Devotion
Page 5
There is Mr. Collins calling me to his room to look out at some one or some thing passing on the road, for the tenth time today. I must go, or he will wake up the baby with his exhortations to hurry lest I miss the spectacle. He has unfortunately had a cough for weeks and has been unable to enjoy healthful exercise in the open air, and has been much indoors.
Write to me very soon, Eliza, you know how I depend on hearing from you.
C. Collins.
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While Elizabeth was reading this letter after breakfast, and reflecting on the very different tone it conveyed in comparison to Lady Catherine’s on the same subject, Georgiana was embarking on her escapade with Mrs. Younge. The tallest footman, who was thought a fine fellow by the housemaids for several streets around, was stimulated by the whiff of irregularity and deception attendant on Georgiana’s exit from the house, and even made so bold as to hint to her of his discretion as he assisted her into an hackney coach. Imprudently trusting him, or perhaps (as one unaccustomed to absconding) simply not thinking, she told him the address in Edward-street to give the coachman.
As a result of certain little stratagems, Georgiana was not missed by her family until dinner time. A maid was sent to her room to look for her; and although she was not found a note was discovered, addressed to Darcy and Elizabeth. It entreated them not to be concerned about her and assured them that she would be home soon. It was, in short, a note of the kind exactly calculated to raise rather than quiet the fears of her brother and sister. The servants were assembled before their master and questioned about their knowledge of Georgiana’s movements that day and the tallest footman instantly confessed his role in her disappearance and volunteered the address.
Darcy paled on hearing her destination and immediately ordered his horse. Although it was difficult to ride at a fast pace through London even at that hour of the evening, by picking his roads he was able first to trot and then to canter as he made his way towards the neighbourhood of Mrs. Younge’s house. On reaching Edward-street he slackened his pace and rode up close to her door before dismounting and handing his reins to his groom. The servant who answered his imperious knock was unable – even for money – to provide much intelligence. He had seen a young lady arrive in an hackney coach, had witnessed his mistress join the young lady and the coach set off. For what place, he knew not. However neither the young lady nor his mistress had a trunk. His mistress carried only a small bag, and had told him to expect her back within the week. He did not recall the number of the coach.
Darcy mounted his horse again and rode home, more slowly. Miraculously, when consulted a second time, the tallest footman was able to produce the coach’s number, but that did not save him from being dismissed that night for his dereliction in not instantly reporting Georgiana’s flight.
The following day Darcy was able to trace the fugitives to a coaching inn, where they had removed to a post-chaise to take them to Ramsgate. Ramsgate! Georgiana and Mrs. Younge had spent the summer there when she was fifteen, and it had been the scene of the intended elopement with Wickham, but neither Darcy nor Elizabeth knew of any acquaintance that Georgiana had formed in that town, that would draw her back there in the dead of winter after an interlude of five years. Darcy made haste to follow them, but the trail went cold when the two ladies arrived in the town and left their chaise. They were not at the coaching inn where they had descended or at any other establishment in the vicinity, nor had they ever been. No one recalled two ladies, an elder and a younger, or even a lady alone, seeking either a room or a meal. The houses of fashionable people, among whom she might number some friends, were uniformly shut up, for the season had of course not started there. It seemed the only explanation that they had gone away thence in a private conveyance, but no one had any memory of such an event.
Returning to London with a sore and anxious heart, he shared all he had learned with his wife. They were much disturbed, but even more were they confounded. “What intrigue could Mrs. Younge have prepared to injure Georgiana, that does not put herself at great risk?” said Elizabeth in perplexity. “She must know that you will immediately come forward to protect your sister.”
“Yet how can I protect her when she has vanished into thin air?”
“Georgiana seems to have gone willingly. Perhaps Mrs. Younge is guilty of no treachery, and an innocent explanation will present itself. They have both left word that they would come back in a few days.”
“Why is there such secrecy? Why do they fear detection?”
But Elizabeth was no more able than Darcy to solve these riddles, other than by useless conjecture, and they sat silent for a long time. At last Elizabeth said, “Ought we to tell anyone what has occurred? Or should we conceal it? Which is the better course?”
“We must conceal her unexplained absence,” her husband replied in a firm voice. “If she comes to no harm, we will have blemished her reputation needlessly by broadcasting this news.”
“I should like to hear the advice of Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, should not you?”
“Yes, yes, of course; will you send a note to them or shall I?”
“I will do it,” said Elizabeth. Although it was clear that they could take no effective action for the recovery of Georgiana, yet it seemed better to do something, however fruitless, rather than nothing.
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CHAPTER
6
London, February 1816
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“I have an excessive regard for Jane,” said Mrs. Hurst. “But when I
saw her at Christmastime all I could think was how very much altered and coarse-looking she was.” She was paying a morning call on her sister Lady Mallinger, the former Caroline Bingley, who was suffering under a languor arising from her condition. Lady Mallinger had appeared and perhaps even was glad to see Mrs. Hurst but all that was wont to interest her had so far failed to stir her spirits. She could not be persuaded into a loquacious mood. After two or three ineffectual efforts to engage her attention, Mrs. Hurst was attempting to rouse her by initiating a favourite pastime, which was abusing their dear sister Mrs. Bingley and their dear friend Mrs. Darcy. “She has taken being with child as an excuse to look almost slatternly.”
At this, Lady Mallinger showed a little animation, in the manner of an old war horse that has heard the distant sounds of battle. “Do you mean to say that she is beginning to resemble a village attorney’s niece?” she enquired caustically.
“Oh, Caroline! you are wicked!” said Mrs. Hurst with approval. She resumed. “I should scarcely have known her if I had met her in the street. She used to have a little beauty –”
“I could never see much beauty in her myself, nothing out of the common way. She was never the equal of Georgiana Darcy.”
“She is a sweet girl, though.”
“Oh certainly, very sweet, although I must confess I have never met anyone with so few accomplishments or such insipid conversation. I wonder that her continual companionship does not turn Charles into a marrow.”
“Her mother supervised her education, you must recollect.”
“And formed her taste,” added Lady Mallinger. “In furnishing Clifford Priory she has brought to it all the haute mode of Meryton.” The two ladies laughed unreservedly.
After a moment Mrs. Hurst began again. “That child of her sister Lydia’s – I am astonished that Charles took it in.”
“Oh! I cannot bear to hear it mentioned!” replied Lady Mallinger with distaste. “It is almost incredible to me. I scarcely dare speak of my feelings.”
“To be placed on so intimate a footing with George Wickham – to have his child presented to the world as our niece!”
“If I may ra
ise a delicate point, I recommend, Louisa, that you do not give confidence to the claim that Wickham was its father. Indeed knowing the child’s mother there is little chance of it.”
“This must be a singular instance, where illegitimacy would raise rather than lower the child’s status!” said Mrs. Hurst rather in ecstasy at the turn of conversation. “Who then do you take the father to be?”
“As I am not an anatomist, I do not know how many fathers a child may have,” said Lady Mallinger. But from this promising start she descended into a brooding silence, for natural children were a subject that rankled in her breast, and she repulsed Mrs. Hurst’s further attempts to pursue it.
After ten minutes of silence during which she vainly attempted to entertain herself by looking out the window at the traffic on Bruton Street, Mrs. Hurst said, “My dear, pray do not let me forget to tell Mrs. John Willoughby a very amusing anecdote about Lady Dalrymple’s cousins, Sir Walter and Mr. William Elliot, when next I see her. I do not believe you have heard it either.” And she added scathingly when she received no response, “How peaceful it is to pass an hour or two with you! I should be miserable if we could not meet often.” But this assault did not produce any result.
When Mrs. Hurst had inconsiderately been left to her own deficient resources for an entire quarter of an hour, she felt justified in pricking her sister with a goad sharp enough to loosen her tongue. “Caroline, when does Sir Henry return?” she asked. She was very well aware of the ill-humour that questions about her husband generated in her sister. But Lady Mallinger answered with apathy and thereby fully depleted Mrs. Hurst’s patience with her. “Caroline, you are using me monstrously ill today!”
Lady Mallinger merely countered by desiring that she might take her leave if she found herself unhappy there. As Mrs. Hurst had no other visits that she wished to make that morning and would have been forced to repair to her own house and husband, she made no move towards parting. However several more minutes of uninterrupted tranquillity leavened her malice, and she observed, with an air of pretended indifference, “Mrs. Jennings is circulating a most absurd rumour – I do not place any credence in it myself – but she had it from her neighbour who is a cousin of a Lady of the Bedchamber – that John Thorn is to be given a knighthood. Do you remember him, Caroline? Of course you must. What a voice! That accent – it quite made my hair stand on end. And that stink of Manchester about him,” but catching her sister’s angry eye she dexterously retreated a little, “he looked thoroughly redolent of his manufactory.”
Lady Mallinger made an inarticulate sound that seemed expressive of antagonism. But Mrs. Hurst having no feelings that would make her respect her sister’s, and comprehending that she had (as she had rather hoped to do) inflicted a wound, could not resist inflicting another. “My dear Caroline, how does this news come to discompose you? Oh, but I need hardly ask, need I? No doubt you feel as everyone must, that bestowing honours on such a man cheapens them shockingly. I have heard, that if he receives a knighthood there will be two or three who will refuse theirs out of offence. Well, it is most fortunate that Sir Henry is a baronet, there at least will remain some distinction between your position and the future Lady Thorn’s. And even should he receive a baronetcy of his own in the future (for honours may be bought by even the most appalling persons), it would be a new creation, and no one respects a new creation.”
Lady Mallinger, thinking angrily that her sister’s unrelenting censure of Thorn amounted almost to praise, delayed speaking as long as she was able, but at last her utmost self-restraint could not prevent her from asking, “And who might this future Lady Thorn be?”
“Heavens! How can you think that I would listen to gossip about such people! But stay – I believe I heard of some girl; a clergyman’s daughter. Yes, that was it. The daughter of a defrocked vicar – or was he a Methodist? – who was teaching Thorn to read.”
There was food for unappetizing meditation in this message of a rival, but Lady Mallinger instantly determined that she would dine on it later. “My dear Louisa, think what you are saying!” she returned in a burst of wrath. “It is blatant invention. You are prejudiced and unjust. Mr. Thorn is an educated man.”
“I did not say he was teaching him to read English. Perhaps it was Greek, or Hebrew, or Hindoo for all I know, or care. But my dear Caroline, you take a very eager interest in the affairs of one so far beneath you.”
Lady Mallinger could no longer endure the exchange, and she attempted to end it with an off-hand response. “Who that has conversed with him can help feeling an interest? He looks on the same world that we observe, and sees far different things.”
“I can hardly applaud your taste, Caroline! It was well that your interest in him ended where it did.” She added after the passage of a half a minute suggested that Lady Mallinger did not intend replying, “Naturally I never imagined any liking in the case. But I could not help suspecting that you were a little attracted to the man, even though pride must have revolted from such a connexion.”
A day’s tête-à-tête between two women must always end with a quarrel!
“Attracted!” said Lady Mallinger managing with difficulty to get the better of herself and speak in a dismissive tone. If her sister’s report had stirred any regrets in Lady Mallinger’s mind she would scarcely choose to share them with her. “But we shall be in danger of fatiguing each other to death if we pursue this conversation.”
Mrs. Hurst was quite alive to the peril of falling out with her sister, for the Mallingers’ house in town was more commodious than Mr. Hurst’s, and their elegant country house Damson was situated more conveniently for visiting than the Bingleys’ house in Nottinghamshire. Mrs. Hurst therefore deferred her amusement to another occasion, turning instead to solicitous queries about her sister’s health, and the household arrangements that were being made to receive Sir Henry’s expected heir.
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CHAPTER
7
Brussels, February 1816
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Had Lady Catherine de Bourgh been aware of the adventure in which her niece was engaged as it unfolded, what, one is tempted to ponder, would have been the first item in the catalogue of horrors that it conjured? Riding in a hired post-chaise (an unusually battered one); travelling without a man-servant, or indeed any servant; leaving London without a properly packed trunk, taking hardly more than the clothes on her back; undertaking a crossing of the Channel in a public vessel? Fortunately, the Lord in His enduring mercy has not seen fit to create any means of instantaneous communication and Lady Catherine was spared awareness of Georgiana’s abominable journey, which terminated in Brussels at a large hotel facing the Park.
As Mrs. Younge and Georgiana ascended the stairs to the door, a young gentleman, at the same time leaving the building, politely drew aside to give them way. As they passed him Georgiana’s face caught his eye. She was looking remarkably well, her handsome features possessing all the bloom and freshness that youth and recent sea air can bestow, and just touched by an interesting hint of the sadness that permeated her soul, for she was naturally endowed with that prized ability to turn misery to the advantage of her looks. If a tear fell from her eye, it must trace a shimmering path over her silky cheek, and if her lip trembled it must draw the glance to the sweet curve of her mouth. It was evident that the young man admired her looks exceedingly. She however failed to perceive his attention for her thoughts were so entirely on Wickham, that she scarcely knew where she set her feet.
Mrs. Younge, moving at a deliberate pace and not afraid of holding the gentleman’s gaze, fastened her eyes on him in a way that shewed her noticing of his looks, by which she was very struck. He was about five and twenty y
ears of age, standing rather above average height, and was uncommonly handsome, with dark hair and blue eyes. His person received additional charm from his singular gracefulness. “What a very good-looking young man!” observed Mrs Younge to herself. “Irish, I expect.” He gave her a momentary glance of bright enquiry, which seemed to declare he should not object to possessing more information about the young lady apparently in her charge, but then proceeded on his way. The two ladies entered the hotel and secured accommodation for each, to which they immediately withdrew to rest.
In the evening as Georgiana and Mrs. Younge were passing to the dining room from their chambers, they once more, and quite suddenly, came upon the very same gentleman they had met at the entrance to the hotel, with no alteration but of dress. He by his looks confirmed that he thought Georgiana very lovely, and his frank and graceful apology for nearly running into them apprised in addition that he was English, and had an attractive voice and polished manners. On this occasion Georgiana could not avoid staring at him in wonder at him. The influence of youth, elegance and manly beauty gave an interest to him that even she, in her desolate state, could not defend against, and his gaze of admiration came home to her aching feelings. Mrs. Younge principally noticed that his coat, although elegantly cut, of good cloth and well brushed, was not new; and this second contact, short as it was, increased her curiosity about him. The encounter, however unexpected and brief, of a handsome young man and a lovely young woman could hardly fail of suggesting certain ideas to her cold heart and active brain, especially knowing as she did the mood of her young companion. It struck her forcibly that a situation might be contrived from which she herself could gain benefit.