“I shall make one observation only, sir, because it is my office. If she is removed to her uncle’s care, both of you are likeliest saved. If neither of you moves, and the matter is pressed in court, you go together.”
Ellison’s proposal would have been sound, were the world it described the world Darcy lived in. He thought of the mere, which had been clearing daily; of Mrs Pemberton’s hands, which had begun again to open; of the meadow system, which the drownerreported as taking water for the first time in twenty years. None of it could be said to a clerk in a study in February.
“She cannot travel,” he said. “The leg is mending, but does not yet bear a coach. And I shall not leave Northmere while she remains in it. Record the refusal as you will. Without elaboration.”
Ellison inclined his head a fraction. “It will be so recorded.”
Fitzwilliam, who had recovered something of his stillness, looked at the fire and not at his cousin. He said to Ellison, “There is no part of him you will move on this, sir. Do not waste the firm’s time.”
“I am content to be wrong,” Ellison said, “if my employer is content with the outcome.” He turned the page and was done with the matter. “The agent. Briggs. What is his present situation?”
“He has been on the lanes three days. He has spoken at the smithy, at the posting-yard, at the lower turning, and at Mr Hadley’s cottage. He has been refused at each. Mrs Hadley would not have him. The Pemberton boy gave him a wrong path. The smith pretended deafness. The postmaster denied any letters. He has not, by yesterday’s report, been seen on any lane since dawn the day before.”
Ellison considered this for some seconds.
“Three days, four points of enquiry, no information yielded. That is unusual, Mr Darcy. The village is generally the easiest end of such enquiries to undo. A coin to a smithy-boy. A bottle to a postmaster’s sister. A man like Mr Briggs has the trade of it.” He looked at Darcy. “The village would not have him.”
“It would not.”
“On grounds you have not in any of these papers explained to me.”
Darcy did not at once answer.
“On grounds that are not in any of these papers, Mr Ellison.”
“Then I shall not seek them. I shall be content to record that the village would not have him. That is a piece of luck, Mr Darcy, the like of which is not bought in coin. It should not be relied upon to last, and you should not, in any subsequent matter, assume any village in England capable of it.”
“I shall not.”
They worked another hour. Dates were fixed; wording argued and chosen; names weighed for whether they could be set down without summoning the persons attached to them. Lady Catherine, if she heard prematurely, would scatter prudence in everydirection; thus she must not hear before necessity required. Charlotte Collins might know enough of her husband’s habits to be dangerous if offended and useful if disgusted. Gardiner’s testimony, if obtained in time, could establish both the genuine debt and the coercive circumstances. Fitzwilliam offered to occupy any messenger sent from Kent by cards, false roads, and military hospitality. Ellison, after one cold glance, said this would be a last resort.
By the time the clerk accepted broth in the schoolroom and Fitzwilliam was released to swear into the fire, the letters were drafted, the witnesses listed, and the silences in the village still holding.
In the afternoon, two letters went out: one from Wainwright’s office by express to Derby counsel, another in Ellison’s legal hand to Collins, carefully phrased to suggest more evidence, more witnesses, and more gentlemanly indignation than perhaps yet existed, though all could be assembled if provoked.
Darcy signed only one document that day with his own name, and it was enough.
MrsHadleycameupafter her dinner with a covered basket and a colour in her face that suggested she had walked the lower lane faster than was sensible for a woman who had been off her hip three weeks together. She would not sit in the kitchen. She would not be put off by Mrs Reeves. She came as far as the parlour door, asked very civilly to see Miss Bennet, and was admitted.
Georgiana sat by the window with a needle in her lap and a sympathy in her face she had borrowed from no schoolroom. Elizabeth was on the settee. The crutches were across her knees, where they had been since Mrs Reeves’s last attempt to put them out of sight.
Mrs Hadley curtsied to them both, set down her basket, and took Elizabeth’s hand in both her own.
“I’ve brought up the eggs Mrs Marsden said you favoured. And the news from the village, which is good, miss, and I shall tell it first because it is good. Mrs Pemberton walked to her gate this morning with no stick and her hands open the whole way. She showed me. She is to bake on Friday.”
“That is more than good,” Elizabeth said.
“There’s the meadow water as well. Hadley says he has not seen such a colour off the weir since he was a boy of twelve. Mrs Pemberton went down to look at it and cried for an hour. She is a great crier, you know, when she is happy.”
Georgiana, who did know, gave a small sound.
Mrs Hadley took an envelope from her apron pocket and held it a fraction longer than was necessary before laying it on the table beside the settee.
“And this from Mrs Marsden, miss. She asked me to wait while she wrote it.”
The envelope was very thin. There was no inscription on the outside.
Elizabeth did not at once take it up.
