Mrs Jenkinson was utterly confounded by my declared intention of retreating to an island off the coast to lodge with cloistered nuns for a few weeks: I think she had visions of having to break the news to my mother that I had taken the veil. I had to play my hand carefully; the poor woman is, as I have mentioned, a terrible sailor, and the only way to and from the island is by fishing boat, rowed by rough men, and stinking of the day’s catch. I suggested she remain behind in our lodgings and rest, given that she remained debilitated by the rigours of the journey and the heat. It was wrong of me to tempt her, but I explained that the Mother Superior of the establishment would send sisters to meet me on the quay and accompany me on my short voyage. She did not have the strength to oppose me, and so I am here alone, unless you count the good sisters, who are so silent, but for their singing and prayers, that I might as well be sharing this island with corporeal ghosts.
This will be a shorter note than my last, because although I have leisure to write, there is little to report. The shape of each day is determined by the prayers recited at set hours in the small but rather fine cathedral – which luckily escaped demolition during the Terrors – and punctuated by meals and readings from the Rule of this Order. In between, the sisters work in the distillery, vineyards, lavender fields, and vegetable rows. I am excused such labour and left to entertain myself through the long, hot hours of the day.
It might seem that I have exchanged my life at Rosings for a foreign version but with habits and hymns – yet here I answer to no one but myself. Each day I walk for hours alone in heat made almost delicious by the wafts of cool air from the watery surrounds, circumnavigating this little island like the Portuguese navigators of old circled the globe. I have my objects – one of them a ruined castle where the wind whistles around the keeps and walkways, and whips at my clothing. The rocks below are black and sharp, and the waves froth about them, and I feel a rather pleasant tremor seeing them beneath my feet as I perch on the edge of a battlement.
The island is also supplied with a number of small chapels, cool, dark caves against the burning sun – welcome places to rest and drink from the bottle of water I carry, which I refill from the spring as I pass its mossy green bubble. More bellicose are the cannons pointed out to sea against the depredations of Boney, and the oven for casting the balls.
One consequence of all this exercise and air is that I am perpetually as hungry as a hunter, and the meals here, while not entirely Spartan – this is still France, after all – are plain in the extreme. But although the bread is coarse, it is served with honey almost ruby in colour and cherry-flavoured, and there is always an array of cheeses, along with speckled and musky grapes, to follow the soup that makes the main meal most evenings. On Fridays, as is consistent with the Roman tradition, we eat fish in the form of a thick and tasty broth called Bouillabaisse, and there is meat on Sundays and feast days.
The first day I turned my steps towards the centre of the island, I came across a sight I shall not easily forget – it was as if a sky purpled by thunder had fallen to the earth. Lavender fields spread before me, creating a swathe of blue stronger than either ocean or sky, and the scent – I swear it was the odour of Paradise itself. I know I wax lyrical, but believe me, it enlivened my nerves and blood. I have purchased a bottle of the distilled oil as a keepsake, and shall bring you some as well on my return. Which creeps closer – I cannot leave Mrs J abandoned in a French hostelry forever. But knowledge of the necessity of adventure is now engrained in me for good, and if subterfuge is required for the pursuit thereof, so be it.
I send all at Pemberley my compliments and good wishes for continuing health. And I pray once again that you are experiencing both comfort and diversion. I think we underestimate the benefits, not so much of repose – I am, after all, mostly an idle creature – but of escape. New experiences are a form of freedom, and I hope the peaks of Derbyshire offer you at least some opportunity to follow new paths.
Yours etc.,
Anne de Bourgh
Charlotte was able to give Jacob and Lizzy almost a full account of the contents of this letter, which were met with exclamations of interest and, on the musician’s part, reminiscences of his travels in that area. He was able to describe in more detail the contents of the fish soup Anne had eaten, and to confirm her rendering of the colour of lavender fields of Provence, and their brazen contrast with fields of golden sunflowers.
‘I declare, you make me wish to travel abroad myself,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I can see I shall have to work on my husband. We did not think of the Continent for our honeymoon journey, given the wars, and there were distant cousins in Scotland and Ireland to be visited. But you make me yearn for such hot skies and colours.’
Charlotte also felt a yearning that was somehow intensified by Miss de Bourgh’s account of her unorthodox adventures, but she could not put a name to her restlessness. She knew only that their time at Pemberley was spinning by faster and faster, and something needed to happen – but what?
Her imagination could supply no answers; she only knew that soon Mr Darcy would return, bringing with him her own husband to conduct them back to Kent; and that they would all return to their usual demesnes and lives, and that this suspended summer would be over. There was no denying she missed her home; at the same time she dreaded that the grief she had been able to dress in different colours here might resume its usual blacks and greys.
The pianos were all tuned, and the harpsichord repaired and set to rights at last. Herr Rosenstein declared himself satisfied, and invited the ladies of the house to Miss Darcy’s rooms so that he could give them a little concert, an occasion that was much enjoyed. Sarah and Laura, who had never heard a harpsichord played before, were particularly intrigued by the differences in tone and volume between the exquisite little jewel of an instrument, with pastoral scenes painted on its sides, and the larger and more sombre-looking pianofortes they were accustomed to hearing played.
Now only the harp remained to be tuned, and that would take but a few days, according to the musician. Fortuitously, Georgiana Darcy was about to begin her journey homeward from Switzerland, so one of the Pemberley coaches would take Jacob as far as Dover, where it would await Miss Darcy and her companion, and convey them home.
That night, as their group ate their usual picnic supper of fruit and cheese in the saloon, Charlotte was seized by a sense of urgency. She could not stop fidgeting, so much so that Lizzy asked her what was amiss. Charlotte looked around the room, its deep windows framing vistas of the hanging woods and hills. Laura was under the piano, pretending to be a leopard stalking its prey, growling to herself. Sarah was lost in another no doubt unsuitable book, the tabby cat curled in a knot of sleep on her lap. Lizzy herself sewed with her usual swift darting movements, and only Charlotte rumpled the shawl she was supposed to be repairing. ‘I shall miss this. You, my dear Eliza, this place – these evenings.’
‘Oh, but you must visit again! All of you!’ said Lizzy. She turned to the musician: ‘You too, Herr Rosenstein. Your companionship has been a boon. We have had such gaiety together, such entertainment – Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells must look to their laurels. I think Georgiana and I must roundly abuse the instruments in this place until they all go out of tune, and we are forced to summon you again. But perhaps you would not wish the arduousness of the journey or the retirement of this place again. Our pleasures, while satisfying, have been of a small and domestic kind. It is not what you are accustomed to.’
‘Ah, but I have benefitted greatly from the peace of this place and the pleasure of the company,’ Herr Rosenstein said with a gallant bow, neatly dodging Laura’s attack on his ankle. ‘I do not mean that idly; my time here has replenished me. I feel like one of those falcons we saw a few days ago; rested and ready to fly on possibly intemperate winds, at the mercy of weather, hunger, danger. But for now, content to enjoy your presence and fellowship.’
He smiled at Charlotte, and her hands pleating the shawl stilled: a
surge of surmise rose up in her, staggering in its certainty. She had not so much an idea or plan as a sense of appointment: she needed only to appear at some juncture or special spot, and her destiny would unfold before her.
For the third time in her life, Charlotte rose before dawn in a slumbering house and went out to present herself to fate, to see where it might take her. The day was so new the sky had not yet cleared from pink and pale yellow to blue, and the birds in the garden were all yelling like hoydens.
As she hastened up the last slope and around the hedges that guarded the hawk house, she had a moment of terrible doubt: but there he was, sitting on the bench in its enclosing arms of box as if waiting for her. He was waiting for her; she had not been mistaken. Relief washed through her bones.
She stood before the musician, panting as he rose to his feet. It became necessary to speak. ‘Mr Darcy and Mr Collins arrive tomorrow.’
It had to stand for everything she could not say. We have one day left. One day.
For a long moment, time spooled to a halt as each stood on the other side of a precipice. Then Jacob spoke with great formality. ‘Frau Collins, we have already breached all rules of propriety. We did so that morning we spent in the maze, we have done so a score of times as you have vouchsafed me the great honour of showing me your heart. And yet we have broken no rules of God or man, have not really said or done anything for which outsiders can reproach us.
‘But I am only human. I am seconds away from risking, for both of us, our security, our reputations, our peace of mind, the happiness of our families. The risks are far greater for you, and I must be clear: I can make you no promises. I can offer nothing more than my admiration, even devotion, for the time we are both here in this place, and ever after at a distance. And this with only the thin assurance that I will shield your reputation by maintaining utmost secrecy of any special connection between us. But I assume – no, I believe – that you are a rational, intelligent woman, one of fortitude and character. You chose to come to this place of your own volition. You now have another choice to make.’
Charlotte met his eyes, the deep brown of streams flecked with mica, the faint latticing at their corners, the fine bones of cheek and socket framing them. He returned and held her gaze steadily as she felt the framework of her moral universe – her life as a dutiful eldest daughter, the wife of Mr Collins, protégé of Rosings, chatelaine of Hunsford, a mother – her girls, Tom, her girls – yaw beneath her. A sensation not unlike rage boiled up from her feet: she had stowed away all the hopes of girlhood, settled for the sensible and the possible, kept every promise she had ever made. And now there was something potentially fatal, potentially a source of ecstasy, before her. She knew herself to be Eve in the garden, and understood the inevitability of the coming bite.
She stepped forward, close enough to smell the faint spice and sweat of Jacob’s body. She knew that whatever movement she made would be enough, but what should that movement be? Should she reach for one of his hands, hanging loose and tense at his sides? Lay her hand on his chest? She dropped her eyes from his at last, to his mouth, then brought up a finger, knowing she had only split seconds left to change her mind, to make a different choice – and then she brushed it slowly across his mouth, electrified by the softness of his lips and the wiriness of his beard combined.
With little experience of such matters, she nevertheless understood that the next move would be his, and he did not fail her. He gathered her into his arms, and stood holding her, his jaw pressed against her cheek, his arms sliding up and around her back and trunk, meshing their bodies together. The embrace felt rough and comforting rather than romantic, although each could feel the other trembling violently.
‘Charlotte,’ he murmured, and a piercing flare ran to earth in her groin at this first use of her name. She desperately wanted to kiss and be kissed; at the same time that she was fighting so hard for breath, she was relieved to wait. But nothing compared with the relief of his mouth seeking hers, covering it, opening it, at last: it was this that she had been waiting for.
For long minutes she stood clasped in his embrace, head tilted back, returning the movements of his lips and tongue hesitantly at first, then with increasing greed and ardour, giving herself over to inhabitation only of that moment, and the next, and the next. She twined her arms around his back, his neck, almost sobbing as their bodies swayed.
At last they paused, drawing back slightly to scrutinise each other’s faces. And then Charlotte did what she had to do: she stepped out of the comfort of his arms, took another two steps back. Then another. They stared at each other wordlessly, the only sound their harsh breathing. Her eyes filling, she turned and stumbled away, her soul tearing.
And then, like Lot’s wife, she looked back.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DAY DAWNED THAT WOULD bring the homecoming of the master of the house, and formality once again settled over Pemberley like starched linen. The girls were taken upstairs to eat in the nursery, while the adults donned evening dress and assembled for a rather more lavish meal than the ones they had grown accustomed to. Lizzy prepared to meet her husband dressed both fashionably and elegantly in a gown of green silk, wearing a choker of emeralds and a matching ornament in her hair, which her maid had piled into a heap of pomaded curls. Any other day, Charlotte would have felt drab and countrified by comparison; but she was still humming like a rung bell, richness emanating from within.
She had spent the day trying to make sense of her feelings and actions. She was almost dismayed by her lack of guilt. She was at last able to pinpoint her most acute sense of distress: it was the prospect of her husband and Jacob meeting and spending time together in company. Not, she discerned, from any alarm at the prospect of suspicion, much less outrage or disgrace: it was Herr Rosenstein’s judgement of Mr Collins she feared. She knew she would see no triumph on the musician’s face as he sat across from her husband at the dinner table, but she could not bear to see pity on her behalf.
The arrival of the gentlemen shortly before dinner, leaving them only time to change, meant that the happy reunions between spouses took place in the general company. Charlotte was not so engrossed in her own feelings as to miss a degree of anxiety in Mr Darcy as he made enquiries about his wife’s health, and a slight relaxation of his stately demeanour as he observed her general high spirits. But it was her own husband who presented the most unexpected change in his general deportment and behaviour.
Mr Collins approached her with expressions of warmth and affection that were marked by their sincerity and enthusiasm, claiming to have missed her inordinately, both her hand at the helm of their household and her companionship as a spouse. He would never again agree to such a parting, he told all who would listen, never again agree to be deprived for so long of his dear Charlotte’s company. It had been their first separation of more than a few days in over seven years of marriage, and he had felt it sorely.
As dinner progressed, it became apparent that he had, in the soft and lonely evenings of lengthening days, embarked on a programme of reading designed to entertain and impress his wife. Rosings had gone some way to fill the empty hours after dinner, but Mr Collins was uncharacteristically reticent on the subject of the de Bourghs.
Among the first items of news he presented were greetings from Lady Catherine, which were gravely imparted to the Darcys and to Charlotte herself. Those accustomed to Mr Collins’s partiality for his patroness braced themselves for a half-hour rehearsal of all that had been said and done at Rosings in the last two months, embellished with the usual effusions; but no such account was forthcoming. Instead, he explained that before leaving on her excursion to the Continent, Miss de Bourgh had been gracious enough to introduce him to the delights of the novel. On this subject, he, Mr Collins, had undergone a rare sea-change: he knew his wife and cousins to be admirers of this form of reading, and had therefore undertaken to investigate what it had to offer, with the view of reading aloud to his family once the winter even
ings drew in.
‘To be sure,’ he opined, ‘there are works that are, while morally sound, not sufficiently wholesome in terms of subject for sharing in the family round, especially not while my daughters are of a tender age. But I confess there have been times that I found myself impressed by the representation of the human condition and its dilemmas in the pages of make-believe. It is not that different from a sermon, perhaps: to choose a topic that delves into good and ill and the choices we face as we strive towards the former and are tempted by the latter. The task of the author of both is to create hypothetical situations in which our inclination towards the good is encouraged, while evil choices are discouraged by presenting the consequences thereof.’
This, although stated in Mr Collins’s habitual verbose form, was very far in opinion from his previous views, and no one knew quite what to say in response, but Herr Rosenstein, with no prior direct knowledge of Mr Collins, was caught up: ‘Indeed, Herr Collins, what you say is true. But there are some romances now abroad that leave such moral discernment to the reader. In Germany, The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Herr Goethe, is the subject of much debate at present, as it presents a convincing account of the almost necessary despair of a young man who is eventually led to self-harm by his observations of the world. Some theologians and clergymen are condemning this, and other similar works, for failing to provide guidance needed by disordered younger minds.’
Mr Collins was delighted, as while not having read the work to which Herr Rosenstein referred, he had happened upon an essay in The Morning Chronicle on this very subject. ‘Indeed, as a man of the Church, and thus charged with a particular responsibility to lead the way when society leans in this direction or that, I would agree. Novels, plays and romances, to be sure, can misdirect. But judicious guidance by wiser minds can prevent such dire consequences as have followed Mr Goethe’s publication.’
Charlotte Page 20