Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

What fascinated him were the English oaks, incredibly old and massive. His reading had led him to believe that none had survived the ship-building that started with the eighth Henry, or the huge increase in house and furniture construction, but clearly the oaks of Pemberley’s woods had never experienced the axes, saws and wedges of tree-fellers. Well, he thought, within the bounds of this mighty estate, the King’s word would not count for half as much as the word of a Darcy, especially were the King a pop-eyed German nobody.

The situation among the Darcys fascinated him too, for he was as sensitive as educated, and could feel the tensions that tugged at civilities like a strong tide at an old jetty. It went without saying that he adored Mrs. Darcy, though closer and longer exposure to Mr. Darcy had softened his initial detestation. If one was a great man, he reflected, one probably knew it, and acted not the part but the essential truth of it. Angus said Mr. Darcy would be prime minister, possibly shortly, and that made him a demigod. However, he would not be easy to live with.

The good thing was that Charlie and his father were building a rapport that certainly had not existed when Charlie first went to Oxford. Most of that was due to maturation, but some of it to the lad’s natural tendency to see all sides of a question-a quality that made his scholarship formidable. The year away had seen him move farther from his mother, and that too was a good thing. She was a reminder of a painful childhood that he was rapidly outgrowing.

“Ho there!” said a young and very imperious voice.

Startled, he looked around, but could see no one.

“Up here, dolt!”

Thus directed, his gaze found an oval face framed by a mop of disordered chestnut curls; two eyes of a colour he could not discern glared at him.

“What happens now?” he asked, having three sisters of his own. For Charlie’s sister she certainly was, with that hair.

“You get me down, dolt.”

“Oh, are you stuck, scruff?”

“If I were not, dolt, you wouldn’t know I was here.”

“I see. You mean you would have pitched stones or nuts at me from your hiding place.”

“Nuts at this time of year? You are a dolt!”

“How are you stuck?” he asked, beginning to climb the oak.

“My ankle is wedged in a crevice.”

“That’s the first elegantly phrased thing you’ve said.”

“A fig for elegant phrases!” she said scornfully.

“Oh, dear. Definitely inelegant.” His face was now level with her feet, and he could see the wedged ankle. “Take hold of a stout branch with both your hands and give it all your weight. Once your legs aren’t bearing your weight, bend your knees. My, you have got it stuck!” When he lifted his head he realised that he was looking straight up her skirts, and gave a cough. “When you’re free, kindly gather up your skirts. Then I may help you down while preserving your modesty.”

“A fig for modesty!” she said, starting to go limp at the knees.

“Just do as you’re told, scruff.” He put his hands around her lower leg and eased the foot sideways until it came free.

Instead of preserving her modesty by bunching her skirts around her closely, she gave a wriggle that perched her on his shoulders, then slid down his length and eventually reached the ground. There she waited until he stood beside her.

“I must say, dolt, that you did that deedily.”

“Whereas you, scruff, behaved with a complete lack of propriety.” He looked at her closely. “You’re not a scruffy schoolgirl, though you act like one. What are you, sixteen?”

“Seventeen, dolt!” She stuck out a grubby hand, its nails bitten to the quick. “I’m Georgie Darcy, but I quite like being called a scruff,” she said, smiling.

“And I’m Owen Griffiths, but I don’t like being called a dolt.” He shook her hand. Her eyes, he discovered now, were a light green, the colour of new leaves; he had never seen their like before. She was, of course, beautiful. No child of those parents could be ugly.

“Charlie’s Oxford tutor! I’m glad to meet you, Owen.”

“I think it should be Mr. Griffiths,” he said gravely.

“I know it should be, but that makes no difference.”

“Why do we guests never meet you?”

“Because we are not yet out. Schoolroom misses with Mr. Darcy for father are sequestered.” She looked wicked. “Would you like to meet the Darcy girls?”

“Very much.”

“What time is it? I was stuck up that tree for ages.”

“Tea time in a schoolroom.”

“Then come and have tea with us.”

“I think I should ask Mrs. Darcy first.”

“Oh, pooh, nonsense! I’ll take the blame.”

“I suspect you take the blame often, scruff.”

“Well, I’m not a very satisfactory daughter,” she said, the curls bouncing as she engaged in a complicated skip down a flagged path. “I come out next year, when I am eighteen, but Mama despairs of my taking.”

“Oh, I am sure you will take,” he said with a smile.

“As if I care! They will lace me into stays that push up my bosoms, style my hair, smear lotion all over my face, make me use a parasol if I go into the sun, forbid me to ride astride, and generally make my life a misery. All to procure a husband! I can do that without a London season because I have ninety thousand pounds settled on me. Did you ever hear of a man who demanded to look at the teeth of a filly worth half that much?”

“Er-no. Except that I don’t think the age of a filly is in much doubt, so he probably wouldn’t look anyway.”

“Oh, you are the kind of man who throws cold water!”

“Yes, I fear I am.”

She gave another skip. “They will bully me into simpering and forbid me to say what I think. And it will all be wasted, Owen. I don’t intend to marry. When I’m of age, I’ll buy a farm and live on it, perhaps with Mary. They say,” she confided in a stage whisper, “that I’m very like her.”

“I’ve never met Mary, Georgie, but you’re definitely like her. What would you do with your life, if you were free to choose?”

“Be a farmer,” she said without hesitation. “I like the feel of the earth, causing things to grow, the smell of a well-kept barnyard, the sound of cows mooing-well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll never be allowed to be a farmer.”

“No matter whom you marry, you could emulate Marie Antoinette and have a little farm to play in.”

“Play? Pah! Besides, I like my head on my shoulders. She was a very silly woman.”

“My father is a farmer in Wales, but I confess I couldn’t wait to leave the barnyard and the cows. They have to be milked, you know, at a dismally early hour.”

“I know that, dolt!” She went suddenly misty-eyed. “Oh, I do love cows! And dirty hands.”

“They have to be clean to milk,” Owen said prosaically. “Also warm. Cows dislike cold hands on their teats.”

They entered the house by a back door Owen had not dreamed existed, and began to climb a chipped, battered staircase.

“What could you possibly like better than a farm, Owen?”

“Academia. I’m a scholar, and hope one day to be an Oxford don. My discipline is in the Classics.”

She mock-retched. “Erk! How indescribably boring!”

They had passed down several interminably long and musty halls, and now faced a door badly in need of paint. How extraordinary! The parts of Pemberley open to guests were magnificently kept up, but the unseen parts were neglected.

“The schoolroom,” said Georgie, entering with a flourish. “Girls, this is Charlie’s tutor, Owen. Owen, these are my sisters. Susannah-Susie-is almost sixteen, Anne is thirteen, and Catherine-Cathy-is ten. This is our governess, Miss Fortescue. She’s very jolly, and we love her.”