Page 44 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

O n the fifteenth day of February, Mr Gardiner arrived.

Perhaps it was an odd coincidence that the house had fallen into a state of settled silence, which only increased from the moment his coach was seen coming down the drive.

I was alerted to his imminent arrival because I sat in my study with the door ajar, and I heard the footsteps and murmurs of the footmen and a call for someone to find Mr Parker. I stepped out and asked that my sister be brought down before I went to the doorway to greet our guest.

I was vaguely aware I would meet Mrs Bennet’s brother, and I had formed any number of expectations regarding this man who was reportedly a resident in Cheapside in London proper. What I saw, however, was the stern and uncompromising face of a man labouring under a strong sense of indignation.

My sense of foreboding, which had been slowly on the rise for days, bloomed into extreme sobriety in meeting this man.

“Welcome to Pemberley, Mr Gardiner,” I said.

He crisply bowed and thanked me, quickly introducing the reason for his visit. “I understand I might find my niece, Elizabeth Bennet, and my aunt-by-marriage, Mrs Jennings, here, sir.”

“They have been our guests, yes. Allow me to introduce my sister.”

They met, and Georgiana invited him into the parlour and offered refreshments, which he managed to refuse with a bare modicum of politeness, by expressing an eagerness to see his niece.

My sister, thrown into confusion, knew enough to leave an angry man to me to manage. She sweetly excused herself directly after I replied that I would send for his niece.

“I am grateful for your hospitality, Mr Darcy, and for that of your sister, but I am sure my family has imposed long enough, and I shall see them home.”

“There has not been the least imposition.” I gestured towards a chair hoping he would make himself comfortable. “Might I have a room made up for you? We have had every expectation you would stay with us at Pemberley for at least a few days.”

“As much as I appreciate your offer, I believe we must go, sir,” he said briskly while still standing.

“Well, after you have spoken to Miss Bennet, perhaps I might yet convince you. Are you certain there is nothing I might have brought up for you?”

“My niece would be sufficient.”

Something in the disguised hostility of his words radiated his deep suspicion that I had her in my custody, under my power perhaps, and had I not been trained to regulate my expression, my eyes would have closed in that universal expression of doom.

His impression was so unflattering to me and so condemnatory of Elizabeth that I excused myself and went personally to find her.

I had no notion of how the day would proceed, forced as I was to rely upon Elizabeth’s interview with her aggrieved relation to smooth things over.

If he ripped her and Mrs Jennings away from us in precipitous haste, the damage to the lady’s reputation would be catastrophic, for there is no greater indictment of guilt than to act out a public countermeasure to that sin for which one wishes to be exonerated.

Even the servants, who were also her well-wishers, would not be able to refrain from gossip, and before a day had passed, the entire village would know she had been removed from my keeping by force and by an enraged uncle.

By instinct, I went to her sanctuary—the gallery. It was a silent, church-like space, and she went there with increasing regularity as though in search of courage.

She must have found some, for she turned her face to me upon hearing my footsteps and smiled with such bravery as must smite a Gorgon or at least give it pause.

“Is it time?” she asked, sparing me the requirement of speaking.

This was just as well since my throat had closed upon seeing her at the window, in the pale light of winter, and in the posture of a banished queen who would now face her accusers.

I took her down to the salon, thinking frantically of just how to prepare her and finding myself at a complete loss.

If she had not held herself upright and with such extreme dignity, I do not think I could have thrown her into the lion’s den unprepared, per se, but she radiated not only a willingness to face her uncle but an intent to do so as a blank slate.

I was simply forced to fall back on her strength. This was such a foreign experience for me that I retreated to my study to grapple with the novelty of not being the principal in a contest, of not repairing a damage done, of not throwing resources onto a problem and buying my way clear of it.

So this is dependency! I marvelled at how horrible it felt to have one’s fate in the hands of another and comprehended just how Elizabeth could have railed against such powerlessness and refused to partake of my help that night in Mrs Jennings’s kitchen.

With my ears on the prick, I waited. Eventually, the doors to the salon opened, and I heard footsteps rising up the grand staircase.

She was exercising her genius on Mr Gardiner, I could feel it, and regretted I could not watch her at work.

There was nothing for it but to wait, however, and rather than sit in such unbearable expectation, I sank into an inner state of stillness, of silent introspection, of patient unknowing.

I do not know how much time elapsed. Not having slept well or deeply since the lady’s arrival in Lambton, I might have lost consciousness.

Parker’s sudden knock shocked me into wakeful alertness, and there she was, standing at my doorway with her eyes wide as saucers, lips slightly parted, her chest heaving as though she had run down the stairs—in other words a picture of horrified dismay.

My heart sank, and thinking she had news of something truly awful, something I had not anticipated, I spoke almost on a gasp.

“What has happened?”

She came forwards in quick little steps of agitation, and said, “Oh sir! My uncle thinks?—”

“I know very well what he thinks,” I said, forestalling the need for an explanation which must certainly embarrass her.

We then spoke as intimates, as such confederates as enjoy a longstanding reliance on one another in times of crisis. Her first point of concern was for me. She had flown down the stairs desperate to warn me and demanding to know if her relation had been rude to me, the man who had ‘saved’ her.

Good God! She had not told him that , had she? No she had not, and so I assured her that Mr Gardiner had been meticulously polite.

Her response to what was meant to reassure her rather surprised me.

She was appalled, as much for her uncle as she was for me, at what she called his tradesman-like dignity which must have rankled and earned him a gentleman’s set-down.

This was not the first time, I realised with a shock, Elizabeth wished to shield her loved ones from my condemnation.

I countered this concern by changing the subject. “What can I do?”

I did not know if I was to set the maids to packing, arrange for a baggage cart, or what other unknown and dreadful chores were in store for me.

So it was in a state of near disbelief I heard she had talked him around, and my dreadful chore would be to offer him my hospitality after having had it once rebuffed.

Such was my relief, I could almost laugh at her, but for once, I knew better than to tease an agitated woman. Still, I could not quite refrain from tweaking her for implying I would make a hash of it.

“Have you so little confidence in my manners?” I asked with a wry grin.

She offered me a wry grin in return and a coquettish look as a sweetener to her tart reply. She had seen my manners, and no, she did not have the least bit of faith in me.

As we walked up the stairs, I could not but be aware that I would be momentarily stepping into an awkward circumstance.

I have only ever responded to awkwardness with stiff reserve, which, I now knew, has not done me any favours.

In a flash, I recalled the awkwardness of Elizabeth’s first meeting with my sister, with her hair in a shambles, an apron covered in stains, and such a complete absence of preparedness as would stagger a horse, and then I knew just what to do.

With a warm smile solidly in place, I broke into the little parlour where Mr Gardiner waited and spoke in unrestrained accents of optimism, as though he had already accepted my invitation to stay and only needed a touch of polite insistence.

I leapt from sentence to sentence as though traversing a barely frozen lake and, as the French say, voila!

The thing was glossed over, the man was slightly appeased, and his niece looked upon me with the misty eyes of an admiring maiden.

This was a fine start, but the hunt was long, and there were many walls to be jumped, and so I, too, went to the gallery for a long pacing walk in order to gather my wits.

This was primarily Elizabeth’s battle, and I, as her principal reinforcement, must stand on the hill watchfully and wait to be of use to her.

The greatest challenge in the world to a man of privilege and action is to wait, but there it was.

By tacit agreement, we went down to dinner in the socially accepted way, as though we gathered every evening as ladies and gentlemen, with Mrs Annesley’s settled presence lending a modest nod, at least, to strict propriety.

Even the menu added to the staid atmosphere of life in an English country manor, and it was very agreeable to our guest.

And while I hoped Elizabeth would add lustre to the evening with her charm, she fell into prim silence. I came to what rescue I could by being as civil as I knew how to be, but in fact, it fell to my sister’s companion to engage our guest in polite conversation.