Suspense and Sensibility: Or, First Impressions Revisited

by Carrie Bebris

  “Mr. Dashwood visited them last month?” he said.

  She refolded the note and set it beside the portable writing desk she’d been using in the parlor when the post arrived. An unfinished reply to Jane’s last lay on top. “I intend to enquire after the particulars when Mrs. Ferrars calls, but apparently he indeed went to Devonshire, just as he claimed.”

  Darcy shook his head. “Impossible! I saw him in his own window during the period he maintains he was away.”

  “You saw someone in the window. Are you quite sure it was Mr. Dashwood?”

  “I made no mistake.”

  “From two stories below? Come now, Darcy. Are you that infallible?”

  “Yes.” Though he made the assertion in a confident tone, he reconsidered his memory of the sighting. The figure’s build, his height, his coloring—it had been Mr. Dashwood. “Yes,” he repeated.

  She regarded him skeptically.

  “You do not believe me?”

  “If you are certain, then I believe you.” Her expression growing pensive, she tapped her quill against the blotter. “I merely contemplate that if it was, in fact, Mr. Dashwood standing in the window, we are hard-pressed to account for how he traveled to Devonshire and back so quickly. Delaford is three days’ journey from here, and your call at his townhouse perfectly divided the nine days he claims to have been gone.”

  Confronted with the logistics, Darcy sought an explanation. “He could have traveled straight through, stopping only to change horses.”

  “A dangerous proposition. Visiting his relations hardly seems an urgent enough errand to warrant risking a midnight encounter with highwaymen. And even if he did travel at such a pace, the timing of your sighting means he had less than five days’ time on either side to make the trip there and back again. He would have been required to turn around directly he arrived, leaving him no opportunity to conduct whatever business took him there.”

  “Assuming he left London and returned when he says he did.”

  “He claims to have departed early on Friday the fourteenth and returned late the Saturday next.” She put aside her letter to Jane and pulled out a fresh sheet of writing paper. With a few dips of her pen, she sketched out a rough calendar. “You called on Tuesday at what hour?”

  “Half past three.”

  She made a notation in Tuesday’s box. “We know he returned Saturday because he came straight here, looking as if he’d just been traveling.”

  “He could have returned earlier and made himself appear travel-weary for his call.”

  “Regardless, we know he was in town by Saturday evening.” She wrote as much on the page. “That’s closer to four days than five between your observation of him and his appearance here—simply not enough time for him to have made the trip after you saw him.”

  “Then he must have left and returned before Tuesday afternoon.”

  “He maintains that he departed Friday morning too early to take leave of Kitty. Even if he set out at some ghastly hour . . .” She scowled at her annotations. “I simply do not see how it is possible. Besides, did not someone else claim to have seen him Friday night? That gentleman at your fencing club looking for Mr. Dashwood?”

  “Longcliffe?” When Darcy had encountered him, he’d said he confronted Dashwood at the Pigeon Hole late the night before. “Yes, Longcliffe’s meeting would have happened on Friday. I heard of it while waiting for Chatfield, and we meet on Saturdays.”

  “His testimony curtails Mr. Dashwood’s travel period even further. And we have not even considered all the sightings of Mr. Dashwood that others reported that week.” She set aside her pen and rubbed her temples. “Unless Harry harnessed an eagle to his carriage, I do not know how he managed the journey.”

  “Mrs. Edward Ferrars arrives on the morrow. Surely additional information from her will enlighten us. If she calls as soon as she is settled, we can look for her perhaps as early as Saturday.”

  So intensely did his wife study her paper that Darcy was not sure she heard him.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She withdrew a second sheet. “I am not certain I can wait that long.”

  Twenty

  “She has done with her son, she has cast him off forever, and has made all those over whom she had any influence, cast him off likewise.”

  —John Dashwood to Elinor,

  Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 41

  Elizabeth set out for St. James’s Street within ten minutes of receiving Elinor’s communication of her arrival in London. She’d sent a note to the Brandons’ townhouse begging leave to call upon Mrs. Edward Ferrars at her earliest convenience, and in turn had been invited to come immediately. She hoped the Delaford party would not consider her eagerness illmannered, but the more she pondered the questions surrounding Harry’s Devonshire visit, the more quickly she needed to have her puzzlement abated.

  Elinor greeted her warmly in the drawing room, where Edward also waited. After hearing Elizabeth’s apologies for intruding on the couple so soon, and dismissing them as entirely unnecessary, Mrs. Ferrars immediately introduced the subject of Harry.

  “The exigency of your call relates, I presume, to our nephew. Has something further occurred since your letter to us in Delaford?”

  A twinge of conscience admonished her for allowing her own impatience to cause them undue anxiety. “Not to my knowledge. Mr. Dashwood is, however, so unpredictable of late that one can never be certain when another tale of his exploits will circulate.”

  “I sensed in your letter that you hesitated to disclose all the information in your possession.”

  “I did not know how you would respond to the intelligence. And, indeed, Mr. Darcy knows more particulars than I. Many of Mr. Dashwood’s alleged transgressions, I am given to understand, are so very shocking that my husband will not describe them to me. Merely from what I myself have witnessed, I would caution anyone who takes benevolent interest in Mr. Dashwood to prepare for a distressing next meeting, for you will find him much altered from the gentleman who entertained us at Norland. But you said in your letter that you have seen him since then?”

  “He called upon us a month ago,” Elinor said. “It was a very sudden visit—he arrived so soon after his letter stating his intention to come that he might have saved us the postage and delivered it himself.”

  “Do you recall the date of his arrival?”

  Elinor and Edward exchanged glances. “It was a Sunday—the sixteenth, I believe,” Edward said. “I had just finished services.”

  “May I ask what errand brought him to you?”

  “He wished to talk about Norland,” Elinor said. “People and things I remembered from the period I lived there, or that I might have recalled others mentioning. He had recently explored Norland’s attics and wanted to know the origin of some of the items he had discovered. Many were pieces that graced Norland’s rooms until my father passed away, but that Fanny did not care for. Others I had no memory of, and referred him to my mother.”

  “Did Mr. Dashwood call upon your mother, then?”

  “Yes, and Marianne, as well.”

  “On the same business?”

  “Yes. He also asked numerous questions about my father and our uncle Albert Dashwood—their temperaments and deportment, their voices and manners of expression, their interests and amusements—the essentials of their characters, I suppose. He enquired, too, about Sir Francis Dashwood, and whether Papa or Uncle Albert had spoken of him.”

  “Had he ever expressed curiosity on these points before?”

  “Not to me, but of course we have had little previous opportunity for such conversations. I do not know whether he asked my brother about any of his Dashwood relations before John’s death. At the time of Harry’s visit, I thought my nephew had merely developed an interest in the estate and lineage he inherited, and I was glad of it. But seen in the light of your report about this Hell-Fire business he’s become involved with, I think we instead witnessed the infancy of an obsession with
our notorious ancestor.”

  “In your letter, you said that he seemed different from what he had been at Norland just a fortnight earlier?”

  “He did not look altogether well to me—tired, which I presumed to derive from the rapidity of his journey. Would you not agree, Edward?”

  Her husband nodded and sat forward. “The fatigue left his nerves frayed. More than once, I startled him simply by walking into a room. I believe he also did not sleep well while he was with us. One morning at breakfast, he complained of a bad dream having disturbed his rest.”

  “Did you enquire into the nature of it?”

  “No, nor did he offer it.”

  Running footsteps above drew their attention ceilingward. Several pairs of feet, small from the sound of them, sprinted across the room above. Peals of laughter followed.

  Elinor smiled apologetically. “That would be Marianne and the children. They have been too long confined in carriages these past few days.”

  Elizabeth arched a brow. “Marianne included?”

  Elinor laughed. “Actually, yes. My sister possesses as much energy as any of them, and as little natural inclination to suppress it. Though she comports herself with the dignity and temperance one would expect from a lady of her station, I think the hours when she dismisses the governess and plays with the children herself provide Marianne one of her greatest joys each day”

  Elizabeth thought of the quiet, broken only by Georgiana’s rehearsals on the harp or pianoforte, that encompassed the houses in which she herself lived. “It is welcome noise,” she said. “Are your own children among the party?”

  “No, they are with our neighbors, the Careys. With Marianne’s five, we were already so numerous as to require two conveyances; to bring our own children with us seemed unnecessary, especially given the additional trouble and expense of transporting ourselves home by public coach once our business is concluded.”

  “We also were not certain what demands might be placed on ourselves and our time in assisting Harry,” Edward said.

  Regardless of what had transpired between Harry and Kitty, Elizabeth sincerely hoped Elinor and Edward Ferrars might exert a positive influence on their nephew—for the good of everyone he came in contact with, if not for himself. “You said he enquired of you about Sir Francis. Were you able to satisfy him on any particulars?”

  “No,” Elinor replied. “Sir Francis died over thirty years ago. By the time I reached an age where one has memories of anything, my father and Uncle Albert never spoke of him, or had any reason to. I suggested Harry ask my mother, since she would be able to recall a period when Sir Francis was still alive. I do not know the outcome of that interview, but Mama is upstairs. Shall I call her? I am certain she would be pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Elizabeth wished very much to speak with Mrs. Henry Dashwood but hesitated to impose on the older woman. “I would not wish to disturb her if she is resting following your journey.”

  A team of horses galloped across the ceiling.

  “I somehow doubt my mother rests just now,” Elinor said.

  Edward left to retrieve Mrs. Dashwood. As the ladies waited, Elinor advised Elizabeth that she had not informed her mother of the extent of Harry’s transformation or made any mention of the Hell-Fire Club. “I did not wish to alarm her until I had spoken with Harry myself,” she explained.

  “I will not reveal anything that might distress her,” Elizabeth promised.

  Mrs. Dashwood was a pleasant woman of about five-and-fifty, with grey hair turning silver and laugh lines around her keen eyes. She greeted Elizabeth warmly upon their introduction, expressing genuine delight at finally meeting her.

  “Elinor has spoken so favorably of you, Mrs. Darcy, that I have looked forward to knowing you since Harry announced his engagement to your sister. I am sorry their marriage will not now take place.”

  “Unfortunately, it was necessary for Kitty and Mr. Dashwood to part ways.”

  “It must be of some comfort to your family that they discovered their incompatibility before the wedding vows were spoken. I was surprised to hear the news, as he talked so ardently of her when he visited. But these things do happen with young people.”

  Though Elizabeth and Darcy grew more relieved with each passing day that Kitty had escaped a permanent alliance with Harry Dashwood, Elizabeth had little inclination to discuss the broken engagement. She yet lamented her lapse of judgment on the point of Harry’s character, and it rankled her vanity that she had allowed herself to be so deceived.

  “I understand Mr. Dashwood also spoke of other matters with you during his visit to Devonshire?” Elizabeth asked.

  Mrs. Dashwood smiled softly in recollection. “Yes. He wanted to hear about my husband, Henry. I was so pleased by his interest. Other than naming Harry after his grandfather, John and Fanny didn’t seem to give Henry two minutes’ thought before he died, and none afterward. Harry met his grandfather few times; John and Fanny visited Norland just often enough to insinuate themselves into Uncle Albert’s will. That he wished to hear about Henry now encouraged me to hope that he had grown to be a man worthy of the name he bears.”

  “Mother, Harry asked me whether Papa or Uncle Albert had ever spoken of Sir Francis Dashwood. Did Harry pose the same question to you?”

  “He did. I could not tell him much. Sir Francis was a distant relation who had been involved in some sort of scandalous affairs that became known to the public a few years before I met your father. I was only about sixteen at the time, and living far enough removed from London that I was ignorant of the details. The only time Henry ever spoke of it later was to assure me, while we were courting, that anything I might hear about his infamous relation had no connection at all to the sort of man he was, and that he hoped to always conduct himself in a manner that would place his honor, integrity, and respectability above question.

  “That’s all I ever heard of Sir Francis for years. To both your father and Uncle Albert, he was an embarrassment better left undiscussed. Then one day, shortly after we moved in with Uncle Albert at Norland, a delivery arrived quite unexpectedly from West Wycombe Park—Sir Francis’s estate. It was a large mirror, with a letter from Sir Francis asking Uncle Albert to keep it for a while.”

  Elizabeth recalled the looking glass that Harry’s footmen had struggled with when she had accompanied Kitty to his townhouse to break their engagement. “I think perhaps I have seen that mirror. Has it a Greek design?”

  “Yes—with carvings of athletes round the whole frame. Uncle Albert didn’t know what to think. He had never known Sir Francis well and had cut off communication altogether when the scandals broke. He was still trying to decide what to do with the mirror when we received word several days later that Sir Francis had died. The death itself came as little surprise—he was in his seventies, and by all accounts had lived an immoderate life—but it left Uncle Albert in a quandary over how to dispose of the mirror. He wrote to Sir Francis’s heir to make arrangements for its return. But the heir, believing the mirror to have been a deathbed gift by Sir Francis in an attempt to polish the memory he would leave behind, exhorted Uncle Albert to keep it and sent with his reply a portrait of Sir Francis in his youth by which to better remember him. So now poor Uncle Albert had a huge looking glass and a full-length portrait to constantly call to mind a dead man he had been quite happy to forget during his life.”

  “What did he do with them?” Elinor asked.

  “What could he do with them? He couldn’t return them to West Wycombe without delivering an enormous insult along with them, he couldn’t get rid of them, and he couldn’t bear looking at them. So he stuck them in the attic, and none of us ever thought about them or Sir Francis again.”

  At least, not until Harry found them. It seemed that his discovery of the portrait had awakened in him some dormant predisposition to vice that he and his ancestor shared. Elizabeth remembered the conversation between Harry and Professor Randolph on the day Harry had first called up
on Kitty. Would that meeting the archaeologist had never inspired Harry to explore Norland’s attics! Sir Francis could have remained forever in obscurity, where he belonged.

  The stampede above had ceased sometime during Mrs. Dashwood’s narration, enough so that the ladies in the drawing room were able to hear a carriage pull up. Minutes later, the arrival of Mrs. Robert Ferrars was announced.

  “Lucy calls upon us already?” Mrs. Dashwood remarked to her daughter. “She must want something.”

  Lucy entered, sans Regina for the first time Elizabeth could recall having seen her. Free of the excess weight, she swept into the room like a cat pouncing on a mouse. She dropped herself beside Elinor and put a hand on her arm. “Elinor, I am so glad you’re at home. The most—Oh!” So intent had she been on her mission, that she hadn’t taken notice of the room’s other occupants. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Dashwood. And Edward. Oh—And Mrs. Darcy! I didn’t expect anyone but family might be here. Especially you. I mean—you know, since the sad business between Harry and Miss Bennet.”

  “Regardless of what has transpired between Mr. Dashwood and my sister, I continue to regard his family with esteem,” Elizabeth said.

  “And we think the same way of you, to be sure. Well, you all would not believe what has just happened! Elinor, I knew you were in town, and I hurried here straightaway to make sure you didn’t hear the astounding news from someone else!”

  Elizabeth could not help but reflect that Lucy seemed very thoughtful in this regard. Whenever bad news circulated, she could be counted upon to deliver it most expeditiously to anyone remotely interested.

  “What do you think our sister Fanny has done? I’m sure you could never guess, so I’ll tell you. She has disinherited Harry! Her only son! I am beside myself with shock. My heart just breaks for him.” As if to illustrate the fracture, she brought her hand to her chest. “Doesn’t yours?”