The True Darcy Spirit. Elizabeth Aston

Cassandra knew precisely what the phrase meant. Despite the apparent strictness of her upbringing under her stepfather’s rigid control—and Mr. Partington was a man very strong on morality—she was no prude. An innocent abroad she might be; ignorant, she was not. Many years of friendship with Emily Croscombe, a lively young woman of just Cassandra’s age, had made sure of that, for Emily had an unusual mother, an educated woman, positively a blue-stocking, who believed modern girls should not be kept in a state of passive ignorance, and what Emily knew, so did her friend and confidante, Cassandra.

      There had been a case in the village, when the attorney’s daughter had, at the age of fifteen, run off with a member of the militia; Emily had told Cassandra that the girl, abandoned by her lover, had come upon the town to make her living and she also told her that Sarah was enjoying her new life, much to the outrage of the village.

      Mrs. Croscombe pointed out to the girls, in a matter-of-fact rather than a moralising way, that while Sarah was young and pretty and had her health, she might find her life in London not disagreeable. But those years soon passed, and a girl lost her bloom, and then with no family, no means of support and nothing of youth and beauty left, the prospects for a single woman in that situation were nothing if not bleak.

      Cassandra came out of her reverie to find herself outside a shop which did catch her attention, for as the door opened to let out a customer, a poignantly familiar smell wafted out. This was a colourist’s shop, and the smell was an unmistakable mixture of linseed oil and pigment that carried her at once back to her attic studio at Rosings, where so many hours of her girlhood and early womanhood had been spent in the absorbed happiness of working at her easel or her drawing table.

      Rosings! An image of her home came before her eyes, an artist’s image of the façade painted in early spring, with green flecking the trees and the family posed for the picture. Rosings wasn’t one of the great houses of England, it was not a house to compare with a Chatsworth or a Wilton, but it was still a fine, imposing house—and, for Cassandra, the place where she had spent the previous nineteen years of her life, until she had driven away from it, with scarcely a backward glance, only a few weeks since.

      What a difference those few short weeks had made, what a complete change in her circumstances had been wrought in that time. She looked with unseeing eyes at the little piles of colour set out in trays behind the tiny panes of the shop window, wondering if there were a time or place she could pinpoint that marked the turning point; a day, an incident, which had propelled her on the course that had so changed her life?

       Chapter Two

      It had been a morning at the beginning of April when Cassandra rode over to Croscombe House from Rosings with some exciting news. Croscombe House was two miles distant from the village of Hunsford, where Rosings was situated, and Cassandra could have found her way there blindfold, so much time had she spent there over the years in Emily’s company.

      It was the fashion for owners of large and elegant houses to have them painted: house, park and, generally, the family lined up in front of the building. Mr. Partington, never one to be outdone by his neighbours, had, through the good offices of Herr Winter, a painter who lived in Hunsford, engaged an up-and-coming young artist to come down to Rosings and paint the house and family.

      “Imagine,” Cassandra told Emily. “He is only four-and-twenty, but already, Herr Winter says, he is making a reputation for himself in London as an artist.”

      “Is he English?”

      “No, he is a fellow countryman of Herr Winter, who knew his father when he lived in Germany. But he speaks excellent English, Mr. Partington was insistent on that point, of course, he would be, for otherwise how could he tell him what to do, and how to paint the picture? Oh, I can’t wait for him to arrive, it is a great opportunity for me, to see such an artist at work.”

      “You won’t be able to see much,” Emily observed. “Not when you’re sitting still, looking like a well-bred young lady for hours on end, under the portico.”

      “That is what I feared, but all is well, it is to be a portrait of the Partington family, and of course I am a Darcy.”

      Mrs. Croscombe was so shocked she could hardly speak. “Do you mean that you are not to be painted with your mother and sisters and brother?”

      “Half sisters and half brother, as Mr. Partington is always so quick to point out. No, and don’t look so horrified, for I don’t give a button for being painted. I should very much prefer to be on the other side of the process, I do assure you.”

      Emily could see that her mother had a great deal more to say on the subject, so she intervened: “What is this painter’s name? When is he to come?”

      “He is called Henry Lisser, and he will arrive on Thursday se’ennight. By which time we will have another visitor, I forgot to mention that, because Mr. Lisser is so much more exciting.”

      “Not another clergyman?” said Emily.

      “No, not at all. It is my cousin Belle, Isabel Darcy. I have no recollection of her, although I know we met as children, when I visited Pemberley.”

      “So she is one of your cousin Mr. Darcy’s daughters,” said Mrs. Croscombe. “He has five, has he not? Isabel will be one of the younger ones, I think, for I am sure the older two are married.”

      “Yes, and her twin sister Georgina is lately married and gone to live in Paris. And, in the strictest confidence, although Mama won’t say anything, and Mr. Partington just tut-tuts and looks grave, I have a notion that she has been in some kind of a scrape, and that she is coming to Rosings to be out of the way and kept out of mischief.”

      “I would have thought Pemberley would keep her out of mischief.”

      “Oh, I believe her parents are abroad or some such thing, but do not want her to stay in London for the summer.”

      “She will be company for you, is she about your age?”

      “She is eighteen.”

      “What is she like?” Emily asked. “Is she pretty?”

      “I have no idea, but you may see for yourself, for she arrives tomorrow, so unless she is to be kept strictly within bounds, or cannot ride a horse, I shall bring her over to make your acquaintance.”

      Belle was no horsewoman, but the visit was paid nonetheless, Cassandra being allowed to take her cousin with her in the carriage. “Which,” she said to Emily as she jumped down outside the steps of Croscombe House, “shows you how rich and important Belle’s papa is, for you know how Mr. Partington hates to have the horses put to the carriage on my behalf.”

      Belle, angelically fair, with striking violet eyes, had a discontented expression on her pretty face as she stepped down from the carriage. She made no bones about telling Emily and Cassandra why she had been posted off to Rosings. “It is because I am in love with the most handsome, dashing man, my dearest Ferdie, only my family consider I am too young and too volatile in my affections to enter into an engagement.”

      Mrs. Croscombe had, through an intricate network of friends and acquaintances, found out more than this. When Emily told her at breakfast the next morning what Belle had said, and expressed her indignation at any family being so gothic as to stand between a girl and the object of her affections—“For he is a perfectly respectable parti, an eldest son, and very well-connected”—her mother thought it only right to say that this was the third young man within a year that Belle, “who is but eighteen, my dear,” had fallen in love with and wished to marry.

      Emily was much struck with this, and passed the information on to Cassandra, warning her not to reveal to Belle how much Mrs. Croscombe, who had a wide correspondence, and kept up with all the gossip of town, knew about her. Cassandra thought it a very good joke. “Perhaps she will next fall in love with one of Mr. Partington’s clerical protégés, or with one of your rejected beaux.”