Chapter Two

It was a clear, windy day, the sort of day where the sharp freshness bit at your nose, with a few hawks circling high in the sky. A bright day in gray October. It was that sort of propitious day when the cart sent out by Mrs. Reynolds to bring me to the estate clattered through the wide wrought iron gate to the park.

Pemberley was built on a grand scale.

Mr. Bingley was always warm and friendly. There are a few men more open hearted and less likely to stand upon their dignity than him. Even with the curtness of Mr. Darcy's letter to me, I expected to find at Pemberley a home like the one that Mr. Bingley had created for himself.

Despite the autocratic tendencies of his wife, Bingley's servants were generously cared for, and he refused to allow them to be made to bow and scrape and stiffly avoid being seen. I had known, in a general way, that Pemberley was a major estate, and that Mr. Darcy was wealthier by more than two times than Mr. Bingley — who was himself wealthier by an equally substantial margin than anyone else in the neighborhood round about Meryton.

Pemberley, upon seeing it… how to describe it?

John, the coachman, paused on the top of a ridge, letting me have a sight of the entirety of the park.

I can close my eyes, and I see it again, what I saw then. The old house built with dressed stone and marble colonnades, the wide park, the artfully arranged trees, the pond and the shrubberies, the creek and the simple beauty of the whole landscape.

It made my heart to stir and leap up, like the way the flight of a hawk, circling high in the sky makes me feel. This estate had substance, it meant something. It had become a part of this landscape over centuries. The house itself was a large handsome stone building with a high wooden roof, it was across a small valley from us, situated part way up a hill, and behind it rose a steep wooded peak, and in the front ran a trilling river that had nothing of the artificial in its banks and arrangement.

There was one tall tower rising above the rest of the construction that reminded me of a medieval keep, surrounded by its castle. It caught my eye, and I smiled at the structure.

My delight at the picture was then, as we trundled down between the trees towards the manor house, perturbed by the realization that I was expected to live in such a place, and not as a guest, nor a member of the family, but as one employed, a dependent whose position and worth depended upon the good will of the family, and my ability to impress with my talents.

I think I had not really considered before that five minute drive what it meant to enter service. Until then I had seen myself as escaping the irksome dependency upon Charlotte; suddenly I was entering the frightening and unknown prospect of employment, and I now saw that the family to which I was to attach myself was very grand, and much beyond my own notions of things.

It frightened me.

However, I arise to meet every attempt to intimidate me, and further upon arriving I found the happy case to be that I did not need to be greatly frightened by those amongst whom I was to work — again, I apologize for this, but rather than being a terrifying creature, such as you would find in a novel, with a harsh manner, and a witch's nose that extended out at least for a foot and a half, Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper, was a civil and polite woman. She even lacked the highhandedness that would be expected in ordinary life from a woman connected to such a great estate.

I met her when the small cart pulled up by a secondary entrance near the neatly fenced off kitchen garden. I stumbled to the solid ground, on feet made unsteady by too long on a swaying conveyance, and I looked about, insisting to myself that I would be polite, and put on no airs, but also present myself in a manner which made clear that I would not be bullied by anyone, though I was in employment.

The house was quite big, quite elegant, and quite fine from up close.

Mrs. Reynolds waited for me by the tall rusticated wall, above which was a line of windows which I believed denominated one of the galleries or perhaps a ballroom. She stood there with two other persons, one of whom was the sole member of the family presently resident, Miss Georgiana Darcy the blonde sister of the master, and her companion stout Mrs. Annesley. We all were sheltered by the house from the fluttering wind.

Due to my nerves I did not stretch widely, as would be my norm after such a long journey — in truth my usual habit would be to walk the grounds for fifteen minutes, at the fastest pace my legs could carry me, while delighting in each new beauty, scent or sight that the turnings of the little trails brought to me.

I am a woman who never lacks for pleasure, for I can find it as readily in the glories of natural creation as in the fellowship of my fellow men.

I turned to the three persons who waited for me, and curtsied to them, a bit confusedly, I had never presented myself as an employee before. A strange new adventure, not wholly pleasant, but also not wholly unpleasant.

The housekeeper spoke and shook my hand with a cheery, almost grandmotherly smile. "Hello, hello, Miss Bennet. I'm Mrs. Reynolds. Welcome. We'll have you set up well very soon. Very soon. I have had a small room near to my own set up for you, and it will be very comfortable."

"I am certain I shall be very comfortable." I smiled in return a little uncomfortably, aware that while she had a room prepared for me, just as she would have had I been a guest, I was not here to be a guest, but to be a servant. "Most pleased to meet you, Mrs. Reynolds."

I made my curtsy to her.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bennet," she repeated. "Was glad to hear Mr. Darcy had found you — we're a slight bit lonely here at times, it will be good for there to be another sensible person for conversation — this is Miss Georgiana Darcy, sister of the master, and her companion Mrs. Annesley."

I bent my head to both of them, feeling self-conscious, and wondering if I should curtsy deeply, in a more subservient way than I would if I were simply meeting a new acquaintance.

Miss Darcy looked about the age of my sister Lydia, maybe a little older. She was a tall well grown girl with appealing eyes and long blond hair that the wind tried to catch, and the pale features of an English rose who blushes easily and freely. She greeted me in a barely audible mumble, without looking quite at my face, but her cheeks were wreathed in a rosy blush that gave me hope that the manner of her greeting showed rather more of shyness than pride.

Mrs. Annesley for her part greeted me even more warmly than Mrs. Reynolds.

Mrs. Reynolds then said, "I thought you might go to the nursery to be introduced to your charge — I am an excellent judge of character, and I can already tell we shall like you, and that you shall do very well here. I am never wrong in such matters — then I shall show you a tour of the estate, too late for a school day to begin. And you must wish to rest for a while, after two days' travel from the south. I never like it, never at all, long trips."

"I do not either," I replied with a smile. "A chance to recover shall be most welcome."

"I hate to travel too," Miss Darcy mumbled. Or at least I believed that to be what she said, as her words were not quite audible, and realizing she had failed to speak loudly enough to be heard she ducked her head in a peculiarly adorable manner, as if hiding from us.

Mrs. Reynolds smiled at the sister of the master. "Well said, Georgie — but about your charge, Cathy is a sweet girl, but she has been suffered to run about with little supervision beyond that given by her nurse, who is hardly a woman to command the upbringing of a gentlewoman. Poor girl — Mr. Darcy pays little attention to her. No wonder though, not after Mrs. Darcy."

"Was Mr. Darcy much in love with his wife then?"

A change.

And those of you alert to the mystery arising in a tale, those of you whose minds pierce quickly to the heart of the matter — I mean those of you who easily confuse The Monk, The Mysteries of Udolpho and perhaps even Byron's Don Juan with reality, each of you would have gained more information from the manner in which Mrs. Reynold's eyes narrowed, the pursed look of her lips, and the slightly confused tilt of her head than I did.

Perhaps I would have noticed had I spent rather less time with my father studying the doings of modern scientists, and arguing occasionally upon matters philosophic. If I had reread every book of Mrs. Radcliff's, and every one of her imitators twice or thrice I might have been prepared for the odd events that were to follow, and found a hint of their likelihood in this moment.

As it happened, I merely believed I'd stumbled upon a matter of conversation that was unpleasant, and I determined to avoid the subject of Mrs. Darcy in the future.

Mrs. Reynolds shrugged, and then said a bit harshly, "Not my place to comment on Mr. Darcy's doings."

"Terrible. She was terrible," Miss Darcy whispered, so that I could barely hear her — I had not expected her to say anything — "Anne was… he doesn't miss her. Not her."

I looked at the girl. "What do you mean?"

She reddened and looked aside, studying the details of the kitchen garden to our side. There was a fine crop of pumpkins, salads, cauliflowers and other late ripening plants.

I was led into the house, with Miss Darcy and Mrs. Annesley, and a sense of awkwardness. The conversation did not flow so smoothly as it had begun.

I certainly would not venture to broach the subject of Mrs. Darcy, and the way she was terrible, again. Though in my curiosity I ached to know more upon the subject, and I was already making low and scandalous conjectures as to what had happened.

The human mind leaps to the obvious quickly and easily: I already surmised from the fact of Mr. Darcy not showing enough care for his daughter that she perhaps was not his. A surmise which I would later determine to be not entirely unfounded.

I was led into the main hallways and up a grand staircase covered in a velvet carpet.

Then into the gallery whose line of windows I'd seen from below. "This way, this way," Mrs. Reynolds said when she led us into the wide hallway lit by the sun, breaking the unwonted silence that had fallen over us. "And here is a portrait of the master and Mrs. Darcy, a very good picture if I might say so."

She paused us all to allow me to examine the portrait at my leisure, while assuring me that the painting was very like to life, very like.

"A handsome man," I said.

Miss Darcy demurred, "Brother usually has more happiness in his expression."

The painting was inset in a hard wooden frame, with cold metallic flowers crawling over the sides, and it had the flourished signature of one of those great portraitists whose name is known to every aristocratic family as "one of the best".

Mr. Darcy sat with a solemn cold expression.

He was as proud and high in appearance as the great estate dictated. But there was something in his eyes, something caught by that great portraitist that clawed at my heart, and made me almost moan — and what would I have moaned?

I think I would have cried out, "Poor man!" if I were not aware of the others watching me.

It was there in those proud eyes, in the expression of that firm young face, it was the look of a tiny mouse caught and squeaking in pain in a trap that would not be released until death parted it from all suffering.

But then I looked back at the solemn face, and that sense was gone, and I only saw a tall proud man.

Mrs. Darcy had been of an entirely different type to him. Her face had a pinched thin look, with an unhappy expression, rather like that of a chittering rodent denied cheese. She was not what one would call a handsome woman, while Mr. Darcy next to her was one of the finest specimens of the male form I had ever seen.

But her eyes… there was an odd look in her eyes as well. And I swear to you, I felt a menace, as if a violent clawing creature with malignant thoughts wished to maim me.

I nearly shuddered, as though a slimy roach slithered down my back, at observing her.

"Anne de Bourgh by birth," Mrs. Reynolds said cheerfully. "The cousin of the master, and Georgie here of course. Terrible tragedy, but she had always been sickly."

"Ah." For a moment my memory of the earlier awkwardness at discussion of Mrs. Darcy prevented me from saying anything else. But then with an appropriately somber frown, and an insistence to myself to not ask whether the child took more after her mother or her father, I said by way of breaking the silence, "I understand she died in the childbed?"

Miss Darcy shuddered. "From fevers weeks after — so I was told. They sent me away before she was brought to her lying in, but she ranted and raved… oh, I should not say any of what I remember from that time. Oh, it must have been her madness what she would say…"

Mrs. Reynolds nodded solemnly. "Those were difficult days. For the master, and for us all in the house. It was before I had become the housekeeper, while Mrs. North yet had charge of the keys — and they kept the rest of the servants away from her rooms near the end. Only Mrs. North, the family and the doctors."

The housekeeper frowned and shook her head again, as though tossing away an odd thought that had bothered her for many years — and I did not see in that look the suspicious knowledge that might have forewarned me.

"But come, come," Mrs. Reynolds said, pulling us away from the portrait, with Mr. Darcy's painfully compelling eyes, and Mrs. Darcy's terrifyingly mad ones. "You must meet your charge."

We ascended to the nursery.

The girl and her nurse waited for us standing on the thick piled carpet of the room, with a few toys scattered about, and a fine rocking horse in a corner. There was a small piano for her to practice upon in another corner, and childish paintings were pinned up around the walls. The fine chintz curtains were pulled open and the room was quite sunny and pleasant. Miss Catherine Darcy was a small nervous child of about six years of age with a plain face and a shy frightened expression, as if like a startled cat, she would leap away if I moved too suddenly.

I loved her immediately, and the fact that I could detect no similarity between the portrait of Mr. Darcy I had just examined, and the features of the girl neither detracted from my desire to teach this young creature, nor left me entirely convinced of my supposition.

Miss Darcy smiled at her niece with a warmth that entirely transformed the young woman's face from pale and proud to sweet and soft.

"Auntie Georgie," the little girl cried, running up to her.

She then hid in Miss Darcy's skirts, and looked at me skeptically.

Miss Darcy knelt and with a smile at me, said, "This is your governess Miss Bennet — we've told you she is coming. You shall like her very much, and she will be very kind to you — won't you be, Miss Bennet?"

I knelt and smiled at Cathy. "Yes, sweetling. I shall teach you everything that is important for you to know — French, history, the sciences, I know a great deal of all sorts, and it is all very interesting, and you shall have a great fun learning."

Cathy blushed, and for a moment would not look at me.

Georgiana added, "Brother chose and hired her."

I thought that was perhaps giving Mr. Darcy a larger credit than he deserved. He had simply replied to a letter sent from a friend, and decided on that friend's reputation, and perhaps also the study of the letter I had written that Bingley sent with it, that I would be sufficient. No interview or other attempt to discover more of my character.

However this saying had a salutary effect on Cathy, who seemed to place a great weight on her father's opinions. She smiled at me and came out and performed a little sweet childlike curtsey, after glancing at Georgiana once more for encouragement.

"Very p-p-pleased to meet you."

I gave an elaborate curtsey in return, nearly bringing myself to the ground, and said, "I am very pleased to meet you as well, Miss Darcy."

I was in truth delighted with the small creature put under my charge from the start.

I know that it is unfashionable to like children — believe me, I have over the years heard all the complaints from my fellow women upon how annoying it is to be expected to pretend to like the creatures, and how terrible it is that their nurses and governesses cannot manage the whole affair. To be honest, I think a great many fashionable women protest too much upon the matter.

For myself, I have always liked children a great deal.

Following my first conversation with my charge, Mrs. Reynolds gave me a tour of the rest of the house, while Miss Darcy the sister went to the drawing room for her second daily session of practice upon the piano. I saluted her for her dedication in my mind, being too embarrassed to admit aloud that I had never had the application to study anything to the amount of three hours or more a day, as Georgiana sweetly confessed to doing with the piano.

Mrs. Reynolds was yet friendlier without the presence of Miss Darcy, whose quietness tended to dampen enthusiasm, and the two of us talked easily and sensibly. I remembered enough of my mother's teaching against that day when I would be responsible for keeping my husband's household to be able to sensibly comment upon her arrangements, and praise her for their soundness.

She showed me the various galleries, the room where the white muscled marble statues collected by the present master's grandfather were kept, the vast dining room, large enough to be the chapel of a parish church or the ballroom of a market town assembly, and she directed me through the various servants' hallways, which she assured me would often be far more pleasant to use, and less awkward, even if my position as a governess meant I was not forbidden from using the family hallways — in any case, she assured me, that while Mr. Darcy was a proud man, always aware of his own dignity, he did not stand on useless ceremony.

It was then, when she was showing me the stairs to the various wings of the building that I heard it first, the peculiar crazed booming laugh that worked its way through the cracks in the wood of the door. The sound came down from the tower that had caught my eye when I first saw the building from afar, and the laugh echoed crazily in the stone passageway.

"Who is up there? Such a peculiar sound." I smiled in a friendly way at Mrs. Reynolds. "Do tell me this is your ghost — every proper estate has a ghost."

Mrs. Reynolds shivered, and I saw her make a small sign like a peasant might to ward off the devil with a hand that was half hidden down by her side. "Not a ghost. No ghost — just Grace Poole. Just Mrs. Poole… Mrs. Poole, she's a strange one, she is. Nothing to pay attention to here. Along, let's go along."

And so saying, Mrs. Reynolds continued the tour of the estate. We next saw the long gallery with the portraits of the master's ancestors in long line, the oldest ones damaged and smeared with water lines from a flood fifty years ago.

I am afraid that at this point, dear readers, that I must make my most shameful confession of all. I shrugged and followed her, and did not immediately take note of the way Mrs. Reynolds did not wish to speak upon the strange laugh, and I did not immediately determine to give my every waking moment, except those dedicated to the instruction of my pupil and those dedicated to eating, to finding out the mysterious truth behind that laugh.

Having soon observed all of the principal rooms of the house, we went down into the courtyard, and from across there to look at the conservatory, which could keep oranges and pineapples alive, and following that the apiary and stables, which were fine and extensive, though mostly empty, only having Miss Darcy's animals and the horses for merely one carriage.

While I had feared I would dine alone that evening, instead I dined with Miss Darcy and her companion. Miss Darcy had requested my presence.

She explained this condescension upon my remarking on her kindness by saying she would feel ever so lonely if she had to eat her first night in a new place entirely bereft of friends. But there was something in the way she replied that made one feel almost as though I did her a favor, rather than the other way around.

Though Miss Darcy said little else during the meal on her own prompting, this placed the young lady deep in my kind graces.

Mrs. Annesley made an effort to prompt her to speak, but Miss Darcy often proved too shy for that, so the two of us spoke together, though every time Miss Darcy ventured a comment we both smiled at her and encouraged her. I made a good start that night upon the quest of establishing us in a friendly way.

The room that Mrs. Reynolds supplied proved to be comfortable and tidy, and it was furnished in a comfortable and utilitarian modern manner. The stove in fact kept the room more snug than my old room, the room I had lived continuously in for most of my life. The only misfortune in the room was that I could on occasion hear that echoing laugh, for the window was close to the window of the tower.

If my new abode was smaller and less ornate than the room that I had always called my own in Longbourn, I refused to mourn.

The dresses that I placed in the closets and chests of the new room were also of less fineness. I myself had been transformed by some subtle shade of human reality, where we collectively dream ourselves into becoming what we are, into someone less fine, less special than Miss Elizabeth, one of the Miss Bennets of Longbourn.

I did not sleep soundly, for that laugh echoed in my dreams.