A heavy silence fell. The Irish were despised here, looked down upon by even the poorest of our cottagers. Charity to an Irishman was nigh on heresy, and my wife did not simply slip the man a handful of shillings and drive on. No. She made agreat, roaring show of sheltering, feeding, and transporting them to their destination. There are chalk mines in Yorkshire that draw the displaced Scots and Irish who labour for far less than the workers they replace.
“You understand feelings run high against the importation of workers who allow mine and mill owners to replace the local men who command higher wages?”
“I do now. I have placed our curate in a particularly uncomfortable situation, and though I regret that very much, I do not know what I would have done differently.”
“You would not learn from your mistake?” I asked coldly.
“I wonder, Mr Darcy, what you would have done had you seen a child with his shoes frozen to his feet, pulling a thin shawl around his ribs, standing two miles from anywhere.” A sob escaped, and she swallowed it angrily, though she could not stem the sheet of tears that poured down her cheeks. She stood there, however, defiant and ramrod straight, adding, “I have been told by Mr Johnson that fate is cruel, and I should have left them to it.”
This shocked me. I could think of nothing to say, so she continued in a tone that bordered on outrage.
“I see you agree with him, sir, and can only congratulate you. To be unburdened by the feelings of compassion must be liberating indeed.”
“It does not follow that my silence constitutes agreement, madam.”
“Does it not?” She spoke with such righteous irony that I felt a blush crawl up my neck.
“I am not without compassion.”
“Oh? I was unaware, sir. If you are in earnest, and if there is to be a punishment phase to this interview, then I wouldconsider it a mercy to hear my fate without Mr Johnson in the room.”
I was now fully flushed—abashed, really. I had handled the meeting in the most deplorable manner. I should have excused Johnson directly after he explained the circumstance. One hard glance at my steward and he bowed himself out.
“What do you mean by a punishment phase, madam?”
“A rumour is afoot that I will be sent to your estate in Scotland. Mr Johnson seems to relish the notion, having teased me just this morning with sly jokes about haggis and sheep’s pelt coats.”
“You put great stock in rumours, do you?”
“No, I do not, but your sister came to hear the gossip and made me aware of it. I could hardly tell her I would not listen to her concerns.”
“If you knew me at all, you would know I would never stoop to such an expedient as sending you to Scotland without extreme provocation.”
“By your account then, your sister knows you no more thoroughly than I, for she is wretched at the near-certain prospect that I am, at this moment, being sent away.”
This was the fourth or fifth time she left me floundering for speech. I was so utterly bewildered I did not even know how to bring that disastrous conversation to a dignified end. I stood silent, swallowing, until she asked if she was free to go, and I awkwardly bowed her out.
I was alone in the room where I was master of my world, with my palms clammy and my heart hammering against my ribs. My thoughts were a cacophony of jumbled, half-formed remnants of reason. From somewhere in the roar in my head, the notion coalesced that if I did not make a sharp coursecorrection, I would go down in flaming ruin and have only myself to blame.
The hour was late, my head throbbed, and my brain stood still in revolt. Come morning, I hoped to be able to think. For the present, however, I skulked my way up to my room and closed the door against the world.
41
ELIZABETH DARCY
I came here with the ground under my feet. I was calm, deeply humbled, and filled with a reasonable and conciliatory spirit. I even felt equal to finding small ways to laugh, to seeing beauty everywhere I looked, to making friends, and broadening my capacities. I realised then that I had somehow come to expect my unwilling husband to also be reasonable, to judge me objectively, and to absolve me of grossly manipulating him for personal gain at least. At times, I even felt a commiserating sort of empathy for Mr Darcy, and by seeing the cornered animal in him, I beheld him with compassion.
I longed to stay in that place of internal equilibrium, but I was torn into shreds. The debacle of three nights ago, when I came to the aid of the most pitiful family I ever beheld, had knocked me to my knees. A coldness crept into my relations with the servants, workers, and neighbours. I was in disgrace—again—still. I could think of nothing worse, for I had disgraced myself from a most precarious position of trying tosurvive a scandal. It was not secret to anyone anymore—from the beginning, our marriage had not been a happy one.
The persistent urge to demand ‘what wouldyouhave done?’ tormented me. What would Georgiana have done or Mrs Annesley? What would Mrs Maunders have done or even Mrs Reynolds? I bit back my question until faced with Mr Johnson’s self-satisfied smirk when he explained to me rather publicly how I had insulted our people. His reply that I should have left them to fate froze me to the bone, and my determination not to despise him died then and there.
Nor could I refrain from demanding of Mr Darcy an answer to this critical question. What wouldhehave done? He could not or would not answer me, and I was so completely out of sympathy with him, I began to wish hewouldsend me to Scotland. His habit of remonstrating with me in the presence of his steward was a cruelty that did him no credit. I lay on my bed and shivered, not from physical cold, but from the sound of the wind howling, wolf-like, as it wrapped around his house. I was in danger of coming to despise my husband as much as I hated his lackey.
This was a line I did not want to cross. If I gave in to the temptation to hate, to forgo every impulse of empathy for a man trapped in a loveless marriage—just as cruelly as I had been—I would be lost. I would descend into a kind of tortured hell. I prayed, though I did not feel divinity anywhere that night. I prayed to the ceiling, to my irrational heart, to the spirits that haunt the forest.Please, please do not let me fall into bitterness!I begged in hollow-sounding words for some relief from the painful compression in my chest.
Wilson stole silently into the darkened room. I should rouse myself, I really should. I am lying here fully clothed withtears falling down the sides of my face into my ears, wetting my hair, dampening my pillow.
“Are you well, ma’am?” she asked quietly.
