I've decided to have Darcy's mother outlive his father as it suits my plot. This story has been just been hounding me to write it, hence the quick updates. I'm glad you all appreciate them, but I think this will be the only update for a bit as today is jammed full between work, a funeral and husband's birthday and I had to bring work home this weekend as I need to get caught up as much as possible before I leave on vacation on June 26th. So if the updates dry up for a bit just know that this does not indicate any waning of interest on my part and I will finish the story. For those of you with someone in your life with autism, a great resource online with lots of free content is Asperger Experts which is run by an aspie. The site's discussion of the sensory funnel was invaluable to learning what my son needed. Btw, I minorly edited this chapter after I first posted it to make it clear the worst pranks were during his first year at university.
He is here! Why must he plague me? When father died and I could order some things to my own liking my first inclination was to have no further association with George, yet he intrudes again and again, trying to take what is mine.
I was Father's heir by right, but Father did not trust me. Always I was to have minders. Nannys and tutors are the normal order of things, but other boys did not have an assigned "friend" and tutor accompanying them to school, or begin school and university much later than the others. Men are not supposed to have cousins assigned to accompany them at every turn to make sure they do all that is expected. Landowners are not expected to have stewards that are provided with detailed plans decades into the future or have aunts that insist they are in charge. Elder brothers who reach their majority are not supposed to only be co-guardians. Men of property are not supposed to be provided with a schedule upon which they should rotate between their homes and relatives houses. Yet all this was done for me.
I understand Father wanted what was best for me and his legacy. He wanted to make things easier for me but his planning was as if he did not understand how I had changed in the decade proceeding when I became a man at one and twenty. The boy he sent to school did change and improve while away.
When I began school it was confusing.I was accomplished at some things and very deficient at others. I quickly mastered the schedule and routine. When it came to memorising and reciting, I always excelled. When it came to synthesizing how many things came together and creatively interpreting them, I lagged far behind.
But I was most deficient when it came to mastering how to relate to the other boys. My fellow school mates quickly learned that if they smiled when they talked to me that I would believe them to be sincere. At that time I did not assign any meaning to waggling eyebrows, eye rolls, random snickers and the like. I trusted many times and I was punished for it.
Matters became worse when I attended university and we were not so strictly regulated. What had been small pranks at school became larger and more troubling schemes. Nothing was apparently of more humor than arranging meetings with me that were not kept. On the worst occasion the club at which I was to meet chums whom I had previously supped with, who I thought would become my friends, turned out to have used that supper to trick me. The "club" I thought I was meeting my chums at turned out to be a brothel. At first I did not know what the place was, in my inexperience I was focusing all my attention on inquiring after the private room they had told me we would be entertaining in. In those days making a simple request of a stranger was terrifying and required that I rehearse the conversation in my head and plan on the best way to phrase the request. I had been told to ask for Mr. Norman's room. The proprietress cackled and informed me that Sally would take me there. An old woman, dressed in a far too revealing dress tried to get me into a bedroom. I fled as quickly as my feet could carry me, hopelessly confused.
The next day at university they laughed at me at every opportunity. I overheard they had made wagers about whether I would enter the establishment and how far I would go if I did. One even wagered I would bed the grandmother. George smiled when he told me that I had made him rich, as he had known what I would do, unlike most of the others who thought I would leave before going to the bedroom. I learned he had arranged it all. That event taught me to trust no one, to avoid the others though I desperately wanted to be like them. And these would be the men I was to associate with as a member of high society.
Through those years George spent some time with me because he was paid to do so. Yes, the payment of his education was not enough, he was actually paid to be my friend but a poor friend he proved to be indeed. I wish I had thought to pay him to stay away from me.
Mr. Stowbaugh, though he was paid as well, I believe had genuine affection for me. He tried to teach me both book knowledge and how to understand people. I was embarrassed to tell him of all the things that were done to me, but I could not hide the effect of the chamber pot that was poured upon me later that same year. It contained someone's digestive upset in both forms.
Mr. Stowbaugh was a perceptive man, but told me he had been protecting my need for privacy in not intruding and allowing me to think he did not know of the pranks so I could keep my dignity. "Master Darcy," he said, looking me intensely in the eyes until I pulled back and focused my attention instead on his bushy brows, "I must do better by you. I believe you need lessons in what the human face may reveal, what words are meant by every grimace, the hidden meaning to be found in these things. Most people learn these on their own. You have not, but I believe you may be taught." And so I learned, but perhaps only gained the skill with it that a young child may possess.
My own face has fewer expressions. My expressions are all the result of my inner feelings and not formed to engage in secret communications with others. I was not skilled at hiding my feelings when inappropriate to the situation. At my uncle's funeral I smiled when I recalled a pleasant interaction with him. My father became enraged, but I did not understand what the change in his countenance meant. It was only when we were in the carriage that he let loose with telling me I had disrespected my uncle and my grieving Aunt Matilda would undoubtedly learn about it from her other male relatives. He told me it would hurt her to hear I was "grinning like an imbecile" while everyone else was solemn. I tried to explain. Words came easier to me now. But he was only slightly mollified.
He sighed and told me, "Fitzwilliam, if you cannot show the correct emotion, it is always more appropriate to show no emotion at all. You may seem proud or pompous, but that is proper for someone of your status. Pride, where there is a real superiority of mind (or for you, simply based on your birthright and the Darcy name) will be always under good regulation." I took that lesson seriously. At his funeral a few years later my face remained as still and fixed as if it were made of stone. But when I returned home to my mother after he was laid in the church-yard plot, I wept.