be expected to feel for someone whose roots were planted far deeper in their homeland, who seemed to her more authentically American than she could ever aspire to be. He had a true history with the place he inhabited, and she liked him for taking pride in his heritage.
They descended the mountains by another road into a beautiful little valley of well-tended cattle and horse pastures. Lizzy admired the tidy white fences, the sprawling meadows beside cottonwood-lined streambeds, and entertained romantic visions of a life lived in harmony with surroundings such as these.
They stopped to watch some heavily pregnant mares that were cropping eagerly at the lush grass. Jorge’s mood turned melancholy. “This canyon is one of my favorite places on earth,” he said. “Every time I come here I wonder how my ancestors could have forfeited this land to the Darcys and de Bourghs.”
“Oh! Is this their land?”
“Yes, this is part of Pemberley Ranch. Darcy owns most of the canyon, and the hills on both sides, and the watershed. His ancestors managed to secure both appropriative and pueblo water rights over the stream, and nobody around gets water for their fields without his permission. His life might have been mine, as it was my ancestors’. It’s very painful to see this land, which was the heart of my family’s life going back centuries, millennia even, in someone else’s hands—especially in the hands of that jerk Darcy.”
“He seems to take good care of it.”
“Oh, I think he does, in his way. His pride would demand that he follow good stewardship practices, so his neighbors would have nothing to despise him for. But it doesn’t come from his heart. It isn’t part of who he is, the way it is for me. For him it’s a matter of his reputation, and of good business. I’ve heard he’s thinking of switching from ranching to planting vineyards, because he could make more money.”
Remembering the vineyards they had driven through—artificially sculpted hillsides stripped of all trees, with trellis poles marching up the slopes in precisely spaced rows—Lizzy was distressed. “I know the vineyards are supposed to be beautiful, and I like wine as much as the next person, but it would ruin this canyon if they did that!”
Jorge agreed. “The vineyards always look to me like military graveyards; they’re so depressing. And to cultivate the grapes you have to keep out the birds, the raccoons—none of the wildlife can thrive in a controlled monoculture environment like that. Ranching has always found a way to coexist with the chaparral, but winegrowing is more lucrative, so what do the landowners care? As long as they make their buck.”
“It would be terrible to destroy this beautiful place just to extract more profit from it!”
“I feel exactly as you do, and I don’t come here very often because I dread what I might see,” said Jorge. “I used to work here in the summers when I was a teenager and old Mr. Darcy was alive; he was okay. But now I’m not welcome, and I haven’t set foot on the land for several years.”
“What was it like, having to be just an employee on land that should have been your own?”
“Oh, in those days I didn’t care, I just wanted to earn a little money, and have the chance to be here. The stories my mother told me when I was little, the traditional tales of her people—you can recognize some of the landmarks described in them out here. For instance, there’s one story that talks about an ancient manzanita that has arched over itself and formed a tunnel; one day, while I was hunting for a lost calf, I found it, just up and over that ridge there. Those old tales—where they took place is like a character in the story, you know? And so when I wandered on this land, it was like the stories were coming back to life, like no time had passed, and everything the Anglos have done could just disappear. Like my people were still here, and free.”
“It doesn’t seem fair that people who want land only to extract monetary value from it should have property rights that supersede those of people whose souls are all intertwined with it. In a just world, the opposite would be true. But why aren’t you welcome here anymore?”
“Old Mr. Darcy never treated me like an inferior. He was the salt of the earth, not a snooty preppy like his son. Old Mr. Darcy would pick up a shovel and work right alongside you. He liked me, which his son couldn’t stand. So after he died, his son found an excuse to fire me.”
“Darcy has lost both his parents, hasn’t he? Were they older people?” asked Lizzy.
“No, they both died in a car crash. They were hit by a drunk driver on San Marcos Pass one night, when they were coming home from a concert in Ojai. Practically the whole valley came to the funeral; everybody liked them. But Darcy wouldn’t speak at the memorial, and didn’t talk to any of his neighbors. He just sat there like nothing had happened.”
Their date gave Lizzy much to ponder, about her adopted community and about how different two young men from the same place could be. She ended the day even more pleased with Jorge Carrillo than before. She had never met anyone like him. It seemed to her that he combined a lively charm with very proper feelings on things that mattered. They agreed on everything. And the injustice he and his family had suffered at the hands of the Darcys made him particularly interesting to her affectionate heart. Her passion for justice was aroused, and she longed to find a way to recoup what he had lost and bring the current Darcy low.
Chapter Nine
The memorial for Aunt Evelyn was now upon them, and Lizzy, hoping to persuade all her family to attend, spent hours locating appropriate readings for each one. In this effort she was not entirely successful, as her relations had their own ideas of taste. Lydon, who had just seen Splendor in the Grass for the first time and was enamored of Natalie Wood, was determined to read Wordsworth’s lines from which the title was drawn, shrugging off John’s objection that the poem was about the death of a child. Mary pored mightily over her Bible and in the end settled, to Lizzy’s disappointment if not surprise, on the Ninetieth Psalm (“You have set our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of Your countenance. For all our days have passed away in Your wrath; we finish our years like a sigh”). Kitty and Jenny refused to read anything at all, and Lizzy was inclined to think that the less her younger siblings were heard from at the event, the better.
On arriving at the Gardiners’ house, the Bennets discovered quite a motley crowd assembled. Lizzy recognized some of the faces from the ball, and turned sharply to avoid meeting Morris Collins’s eye, colliding with Charley Bingley as she did so. He promptly led her and John off to make further introductions among the younger set. His friends all had a sleek, well-fed look that led Lizzy to guess that these were members of the Enclave families Mr. Collins had made so much of. The appraising way some of them sized up her clothes confirmed her surmise, and she found herself every bit as ready to dismiss them from her mind as they were eager to abandon her and cluster around Fitzwilliam Darcy when he appeared in the doorway. But her satirical grimace in John’s direction was intercepted by one young woman, less glossy than the rest, who smiled at her with shrewd comprehension.
“Charlotte Lucas,” she reminded Lizzy, extending her hand as John strolled off with Charley, chattering animatedly. “They are a little transparent, aren’t they?”
“I can’t quarrel with their taste in slighting me,” said Lizzy, “but I’m not sure fawning over Fitzwilliam Darcy is much of a compliment to their understanding. And I’m certain it isn’t good for him to be so lionized: he seems by nature very proud, and such attentions can only make him smug.”
“Is it any wonder that such a fine young man, with family background, money, everything else in his favor, should think highly of himself?”
