Page 49 of Near Pemberley

At last, towards the end of August, the long-discussed journey to Scarborough was resumed.

Miss Bingley announced the plan repeatedly during the preceding week with a degree of satisfaction which she appeared to think delicately concealed. Mrs. Hurst complained incessantly of the inconvenience of travel while simultaneously directing servants to pack half her possessions. Bingley alone seemed genuinely reluctant to depart.

“You will join us later, perhaps?” he said one evening as they walked together after dinner.

“No.”

“You bury yourself too much at Pemberley, Darcy.”

“I have business enough here.”

Bingley looked at him thoughtfully. “Business is a tolerable excuse for many things. But not always for unhappiness.”

Darcy made no answer.

Fortunately, Bingley possessed neither the vanity nor curiosity to press where confidence was not offered.

When the morning of their departure finally arrived, Darcy experienced a sensation bordering very nearly upon relief.

The house grew quieter after they left.

Miss Bingley’s restless attentions vanished with remarkable pleasantness. Mrs. Hurst’s languid complaints did not drift through the drawing rooms. Even Bingley’s good humour, though missed in some degree, had become lately too closely associated with recollections Darcy found increasingly difficult to bear.

Georgiana herself seemed sensible of the change. “You are easier now that they are gone,” she observed gently one evening.

Darcy glanced up from the letter he had not truly been reading. “Am I?”

“A little.”

He considered denying it, then abandoned the attempt.

“Yes,” he said simply.

September arrived.

The harvest occupied much of his attention. For several weeks, Pemberley assumed that peculiar activity belonging only to early autumn: tenants and labourers constantly moving across the estate, wagons upon the roads from morning until dusk, endless reports regarding weather, grain, storage, and accounts.

Darcy applied himself to these concerns with his accustomed diligence.

Yet even labour did not produce the distraction it once might have afforded.

No answer came from Longbourn.

Eventually, he ceased expecting one with every post.

And because expectation itself diminished, his spirits sank still further.

For uncertainty, however painful, had at least preserved hope.

Silence began gradually to extinguish it.

At times, he persuaded himself that this silence itself constituted answer enough. The Bennets, once removed from the temporary openness occasioned by Lambton, had perhaps resumed their former opinion of him. Elizabeth herself might now regret whatever gentleness she had unintentionally shown him.

The recollection of her distress at the inn still resisted that conclusion.

Yet memory could not sustain confidence anymore against weeks of silence.

He became quieter even with Georgiana.