“I should enjoy a ride above all things.” She dropped her eyes self-consciously and set about filling her plate, suddenly realizing how hungry she was.
“A ride?” said Kitty, entering the room with her husband at that same moment. “What a splendid idea. Tristan and I shall go with you, and perhaps Lizzy and Mr. Darcy will as well. We shall make a party of it. After all, we must not leave the two of you unchaperoned, must we?”
“I am convinced that ‘unchaperoned’ is exactly what they had in mind, my dear,” Tristan told Kitty. “Nevertheless, a bracing ride would be just the thing to clear away the cobwebs. We have been all too long confined indoors.” To the others he added, “Have no fear, though. We shall be certain to take a wrong turn and lose ourselves at the first opportunity. If anybody can be sympathetic to the evils of a want of privacy, it is I.”
Mr. Tristan Collins was as good as his word. Although they began as a riding party of four (Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy declining to join them), they shortly divided into a pair of twosomes, Kitty and Tristan veering off toward the hills whilst Mary and Mr. Farnsworth continued down the trail by the stream. Mary took the lead and set a brisk pace, enjoying the feel of the powerful animal moving beneath her and the cold air whipping past her cheeks. The knowledge that the man she loved rode just behind her completed her idea of happiness.
When the trail widened out enough to admit two riders abreast, she slowed her horse and waited for her companion to draw alongside. “What was it that you wished to tell me, Harrison?” Mary called out, taking pleasure in hearing his name roll off her tongue. “We are alone now, and this is your chance.”
A distant peal of thunder rumbled somewhere off to the west.
Farnsworth reined in his horse to the walking pace of hers. “I want you to know all – everything about me, Mary. If we are to be happy together, there can be no secrets or deceit between us.”
“I quite agree. My life is an open book; there is nothing you may not know, and very little of which you are not already aware, I should think.”
“It is quite a different thing with me, however. I am ten years older, and I had a life before coming to Hertfordshire, which you can have little knowledge of.” His tone was very grave. “It is better that you should hear these things now, before we are married, in case it will make a difference in the way you feel.”
A tremor of uneasiness trickled down Mary’s spine. “You begin to frighten me, Harrison. Is there something in your past, some horrible scandal or indiscretion that you mean to confess to me?”
“Indiscretion, certainly. Scandal? That too, if it had become widely known, which thankfully it did not. How horrible the business is, you shall be the judge. Be patient and I will tell you the whole story.”
Mary said no more. She drew a deep breath and sat a little straighter in the saddle, bracing herself for what was to come. Half an hour before, she would have said that nothing could have shaken her confidence in Mr. Farnsworth, and yet now she trembled with dread for what he might say. Could that happiness which she had waited so long to taste be swept away from her lips the very next day? Surely not; it would be too cruel.
For a long moment, Mr. Farnsworth remained silent as well, looking afar off into the distance as they rode apace down the path. “The trouble erupted six years ago,” he began. “No, I must go farther back.” He sighed and a weary expression came over his countenance. “As you may know, I made my fortune years ago in the war, as a captain in His Majesty’s Navy, a fortune which enabled me to marry where I wished and to set myself up in London in some kind of style. We were happy in those early years, Constance and I – just the two of us at first, and then with the added blessing of our daughters. The only point of contention between us was my necessary absences at sea. Constance hated being left alone at home, and she begged me to resign my commission. ‘Out of the question,’ I told her. It was my career, after all, and one I was well suited to. So I came home whenever I could, and kept promising to retire before long. Then about ten years ago, I was put ashore earlier than expected after a voyage and came home to surprise my wife.” He paused.
“She must have been… delighted to see you,” Mary said tentatively.
“Shocked, more like. I discovered her there, at our London house, in the arms of an old acquaintance – a man who had been a lieutenant under my first command, and who had been more than once a guest in my home. Constance denied everything, of course. They both did. She claimed Ekhart had come strictly as a friend in time of need, a shoulder to cry on. You see, she had just lost what would have been our third child – a boy. And I was not there to comfort her, as she pointed out.”
Again, Farnsworth paused, but Mary dared not venture any remark on this aspect of the story. Instead, she observed, “The sky is darkening. Perhaps we should start back. We can cross here and take the shorter way home.”
He nodded without comment, and then continued his narrative after the horses had picked their way through the cold, hock-deep water to the other side. “I made some discreet inquiries, and the two of them had been seen keeping company about town, but nothing too alarming. Constance continued to plead her innocence, and in the end, I decided to believe her. I wanted to, of course. No man likes to think himself a cuckold. I hoped we could put the unfortunate business behind us and go on as before. Then, when Michael came along a year and a half later, it seemed we had succeeded in doing so. With our family growing, I made good on my promise to retire, and all was well again. Those were happy days. We laughed, we played with the children, we entertained, and we danced with no thought for the past.”
Mary glanced sidelong at him and saw his wistful smile before it faded. “Happy days,” she repeated.
“Yes… until Ekhart turned up again. I thought him long gone to Scotland, and then I happened upon him at my club one night, losing at cards and drinking heavily. Apparently, he had been at it some time, for he was in rather rough shape. He spied me and demanded that, in homage to our past service in arms together, I advance him twenty pounds to settle his debts. It may not surprise you to learn that I refused his request. From there his behavior deteriorated rapidly until I was conscripted – along with another gentleman, a fine fellow by the name of Talbot – to remove the troublemaker from the premises. None too willingly, he came along, stumbling and cursing all the way to his rooms at a boarding house, where we prepared to leave him to sleep off his foul mood. Before we went, however, Ekhart turned on me and fired the fatal shot. He said I should not look down my nose at him, for he would have the last laugh, since the heir to my estate…” He took a deep breath and let it out again in a cloud of steam. “The heir to my estate was his own bastard son.”
Mary gasped in spite of herself. “Michael?” she whispered.
Mr. Farnsworth nodded solemnly. “You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. I flew at the man and nearly tore him limb from limb. Were it not for Talbot being there to restrain me, I might have murdered a man that night. Does that shock you, Mary?”
Mary did not know how to answer.
“Never mind; it is not a fair question to put to you.”
“Did you believe what this man said, about Michael, I mean?”
“When I later considered his assertion rationally, I realized that there was just enough uncertainty about the date of conception as to cast into doubt whether I had been at home or away at the time. And then there was Constance’s insistence that the child be named Michael – Ekhart’s given name. So, yes, I did believe it, and I acted accordingly. If I was to be miserable, I was determined I should not be the only one. I took my wife away from her home in town, and from the society she loved, all but imprisoning her at Netherfield whilst I hobnobbed in London to spite her. And what is worse, I shunned the boy; I withheld the merest kindness from him, my own flesh and blood.”
“Yes, he is your flesh and blood! Surely no one who has seen the strong resemblance between the two of you could deny it!”
“Clear enough in the boy of nine, I
grant you, but it was not so obvious in the two-year-old infant. Michael is my son; I am as certain of that as anything in this world. Even were he not, however, he had done nothing to deserve what I gave him: my contempt… and more. Shall I tell you the worst, Mary? Or do you already despise me?”
They had come up the rise, out of the wood to an open meadow. A heavy dampness permeated the air, and Mary noticed the first drops of rain spotting her cloak. “I… I do not despise you, sir.”
“And yet your faith in me is shaken by this news. I see it plainly written on your face.”
“No,” Mary said with far more conviction than she felt. “These are difficult things to hear. Still, I trust I shall understand you better for it in the end.”
“Then I do not regret speaking, and I will be bold to tell you one thing more so that my conscience may be clear, whatever else comes of it.” Farnsworth brought his horse round and stopped so that he was facing Mary, and as close to her as the situation allowed. He reached for her hand, held it, and studied it, as if to give himself an excuse for not meeting her eyes. In a voice thick with emotion he said, “When I thought… When I thought Michael was a different man’s child… God forgive me, but I secretly hoped he would not live to inherit my estate. I prayed for another son to take his place, one that I could be sure was mine.” Farnsworth lifted his anguished face to look at Mary. “This is the guilt I carry with me always.”
Mary could say nothing for the distress his words had engendered within her. Her eyes stung with tears, and a choking sob issued from somewhere deep within her chest. It sickened her to think this man had ever been brought so low as to wish his own son harm.
“I see you understand the gravity of what I have told you, Mary. You cannot think any worse of me for it than I do myself, however. And I assure you I have been sorely punished. The sons I wanted were born dead, and then their mother – whom I still loved, despite everything – was carried off as well. Finally, when I had begun to regain some hope for the future, to think about the possibility of a new life with you, it seemed I would lose Michael too, in delayed fulfillment of my horrid wish. I thank God that He saw fit to give me back my son, and also that I had had an opportunity to make my peace with Constance before she passed from this life.” He paused. “But what about you, Mary? Will you really consent to unite yourself to the black-hearted villain you see before you now? Knowing what you do, can you still love me?”
50
Teacher, Know Thyself
As the rain began pouring down in earnest, a crack of thunder broke directly overhead. Mary screamed, and her mount bolted forward, racing across the field for home. She did nothing to restrain the animal, only held tight and allowed it to chart its own course. She welcomed the icy drops striking her face and the wind roaring in her ears, as if their force might overpower all other unpleasantness, as if the shock of Harrison Farnsworth’s confession could be outdistanced if only she flew fast enough.
Another minute and they had reached the stables, where Mary quickly slid from the saddle and consigned her mare over to a groom before dashing away again.
Mr. Farnsworth, who had been hard upon Mary’s heels the whole way, finally overtook her on foot. “Wait!” he implored her, coming round in front and taking hold of her shoulders. “I have bared my soul to you, Mary. Have you nothing to say in response?”
“The rain!” she cried out. “We must go in. And I must be allowed to think before answering!”
Mary broke free and ran on to the house. Once inside, she hurried to her own room and closed the door, pausing there to steady her nerves and stay her trembling hands. She needed time – time alone to digest what she had just learnt and to reconcile herself to the altered state of affairs if possible.
Wishing she could shed all her worries with as little effort, she then began peeling away her damp clothing, simply letting it fall to the floor where she stood. Once dry and redressed, she settled herself at her dressing table and regarded the troubled face she saw in the glass, the one that had looked so serenely content only a few hours before. Her mind still reeled with all that Harrison had told her concerning his past, his marriage, his dead wife, and his relationship to his son.
This new information explained much about what Mary had observed when first she came to Netherfield. Now the palpable tension she had noticed in the household made sense, as well as Mr. Farnsworth’s behavior to his wife and son. She could even understand – at least in part – what he had suffered at the hands of others and by the punishment of his own conscience. But did his latterly remorse erase the vindictiveness of which he had admitted being guilty?
A few years earlier, she would have had no difficulty judging such a case, and no scruple doing so either. She would have condemned them both, husband and wife, with hardly a second thought.
Things had seemed simpler then, before the clear demarcations she had drawn between right and wrong were thoroughly tested. True right and wrong were still what they had always been, of course; only her sympathy for those who sometimes found themselves over the line had changed. Her former prejudices had been stripped away, and she had more understanding of the powerful forces that pushed and pulled at the vulnerable hearts of men.
Experience had been her teacher. Her unforeseen attachment to the Farnsworth children, her silent grief over her father’s death, her ambition and infatuation for Mr. Tristan Collins, her animosity towards her own sister for coming between them, her painful banishment from Netherfield, and the final realization of her desperate love for Mr. Farnsworth: each one of these had stripped away another layer of the armor that had long kept her untouched by commonplace emotional turmoil.
In the past, she had been able to moralize over the infamous sins of others with superior self-satisfaction, both because she had maintained a degree of detachment from their plights, and because she had never been tempted to such behavior herself. Could she say the same now?
There was a knock at the door, and Elizabeth entered a moment later. “Oh, there you are, dearest,” she said coming over to where Mary still sat at her dressing table. Elizabeth studied her sister’s reflection in the mirror, saying, “Is anything the matter? I spied Mr. Farnsworth treading to and fro on the gravel out in the rain, looking very worried. And I see you are currently wearing a similar expression.”
“Oh! Is he still out in the rain?” Mary crossed immediately to the window and looked down. There, through the wavy, water-streaked pane, she saw his distorted form – now paused, and now resuming his purposeful march to nowhere in particular.
“I called to him,” said Elizabeth, “urging him to come in, but he would not. He says he is waiting for a word from you.”
Mary made no answer; she only continued studying the dark figure pacing below.
“I hope you two have not quarreled,” prompted Elizabeth, to no avail. “Have I mentioned how very much we both like your Mr. Farnsworth, Mr. Darcy and I? We could not be more delighted that you have found someone so perfectly suited to you.”
“He is far from perfect, as it turns out.”
“I did not mean to say that he was. We all have our faults. We all make mistakes, I believe… perhaps even you, Mary dear.”
Elizabeth was right, of course. What was there of moral high ground left to her, after all? Portions of her behavior over the past year were mortifying enough to remember, but when she recollected her thoughts… Pride and folly abounded, but there was far worse. Had she not distinguished something akin to murder in her heart when Kitty betrayed and Tristan deserted her? And what of her feelings for Mr. Farnsworth? If she looked more closely, might she discover that her first symptoms of desire for him had germinated when he was still another woman’s husband?
If God could forgive her such things – and she knew that He could – what right had she to hold past offenses, already confessed and cleansed, against Harrison Farnsworth?
Mary abruptly abandoned her window and snatched up a handy shawl. “Thank you, Lizzy,�
� she said brightly as she threw it about her shoulders.
“For what?”
Mary was already halfway out the door.
With a light heart, she sailed through the passageway and down the stairs. She had always been so severe on people who were not perfect and so unwilling to show any sign of frailty herself. Now, however, she rejoiced in her own weaknesses, so flagrantly displayed over the last year, because it made accepting Mr. Farnsworth’s past failings not only possible but compulsory.
She crossed the hall and flung wide the front door.
Twenty feet away, Farnsworth heard the sound and stopped in his place. He turned and lifted his face to her – a face dripping with rain and laden with the weight of an unanswered question.
Mary paused on the threshold a moment, her breath catching in her throat as she regarded her beloved in all his tarnished splendor. What a kind convenience, she thought, that she had been taught to properly know herself just in time – in time to accept this marred yet magnificent man who had offered her his heart.
Down the steps she ran, and into the crush of Mr. Farnsworth’s eager embrace. “All is well,” she told him, as water from his sodden coat soaked through to her skin. “All is well.”
“Then you have forgiven me?”
“There is nothing for me to forgive, dear Harrison. The past is past. Let us leave it there and make a new start… together.
~~*~~
That evening, with calm and comfort restored, Mary and Harrison Farnsworth attempted to reconvene their discussion in the saloon near the fire. Most the others of the household instinctively understood their need for private conversation, and they kept their distance. Mrs. Bennet proved the exception, however. But for Mr. Darcy’s heroic intervention, she would have remained seated alongside Mary the entire evening, for the purpose of flattering her future son-in-law and frequently saying how very pleased Mr. Bennet would have been with the match.
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