Page 38 of The Winter of Our Discontent (Pride and Prejudice Variations #1)
Thus, the conversation continued. There was no reasoning with the man.
His money, tucked up in a jar in his wife’s kitchen, was rightly his.
If she spent a sixpence, he would thrash her.
When he felt more like himself, he thought he might thrash her anyway for putting him out of the house.
Come to think of it, he should thrash her for forcing him to seek comfort at the gin hut in the first place.
I glanced uncomfortably at Mrs Darcy, who bore this offensive tirade with a pensive look. Travers glibly placed the whole debacle at his wife’s feet, citing marital infelicity as the first and only cause of all his suffering.
I was nearing the end of all patience when my wife spoke. “What of your sister, Mr Travers? Could she not give you a room? You are not well.”
Ah, suddenly I saw where she was leading.
Travers must relinquish his farm. Her suggestion was met with resistance—today.
In a week’s time, however, Travers would be moved to his sister’s cottage on the outskirts of Derby where her husband was a freehold farmer of a generous plot of land.
Johnson would persuade him, though a small pension would likely be required, as would housing and a subsistence for the man’s estranged wife and children.
This was one of the costs of running an estate—providing for people beyond their usefulness. This was the covenant I saw broken day in and day out so that wealthy landowners could stay wealthy, and this was why I relentlessly sought income from both large and small sources.
“I suppose that answers my question,” I said gravely to Mrs Darcy as I handed her up into the gig. With a start, I realised this was the first time I had grasped her hand intentionally. I wished I could resent her as thoroughly as I had, but solidarity, once tasted, could not be forgotten.
If anything, this epidemic of ‘the Lord’s Judgment’ had united us in a common cause.
I drove her two miles down the lane and turned off into a fallow field.
The ground was poor there, having been a wash in my grandfather’s time.
The good soil had long since gone down the road, and what was left was full of small stones.
“What say you to a widows and orphans’ cottage here?”
“Are you in earnest?” she asked in wonder.
“I hope I am not so stubborn that I resist a practical solution that is not my own,” I said drily. “Ned Travers is not long for this world, I think.”
“Then you are a liberal man, sir. What can they raise here?”
“The verge is meagre but sufficient for geese and goats. They will be poor to be sure, but they will neither freeze nor starve. And if I am not mistaken, the generosity of Mrs Darcy will see them established and made comfortable.”
“Mrs Darcy is very generous with Mr Darcy’s bountiful means.”
“I have seen no increase in spending. ”
“Because she and Mrs Reynolds are becoming very sly in their economising, Mr Darcy,” she said with a hint of archness.
“Ah,” I said, making a mental note to increase the household budget by five percent. We were far from requiring retrenchment in order to encompass a few well-applied expenditures for my dependents. What would an elegant and fashionable wife have cost me in comparison? Twice as much at least.
“Mrs Travers will not rightly be a widow just yet, sir. Will it be much remarked?”
I shrugged. “If her husband abandons the farm, she may as well be widowed. Besides which, we need such a place. Accidents do happen. I never thought of it because I have a good row of pensioner’s cottages, but they are a fair way down the spinney road and too far from the school to be suited to children. ”
We spoke for some time as we walked the ground, about how many rooms the cottage should have, about what sort of support would be required, and about Mrs Travers’s children.
“I do not necessarily object to putting girls in school,” I said, “but Mrs Rogers cannot be expected to teach them, and I do not know who we could get to do so.”
She remained quiet for the length of ten steps before she said—carefully—tentatively, “My sister Mary might enjoy the challenge.”
“I see,” I heard myself say from afar. The familiar coldness rushed in, flooding me with icy resentment. We had been able to converse reasonably, had achieved a sort of commonality. We had just seemed to put our feet on some sort of solid ground, and she felt emboldened to ask for a favour.
Bloody hell, but she has patience! I raved inwardly. To work so tirelessly, and for so many months, to gain a footing with me, only to use me to position one of her sisters at Pemberley!
But she did not have enough patience to have waited until I was well and truly caught up in her easy presence .
My memory was long, much longer than she gave me credit for, in fact.
She had ensnared me, obligated me to marry her against the inclination of my soul, and now, at last, she showed her hand.
Bit by bit, her family would arrive. They would be made useful at first, and then slowly earn privileges and positions and introductions.
I would subsidise their livings, fund their entrance to society in London, dower, and promote them.
I had let scales grow over my eyes somehow, and when they fell, I looked at Mrs Darcy as though examining a specimen through a cold glass case.
She sat to my right as I drove towards the great house, giving every appearance of being thoughtful, capable, and yet ever so slightly delicate.
She invited me to feel tender and protective towards her, and I hated her anew for almost having achieved her goal.
Not for the first time did I think of annulment, of divorce, of sending her to my property in Scotland, or to my leasehold in Ramsgate.
I spent the night engrossed in a fantasy of buying a tract of land in America and sending my wife there to keep company with native chiefs and the hordes of Irish escaping starvation.
Let her be Joan of Arc in Virginia , I thought grimly. She could charm a Spanish bandido and give him a shack full of natural sons and daughters, all barefoot and shirtless, trained to fraudulence, trickery, and thievery.
I could not get away fast enough. I left for Manchester half an hour before full light in the dourest, most determined state of mind.