I will return as quickly as I am able. Until then, know me to be, your devoted, faithful, Fitzwilliam
Darcy sealed his letter to Elizabeth and felt immediately more composed. She had become his touchstone, and writing to her seemed to bring her soothing influence to bear on his unsettled mood. He left the library and gave Perkins his letter to post, felt an urgency to have her receive his words of affection and instructed it be sent express, not without first reprimanding Perkins for his grave error the prior evening. “The consideration and reputation of your mistress must always be your foremost concern,” he insisted to the chastened servant. “Such an error in judgement cannot be repeated. I depend upon you, Perkins, to guard the good repute of this house.”
He was prepared now for the unpleasant morning that was ahead of him. He knew not in what mood his cousin would rise, but he foresaw nothing that was not uncomfortable and awkward.
Edward appeared in the breakfast room when Darcy had long since finished his food and was passing the time until he appeared reading the newspaper. Edward was more presentable, no longer the disconcerting dishevelled mess of the prior evening, but he looked unwell and depressed.
“How is your head, Edward?” Darcy inquired as his cousin took a seat at the table.
“Throbbing. How do those army types like Henry manage to consume so profligately and still function as an army?”
“Some fresh coffee is what you need.” Darcy instructed the staff to bring his cousin some fresh coffee and waited for Edward to begin in his own time. Edward appreciated his cousin’s patience. With food and coffee, finally feeling a little restored, he thought it best to proceed. He could hardly go on as if nothing problematic had occurred.
“How shall we begin, Darcy?”
Darcy shrugged his shoulder. “It is not for me to decide. I am not your keeper, Edward. Your mother entreated me to extract you from the Harrels, but there is no more I can do unless you ask it of me. I will not do such a thing again, you may be sure.”
“I should imagine it was rather distasteful.”
“To find you in such a state, with such company, certainly. You have never associated with such people before, have always been discreet and sober in your entertainments.”
“I thank you for importuning yourself so greatly, leaving Pemberley and coming to London simply to pull your drunken cousin from his despair,” he remarked with exceptional honesty.
“Your despair?”
Edward sunk his head into his hands and sighed deeply. “What have I done, cousin? What dreadful miscalculation? Committed for life to such a woman! My brother had forewarned me but I could not have imagined that it would turn so wrong so quickly. I did not seek some profound, poetic happiness in marriage, yet I certainly did not anticipate this bewildering despair.”
“Is it so bad between you?” he asked sympathetically.
“It would be preferable if it were bad, or angry, or vicious. She is entirely without emotion, cold and indifferent to everything. She is capable of sitting in a room for hours, perfectly composed and monosyllabic and utterly free of any occupation. She just sits, like a statue; it is utterly maddening. She is only animated at a table of cards, gambling large sums of money.”
“Last night you told me you could not abide another day at Highpointe Manor, but you understand that you must leave London before the situation is irreparable, before she begins losing large sums of money. You must return to Highpointe.”
“Alone with her at Highpointe? I cannot at the moment conceive of anything more wretched.”
“Surely you can find a domestic arrangement that offers you peace? You will not always be alone. You have many friends and acquaintances; she must as well. You will have visitors, you will make visits, and with time there will be children to provide your wife with a respectable diversion.”
“Children! I do not imagine I shall be a very attentive husband,” he replied mordantly. “No more than strictly required to produce an heir. A gentleman can always do what he must for an heir.”
Darcy let the coarse remark pass without commentary. “Why did you agree to go to Harrel’s? His reputation is abhorrent and you have always despised the crassness of such people. When we were all at university you regularly mocked him mercilessly for his vulgarity.”
“What was I to do? Go to Madame Lévesque whilst my wife went to gamble with Harrel and his wife?”
“I am sure other options were available to you, even at this time of year.”
Edward sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing, but he suspected it had nothing to do with the excessive amounts of wine and whiskey consumed over the prior evenings. “You must think me a very dissolute man, Darcy. I know what little forbearance you have for such behaviour.”
“I think you an unhappy man, and I wish it could have been different for you.”
“Ah, but it could have been.”
Darcy hesitated before inquiring. “Miss Vye?”
Edward responded bitterly. “It is no small, painless irony, Darcy. I abandoned Miss Vye for her brother’s vices and instead I have now a wife with the very same vices. I deserve my unhappiness for being so faithless. I cannot fault father; he thought he was doing the best for me and for the family. The wife I desired for myself was debased by her brother, the wife father chose for me is entirely discreditable. And yet how we all belittled your choice! But in truth you have been fortunate that your sentiments have not led you astray, for not all marriages made for love are so seemingly happily resolved as your own.”
“What will you do now?”
“I must leave London with my wife, as you say, before the situation becomes irreparable. If I sacrificed the woman I loved for reputation, I can hardly allow the wife I have to bring me disrepute. But I confess I cannot bear the thought of being alone with her at Highpointe Manor. Such a remote, secluded place.”
“Highpointe is very beautiful,” Darcy remarked, and thought of how his own wife would relish the thrilling environs of the Manor, the lanes that crossed the bluffs and stood high above the sea. “In any case, there is always Covingford.”
“Such a long journey from London and carriages are such confined spaces.”
“Rest at Pemberley on the way. Stay for whatever time you desire. You can be well distracted. Lady Catherine is to arrive presently with Anne.”
“That is hardly apt to make the scheme seem attractive, my dear fellow,” Edward responded mordantly.
“Perhaps, but I have as well a house full of guests at the moment, with some of whom you are acquainted; Hamish MacCleary, James Thorney and his wife. My wife’s sisters are also visiting with my friend Bingley. I have a handsome new stallion and the fishing has been very fine this summer. We will be shooting for grouse soon. There will be ample distraction, for both of you. Come to Pemberley, Edward, whilst you find your foothold.”
“Possibly.” Edward rose from his seat and began to pace the room.
“If not go to your sister at Matchem.”
“I could not bear Edith’s perfection at the moment and Norbury is always so occupied with his mysterious projects.” He stopped in the middle of the room and dropped down his chin to his chest. He was a vision of resigned misery. “I must simply carry on, mustn’t I?”
“You cannot allow despair to conquer you. You will make peace with this marriage and find contentment.”
“Under similar circumstances I am sure you would do just that, but you are a better man than I have ever been, Darcy.”
“My faults are simply different than yours. We should none of us think ourselves free of the ills of pride and prejudice, we should none be so arrogant to think ourselves in no need of improvement.”
“Right! In any case, I suppose I am saved from my heedless abandonment of all propriety. I must retrieve my wife and return to Grosvenor Square. Mother will be beside herself and father taken ill and my wife shall be entirely indifferent to the misery she has inspired.”
“
What more can I do for you?”
“You have done enough. You have reminded me of my dignity. Do not heed mother’s call again should it come. I cannot promise that your effort will result in improvement. You may go home to Pemberley secure in the knowledge that you have done your service.”
“I hope to see you and the Viscountess at Pemberley very soon following my own return.”
“We shall see, cousin.” Edward laid his hand on Darcy’s shoulder for a moment before walking to the door. “Darcy?” he inquired before quitting the room. “May I ask something without giving offense?”
“You may.”
“How did you know that your wife was not a common fortune hunter? That she was honourable and worthy of the sacrifice?”
“I have sacrificed nothing.”
Edward sighed. He saw before him Miss Lucy Vye’s pretty countenance, heard her angelic voice in song. “You must understand what I meant; all the trouble and nuisance of the family; all the heavy expectation and burdens of society and all that. How did you know she was worth forsaking what we had been taught from our earliest age was our irrevocable duty as eldest sons? We were not educated to marry for love; fortune, position, connections, this is what we were taught from the earliest age to desire in a wife. There is nothing heedless or reckless about you, Darcy. How did you know that to marry her was not a rash, dangerously sentimental choice?”
“At first I did struggle with all of that; most painfully. In the end, I was fortunate enough to learn that those expectations had nothing to do with me as a man. The expectations had to do with my station, my property, my income, and those things could not impose a duty upon me more significant than the duty I owed to myself as a man unless I chose to let them.”
“How did you come upon this wisdom?”
Darcy responded with a candour that surprised them both. “Not easily, I can assure you. My wife unambiguously refused my first offer of marriage,” Darcy stated evenly.
Edward turned to his cousin, an expression of powerful surprise and scepticism upon his mien. “Your first offer?”
“Yes.”
“That is impossible! A gentleman of your situation refused by a lady of hers? Absurd. Women of such modest means do not refuse offers of matrimony from gentlemen in possession of substantial fortunes.”
“Not commonly, I certainly did not anticipate that she would. I will not bore you with details that can be of no interest to you. Suffices to say, in her refusal I was, for the first time, judged solely as a man. Pemberley, my income, they were nothing to her; I was nothing to her until she could respect and admire me simply as a man. I perfectly well comprehend that marriages made for love are not all so happily resolved as my own. Had she accepted my first offer of matrimony neither should mine have been, for if she had accepted me from the first between us there would have been no respect and no trust. I married for love; you did not. But the success of my marriage is not for love, any more than this initial trouble in your own is for lack of the same. I am convinced that a marriage cannot be sustained relying solely upon the fervour of passion any more than it can when relying solely upon the commonality of interests. Without respect and trust no marriage, regardless of the terms upon which it has been established, can ever succeed.”
“That is all very well as far as it goes, Darcy, but it would appear your wife was not concealing disqualifying vices and debts. From your place of plenitude everything looks possible. I do sincerely congratulate you; I envy you. As you said, you have scarified nothing. Do not exercise pity on my behalf. I have indulged my wretchedness, allowed myself to cosset self-pity and remorse. No more. I will find my peace,” he added defiantly. “I am to be the Earl of Richmond. It is an old and noble line. I will not allow debt and disrepute to sully the noble name. Such disgraceful sentimental wallowing is done with. I will carry on.”
Edward departed the room without another word and Darcy suspected that he and his cousin would never again hold such a forthright conversation, suspected Edward would wrap himself in the cold civility of which they were all so capable and march forward, respectable, prominent and miserable. Darcy knew he had done right to follow his aunt’s bidding, but there was no more for him to do. Every man must abide his destiny and he must do so with fortitude to be worthy of its consequence, be that what it may.
As soon as Edward departed Portman Square to extricate his wife from the Harrels, Darcy gave instructions to prepare to return to Pemberley on the following morning. He would remain only enough time to call upon Lady Richmond and the Gardiners. He was eager to be restored to Pemberley, to enjoy the waning weeks of summer in Elizabeth’s company. It had been many years since he had spent the autumn quietly at home in Derbyshire. He looked forward to it with keen pleasure. He had no desire to return to London for the foreseeable future.
Chapter 34
Glad Return
Elizabeth looked across the drawing room at her husband and furrowed her brows; something was not well with him. He had returned to Pemberley earlier in the day and had maintained a strangely withdrawn air about him since. They had been alone together for but a moment, and though he had kissed her warmly in glad return, he seemed to be avoiding any possibility of meaningful private conversation. Even her father had come to her and inquired if all was well. “It is as though he returned to find your mother disturbing the peace of his drawing room; my dear Lizzy, such a demeanour is not what I am accustomed to seeing any longer.”
Even now, across the room with Mr. Thorney, there was something in his posture that reflected distraction and unease. Elizabeth excused herself from the conversation with Georgiana and Mrs. Ashton. She went to Darcy’s side and slipped her arm through his own.
“Do I disturb you gentlemen in a very important conversation?”
“Not at all, Mrs. Darcy. I was sharing with your husband how fervently my boys were disagreeing with each other at the stables this morning about which of them would be the superior horseman when they have grown. Just five and six years of age and already filled with braggadocio. It brought to mind when your husband and I were boys and he came to stay at Edgewood Hall for the first time. I believe we had the same on-going dispute regarding which of us was the better horseman.”
“What was Mr. Darcy like as a boy, Mr. Thorney? Was he filled with braggadocio?” she inquired with a playful smile.
“I shan’t tell stories out of school, for if I can tell stories to humble and embarrass, he can surely do the same. As for the rest, I suppose that he was neither more nor less conceited than the rest of us. We were all boys of a similar ilk at school.”
“Yes we were,” Darcy replied; “all of us blissfully ignorant of our ignorance, as I recall.”
“Not a few of our old school chums still are,” Thorney replied with a laugh. “Now if you will excuse me, I see Mrs. Thorney is summoning me from across the room. No doubt to request I satisfy some caprice. I would venture we are, if nothing else, all now wise enough to know when to heed the instruction of our wives.”
As Mr. Thorney stepped away to join his wife Elizabeth inquired of her husband, “Will you take a walk with me?”
“Now?” Darcy replied uneasily, gesturing with his hand to indicate the fully occupied room.
“We shall not be missed. In any case, Georgiana is every day a more capable hostess should anything be needed, and Jane is here with her. Did your friend not just aver that you are now all wise enough to know when to heed the instruction of your wives?”
“Indeed,” Darcy replied quietly. They quit the room through the doors to the terrace and went down into the gardens, walking for a time in silence. When they were at some distance from the house Elizabeth turned to Darcy and took his hand gently into her own. “I was wondering if you knew when my husband might return to me?”
Darcy furrowed his brow. “Pardon me?”
“You have returned very withdrawn and unsettled. Can this business with your cousin’s wife have so upset you that you take it so gravely
to heart?”
“My cousin appears returned to his senses. It is all in his hands now, as it ought to have been all along.”
“Then pray, what has you so quiet? Even now, alone with your wife and so uneasy?”
Darcy took a deep breath, looked away from her a moment. He spoke softly. “There is something you must be made aware of; I cannot in truth be easy until you are. Yet, it is entirely disreputable and I have no notion how to begin.”
“Simply say whatever it is directly,” she replied with a gentle smile.
“You received my letter from London.”
“Naturally,” she replied warmly, drawing him near, recalling the passionate adieu.
“In it I mentioned a most abhorrent incident had occurred.”
“This is what troubles you?”
“I would wish to forget it. It is very objectionable and distasteful to discuss it with you. Yet to not inform you would be an error.”
“Tell me whatever it is at once before I grow anxious. It cannot be so grave!”
He spoke at last in a restrained and cool manner. “After I retrieved my cousin from the Harrels, and returned home with him, Glencora Morris appeared in Portman Square and offered to become my mistress.”
Elizabeth stared at him in complete silence. Her countenance expressed nothing; there was an almost blank look of incomprehension. “Glencora Morris was in our home?” she said at last.
“Yes.”
“I do not understand.”
“It would appear she is a friend of Mrs. Harrel. She was at the Harrels when I went there in search of my cousin and we exchanged a few inconsequential words.”
“At the Harrels? That is certainly an unfortunate coincidence. How did she come to be in our home?” Elizabeth insisted.
Darcy took a deep breath. He was not pleased to be discussing this with his wife—would have preferred to let it go, forgotten and dismissed as the provocation merited, but in his scrupulousness, he could not allow her to be in ignorance of such a grave assault on the integrity of their marriage. He led her further up the garden path where there was a place she could sit. He explained to her more fully what had occurred with his cousin and how Glencora Morris came to be in their drawing room. He described that encounter as briefly and succinctly as possible.
To Teach the Admiring Multitude Page 37