Page 35 of Mrs Darcy’s Dilemma
Henry did come, and after his cousin had ridden back to Swanfield, repentantly upon the whole, for the sight of Cloe’s sadness and shame had worked upon him so far.
The entire party would know themselves glad to exchange Jeremy for Henry; and the young man very speedily found Jane and Cloe in the walled garden, picking roses, for Mr. Clarke had at last given them permission to cut the full-blown blossoms.
“This is a pretty sight,” he said, walking in by the garden gate. His eyes met Cloe’s at once, but she lowered hers and said nothing. Jane ran over to him and grasped his hands.
“Henry! Here you are! Can you stay? Are things all right in your parish? Has my mother seen you yet—shall I tell her you are here? She and the aunts are in the library with Fitzwilliam, Aunt Mary has found some interesting racing volumes she wished to show him for a treat, and the other gentlemen are out riding,” she finished, in one breath.
“Why, Jane, you talk so fast. Yes, everything is well at Manygrove. I have been marrying and burying parishioners at not much of a rate—in fact, there have been no marriages or deaths, though I have had two Christenings. It is very hot, however, and I thought a few days at Pemberley, watching the sight of my sister with her intended, would refresh me. Do not take me for an idle parson,” he said, taking care not to look at Cloe again until he thought she could bear it.
“No, Jane, you need not go to my mother yet—sit and rest, do.”
But Jane was up and running, and she called over her shoulder as she flew, “Mama has not seen you; she will want to know.”
Cloe was therefore abruptly left alone with Henry, in a situation of awkwardness which seemed to her almost unbearable.
She could absolutely think of nothing to say and turned a pink rose around in her fingers, sure that it matched the colour of her face and glad to use her bonnet as a screen.
Henry advanced a little, and said hesitantly, “I have not seen you in this long time, Cloe—not since you went away and became a governess. I am sure you did it all very well, but I wish you would have stayed here.”
She forced herself to speak, though she still could not meet his eyes. “I could not, you know, and it was not so very bad after all. The Collinses were kind, and I saw a part of the country that I had never seen before. Kent was quite beautiful.” Her voice trailed off.
“Is it very painful for you, to see me here?” he asked quickly. “I shall remove myself if my presence is distasteful to you; I would not distress you, for the world.”
“Oh, no! Not at all,” she managed to say. “I am leaving myself, you know—I have stayed such a long while already, and your family has been so kind. I go to Lady Neville, soon, and I am fortunate to have such a prospect. Not a girl in a hundred, I am sure, could.”
Henry moved close enough now to be face to face with her. “Cloe,” he said, “I must say it, impossible though it seems. You must not. Please do not accept another position—I want you to remain here.”
She looked up in astonishment. “Mr. Henry—Mr. Darcy—Cousin, you know I cannot do any such thing. I must go, and that soon. I do not wish to remain dependent and a burden here or anywhere else—I must be independent.”
“Not if you were my wife,” he said, earnestly. “Would you indeed prefer independence to that? Cloe, I have always wished you to marry me, and I cannot stop wishing it, now that I have seen you again. I think I could make you happy, and I know you would make me so.”
She tormented the rose petals in her hand and looked at the ground. “You know very well that can never, never, be.”
“Of course it can. Who is to say not? My father and my mother will welcome you with delight. Jane will be so truly your sister—you will be at home at Pemberley.”
“Oh, don’t tempt me, don’t tempt me. It sounds too beautiful to be true—and it is,” she cried.
“You do care for me, then? The prospect does tempt you?” A joyous smile stole over his features.
“That is what I want to be assured of. Say nothing, if it is so—and I will know how to be happy. Cloe, I stayed away because I thought you wished it, but I could do so no longer: you are the wife I want and will have.”
She found she could not reply, and after a moment he took her arm gently.
“Let us go into the house,” he said, “and see my mother. You must think it over, and you will see, in a rational light, that there can be no objections. But I will importune you no more at present. Your own good sense will do a better job than I can.”
Mrs. Darcy and Jane saw them walking through the gardens, slowly, arm in arm, and they were rejoiced, but when the young couple entered the parlour, Henry said nothing, and Cloe took a seat near Fitzwilliam.
She occupied herself in offering him the different roses, one by one, so that he might enjoy the scent of each, and he sniffed very dutifully to please her, kindly refraining from entirely spoiling her happiness and usefulness by telling her that he had never had any sense of smell worth mentioning.
Henry talked quite successfully about parish matters for the next hour, though hardly aware of what he said, and when his father came in, he followed him upstairs and presented his case to him, with warmth and anxiety, while Mr. Darcy pulled off his riding-boots.
The agitated Henry further scrupled to explain the full truth: that Cloe had not yet accepted him.
“As far as I am concerned,” said Mr. Darcy, “you may marry the girl, if it pleases you, and if you can make her have you. Her family may be a drawback, but as I married into it myself with remarkable success, I can only call it a prescription for happiness, and if her parents have been a burden to me this five and twenty years, I shall be quite glad to pass them on to you. I fancy it is the sister that it is at the bottom of the girl’s reservations, but as my late father-in-law Mr. Bennet used to say, no one ought to mind being connected with a little absurdity.
And I say, if folly were grief, every house would weep. ”
“It is more than absurdity and folly, indeed,” said Henry soberly, “but Cloe is not to be held responsible for her sister’s character, and if you do not object, sir—”
“Far from it. By your marrying Cloe, we would have an actress in the family no more than is already the case, and we are not so foolish as to think it is a reflection on poor Cloe’s virtue, any more than on our own.
Well, go down, go down, Henry; continue your wooing, and be so good as to let me finish getting dressed.
She will make a very good parson’s wife, and I shall give you the fields between Pemberley and Manygrove when you are married, so you will start life on no less than two thousand a year, and when I am gone, you two will look after your brother, and help him run the place.
With your influence, Pemberley will be much properer than it ever could be in my lifetime, I have no doubt.
You will never allow any actresses hereabouts.
Times change, and we must change with them. ”
“Thank you, Father,” said Henry with all his heart, “your kindness is such as I cannot express—” But Mr. Darcy waved him away and rang the bell for his manservant to bring up the shaving-water.
Henry courted Cloe very determinedly, and every day, as Fitzwilliam sat under a sun-umbrella, watching his beloved horses, the two young couples walked a little distance into the Park.
They liked to see how the crops were ripening, and to look at the fish in the stew-pond, and to watch the donkeys pulling the heavy stone rollers over the smooth green lawn, scattered with daisies and buttercups, and to see the view from the old stone bridge.
Much as they all liked each other, it was remarkable how the foursome generally split into two pair.
Mrs. Darcy tactfully stayed back, on these occasions, watching over Fitzwilliam, hoping to make him feel less left out, but her tender consideration may have been thrown away, for as long as he could be wheeled out to see the horses and have the racing-stud read to him daily, and be fed sufficient beef and porter in judicious sips and bites, Fitzwilliam was not unhappy.
He did not care if he never formed part of a couple with a young woman again, since one of the species had led him into so many difficulties.
Jane, however, was anxious about the match between her friend and her brother.
“I do hope Henry will persuade her,” she said to her future husband, for the fifth or sixth time that day.
“I made her listen to some solemn talk on the subject last night and told her I should never forgive her if she did not take him.”
“You have been telling her that very constantly, all week long,” observed Lord Frederick. “I should think she is tired of hearing it. You might safely leave it to herself, I am sure.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Certainly. Hanging and wedding are the two things that go by destiny, do they not? So there is not the least doubt in the world.”
Nor was there. When Henry and Cloe joined the others, during one of these walks—it hardly matters which one, as they were all very much alike—there were two engaged couples instead of one; and Jane claimed the affectionate embrace of a sister, while Lord Frederick shook Henry’s hand with warmth and pleasure, so that the four young people made a joyous cluster in the midst of a poppy-field.
Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy walked out and joined them, and they heard the long wished-for news and embraced their new daughter-to-be with heartfelt delight.
Mrs. Darcy drew her a little apart and told her, with smiles and embraces, “I was sure you would give in. So persuasive as our Henry is, so full of courtesy and full of craft, with his tongue his best weapon—how could you long resist his arguments?”