No Thank You, Mr Darcy

by Lucy Tilney

  “Are Caroline and Louisa being pleasant?”

  “Louisa is. She and Reggie offered Netherfield for the reception without being asked. I think being Lady Hurst has softened her up a bit and she feels she can be magnanimous. Caroline is too busy dealing with her own demons. There was a rumour going around that Darcy was engaged to Lady Claire de Bourgh and Caroline confronted her and called her names in public. It was all pretty dreadful and resulted in Caroline being bodily removed from Harrods.”

  Elizabeth gasped. She could imagine Caroline being exceedingly nasty given a chance but the idea of her embarrassing herself publicly to the point of being physically removed from a shop was astonishing.

  “…then there was a row with Louisa over it. Lord de Bourgh gave Reggie a bit of a dressing down at their club as if poor Reggie can be expected to control Caroline. We were all in Mrs. Bingley’s house in York when Reggie rang to tell Louisa about it and she stormed into Caroline’s room and Caroline flew out and started shouting at her mother. I didn’t know where to put myself, Lizzy, I had to go out and wander in the Minster for a couple of hours. When I got back Caroline had locked herself in her room, Louisa and her mother were fighting, and Charles had been called to mediate. I still have no idea what any of it was about but Caroline has been terribly spikey and barely civil ever since.”

  As Elizabeth's whole opinion of Caroline Bingley could be filed under 'Narrow-minded, Snotty, B-witch' she found it hard to sustain interest beyond the initial thrill of Caroline making herself ridiculous in a department store. She had no wish to know the gritty details of the Bingley family upsets and changed the subject. After all, she too had a great deal to say on the subject of weddings.

  PEMBERLEY

  She settled down at her desk to read the several editions that had been printed while she was having other adventures. Thank heavens for all the writing she had done ‘just because’ and all the interviews she had written up ‘just in case’. As she toyed with the idea of telling the Gardiners before her parents simply for the sake of letting them know she wouldn’t be staying the telephone rang and Lily put through a call from her father.

  “Well, Lizzy,” he said and she could hear the familiar sound of him tapping his pipe against his coffee cup, “I have good news and bad news. Which do you prefer?”

  “Good news, please.”

  “Your grandpapa’s paintings will let me cover Jane’s wedding to your mother’s specifications without going into debt. If I take things more in hand and no more of you get married for a year or two we should be back a-okay. The bad news, you might as well hear it, is that Lydia tells me she has a job. I find it difficult to believe anyone would employ Lydia for anything and I’ve seen no evidence of applications. She gets letters certainly but always in a feminine hand and probably from whatever silly girls she can keep in with from Meryton. I tell you, Lizzy, if she’s up to any nonsense someone else will have to take her in next time.”

  As she listened Elizabeth leafed idly through a copy of the ‘Tatler’ Lily had left and thought of the letter that had made Lydia so excited. Her heart dipped because there on the page in front of her was George, dashing as always in a morning coat and top hat, marrying the Honourable Miss Mary King. She sighed. How could Mary King with all her brains not see through him? Poor, poor woman!

  On Friday afternoon in a lightweight lavender wool suit and a hat that Jane had painstakingly embroidered with purple heartsease Elizabeth arrived in Lambton. She couldn’t help but smile as she looked out at the clean sandstone station building with its baskets of trailing flowers and bustling porters in the green and black livery of the Buxton and Peaks Railway Co. Darcy had told her that while he only had a few shares in the LNER he did own the BPRC outright hence she had had a flower-filled carriage to herself since changing trains at Derby, silver service afternoon tea, and her personal porter to manage her bags. Queen Mary herself might envy such style!

  She had expected Darcy to be on the platform to meet her and as the train had pulled around a long bend into Lambton she had taken off her hat and risked hair and complexion for a glimpse of his tall figure. In that, however, she was disappointed for as the porter - her own porter, Neville Reynolds - handed her down from the carriage she saw only Annette and Anne.

  Annette was the first to rush towards her and in her anxious look and too tight embrace Elizabeth suspected her sang-froid had begun to melt and the true emotional import of being so dramatically reunited with her family and place in life was beginning to reveal itself. Anne stood back and Elizabeth was conscious that the whole station - or at least two porters, the station master’s wife, an old woman with a basketful of squawking chickens, two men in bowler hats and pinstripes, and a gaggle of straw-hatted schoolgirls - had all stopped to look at her.

  “Would you drive that blasted train, Walter!” roared a guard waving a green flag furiously at the 11.55 to Harrogate which had failed to leave the station because the driver and the stoker were craning their necks out of the engine. Elizabeth blushed, bit her lip, and tried not to laugh as she stepped out on to the pavement and into a crowd of townspeople who had obviously heard the future Mrs. Darcy had arrived. Neville Reynolds loaded her luggage into the waiting Bentley and hopped in front with the chauffeur.

  Lambton was a cobble-stoned, picture postcard town with thatched cottages, a Queen Anne inn, blue and white striped awnings over the shops, and hanging baskets of flowers on almost every lamp-post. Outside the police station under its blue lamp stood a handsome gent with a handle-bar moustache (George's cousin, surely), and on the steps of the Town Hall, two elderly ladies were in deep in earnest conversation perhaps discussing how to safely remove Georgiana's knitted moustache from Queen Victoria's portrait. Five minutes later the car reached a road flanked with apple trees where mossy stones passed for pavement and a few old men doffed their caps and beyond that there was a drive through light woodland. Then Annette asked the driver to slow down to give Elizabeth her first view of Pemberley stretched out in the afternoon sunshine across an ornamental lake sunk so long ago that nature had entirely forgotten artifice had anything to do with it.

  She pushed open the door and stepped out. No-one, not the prim chauffeur or the helpful Neville Reynolds attempted to assist her, and she stood by the side of the road drenched in wonder. The house was Elizabethan and stretched in glorious burnt ochre splendour the breadth of the lake and for at least two acres behind it. The moss-encrusted tiles were the colour of the russet marygolds the pious Susanna Darcy, one time lady-in-waiting to Good Queen Bess, had planted in the exquisite, geometric herb garden stretching off to the east encroached upon by lilac trees and great banks of lupins. It had never been modernised or 'improved', no Mr. Repton nor Mr. Crawford had ever got his hands on it, no status conscious Victorian had ever rebuilt it, no-one nouveau-riche had ever owned it; it stood as a testimony to some of the oldest and most confident money in Europe.

  “Tell me it's not some English Germelshausen,”1 she breathed to Anne de Bourgh who had got out of the car to stand beside her. Catch her perhaps.

  Anne laughed, “I promise you, my dear one, it is all quite real. I was here as a tiny girl watching those white climbing roses being planted to celebrate the coronation of King Edward.”

  As they pulled up at the stone arched front door with the white roses tumbling in abundance over it Elizabeth imagined she saw Charles’ car taking off furiously down the long drive behind them. It couldn’t be. She resolved to check with Darcy but suddenly every moment was crowded. Almost the full complement of staff had assembled to meet her, all with baited-breath and insatiable curiosity, and she was stabbed by a pang of fear at the idea that these women (somehow the men were not an issue) who had served duchesses and maharanis and the daughters of earls would not be impressed by a magazine writer from a provincial town.

  Impressed or not, she was treated at least as well as Princess Maud ever could have been. Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper, showed her around a fraction
of the house talking all the way about what an excellent master Mr. Darcy was, and at the end of it, she had sore feet not being shod for miles of gallery and corridor but a very full heart. A quick cup of Earl Grey (quick by the standards of a house that knew nothing but the greatest formality despite its master’s assertions that the family were capable of getting their own breakfast) set her up for the tour of the stables, the water garden, the flower terraces, and Lady Anne’s conservatory which made Syon House look rather humble.

  To her utter relief, as she sank into an enormous velvet sofa in a room with peacocks and pomegranates carved on its ancient wood-panelling which Anne assured her was the ‘little drawing room’ although the main drawing room at Longbourn would fit in a third of it, her beloved finally appeared. Something, anticipatory wifely wisdom perhaps, prevented her from even teasing him about being left in the care of cousins and caretakers, but if she had hoped for a few minutes alone it was denied her. He had brought with him the elderly and venerable Mlle Jacob, his mother’s lady’s maid who had come out of retirement to be hers until a permanent one could be found. She smiled wanly at him having hoped for a small, informal meal - even to the extent of wishing Anne and Annette elsewhere. Finally, after many, many pleasantries the door clicked and Mlle Jacob’s heels did too until the tiled floor gave way to Turkish carpet and they were, at last, alone.

  “You look tired, my sweet,” she traced her fingertips longing across his cheek, “do we have to dress and have an elaborate dinner?”

  He kissed the palm of her hand and held it against lips for a moment, “I’m fine. Please forgive me for not being at the station. I fully intended to be and then Charles appeared. He refused to stay for dinner but he sends you his love.”

  She blanched then reddened, “To do with Jane?”

  “No, no, not Jane. We can discuss it some other time. Now I must away and hope my under-valet is on top of his job as Sibley has let me down by running away to get married and won’t return for a fortnight…” he winked, “…Mlle Jacob and she is always Mademoiselle, by the way, never Jacob, will have your bath prepared by now, I imagine.”

  “Evening ensemble, oh Fitzwilliam…”

  And then, to her absolute dismay, she discovered the entire county had been invited to dinner by the criminally unromantic Anne and it wasn’t until after 11.00 that she and Darcy stood on the front steps as a caravan of stately cars worked its way ponderously down the drive to goodness knew where and only goodness cared. Charles was forgotten.

  “All these people!” she cried staggering into the great hall where Hudson was directing an even more exhausted footman ahead of them into the ‘little drawing room’ with a pot of hot chocolate.

  “These, my love, were the massed dignitaries of Derbyshire. Sir Charles Austen, the Lord Lieutenant of the County with his wife, Lady Berengaria, daughter of the Earl of Bencorrum; Sir Harold and Lady Winstanley of Fotheringham Grange; Colonel and Mrs. Pickering; Lady Amerilda Scott-Ponsonby-Harrison; the Earl and Countess of Hattiscolme; General and Lady Tilney; the Right Reverend Bishop of Lambton and Buxton and his wife, my cousin Philadelphia; Lady Flavia Trefussis and...”

  “Stop... stop... don’t be so literal… I know their names,” she cried, collapsing on a sofa and kicking off her shoes. “But what on earth possessed Anne to invite them all to dinner and why didn't you stop her?”

  Darcy's assurances that he had no idea that Anne had assumed the role of hostess and organised a dinner party for thirty-five people fell on deaf ears. Elizabeth was exhausted and miserable and so she continued until the thought occurred to her that she might have got all her society socialising over with in one swoop after which she was inclined to regard her fiancé in a more charitable light.

  “Why,” she asked, as the elaborate grandfather clock permitted its little lady to pirouette midnight, “did you use Fatty Willikins as a go-between with the bishop regarding Mr. Annesley?”

  “Fatty...” he began chuckling and laid down the tumbler of Scotch he had been holding, “what did call him?”

  “Fatty Willikins, he was, um, a cherub of a baby… Rector of Holy Trinity... Sgt Collins... the Reverend William Randolph Arbuthnot Collins BA, Oxon... whatever one cares to say. My idiot cousin.”

  He chuckled and snuggled in closer caressing a strand of hair off her forehead and back into the diamond and peridot chaplet he had left on her dressing table as one of many welcome gifts, “Two reasons, my love, the first being that Mr. Collins no matter how much of a buffoon he may be, did not deserve my rudeness at the Netherfield Christmas ball and I have long wanted a way to recompense him. I should have been gentleman enough to listen to whatever he was saying, and later too in the Spotted Dog where Charles dragged me for an ale and where we found the poor man all alone and left him so.”

  Because he's an obnoxious twit, rolled off Elizabeth's tongue unsaid.

  “So, hearing that Bishop Thirlwaite was rather inexplicably fond of him, I fed two birds with one scone as my mother used to say. I gave Mr. Collins a crib sheet of all the right things to say to His Grace thereby getting Mr. Anneseley a new position and giving Mr. Collins the credit of recommending him.”

  Elizabeth poured herself another chocolate, it was tepid but as Lydia would say, deevie.

  “Cousin William deserves everyone's rudeness everywhere but if you are not in the good books of a bishop, my love, you'd better tell me why before we go any further.”

  “Spoken like a true rector's cousin,” he said ducking as she aimed last week's ‘Radio Times’ at his head, “but Bishop Thirlwaite doesn’t like me. I stole his Greek prize.”

  “Aha, so that’s your deep, dark secret. You sneak into episcopal palaces in the wee sma’ hours and deprive elderly clerics of their treasures. Like Raffles without the glamour.”

  “You could say that, but in this case, it’s a bit more mundane. Dr. Thirlwhaite held the honour of the best Greek pupil at Matlock Prep School for forty years until 1905 when I improved on his grade.”

  “Mr. Darcy, are you telling me the truth?”

  “Miss Bennet, of course. The whole truth, however, is another matter. Around a year ago I chanced to meet the bishop in Whites’ and when we were introduced he told me, with a twinkle in his eye that he had always wanted to meet me. He is an international Greek scholar and my besting him at prep school at the age of ten is the only time in his life anyone has. He then, good man that he is, braved impropriety by asking me to have a word with my aunt about some of her more extreme views. I am afraid, in my pre-Elizabeth pride, I took it dimly. He now views me in a similar light and I could not ask him a favour yet I think our family owes Mr. Annesley something so I approached Mr. Collins to be my go-between. He was so grateful I couldn’t bear to hear the words ‘thank you’ for several days afterwards.”

  “And how is your Greek now?”

  He chuckled, “Let’s just say the good bishop needn’t worry about me. The most I can hope is to fare better with your father than I did as an undergraduate.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Halfway through the Lent term of 1911, he asked me to never darken the doors of his department again!”

  “Oh, Fitzwilliam! It hadn’t occurred to me before that you knew my father but, of course, Cambridge is a very small world.”

  “My father wanted me to read ancient history and I preferred modern, I am no classicist I am afraid. In the end, everyone was happy. I studied what I wanted, my father saw me graduate from his old college, and your father never had to see me again. And, in retrospect, I learned a valuable lesson because when I knock on that study door in Longbourn in a few weeks I won’t have to pretend to quake. I already know how fierce he can be. Now, shall I carry you to your room or do you think we’ll shock Hudson?”

  “I don’t think much could shock a butler of his age, but allow me the pleasure of staggering violently against Anne’s door.”

  Anne, however, was sleeping the sleep of one who knows she has done virtuously an
d short of driving a chaise and four down the corridor Elizabeth could not have woken her.

  1 The German fairy tale that inspired Brigadoon.

  JANE’S WEDDING

  Phoebe Bennet was a happy woman on the day she attended the wedding of her most deserving daughter. Forgotten were the rivalries with Mrs. Bingley and forgotten was the injustice of seeing Edith Leigh and May Oliver as bridesmaids instead of Mary and Kitty. Mary had unsubtly informed Jane that while she wished her all the joy in the world she would rather do it from a pew and Kitty had gone in a pique when she understood Edith Leigh had been asked before her. Elizabeth as chief bridesmaid wore lavender and the other two lilac and all four carried bouquets of white roses.

  Georgiana arrived driving a buttercup yellow Stutz Bearcat and wearing a concoction of lemon chiffon. She drove both her uncle and newly discovered aunt and why was anyone’s guess but no-one had time to care. Darcy had chosen the last possible moment to arrive, just before Phoebe had hysterics and just after Louisa had discreetly asked Sir Reginald to step in and take his place as best man.

  It was a short walk as Orchard House was even closer to the church than Longbourn House so Jane was accompanied by all her sisters, most of her old school friends, some of them with little daughters, and most of the small girls of the village all gainfully employed holding posies or scattering petals. It was a merry, flowery procession led by a young Lucas playing a recorder and Jane herself in a simple, modern, pearl-embroidered dress.

  The Right Reverend Dr. Thirlwaite who had baptised Jane as a baby in Cambridge performed the ceremony wreathed in, almost, as many smiles as the bride and Mr. Annesley, released from servitude to Lady Catherine, preached on the virtuous woman whose price is above rubies.