Pemberley Shades. D. A.Bonavia-Hunt

For men, I am sorry to tell you, Mrs. Darcy, talk very differently among themselves. When the wine goes round, out come words and expressions you would not like to hear. Now if a man has a wife, he will get into the way of accommodating his speech to her taste. And then a wife orders the house in such a manner that her husband has to mind his behaviour, which is what he should do. When I go home after visiting at Pemberley where there is order and elegance in every part, I think what a difference a lady in the house would make.” He paused at last, but after a moment said solemnly, “I don’t think I should make a bad husband either.”

      “I am sure you would not,” said Elizabeth warmly.

      “It is very handsome of you to say so, Mrs. Darcy, for after Darcy I must seem monstrously stupid and countrified. I wish others could think so too.” He heaved a great sigh, and looked at her with eloquent eyes.

      “Perhaps someone will one day.”

      “But there is only one I would like to think so.”

      “You know, Mr. Mortimer, the first choice of our hearts is often a mistaken one.”

      “I was afraid you would say something like that. Then you think there is no hope for me.”

      Elizabeth made no disclaimer and they proceeded in silence until he burst out anew.

      “I know I am not good enough for Miss Darcy.”

      “It is not that at all,” she said gently. Truly sorry for his disappointment, she began to depict Georgiana as an extraordinary girl who cared for nothing but study and was indifferent to the society of any but the members of her own family. By some exaggeration of these traits she hoped to convince him that he had fixed his heart upon a very unpromising object, in the belief that he was not the man to nurse for long a one-sided attachment. But Mortimer, who was of a sanguine temperament and rebounded from each blow with like force, began to argue his own case with more ardour than cogency, until his hostess, though still commiserating him, lost patience and longed for the seclusion of her dressing-room. For in spite of all that the romantic novelists have written, nothing can be so dull to the onlooker as a respectable love. When the clock over the archway to the stables was heard striking the half-hour after two, a reminder that it was time to be preparing for the afternoon service, she felt an exquisite relief.

      The following Tuesday her impatience for news from her husband was at last satisfied. He had written on his arrival at Berkeley Square promising a further letter when he had seen Mr. Acworth, and she came to breakfast from a survey of her flower garden to find it awaiting her. Eager to learn all that he had to tell she opened it forthwith, but saw that he had written at such length and so closely that a much more careful perusal would be required than was possible at the table. The first sentence informed her that he would reach home on the morrow, and this important question answered to her satisfaction, she cast a hurried glance over the rest of the page and then at the last one, and set the letter aside to be read in private and at leisure.

      Georgiana had likewise heard from her brother, though briefly, and she looked up from her own letter and said, “Fitzwilliam has found nearly all the music we asked for, and now he is to hunt the bookshops. He says the spring fashions for women are ugly beyond words. Have you, too, a letter from him, Elizabeth?”

      “Yes, and there is so much packed into it that I have not had time yet to read it properly. I collect, however, that he is returning tomorrow and bringing a visitor with him.”

      “A visitor! We have had none these six weeks, and how pleasant it has been.”

      “True. But this is no ordinary visitor. I believe that the new Rector of Pemberley is to be introduced into our midst.”

      “Is that all? There must be a new rector in any case, and we cannot escape his being introduced to us. How I wish we could make the acquaintance of some person unlike any we have known before. If only Fitzwilliam would bring us a musician, or a poet, or an actor of genius. But he would never do it because such people are not of our station and cannot be admitted to our society. And yet I am sure they must be on the whole more interesting than the people who do stay here, or come calling.”

      “That is very possible,” said Elizabeth. “But you should remember that acquaintance does not only consist in interesting conversation, and the kind of people you mention, with some exceptions no doubt, lead irregular, and often disreputable lives.”

      “Do you know, Elizabeth, I have observed that when my brother is absent, you talk just as he would on any debatable subject. But when he is here, you fly to the opposite opinion. If he had said that musicians and poets and actors lead disreputable lives, you would have maintained the contrary.”

      “As to that, my dear Georgiana, you seem not to have observed that your brother frequently makes a statement with the sole object of provoking an argument, and if I did not immediately dissent from him, he would think I was either ill or out of humour. Besides, you are to remember that the simplest statement—as about the weather or somebody’s taste in dress—is so highly controversial, and so many divergent opinions can be rationally advanced upon the same subject, that it is well nigh impossible to decide what is true.”

      “At that rate,” said Georgiana, with more acuteness than most of her acquaintance would have given her credit for, “you cannot believe what anyone says, and your own statements least of all.”

      Elizabeth smilingly admitted the impeachment. “You see what comes of having to talk willy-nilly whenever you or your brother fall into one of your silences in dull company. One must say something, so long as it is not instantly detected as nonsense.”

      Breakfast over, the sisters separated, Georgiana to go to her sitting-room and her pianoforte, Elizabeth with her letter to the library. Here, sitting at the writing-table, with the letter pages spread out in front of her, she was soon immersed in what Darcy had to say. Her cursory survey, lighting upon a word or two here and there in his small and even handwriting, had by no means taught her what was to be unfolded, and she now learnt that she was not only to receive Mr. Acworth, but another visitor as well.

      “I am happy to say,” Darcy wrote, “that the business which brought me to town is now concluded so far as it can be, and I shall leave London early tomorrow—Wednesday—expecting to be with you in the afternoon of the next day. This is slow travelling for my natural impatience to be at home; but as I am bringing Mr. Acworth on his journey hither, it is not fair to one in his state of health to hasten the journey unduly. There will also be a third person in the carriage—Major Wakeford—whom I have induced to return with me to Pemberley for a long stay.

      “You have heard me speak of Francis Wakeford, I know. He is a cousin of ours on my father’s side, and on several occasions spent his school holidays here. We were of the same age, shared the same tastes and became firm friends. After he entered the army we saw one another only infrequently, but this happened without any fault on either side. He subsequently went abroad with his regiment, and I ceased to hear from him, except once after my father’s death. I replied, but never knew whether my letter had reached him. Thus matters stood when two days ago I heard by mere chance that he was in town, in lodgings in Upper Seymour Street. My informant, a fellow officer of the same regiment, told me that he had been severely wounded in action, losing an arm, besides sustaining an injury to the left leg which rendered him very lame, and that in consequence he was invalided out of the army on half-pay. At the first opportunity I sought him out. His condition as described had in some measure prepared me for some change in him, apart from that wrought by the passage of time, but I must confess that on first seeing him he appeared so altered as almost to defy recognition. At thirty-two he is prematurely grey, his face seamed with lines and bearing the stamp of all he has suffered. But there is always that in persons with whom we have been truly intimate which survives all physical change, and after we had been talking together a short while, the Francis Wakeford I had known as a young man returned once more to view.

      “I stayed for some time talking with him, and he seemed so cheered that although he spoke of his desire for solitude, I became convinced that his need is for companionship. I asked him what he was doing in London among strangers when he could be better cared for in his father’s