Lady Catherine's Necklace by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466884694
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

VII

Letter from Miss Maria Lucas to Mrs Jennings

My dear madam,

Mr Collins has not yet returned to Hunsford. We learn that the drains at Longbourn Manor are in a shocking condition, and the house cannot be let until they are put in better order. (Mr Bennet, it seems, was a sad heedless householder who permitted many parts of his estate to fall into a parlous condition of neglect – my sister has had many communications from her husband lamenting this state of affairs.) By great good fortune Lady Catherine is away from home at this time, otherwise I am very sure she would never have permitted her incumbent clergyman to absent himself for so long.

As matters are, we go on very peacefully. At least in this household. But now, dear ma’am, I have to relate to you a dreadful fatality which lately took place in this neighbourhood.

I told you in an earlier letter about the two painters who had been friends of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, and who for many years have occupied a house on the Rosings estate. And I also told you of the couple, Mr and Miss Delaval, who, due to a carriage accident, have been staying at Rosings House. Mr Delaval, who is most knowledgeable about improvements, and has a very persuasive manner, has been advising Lady Catherine on how best to perfect and develop her parkland and pleasure grounds, and she has been listening to him with a very willing ear. (The lime avenue is to go, I grieve to report, and the cherry orchard is to be grubbed up.) Mr Delaval’s most recent piece of horticultural and aesthetic counsel related to the cottage where the two painters have been living for the past twenty-odd years. He persuaded Lady C. that it was a sad eyesore and should be pulled down, to make way for a grotto or a Grecian temple. She was most ready to comply with this advice, and gave the two friends one month’s notice to quit. (Neighbourhood gossip has it that the two men, Mr Mynges and Mr Finglow, had been great friends of the late Sir Lewis de Bourgh and that Lady Catherine, who by all report was not on good terms with her husband, had disliked the two men on no better grounds than because they were favourites with Sir Lewis.) Lady C.’s edict was such a shock to the elder of the two men, Mr Finglow, who was already in a low state of health, that he suffered a severe seizure which rendered him blind; also, for two days, paralysed. Rousing from this latter condition he quitted the cottage, at a time when his friend was not at hand, tottered out of doors, and contrived to fall, or cast himself, into a great blazing bonfire composed of unwanted canvases, frames and articles of furniture, etc., which had been set burning not far distant from the house. From the shock and burns ensuing upon this accident, Mr Finglow soon succumbed

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