Pemberley by Emma Tennant Page A

by her husband, were singing and dancing and a little acting (though she had no experience of the stage); and Elizabeth’s pride, in her first year at Pemberley, had been the organising of the party for the children of the workers on the estate. This was to take place two days after Christmas, in the white drawing-room at Pemberley House: there would be carols, mime and a Nativity scene, all imagined by Mrs Darcy, who trained the children’s voices, too, and on the discovery of an exceptionally gifted little girl had arranged harp lessons; the child’s first harp performance would be heard at the party.
    To be surrounded by the eager faces of the children, and to receive the smiles and curtsies of their mothers, soon rid Elizabeth of her anger and resentment – for she was now able to see it thus – at Darcy’s absence of mention of Master Roper’s relation to theestate. She wondered, indeed, as she entered a cottage and heard sung some verses of a favourite old hymn, at her selfishness and pride; and she prayed as earnestly as the children, in their sweet rehearsal for the big day, that she would learn to lose her propensity to prejudice.
    The day had been fine, but, being at the winter solstice, turned suddenly dark – it was later than she thought – and Elizabeth, refusing an escort, announced she must hurry home. As she went down the lane and out into the fields that surrounded the park, thunder rolled in, and the first drops of stinging rain; and soon the lane turned to mud, which sucked a shoe from her foot. Thorn bushes, flailing in the gale, slapped her face.
    Elizabeth stopped by an opening in the hedge and looked through at a field, still a good mile from the house, where a gypsy caravan, small and brightly painted, stood under a tree. She had passed that way several times with Georgiana, whose plaything the caravan had been; and, after a shower of icy stones had descended on her, decided to run into the field and take shelter in the caravan.
    The interior was clean and bare, with only a fine carpet and some cushions, left over from the days when Georgiana had played there with her young friends; and Elizabeth sat there until the storm should pass.
    As she waited, the desolation of the fading day, the increasing blackness of the sky and the dripping of the rain on the sides of the caravan inclined Elizabeth, try as she might to resist them, to fall prey to dreadful thoughts. The following day would bring all the guests to Pemberley. She would be seen in the first instance of her capacity as mistress of Pemberley; and she knew she would be judged. If arrangements failed, it was she and she only who would be to blame. However understanding Mr Darcy would prove to be – and she knew the hope was in his heart that all should go well, and mistakes would be overlooked – Elizabeth Darcy was to be responsible for both the moral and physical well-being of an ill-suitedassortment of people over a long period of time. She it was who must invent diversions on dull days, provide entertainment when it was called for, whether inviting a guest to play the pianoforte and sing – and her great fear was the encouragement of her sister Mary to do either – or play commerce or fish or some new game of cards brought fresh from London by Miss Bingley and in need of mastering. Then the meals must be varied, and the platters laid out just so; and, though Elizabeth could count on Mrs Reynolds to perform her usual miracles, should some omission or fault become too evident in the arrangements, it would this year be Mrs Fitzwilliam Darcy, not the housekeeper, who must make amends.
    With a succession of such musings crowding in like phantoms, Elizabeth fell into a deep sleep among the cushions of the gypsy caravan. How long she slept she did not know – she dreamed of her father, and of the library at Longbourn, where she had so often laughed and conversed with him – and she was