Pemberley (10 page)

‘May I ask from you, as your aunt and sole surviving relative on your mother's side, one favour over the Christmas season? I will be brief. Your heir, Master Thomas Roper, has arrived at the age of twenty. You have not yet made his acquaintance, but I am able to give by assurance that he is a most pleasant young man, well educated, and keenly aware of his prospects, should there be no son and heir to Pemberley. I ask, simply, that I may bring Master Roper to you for Christmas. As a cousin, he may claim the right to some consideration from you; as your possible successor, he is at this time in his life in need of guidance from you – indeed, you may wish to keep him with you for a month or more, so that he may understand the principles of the management of a great estate. You may apprentice him to Mr Gresham, but I do not wish, naturally, to interfere in your affairs.' The letter was ended with the usual expressions of affection and signed, with a flourish, ‘Your aunt Catherine de Bourgh'.

Elizabeth placed the letter with the others – all, she saw, from aunt to nephew, but she had no heart to read them – and went over to stand by the window of the ante-room. Her thoughts were in turmoil: why had not Darcy told her the real relation of Master Roper to himself, for he had said only that Lady Catherine would bring her daughter; and why, when Darcy made such sport, in his new, open manner with Elizabeth, of his aunt, even going so far as to jest of a satirical playing-card of her likeness, did he fail to refuse the impertinent and premature request on the part of Lady Catherine? Why was Master Roper so freely accepted into the family?

Elizabeth, in extreme dejection, saw that, after all, Mr Darcy was little changed from his earlier self; that all her sister Jane Bingley's advice on the subject of softening him and enabling him to confide easily in his wife – advice she had taken with great earnestness – had been in vain. Darcy lived alone in his shell of Pemberley. It was his greatest concern. If his wife proved unable to present him with a son he would devote his time and tutelage, all his paternal affections very probably, to a distant cousin. Even Mr Bennet, who had, as Elizabeth had long ago accepted, many failings as a father, preferred his Elizabeth to the heir to Longbourn, Mr Collins!

From weakness, Elizabeth actually sat on a chair in the ante-room and wept half an hour. Then she made her way from the house, for the prospect of the open parkland and cold air of outdoors was necessary in the extreme to her. She did not fail to reflect, as she crossed the long galleries and descended the staircases of Pemberley, that Mrs Reynolds had suggested a bedchamber for Master Roper that had appeared at the time to Elizabeth to be stately indeed for a young bachelor cousin of the Darcy family. With the bitter sensation that everyone but she knew the true significance of the visit of Master Roper, Elizabeth left the house and made for the fields beyond the park of Pemberley.

It was a fine day with a strong wind blowing, and as Elizabeth walked she reasoned with herself with a ferocity she had not known since the early days of her humiliation at the hand of Mr Darcy. Her first visit to Netherfield, the house rented by Charles Bingley – her mind returned with the speed of dream to the ball, to the haughty air of Mr Darcy, and his overheard refusal to invite Miss Elizabeth Bennet to dance, for though she was ‘tolerable' she was ‘not handsome enough' to tempt
him.
Her colour came and went as she walked over rough grass and found herself in the lane leading to the village, and she tried, by means of summoning the calm and candour of her sister Jane, to restore Mr Darcy to her favour once more. ‘After all,' she argued, with as much determination to succeed as an attorney-at-law, ‘it is I, Elizabeth, who have just come from what I hoped would prove a scene of love and gratitude with my husband; I, Elizabeth, for whom Mr Darcy has constructed in his house a new library dedicated to my father – and done this for me, to show honour and respect for my forebears, even if he cannot find those sentiments for my mother. It is I, Elizabeth Darcy, who was intent on showing my respect, in turn, for the benevolence and kind paternalism of
his
late father, who was so good as to educate the scoundrel Wickham, a precedent which in no way deterred Fitzwilliam from doing likewise with young Mr Gresham. No,' Elizabeth concluded, and the strength of her arguments was entirely persuasive to her, ‘I admire Darcy for his care of those who manage and work on his estates; and I must not refuse to grant him my appreciation of his hospitality to his cousin Master Roper. If Master Roper should one day inherit Pemberley, it is his right, and Darcy recognises it.'

Elizabeth climbed a stile and entered the village. She was known and loved here now, though she had found her first visits made her awkward; for she had had no experience of the dispensing of bounty at Longbourn, Mr Bennet's estate being small, and the great houses in the vicinity seeing to it that the villagers were not neglected. Here, Elizabeth alone was responsible – and, before her coming, the wife of a retired estate manager, who was only too glad to hand over the duties to the rightful mistress of Pemberley, had officiated.

Once the first reservations had passed, Elizabeth found a delight in visiting the village and bringing her report on roofs that needed repair, or sick children, to the suitable quarters. Like all large estates, Pemberley had its own stonemason, carpenter, clock-winder and roofer; and an old nurse, once guardian of Darcy and, after him, his sister, could be called to attend to simple ailments while the Darcy physician, at Matlock, received a regular fee from the estate in recompense for his village health visits. All in all, Pemberley, thanks to the late Mr Darcy and his son, was a model village, and Elizabeth was proud to bring some of her talents to play there. These, as she admitted when teased at her excessive modesty by her husband, were singing and dancing and a little acting (though she had no experience of the stage); and Elizabeth's pride, in her first year at Pemberley, had been the organising of the party for the children of the workers on the estate. This was to take place two days after Christmas, in the white drawing-room at Pemberley House: there would be carols, mime and a Nativity scene, all imagined by Mrs Darcy, who trained the children's voices, too, and on the discovery of an exceptionally gifted little girl had arranged harp lessons; the child's first harp performance would be heard at the party.

To be surrounded by the eager faces of the children, and to receive the smiles and curtsies of their mothers, soon rid Elizabeth of her anger and resentment – for she was now able to see it thus – at Darcy's absence of mention of Master Roper's relation to the
estate. She wondered, indeed, as she entered a cottage and heard sung some verses of a favourite old hymn, at her selfishness and pride; and she prayed as earnestly as the children, in their sweet rehearsal for the big day, that she would learn to lose her propensity to prejudice.

The day had been fine, but, being at the winter solstice, turned suddenly dark – it was later than she thought – and Elizabeth, refusing an escort, announced she must hurry home. As she went down the lane and out into the fields that surrounded the park, thunder rolled in, and the first drops of stinging rain; and soon the lane turned to mud, which sucked a shoe from her foot. Thorn bushes, flailing in the gale, slapped her face.

Elizabeth stopped by an opening in the hedge and looked through at a field, still a good mile from the house, where a gypsy caravan, small and brightly painted, stood under a tree. She had passed that way several times with Georgiana, whose plaything the caravan had been; and, after a shower of icy stones had descended on her, decided to run into the field and take shelter in the caravan.

The interior was clean and bare, with only a fine carpet and some cushions, left over from the days when Georgiana had played there with her young friends; and Elizabeth sat there until the storm should pass.

As she waited, the desolation of the fading day, the increasing blackness of the sky and the dripping of the rain on the sides of the caravan inclined Elizabeth, try as she might to resist them, to fall prey to dreadful thoughts. The following day would bring all the guests to Pemberley. She would be seen in the first instance of her capacity as mistress of Pemberley; and she knew she would be judged. If arrangements failed, it was she and she only who would be to blame. However understanding Mr Darcy would prove to be – and she knew the hope was in his heart that all should go well, and mistakes would be overlooked – Elizabeth Darcy was to be responsible for both the moral and physical well-being of an ill-suited
assortment of people over a long period of time. She it was who must invent diversions on dull days, provide entertainment when it was called for, whether inviting a guest to play the pianoforte and sing – and her great fear was the encouragement of her sister Mary to do either – or play commerce or fish or some new game of cards brought fresh from London by Miss Bingley and in need of mastering. Then the meals must be varied, and the platters laid out just so; and, though Elizabeth could count on Mrs Reynolds to perform her usual miracles, should some omission or fault become too evident in the arrangements, it would this year be Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy, not the housekeeper, who must make amends.

With a succession of such musings crowding in like phantoms, Elizabeth fell into a deep sleep among the cushions of the gypsy caravan. How long she slept she did not know – she dreamed of her father, and of the library at Longbourn, where she had so often laughed and conversed with him – and she was wakened only by a beam of light from a lantern, as it shone into her face.

The light was succeeded by a voice, loud and joyful – and the face of young Mr Gresham looking down at her. He called out, ‘She is here, Sir. She is in here.' Minutes later Mr Darcy boarded the caravan and gathered his wife up in his arms.

‘My Elizabeth! What are you doing here?' he said in a voice that sounded to her exceedingly husky. ‘We have searched everywhere – oh God, Eliza, I thought you were lost and I would never find you again.'

Dawn rose in the sky as Elizabeth returned to the house in the back of a wagon driven by Mr Gresham, with the arms of Mr Darcy around her as if he would never let her go. She was tired and stiff, and cramped; and felt more gratitude than she ever remembered, at the fine linen of her bed and the roaring fire in her room, and Darcy's arms still around her.

Mrs Bennet was as astonished as she had predicted she would be by the extensiveness of the park and variety of grounds at Pemberley, and by the half-mile ascent to the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased and the eye was instantly caught by the house, situated on the opposite side of a valley.

‘I have never seen a place for which nature has done more,' cried Mrs Bennet, who had on many occasions extracted these opinions from Mr and Mrs Gardiner, ‘nor a place where natural beauty has been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. To be mistress of Pemberley must be something!'

Kitty, who looked out of the window of the carriage in the hope of seeing some sign of life, though dragoons, here, would certainly be most improbable, felt her spirits go down at the sight of the handsome stone building that was Pemberley House, and remarked that the place looked as much like a prison as she had ever considered it to be.

‘How can you, Kitty?' said Mrs Bennet. ‘You can have no idea of your good fortune, to come here as often as you do. Lady Lucas tells me she finds you much improved since the time you have spent with dear Jane at Barlow and with dear Lizzy here.'

‘There is nothing to do at Pemberley,' was Kitty's ungracious reply.

Here Mary, who had been in silent and contemplative spirits on the journey, remarked that the library would occupy her for the length of her stay. ‘It is to be deplored, Kitty, that you have so little interest in the life of the intellect. Your life will be no different from Lydia's – empty and frivolous.'

‘I wounder, will Lydia be at Rowsley yet?' said Kitty, who was
cheered by this reminder that a sister closer to her in temperament than the wise and sweet Jane, or the clever, thoughtful Lizzy, could be was to come into the vicinity. ‘And George Wickham,' went on Kitty lazily, ‘I hear he has been much ill-used by Mr Darcy. What will they make of each other when they are thrown together? It is time Mr Darcy made reparation for his cruelty to brother George, that is for certain.'

‘My dear Kitty, you have not been listening,' said Mrs Bennet. ‘I pray you, when tales are told, hear the other side. The truth came out that Mr Darcy was most generous to Mr Wickham.'

‘Lydia says her poor husband was monstrously treated,' said Kitty with another yawn.

The carriage stopped in front of Pemberley House, and after Mrs Bennet had instructed Mary several times to remove her spectacles, as they gave her a slovenly air, and Kitty to shake out her dress as she alighted, so as not to appear creased after the journey, all three alighted.

‘How delightful,' cried Mrs Bennet, as a vista of stone bridges and a gradually rising hill, with trees scattered at just the places to charm the eye, lay before her. And ‘Oh, if you will pardon my daughters' – for Mrs Bennet now spoke to a footman who had opened the wide door of oak. ‘Let me go first! Catherine! Mary! For I am the mother of Mrs Darcy. I beg your pardon, Sir!'

This flustered beginning led to a further nervous burst of speech on Mrs Bennet's part, when, enquiring after ‘my daughter Mrs Darcy' and climbing the magnificent staircase to the long gallery, she was gravely informed that Mrs Darcy was still in her apartments.

‘What? Still in bed? After noon?'

‘Lizzy rises early, customarily,' said Kitty. ‘Perhaps she is unwell.'

‘Never have I seen such stateliness,' cried Mrs Bennet, as she stopped and looked around her. ‘My poor Elizabeth, how can she manage all this? Oh, it is very splendid indeed!'