Death Comes to Pemberley

by P. D. James

  My dear Nephew

  Your express, as you will have realised, came as a considerable shock but, happily, I can assure you and Elizabeth that I have not succumbed. Even so, I had to call in Dr Everidge who congratulated me on my fortitude. You can be assured that I am as well as can be expected. The death of this unfortunate young man – of whom, of course, I know nothing – will inevitably cause a national sensation which, given the importance of Pemberley, can hardly be avoided. Mr Wickham, whom the police have very properly arrested, seems to have a talent for causing trouble and embarrassment to respectable people and I cannot help feeling that your parents’ indulgence to him in childhood, about which I frequently expressed myself strongly to Lady Anne, has been responsible for many of his later delinquencies. However, I prefer to believe that of this enormity at least he is innocent and, as his disgraceful marriage to your wife’s sister has made him your brother, you will no doubt wish to make yourself responsible for the expense of his defence. Let us hope it does not ruin both you and your sons. You will need a good lawyer. On no account employ someone local; you will get a nonentity who will combine inefficiency with unreasonable expectations in regard to remuneration. I would offer my own Mr Pegworthy, but I require him here. The long-standing boundary dispute with my neighbour, of which I have spoken, is now reaching a critical stage and there has been a lamentable rise in poaching in the last months. I would come myself to give advice – Mr Pegworthy said that were I a man and had taken to the law, I would have been an ornament to the English bar – but I am needed here. If I went to all the people who would benefit from my advice I would never be at home. I suggest you employ a lawyer from the Inner Temple. They are said to be a gentlemanly lot in that Inn. Mention my name and you will be well attended.

  I shall convey your news to Mr Collins since it cannot long be concealed. As a clergyman, he will wish to send his usual depressing words of comfort, and I shall enclose his letter with mine but will place an embargo on its length.

  I send my sympathy to you and to Mrs Darcy. Do not hesitate to send for me if events should turn ill with this affair and I will brave the autumn mists to be with you.

  Elizabeth expected to get nothing of interest from Mr Collins’s letter except the reprehensible pleasure of relishing his unique mixture of pomposity and folly. It was longer than she expected. Despite her proclamation, Lady Catherine de Bourgh had been indulgent about length. He began by stating that he could find no words to express his shock and abhorrence, and then proceeded to find a great number, few of them appropriate and none of them helpful. As with Lydia’s engagement, he ascribed the whole of this dreadful affair to the lack of control over their daughter by Mr and Mrs Bennet, and went on to congratulate himself on having withdrawn an offer of marriage which would have resulted in his being inescapably linked to their disgrace. He went on to prophesy a catalogue of disasters for the afflicted family ranging from the worst – Lady Catherine’s displeasure and their permanent banishment from Rosings – descending to public ignominy, bankruptcy and death. It closed by mentioning that, within a matter of months, his dear Charlotte would be presenting him with their fourth child. The Hunsford parsonage was becoming a little small for his increasing family, but he trusted that Providence, in due time, would provide him with a valuable living and a larger house. Elizabeth reflected that this was a clear appeal, and not the first, to Mr Darcy’s interest and would receive the same response. Providence had so far shown no inclination to help and Darcy certainly would not.

  Charlotte’s letter, unsealed, was what Elizabeth had expected, no more than brief and conventional sentences of distress and condolence and the reassurance that the thoughts of both herself and her husband were with the afflicted family. Undoubtedly Mr Collins would have read the letter and nothing warmer or more intimate could be expected. Charlotte Lucas had been Elizabeth’s friend through the years of childhood and young womanhood, the only female except Jane with whom rational conversation had been possible, and Elizabeth still regretted that much of the confidence between them had subsided into general benevolence and a regular but not revealing correspondence. On Darcy’s and her two visits to Lady Catherine since their marriage, a formal visit to the parsonage had been necessary and Elizabeth, unwilling to expose her husband to Mr Collins’s presumptive civilities, had gone alone. She had tried to understand Charlotte’s acceptance of Mr Collins’s offer, made within a day of his proposal to her and her rejection, but it was unlikely that Charlotte had either forgotten or forgiven her friend’s first amazed response to the news.

  Elizabeth suspected that on one occasion Charlotte had taken her revenge. Elizabeth had often wondered how Lady Catherine had learned that she and Mr Darcy were likely to become engaged. She had never spoken of his first disastrous proposal to anyone but Jane and had come to the conclusion that it must have been Charlotte who had betrayed her. She recollected that evening when Darcy, with the Bingleys, had first made an appearance in the Meryton Assembly Rooms when Charlotte had somehow suspected that he might be interested in her friend and had warned Elizabeth, in her preference for Wickham, not to slight a man of Darcy’s much greater importance. And then there had been Elizabeth’s visit to the parsonage with Sir William Lucas and his daughter. Charlotte herself had commented on the frequency of the visits of Mr Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam during the visitors’ stay and had said that it could only be a compliment to Elizabeth. And then there was the proposal itself. After Darcy had left, Elizabeth had walked alone to try to quieten her confusion and anger but Charlotte, on her return, must have seen that something untoward had happened during her absence.

  No, it was impossible for anyone other than Charlotte to have guessed the cause of her distress, and Charlotte, in a moment of conjugal mischief, had passed on her suspicions to Mr Collins. He, of course, would have lost no time in warning Lady Catherine and had probably exaggerated the danger, making suspicion into certainty. His motives were curiously mixed. If the marriage took place he might have hoped to benefit from such a close relationship with the wealthy Mr Darcy; what livings might not be within his power to bestow? But prudence and revenge had probably been more powerful and sweeter motives. He had never forgiven Elizabeth for refusing him. Her punishment should have been a lonely indigent spinsterhood, not a glittering marriage which even an earl’s daughter would not have scorned. Had not Lady Anne married Darcy’s father? Charlotte, too, might have had cause for a more justified resentment. She was convinced, as was the whole of Meryton, that Elizabeth hated Darcy; she, her only friend, who had been critical of Charlotte’s own marriage based on prudence and the need for a home, had herself accepted a man she was known to detest because she could not resist the prize of Pemberley. It is never so difficult to congratulate a friend on her good fortune than when that fortune appears undeserved.

  Charlotte’s marriage could be regarded as a success, as perhaps all marriages are when each of the couple gets exactly what the union promised. Mr Collins had a competent wife and housekeeper, a mother for his children and the approval of his patroness, while Charlotte took the only course by which a single woman of no beauty and small fortune could hope to gain independence. Elizabeth remembered how Jane, kind and tolerant as always, had cautioned her not to blame Charlotte for her engagement without remembering what it was she was leaving. Elizabeth had never liked the Lucas boys. Even in youth they had been boisterous, unkind and unprepossessing and she had no doubt that, as adults, they would have despised and resented a spinster sister, seeing her as an embarrassment and an expense, and would have made their feelings known. From the start Charlotte had managed her husband with the same skill as she did her servants and her chicken houses, and Elizabeth, on her first visit to Hunsford with Sir William and his daughter, had seen evidence of Charlotte’s arrangements to minimise the disadvantage of her situation. Mr Collins had been assigned a room at the front of the rectory where the prospect of viewing passers-by, including the possibility of Lady Catherine in her c
arriage, kept him happily seated at the window while most of his free daytime hours, with her encouragement, were spent gardening, an activity for which he displayed enthusiasm and talent. To tend the soil is generally regarded as a virtuous activity and to see a gardener diligently at work invariably provokes a surge of sympathetic approval, if only at the prospect of freshly dug potatoes and early peas. Elizabeth suspected that Mr Collins had never been so acceptable a husband as when Charlotte saw him, at a distance, bent over his vegetable patch.

  Charlotte had not been the eldest of a large family without acquiring some skill in the management of male delinquencies and her method with her husband was ingenious. She consistently congratulated him on qualities he did not possess in the hope that, flattered by her praise and approval, he would acquire them. Elizabeth had seen the system in operation when, at Charlotte’s urgent entreaty, she had paid a short visit on her own some eighteen months after her marriage. The party was being driven back to the vicarage in one of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s carriages when the discussion turned to a fellow guest, a recently inducted clergyman from an adjoining parish who was a distant relation of Lady Catherine’s.

  Charlotte had said, ‘Mr Thompson is no doubt an excellent young man, but he is too much a prattler for my liking. To praise every dish was unnecessarily fulsome and made him seem greedy. And once or twice, when in full flow of speech, I could see that Lady Catherine did not much like it. It is a pity he didn’t take you, my love, as his example. He would then have said less, and that more to the point.’

  Mr Collins’s mind was not subtle enough to detect the irony or suspect the stratagem. His vanity grasped at the compliment and, at their next dinner engagement at Rosings, he sat for most of the meal in such unnatural silence that Elizabeth was fearful that Lady Catherine would sharply tap her spoon on the table and enquire why he had so little to say for himself.

  For the last ten minutes Elizabeth had laid down her pen and had let her mind wander back to the Longbourn days, to Charlotte and their long friendship. Now it was time to put away her papers and see what Mrs Reynolds had prepared for the Bidwells. Making her way to the housekeeper’s room she remembered how Lady Catherine, on one of her visits the previous year, had accompanied Elizabeth in taking to Woodland Cottage nourishment suitable for a seriously ill man. Lady Catherine had not been invited to enter the sick room and had shown no disposition to do so, merely saying on the way back, ‘Dr McFee’s diagnosis should be regarded as highly suspect. I have never approved of protracted dying. It is an affectation in the aristocracy; in the lower classes it is merely an excuse for avoiding work. The blacksmith’s second son has been reputedly dying for the last four years, yet when I drive past I see him assisting his father with every appearance of being in robust health. The de Bourghs have never gone in for prolonged dying. People should make up their minds whether to live or to die and do one or the other with the least inconvenience to others.’

  Elizabeth had been too shocked and surprised to comment. How could Lady Catherine speak so calmly of protracted dying just three years after she had lost her only child following years of ill health? But after the first effusion of grief, controlled but surely genuine, Lady Catherine had regained her equanimity – and with it much of her previous intolerance – with remarkable speed. Miss de Bourgh, a delicate, plain and silent girl, had made a negligible impact on the world while she lived and even less in dying. Elizabeth, then herself a mother, had done everything she could by warm invitations to visit Pemberley and by herself going to Rosings to support Lady Catherine in the first weeks of mourning, and both the offer and this sympathy, which perhaps the mother had not expected, had done its work. Lady Catherine was essentially the same woman that she had always been, but now the shades of Pemberley were less polluted when Elizabeth took her daily exercise under the trees, and Lady Catherine became fonder of visiting Pemberley than either Darcy or Elizabeth were anxious to receive her.

  3

  With each day there were duties to be attended to and Elizabeth found in her responsibility to Pemberley, her family and her servants at least an antidote to the worst horror of her imaginings. Today was one of duty both for her husband and for herself. She knew that she could no longer delay visiting Woodland Cottage. The shots in the night, the knowledge that a brutal murder had taken place within a hundred yards of the cottage and while Bidwell was at Pemberley must have left Mrs Bidwell with a legacy of pity and horror to add to her already heavy load of grief. Elizabeth knew that Darcy had visited the cottage last Thursday to suggest that Bidwell should be released from his duties on the eve of the ball so that he could be with his family at this difficult time, but both husband and wife had been adamant that this was not necessary and Darcy had seen that his persistence had only distressed them. Bidwell would always resist any suggestion that could carry the implication that he was not indispensable, even temporarily, to Pemberley and its master; since relinquishing his status as head coachman he had always cleaned the silver on the night before Lady Anne’s ball and in his view there was no one else at Pemberley who could be trusted with the task.

  During the past year, when young Will had grown weaker and hope of recovery gradually faded, Elizabeth had been regular in her visits to Woodland Cottage, at first being admitted to the small bedroom at the front of the cottage where the patient lay. Recently she had become aware that her appearance with Mrs Bidwell at his bedside was more of an embarrassment to him than a pleasure, could indeed be seen as an imposition, and she had remained in the sitting room giving what comfort she could to the stricken mother. When the Bingleys were staying at Pemberley, Jane would invariably accompany her together with Bingley, and she realised again how much she would today miss her sister’s presence and what a comfort it had always been to have with her a dearly loved companion to whom she could confide even her darkest thoughts, and whose goodness and gentleness lightened every distress. In the absence of Jane, Georgiana and one of the upper servants had accompanied her, but Georgiana, sensitive to the possibility that Mrs Bidwell might find it a greater comfort to confide confidentially in Mrs Darcy, had usually paid her respects briefly and then sat outside on a wooden bench made some time ago by young Will. Darcy accompanied her rarely on these routine visits since the taking of a basket of delicacies provided by the Pemberley cook was seen as essentially women’s work. Today, apart from the visit to Wickham, he was reluctant to leave Pemberley in case there were developments needing his attention, and it was agreed at breakfast that a servant would accompany Elizabeth and Georgiana. It was then that Alveston, speaking to Darcy, said quietly that it would be a privilege to accompany Mrs Darcy and Miss Georgiana if the suggestion were agreeable to them, and it was accepted with gratitude. Elizabeth glanced quickly at Georgiana and saw the look of joy, swiftly suppressed, which made her response to the proposal only too evident.

  Elizabeth and Georgiana were driven to the woods in a landaulet, while Alveston rode his horse, Pompey, at their side. An early mist had cleared after a rain-free night and it was a glorious morning, cold but sunlit, the air sweet with the familiar tang of autumn – leaves, fresh earth and the faint smell of burning wood. Even the horses seemed to rejoice in the day, tossing their heads and straining at the bit. The wind had died but the detritus of the storm lay in swathes over the path, the dry leaves crackling under the wheels or tumbling and spinning in their wake. The trees were not yet bare, and the rich red and gold of autumn seemed intensified under the cerulean sky. On such a day it was impossible for her heart not to be lifted and for the first time since waking Elizabeth felt a small surge of hope. To an onlooker, she thought, the party must look as if they were on their way to a picnic – the tossing manes, the coachman in his livery, the basket of provisions, the handsome young man riding at their side. When they entered the wood the dark overreaching boughs, which at dusk had the crude strength of a prison roof, now let in shafts of sunlight which lay on the leaf-strewn path and transformed the dark green of the b
ushes into the liveliness of spring.

  The landaulet drew to a stop and the coachman was given orders to return in precisely one hour, then the three of them, with Alveston leading Pompey and carrying the basket, walked between the gleaming trunks of the trees and down the trodden pathway to the cottage. The food was not brought as an act of charity – no member of the staff at Pemberley was without shelter, food or clothing – but they were the extras which the cook would contrive in the kitchens in the hope of tempting Will’s appetite: consommés prepared with the best beef and laced with sherry, made to the recipe devised by Dr McFee, small savoury tartlets which melted in the mouth, fruit jellies and ripe peaches and pears from the glasshouse. Even these now could rarely be tolerated, but they were received with gratitude and if Will could not eat them, his mother and sister undoubtedly would.

  Despite the softness of their footsteps, Mrs Bidwell must have heard them for she stood at the door to welcome them in. She was a slight, thin woman whose face, like a faded watercolour, still evoked the fragile prettiness and promise of youth but now anxiety and the strain of waiting for her son to die had made her an old woman. Elizabeth introduced Alveston who, without directly speaking of Will, managed to convey a genuine sympathy, said what a pleasure it was to meet her and suggested that he should wait for Mrs and Miss Darcy on the wooden bench outside.

  Mrs Bidwell said, ‘It was made by my son, William, sir, and finished the week before he was took ill. He was a clever carpenter, as you can see, sir, and liked designing and making pieces of furniture. Mrs Darcy has a nursery chair – have you not, madam? – which Will made the Christmas after Master Fitzwilliam was born.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We value it greatly and we always think of Will when the children clamber over it.’

  Alveston made his bow, then went out and seated himself on the bench which was on the edge of the woodland and just visible from the cottage, while Elizabeth and Georgiana took their proffered seats in the living room. It was simply furnished with a central oblong table and four chairs, a more comfortable chair each side of the fireplace and a wide mantelpiece crowded with family mementoes. The window at the front was slightly open but the room was still too hot, and although Will Bidwell’s bedroom was upstairs, the whole cottage seemed permeated with the sour smell of long illness. Close to the window was a cot on rockers with a nursing chair beside it and, at Mrs Bidwell’s invitation, Elizabeth went over to peer down at the sleeping child and congratulate his grandmother on the health and beauty of the new arrival. There was no sign of Louisa. Georgiana knew that Mrs Bidwell would welcome the opportunity of talking alone to Elizabeth, and after making enquiries after Will and admiring the baby, accepted Elizabeth’s suggestion, which had already been agreed between them, that she should join Alveston outside. The wicker basket was soon emptied, the contents gratefully received, and the two women settled themselves in the chairs beside the fire.