Page 21 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)
CHAPTER TWENTY
T he parade of events leading up to Christmas Day and the faint malaise that follows such a climax to the season lent me a reprieve.
I hardly thought of Miss Bennet at all. When entertaining the vicar and his wife, I directed my comments towards matters concerning the parish, the distribution of alms, and what was to be done about the weekly market that had outgrown its prescribed location in the alley beside the bakery.
Mind-numbing stuff, really, but I was determined to restrain myself.
After the ladies retired, I poured out a glass of port for Mr Wilkes. Unfortunately, I had been too earnest in my pursuit of safe topics and had exhausted all means of benign conversation. Thus, I blurted out, “Are you acquainted with Mrs Jennings?”
“Who?”
“The widow who lives in the Frye house,” I said, striving not to sound annoyed by his ignorance.
“Ah,” he said unfeelingly. “I believe she lives quite retired now.”
“You do not visit her? ”
He then affected a more vicarish look, frowning slightly to signal the required Christian concern, and said, “I believe there is some impediment to company. She no longer goes to church…”
His voice faded off thoughtfully and then he settled it that he thought the lady was profoundly deaf or some such. With that tidy justification, he apparently dusted his hands of whatever pastoral duty he might have had.
I, too, attempted to dust my hands of the matter pertaining to the occupants of the Frye house on the very edge of the village.
The weather continued to be cold and dreary which kept me confined indoors, and the fireplaces at Pemberley radiated a deeply enveloping warmth that suffused every room I entered with a golden glow.
This should have led me to thinking all manner of comfortable thoughts, but it invariably led me to thinking of the poor and their seasonal misery, and then onward to the meagre fires of those living in genteel poverty.
Mrs Jennings’s hearth had put out an insipid heat, the kind of blaze that does not reach the corners of a room.
The parlour, too, had seemed bleak when compared to the salon in which my sister and I sat after dinner.
I observed the sparkle of light on the cut crystal bowls, the warm hues that suffused the rugs and draperies, and watched as Georgiana absently tossed off her shawl, letting it fall into a cloud of rose-coloured cashmere around her waist as she read.
I reached for my copy of Aurelius’s Meditations hoping for a morsel of consolation with which to relieve my senseless worry over the comfort of a certain someone and her elderly relation. As I turned the page, I was confronted with these words:
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work—as a human being.
What do I have to complain of, if I am going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do?
Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?
In the spirit of the Greek philosophers, I spent two days contemplating what my work—my duty—should be with regard to Elizabeth Bennet.
My concern for her warmth and physical comfort was merely sentimental.
They were neither starving nor freezing to death, and I doubt that Miss Bennet resented the modesty of her surroundings or inwardly complained that Mrs Jennings was not more affluent.
But they had no company, no relief from the endless hours of confinement that constituted a winter in Derbyshire.
If only she had a friend or relative with her, a sister perhaps, with whom she could share the burden of caring for Mrs Jennings.
As New Year’s Day came and went, I concluded that her isolation disturbed me more than anything, and that if she had some means of support, I could leave her alone—both in my mind and in reality. To this end, I gathered my resolve and once again intruded upon Miss Bennet’s notice.
She was not overjoyed to find me at her doorstep. “Mr Darcy!” she cried.
Hat in hand, I begged pardon, thinking perhaps I should offer to return at a better time. But instead of allowing me a graceful exit, she grasped my arm, pulled me into the house by the coat sleeve, and swiftly latched the door behind me.
What followed was an uninterrupted flow of questions, none of which required answers—the whole of it meant to lessen the extreme awkwardness of our meeting.
Once she had sufficiently overwhelmed me, she then invited me in to greet Mrs Jennings.
Our mortification, however, only worsened, since that lady mistook her relation for ‘Mrs Darcy’.
For once, Miss Bennet looked embarrassed.
She was unequal to brazening out such a wild insinuation with a flippant remark and instead strove to force Mrs Jennings to remember her.
Alas, her efforts were fruitless, and the elderly lady continued to thank her for her condescension in visiting.
Defeated, Miss Bennet excused herself to retrieve the tea tray, while I pondered just how I would execute my errand.
I meant only to advise her, to suggest she apply to her family to send someone to Lambton to help with whatever duty she had to Mrs Jennings.
I could think of no better means than meeting her in the narrow hall leading out of the kitchen on pretence of assisting with the tea tray, and there I restrained her with my hands over hers as they gripped the handles.
Looking earnestly into her eyes, I said, “Is there no one in your family who can come to your aid? You are here all alone?—”
She did not like the direction of my advice.
After attempting to brush me off with a light jest that her neighbour would be only too happy to keep them company, we indulged in a tense skirmish of words that would have been both loud and heated had we not been required to speak in low voices so as not to be overheard.
Miss Bennet was greatly affronted by my suggestion she needed help of any kind and inferred in my concern a judgment upon her entire family as neglectful, thoughtless people.
I could not disguise my irritation to have been so unjustly accused. “What?” I demanded.
She shook off my grip, tossed back her head, accused me of wilfully misunderstanding her—rather than the reverse, which was in fact the case—and with her chin held high, she marched away, leaving me standing stupidly in the hall.
I could hardly leave at such a moment without being rude to Mrs Jennings and so the visit continued under an aura of mutual harassment until the widow took fright at a noise.
The lady then mistook me for someone named Mr Carlton, a name which seemed to spark such a dreadful recollection, she had to be escorted up the stairs to recover.
The scene was distressing in every way, the elderly lady’s fragility on full display, and eliciting an equal degree of anxiety in her caregiver.
Under the circumstances, I could hardly slip away without at least ascertaining whether I should fetch a doctor or whatever else might be needed, and so I sat in restless apprehension for another quarter of an hour.
When Miss Bennet did return to the room, her grim expression foretold a strong determination to be rid of me.
She spoke at length and with angry enthusiasm, and I heard her out in silence.
In spite of her full-throated objections to my concerns, I held firm to my purpose, and having failed to induce her to ask for help from her family, I insisted upon sending the squire’s wife to visit her.
The final misery was the insistent knocking of the vile busybody, whom I coldly addressed on my way out the door.