The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy

by Marsha Altman

  “I got an enthusiastic greeting. If you hadn’t been cooped up in that study, you’d have heard it.”

  Downstairs, the Maddox sitting room was in an uproar as servants carried in trunks and Caroline embraced her brother, who apparently had not gone native and was dressed like a dignified Englishman.

  “Mr. Mugin,” Dr. Maddox said and bowed to his guest. “What a surprise. I never thought you’d be back on this side of the world again.”

  “I need to be in place—” he said something in Japanese to Nadezhda.

  “He says he needs to be somewhere where he’s not wanted for any crimes,” she said. “And China was apparently not an option. Mugin, what did you do?”

  “It’s not so much that he committed a crime as that he’s being hunted by a group of martial arts students because he defeated their master,” Brian said. “And then spit in his face. Which he had said he wouldn’t do.”

  Mugin shrugged. “I lie. And give you plenty of warning to run.”

  “You knew Bingley couldn’t run! I had to carry him halfway across—”

  “Gentleman! Please!” Bingley said. “I’ve had to put up with this for two months.” He turned to Dr. Maddox and offered his hand. “Doctor.”

  “Mr. Bingley.” Maddox took it. “You look—” Bingley was sunburned and he had overgrown hair and the beginnings of a beard, but his eyes were bright. “You look as though you’ve been on a boat for a long time, but otherwise well.”

  “You also, minus the boat part. I understand my family is still in Hertfordshire and the Hursts are in their country house.”

  “Yes. Mr. Bennet is throwing a party in a week or so.”

  “Terrific. Well, if I could trouble you, I need your medical advice. And no, we didn’t pick up any Indian diseases. It’s about an animal.”

  “What? Did you buy one of those talking birds?”

  “No,” he said, “not a bird.”

  By the time Darcy was done with his final meeting with his steward and his accountant, the post had already come to the townhouse, which he viewed as a good sign. He despised staying alone in London when his family was away, but business had arisen the night before and it had carried over into the next day. He wanted to read his letters and be gone.

  The brown envelope from Madrid drew his attention. He rarely corresponded with the banker in charge of receiving Grégoire’s yearly income, except when actually making sure it had gone through, which it had in January. As his father had before him, Darcy managed the fund set up for Grégoire’s welfare. He had altered it only by basing it in London instead of France, and lowering the amount to something more manageable for Grégoire, who only gave it to charity anyway. The rest stayed in the account to accrue further interest.

  Concerned, he motioned for the servant and had him call back his departing steward. “I need your advice. It seems my brother withdrew one hundred pounds from afar and that money did not make it to the correct location.”

  His steward was familiar with the situation. “Who was responsible for the transfer, and where was it going?”

  “It seems a man was hired to take it to a local noblewoman, who was to distribute it to needy residents. This man has been in the bank’s employ for many years and has always been trusted to see the job through.”

  “And the noblewoman?”

  “I don’t know.” He handed the letter to his steward. “Will you have someone look into this immediately?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And give me a minute to pen a letter to my brother, if you’ll be sending mail to Spain.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  He never was quite ready to assume that Grégoire’s mail would be read unopened, even if Grégoire insisted the seal was still intact when he received it. He wrote a quick letter about some family account business being unsettled, and would he please write back, or contact the banker? He had written Grégoire only a few weeks earlier, and had little else to say, so he sent it off and told his manservant to prepare to leave for Hertfordshire. The steward was opening the front door when he faced a bowl-shaped hat.

  “Darushi-san.”

  “Mr. Mugin,” he said. “What a surprise. Is this to say that Mr. Bingley and Mr. Maddox have arrived?”

  “Binguri-san, he go to country soon.”

  “And you’re to be their servant again?” he said, not sure that it would rile Mugin, but hoping that it would.

  “Lazy gaijin, too slow,” Mugin said, bowed, and ran off back down the road, his wooden shoes clacking all the way.

  Darcy had never trusted Mugin, but had no reason not to believe him now, and followed him to the Maddox townhouse, where there were many trunks in the hallway and a great commotion.The first person he encountered was not Bingley or Maddox, but a disconcerted Mrs. Maddox, her bonnet off and her normally perfectly tied hair askew. “Mrs. Maddox.” He bowed.

  She stopped only to curtsy. “Mr. Darcy. Excuse me.” And then she rushed into the sitting room and shut the door behind her.

  “What! He’s not that bad, Caroline—”

  Darcy could vaguely hear Bingley’s voice from up the steps, but it was not Bingley who emerged first. It was a small animal, like a cat but not quite, covered in soap suds. It squeaked, and then without warning, climbed right up his clothing and sat down on his head.

  Bingley did catch up, looking a little wet. “Hello, Darcy.”

  “Bingley.”

  “Sorry about—”

  “Bingley, what precisely is on my head?”

  “It’s a monkey.”

  Calmly, he said, “A monkey.”

  “Yes. He won’t harm you.”

  Coolly, Darcy said, “Though it has been an honor to be your companion these many years, our friendship will come to an abrupt end if you do not get this animal off my head.”

  Bingley did not need to be told twice. “Monkey! Kinasi!” The monkey leaped from Darcy’s head to Bingley’s outstretched arm, where it climbed up onto his shoulder and squawked. “I am sorry about that. It seems he doesn’t much care to be bathed.”

  Darcy was going to say something, but Mr. Maddox came barreling down the stairs, towel in hand. “Here you—oh, hello.” He bowed. “Mr. Darcy.You have suds in your hair.”

  “I know.”

  Bingley took the towel and wiped off his little monkey, which was not much bigger than his head and brown in color. “Dr. Maddox said we should bathe him. In case he had some bugs in his fur. Have you seen my sister?”

  Darcy gestured to the closed double doors of the sitting room.

  “You can come out now. Caroline?”

  “I am not going near that thing!” she shouted from the other side of the door. “He screamed at me!”

  “Well what did you expect him to do? You were screaming at him!”

  “Monkey see, monkey do,” Mr. Maddox said.

  “She doesn’t like animals—other than dogs, that is,” Bingley said. “Louisa had a cat when we were children. It used to scratch its paws on her dresser.”

  “And on my leg!” Caroline said. The monkey shook itself out on Bingley’s shoulder as Dr. Maddox appeared, followed by his children.

  “A monkey is not a dog.”

  “Has she locked herself in there?” Dr. Maddox said.

  “It’s not her fault she yelled at it.”

  “You could have told her you were bringing a primate in the house, Mr. Bingley.”

  “I told you.”

  “What’s a primate?” Emily Maddox asked.

  “It’s a monkey,” her father explained.

  A truce was eventually reached; Monkey (the animal’s name) went back in his cage and into the wagon bound for Longbourn, and Caroline Maddox agreed to come out of her fortress.

  Darcy still had to make his way to Hertfordshire and Bingley was eager to see his wife and children, so they bid their adieus, stopping for a moment outside before they would depart in their separate carriages.

  “It is good to have you home,”
Darcy admitted. “You didn’t do anything insanely idiotic while in the Orient besides buy a monkey in the notion that your wife would accept such a thing in the house?”

  “I have spent months practicing my pleading look,” Bingley said. “And as for anything else you hear I may have done, please don’t believe everything you hear from Brian or Mugin.”

  “I never do.”

  It was Mr. Bennet who greeted Mr. Darcy as he stepped out of his carriage. His father-in-law was sitting on a chair in the sun. “Mr. Darcy.”

  “Mr. Bennet. I apologize for being late.”

  “I doubt Lizzy will be any less eager to see you.”

  “Yes, well, I doubt I will be the main attraction today,” Darcy said as Mr. Bingley got out of the carriage.

  “Mr. Bennet.”

  “Mr. Bingley!” Mr. Bennet stood up a bit straighter. “So my wayward son has arrived.”

  “How are you, Mr. Bennet?”

  The old man shook Mr. Bingley’s hand as firmly as he could. “Busy frustrating Mr. Collins every day. Your wife is…frankly, I don’t know where she is. But at least one of the children will shriek loudly enough to get her attention when they see you, which I’m sure will be soon enough—”

  “Papa!” Eliza Bingley came running out the front doors, her embroidery cloth and ribbons still in hand.

  Bingley picked up his younger daughter. “You’ve grown tall! You look more like your mother every day.” He kissed her cheeks. “Speaking of—”

  The quiet did not last long. Edmund was quick to follow, and then Charles, and finally Georgiana, until he was almost toppled over by all of his children. “I cannot carry you all! Edmund, there’s no reason to be pulling on my coat, I don’t—” He stopped when he saw his wife, emerging tentatively into the sunlight. “Mrs. Bingley.”

  She curtsied. “Mr. Bingley.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Jane,” he whispered, his eyes tearing. “My beautiful Jane.”

  “I missed you,” she said. “Don’t ever go away again.”

  “I will do my very best,” was his reply.

  Fortunately, only the Darcy family was currently in residence, with everyone else in London or at Netherfield. So Mr. Bingley had to endure only so many reunions with everyone present before he could excuse himself to get something from his carriage. He took Jane with him.

  “I have a surprise,” he said. “Well, several, but this one I think will adequately distract the children for a little while.”

  “Now, why ever would you—Oh, my God.” Jane covered her mouth as Bingley uncovered the cage. “Is that thing alive?”

  “Of course he is. And he’s tame. Well, relatively, for a monkey.” He opened the little door and put out his arm, and the monkey instantly went up to his shoulder. “And he’s not dirty or diseased. We bathed him at the Maddox house. My sister would be glad to complain to you about it.”

  “Charles, you can’t be serious.”

  He turned to the simian on his shoulder. “Monkey, what do you think? Am I being serious?” It squeaked in response. “Monkey, shake.” The monkey held out its tiny arm. “He just wants to shake your hand.”

  Jane looked at her husband, and then at the monkey, and then at her husband again. He did seem to be serious. She held out her fingertips and let the monkey grab them. “He has such tiny hands.”

  “He likes you. Monkey, do you like Jane?” Bingley said. The monkey howled. “Well, you had better like her, because if you don’t get on her good side, you don’t get to stay with us.”

  “Charles—”

  He held the monkey in his arms. “Look at him. The children will adore him.”

  “He’s a wild animal.”

  “He’s not that wild. Are you, Monkey?” he said. In response, the monkey squeaked and grabbed his nose. “Ow, ow, that’s enough. I told you not to do that!”

  Jane broke into laughter, perhaps at the sight of a small monkey trying to capture her husband’s nose. “We’ll try it.”

  “A trial basis. I understand.” He kissed her. “Thank you. Oh, and you might want to cover your ears.”

  It was good advice. The children collectively screamed in excitement upon seeing the animal perched on Bingley’s shoulder, and it screamed right back at them. It took him a full minute to shush eight children.

  “Is that a monkey?”

  “What’s its name?”

  “Can I stroke it?”

  “Can we keep it?”

  “Does it have to live in a zoo?”

  “Can I hold it?”

  “Does it bite?”

  “Children,” he said calmly, with as much authority as Charles Bingley could muster, “this is Monkey. Yes, that is his name. Not very original, but you will remember it. He doesn’t bite unless you hurt him, so as with any pet or person, you must treat him with respect. That means no tossing him or tugging him or pulling on his tail.You can hold him one at a time. Georgiana?” He dealt with the crowd of boos. “She’s the oldest.”

  “Not by much!” said Geoffrey.

  Georgiana smiled triumphantly as she took the monkey into her arms. One by one, they all met Monkey, though Cassandra and Sarah were frightened of him, and Edmund was too proud to admit that he was, but passed him off rather quickly. Perhaps the most excited person was the last person in line, Mr. Bennet. “Now here is something I never thought I would see,” he said as the monkey climbed up onto his bald spot and sat down.

  “If he gets upset, just let him run up a tree or something, and I’ll come get him down,” he told Elizabeth before disappearing with Jane. Darcy mysteriously did not offer to help with monkey wrangling and vanished into the library as quickly as he could.

  Jane and Charles found a spot far away from the house, where they could see Oakham Mount, a place where they had regularly walked during their engagement. The view had not changed, but they were not interested in the view.

  “I missed you,” he said between kisses. “I’m sorry I’m a little hairy—and burned. And freckled.”

  “You’re perfect,” she said.

  They sat together on a large stump, looking out at the wild and content to just sit together with Bingley’s arm around his wife’s shoulder. “I would regale you with stories, but to be honest, I am utterly exhausted.” He chuckled. “What happened while I was gone?”

  “Lady Kincaid had a son. His name is Robert.”

  “It went well?”

  “I think so. Mr. Darcy seemed pleased at his sister’s good health. Lizzy was ecstatic, of course. They stood as godparents.”

  “Was Grégoire there?”

  “He did not come in time. He should be here in a month or two, maybe. It is not set.” She looked up at him. “My mother had a stroke.”

  “I’m so sorry—”

  “It was minor. Papa said he didn’t notice it for a few days.”

  “Can anything be done?”

  “No, aside from not saying anything when she says something strange.”

  He put his other arm around her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “It was only a few weeks ago.”

  He kissed her on her forehead. “I’m still sorry.”

  “We always assumed she would outlive him. Do you suppose it would be better if—”

  He hushed her. “We don’t know the future. All we know is your parents are both alive and relatively well. For now, that is enough.”

  CHAPTER 9

  A Long-Expected Party

  MR. BENNET, NOT KNOWN to be a stingy man with his family (which had almost proved to be his ruin with his youngest daughter), spared no expense. And anyone with even the slightest connection to the family was invited. Though Hertfordshire was no Derbyshire, by its own standards this was a grand celebration. Mr. Bennet did not host a ball (“My daughters are well settled, thank you very much”). Instead, it was a daytime celebration, mainly to accommodate his seventeen grandchildren, four nieces and nephews, and four great-nieces.

  Aside from plan
ning the menu and the accommodations, Mr. Bennet had one unpleasant duty. At Mrs. Philips’s insistence, he sat in a gathering with her and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner about Mrs. Bennet, whose condition remained unchanged. She was still given to periods of confusion, but was hardly an invalid.

  “I see no cause for concern,” he said to his sister-in-law.“If anyone says anything of note, it will hardly be heard over the screaming army of children to descend upon us.”

  “I do not want my sister exposed to public denunciation.”

  “Then perhaps you should have lodged a complaint between now and when my first daughter came out a month ago,” Mr. Bennet said, to which the Gardiners could not help smiling. “Mrs. Philips, my wife has not complained about her wits for almost six weeks now—and I have been counting. I can hardly lock her away for such a crime. Nor am I remotely willing to do so,” he said. “If anything, she is to be commended.”

  The widow Mrs. Philips was overruled by the Gardiners, who agreed with Mr. Bennet, and then by the man in charge, and she silenced herself.

  “There is, however, cause for more general concern,” Mrs. Gardiner said, and her husband nodded.

  “I am at the moment too happy and foolish to fathom it,” he replied. “If this is to be her twilight, then I have decided to enjoy her now and wallow in misery later. Putting off important business has always been my proficiency.”

  In early August, the mass descended on Hertfordshire. Already the Darcys and the Bingleys were in residence, and everyone delighted in comparing notes about the differing accounts of Mr. Bingley’s travels that he gave, depending on his level of intoxication at the time. He showered his children and relatives with odd gifts. Indian goods had been available in Town for years. But it was quite another thing to get an Indian trinket as a gift from a traveler who could say where he had gotten it, how long he had bargained for it, and whose heritage had been more insulted by the end of the bargaining before an actual price was affixed. “I verbally slighted many shopkeepers’ mothers,” he said. “And I am a dolt with the hair of a demon.”

  “That was already known,” Darcy said, and was already looking out the window innocently when Bingley turned his head.