“You will marry one day, and you’ll be very happy for it,” Bingley replied. “Marriage is happiness, and delight, and oh, I am so happy!”
He lurched forward to hug Darcy once more, and then went to hug Colonel Fitzwilliam, even though the officer was still seated, and actively shoveling fish and eggs into his mouth. Colonel Fitzwilliam kept his hands up to fend off the gentleman.
Bingley laughed. “And I am off already. The Gardiners told me that I could call on them any time, and I intend to hold them to that offer. I just needed to thank you and announce our happiness.”
Darcy felt a strong sense of warmth towards Bingley. Even if he and Elizabeth never found happiness together, at leastBingley would be happy with Jane.
It would need to be enough to see Elizabeth happy.
“You are going to call on Elizabeth's aunt and uncle now? The ones at Gracechurch Street?”
“Yes,” Bingley said. And then he looked at Darcy with a sly expression. “Caroline is beyond annoyed that we will be so closely connected to tradesmen.”
“I will come with you. I have not yet called upon them, and I owe Elizabeth that duty.”
“Oh, do not speak likethat,” Bingley said. “Fine fellows. Very gentleman-like. Both Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner are more refined than any of my father’s friends ever were. You’ll like them.”
That promise hardly convinced Darcy of the matter. Bingley was a fine man, but not particular. However, it was Darcy’s duty to his wife to not only call on her relations, but to also make the best effort he could to enjoy the call.
Without bothering to finish his breakfast, Darcy rose from the table. “Let us be off.”
“Ten minutes, both of you,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “I’ll come with you. To keep you two out of trouble, further marital entanglements, and the like.”
“The entire journey,” Darcy replied, “is a result of already existing marital entanglements. And in any case, you can hardly worry that we will precipitously enternewones.”
“Do not tell me what I cannot worry about. I am a soldier, I assure you, my ability to worry is honed and strong. Besides, I’ve some hope to meet another one of your wife’s sisters and become entangled with her.”
“I thought you were determined this morning to never marry,” Darcy replied.
“We wouldn’t marrythismorning.”
“There are three more,” Bingley exclaimed happily, “butthey are all in Longbourn. Miss Gardiner is only eleven, but remarkably clever already.”
“Richard,” Darcy said with a forbidding voice, “you hardly need to come.”
“Oh, but I must,” the officer said, having somehow finished his whole dish in the past two minutes, while continuing to speak to them. “My curiosity demands it. And besides, just as you must do your duty to your wife’s relations, I must do my duty to my cousin’s wife’s aunt and uncle.”
“That is not a duty.”
“Youknow how dedicated I am to my family. It is like my father always says, nothing matters like family.”
Though it was an unfashionable neighborhood from the standpoint of the aristocracy — too touched by crowds of men endlessly running back and forth on matters of business, and with the main street filled with shops and ground floor store fronts, the simple fact was that Cheapside was notcheap. It sat at the very heart of the City of London, at the beating center of the greatest commercial empire in the world, in the midst of the richest city in the world, except perhaps Paris.
They walked past warehouses heaped with expensive goods, shops with every sort of finery, and also the fine façade of the Bank of England. The scent of money filled the plazas and streetways, like a miasmatic mist.
The aristocrat whose wealth came from a dozen generations of landowners sneered at the tradesmen of the district who dirtied their grubby hands in the horrors ofcommerce. But the Englishman in him found a strange pride to know that these men wereskilledat that dirtying.
While nothing to Darcy House, the home on Gracechurch Street that Bingley led Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam to was a substantial thing, with windows rising up three stories, and a solid oak door.
Bingley leaped forward soon as they left the carriage, and eagerly knocked before trying the handle himself.
Was that how he’d gotten past Darcy’s butler? For that matter, was this how Colonel Fitzwilliam kept making his way into the house?
They were greeted by a tidy looking maid in uniform who grinned and bowed to them, looking with a little confusion at the two gentlemen who'd accompanied Miss Bennet’s suitor for this very early call.
Darcy explained that he was Mr. Darcy, the husband of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner’s niece, Elizabeth.
Her eyes lit up and she said, “Oh the one who—” Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, let it down, and then said, “The master and mistress will be delighted to see you.”
