cottage door at night and, when returning late from Pemberley, he had been instructed to give a signal by knocking three times loudly and four times more quietly before inserting his key.
The cottage was reputed to be unlucky but only in recent years had ill luck touched the Bidwells. He still remembered, as keenly as if it were yesterday, the desolation of that moment when, for the last time, he had taken off the impressive livery of Mr Darcy of Pemberley’s head coachman and said goodbye to his beloved horses. And now for the past year his only son, his hopes for the future, had been slowly and painfully dying.
If that were not enough, his elder daughter, the child from whom he and his wife had never expected trouble, was causing anxiety. Things had always gone well with Sarah. She had married the son of the innkeeper at the King’s Arms in Lambton, an ambitious young man who had moved to Birmingham and established a chandlery with a bequest from his grandfather. The business was flourishing, but Sarah had become depressed and overworked. There was a fourth baby due in just over four years of marriage and the strain of motherhood and helping in the shop had brought a despairing letter asking for help from her sister Louisa. His wife had handed him Sarah’s letter without comment but he knew that she shared his concern that their sensible, cheerful, buxom Sarah had come to such a pass. He had handed the letter back after reading it, merely saying, “Louisa will be sadly missed by Will. They’ve always been close. And can you spare her?”
“I’ll have to. Sarah wouldn’t have written if she wasn’t desperate. It’s not like our Sarah.”
So Louisa had spent the five months before the birth in Birmingham helping to care for the other three children and had remained for a further three months while Sarah recovered. She had recently returned home, bringing the baby, Georgie, with her, both to relieve her sister and so that her mother and brother could see him before Will died. But Bidwell himself had never been happy about the arrangement. He had been almost as anxious as his wife to see their new grandson, but a cottage where a dying man was being nursed was hardly suitable for the care of a baby. Will was too ill to take much more than a cursory interest in the new arrival and the child’s crying at night worried and disturbed him. And Bidwell could see that Louisa was not happy. She was restless and, despite the autumnal chill, she seemed to prefer walking in the woodland, the baby in her arms, than to be at home with her mother and Will. She had even, as if by design, been absent when the rector, the elderly and scholarly Reverend Percival Oliphant, made one of his frequent visits to Will, which was strange because she had always liked the rector, who had taken an interest in her from her childhood, lending her books and offering to include her in his Latin class with his small group of private pupils. Bidwell had refused the invitation – it would only give Louisa ideas above her station – but still, it had been made. Of course, a girl was often anxious and nervous as her wedding approached, but now that Louisa was at home why did not Joseph Billings visit the cottage regularly as he used to do? They hardly saw him. He wondered whether the care of the baby had brought home both to Louisa and to Joseph the responsibilities and risks of the married state and caused them to reconsider. He hoped not. Joseph was ambitious and serious, and some thought, at thirty-four, too old for Louisa, but the girl seemed fond of him. They would be settled in Highmarten within seventeen miles of himself and Martha and would be part of a comfortable household with an indulgent mistress, a generous master, their future secured, their lives stretching ahead, predictable, safe, respectable. With all that before her, what use to a young woman were learning and Latin?
Perhaps all would right itself when Georgie was back with his mother. Louisa would be travelling with him tomorrow and it had been arranged that she and the baby were to go by chaise to the King’s Arms at Lambton, from where they would travel post to Birmingham where Sarah’s husband, Michael Simpkins, would meet them to drive home in his trap and Louisa would return to Pemberley by post the same day. Life would be easier for his wife and Will when the baby had been taken home, but when he returned to the cottage on Sunday after helping to put the house to rights after the ball, it would be strange not to see Georgie’s chubby hands held out in welcome.
These troubled thoughts had not prevented him from continuing with his work but, almost imperceptibly, he had slackened his pace and for the first time had let himself wonder whether the silver cleaning had become too tiring for him to undertake alone. But that would be a humiliating defeat. Resolutely pulling the last candelabrum towards him, he took up a fresh polishing cloth and, easing his aching limbs in the chair, bent again to his task.
5
In the music room the gentlemen did not keep them waiting long and the atmosphere lightened as the company settled themselves comfortably on the sofa and chairs. The pianoforte was opened by Darcy and the candles on the instrument were lit. As soon as they had seated themselves, Darcy turned to Georgiana and, almost formally as if she were a guest, said that it would be a pleasure for them all if she would play and sing. She got up with a glance at Henry Alveston and he followed her to the instrument. Turning to the party she said, “As we have a tenor with us, I thought it would be pleasant to have some duets.”
“Yes!” cried Bingley enthusiastically. “A very good idea. Let us hear you both. Jane and I were trying last week to sing duets together, were we not, my love? But I won’t suggest that we repeat the experiment tonight. I was a disaster, was I not, Jane?”
His wife laughed. “No, you did very well. But I’m afraid I have neglected practising since Charles Edward was born. We will not inflict our musical efforts on our friends while we have in Miss Georgiana a more talented musician than you or I can ever hope to be.”
Elizabeth tried to give herself over to the music but her eyes and her thoughts were with the couple at the piano. After the first two songs a third was entreated and there was a pause as Georgiana picked up a new score and showed it to Alveston. He turned the pages and seemed to be pointing to passages which he thought might be difficult, or perhaps where he was uncertain how to pronounce the Italian. She looked up at him, and then played a few bars with her right hand and he smiled his acquiescence. Both of them seemed unaware of the waiting audience. It was a moment of intimacy which enclosed them in their private world, yet reached out to a moment when self was forgotten in their common love of music. Watching the candlelight on the two rapt faces, their smiles as the problem was solved and Georgiana settled herself to play, Elizabeth felt that this was no fleeting attraction based on physical proximity, not even in a shared love of music. Surely they were in love, or perhaps on the verge of love, that enchanting period of mutual discovery, expectation and hope.
It was an enchantment she had never known. It still surprised her that between Darcy’s first insulting proposal and his second successful and penitent request for her love, they had only been together in private for less than half an hour: the time when she and the Gardiners were visiting Pemberley and he unexpectedly returned and they walked together in the gardens, and the following day when he rode over to the Lambton inn where she was staying to discover her in tears, holding Jane’s letter with news of Lydia’s elopement. He had quickly left within minutes and she had thought never to see him again. If this were fiction, could even the most brilliant novelist contrive to make credible so short a period in which pride had been subdued and prejudice overcome? And later, when Darcy and Bingley returned to Netherfield and Darcy was her accepted lover, the courtship, so far from being a period of joy, had been one of the most anxious and embarrassing of her life as she sought to divert his attention from her mother’s loud and exuberant congratulations which had almost gone as far as thanking him for his great condescension in applying for her daughter’s hand. Neither Jane nor Bingley had suffered in the same way. The good-natured and love-obsessed Bingley either did not notice or tolerated his future mother-in-law’s vulgarity. And would she herself have married Darcy had he been a penniless curate or a struggling attorney? It was difficult to envisage Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley as either, but honesty compelled an answer. Elizabeth knew that she was not formed for the sad contrivances of poverty.
The wind was still rising and the two voices were accompanied by the moaning and howling in the chimney and the fitful blazing of the fire, so that the tumult outside seemed nature’s descant to the beauty of the two blending voices and a fitting accompaniment to the turmoil in her own mind. She had never before been worried by a high wind and would relish the security and comfort of sitting indoors while it raged ineffectively through the Pemberley woodland. But now it seemed a malignant force, seeking every chimney, every cranny, to gain entrance. She was not imaginative and she tried to put the morbid imaginings from her, but there persisted an emotion which she had never known before. She thought,
