Judith Brocklehurst: Darcy and Anne

“If that is all,” Mrs Caldwell said, “we shall be delighted; my husband has a large library, and I am very fond of reading myself. Our home is quite close by, and you may come and choose for yourself. But Mrs Endicott is staying with us, and I do not know if you and your mother would wish for her acquaintance. The Endicotts are not people of rank; her husband is a publisher and bookseller. If you prefer, tell me what you like, and my maid shall bring a few books to the hotel, so that you may choose something.”

“Distinctions of rank are thought to matter greatly,” Anne replied, “but Mrs Endicott was kind, and that matters more. My father told me he read a book by a French writer who said that savages are more noble than we are, because they do not care about such things. That is, I tried to read it; I think that is what it said. In any case, I would be happy to make Mrs Endicott's acquaintance.”

“My dear, that is just the kind of thing your father would have said.”

The Caldwells lived in a respectable-looking stone house, on one of the streets near the church. Anne found herself in a spacious apartment, its walls crowded with books, looking out onto an enclosed garden. In it, Mrs Endicott was sitting with two men, shaded from the last rays of the sun by a big copper-beech tree. Mrs Caldwell called them in, and introduced her husband and her son. Mr Edmund Caldwell was a stocky, youngish man, not handsome, but with kind, bright eyes.

“I remember your father well,” the elder Mr Caldwell told her. “He was passionately interested in stones—he loved the fossils in our hills—and we wrote a great many letters to each other.” Anne was looking at several very big fossils, skillfully mounted, standing on tables and shelves. “I think there are some specimens like these in the library at Rosings,” she ventured, “there are several cabinets of smaller ones, too, and many of them have the word 'Derbyshire' on the labels.”

“We collected them together,” Mr Caldwell said. “We had some wonderful days in the hills. You came with us, Edmund; and young Fitzwilliam Darcy. I can see him now, scrabbling about with his hammer, so serious. He looked up to you, Edmund, then, for he was only eight years old, and you were ten; and that handsome little fellow, George Wickham, came along, but he did nothing, just ran about, he never would apply himself. You were only three, Miss de Bourgh, but your nurse walked you out to meet us, a little toddling thing in a pink dress.”

His wife said. “I remember it well. She wanted to do everything that the others did, and picked up a pebble from the roadside, and brought it to you, saying 'Look, Mr Caldwell, this is a beauty!'” She smiled at Anne.

“All stones are beautiful,” said Mr Edmund Caldwell. “Yes, they are; even those by the roadside. They have colours in them, they have gleams, they have traces of the fire wherein they were made. They will shine, if you cut and polish them.

“Look, Miss de Bourgh,” and he picked up a small platter made of blue stone. “Look, see the patterns in this, see the swirls of colour. This is the blue john, our own Derbyshire stone. It is found nowhere else in the world. It is fragile; it will smash easily. But how beautiful it is!” and he smiled at her.

“It is indeed,” Anne said, and smiled back at him, holding the little dish in her hand.

“We have a property up in the hills,” Mr Caldwell said. “The soil is too thin to do much farming, and my son had the idea of developing a lead mine, which is doing very well.”

“Yes, the lead mine is doing well,” Mrs Endicott said, “but are you making anything from the little blue john mine?”

“Well, it makes no money,” said Edmund Caldwell, “but I believe beautiful things can be made from this stone, if we can but learn to work it. It is an amusement—or should I say, a passion?”

“Now Miss de Bourgh, you must choose a book,” Mrs Caldwell said. “Would you like a novel, or something more serious? Miss de Bourgh has been reading the French authors,” she told the others.

“I did, a little, but I find reading French very hard, too hard for pleasure.”

“And their terrible ideas,” said Mrs Endicott.

“No,” said Edmund Caldwell. “They have wonderful ideas, about liberty and equality.”

“But look at the dreadful things they have done. Such wicked people. Their ideas must be wrong.”

“But, excuse me,” Anne said. “Are we right to condemn the ideas, because some of the people did wicked things? We all know what it is to have good principles, but not do such good things as we know we ought.”

“One idea they have, which I support with all my heart,” said Edmund Caldwell, “and that is, liberty. Slavery is wrong, tyranny is wrong. Nobody should be allowed to tyrannise over any other human being.”

“But is it right, to protest it by violent means?” asked Mrs Endicott.

“Come, come,” said Mrs Caldwell, “Miss de Bourgh came here for something to read, not an argument. We argue all the time, Miss de Bourgh, in this house. There is only one provision: that nobody is allowed to get angry. Now, Miss de Bourgh, would you like a novel?”

“I am not in the habit of novel reading. My mother does not approve of them, and there are very few in our house.” As she spoke, she was looking along the shelves, and took down a volume: An Enquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth by John Whitehurst. “I have read this; it is in my father's library.”

“I know it,” said Mr Edmund Caldwell. “It was not published recently, but it is very good, and there is a great deal in it about our county.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs Endicott, “that in a short while a great map will be published, of all the British Isles, showing the rocks that lie underneath, in every place? And he will buy it, will you not, Edmund?”

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Whatever the cost, I shall buy it.”

“Come, try a novel,” Mrs Caldwell said, smiling at Anne. “Do try. There can be no harm. You want something a little lighter to read before you go to sleep.”

“If you give her the last one you lent to me, she will not sleep at all,” said Mrs Endicott. “She wants no Horrid Mysteries, or midnight frighteners.”

“No, no,” said Mrs Caldwell. “I have one here that is very pretty, and harmless. Now, where is it? On this table here, I think, for I put it down the other day…”

While she hunted for it, Anne looked further along the shelves, and found a small pamphlet: An Account of some Curious Derbyshire Rock Formations by Edmund Caldwell. Publisher: John Endicott.

“Oh!” she said. “Did you write this, sir? I would dearly like to read it.”

“You may keep it, Miss de Bourgh,” said its author. “We have a good number of unsold copies.”

“Oh, come,” said Mrs Endicott. “It did not sell at all badly.” “

No, but we can certainly spare one for Miss de Bourgh.”

Meanwhile, the elder Mr Caldwell had been looking through an untidy writing desk. He now came toward them, with an envelope in his hand.

“This is something that you may like to see, my dear,” he said, sliding out a letter, and holding it out to her.

The paper was not new. Anne saw the address , She saw the first words “ My dear Caldwell, I was so pleased to receive your letter,” and knew her father's hand. She could see him, sitting at the desk in his library, writing, while she sat close by in a big armchair, playing with her doll. She felt the tears rising to her eyes, she felt her face convulse; she began to cry, and found that she could not stop.

A young lady who faints may awake chivalrous sentiments in gentlemen; a young lady who weeps engenders only a strong desire to be elsewhere. By the time Anne was recovered enough to look up, both Mr Caldwells had disappeared. Mrs Endicott was holding her hand, Mrs Caldwell was proffering a clean handkerchief, and a maid was bringing in a tea-tray.