A Private Performance

by Helen Halstead

  “You understand nothing about me, Mr. Glover. How do you dare?”

  “I beg you, madam, to grant me permission to finish the work. I will make changes, and yours will be the final decision whether or not the public will see it.”

  His eyes expressed some fervent feeling and she flinched in distaste. She sought to pass him, when a hand fell on Glover’s arm.

  “You overreach yourself, sir. You will importune this lady no longer.”

  “Whittaker!” Scorn spat from the dark eyes. “You will stand in the way of art for an occupation?” They were blocking her exit.

  “As it happens, Glover, I need no occupation. Art is a refinement in my life.”

  “You are a dilettante.”

  “Perhaps it is best I aspire to nothing more.” Whittaker paused, looking the other up and down. “There is no sight more pitiful than the clown aspiring to play Hamlet.”

  For a moment Elizabeth feared Glover would strike him, but he turned on his heel and rushed from the garden. They could hear the scattering of gravel as he fled along the path.

  “Why do you do it, Mr. Whittaker?”

  “Why indeed, Mrs. Darcy? Lady Englebury accuses me of jealousy.”

  Elizabeth was too startled by this unwelcome confidence to speak.

  “I can understand if you doubt me,” he said. “I was, myself, deeply shocked by her accusation.” He looked away and, seemingly forgetful of Elizabeth’s presence, continued, “Yet, I see now that I have been sick with envy, as though his success in the arts precluded me from my aunt’s esteem.” He started, becoming aware of her expression of surprise and faint distaste. “Why do I tell you this?”

  “Indeed, sir, I know not. My question was rhetorical.”

  “I wish desperately for you to understand me; I know not why.”

  ‘They are all mad,’ she thought, and something of this was conveyed in her expression.

  They were in the archway now, concealed from the shrubbery outside. She turned to go.

  Blinded by emotion, Glover had brushed past Darcy unseeing. Nameless suspicion and anxiety caused Darcy to leave the path and cut across the grass to find her. She was there, with him, cheeks flushed, eyes widely dark, as Whittaker said: “I have been tortured. You are surprised. Thought you that I had no cares? I was jealous of him. Yet now, I see there is no cause.” It was when he broke off that she saw Darcy.

  “Come, Elizabeth.” She blanched and looked a little angry at his peremptory tone.

  He offered her his arm, in a manner she dared not refuse, lest she shame him before Whittaker. However, she would see he did not behave so again. They walked rapidly along the path, anger sizzling between them.

  “I would thank you, sir, not to use me so again! I am not your servant.”

  “No, indeed, madam. You are my wife; and you will remember it,” he said. She stared at him in disbelief.

  “How could I forget it?” she said.

  They parted without further speech and did not meet again until dinner.

  Elizabeth passed the rest of the morning with the ladies. She walked out with Amelia, their gowns brushing the wet grass, scarves fluttering in the wind. They followed the gravel path up as far as the woods, where the damp ground halted them; then turned and looked back over the gardens. Amelia saw them first and touched Elizabeth’s arm.

  Georgiana was walking in the park with Lord Bradford.

  “Miss Darcy.”

  The girl slowed her steps and stopped. He looked at her sweet face, her downcast eyes. Lord, how she had eclipsed the lovely Arabella in his estimation!

  “Miss Darcy, since I have come to know you, you have occupied my thoughts and my heart exclusively. I scarcely dare to hope, but will you be my wife?”

  She could not answer him.

  “Let me care for you, love you, keep you from harm.”

  Georgiana spoke, so softly he had to bend his head to hear her: “It is too great an honour for me, my lord. I … I could not do justice to the position you offer me.”

  “I am a simple man, Miss Darcy. Some would say I am not fitted for my position in the world. If you would share it with me, I would not ask more than you could comfortably learn to perform.”

  She could not answer him for looking at his shoulder, and recalling her dream of leaning her head there. All her senses told her how his embrace would ease her pain. How could she so yearn, when she loved an unattainable other? She did, did she not?

  “I feel I have spoken too soon,” he said. “Do not say me nay at once, dear Miss Darcy. Allow me the chance to convince you that I can make you happy.”

  She nodded.

  “When shall I speak again? Tell me, at the end of your stay here? Or later?”

  “I know not. I feel so confused.”

  “You do not dismiss me?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Then I have your permission to hope?”

  “I do not deserve your kindness,” she whispered.

  “You deserve more than I can offer you, and in six weeks, I shall again offer you all I have to give.”

  She flushed and looked away, her lips slightly parted. He looked at that mouth, which whispered so few, yet treasured, words. He would have so much liked to kiss those lips. She looked at him then and knew it, and could not draw her eyes away from his.

  He sensed his chance and longed to put his question again, but wondered if it would be ungentlemanlike, after her promise to hear him again.

  In that moment’s pause, Georgiana slipped mutely away from him and returned to the house.

  She went to her room. Something of Bradford’s essence had impressed her so deeply, had made her so aware of all the love swelling her heart that she felt capable of the courage that love demanded of her. She sat at the desk and reached for the pen. She wrote the note off hastily, and rang the bell. She watched her own hand giving it to the footman and sat down, watching her clock tick away fifteen slow minutes.

  She went to meet her enemy, and found him waiting. She blushed deeply, and her prepared speech burst out: “Mr. Glover, I beg you to desist from all your attentions to my sister. You do not know what unhappiness you cause her.”

  The left side of his face twitched. He said nothing.

  She shook under his dark stare. Her throat was tight and dry. She bit her lips to quell their trembling. She said, “I tell you, sir, you must do as I say.”

  He stared at her. The silence, which in the past would have made her very afraid, called up a surge of emotion that shook her.

  “Well?” she burst out. Her voice took her by surprise; it came out an octave lower than ever before.

  “Pray, wait here for me.” He rushed out. What kind of man was this? Georgiana had never met with such a one. She had told him, a man, a celebrated writer and a favourite of the marchioness, that he must obey her. What was she thinking? The previous afternoon, for all her distress and fear, she had not stilled a secret voice that whispered to her that Glover’s work was the embryo of something great. A thousand deaths, including the death of their family happiness, could not halt its birth. What right had she, Georgiana, to try?

  He was with her again in minutes. In his hands was a manuscript, the pages held together with a ribbon.

  “Take it,” he said.

  She looked at him mutely. She could not reach for it.

  He hurled it onto the fire. She gasped and would almost have pulled it forth. It seemed a long time that they stood there, watching as the flames licked around the edges. At last a great whoosh of destruction sucked it to oblivion.

  He bowed, abrupt, yet somehow courtly in his way. He turned towards the door.

  “Mr. Glover!” He turned back.

  “I can only guess what this sacrifice means to you. I hope you do not think me impertinent.”

  “You are courageous.” The fine angles of his face seemed alive with feeling. She had never known such a person existed.

  “I am the most fearful person in all the world,” she
said.

  “In the small things, perhaps. Yet in the great things, you are courageous.”

  “My brother and his wife are all I have in the world. I must fight for them.”

  “Constantly, women astound me.”

  “All your work. You make people so happy,” she said.

  “They laugh for an hour. They do not even see that they laugh at themselves. I was ambitious, but never mind. Whittaker is right; this longing to play Hamlet is every clown’s tragedy.”

  He was halfway through the door when she said: “No! No! You must not listen to the vulgar chatter of the world. You must listen only to your own heart and to your conscience and you will do right. Then, God willing, you will succeed.”

  “I thought you a child,” he said, and quitted the room.

  By evening, the last of the storm had been chased away. Through the long windows Elizabeth looked out on to the fingers of light across the lawn. She sighed.

  “You weary of us already,” said a voice close behind her. She started. Whittaker stood beside her. He leaned against the window frame and gazed at her profile. He said: “I have had some dealings with Sir Graham Eston of late, and I wondered if you knew much of him. The gossip is so various.”

  “Really, I know him only by repute. You would do better to speak to Mr. Darcy about him,” she said.

  “Your husband would as soon converse with a toad as with me.”

  Elizabeth laughed involuntarily, a light sound that filled her with pain, and glanced across to where Darcy sat, ostensibly listening to Sir Beau but, in reality, studying his wife. Their eyes met: his gaze was impenetrable. Her laughter faded, and by habit she smiled at him with a hint of coquetry. He looked away.

  She turned back to the window.

  “I am sure you underestimate yourself, Mr. Whittaker. To my knowledge, Mr. Darcy never talks to toads.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “You may have reason for complaint if he did, I think.”

  “Not at all. I understand that conversing with amphibians is not on that very short list of crimes about which a wife might complain.”

  He laughed again.

  ‘I believe she rather enjoys Darcy’s saturnine moods,’ he thought. ‘The man is sulking now because she exchanges the occasional word with a man who admires her. He must love her to distraction.’

  The thought of Darcy suffering distraction from any cause made him smile. ‘I am safe from that, at least. No-one will ever hold such power over me.’

  Miss Whittaker called to them in her softly carrying tone: “I cannot imagine in what way my brother has deserved your attention, Mrs. Darcy. You are cruel to deprive the rest of the company of your wit.”

  “You are deceived by my hollow laughter, Sister,” her brother replied. “Mrs. Darcy has been drawing a comparison between myself and the toad, with the latter coming out much to advantage.” Elizabeth laughed in relief at his silliness.

  Georgiana had bowed to pressure and was nervously taking her place at the pianoforte. Sir Beau and Arabella had been practising a duet written by Whittaker. Elizabeth moved towards the small sofa where Darcy was sitting. He rose, with courteous alacrity, and she sat down alone.

  “May I bring you something, Elizabeth—a glass of wine?”

  “Thank you, no.” She gave the merest flash of a polite smile.

  He took up a position standing behind her. She watched as Arabella glided to the instrument to sing. She was dressed with beguiling elegance, in clinging silk of autumnal gold. ‘Perhaps Fitzwilliam would have married her, if he had not fallen so foolishly in love with me first,’ she thought. Miss Whittaker would not mourn, she imagined, when a husband’s affection faded.

  Whittaker approached and sat next to Elizabeth on the sofa.

  “What enviable calm your sister has, Mr. Whittaker,” she said. “I cannot imagine what upheaval it would take to ruffle her.”

  He half turned to her and said, with quiet abstraction, as though his words were involuntary: “My sister and I suffered such storms in our early life that, by contrast, any squall is nought but the most wondrously bracing breeze.”

  Elizabeth looked at him, astonished. His eyes were soft, open blue; she sensed in him a pain lying deep beneath his ennui, his shallow pleasures. She wanted to reply, but her lips trembled.

  “A foolish remark, madam. Pray forgive me.”

  To her horror she felt her eyes filling with tears.

  “Allow me to fetch you a glass of wine,” he said, softly.

  “No, thank you.” Her lips moved but she could not speak aloud.

  However, he gestured to a footman, who brought the wine at once. Whittaker took it from the tray and handed it to her.

  She took a sip. Her tears had retreated. She knew now she would not weep. She looked down to her lap, where the glass of wine shook slightly in her hands. She must put it down. She felt fingers brush hers, as Darcy leaned down and took the glass, putting it on the little table beside her.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She dared not look at him.

  As she prepared for bed, Elizabeth thought of the previous night and of how her cold reception of her husband’s advances must have hurt his pride. They had buried quarrels between the sheets in the past, but last night was different, for she had never previously questioned his love and esteem for her. The thought of submitting to him when his passion was only for her body was repugnant to her. She felt a chill, realising that she had even thought in terms of submitting. Where love had been a joy, was it now to be a duty, and irksome at that?

  Elizabeth looked at her image in the mirror. She thought of the qualities for which she had so loved her husband: his high sense of honour, the keenness of his mind and the passionate, tender, chivalrous love he had shown for her. Had that love been burnt up by too passionate a devotion? One read of such things—but Fitzwilliam fickle? It did not seem possible.

  She owed him gratitude. She had done something, perhaps, to annoy him, although she could think of nothing that could begin to justify such coldness. Yet he had, at times, betrayed a sensitivity so keen she had been astonished.

  The foolishness of their situation dawned upon her. He must love her still. They had come to misunderstand each other. Instead of standing on her pride, all she need do was apologise. She did not know for what, but he obviously did. Later she would tease him about it, which was something to anticipate.

  She opened the door softly and went in. She slid in beside him.

  “Thank you for rescuing my wine, Fitzwilliam,” she said.

  “I did not wish you to make a fool of yourself,” he said.

  Her exclamation of pain was so soft it sounded like a sigh.

  She nearly left it there, but desired to look back on this occasion with the knowledge that she had done her duty.

  “I am sorry if my behaviour has caused offence, Fitzwilliam.”

  “You have done nothing to justify complaint.”

  She blew out the candle, and the cold darkness crept around them.

  CHAPTER 33

  FROM THE MORNING LIGHT STREAMING into the room, Elizabeth knew the weather had cleared. Her husband had likely gone fishing. She dressed with care, doing honour to herself. She breakfasted with the other ladies, then prepared for a long solitary walk. In the beautiful wood on the east side of the house she ran to lose herself far in the trees.

  She gasped at the sharpness of the air, breathing deeply the delicious scent of the moist ground. Sunlight through the trees threw dappled greenish light round her. She forgot all that had come before.

  She heard her name called, and turned to see a servant running up the path to her.

  “We have been searching everywhere for you, ma’am. The marchioness asks if you would kindly come back to the house.”

  She sighed and turned back. On her way down the hill she met Darcy.

  “Good morning, Fitzwilliam. What diversion is her ladyship planning now?” she said.

  “Come to the house
, Elizabeth. I have something to tell you.”

  “What is it? Pray tell me at once. It is Papa!”

  “It does not concern your parents. Pray, sit on this bench.” She sank down. He would have taken her hands, had he not felt this would be unwelcome.

  “Elizabeth, I have just received an express letter from Mr. Turner. Your sister is gravely ill, and he begs your speedy return.”

  “Kitty?” She put her hand out to him and he enclosed it in his. She wanted more, wanted to feel his arms around her, but she did not wish this done in charity. She stood up and took his offered arm. As they emerged from the wood, she saw the carriage already pulled up before the steps, and footmen beginning to load the luggage. Georgiana ran across to them, put her arm around Elizabeth and walked back with her to the house. In ten minutes, their whole party was on the way to Derbyshire.

  Kitty opened her eyes. ‘Was I sleeping?’ she wondered. ‘Who is this man, sitting by my bed?’

  “Kitty, here is Mr. Edgeley,” said Edward, from the foot of the bed. “Do you remember that you asked to see him?”

  “I am so sorry. I have been sleeping.” Her voice was so hoarse and weak, he bent forward, straining to hear her.

  “Pray, do not hurry yourself. I have all the time you need.”

  She looked, confused, from his kindly worn face to Edward, so sad. She remembered.

  Her eyes sprang alive with fear, and she was fully present again.

  At once Edward was at her side, taking her hands in his.

  “My dearest, I beg you not to be afraid.” His face pressed against her hands.

  “Poor Edward,” she said. She shuddered for breath. “Better for you if you had never seen me.”

  “No, no. There is still hope. I do not despair.” He felt the warmth of the hand upon his shoulder.

  “We pray to God that Mrs. Turner will be spared. Meanwhile, I should like to have a little conversation with her.”

  “I am being selfish.”