Elizabeth Aston - The True Darcy Spirit

Horatio, still standing at the window, saw Cassandra check her pace and then straighten her shoulders, as though taking up a burden, before she made her way to the gate that led out of the Inner Temple.

He was filled with a sudden rage, at her obstinacy, her refusal to see sense, to conform to the rules and proprieties of that order of society into which she had been born. Would her stepfather really cast her off? Would her mother, who was after all her own flesh and blood, allow him to do so? He was not closely acquainted with Mrs. Partington, but what little he had seen of her he hadn’t admired. She seemed to be completely ruled by her second husband, a poor fellow, in comparison to the clever, amiable man that the late Thaddeus Darcy had apparently been.

Well, there was nothing he could do about it. He could merely wait and hope that during the next few days his cousin would come to her senses. Perhaps Eyre would return from Ireland and her affection for him, which must be considerable in order for such a girl to cast herself under his protection, would be sufficient to persuade her that marriage to her naval lieutenant was the best hope of a reasonable future that she had.

At the same time he felt a sudden loathing for Eyre. Had he meant to ruin Cassandra? No, that wasn’t likely. By all accounts he had left Bath in a hurry because of his indebtedness. And he wasn’t the kind of man not to seize the chance of a pretty companion, especially one who he knew might well be possessed of a large fortune.

How could Cassandra be guilty of such folly as not to see that Eyre was only interested in her fortune? Although he supposed that he might have had some feeling for her as a person as well. She was well-looking enough, although he himself would never choose to live with a girl who had a look as direct and alarming as Cassandra’s—or so pigheaded a character. She reminded him, uncomfortably, of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, also his cousin, and a formidable man.

Damn it, where was Henty? Here was the day half-gone and no work done, nothing achieved. He flung open the door into the outer office and curtly told his clerk to come in, that there was much to be done.

He started to dictate a letter, to go to Mr. Partington, in Kent. Then he thought better of it. This was a family affair. He would write to Partington himself that evening, and give him a brief account of the meeting that he had had with Cassandra, saying that he had duly passed on Mr. Partington’s message and the conditions that he laid down for his stepdaughter. When he had an answer from Cassandra, which he was sure would be in favour of marriage, he would again be in communication with him.

He said no more about Miss Darcy to Henty, and indeed made every effort as the day went on not to think of his cousin. If he was going to think of any woman, he would prefer to think of Lady Usborne, with her pretty, flattering ways, and no grey eyes sparkling with anger, or—and this irked him even more—amusement, when she looked at him.

Cassandra found that the flowing river, the people walking at their leisure taking in the air, enjoying the sunshine and the warmth of the day, jarred with her mood. It was too leisurely, too comfortable here. She wanted to be in motion, she needed to take action, not to muse or brood.

So she left the Inner Temple, with its calmness of centuries of learning and law, and went out through the handsome Inigo Jones gate into the Strand. There the traffic was as busy as ever and the clamour of London rang in her ears: horses’ hooves ringing on the cobbled way, the screeching sound of wagon wheels, the rattle and clatter of carriages, and all around her, voices raised in laughter or argument, peddlers and street men selling their wares, a woman shrieking loudly at a disobedient child, small boys squealing amongst themselves as they played with the stone that they sent skittering across the cobbles trying to bring down a passing horse.

There were shops all along the Strand, their bay windows full of enticing goods. None of these caught Cassandra’s attention. In fact, after the first impact of the scene with all its movement and life, she hardly noticed what was going on around her nor where her steps were leading to. She was considering Mr. Darcy’s parting words to her, his warning that even a young lady such as herself, well-born and carefully raised, could, by setting her will against the wishes of her family, easily find herself come upon the town.

And Cassandra knew precisely what the phrase meant. Despite the apparent strictness of her upbringing under her stepfather’s rigid control—and Mr. Partington was a man very strong on morality—she was no prude. An innocent abroad she might be; ignorant, she was not. Many years of friendship with Emily Croscombe, a lively young woman of just Cassandra’s age, had made sure of that, for Emily had an unusual mother, an educated woman, positively a blue-stocking, who believed modern girls should not be kept in a state of passive ignorance, and what Emily knew, so did her friend and confidante, Cassandra.

There had been a case in the village, when the attorney’s daughter had, at the age of fifteen, run off with a member of the militia; Emily had told Cassandra that the girl, abandoned by her lover, had come upon the town to make her living and she also told her that Sarah was enjoying her new life, much to the outrage of the village.

Mrs. Croscombe pointed out to the girls, in a matter-of-fact rather than a moralising way, that while Sarah was young and pretty and had her health, she might find her life in London not disagreeable. But those years soon passed, and a girl lost her bloom, and then with no family, no means of support and nothing of youth and beauty left, the prospects for a single woman in that situation were nothing if not bleak.

Cassandra came out of her reverie to find herself outside a shop which did catch her attention, for as the door opened to let out a customer, a poignantly familiar smell wafted out. This was a colourist’s shop, and the smell was an unmistakable mixture of linseed oil and pigment that carried her at once back to her attic studio at Rosings, where so many hours of her girlhood and early womanhood had been spent in the absorbed happiness of working at her easel or her drawing table.

Rosings! An image of her home came before her eyes, an artist’s image of the façade painted in early spring, with green flecking the trees and the family posed for the picture. Rosings wasn’t one of the great houses of England, it was not a house to compare with a Chatsworth or a Wilton, but it was still a fine, imposing house—and, for Cassandra, the place where she had spent the previous nineteen years of her life, until she had driven away from it, with scarcely a backward glance, only a few weeks since.

What a difference those few short weeks had made, what a complete change in her circumstances had been wrought in that time. She looked with unseeing eyes at the little piles of colour set out in trays behind the tiny panes of the shop window, wondering if there were a time or place she could pinpoint that marked the turning point; a day, an incident, which had propelled her on the course that had so changed her life?

It had been a morning at the beginning of April when Cassandra rode over to Croscombe House from Rosings with some exciting news. Croscombe House was two miles distant from the village of Hunsford, where Rosings was situated, and Cassandra could have found her way there blindfold, so much time had she spent there over the years in Emily’s company.

It was the fashion for owners of large and elegant houses to have them painted: house, park and, generally, the family lined up in front of the building. Mr. Partington, never one to be outdone by his neighbours, had, through the good offices of Herr Winter, a painter who lived in Hunsford, engaged an up-and-coming young artist to come down to Rosings and paint the house and family.