Page 39 of The Winter of Our Discontent
The tumble-down shack that housed Mr Travers came into view, putting an end to her musings. We pulled to a stop, and I tied the horses to a single fence post. Mr Travers looked to have aged ten years and was the same grey colour as his estranged wife. He was by turns resentful, angry and piteous. I knew then that his recovery could not be hoped for in time for spring.
“I am bringing in some hands, Travers,” I said, while Mrs Darcy emptied her basket onto a dirty, three-legged table. “You are in no shape for planting just yet.”
“There is no cause for that, sir,” Travers argued in athready whine. “The doctor will have me up and doing to be sure.”
“And if he does, I will send the extra labour elsewhere. In the meantime, who helps you?”
“The younger Thompson boy and half a dozen cottagers from what used to be the commons over Whitley way. I bring them come first thaw.”
“You ought to bring the cottagers over now. The farm is ailing.”
“And pay them with what, begging your pardon, sir?”
“Have you nothing from harvest?”
Thus, the conversation continued. There was no reasoning with the man. His money, tucked up in a jar in his wife’s kitchen, was rightly his. If she spent a sixpence, he would thrash her. When he felt more like himself, he thought he might thrash her anyway for putting him out of the house. Come to think of it, he should thrash her for forcing him to seek comfort at the gin hut in the first place.
I glanced uncomfortably at Mrs Darcy, who bore this offensive tirade with a pensive look. Travers glibly placed the whole debacle at his wife’s feet, citing marital infelicity as the first and only cause of all his suffering.
I was nearing the end of all patience when my wife spoke. “What of your sister, Mr Travers? Could she not give you a room? You are not well.”
Ah, suddenly I saw where she was leading. Travers must relinquish his farm. Her suggestion was met with resistance—today. In a week’s time, however, Travers would be moved to his sister’s cottage on the outskirts of Derby where her husband was a freehold farmer of a generous plot of land. Johnson would persuade him, though a small pension wouldlikely be required, as would housing and a subsistence for the man’s estranged wife and children.
This was one of the costs of running an estate—providing for people beyond their usefulness. This was the covenant I saw broken day in and day out so that wealthy landowners could stay wealthy, and this was why I relentlessly sought income from both large and small sources.
“I suppose that answers my question,” I said gravely to Mrs Darcy as I handed her up into the gig. With a start, I realised this was the first time I had grasped her hand intentionally. I wished I could resent her as thoroughly as I had, but solidarity, once tasted, could not be forgotten.
If anything, this epidemic of ‘the Lord’s Judgment’ had united us in a common cause. I drove her two miles down the lane and turned off into a fallow field. The ground was poor there, having been a wash in my grandfather’s time. The good soil had long since gone down the road, and what was left was full of small stones.
“What say you to a widows and orphans’ cottage here?”
“Are you in earnest?” she asked in wonder.
“I hope I am not so stubborn that I resist a practical solution that is not my own,” I said drily. “Ned Travers is not long for this world, I think.”
“Then you are a liberal man, sir. What can they raise here?”
“The verge is meagre but sufficient for geese and goats. They will be poor to be sure, but they will neither freeze nor starve. And if I am not mistaken, the generosity of Mrs Darcy will see them established and made comfortable.”
“Mrs Darcy is very generous with Mr Darcy’s bountiful means.”
“I have seen no increase in spending.”
“Because she and Mrs Reynolds are becoming very sly in their economising, Mr Darcy,” she said with a hint of archness.
“Ah,” I said, making a mental note to increase the household budget by five percent. We were far from requiring retrenchment in order to encompass a few well-applied expenditures for my dependents. What would an elegant and fashionable wife have cost me in comparison? Twice as much at least.
“Mrs Travers will not rightly be a widow just yet, sir. Will it be much remarked?”
I shrugged. “If her husband abandons the farm, she may as well be widowed. Besides which, we need such a place. Accidents do happen. I never thought of it because I have a good row of pensioner’s cottages, but they are a fair way down the spinney road and too far from the school to be suited to children.”
We spoke for some time as we walked the ground, about how many rooms the cottage should have, about what sort of support would be required, and about Mrs Travers’s children.
“I do not necessarily object to putting girls in school,” I said, “but Mrs Rogers cannot be expected to teach them, and I do not know who we could get to do so.”
She remained quiet for the length of ten steps before she said—carefully—tentatively, “My sister Mary might enjoy the challenge.”
“I see,” I heard myself say from afar. The familiar coldness rushed in, flooding me with icy resentment. We had been able to converse reasonably, had achieved a sort of commonality. We had just seemed to put our feet on some sort of solid ground, and she felt emboldened to ask for a favour.
