Page 37 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)
FITZWILLIAM DARCY
We have observed the holidays, given alms to the poor, drunk punch with the servants, and rung in the New Year. Richard left us ten days ago, travelling to Liverpool, where he set sail back to Belgium.
I cannot attest to the health and prosperity of the estate.
The confidential matter has cast a pall over us.
Mrs Travers is an intelligent woman and in the course of her treatment came to understand the source of her suffering to be her husband’s infidelity.
Mr Travers is now living in a low cottage on the edge of his farm.
Since theirs is a large and productive property, I am unsure how we can proceed with this state of affairs.
As to the others, when I pressed Yardley, he said Mrs Pirtle, whose understanding is not deep, had shrugged off what she called a man ‘seeing to his needs’, but he has little hope for similar complaisance from Mrs Butters, a Methodist, since she, too, is now making the obvious connexion.
After consulting with my steward, who only shrugs and laughs, I summoned Mrs Darcy. My purpose was to ask if she could be of any assistance in reconciling the Travers.
She tartly suggested I build a couple of widow and orphan cottages because husband murder was more likely than a happy resolution.
We spoke heatedly for a quarter of an hour on this subject.
It is her opinion that being dosed with mercury for six weeks is a torment equalling the original complaint and that the women are becoming so sick they are unable to carry their share of the work, much less inclined to stay contentedly with an offending husband when he is too debilitated to provide for her children.
When I countered her argument by saying Mrs Pirtle, at least, is more forgiving and realistic, Mrs Darcy cast me a sceptical look and asked how long I would stay forgiving and realistic with a woman who diseased me and put my children at risk because of her own lust. It is easy, she said darkly, to express tolerance, until the larder is empty, and one’s body is riddled with uncomfortable sores.
When the volume of my argument had finally come down sufficiently that I could hear what my wife was saying, I was forced to reluctantly agree that broken homes and abandoned fields are a distinct possibility.
I feared for my farms. Mrs Darcy and I then made plans to visit our tenants the following day so I could ascertain the state of affairs for myself.
In the meantime, I made a decision to go to Manchester in the near future.
I have heard that displaced farmhands looking for work in the mills and foundries can be found in droves there.
We will need good men to help this spring if my tenants are indeed affected by this scourge.
On the following morning, I said, “I ordered the gig. I hope you do not mind. I know it is cold, but I cannot drive around Pemberley in a closed carriage as I have seen some do on their estates.”
Mrs Darcy smiled slightly. “A coach and four arriving at Mrs Butter’s milking shed might certainly give the impression of loftiness,” she said.
And so, we left the house. For the first time since her arrival at my estate, we travelled as a man and his wife alone.
For the first time, I drove Mrs Darcy down the road.
To my dismay, I became conscious of my whip, hoping I did not job my horses’ mouths like a London dandy.
Upon returning from my escape to London, I had spent the majority of my days on the land.
The demands of changing agricultural methods and my overarching ambition to diversify our productions in order to survive long term, had kept me thoroughly occupied.
I had left ‘the people’ to Mrs Darcy and gladly so.
True, Pemberley was populated with an army of self-sufficient people, but my mother had always tended their intangible concerns, and I was relieved, albeit begrudgingly, they were once again looked after in that particular way.
The new Mrs Darcy waded into hordes of children, held bawling infants, and spoke easily with everyone.
Even dogs seemed to swarm her when she arrived at farms and cottages, leaving me to wander behind in her wake as she was swept up by small crowds.
Her laugh was as twinkling as her eyes, and her merry, good nature guaranteed she would be doted upon, deferred to, and otherwise wholly admired.
Towards me, the prevailing reaction was considerable awe. The children shrank into a large-eyed mass hovering behind my wife’s skirts when they came to notice me. The women spoke to me with lowered eyes and careful dignity.
After each visit, I discussed with Mrs Darcy the health of the farm we had just seen. I made notations in a small ledger I kept in my pocket.
Dowlish is getting upwards of fifty with no sons, only daughters, all working at Pemberley. Another hired hand might be welcome.
Thompsons are thriving and their oldest is suited to working the land. Long-term prospects are good.
Other notations were more worrisome.
Horace Goodwin appears thin and weak.
The Anthony brothers are confined to bed with lingering coughs.
I became increasingly sober as we went, but the visit to Travers’s farm caused me to feel grim indeed.
I had never seen Mrs Travers—who had always been friendly—so dispirited.
The children were dirty and her house in disarray.
The woman stood grey-faced in the doorway to her bedchamber and stared at the floor while Mrs Darcy took charge.
“Adam, stop teasing that child and find some wood for this fire. I have brought a can of stew, though it is long gone cold. Would you like to eat?”
My wife was a diminutive figure, slim and swift in all her movements, but with a kind of engaged confidence that commanded obedience.
She was not a squeamish woman, I noticed, for she lined up the herd of children by the pump and herself scrubbed half a dozen faces and hands, drying them with an apron she had appropriated from a hook on the wall in the kitchen.
While she was thus occupied, I wandered around the cottage and took stock. The pile of wood was nearly gone, and the poultry coops were scarcely populated. The pig Mrs Travers so constantly prized, was missing from the sty. Had the goat been milked or gone dry?
Johnson should have seen to these people, but in the steward’s defence, I had appropriated most of his time with large projects—the roofs on the grain barns, the roads, the ditches, the seed stocks, the grazing, and putting up of hay.
In other words, the land . The dwindling of a woman’s poultry yard and lack of kindling could hardly be a matter of priority by comparison, could it?
When we left that dismal place, I drove us down the lane in silence. Mrs Darcy pulled her muffler up around her chin. She looked tired for once. I slowed the horses and finally spoke.
“What do you recommend?” Truly, I could not think what to do at all.
“We should stop and see Mr Travers, sir.” At times, her formality with me, the fact she still referred to me as sir, or Mr Darcy, struck me as unfortunate, but I pushed that aside as she continued to speak.
“I have some cold pie for him. Mr Yardley says he is doing poorly since he has been tossed out to fend for himself.”
“His wife is in no condition to care for him. She looks to be in need of care herself.”
“To be sure, but it is the children who worry me. I wish Mr and Mrs Dowlish might take them but—” She sighed, her face averted and eyes downcast. “I simply do not know what can be done for them. I suppose that is why I was so snappish when I suggested a widows and orphans’ cottage.”
I felt an urge to offer my own apology for incivility that day, but the words stuck in my throat like a bone. I was in the throes of self-castigation for my abominable pride, when she spoke again.
“Is there any hope that Mr Rogers’ school might be expanded to include the girls?”
I could not help the look of puzzlement I threw at her. What was this to the purpose? She sensed my question and explained herself.
“The boys are at least given a glass of milk in the mornings when they are in school. Mr Rogers says that hunger stands in the way of learning, and I wish they could all be fed much more than milk. But Mrs Travers’s girls are in danger of the scurvy and of growing up stunted and slow-witted if their mother cannot come about.
If they were in school, and if we could somehow feed them all a little more…
” She glanced uncertainly up at me as I listened.
“Well, I am full of expensive schemes, sir.”
The tumble-down shack that housed Mr Travers came into view, putting an end to her musings.
We pulled to a stop, and I tied the horses to a single fence post. Mr Travers looked to have aged ten years and was the same grey colour as his estranged wife.
He was by turns resentful, angry and piteous.
I knew then that his recovery could not be hoped for in time for spring.
“I am bringing in some hands, Travers,” I said, while Mrs Darcy emptied her basket onto a dirty, three-legged table. “You are in no shape for planting just yet.”
“There is no cause for that, sir,” Travers argued in a thready whine. “The doctor will have me up and doing to be sure.”
“And if he does, I will send the extra labour elsewhere. In the meantime, who helps you?”
“The younger Thompson boy and half a dozen cottagers from what used to be the commons over Whitley way. I bring them come first thaw.”
“You ought to bring the cottagers over now. The farm is ailing.”
“And pay them with what, begging your pardon, sir?”
“Have you nothing from harvest?”