“You consider yourself to be a happy woman?”
“Oh, certainly.”
“And from whence does this happiness come? Do you think it is a matter of your fundamental character, or a matter of howyou were raised? — I ask as a father who often wonders how he might raise his daughter to be happy. It was nearly the last thing that Anne said to me, she begged for me to raise Emily so that she might be happy. But real happiness is not a matter of momentary pleasures, but of enduring sources of satisfaction and the ability to face the vicissitudes of life properly. And I do not know… how.”
“I can hardly answer. But I think teaching her to laugh freely, and to find humour in the details of daily life, cannot go amiss.”
“I hope so. But it must be more — and so little of what I read upon the art of rearing children cares about theirhappiness. The consideration is always to teach them to be disciplined, capable, independent, to avoid vice and pursue virtue. And that is how I was raised. And thoseareconsiderations of the utmost importance. Buthappinessitself is seldom considered.”
Elizabeth smiled. “You are an unusual man.”
Darcy pressed his lips together in a way that showed he wished to smile. His eyes were bright.
“I must also tell you, sir, that I have decided I rather like you. I dare say I have never had a conversation upon such subjects in a ballroom. Your only defect, I think, beyond occasional rudeness, is your disinclination to dance.”
Mr. Darcy laughed, and Elizabeth liked to see that from him. “I now owe you a dance, and I will happily offer it wheneveryouwill do me the honour of accepting my hand.”
He then yawned widely.
Elizabeth laughed. “My vanity punctured once more.”
“I am not used to ball hours any longer.” Darcy rubbed at the back of his neck. “I fear I must lay the blame upon my daughter. She wakes with the sun, like a proper farmer, and I have asked to be woken with her, so we might take an earlymorning walk — would you dance with me? Afterwards I believe I shall retire for the night.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I cannot. I have promised this next to Mr. Gould. And after that with your host’s brother, Mr. Hurst. But for the next opportunity when we both are at liberty to dance, I am at your disposal.”
As it happened the two of them did not dance that night, since by the time Elizabeth’s two next dances had completed, Mr. Darcy had progressed from yawning and rubbing his eyes, to napping on a sofa in the card room, and she had neither the bravery, nor the heart, to wake him from his presumably well-earned sleep.
Chapter Three
Emily stood on the seat cushions in the carriage, pressing her hands flat on the window as she stared at the passing hedgerows, orchards and stubbled fields. A few of the fields had already been tilled for the winter crops. Darcy kept a hand on her so that he could catch her if a sudden jerk of the carriage made her lose her balance.
He was not worried, though. The little creature was surprisingly durable. At first Darcy’s heart jumped into his throat every time she tumbled in a failed effort to walk, and for a week he even used leading strings to keep her upright while she made her experiments in the difficult task of two legged locomotion.
But time familiarized him with the young child’s limits. Darcy learned from many examples that she could safely flop backwards and hit her head on a wooden floor, the dirt, the grass, and even a marble floor without any more damage than a need to cry for a half minute.
He still held her hand carefully when she demanded to walk along the brick base of a fence placed above cobblestones, or back and forth in the windowsill, or when she wished to go down stairs.
“Now we’re in the town,” Darcy informed Emily, and he pointed at the collection of brown and white timber-framed buildings that made up the decent sized market town.
Emily had no visible reaction, but as she continued staring, Darcy thought her properly entertained.
“Why must you insist on taking her,” Mrs. Hurst said. “None of my friends take their children to such things. The child would be happier at home with her nurse.”
“It is best,” Darcy replied, “for her to gain the habit of being in company as early as possible.”
“Mr. Darcy does everything that is proper!” Miss Bingley exclaimed. “Louisa, you cannot compare him to those negligent high society mothers. He knows what he is about — and Emily is such an entire goose that no one could possibly not wish to have her present ateveryevent.”
A slight wrinkling of the young woman’s nose as she said, combined with her emphasis oneverymade Darcy suspect that Bingley’s sister was not wholly sincere.
Darcy did not know if Emily gained any benefit from being in company at this age. If there was any advantage, it must be slight. His true reasoning was perhaps similar to that of those neglectful mothers Miss Bingley railed against: He wished his child to be present with him, just as those mothers wished their children elsewhere.
The volumes and volumes that Darcy had stuffed his library with upon the subject of child rearing, while they universally disliked nurses and ever leaving children in the care of servants, had mixed opinions on whether it was sensible for the children to be kept often in the presence of adults.
Darcy did wonder what those writers who claimed great harm from putting the child too much in the constraint required by adult company, believed the children would be doing if they werenotin the care of servants while their parents entertained or were entertained. Perhaps they believed that the parents ought to wholly abandon society for the sake of their children, till they were of a proper age to be transferred to the care of seminary and school.
After a minute of silence in the carriage, Miss Bingley repeated, “Mr. Darcy is such a perfect father! My heart always glows with light when I see how much he loves his poor motherless child!”
It took an effort for Darcy to avoid a deep frown at how Miss Bingley spoke.
