with it.” Kitty shrugged again. Customarily Darcy would have been irritated by her ill-mannered response, but something in her expression had roused his compassion. “Are you unwell, Kitty?”

  Kitty looked up into his face with surprise. He had never before addressed her simply as Kitty and it made her feel immediately more at her ease. It occurred to her that for all Bingley’s amiability he never asked her such a simple question. He teased her good naturedly, but never truly asked after her. Indeed, nobody ever seemed to ask after her.

  “I am well,” she replied at last.

  “But you are unhappy.”

  He spoke in a voice of such brotherly kindness, with such an unforeseen gentleness that tears suddenly rose to Kitty’s eyes and she found herself responding with sincerity. “I have been thinking that no one thinks well of me.”

  “I do not understand,” he replied in the same gentle tones, although he suspected he understood perfectly well. Surrounded at Pemberley by society superior to what she was accustomed to at home she was doubtless for the first time aware of her inadequacies and he thought it promising that she was. And then, their friends had not embraced her; she was an unpolished presence to which they paid little mind. Only her sisters and Georgiana spared her any notice.

  “I am not as stupid and without capacity as people think,” Kitty responded with sudden lucidity.

  It was now Darcy who was surprised, at her discernment and at his own sympathy for the unappreciated young lady. “It is not agreeable to discover that what we believe ourselves to be is not always how others perceive us,” he replied. “I understand entirely.”

  “You?” she responded inelegantly. How could Mr. Darcy, with all his formidableness, with his grand house and elegant manners and ten thousand pounds a year, how could he understand her?

  “Not all of us have a talent for recommending ourselves to strangers, the ability to easily present our best selves forward, even to our friends and relations. You need only decide who that is in your own case and make the effort to improve.”

  “My best self?”

  “Yes, your best self.”

  “I am not sure I know who that is,” she replied honestly.

  Her tone was so pitiable that Darcy found himself wanting to protect her and guide her. She seemed suddenly a very lonely and lost figure. “I can tell you who she is not. She is not an imitation of one of her sisters or anyone else she might admire. What do you have inside that you would like others to see, to recognize when they hear the name Miss Catherine Bennet? That is the young lady you should strive to always be. It is difficult to alter how we behave so that others may value us as we would wish them to, for others to see our true, best selves, but I can ass
ure you it is well worth the effort. The rewards are immeasurable.”

  She reflected on his words for a moment and looked up into his face again. He was gazing at her with a mild compassion utterly free of the judgement and censure she had long considered his fixed expression. “Mr. Darcy,” she declared quietly, “no one has ever spoken to me before with such consideration and concern.”

  Sadly, he imagined it was true. Mr. Darcy supposed that in the greater family circle Kitty had always been a little lost in the shuffle of her more assertive and captivating sisters. Even Mary, for all her pedantic preposterous manner, never was shy at demanding her moment. He recognized as well that she must feel herself very much outside the bonds of confidence that so strongly united Elizabeth and Jane. He replied with gentleness. “What I have said was certainly kindly meant and I hope advantageous as well.”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Darcy,” Kitty exclaimed spontaneously.

  “What do you have to be sorry for?”

  “For having thought all this time you were such an unpleasant man.”

  To her great surprise, Darcy laughed softly, smiled at her. His smile was filled with such warmth, his expression with such sympathy, that she was mortified by all the ungenerous things she had said and thought about him; she was ashamed that she had given her own sister so little credit and that she had so easily and often disparaged her marriage to this man. Kitty realized that she had never taken the trouble to know him at all. How entirely prejudiced she had been against him and his marriage to Elizabeth.

  “You must allow me to apologize as well, Kitty.”

  “For what?”

  “For not making you feel more welcome in your own sister’s home.”

  “I feel very welcome now,” she responded with sincerity.

  “Good. I am glad of it. Now if you will excuse me, I do have business inside with my steward.”

  As he rose to leave, Kitty was filled with a determination and eagerness that was entirely new and pleasing. “Mr. Darcy,” she cried before he could leave. “I will try to do just as you say.”