Recollections of Rosings (25 page)

    She determined, therefore, to write again to her sister, a brief note, pointing out that Mr Adams had revealed all of the facts regarding his parents and his own birth to her before receiving her consent.

    
Dear Becky,
she wrote:

    As she wrote, Catherine could not help recalling her own, very different experience. Unlike Lilian, she had been too compliant and impressionable to withstand the arguments put by Lady Catherine de Bourgh against her friendship with Mr Burnett. She had feared that by seeming to defy Her Ladyship, she would be offending her and would also consequently upset her dear mother, since Lady Catherine, having taken her mother's place, had demanded the same respect and obedience as a parent.

    Catherine had been not much older than Lilian at the time. She could remember well how she had felt all those years ago, and an uncomfortable lump rose in her throat at the memory.

    The arrival, at that very moment, of Mr Frank Burnett himself threw her into confusion, and she had to make some hurried excuse to retreat upstairs for a while, leaving him alone in the parlour.

    When she returned, Mr Adams and Lilian had come indoors and joined Mr Burnett, who was congratulating them both upon their engagement. As Catherine entered, they turned to her and looked so cheerful together, she was glad of the time she had taken to splash her face with cold water and tidy her hair before returning.

    Impulsively, she invited them to take a glass of sherry and seeing that John Adams had already been asked to dine with them, extended the invitation to Frank Burnett as well. It seemed the most natural and polite thing to do, she thought, rationalising her impulse. It would have been churlish to ask one of the two gentlemen to dinner and let the other go away to dine alone. Mr Burnett had accepted the invitation with pleasure, and she was sure Lilian and Mr Adams would not mind.

    Lilian, engrossed in her conversation with John Adams, noticed nothing odd or curious about her mother's invitation to Mr Burnett. Indeed she and Mr Adams seemed to welcome his presence; it meant they could be talking privately, knowing her mother did not lack for congenial company.

    The evening passed pleasantly during dinner and afterwards.

    Both Catherine and Mr Burnett, left to themselves, found several subjects to talk about together. There was much they enjoyed in common and very little upon which they disagreed. Even when they did, each appeared so ready to listen to and accommodate the other's point of view, that harmony and concord were guaranteed.

    There would be many such occasions in the weeks that followed, and Frank Burnett seemed appreciative of the invitations, making no secret of the fact that he enjoyed the company and preferred it greatly to dining alone at his lodgings.

    Meanwhile, news of the engagement reached Mr and Mrs Darcy at Pemberley, from two sources.

    Charlotte Collins, writing to her dear friend Elizabeth, was first with the news.

    Elizabeth was both concerned and confused by her friend's letter and determined to discover the truth of the matter.

    On this same day, Mr Darcy had received a letter from Jonathan Bingley pertaining mainly to business matters arising from the Rosings Trust. However, in a concluding paragraph, he had added:

Mr Darcy, having read the letter through, took it upstairs to his wife.

    "Lizzie, my dear, I am sure you will find the final page of Jonathan's letter of great interest," he said, handing it to her. When she had read it, Elizabeth put it down, rose, and walked about the room as if in exasperation.

    "Really, Darcy, I am quite mystified! I cannot make it out at all! They cannot both be right."

    "What is it? Who do you mean?" he asked and she replied by holding up Charlotte Collins's letter and saying, "If Mr Adams is so well thought of by Jonathan and Anna and Catherine is sufficiently satisfied to consent to his engagement to Lilian, how is it that Charlotte has had this dreadful story from Becky Tate about his family?"

    Mr Darcy took Charlotte's letter from his wife and, going over to the window, perused it carefully. When he returned it to her, he looked very angry indeed.

    "Lizzie, what you have here is a nasty piece of mischief! I cannot believe that Jonathan Bingley is mistaken in his judgment of Mr Adams, nor do I think Catherine Harrison will have agreed to let her daughter marry a man without making the most scrupulous enquiries about him, his family, and background. It is inconceivable that Mrs Tate's story is true."

    Elizabeth merely shrugged her shoulders. "Why should anyone fabricate such a tale?"

    Darcy, still looking quite shocked, replied, "I cannot imagine, but I am prepared to believe that Mrs Tate's friend Lady Ashton is in some way involved. I understand from Anthony Tate, who is most unhappy with his wife's association with Lady Ashton and her circle, that these people have little to do except play cards, go to balls and parties, and gossip, indulging themselves in the silliest way by destroying the reputations of others who are not of their group. I suspect this information comes from within her circle. Now, it may be that Mr Adams has in some way offended one of them. I think I would much rather trust Jonathan's opinion than theirs, my dear, do you not agree?"

    Elizabeth agreed completely with her husband and expressed her determination to seek Jonathan Bingley's opinion herself. This she did subsequently, writing him a short note, which was despatched to the post immediately. She would wait for his reply before responding to Charlotte's letter, she thought.

    Her husband, whose own mind was already made up, agreed that this was the best course of action.

    "You are right to wait, Lizzie, there is nothing to be gained by distressing poor Mrs Collins to any greater degree than she has been by Mrs Tate's rather thoughtless retelling of rumour and gossip," he said.

    It did not take Jonathan Bingley long to realise the purpose of Elizabeth's note. Rising abruptly from the breakfast table, he laid it before his wife.

    "Anna, my dear, something quite extraordinary is afoot. My aunt Lizzie has heard a curious tale about Mr Adams…"

    "About Mr Adams? Who from?" asked his wife, puzzled by the intensity with which her usually calm husband had reacted.

    "From Mrs Charlotte Collins, who has had it from Becky Tate, who has had it from a friend of Lady Ashton!"

    "What? And what does she say?"

    "Read it and judge for yourself. It beggars belief that people should stoop to put such stories about. John Adams, it seems, is to be pilloried for something his parents are supposed to have done in their youth."

    Anna read Elizabeth's note and was as astonished as her husband had been by its contents.

    "I find it difficult to believe that Becky would even take such a rumour seriously. Clearly, it is an attempt to damage Mr Adams's character and must be the work of some person of malicious intent. Yet, why do you suppose anyone would wish to do this?" she asked.

    Jonathan admitted he had no explanation. "I cannot imagine, yet I suppose I shall have to find out—if only to set my aunt Lizzie's mind at rest. I suppose I could write to my sister Emma, she has many contacts in London… but I can hardly expect her to be impartial in the matter, for she has no regard for Lady Ashton, who Emma believes is a woman of very little sense and no scruples at all…"

    He was interrupted by the maid, who brought in a letter which had just been delivered by express. It had come overnight from Rosings and contained a message sent in confidence to Jonathan by Mrs Catherine Harrison.

    On opening it, Jonathan found therein the answer to the question posed for him by Mrs Darcy. Catherine, having received Rebecca's letter, had responded to her sister and then proceeded to write to Jonathan, fearing the rumour may have reached his ears, too.

    In the clearest possible terms, she explained that in his answers to her questions about his father's estrangement from his family in England, Mr Adams had given her a full and frank account of the circumstances as told to him by his mother, including the fact of his own birth out of wedlock and the subsequent marriage of his parents, before their departure for France.

    Catherine wrote:

    Jonathan was relieved indeed. Handing the note to his wife, he said, "I hope, my love, that this will be the final word on this unfortunate subject. I intend to see Mrs Collins first and then respond to my aunt Lizzie. Catherine's letter should suffice to set their minds at rest."

    Anna agreed and shortly afterwards, Jonathan called for his horse to be saddled up and set off to ride over to Longbourn to reassure Mrs Collins.

While Jonathan's words did reassure Charlotte Collins and to an even greater degree Mrs Darcy, Becky Tate was not similarly comforted by her sister's letter.

    She could not believe that Catherine could be quite so sanguine about the matter of her daughter's engagement. Urged on by Lady Ashton and her friend and confidante Madame du Valle, who had been the original source of their information, Becky decided to travel to Kent and confront Catherine with the story. Convinced that Mr Adams was not the right man for her niece, she took with her also another piece of information, which she hoped would assist her to change Lilian's mind on the subject of matrimony.

    Prior to her departure for Kent, she took morning tea with Lady Ashton.

    "It seems almost as if my sister, still grieving for her husband, has temporarily abandoned her sense of responsibility," she complained, "else she could not have countenanced such an engagement."

    Lady Ashton agreed it was a most unsuitable match and had to be stopped, for all their sakes.

    "No one of any standing in society would recognise your niece and her husband," she warned, intoning it as though it were a sentence of death.