More Sport for our Neighbours

by Ronald McGowan

  “That is a course I cannot praise too much, sir. I have always had a very high regard for the good sense and discretion of my daughter Elizabeth, and it pleases me to see that you share this opinion.”

  “I regret your departure greatly, sir, but I respect its necessity. I regret it particularly in that it will prevent you from making the further acquaintance of my sister, Georgiana, who will be arriving shortly from her aunt’s, and has been vastly eager to meet you again. But, however, that must be as it must be. Perhaps you will at least permit me to provide what assistance I may in making the travel arrangements?”

  “Thank you, sir, that would be greatly appreciated. I have no very clear idea of how to get from Derbyshire to Newcastle. To tell the truth, I have no idea at all. For all I know we may need to go back to London and start again.”

  “Consider that, at least, to be done, Mr. Bennet. I shall see to it personally that coaches and whatever else is needed are bespoke as quickly and conveniently as may be done. I shall consult further, but in the meantime please feel free to ask the servants for whatever assistance you may need in your family’s packing and other preparations.”

  He did not say in so many words “the interview is now closed”, but he conveyed that sense perfectly adequately, and I almost found myself bowing as I left the room. Why is it that, at the end of a conversation with Darcy, I always feel as if I have been addressing a public meeting? Why does it always end up in a tacit contest to see who can produce the most formal and stilted prose ex tempore? Whether it is the effect I have on him, I cannot tell, but it is certainly the effect he has on me.

  I pondered, as I left him, whether I should make public my doubts about the possibility of arriving in time for the birth, but decided to await the right occasion. At the moment, Mrs. Bennet was still enjoying her disappointment at my refusal to leap up at once and bound upon the nearest conveyance with instructions to drive instantly to Newcastle and not spare the horses.

  I retired, therefore, to our sitting room, to contemplate how best to break the news of our imminent departure to my family.

  I was awoken from this arduous task, in only a few moments, by the sound of Mrs. Bennet processing along the corridor.

  “Well, girls, I should have thought it not unreasonable to hope that your sisters might spare us just a little time for a comfortable chat, especially as we have not seen Jane for such a time. I certainly never expected them to go off just like that for a conference with their husbands. Whatever shall we do for amusement in this great museum without them? However shall we pass our time, especially as your father is being so unreasonable and refusing to help his own daughter when she is expecting?”

  She did not pause for an answer, but swept open the door.

  “Oh! There you are!” she continued. “I was just telling your daughters, Mr. Bennet, that I do not know how we shall pass the time while we wait for news of whether poor Lydia is safely delivered, when we should be with her at this time. I do not know how Lizzie abides it here, stuck in a desolate wilderness with her stick of a husband, and never a neighbour or a shop to be seen. Some of us did not even have the pleasure of a week in Buxton, but must remain in this mausoleum while you and Kitty were enjoying yourselves with the society of a famous spa.”

  I should not have called the rigours of the water treatment exactly enjoyable, but many years of matrimony have taught me the unwisdom of giving voice to such thoughts, and I contented myself by saying,

  “Never mind, my dear, I believe that in Newcastle they have an assembly or a concert every week.”

  “What is it to me if they have both every day, since we will never attend any of them. I wish Newcastle were buried in one of its own noxious mines!”

  “That is a sad fate to be wished upon so many innocent inhabitants, including your own daughter, my dear. What has Newcastle ever done to offend you?”

  “It has no need of having done anything, since we shall never get there, though we wait all our lives.”

  “The journey is certainly a lengthy one, and no doubt arduous, but I should certainly not contemplate it if I thought it the work of a lifetime.”

  “Oh, do not talk to me of Newcastle! I never wish to hear the name of Newcastle again.”

  “I regret to hear that. I wish you had told me sooner, and I should not have asked Mr. Darcy to make arrangements for us to travel there as soon as may be.”

  “What do you tell me, Mr. Bennet? Mr. Darcy is arranging our travel there? Oh, Mr. Bennet, I knew you could not be so hard-hearted! Come Mary! Come Kitty! Thank your good, kind father for all the trouble he has been to. Just think! We shall soon see Lydia again! And her new baby! Come, girls, we must not delay. We must pack, we must have everything ready for our departure.”

  And with that, she was off, leaving me with my pen and paper, nursing the tenuous hope of a few hours uninterrupted until we met again at dinner.

  Fond, foolish hope! I found that, however I struggled to apply myself to my work, I could not evade the pricks of conscience which kept telling me that perhaps I was wrong in keeping my observations on the time Lydia’s letter had taken to reach us to myself, and not shared them with my family. Try as I might, I could reach no firm decision on this dilemma, and found myself repeatedly changing my mind. At length I reached the conclusion that, as I was already one foot on sea and one ashore, to one thing constant never, I should continue a deceiver ever until the event should either dispel my doubts or prove me right.

  It is remarkable the calming effect a decision has on the nerves, however misguided, uninformed or downright wrong it may be.

  Dinner brought news which I dare say I ought to call welcome, although it set me off again on the same bought of indecisiveness.

  Bingley began the subject.

  “I must congratulate you, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, on the prospective arrival of your first grandchild. My own parents, alas, enjoyed no such pleasure, having passed away before I had the supreme happiness of marrying your daughter. But, then, if they had not, I should never have come into Hertfordshire, and we should none of us have met, Darcy excepted.”

  “You will naturally wish to visit your youngest daughter as soon as may be, and we are particularly glad that you should do so, for it enables us to welcome you to Garthdale all the sooner.”

  “You intrigue me, Mr. Bingley. I thank you for your good wishes, but I cannot see how our early departure from Pemberley will have the effect you suggest. We will try to take you in on the way back from the far North, certainly but when that may be is impossible to say.”

  “Charles and Mr. Darcy arranged it all between themselves this morning, papa,” said Jane. “You are to come with us back to Garthdale as soon as may be convenient, and after a short stay there – which we both hope will not be too short – We shall drive you to Hathersage, where you may pick up the coach to Sheffield further along its route, thus saving you several hours of dusty travelling in the discomfort of a public conveyance.”

  “That is indeed a convenience. I had assumed we should have to go all the way back to Derby via Buxton, or at least to Chapel en le Frith, for Sheffield, and, of course, it would be much more congenial to travel with you, my dear, and to see your new home, however briefly. But when do you propose to leave?”

  “We are entirely at your disposal, sir, replied Bingley. And, what is more, we hope that you will spare us at least one night. That will be so much more comfortable and convenient for us all, and, you know, if you join the Perseverance at Hathersage, it will get you to Sheffield in time to connect with the coach to Doncaster, and eliminate the need for a night in Sheffield.”

  “You have looked into it thoroughly, sir, and I must thank you and Mr. Darcy for your efforts and accept your offer gratefully. Do you, by any chance, also happen to have the timetable of the coaches from Doncaster to Newcastle at your fingertips?”

  “I regret I do not, sir. Our knowledge extends only as far as the next county, but I do not doubt they will be ab
le to inform you at the inn at Doncaster.”

  Chapter Fourteen: Domestic Manners of the Bingleys

  Garthdale, which we reached after a long, but otherwise uneventful journey via the pleasant towns of Chapel en le Frith and Hathersage, proved to be a much smaller house than Pemberley, set halfway up a hill, with sweeping views down towards the West Thirding, or Riding, as they say in those parts, of Yorkshire.

  The sight of this view set me musing upon the ancient custom of dividing the counties into third parts, preserved to this day only in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Was this practice, I wondered, previously more widespread, and if so, why thirds, rather than the more convenient quarters? Could it be some old, tribal tradition from heathen times, perhaps something to do with the triple goddess? Traces of the practice could, perhaps be discerned also in Durham, where there was the county, proper, Norham or North Durham hard on the Scottish Border, and Craikshire south of the Tees. Was this, perhaps, an Anglian practice rather than Saxon, and therefore unknown in the South? All this was mere conjecture, and must await proper investigation, but I welcomed the thoughts as a sign that my mind was returning to its old interests, and there might be hope for me yet.

  I was roused from these musings by the carriage halting outside the house, and the door being opened and steps folded down.

  Miss Bingley met us at the doorway.

  “Welcome to Garthdale,” she said, quite as if she were receiving guests on the threshold of her own establishment. “We have been deprived of your company for far too long, Mr. Bennet. You and your charming wife and accomplished children will make such an addition to our society.”

  All this was accompanied by an extravagant curtsey, and a practised smile, as if to say “see, I am a reformed character.” It failed totally of its purpose as far as I was concerned and I doubt if Mrs. Bennet or my girls were deceived either.

  It was clear, however, that it still worked upon her brother, and upon dear Jane, so ready to see the good in those around her and so reluctant to admit their failings.

  Miss Bingley’s whole manner, in fact, was quite proprietorial, ordering the servants about, officiously taking charge of everything and completely ignoring the real master and mistress of the house until the servants had disappeared, when she turned to her brother with “Charles, Briggs is waiting for you in the office. He insists upon speaking to you about the four-acre, although I have told him exactly what needs doing. You know that I understand these things far better than you do, and I should be obliged if you would make him understand that, too.”

  Her greeting to Jane was only slightly less abrupt.

  “There you are, Jane, and I see you have brought your own maid back with you again. I quite see that you might wish to make your own mind up about such things, but I assure you that I had your best interests at heart when I spoke to you on that subject before you left. Dear, sweet Jane, you are so trusting with everyone, but I will take care for you, never fear for that, though it wear me out, for the love I bear you and my dear brother. But you must be dying to show your guests to their rooms. Tea will be served in fifteen minutes.”

  And with the merest of bobs to us all, she swept out.

  She had not exactly said “Dismissed,” but it felt like it.

  I liked neither the looks nor the sound of this, but the ladies were soon so happy in showing, and being shown their new rooms that I resolved, for the moment, to say nothing, but to observe how matters progressed.

  And observe I did. We had agreed to stay but one night at Garthdale, Mrs. Bennet being eager to get on to Newcastle, although this was changed after the first evening.

  “Dear father,” Jane said to me after dinner. “I am so happy to see you here at last. I know you must be wild to see Lydia and your grandchild, but could you not stay just a little longer?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, my dear,” I replied. “But it is your mother you must persuade, not me.”

  “Then I will speak to her tonight, before we both go to bed. There are other things we need to have a comfy coze about, and I will add that to them.”

  The result of this ‘comfy coze’ was that our departure was postponed from ‘instantly’ to the much more satisfactorily vague ‘soon,’ the reason for this being very expeditiously impressed upon me.

  “I should not be happy leaving poor Jane just now,” said Mrs. Bennet. “You men never discern anything which I dare say is how she has escaped her brother’s notice for so long, but did you see the way Miss Bingley ordered Jane about when we arrived? And since then she has been acting quite as if it were she, and not Jane, who is mistress here. Oh, she simpers and smiles and pretends friendship as she always did, but she is undermining your daughter, Mr. Bennet, and I will not have it. I require you to do something about it, Mr. Bennet.”

  Mrs. Bennet is a steady, reliable friend, and an even steadier, more reliable enemy, and I should have expected little else from her when speaking of Miss Bingley, but in this case her words coincided with my own observations, and I resolved to oblige her. But before I could announce my intentions, which were, in truth, not yet fully formed, there was more to hear.

  “And do you know, Mr. Bennet, that woman has induced her brother to adopt a separate bedroom from his own wife? She has convinced him that to share a bed is both unfashionable and unhealthy, and now they never spend a night together! From what poor Jane has told me, Bingley was never much in the way of a passionate lover, but now how will we ever have a grandchild from them now? It is all that woman’s doing. She tried to part them right from the start, and now she is at her old tricks. It is clear that she has been battening upon her brother and Jane ever since she realized that she would never succeed in detaching Darcy from our Lizzie. If she is not stopped, I could easily believe her capable of doing away with Bingley and Jane, and who would get all Bingley’s money then? You must do something, Mr. Bennet.”

  “There does not seem to be a great deal that I can do, my dear,” I replied, “but what there is, I shall do. I shall speak to Bingley tomorrow, and we shall see. But never fear, my love. Our Cinderella shall keep her Prince Charming. Leave me to deal with the Ugly Sister.”

  “Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are always so good to me,” was her reply, and she turned over and began instantly to snore, leaving me to ponder the ending of this fairy tale.

  The following day I spent in close observation of this unexpected ménage à trois. I remember observing to Jane, at the time of their betrothal, “I have not a doubt of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income."

  I saw nothing to contradict this prediction, save one thing only. I had not counted on the continuing presence of Miss Bingley.

  She was evidently a very efficient housekeeper, but clearly not in the best of odours with the servants, and a few sympathetic remarks made in the course of a visit to the servants’ hall, aided by the liberal distribution of halfcrowns proved gratifyingly enlightening.

  In this I was helped by the fact that Joseph, the butler, had been our under-butler at Longbourn for five years, before going to Garthdale to ‘do for Miss Jane’, and his indignant relation of Miss Bingley’s iniquities set me thinking.

  “It’s a shame and a disgrace, sir, the way she bamboozles the young master and poor Miss Jane, and her feathering her own nest all the while. You ought to take a look at them account books, sir. You’d soon set things to rights round here, you would.”

  This, of course, was most unlikely to happen, and due allowance must be made for servants’ prejudice, but perhaps if Miss Bingley thought otherwise? Something might yet be contrived.

  The following morning, it being fine and bright, though a trifle windy, I prevailed upon Bingley to show me round his estate, while Mrs. Bennet had another word with Jane.

  The countryside here was not at all like
the friendly woodland around Pemberley, but all open moorland, grazed by flocks of hardy sheep, and enclosed by steep, towering hills. The valleys between them funneled the east wind most uncomfortably in our faces, and I remarked upon the coolness of the day to my son-in-law.

  “Oh, this is nothing,” he replied. “This is bracing, no more. You should try the wind on the hilltops. It’s the heights that are wuthering, as they say round here.”

  Remarks about the estate led naturally to the question of its management, which Bingley admitted he found both boring and difficult.

  “Would you like me to cast an eye upon your accounting books?” I asked, quite innocently.

  “Oh, I wish you would. I can never make head nor tail of them, but there always seems to be more money going out than coming in.”

  “That cannot be right, I hope. And if it is, we must attend to it. If we stay here long enough, I will see what can be done, but the length of our stay is a matter for the ladies. And speaking of the ladies…”

  I led from this, gradually, into the subject of separate bedrooms, and the desirability of an heir, now that Bingley was a landed proprietor.

  I found to my astonishment that Bingley seemed to have no very clear idea of how such a thing might come about, of how babies are made. I perhaps should not have been so surprised. Bingley had been a mere infant when his father had died, and had been brought up by his elder sister, and such an elder sister, too, as that dry stick of a Mrs. Hurst. He had not had the mixed benefits of going to school, and had only met Darcy at Oxford, where they had both attended a college notorious for the monasticism of its students.

  Since then he had carefully left everything to do with farming his estate to his sister and his steward, about whom I began to have my doubts, too. He had never seen a stallion brought to a mare, nor a bull to a heifer, nor even a ram to one of his own ewes.

  Still, he cannot have been totally innocent, for when I explained the procedure in the necessary detail he raised no objections.